Bartimaeus

Duh, yes, you're right - reading comprehension is overrated. Okay, well...um...I'll put that on the to-do list. Dang it, I don't want to fix that, but I guess I gotta.

(e): I'm pretty sure both IR and SR have both used 0% as a way to "disable" stuff as well before, though I've mostly stripped such unused effects in both IRR and SRR. Interesting to think about. Guess if you want to keep an effect around but disable it, you should actually be doing 100-100.

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

Don't I recall reading somewhere that AoE Deflection doesn't fully work, and can't be adequately tested, with spells cast solely within the party?  Or am I thinking of something else?

You're probably thinking of the fact that a Spell Deflection-ed character casting spells on themselves will pierce their own Spell Deflection (i.e. Spell Trap wizard casting Shadow Door or Improved Invisibility on themselves). I think another party member casting Improved Invisibility on the Spell Trap wizard would actually trigger the Spell Trap, however. One additional inconsistency is that we don't bother to make the AoE Spell Deflection subcomponent apply to *friendly* spells, so you can cast Bless and such all you like and it'll never be deflected. It's not worth the trouble to fix, and would likely annoy people more than provide any comfort in creating absolute consistency. Furthermore, I think you've opined the idea of making buffs (or at least the Cure series of spells) not have a power level at all so they can always pierce Spell Deflection even if cast from other characters, and I think I'd rather go down that route than making friendly AoE spells not affect Spell Deflection characters.

@Lianos Nope, it's a little "cutting edge" stuff since it's only as of the last couple months or so that I was alerted to the kind of derelict state of the AoE Spell Deflection subcomponent and subsequently seriously went through it and fixed everything up, added and tested a whole lot of spells that were inexplicably not included, fixed spells that were getting broken by it, and then found out the problem from kreso about stationery spells causing multiple Spell Deflection charge usages (every round - so an Ice Storm at 4th level with a 4 round duration could take up 16 charges if a Spell Deflection-ed character sat in it!). I'll be adding some explanations to the description of each Spell Deflection-like spell to explain better in the next patch, which will probably be in the next few days. As for the readme...it would probably be pointless for me to try to update it, because this isn't my mod and presumably it'll get an official readme update eventually, but I do sympathize that things feel like they're in a state of flux for somebody not already intimately familiar with its current state. As subtledoctor has said before, the mod is basically stable at this point, but a whole lot of stuff is no longer accurate in the readme or even mentioned at all at this point (e.g. some of kreso's changes). At the very least, SRR's spell descriptions should always be accurate, I guess, since I've trawled through and tested virtually every spell myself? But yeah, not ideal.

Part of what you're arguing against something I already accepted as being a novel idea. Traditional magical energies, like fire or magic damage, I already said am open to making them check magic resistance even if originating from an item, whether summoned via SR spells or through IR weapons. But since they're not already like that and I'm not sure that anyone actually wants them to be like that, I have no real desire to effect that change, and it is a pretty big change.

What I said I was less open to was physical force not magically enacted being resistable - e.g. a rock thrown by somebody's hand that hits someone in the face. While the object may have been magically conjured, the force that threw it was not, and I think that should be respected (and I think it generally is within both vanilla BG and SR, and I am curious to know if that's the case within D&D 2.0 as a whole). If you go down that route that that should also be magically resistable, then it opens a whole bag of worms that I just have no interest in even thinking about just because of the mess it'd create. You say that "[the meteors] are entirely magical in nature" in contrast to a magically conjured sword, but in point of fact, I do not know that. It is a conjuration spell, same as Monster Summoning spells, same as the Enchanted Weapon weapon - where in the universe am I pulling real magical +3 weapons from repeatedly? Where in the universe am I pulling real umber hulks, hobgoblins, slimes, basilisks, ogres, werewolves, etc. from? Is conjuration the act of teleporting all these different real things from real points in the universe, or is it the act of converting energy to create and/or arrange specific patterns of atoms to effectively create them? Personally, I think it's creating them, because they're spells that are cast the same exact way every single time with the intent of creating (or grabbing if you insist that they're being pulled from somewhere else) the same exact creature or weapon every single time, and therefore it follows that if you make the physical damage of Magical Stone or Minute Meteors require an MR check for every attack, you have to do the same for conjured creatures and Enchanted Weapons. I think gated creatures are the ones that are magically grabbed from their home plane and potentially bound, not normally summoned creatures, no?

As for Spell Deflection, it just seems fundamentally wrong to have a 3rd level spell potentially count as 30 spells against Spell Deflection. It is not a 30th level spell. I have less of a problem with Magic Missiles or Flame Arrow breaking multiple Mirror Images because they're literally fundamentally supposed to be multiple projectiles, so it makes sense they might hit different images or hit Stoneskin multiple times (although I'm pretty sure Stoneskin doesn't help at all against Flame/Acid Arrow), and less of a problem with stationary effects penetrating Spell Deflection entirely because it's a game engine limitation (as far as I know) that we would correct if we could. Additionally, stationary spells don't generally do massive damage since their effects are supposed to spread out 5+ rounds, so they don't tend to kill in of themselves, which makes it a flaw with the system that's a little easier to accept.

I always wondered how many points were actually useful, since the default is 0 to 100, and if you count 0 as a point in of itself, that's 101 points. Turns out, neither 0 or 100 were counted. Not much you can do about it - right now, an item that has a 15% chance of an effect uses percentage points 0 to 15, which is effectively 15/99, or 15.15-%. 14/99 would be 14.14-%, which is less accurate, so I don't think this really changes much. Thanks for letting me know, though.

Download and view with a video player if it doesn't automatically play in your browser. Also, sorry about the music, but I didn't feel like remaking it:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/3rlsvsjsmitigkw/2019-02-04_11-02-59.mp4

Seems to be working for me. As you can see, I cast a Fire Trap on top of Edwin, then had him cast Spell Deflection, then removed him from party and attacked him, Fire Trap activates and is deflected, and then I cast various other AoE spells on him until the Spell Deflection runs out of charges. Can either/both of you describe the exact situation(s) where it doesn't seem to work?

One note I'm planning on adding to the Spell Deflection-type spells is an explanation that stationary spells like Cloudkill and Ice Storm et. al. penetrate Spell Deflection (sadly by game engine necessity). Hopefully that's not the point of confusion here. I think I've tested every spell pretty thoroughly at this point, but you know how it is...

I think it's an arbitrarily drawn line between types of force delivery, I suppose. You have to physically throw a Minute Meteor, just like you'd have to throw a dart. Yes, the Minute Meteor is magically conjured, but so are the weapons of Monster Summonings and Enchanted Weapons, and I'm surely not in favor of .spl-izing all of their attacks to make sure everything passes a magic resistance check every time they do something. I'd be more open to adding magic resistance checks for magically created traditional energy attacks coming even from items (e.g. elemental effects like fire as well as stuff like vampiric or even fear et. al. effects), but it's a big no from me for physical damage that is delivered by physical force (there is more of a grey area on physical force delivered by magical means, though, such as Melf's Acid Arrow, and of course, there are specific and arbitrary exceptions in general such as the Cause Wounds series that are mysteriously exempt from MR where similar attacks are not). I'm not exactly clear on whether you still wanted the Minute Meteor to still do any kind of physical damage, though, which definitely affects whether you need to argue about this - if the idea was to eliminate all physical damage, there are already other limited use spell weapons e.g. Shocking Grasp that do have to pass MR checks, so yeah, go crazy (although I must admit that don't I particularly favor this Melf Meteors redesign to begin with and would probably revert it for at least myself). In a broader sense, though, I'm not sure whether I'd want every instance of magical effects coming from e.g. IR weapons to really necessarily have MR checks...I'm leaning towards no because there's no way I'd want to actually implement it and also it's just how it's always been and I'm kind of loathe to change it just because of that...but I am open to it at least being a novel idea.

Big no from me on it triggering Spell Deflections, though - for the same reason we're not allowing stationary effects like Cloudkill to trigger Spell Deflection: a single Y level spell should never take up more than Y levels of Spell Deflection. Either it protects against it fully in the proper way (which we cannot implement in this case), or it shouldn't at all - at best, a note should maybe be made of it (probably unnecessary in this case, since this is already how the item has always functioned and what people already expect).

It's not that I hate change, but I hate change.

@Jarno Mikkola I think when you actually paste something, a little prompt at the bottom of the message box shows up so you can paste in non-rich text. Rest in peace, BBCode Mode.

Yep, see:

Ah, I think I know the reason. Because it is an AoE spell, it is affected by the AoE Spell Deflection subcomponent. This means that the effects of the spell are passed onto a subspell, the spwi812d.spl. Thing is, dvhorrid.eff, the self-immunizing effect file that protects undead and such against Horrid Wilting, is protecting for spwi812, not spwi812d. And while protecting against the base spwi812.spl should prevent spwi812d from affecting them, it only works if the effect is applied to them *before* spwi812d.spl hits them, not after like it currently is doing. Am I correct in assuming that you can only cast Horrid Wilting once upon these creatures, and then subsequent tries they're immune? If so, then the solution is really simple.

I'll probably have to look at AoE spells to see if there are any more examples of this sort of errant behavior. Sigh...

Hmm. Not a spell that SRR touches (spwi812 is literally not included with SRR). Could you give me a copy of your override spwi812 and spwi812d if it exists? Furthermore, does this apply to all undead, or do you have specific creatures in mind?

Bracers of Speed: brac11.eff needs to be set to type 1 instead of type 0, already fixed in IRR.

Saving Grace: I guess you'd need SCS to flag this shield as being "anti-undead" and something for non-mindless undead to generally avoid when possible if IR is installed.

(e): Also, Saving Grace should possibly use condition 0 (hit by) instead of 7 (attacked by), as well as target 1 (last attacker) instead of 2 (nearest enemy). I am guessing that it was made this way to limit its damage output, maybe?

Cool, better safe than sorry. Also why outlining the process you used to reach the conclusion that something is a bug can be helpful for those diagnosing it, :P.

Yeah, sorry, wasn't really supposed to be posted for probably several days. I'm doing a big Magic Resistance test of every offensive spell, and I wanted to give Draztik a chance to reply, and I hate unnecessarily double posting. But yeah, when I thought it was single-use, it sounded like just about the worst 2nd level spell out there...lasting for an entire turn, on the other hand, means it could be borderline overpowered with a swashbuckler- or fighter- multi/dualclass. It still doesn't have great damage, but who cares when it has a -2 saving throw 5 round paralyzing effect? Really curious to play around with it in an actual game.

Firkraag is definitely weaker than that group of vampires. I can't recall because I usually side with her instead of the Shadow Thieves, but are they even harder than the vampires you run into in Bodhi's lair the first time during the main quest?

1. Please clarify: did the projectile not target your charmed character, or did it simply fail to dispel the Charm? If the projectile targeted the charmed character, then you are likely not understanding how Dispel/Remove Magic works. Read the description of Dispel/Remove Magic for more info on how dispelling magic works - it is not a 100% chance of working on enemy targets, party members or not (at least, I would think that'd be the case). If, on the other hand, the projectile did not attempt to target the charmed creature at all, that would be very weird, since the projectile Remove Magic uses is a vanilla projectile and has not changed.

2. Yeah, looks like the self-protection opcode is not dispellable, thanks.

3. Me neither, particularly. Makes pretty much absolutely no sense to use vs. the 3rd level AoE spells like Glyph of Warding and Holy Smite, for both the AI and the player. The one neat thing about them is that they're not subject to magic resistance, I suppose, but I'll think more about them.

Think it's supposed to be set that way already (it is kind of the idea of having a separate symbol for him, I would think), but yeah, it's not. Fixed and thanks.

It was a little bit of a nightmare to fix since the way Spell Shield, Dispelling Screen, and Breach were all interacting with each other via the different .tpa files was...not intuitive, to say the least...at least to somebody not intimately familiar with weidu (a hour or so of my life down the drain trying to figure what in the world was happening between ardanis_spell_shield.tph, dispelling_screen.tph, dispelling_screen.tpa, and main_component.tpa...), but I think I got it now. Should be fixed, and the version number has been incremented to V1.0.11. ...Also, once again, something that needs to be fixed in SR b16 - not a bug originating from SRR.

...This also makes me think that there are probably more inconsistencies with the various Wish spells, but I really don't want to look at them right now, .

MR issues with SR (non-Revised) b16's Sound Burst, Teleport Field, and Incendiary Cloud all confirmed and fixed for SRR (and now live on github).

As for Breach, seems fine to me. Created a two sorcerer party on a fresh BG2EE install with only SRR installed, and went through three scenarios:
Scenario 1: Had sorcerer #1 cast Stoneskin, then sorcerer #2 cast Breach on sorcerer #1, and it was dispelled.
Scenario 2: Had sorcerer #1 cast Dispelling Screen and then Stoneskin, then sorcerer #2 cast Breach on sorcerer #1, and the Dispelling Screen was dispelled, but not the Stoneskin. Then cast Breach on sorcerer #1 again, and the Stoneskin was dispelled.
Scenario 3: Same as scenario 2, except the order of Dispelling Screen and Stoneskin was switched. Same result.

If you have reproducible steps, lay them on me.

(e): I just noticed that you said the Breach spell from Wish. Reading comprehension skills, people. Yeah, looks like you're right, it's not getting the remove Dispelling Screen effect correctly, will get back to it later.

8 hours ago, DavidW said:

Adds saving throw at -5, but it’s skipped if SR is detected.

Okay, cool, thanks for letting me know!

Huh. I thought the colors would be switched from what you described. Blue would be empty (because it doesn't contain hostile effects in of itself), while white is full (because it could contain either hostile or friendly effects). I guess it's a little arbitrary either way you look at it, though.

59 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

More relevant to the "last call for fixes:"

Tome & Blood has a component that converts the Sequencer and Contingency spells into innate abilities.  (It uses the stock white icons when the sequencer/trigger is "empty," and when the sequencer/trigger is "filled" and ready to use, it displays a blue icon that is I'm-sure-not-at-all-suspiciously-similar to the ones posted by @Bartimaeusearlier in this thread )

Hah. I've never used Tome & Blood, so I had no idea (EE-only, isn't it?). Took like 60 seconds each in Photoshop to recolor them...and several more minutes to convert them back and fix their palette.

@DrAzTiK No idea, as I haven't ever used Kit Revisions, but it stands to reason that it probably is. Note that this is not an addition by SRR - the revised saving throw tables were always installed in SR games: I've just allowed the choice of disabling it via the settings.ini. Indeed, all the settings that I've added to settings.ini are the defaults used by non-Revised SR, to make sure that if somebody's installing SRR without looking through it, their options will effectively be the same as if they had installed SR.

17 hours ago, Salk said:

Hello Bartimaeus!

Sorry for a late intervention but I haven't been checking on this forum the last days. About imprisonment: I quite despised having the game apply different mechanics to party members and NPCs for the same spell but I realize there is not much that can be done to overcome the engine limitations, like you said. So I think this is the least of the many evils.

Thanks for your precious job, my friend!

No problem, and yeah, I don't like it either, but it's the only way I can think of to make Imprisonment and petrification actually work like they're supposed to when you use them. At the very least, if a spell is going to have an unfair advantage, I'd prefer it to be for the player strictly because of engine limitations than for other reasons or for the AI, but still.

V1.1.0 released:

1. There is an additional settings.ini switch to make Imprisonment have a -6 vs. spell saving throw - defaulted to off. Soul Trap (used by Kangaxx) already had a -4 saving throw, and it has stayed like that (since they're technically not the same spell, and Soul Trap is cast more often and also drains 4 levels each time it's cast).
2. Imprisonment will permanently Maze and subsequently slay party members after five turns if Freedom is not cast before that, but will properly and permanently Imprison everyone else it's cast upon. If you want items to drop from Imprisoned creatures, P5 Tweaks has a "Drop Items on Imprisonment" subcomponent. Should also affect Soul Trap (which was already being modified by SR), although I'm unsure exactly how SCS affects this spell, which I will eventually have to check out.
3. Nymph's weapon should now have a generic icon (instead of nothing).
4. Hamadryad's and Nymph's spells have the Cure Wound spells replaced in favor of Regenerate Wounds. Currently shelved, they'll retain their Cure spells. Their scripts cast spells by IDS entries (of which Regenerate wounds spells don't have any), and while I'm pretty certain I could figure out how to cast by resource name instead if I really wanted to by just poking around some other scripts, I think I'm just going to wait until SR gets its IDS entry update (assuming that it's still going to happen...eventually).
5. Banishment already had a graphic effect being called (the same one used for other planar shifts such as in Imprisonment and ToB'S Pocket Plane ability), but because affected creatures were being immediately slain, could not play. So now creatures banished will disappear with a short delay so that the graphic effect can play.
6. Animation fixes for Flame Sword, Spiritual Hammer, and the druid club spell that I can't spell. Checked other summonable weapons to make sure that I didn't create the same kind of problem, and it didn't seem like they were affected.
7. Switched Faerie Fire and Sunscorch's resource files as per DavidW's instructions. If someone's playing on Siege of Dragonspear, could you tell me if the subcomponent "Remove Disabled Spells from Spell Selection Screens" is installable?
8. Testing increased range on Blade Barrier and Globe of Blades, as well as "on-hit" spells like Fire Shield. Tentative. Feedback appreciated.

...I wonder if that's actually it, since most of the time, I have party AI off and no scripts assigned, but once in a while, I enable it for miscellaneous use.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've seen that before in previous SCSs in ToBEx games. It's weird, because I don't think it happens every time, but it does happen.

12 hours ago, TheLoneTremere said:

Sure, it seems by the time you get them you already are fighting decently strong enemies, perhaps maybe give this a regenerate spell or two and maybe delorious decay or so.

 

P.s i dont see any editing that can be edited in the settings configure file in SR.

1. That reminds me - since they're druids, they shouldn't even have Cure Wounds spells, but Regenerate Wounds spells. I'll think more about it.

2. Standard SR's settings.ini doesn't have anything besides like a ToBEx setting, if I recall correctly...but mine has the following settings:

// Main Component               
install_tobex                   = 1 // installs ToBEx; automatically skipped if it's an EE game or if ToBEx is already installed and up to date
revised_saves                   = 1 // installs Demi's revised saves tables for all classes (they're simplified and arguably a little more balanced)
celestials                      = 1 // set to 0 if you prefer alternative celestials without SR mucking things up
fiends                          = 1 // set to 0 if you prefer alternative fiends (e.g. atweaks') without SR mucking things up
ai_spell_immunity               = 1 // set to 0 to make the AI never use the old AI-only Spell Immunity spells (and have them replaced with spells of similar function and/or power)
dispel_globes                   = 1 // set to 0 to make globes of invulnerability not be dispelled by Dispel/Remove Magic
enchanted_weapon                = 1 // set to 0 if you prefer EE's implementation of Enchanted Weapon (no new item, just set's current weapons to +3 enchantment level - EE only)
saving_throw_imprisonment       = 0 // set to 1 for Imprisonment to have a -6 saving throw instead of no save
blindness                       = 0 // set to 1 to restore the original mage spell Blindness (replaces Obscuring Mist for mages - druids still have it)

@DrAzTiK

1. I think I remember you mentioning this in the SCS thread - no idea what that's about, can't say I've seen it before (but also, I haven't tested the latest SCS basically at all yet), and I don't know if it applies to just SRR or SR as well.

2. That's really bizarre. Will have to take a look, but I don't think I've done anything to change that, possibly an EE issue? I'll find out, I guess. (e): Confirmed and fixed, was due to what should've been a harmless change, but the little things can get you sometimes.

3. Correct - clerics do not receive this spell.

4. Yes. Chaotic Commands protects against it because the Hold effect is I guess considered to be a mental effect (I'm not sure that I necessarily agree) in addition to being a movement-restricting effect, so they both protect against it.

5. That's correct. Where's the confusion from? Free Action and Chaotic Commands can protect one individual against hold/paralyzation (and Free Action will also protect against most other types of movement inhibitors, while Chaotic Commands will protect against most other types of mental commands), but not cure it, while that spell actually cures it for the entire party.

6. From what I can tell, everything in the spell looks right. I guess I'd need specific circumstances to test here to confirm the problem.

37 minutes ago, TheLoneTremere said:

 

 

Gottcha, this may have been discussed before, but do you think it is possible to slightly buff the nymph's spells?

From Call Woodland Beings? Uh, maybe. Anything you had in mind? Summonables are probably my weakest point in terms of revising/balancing them, honestly, as I hardly ever use them (it's just not really my style), so it's hard for me to project exactly how strong something might be...so feedback on them is always welcome.