Bartimaeus

From what I recall, Moment of Prescience is actually +40, not +20, though I'm not sure how effective that actually is in practice. I left it as previously described because I did not understand why it was like this (i.e. I did not change it to be like that), but it actually gives you a +20 bonus to AC, then an additional hidden +20 vs. the individual types of weapons (slashing, crushing, piercing, missile). So if that's not enough AC, I'm not sure that anything would be. Also, the big weakness of PfMW is that if you literally have any unenchanted weapon lying around (say...Bala's Axe even, which I always keep on hand personally in BG2), PfMW is useless. So from the player perspective against an AI caster, both PfMW and Prismatic Mantle are unfortunately pretty flawed spells. Shield of the Archons deflects AoE spells properly, but the spell deflections don't? @Wyrd: I rather like that idea, and it's definitely possible. I think I'll implement that on a preliminary basis (aka subject to be reverted if it becomes problematic).

Okay, good, it at least is setting their gender to something unique, so that Banishment can still work on SR's end (seeing as SR is installed way before TA) by simply telling it to kill that gender of creatures, too. Gosh, Banishment is in such an awkward spot as a 6th level spell, I'm really not sure whether it should be able to kill 9th level spells (e.g. Gate) and/or HLAs or not. If not, it makes it a hard sell to ever memorize it - if so, it makes it borderline OP throughout ToB. Hmm...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Spell Trap in SR essentially a "Greatest Spell Deflection"? I'm pretty sure it uses the same opcode, just set to 99 spell levels instead of 15 like Greater Spell Deflection. I know in vanilla, Spell Trap actually absorbs spells and grants a sort of Wondrous Recall-like effect, but SR removed that. Either way, I didn't touch change that, but I guess I was assuming Spell Trap is supposed to deflect all the same. Banishment: Yeah, I would guess so. From what I'm seeing, fiends do not use that gender, but instead use 9 (summoned_demon). Devas have it set to 4 (neither), while Planetars have it set to male/female. Djinni and Efreeti have it set to male. The Elemental Princes have it set to male/female. Everything besides that looks correct. I'm not sure if Devas, Planetars, Fiends, and the Elemental Princes should have Banishment be effective upon them, but I'm thinking at least Djinni/Efreeti should. Also, if I remember correctly, I think the summon cap of 5 is hardcoded in at least BG2 via the 0x6 gender (summoned), so if you install the unlimited summons component of Anthology Tweaks, it probably simply mass changes the gender to something else, which means I should probably figure out what and account for it. As for the merit of the spell itself, I'm not exactly a huge fan of it, especially since it currently does not affect the most powerful of summons (which is where it would actually be effective - any battle where celestials and fiends are getting summoned). I'm still thinking it over, though. Mind Blank: Fair enough. I may go over that spell with a fine tooth comb and figure out more comprehensively what it should do and detail it in its description.

I'm afraid I don't understand: Breach is almost literally just two opcode 221s (remove sectype) set to 2 and 7. So it's literally whatever spells have byte 0x27 set to 2 or 7. If a mod adds a spell that has sectype 2 or 7 that has a duration, it's sure to be Breachable.

Well, it's whatever spells have sectype 2 (specific protection) or sectype 7 (combat protection), isn't it? So read byte 0x27 for 2 and 7 to get a more comprehensive list.

Banishment: I have not touched Banishment except to fix its icon. Does this apply to ALL summonings, or were there particular ones you tested it against? Pit Fiend/Glabrezu: Nothing I did, but I would assume it's as designed, since glabrezus are demons and pit fiends are devils. Death Knight: Again, nothing that I touched, but I'd curious to know if this is intended behavior as well. Spell Trap: EE game, right? I think Luke has complained about this on BGEE as well. Not completely certain what the cause is. I guess I need to test whether vanilla SR correctly deflects AoE spells vs. SRR's on EE games. Prismatic Mantle: Yeah, it's a problematic case. What I have thought about doing is increasing its protection up to +3 and making it so that its prismatic effect can only trigger once per round upon a given enemy (i.e. if you have two fighters attacking a caster with it, they'll both be affected by the mantle, but only once per round each). It's pretty hard to figure out what to do with this one. Mind Blank: I have to be honest: the spells Mind Blank protects against is a bit random. I didn't choose them, but yes, it has similarities to Chaotic Commands, and also grants protection against all the Power Words (though I'm not completely sure why - wasn't my choice), Oracle (but not Detect Illusion?), and maybe a couple of other things.

Huh As in, SR renamed both of them to Dispel Magic with the intent of making them affect only enemies, then failed to actually make them affect only enemies and instead had different implementations depending on which exact Dispel Magic you were talking about.

Yes, RM/DM, if successful, will dispel literally any ongoing effect that is marked as type 1 (dispel/no bypass magic resistance) or type 3 (dispel/bypass magic resistance) resistance. This is probably why SR tried (and failed) to merge Dispel Magic and Remove Magic, because DM could easily accidentally dispel enemies' own buffs if incorrectly targeted.

V1.00j released: Chaos should now have the correct icon. Break Enchantment's new description: "Upon casting this spell, the caster is able to free a victim from enchantments and curses. The spell can reverse the effects of confusion, deafness, feeblemindedness, hold, petrification, and silence, free a victim from magical fear, sleep, and charm, and break the effects of a curse. Note that Break Enchantment cannot remove the curse from a cursed shield, weapon, or suit of armor, for example, but allows those afflicted with any such cursed item to get rid of it. Certain special curses may not be countered by this spell, or may be countered only by a caster of a certain level or through a particular ritual." Storm Shield makes clear that it is not cumulative with itself. Strength of One makes clear that it is not cumulative with itself. Blade Barrier and Globe of Blades make clear that they are not cumulative with themselves or each other (and on a side-note, Globe of Blades actually *becomes* non-cumulative with itself and Blade Barrier - Blade Barrier already had it, but Globe of Blades was lacking it). Improved Haste's slow counter is now patched in at the correct insert point. Mass Regeneration now has the correct targeting. Went over all protection spells that are not supposed to be cumulative with themselves and corrected a number of spells that had them not in quite the correct order: various Protections Against Evils, Mage Armor, Ghost Armor, Barkskin, Resist Elements, Storm Shield, Magic Resistance, and Regeneration. Most of these, with the exception of I think Storm Shield, were only very slightly out of order, mostly because of other versions of the spell across the arcane-divine spectrum or vs. IR copies of the spells (i.e. the divine version of Resist Elements was specifying protection against the divine version of the spell before the arcane version, which prevented the protection against the arcane version from ever happening...so you could cast the arcane version right after and stack them, but not the other way around). Storm Shield had its protection against itself inserted right in the middle of spell, and so was lacking its protections against gas spells like Cloudkill as a result. Now fixed.

Improved Haste: Can't confirm. Can you send me a copy of your SPWI613.spl from override (or if you've biffed, from your biffer backup folder)? Also, against what slow effect - just mage spell Slow, or something else in particular? *edit*: I reverse the previous "can't confirm" about Improved Haste. I discovered what the problem is. The Hastes don't let themselves stack, and as such, have a protection from themselves opcode at the end of its effects. This also has the unintended effect (unintended here, anyways) of providing immunity to the sectype opcode that's patched in after during installation. So basically, I need to figure out a way to patch in the Slow-cancelling opcode BEFORE the immunity opcode. A "set insert_point" is needed during the macro patching, I guess. Luckily, normal Haste already has this, so it's just a matter of adding it to Improved Haste. Sadly a bug completely of my own making from when I was updating Improved Haste to more thoroughly protect against slow effects. I'm going to look through a lot of potentially stackable buffs and making sure these "protection from similar spells" opcodes are in the right order. Break Enchantment: Yep, that's intended behavior (after all, not everyone can cast Vocalize). I will update its description, especially since I'm pretty sure this spell does not even mention it can break petrification! Mass Regenerate: Thanks! Chaos: Probably a leftover from the icon reorganization fixes, thanks again.

Doesn't affect me (not an EE player), so I'm not the best judge, but I am not a fan. Backstabs are super easily exploitable and easy to rack up if you're determined (especially the second you throw in Boots of Speed and then Haste), and you're basically adding the Heartseeker property to it, except instead of a 15% chance, it's 100% on backstabs. Seems very strong. It is, of course, dependent on the player exploiting backstabs, but it's probably not a change I would advocate for.

From Demi's notes that I read, Kua-Toa Bolts being heavy (and dealing an additional 2 damage from normal bolts) is intended. Jan's Flashers is intended, too - they have poor damage to compensate, as I recall. Cloak of the Shield is definitely not new - it's been around since BG1! - although I changed its implementation because I felt it was so terrible, especially given its location in BG1 (end of Durlag's Tower) and BG2 (Firkraag). (e): Although it looks like I forgot to actually enable the 1D12 damage for the Kua-Toa bolts when using Weapon Changes, so I'll have to fix that.

Sounds way over my pay grade, to be honest. I don't dislike these ideas (though it's probably a case of needing to see it in action to understand if it actually works better), but it would be way beyond my time, patience, and physical condition to even begin to implement (I have bad very early onset arthritis that makes even playing games - especially these ones with lots of mouse clicking - painful, never mind many hours of modding). It's also probably beyond the scope of current SR, at least with the author MIA. Still, neat to think outside the box when you've been inside the established tried-and-true BG2 box for so long.

Another Enhanced Edition change? That would definitely merit discussion if implemented into SR, .

Looks alright to me. I installed a copy of BG2:EE and lo and behold, I run into the same issue. Looks like EE games need SWI219 to have a special flag to enable spellcasting while silenced, and this is a bug from SR (i.e. it's not my fault). Fixed, thank you. For Subtledoctor: in DLTCEP under general properties, write 512 in the "not in combat" field to fix this issue. Now let's look at Harper's Call...casts the spell, character is resurrected, caster immediately takes 10 damage, but then the character dies right after. I would guess this is because Harper's Call gives a penalty to all stats when a character is raised - including constitution. And because BG2EE handles stat reductions differently from ToB, it can immediately kill the character in question. Again, this isn't my fault, this is something that's present in SR and I'm rather shocked that nobody has discovered it or Vocalize before now. Fixed, and thank you. V1.00i will be released momentarily to fix these two issues. V1.00i now released to fix the above two issues. The fix for Harper's Call isn't perfect - basically, for just a moment you'll see the raised character having full HP, then drop down to 1 after the constitution penalty kicks in. No matter what I seemed to do, the constitution penalty seemed to kill the character unless I healed the character and added a short delay in between the healing and the penalty. Still, it at least works now.

>Well, GOI has an area of effect! So there actually is a way to protect your party members without Dispelling Screen. Uh, what now? @664=~Globe of Invulnerability Level: 6 School: Abjuration Range: Personal Duration: 1 round/level Casting Time: 6 Area of Effect: Caster Saving Throw: None This spell creates an immobile, faintly shimmering magical sphere around the caster that prevents any 1st-, 2nd-, 3rd- or 4th-level spell effects from penetrating (i.e., the area of effect of any such spells does not include the area of the globe of invulnerability). This includes innate abilities and effects from devices. However, any type of spell can be cast out of the magical sphere, and these pass from the caster of the globe to their subject without affecting the globe. Fifth and higher level spells are not affected by the globe. The globe can be brought down by a successful dispel magic spell, as well as other forms of magical attack such as Pierce Magic and Spellstrike.~ I'm pretty sure it does not.

Planetar bug was already fixed a couple of versions ago, actually. That was the result of transitioning fighter-like summonables away from the actual literal fighter class (and instead simulating it) to prevent weirdites and inconsistencies in people's mod installs, and selecting the "innocent" class as a temporary replacement...which of course, means reputation loss when you kill them, which I forgot to change for a couple of versions. Already fixed as of the last couple of versions, though. Silence: That's bizarre. Both Silence and Power Word: Silence use the same opcode for silencing. Either way, I cannot confirm: I cast priests' Silence upon myself (using a modified AoE projectile that targets friendly creatures), confirm that I am silenced by trying to cast another spell, and am able to cast Vocalize to clear it immediately after. Harper's Call: Cannot confirm. I create two Jaheiras, kill one of them, cast Harper's Call using the other, and she's resurrected. Are you playing on BG:EE? BG2:EE? What's your weidu.log look like?

>Bartimaeus may feel otherwise be he can make what changes he wants in his SRR project Not really a concern, since I'm not interested in making anything that breaks SCS, which means that even if I wanted to change some stuff, SCS compatibility (and therefore staying true to SR) is more important. Also not really a concern since it's my personal project, and nothing that SCS should worry about to begin with. Dispelling Screen if (M)GoI gives immunity to DM/RM: It still serves a purpose, since it acts as an additional layer of defense for the mage, as well as the *only* defense for other characters. DM and RM are big AoE spells that are frequently cast by SCS, after all, and having no defense, even a single line of it, for your fighters is probably more devastating on an encounter-by-encounter basis than the lack of a more "complete" protection in our theoretical (M)GoI. Dispelling Screen providing special protection for caster: This seems like a weird solution to me. Creating a specialized version of the spell that only affects the caster while no-one else in the AoE seems...atypical of sensible spell design. I definitely would not want this principle applied to other AoE buffs and protections, so I would probably not want it applied here. Ultimately, I would accept if it that's what people really wanted, but I'd definitely prefer the idea above.

I'm pretty sure IR changes that, since it replaces all slngxx.itm with versions that have that property disabled. Furthermore, I'd be surprised if that wasn't only BG:EE - I'd expect BG2:EE to have it disabled it again (as vanilla BG1 has that property enabled, while vanilla BG2 has it disabled). IR was made for BG2 (IIRC, Demi has never even played BG1?). Not sure how I feel about changing damage types - seems like it would just create more inconsistencies. Good point @ ApR.

Nope, I made a new installation of BG2 just to check and confirm those stats. Every bow has an ApR effect (opcode 1) with type 1 (set) at 2 (2 ApR). Well, except Tuigan, which is 3. IR's Weapon Tweaks drops them to 3/2.

DM/RM are definitely...strange for their spellcasting level vs. their level of power. Useless against higher level characters, even a single one, while overwhelmingly powerful against lower level characters, particularly if there are lots of them. To do something like you suggested, though, in restricting what spellcasting level spells DM/RM and dispel, would probably mean removing the dispel magic opcode altogether and trying to emulate it using sectype stuff. I guess you could reserve the dispel magic opcode for friendly characters only, to dispel enchantments cast upon them and such. Not completely sure how I feel about that idea - might be more trouble than its worth. I'm reading about 3rd edition's Dispel Magic, and it seems like a fairer implementation of the spell: if you want to try to dispel *all* magic on a character, it has to be single-targeted...OR you can make it a mass target to dispel just *one* spell per character. That makes way more sense, but it would be a feat to create in the Infinity Engine.

Enchantment level: That's fine by me, though I'd be hesitant to completely replicate the work of somebody else in IR when it already exists outside of it. Damage/THAC0: Still not sure what I think is ideal here. For reference, these are the launchers in vanilla: Bows: Receive THAC0 bonus from enchantment, but not damage. Base ApR of 2. Arrows: THAC0, no damage, base damage of 1D6. Crossbows: THAC0 and damage, base ApR of 1. Bolts: THAC0, no damage, base damage of 1D8. Slings: THAC0 and damage, base ApR of 1. Bullets: THAC0 and damage, base damage of 1D4+1. In other words, it's a complete disaster. Neither launchers nor ammunition are consistent with each other in any conceivable way as far as I can tell. With weapon changes, they all receive bonus THAC0 and damage, bows are nerfed to a base ApR of 3/2, and bolts instead deal 1D10 damage. By changing all of them to be launcher gets THAC0, ammunition gets damage, it would seem slings are the most stomped on (losing half of their vanilla bonuses), while bows benefit the most (as they come out net neutral from vanilla). Of course, it somewhat depends on what happens to bows' ApR, too - leaving them at 3/2 makes them pretty comparable to crossbows, maybe a little better depending on the level of enchantment arrows you're using (due to the ApR difference). Poor slings, though...but of course, the reverse is happening now anyways - instead of taking away slings' vanilla bonuses, the other categories are receiving them, too.

So our ideas here are: Leave everything as it is. Don't let DM/RM be an exception to (M)GoI, thereby protecting you from its effects. The effect is that your GoI must be dispelled by normal antimagic (Secret Word et al.) before DM/RM can be cast upon you. Make Dispelling Screen single target (self-target only?) and not be dispelled if DM/RM is cast upon you. Same as above, but with DS instead of the GoIs. Spell Shield also gives protection against DM/RM. Same as above, but with SS instead. I don't particularly like #4, since it rather creates too much overlap with Dispelling Screen when it already feels like they're too similar spells at the same spell level. #3 I do not feel too strongly about either way - I feel like the design of the spell is fine as-is, and I already like using it to protect fighters and priests, especially because SRR's Remove Magic has a smaller radius than SR's, which means less chance of the party getting mass dispelled multiple times in a row. As-is, it also makes sense as one of the very few protection spells besides Mirror Image and Stoneskin to take as a sorcerer, outside of triple-firing sequencers. #2 is the one I like most for reasons I started earlier, I think. Like subtledoctor said, there may be other reasons some people discussed in years past to discourage this change, though.

Hmm. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I've never thought (M)GoI was particularly good for the player, especially against SCS targeting, so this gives it a greater purpose - doubly so because it would also protect against players' Inquisitor spam and such*. It would also only apply to the mage, so it also doesn't really step on Dispelling Screen's toes per se. And funnily enough, it would also make Spell Thrust serve a little more of a purpose at 3rd level in BG1, since it would be equivalent in level to Dispel Magic and serve as your way to dispel BG1 mages' MGoI - without it, you could conceivably not have any way to fight a MGoI mage if you only have access to 3rd level spells. I'm tempted to try it out, but it would no doubt just mess up SCS's AI something fierce. *Actually, can someone explain how opcode 102 works exactly to me? SR's MGoI specifies it against levels 1-3, but then also manually specifies immunity to AoE spells that are of 3rd level and lower? Why is that necessary? And does opcode 102 protect against innate/special type spells, too...including externalized to .spl item effects?

Hicuty: It sounds more like you have an issue with SCS than SR, especially since not playing with SR wouldn't solve this issue anyways. When an enemy has a real penchant for Dispel/Remove Magic, I will sometimes send in a single character or creature that has some kind of buff on it while my other characters remain out of sight to draw out the dispels. You can't really do that for the lich in the wall encounter, though - nowhere to hide, and no way to summon a creature in advance. And from a non-meta-gaming view, there's no way to even tell there's a lich in there. An encounter specifically designed to mess you up.