polytope

Out of interest, that particular wizard's script (TRGRD02.cre using MAGE8A.bcs) references the use of lightning bolts in the original game, but then he doesn't have any memorized, unlike most mages who use it, so it looks like the original game devs hit on this same bug in different circumstances once long ago.

I don't have much to contribute to this topic, but I have noticed that on rare occasions initial kit bonuses can be applied to a character twice on creation. I'd guess something similar is happening here, best to make sure that whatever .spl encodes such bonuses also has a timing mode 9 protection from itself if it's only meant to be applied once.

1 hour ago, CrevsDaak said:

I think creating a new spell for the sword to use (by copying the old LMD it was using prior to it being modified) is the most sensible thing to do, since if other mods decide to modify LMD they would also be editing the sword's spell (though it's going to be a bit late by the time SCS is installed to prevent that).

Worth mentioning that in un-modded BG2 (not EE) Foebane inflicts a flat +4 magic damage, +4 hp bonus to the wielder, no shell spells involved. And it was already the best sword in the game (better than Blackrazor in most cases).

The problem is that rather than giving the sword its ability from the original source books (I forget which supplement, but it's meant to be 1d8 hp drained) the devs "standardized" the on-hit effect as a copy of Larloch's Minor Drain except for it being cloned into the weapon's feature block, rather than cast on hit (probably because of the bug with variable dice values in opcode 18).

There isn't really a need to do things differently here from the BG2 Sword of Chaos, or Adjatha, I think more problems have been introduced than fixed.

P.S. sorry for the "bug report" derailment DavidW, it's up in the air whether this is more of a bug or more of an issue with design decisions.

On 3/30/2024 at 6:01 PM, ManaMusic said:

With abovementioned combo you not only get crazy physical res but also other resistances.

Physical resistances are the most unbalanced if pushed to 100 or close to 100. Most spell-casting creatures can inflict multiple types of magical and elemental damage (with a few exception such as flaming skulls that only have fire spells) plus debuffs, with SCS or other tactical mods many can lower magic resistance. On the other hand, creatures that rely on physical attacks usually don't have multiple alternatives to throw at the party, so 100% resistance to any type of physical damage is problematic i a way that 100% resistance to any element or even magic is not.

On 3/30/2024 at 6:01 PM, ManaMusic said:

 how to explain the race for the charname? Bhaal the father and genie the mother?

Tbh, it is no stranger than the existence of Abazigal or Yaga-Shura. Or the fact that you can select barbarian or monk as character classes from the start.

10 hours ago, Dorothy_Dorothy_ said:

mmmmm I think wraiths and liches can spawn on random rest encounters on harder modes in the shadow temple ruins, for example. It's also level-dependent I think, but it's been a long time since I looked into how that's done. IIRC it's a table that compares your current level and current chapter of the plot.

There are actually three separate things here.

In the majority of maps there are rest-interrupt spawns coded into the .are file, often more than one possible monster, and with variable chance of it turning up, but never dependent on your character's xp. There are also spawned groups from SPAWNGRP.2da encountered at various points in most dungeon/outdoor maps, again, a variety of possibilities, i.e. the same spawn point could have RDUndead (mummies and ghasts) or RDUndea2 (shadows and wraiths), you won't know until you get close.

However there are also "trap" areas in many maps, which function much like an undetectable and undisarmable floor trap and run a script which does check your characters xp (not your level, so multiclass characters get equally difficult spawns) when deciding to add creatures, those scripts like SPWNDEAD.bcs are the scaled ones that can confront you with liches etc., however these are only triggered when advancing through the map and only once for each such scripted spawning, unlike other spawnpoints which may reset over time.

Stackability of physical damage resistance is a perennial problem, looks to me like a water genasi barbarian could get up to 95% at high levels; 15% race, 20% kit bonuses, 20% defender flail, 40% hardiness.

The "hardened warrior" feat, if you have feats in your game, takes that to 100%...

It would make more sense lorewise for the water genasi to get 15% magic resistance instead. Marids (the elemental water type of genie and presumable ancestors of water genasi) have the highest magic resistance of any genie type, even the "typical" marids, not just the "noble" type get it, so there's a reasonable precedent.

Also, it seems improbable, to me anyway, for these guys to be barbarians or even berserkers. I could see it for fire genasi.

8 hours ago, Dorothy_Dorothy_ said:

that was obnoxious because what it really did was just make me run back to town to sleep in an inn and then spend ten seconds walking back through the dungeon to get to where I was (the Planar Sphere and Spellhold to Underdark sequence is really the only time you can't do this)

Planar prison also, but like the planar sphere (1st floor) that's actually a safe place to rest. So is most of Spellhold/underwater city and there's a gnome inn in the underdark. Mostly you're missing out on temples for that portion of the game which behooves you to keep a cleric alive at all times unless you've found a Rod of Resurrection (let's face it, most parties have). It varies by area, but I'm pretty sure the most dangerous creature you can see as a rest spawn in BG2 is a (single) gauth, most others being nuisances. Worse things might spawn in Watcher's Keep but in every level except the 3rd one it's simple to backtrack and find an exit. Similarly backtracking through the map along path's you've already taken is usually safe because the devs didn't implement wandering monsters (there are a few exceptions like the Firewine ruins in BG1).

8 hours ago, Dorothy_Dorothy_ said:

Isn't there a mod somewhere that actually removes resting outside taverns?

Well, that would make it harder as the entirety of Spellhold and I guess parts of Siege of Dragonspear would need to be done without rest. SCS currently has an option to disable resting in the Illithid city of the underdark.

21 hours ago, RoyalProtector said:

For example, consider how at level 1, you die by 2 or 3 arrows at most, but at level 13, you can take 10 times more, obviously it can't realistically mean that your character suddenly is capable of being impaled with many sharp pointy metal projectiles.

Yes, in the abstract a character's stock of hp sometimes represents a close call survived with some exertion, hitting the floor, ducking behind cover, flinching backward in time to only take a graze etc.

That abstraction breaks down when you look at things like poisoned arrows/daggers though, you could argue that high level characters survive both the physical injury and the poison better because a mere graze injects less poison, and less deeply into the tissue, but I'd struggle to believe it. It's probably the reason poison wasn't counted in hp damage in the earliest editions and was instead save or die (or incapacitated) with varying bonuses/onset times.

18 hours ago, Dorothy_Dorothy_ said:

2nd edition D&D kind of has "gotcha" and "puzzle monster" mechanics as a core conceit. Bosses with low enough THAC0 to guarantee they hit against AC every time aren't really any more problematic than player characters who can become invincible for a turn or two at a time.

 The latter part is not a 2e thing, really, it's a ToB thing.

13 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

The counterpoint being, of course, that the encounters in BG2 have already been balanced, and they have been balanced against this particular idiosyncratic every-encounter-on-steroids house-ruled implementation of 2E. So standardizing things, at this late date, may not help anything.

In most instances, throughout this series, it was simply easier for the designers to overpower the encounters than to restrict the player character's frequency of resting in a way that's plausible and not immersion breaking. This means both random monster groupings and set encounters in IE games are scaled on the assumption of encountering a party near or at full strength in terms of their hp pool, memorized spells, x-uses per day items. Very few areas that you have to complete without leaving or resting.

4 hours ago, RoyalProtector said:

I still find it rather dumb that a feature like that is essentially invalidated by some enemies. Also, realistically it's rather dumb. Can you imagine Drizzt fighting Demogorgon and getting hit every time? Hilarious.

That's a problem ultimately caused (mostly) by kit/class tables extended to levels above 20 (above 30...) along with HLAs so that certain builds like swashbucklers (and monks and kensai->thieves) can get AC much better than even Drizzt, thus, to keep up with this power creep the big enemies in ToB need even lower THAC0 than they should "legitimately" have.

Also, it is a problem, but one not really resolved by any edition of D&D, that AC is an abstraction of both physical armor and capacity to avoid blows, checked with a single die roll... yet most characters didn't get an inherent improvement to their base AC in those rules (beyond that from dexterity) as they increase in level, and all other "survivability" is instead represented by hit points gained. Several other systems split "defense" from actual armor, with weapon type usually mattering more for armor penetration purposes and respective levels for bypassing defenses.

10 hours ago, RoyalProtector said:

... But at least we can all agree, I think, that the THAC0/AC system as such is trash and absolutely beyond hope [in ToB].

Nothing's simpler than THAC0/AC, subtract the targets AC from the attacker's THAC0 and that's the number needed on d20 for a successful hit (if <1 is a guaranteed hit except on critical, if >20 is guaranteed miss except on critical), it works when both THAC0 and AC are negative too (as if often the case in ToB), since only the difference matters. Prior to THAC0 in AD&D the charts for what creatures attacked as were a lot more obscure and difficult to remember.

Unless you mean that AC becomes useless in ToB? Not quite, there are bosses that will hit any AC, but they're rarely alone, and the attacks from their minions (who can be foiled by AC) add up quickly. Likewise only warrior classes and priests at full buffs have THAC0 in the auto-hitting range.

THAC0 seamlessly converts to base attack bonus btw. as in 3e, so in my view it's cosmetic which system is used (except for a few unusual rulings for unimplemented monsters/abilities where for instance target's AC is added to the damage, or chance of infection is a % = 10 times the armor class, so that it's worse for it to be a high number).

2 hours ago, DavidW said:

You see this most clearly in recent versions of Pathfinder - what matters are the bonuses, with the base scores kept around only for nostalgia value, and indeed dropped entirely in the most recent version (one just talks about having Strength +4 or Intelligence -1).

Well, yes, the only real reason to chart in game bonuses to an arbitrary numerical threshold was if you're randomly rolling stats for your character (rather than using a point-buy system that's become more common and something like this is basically assumed for BG2 players given rerolls and moving points around in chargen) which permits uncertainty as to whether you'd have any stats in the bonus range.

Without a base score it's a bit more complicated to keep track of things like the possibility of dying to a stat drain, but the systems that do that have their own rules for "draining" monsters.

I wasn't specifically attacking your mod for borrowing from recent rule sets btw., just my opinion that it's easy to break balance when overhauling mechanics, particularly with assumptions made by other modders about creatures/items they've added to the game and how effective those will be.

Mace for Devas would be comparably easy as we've already got a sword overlay to work with. That said, it looks like too much work for me, I'd prefer to just pretend they're using a sort of bar-mace:

OTOH Balors with Ascension/SCS/aTweaks have vorpal weapons, but no sword overlay at all, and it's a lot more jarring for them to just apparently yank somebody's head off. Meh, it's been like that for so long I doubt anyone will change it, especially when you have to work around wings for the weapon animations; big creatures with wings etc. always looked bad with most graphical overlays...

This topic has come up before as I remember with aTweaks fiends. Before I waste any more time on this, can someone tell me if they know of a mod/modder/tool that they used which does something like this?

Cornugons with clubs, it will take me time to get the frames properly aligned and edited:

Several attempts have been made over the years to revise stat bonuses (for IE games and by 2e players as a whole), almost invariably, something goes wrong, the already tenuous game balance falls apart. Personally, I think one of the main reasons for dissatisfaction and attempts at reworking it is the "dead zone" for most ability scores taking up the larger part of the bell curve of a 3d6 die roll, so that there's too little chance of generating a character with useful bonuses raw, and you have to start moving ability points around.

Besides, it makes little sense that a character with 15 strength is no better in hand to hand combat that one with 8 strength, despite being able to carry more than twice as much weight. Similarly, because ability checks weren't implemented in the IE a character with 14 dexterity is no more likely to avoid physical damage than one with 7 dexterity (and their basic AC wouldn't be better anyway, dex checks only applies to a handful of monster attacks and a larger number of traps/hazards).

FWIW, this is the table in OD&D:

Strength                  Hit Probability      Damage
3-4                            -2                            -1
5-6                            -1                            Normal
7-12                         Normal                   Normal
13-15                       +1                            Normal
16                            +1                            +1
17                            +2                            +2
18                            +2                            +3

Exceptional strength

Dice Score                  Hit Probability       Damage
01-50                            +2                            +3
51-75                            +3                            +3
76-90                            +3                            +4
91-99                            +3                            +5
100                                +4                            +6

Something to note is that an exceptional strength roll in the 1-50 range (originally) gives no bonuses over plain 18, which I doubt would be popular, and 18/100 ends up one point ahead of vanilla values for THAC0 bonus. Arguably, 17 str should grant only a +1 to damage and 18 (unexceptional) would increase that to +2. Also, 13-15 share the same bonus, whereas 16, 17 and 18 all grant improvements. 

On 3/24/2024 at 1:19 PM, DrAzTiK said:

No offense but It is a bit sad that the current fashion is to rely so much on 3e edition. There is some good things in it but also a lot of garbage.

8 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

The obvious problem with 3E ability scores (and 4E, and 5E, and Pathfinder, etc.) is that you can boost an ability score and get no benefit from doing so. This seems so shockingly bad to me, it boggles my mind that WotC has stuck with the system all this time.

I'm also not a fan of 3e intrusions into BG trilogy, particularly because so many of the mechanics were hardcoded under the assumption of a 2e ruleset, which isn't easily changeable, besides 3e not being an improvement anyway.

Ability scores increments that give no immediate mechanical improvement are still useful as a protection against stat draining creatures/diseases and for ability checks that compare the result of a die roll or multiple dice to the score, failing if the rolled number is higher (in 2ed that was usually a d20, but occasionally something like 2d12, or with a -X penalty applied, that ensured success wasn't always guaranteed in every instance no matter stat enhancers).

In my impression, generally speaking, the more niche the topic, the more technical and specific the question the less likely the language learning model (or machine learning in general) can produce anything that applies the body of knowledge appropriately, let alone specifically delivers the answer you were looking for. A fan's interface for modding an old computer game is definitely not something it's likely to be able to work with.

This applies more generally, remember last month's story about the AI illustrated article in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology? People were laughing at how it attempted to depict the rat's testicles, but in fact the depiction of the JAK-STAT signalling pathway is also a total mess, because it's a little known subject except to immunologists and hasn't been described and illustrated enough times for an artistic AI to train on it, so the AI produces a lot of nonsensical filler instead of a useful diagram.

36 minutes ago, DavidW said:

I don't know a way to adjust carry weight.

My recollection is that equipped/inventory items with negative weight actually work, can't do it smoothly for a kit though, unless you add some sort of undroppable and (relatively) unobtrusive item, in the style of a carried familiar, called something like harness or webbing I guess.

14 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

But, if it only needs to be detected by scripts, why not just use a local variable?

Local variables set on party members cannot be easily checked by other creature's scripts.

Opcode #268 and associated stat #148 also appear harmless to set upon player characters, possibly also opcode #293 and stat #183. These can be used without ToBEx's expanded functionality of #318.

11 hours ago, Dan_P said:

I've never used 340, but 341 can definitely stack.

Seems I misremembered and mixed up change critical effect #341 with change bard song effect #251.

Is there a simple way to choose only one such at a time though? Besides the obvious i.e. removal of the resource that grants the effect by #321 or similar?

My own efforts to make single class thieves a bit more useful in straight combat were similar, but not the same:

A repeating ability under the special abilities tab with a four round cooldown which gives the equivalent of Assassination via #303 backstab every hit and a +2 bonus to THAC0 but sets attacks per round to zero for one round after a hit connects (to ensure it isn't disproportionately powerful for dual and multi-class thieves who've ways to maximize their attacks per round), called skirmishing, to distinguish from swashbuckling (swashbucklers obviously don't get it).

Also, allowing the Assassination HLA to be chosen multiple times, but the backstab multiplier during an assassination reduced to X3 for normal thieves/multiclass thieves and stalkers (extended as a HLA choice for them), X4 for assassin kit (making it in someways better, someways worse than warrior Critical Strike which guarantees hits and doubles the strength bonus).

Balancing thieves in combat also means balancing traps though, which get more than a bit silly in the late game, that's one of the mechanics which most modders leave alone, like priestly turning of undead because it's unbalanced but also substantially hardcoded.

If I want to use a new innocuous detectable stat that will work in scripts between the original engine/ToBex/EE can anyone advise if opcode #308 and corollary #195 is a poor or good choice?

It doesn't seem to be stored in save games but this won't matter if it's used to keep track of things in combat (where you shouldn't really be able to save the game anyway), likewise, although it does protect from the "Tracking" HLA (which no one takes...) that's an ability that's used to discover creature's locations before a combat starts.

On 3/7/2024 at 3:42 AM, svj said:

Thanks Jmerry&SubtleDoc but your replies are valid for EEstuff i am not making EE mod in fact it might be ToB only

Here's another solution (involving shell spells) that will work on the "old" engine, since you want the creature to heal damage specifically every round regardless of disabling effects, use opcode #232 to cast a spell aaaa.spl on condition #11: took damage.

aaaa.spl has the following effects in its feature block:

1. Opcode #146: Cast spell bbbb.spl (Instant/permanent)
2. Opcode #206: Protection from spell aaaa.spl (duration 6)

bbbb.spl has the effect of healing all damage via opcode #17 with a delay of 6 seconds, making sure the mode is healing normally rather than resurrecting from death, this should work even when the creature is disabled i.e. feebleminded.

Then again, if the party has successfully used Feeblemind (or even Hold Monster) on the creature that heals every round it really won't matter if it regains all its hp... up to you if you want the secondary spell to also remove disabling effects/level drains etc.

#248/#249s have always stacked, as in spcl121, archer's called shot, new effects are gained per 4 levels and all are cumulative. I believe standard order of applications applies, so that the equipping effect precedes that granted by short duration buff. Unexpectedly, the on hit effects evaluate before the feature block of the weapon itself.

#340/341 force only one resource to be picked, I think.

Don't beholders already get around this by applying a .spl on self if they're illusions or summons (simulacra)? Liches also?

On 12/29/2023 at 3:10 AM, DavidW said:

Force mages I did more because I thought it was thematically fun - I'm unsure about balance, the damage boost for magic-damage spells is a nontrivial advantage, but probably you're right. I'm not too horrified though - in a single-player game like BG2 I don't want to worry too much about precise balance between options.

I, too, like the concept, but the description of force mages from the player's option series isn't very helpful because it says they should be barred from alteration and divination... much unlike the other elementalists.

The way I see it, "forces" (their speciality) all operate by rigid and quantifiable laws, so magic that's chaotic and unpredictable (Prismatic Spray, Sphere of Chaos, Chromatic Orb by extension) is antithetical, as would be summons from supernatural realms like the outer planes (Nishruus, demons etc., but I'm unsure if it should extend to [limited] Wishes). Similarly, mind affecting magic that strips reason and acts on emotions (Spook, Horror, Emotion [all subtypes], Confusion, Chaos) but not those enchantment spells which purely constrain or compel (like the Hold line and Domination) should go, I added Slow and Ray of Enfeeblement to the list because they don't seem to act by an opposing force (like Telekinesis) but rather the "leeching" of a force.

I'm stuck for better ideas as to what could be justified as "philosophical" opposition spells to force magic without just copying the Invoker's restrictions.

4 hours ago, DrAzTiK said:

I am a bit worry about the resurrection spell change costing one diamond or additional money.  In most modern rpg ( starting wih dragon age origin in 2009), resurrection is something basycally free coz all your teammates just lay down if "killed" and wake up it you manage to win the fight ( you still need to heal themp)  and so there is not even need of resurrection and It would have be a dream to get this amazing mechanic in BG witch allow to save a lot of micro management.

The reason of this mechanic gameplay in modern rpg is because it is very standard and it happens ofen  to get a character killed in fight even at low level.  We can't force the player to use a high level spell or to use ressources to resurrect them.

The BG series aren't modern RPGs, though, and SCS is intended to make the game more difficult. With such a mechanic, the game is only lost by TPK (would you extend it to the protagonist?) which is pretty rare even with improved AI, as SCS doesn't greatly increase the firepower or number of enemies in most encounters.