polytope

Actually, it will return true for morale failure (caused by a battle going badly, not by magic) but not for the Panic() which is faked like PlayDead() and which also doesn't seem to change the selection circle colour. I think that the Panic() command is like Attack() - not AttackReevaluate() or AttackOneRound() - in that the creature won't do anything else and hence won't repeat the block, but there's no harm adding a timer or variable to be sure.

There are at least three ways of doing so, on a direct scripting level you can (after the desired trigger block), use the actions: THEN RESPONSE #100 Panic() END or THEN RESPONSE #100 MoraleInc(Myself,-X) END where X is some value greater than the creature's morale stat. The timing for recovery of morale is glitchy and possibly fails to happen, if you need the creature to only panic for a set period of time instead use: THEN RESPONSE #100 ApplySpellRES("XXXXXX",Myself) END XXXXXX being a filename of a .spl which applies opcode #24, the panic state, for whatever time you want, also set global timer or variable in the action if you're not checking for STATE_PANIC in the trigger block etc to ensure the script doesn't loop. You'll need to edit the doors of the area file and apply the NPC impassable flag.

What more would you expect offhand weapons to grant? Specialist bonuses of +1/2 attack per round for ** or +1 for *****? Warrior level bonus of +1/2 at 7th level +1 at 13? Both, so that dual wielding grants the same bonuses as Improved Haste (and potentially cumulative with IH, although the engine has a hard cap of 10 attacks in a hasted round, or 5 in a normal round). An extra attack plus the passive bonuses of an offhand magical weapon (in BG2 a smorgasbord of enhanced strength, resistances to some damage types, or immunities to many disabling or lethal effects) is already very strong compared to almost any available shield, which is the other option.

Beware of doing this for druids, they get HLAs at 15th level, but attain level 9 at only 90,000 xp, so expect to see multiple Quest Level spells thrown by those groups of enemy druids in the grove in early BG2, I think druids would need to be handled on a case by case basis by editing the stratagems->priest->override->bg1(bg2) level.2da files... adding an exception of set level for their creature file names, although someone else will probably suggest a cleaner way of doing it, just the first thing that occurred to me. Bassilus was about that level in earlier versions, but yeah it's too much. This would be fine by me actually, that battle is still a bit lackluster and there are so few encounters where a priest rather than accompanying mages is the highest level or most threatening enemy.

So, to make sure I understand, a high level wizard with base saving throws (Death/Wand/Polymorph/Breath/Spell) of 8/3/5/7/4 will have 3/20/0/2/20 and automatically fails to save vs wands or spells? A high level fighter or monster like a fire giant goes from 3/5/4/4/6 to 20/0/20/20/1 thus auto failing saves vs death, polymorph and breath? No wonder some players were saying LoB becomes a lot easier in late BG2 (personally never tried it). ETA: In my tests setting THAC0 to -1 via opcode 54 (not coded directly into the creature's file) gave me a similar wraparound to 20 problem, incrementing by opcode 54 is ofc safe. I too think it was intended, iirc besides downed trolls only zero level civilians and kobolds have base saves of 20 in any category, that being Breath Weapon, which would rarely be relevant in game, and all tables for player character classes start below 20 in each category. I can confirm it was this way on the old engine too, noticed some years ago that any creature with a save vs spells of 20 is auto-killed by Chromatic Orbs from a 12th level caster, although the +6 bonus should grant a 35% chance of survival.

I will say that while spellcasters may not need HLAs, warrior types do because otherwise the player has a boring advancement in the later stages (saving throws stop improving at lvl 17, THAC0 at 21), so just 3hp/level and one new proficiency every third level. Thieves need something too (just not Time Traps). The expanded spell progression table beyond level 20 from the Complete Wizard's Handbook might be enough for mages (class level vertical axis, spell level horizontal, if it wasn't obvious). 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 21 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 2 22 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 3 23 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 3 24 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 25 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 26 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5 5 27 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5 5 28 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 29 7 7 7 7 6 6 6 6 6 30 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 6 6 31 8 8 8 8 7 7 7 6 6 32 8 8 8 8 7 7 7 7 7 It still has the problem of enemy mages falling behind in firepower, and being scripted to use HLAs anyway, although those could be retconned (from the modder's perspective largely just reskinned but tweaked a bit too) as the results of Wish spells. There's also the issue of how to expand the tables appropriately for sorcerers and bards (there is a table for bards in the High Level campaigns book, but that also includes a different table for high level wizards, further confusing things), lastly, priests already have a glut of high level spells, so giving them more is redundant, then again Quest level spells for arch priests are canonical in AD&D, and druids are supposed to have their own particular abilities upon becoming a Grand Druid, then a Hierophant.

@Endarire I didn't yet tag you in this thread, that was jmerry, even though their avatar is a polytope. But yes, there is no advantage to hosting this mod on GitHub, that would be for complex mods like SCS where the version tree is important to find the last stable/compatible release, not for an overwrite of a single 2DA file. Besides, pointlessly inflating the number of BG2 related GitHub repositories makes it harder for searchers to find relevant ones. The vorpal weapon isn't the real problem. Unmodded, their regeneration rate, fast casting heals and weapon immunities together make them simply unbeatable by a large fraction of the creatures encountered, it's likely to take more than one round for even a very powerful boss type to take one down upon which the wizard can just summon another (unless you've got the SCS component to make celestial summons once per day innates, which is an improvement although making wizard HLAs into innates is generally overpowering as it means the player no longer has to decide between 9th level spells and HLAs). Solo, or in a duo, trio or even quartet it would be more obvious even with the crucial level requirement (except for multiclasses, but that simply disadvantages the player who chooses multi!) and the XP table revision, bear in mind that most players have the original game default of neither. 3M xp earned unlocks HLAs for them.

On consideration, one of the things which has always annoyed me was having to fight all the Bhaalspawn again almost immediately after defeating them the first time if you play with Ascension (and without Ascension is still much too easy on repeat plays even with SCS), along with Irenicus twice, or thrice if you're good aligned and meet him in the pocket plane. Oh and possibly Sarevok too, for the third or fourth time. It felt like one of those old arcade games which do that to you and was out of line with the rest of the saga. I would like to see a mod to somehow fill in the time between the encounters with the main antagonists, who keep coming back.

I agree with most of Ballad's comment on the old thread (except that UAI is arguably one of the more imbalancing): It looks like Beamdog took his advice and nerfed planetars by giving them 48 hp/round regeneration on top of all their other perks. Unfortunately mods that touch the HLA system (like Refinements) generally add new HLAs of comparable power (or attempt to, most Refinement HLAs are weak in practice, but on the upside they did nerf UAI to use of scrolls only), treating the vanilla game as a benchmark. Rogue Rebalancing does replace the outrageous Time Traps with Acid Traps, but adds some other very strong HLAs especially for bards. HLAs are used not only in SCS but by some vanilla enemies and especially Ascension enemies, so we can't easily imagine the late game completely without, instead modders generally try to increase the power of enemies encountered at high level to match, the trouble here is that a solo character will unlock HLAs very early in the saga, around when a party of 6 would be about 10th level (dependent ofc on how much of the xp you gained was quest xp, many quests give raw xp as for slaying monsters/learning spells/solving locks and traps though).

Psionics underwent several revision in 2nd edition, but strictly BtB Energy Containment - not Energy Control, I misnamed it - is not a durational power which the psionicist pays PSPs round by round to maintain, like the less comprehensive Inertial Barrier, it's something you need to activate in the same round you want it (locking out the use of other psionic powers that round), prep time of zero though, not even one, so can be used instantly if the psionic character or creature lost initiative or perhaps even if they were surprised. That's putting aside the successful power check needed to activate it, I think most players agreed that the system of power checks in the original Complete Psionics Handbook was bad, and use one of the alternatives if they want psionics. Mind flayers could certainly activate Energy Containment - to be on the safe side - in rounds when they couldn't find anything vulnerable to their other mental attacks (Blast, Domination etc.) or any unprotected low hp target to nail with Detonate or Ballistic Attack.

It's a good idea to add more content to Throne of Bhaal, the endgame feels kinda rushed and you have little opportunity to actually use the late game items you acquire from defeating the two enclaves. I have little experience in area design, the only thing I can contribute to this topic is that you can make a reused area look quite different simply by editing the lightmap (AR____LM.bmp) to give new hues and adding some static animations, the tiles themselves are a pain to edit and put back together.

Not all of them were, vampiric mindflayers and ulitharids were always vulnerable to elemental damage, but regular mindflayers were immune. It makes little sense since ulitharids are supposed to be the more powerful, and the vampiric ones at least should have had a regular vampire's 50% resistance to cold and electricity. There are btb some psionic powers (Energy Control, Inertial Barrier - only the 2nd was implemented, but still unused) that a mindflayer could use to make themselves temporarily resistant to elemental damage, which seems better than just coding it into their creature files, because there's nothing about these psychic squidy critters that suggests they're supposed to be inherently immune to such damage types, they're flesh and blood, not constructs or something like that. It's still an undesirable bug that the damage tick from poison, bleeding or disease activates a Fireshield, since that's obviously not how it should work. I'd think it should be retaliation per attack, so, while a high level fighter using Whirlwind would damage themself more quickly swinging at a fireshield I don't see the logic in taking a worse scorching from a fireshield if they used a poisoned weapon...

For what it's worth this is one of SCS's nods to PnP-ization/ Demons (not devils) should take half damage from magical fire, none from electricity. Devils are fireproof and lightning vulnerable. Both take half damage from cold. Exceptions are Balors and Succubi who are supposed to be completely immune to fire. Mind flayers are also stripped by SCS of their elemental resistance, which they shouldn't have had. As for the wiki entry, it's inaccurate, but what's new? Wiki also states monsters without proficiency in their weapon take a penalty to their attack and damage rolls (in game, only attack rolls, and only if they have a character class, there never was a damage penalty at all). However, with SCS, Succubi are now fire vulnerable, which is contrary to both the vanilla game and AD&D rules, as for the "fireshield feedback" exploit with Aura of Flaming Death, obviously in need of a fix, but it's not really an SCS problem, present in vanilla.

For now you may want to install it before SCS simply because SCS (current version!) clones remove magic to SPIN138 called INNATE_FIEND_DISPEL_MAGIC, the version used by fiends. If you installed polydisp after current SCS, then fiends (but not other spellcasters) would use remove magic with vanilla behaviour. Then again, SCS is slow to install and polydisp is very fast, so ideally polydisp would come after SCS, I'll fix the fiend loophole in the next version. On the other hand, if you installed aTweaks fiends instead of SCS, polydisp should be installed after that, I accounted for aTweaks' fiend version of RM, but was unaware SCS did the same. Also, if you want to play with the Spell Revisions mod, definitely install polydisp after SR. This mod revises the inquisitor kit's dispel magic to operate at 4 levels above their actual level, so don't install the SCS nerf together with it (as seen on the first page although I've misquoted the probabilities, I'll fix that). For now it doesn't work on BG1 unless you're using Baldur's Gate Trilogy, because it searches for a filename present only in ToB, I did this to prevent it being installed on original BG1 (where it wouldn't work) or original BG2 without the ToB modifications to the game engine. Future versions should include BG1EE compatibility. I honestly wouldn't memorize Dispel or Remove Magic in BG1, you have too few lvl 3 slots to make it worth taking a chance on, and you don't encounter enemies with Protection From X Weapon type spells even with SCS. I'll be honest that I haven't played Siege of Dragonspear and am unsure of the importance of dispelling there. The exception is for the Inquisitor I guess who gets it for free whereas other paladins at these levels can't cast any spell... I really don't think BG2 kits are properly balanced for BG1 even after all these years, but that's another story.

If you want to revise basilisks with a permanent hold type effect then just tack on an opcode 100 against RACE = BASILISK (102) with the same saving throw, that way the basilisk will simply ignore anyone who it has faux-petrified, just need to ensure that it's removed by Break Enchantment (opcode 321 on EEs, needs a sectype on original engine), and that anything that would prevent the hold effect also prevents all effects of the basilisk's gaze attack (easiest if externalized as a .spl). I'm not sure if it's worth the effort just for consistency between an arcane spell and a monster's special attack though, why must petrification from a basilisk be identical to a wizard's Flesh to Stone spell?

Time Stop actually does summon an invisible creature to act as a timer (on original BG2 SCS with ToBEx, haven't checked the EE version) but only if cast successfully. If the crash occurs the instant casting is attempted the problem is something completely different. Can you extract SPWI909.spl from your installation's override folder and PM it to me? I'll see if I can figure out what's happening when I have time later today.

1) Not really what I was referring to, even though rogues actually can do more damage per hit than anyone except a kensai (and even per round, with Mislead spell or assassination), a narrow window for damage due to the small die removes the suspense from backstabbing and wondering whether your thief will roll high enough. 2) I can understand the rationale behind penalizing the backstab multiplier for large weapons even though it's bad for some kits like the stalker because of the interaction with dual wielding, but granting daggers an actual bonus to backstab multiplier is even worse. Why should daggers in both hands inflict a better backstab on the first hit than a dagger with one hand free? It makes no sense at all, whereas with dual wielding longswords you could at least imagine it makes the character more awkward and genuinely more unlikely to pull of a successful backstab. 3) A d5 isn't a platonic solid... okay neither is a d10, but that's at least symmetrical. I don't like the idea of dice that aren't used in the real world.

This particular one hasn't happened to me but it looks like you're running the original engine with ToBEx? And EET Tweaks? I don't think the current version of SCS is stable with ToBEx on non-EE games and really isn't being actively supported and updated, and I've no idea whether any EET Tweak components which were mostly designed for a different engine work alongside it. Can you check Sion's script? Does his initial Chain Contingency contain a summoning spell? Certain animations are borked and reliably cause a crash to desktop.

For many, many years since before SCSII and SCS were merged into a single mod, enemy mages have been Dimension Door-ing after the party when you get out of LoS, iirc, in the early versions they didn't need to actually have Dimension Door memorized, only to be above a certain level, with the more recent Stratagems spell memorization is a bit more strongly enforced, so fewer AI spellcasters might actually have a DD and if you're new to the mod you're less likely to see it.

Turns out this works, I remember previously testing with an item that increases (while equipped) resistances by +50% and a durational spell or potion that sets to 50%, with the result being that resistances are stuck at 50%... but if it's done the other way around, with an equipable item setting and a timed duration spell or other such effect incrementing (which Hardiness and AoF do) then you end up with all the cumulative resistances. Effect order application is strange like that. Obviously this needs to be addressed, in Enhanced Edition it's easy enough for the Shapeshift tokens to remove (in the instant of equipage) all effects specified by a .spl resource (like Hardiness), on vanilla engine you'd need to remove all 1st level combat protections (Hardiness and Armor of Faith both count), that's actually mostly fine because druids can't cast Shield or whatever except from the amulet. Another problem is the that the tokens are usable by characters who shouldn't be able to use them, like ranger-clerics, F/M/Cs and monks in enhanced edition. Seems intentional (because so few spells require a save at exactly -3, rather than -2, -4 or whatever). Perhaps it should be -25% if your party members makes their save, -50% if they fail?

A small d4 die for damage removes some of the suspense from a backstab*, regardless of allowing a x5 multiplier, because the maximum damage is at most 15 points above the minimum (and specialization/magic/kit bonuses would usually provide most of this damage anyway). If something needs to be done to improve daggers globally, then a good candidate would be an enhanced critical hit effect if wielded by warriors or rogues (i.e. not by single class druids or mages). *Although of course maximum damage can be guaranteed if you're a kensai->thief using kai or cleric/thief under Righteous Magic.

The only recruitable stalker NPC is a katana specialist... Also, it depends on what you think are appropriate weapons. The vanilla game list is fine except for staves, which should really not be weapons for single class thieves, even spears would make more sense (I believe Safana in original BG1 had a mysterious spear proficiency? So long since I've played that version...). Then it became worse when the Staff of Striking and particularly the Staff of the Ram were introduced, which made clubs totally redundant to thieves. Light single handed blades (not battle axes or bastard swords) and light blunt weapons (clubs) are thematically appropriate for thieves, the reason daggers are a wasted proficiency (except for poisoned throwing daggers, and Fire Tooth if you're playing EE) is that the circumstances in which daggers would be useful just don't occur in game: Disarmed of your main weapon (even if you drop weapons due to a special attack you can move and pick them up). Trapped with a net and need to cut your way free (doesn't happen) Enveloped/constricted/swallowed whole by the monsters that can do that (which aren't encountered, or for which this attack form wasn't implemented) Forcing players to backstab with daggers (which have low damage ceilings) doesn't improve the situation much I'm afraid, as it is daggers are a ranged weapon only in BG2, which is also silly, but there you go.

Item Revisions (in a previous version, I haven't checked lately) did this but there's a problem when dual wielding. Longswords in both hands (for instance) means a -2 penalty to backstab multiplier, kind of ruins the stalker kit which is clearly supposed to be both a backstabber and also a two-weapon fighter (like other rangers).

Actually the caster will get +1 str, dex and con for each creature killed by Soul Eater (so up to +20 if you can somehow get all rabbits in the AoE, no need for other stat enhancing equipment), it's just that the subsequent animation of all but 5 skeletons fails because they're controlled summons and the game won't let you have any more (In Enhanced Edition you'd need to edit SUMMLIMT.2da, in original BG2 - which doesn't support conversion of either Soul Eater or Seven Eyes - I believe it's hardcoded).

Can't do that without modding away the summoning cap, the engine is quite strict here (in my tests) and you're stuck with 5 skeletons (instead of five potentially better summons). Actually dangerous encounters that are worth using 7th level spells for tend to feature enemies that can one shot either a 3HD skellie or a bunny rabbit (maybe not if they're using slashing/piercing weapons, which skeletons resist), but even so, unless they have AoE damage they will need to expend at least one attack (and some time moving) on each rabbit, which is what made the Limited Wish for a rabbit horde useful, tactically you can think of it as either a double strength Stoneskin cumulative with regular skins or a Maze spell that still allows attacks on the confused bunny-hunting monster.