polytope

In EE, opcode #271 should disallow actions not listed in INSTANT.ids, by default this file includes DestroySelf() - and CreateCreature(), which obviously works as that's how the trolls are spawned - has some mod in your order changed INSTANT.ids?

I just tested and a creature with permanent (timing mode 9) immunity to #168 in any case vanishes if instructed to DestroySelf() by script. It should probably be noted that neither #168 nor the DestroySelf() set the creature's death variable, which is important to know if you're keeping track of who/what died and so shouldn't be used as an offensive effect against any unique creature (i.e those not summoned or illusionary).

Curious, my version of DW#KPSPY.CRE has both IMOENHP1.itm and a permanent #271 - disable creature set yet it functions as intended in its spawning + vanishing behavior, whether encountered in the keep or called by console. This bug is obviously very rare, or other players would've reported it by now, considering how visible and game-breaking it is. What's your OS? Which game, EE or classic? If EE what version?

What a coincidence, so many other people in the past few weeks also seem to have stumbled upon techloky and made posts almost identical to yours, unrelated to the topic or the game but name-dropping or linking techloky. Merry Christmas to everyone except shills.

Although skeletons (and later in game, Mordies) ignore a Stinking Cloud regardless, as can any PC with sleep immunity (for now, there's another thread on whether the cloud or earthquake etc. are true sleep effects). Conversely, both summoned spiders and characters with Free Action (spell, ring or potion) can operate in a Web. Since there are existent means to immunize both party members and your choice of summons from both spells there's no strong argument that the saving throws are intentionally staggered to make the one more party friendly. The only argument I see is that some classes have alternately better saves vs spells and death, but a 4 point gap between Web at -2 and Stinking Cloud at +2 makes this usually moot (except for cheaty NPCs with artificially low saves). This also seems a good time to bring up the seriously bugged duration of the Grease spell, (if it's not already on someone's fix list) which should be tied to the .PRO rather than the feature block, as for other durational AoE magic and as it was in original BG.

I have a suspicion you're responding to a bot/scammer because of their reference to "most of the techloky apk mod games" and "your article". Seems to be part of a wave of astroturfing to get people to install techloky (whatever it is, I'm not visiting the website) on their phones, see a similar post and timestamp here

Ah yes, the spider form got substantially nerfed with EE (it used to have 4 apr), its poison was also weakened to allow a save at around the same time the assassin and blackguard kits poison weapon abilities were. Still, a mage could do more damage per round throwing Melf's Minute Meteors, without having to get close to an enemy (bear's AC is poor) and still able to cast spells without wasting an action to switch back, maybe not if the target was immune to fire but I really don't think anyone would melee a red dragon with a mage in bear form... The mustard jelly still looks like the most interesting (abusable) polymorph option.

Yes, if an ids entry has been changed it's a strong assumption that the spell was too, but the reverse isn't true, I know some mods alter vanilla .spl and .eff files with no corresponding update to spell.ids. Reversion of the files to original is easy enough, but likely incompatible with whatever mod changed those, since the change was probably made for reasons important to that mods intended function.

Oh right, that's terrible, I hadn't actually looked at the screenshot, and thought he was referring to movement rate while polymorphed into a bear but it looks like it's tied to the duration of the polymorph form and not removed by reversion to natural form. A clear bug, along with the shapeshift token proficiencies, but like I said, equipping an item generally won't replace active durational effects. Doesn't seem to exist on original engine + SCS with faster bears component, I've also literally never polymorphed my mage(s) into bear form, why would you?

I don't want to make assumptions about vanilla game files being left untouched, but also don't want to needlessly make a mess of the override folder by adding many extraneous files that are functionally identical to things already present in game. Is there anywhere a library of overwritten or changed vanilla spell files and .EFFs?

Tenuously bugged, it doesn't make sense for a bear to wear boots anyway, and durational effects have always overridden those from equipped items (unless ofc both effects increment rather than set a stat).

Surely no harm in giving Dragomir immunity to opcode #43; depetrification, along with a death script extension to drop inventory. The only reason a player would try to depetrify an enemy is to get their inventory items (redundant with such a script) or attempting some outright strange exploits. Yeah, conceptually I think vamps should only get the "turn to mist and escape" clause if reduced to zero hp through damage in combat, not if petrified, disintegrated or destroyed with a mace of disruption or a Sunray; in that case there should be no need for finding and staking them. It's beyond the scope of a fixpack to change vampire's scripted Gaseous Form ability though.

Does this kind of script block still work? IF Die() THEN RESPONSE #100 DropInventory() END Iirc, the items of a disintegrated/frozen creature are actually retained (even though the creature's sprite is gone), as with a stoned one, not dropped as you'd see with most death types.

Uninterruptible by anything except disabling effects or death and also can be called in the same round that the creature takes another action like using a potion or inventory item or casting a spell normally. As for ApplySpell(), you can also use ActionOverride() if you want a creature other than the one performing the scripted action to cast at its own level. As in the Limited Wish dialogue: ActionOverride(LastTalkedToBy,ReallyForceSpell(Myself,WISH_HEAL_PARTY)) Not that caster level matters in that specific case.

If you can get the AI to generate a decent large landscape image in isometric perspective it should be easy enough to chop it up into a tileset (so long as it doesn't involve water and static animations, that's fiddly). The searchmap, lightmap and heightmap .bmp files aren't too difficult to draw by hand once you've got an idea of the area layout, it's the detail of the background image that really slows map creation. The difficulty is getting the AI to make something both isometric and navigable, I may try sometime this holiday season. (These images aren't mine, these're from Nightcafe authors) There's also obviously a problem with scale of structures like doors and storied buildings vs the in game character avatars.

I don't use HLAs as innates option because it makes encounters with high level enemy mages all much of muchness, i.e. they all have the same HLAs beyond a certain level (lvl 25 in theory but realistically sooner) and is too repetitive for my tastes. Item Upgrade has a minor incompatibility with an SCS component as things stand, because one upgrade requires a scroll of contingency but SCS optional makes contingencies (and triggers, and sequencers) innates for any mage... I don't use this component either. More generally, Item Upgrade makes the game easier while SCS's purview is to make the game harder, so it's a somewhat antithetical combination. There are some reasonable item upgrades, but, the upgrades to the Blackblood club, Kitthix figurine, Water's Edge and Soul Reaver are all much too powerful, the first two stand out as being available in the very early stages of SoA and ruining game balance.

ApplySpell action is different to ReallyForceSpell() because it doesn't cause the creature whose script called it to face their target i.e. it seems to come from out of the blue (and doesn't have an associated caster level, as IESDP notes). Useful in cutscene type setups. Surely you've noticed that ForceSpell() respects original casting time (although uninterruptible) and doesn't take place during Time Stops, this is actually useful on original BG2 engine if you want to make certain a creature isn't acting during a Time Stop, ForceSpell() - cosmetic - before any ReallyForceSpell() actions in its scripting blocks.

It sort of doesn't, this aspect of any plot important item (that it magically returns to the PC's inventory) feels weird already, some recruitable NPCs however will EscapeArea() and thus not reappear if annoyed enough so I guess it was necessary, on the original engine anyway. Idk? They are made mostly of flesh, if unliving, so seem to fall under the targets that can be affected by Flesh to Stone spell, unlike skeletons/wraiths/shadows but oth exactly like ghouls and zombies, which are nevertheless immune to petrification... The fact that vampires are immune to fewer effects that instantly destroy or incapacitate them than other undead does seem like a deliberate choice, because the devs made a specific and different ring for vamps to bundle their immunities and regeneration, rather than giving them an immunity item paired with a regeneration item, like pit fiends have for instance. Also, giving vampires more immunities seems to restrict playing style, a solo mage might be annoyed if they discover they now have to out damage the vampire's regeneration (not a problem if high enough level of course but still).

I'm interested in the possibility of AI generated art to make new large area images that could be cut up into tilesets for instance, as map creation is otherwise notoriously slow in these games (hence both designers and modders reusing quite a few indoor areas). About the text itself, I can see a few clues that it was written by an AI, not a person. Firstly, the game mechanical descriptions of the items: Shield of Honor – A magical shield that grants additional protection when defending against attacks. +4 AC bonus, +5 vs physical attacks. Technically, it could give different AC against touch attacks vs straightforward melee/missile attacks but generally speaking AC is always a protection against physical attacks, something which I'm not sure the AI has picked up on. Also, it seems to think weapons should all do 2d6 damage (the bow, the hammer and the sword all do). Robes of the Canon - A set of magical robes that grant its wearer increased power when casting spells. +2 AC bonus, +2 to spell DCs and +1 damage per hit while spellcasting. Per hit when spellcasting? Again, could be touch attacks, but it seems wrong and the AI is using 5th edition (or at least post 2nd edition) terminology like DCs and willpower, the latter being forgivable I guess because it's the default assumption these days. Moving on to the characters: Athar admires Anari for her courage and determination, praising her for her skill in combat. He respects Olrun's bravery and dedication to the gods, and admires Zariel's cunning and agility. Zariel sees Athar as a great leader and a brave warrior, respecting his noble sense of justice. A paladin admiring a neutral evil rogue's cunning? Or the latter respecting his sense of justice? The Voice speaks in a deep, calming yet authoritative tone. They use a mix of vocalization and mannerisms to get their point across, emphasizing certain words and phrases. They speak with a melodic cadence, like they're singing rather than speaking. Singing authoritatively doesn't sound right. The ranger Anari is also described as a "powerful spellcaster", which rangers aren't... indeed if this is supposed to happen around Baldur's Gate, they probably aren't spellcasters at all yet. Apart from that, some small stuff which human authors also do: OpenAI rehashed description texts a few times i.e. The Voice is "skilled in the ways of divine magic and have a deep connection to the gods" whereas Olrun is "skilled in the ways of melee combat and has a deep connection with the gods." Zariel is described as having two unusual daggers, but only stats for one... meh, as I say small mistakes which a human writer without an editor might also make.

You persistently belittle and insinuate in backhanded fashion and act as the aggrieved party when someone else responds in kind. Telling someone that their ideas are "ridiculous" or "bonkers" is no less "offensive" than noting that you don't know what you're talking about. If you really want to be offended, not only do you not know what you're talking about, you really love the sound of your own voice to the extent of writing walls of pointless word salad: ???? What does any of that have to do with being able to adjudge whether it makes sense for mages to be able to call upon celestials with or without references to the external literature?

No, you don't know what you're talking about. Assertions like yours that something makes sense or doesn't rely on expectations derived from external sources as justifications for the sensibility of the subject or lack thereof. Does it make sense that Pi is an irrational number? It is, and there is no external frame of reference in which Pi is ever anything else from which you might develop the expectation that the Pi we deal with would be expressible as a ratio of two integers. Does it make sense that knights in chess cannot move as far in one action as bishops? That's how it is in the game system, if you had different expectations on the ruleset, it was based on something other than chess. If you want to ignore the published sources available around the time this game was written and consider the game alone, only internal inconsistencies and contradictions could be considered nonsensical. I see no such contradiction, prior to ToB (and even after it, if anyone ever bothered to cast it) the Gate spell cast by both mages and clerics gates in a pit fiend, and only a pit fiend. Come the expansion mages and clerics were both gating in celestials through a different HLA. Indeed, the Gate spell should always have been more versatile, and the creature that steps through probably contingent on factors like alignment & level for NPCs and some combination of alignment, level and reputation for the party, but claiming that it makes no sense for a wizard to be able to create Gates to the upper planes, where lorewise planetars are from, is baseless.

...and this returns us to the question of whether it makes sense for a mage to be gating in planetars. The game lets you do so, not providing much information on what they are, and why you can. Without reading external sourcebooks you can't assert that it is or isn't appropriate. Just like historical fiction, without knowledge of the actual historical figure characterized, you cannot say that it's a faithful representation, in order to determine whether something in-game makes sense in the context of the fictional world you need to look outside the game.

The difference is that when opening a Gate for a fiend you've introduced a completely new evil to the world and your character - not, you, the player - doesn't know the outcome or how much harm it will do (obviously, in this game, it will just vanish after a set time period rather than looking for fresh prey, but that's not the point).

It comes down to verisimilitude and the fact that you've gated a demon or devil in to your world to wreak havoc in the first place. Obviously, in game, you can avoid the fiend harming innocent people, but that's an artificial simplification and restriction of the spell, plotwise you've no guarantees about their actions once they're loosed. Also, certain acts like slavery - if you had some way to control them which the game by default doesn't give you - are generally considered inherently wicked regardless of who they're done too (the Domination spell is also problematic like that). I mean, the question was initially about what makes sense in this game, you can't quantify that without external references, obviously what happens in this game always makes sense if the game is considered alone without associated lore, just like any novel could only be considered unrealistic by reference to external things like expected patterns of human behaviour and the laws of physics. I must say that being able to call the planetar so frequently, multiples times in one day if you have multiple 9th level slots, regardless of whether she died or survived the initial period of summoning is a bit much, for me anyway. Simplifications are only to be expected, but can still pose balance issues.

No, thats the in-game description of the Gate spell for BG2, not the in-universe description of how it works in pretty much any edition of the D&D rules. It's pretty clear that planetars/devas/elemental princes are called by some variant of a Gate spell, since they aren't banished by things that dismiss summons. Yes, in original BG2 before ToB the Gate is always to a pit fiend, rather than bringing up a menu (as with Spell Immunity) of planes the caster could reach and draw an inhabitant from, this simplification of the spell's function isn't an argument for mages having a particular affinity for fiends, since priests got much the same Gate in vanilla. This entire thread is about how the developers made a poor choice in giving mages loyal and frequently usable planetars as a HLA, so the descriptions of other spells they changed from the rulebooks don't help make a case for how the Gate spell should work, and again, it's equally out of character and implausible for good aligned mages to summon evil lower planar creatures to their world.