polytope
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Posts posted by polytope
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15 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:
I mean, at least a planetar is a real thing. There is no “dark planetar” in any Monstrous Compendium. And plenty of other monsters that could serve just as well. (I mean, why not just summon a balor or something?)
They wouldn't though, serve equally well, that is. In 2nd edition AD&D even a balor is not a match in terms of stats and abilities for a planetar, so the equivalent summoning spell for evil mages either needed to summon multiple creatures, invent something completely new, or just cosmetically alter the planetar to a dark version. Fallen angels are canonical in pretty much every major religion, so it doesn't stretch my credibility any further than mages regularly having them at their beck and call.
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Gate is also a 7th level spell for clerics in 2nd edition, obviously the intent is that mages get more power from their 9th circle slots than priests would from their 7th circle slots - considering the better equipment, hit points and combat abilities of a priestly class vs a mage - thus counterintuitively planetars are called by a mage, devas by a cleric (or paladin as HLA).
As for why a fallen planetar for evil mages; simple parity. The planetar is about the second most powerful non-unique creature with stats in AD&D (second to the solar, which appear as plot characters and in fallen aspect as a boss), posing a problem of how bad guys can match this kind of summoning power, simpler just to cosmetically reskin the planetar and make an evil version. I don't see a huge problem with this dark planetar, not more than with mages summoning planetars in the first place!
Like, I think the devs realized summoning spam was too powerful in BG1, not only did they implement a 5 creature limit for BG2 they really hit summons with the nerf bat period (notable exceptions in aerial servants, skeleton warriors, mordy swords and totemic druid's spirit animals, but almost no other summon is worth its spell slot, except invisible stalkers if you need summons with undispellable immunities to a lot of disabling effects). Then in ToB they realized the nerfing went too far, but rather than fix the existing summons, they instead added a couple of OP new ones.
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7 hours ago, Guest Morgoth said:
would it be possible for tweaks to add a RP tweak called "Shopkeeper have their own items in the inventory"? It would be cool if by killing them (or finding a chest somewhere) you could reach (and get) the inventory they have.
The thing is, the punishment in this game for killing innocent npcs is - via a rather crude implementation - a loss of reputation (with consequences only if it gets really low), and reputation can be increased via donations to temples, most interesting merchant's total stock could be resold for more than enough to recover the reputation lost while still keeping some choice items. It would basically make every important purchasable equipment/scroll/potion free for a powergamer, stores are already a bit broken if you have a character with high enough pick-pocketing skill.
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I don't see the issue with graph axes starting at non-zero values, it's the case for pretty much every stock chart, and I've never seen weather forecasts in Kelvin.
19 hours ago, Magus said:As for mitigating kensai, "ken" stands for "sword", not dagger nor axe. I think a reasonable lore-friendly tweak would be to limit kensai to 2 pips in non-sword specialities.
Anyway, archers are still more versatile with their variety of arrows.
I fear that with HLAs they'll still be the best ranged DPS dealers, specialization vs grandmastery costs them 3 damage per hit (and thus at lvl 12 and thereafter they'd still be doing more damage per hit than a regular fighter with weapon GM), but no reduction in APR while using GWW. I'd prefer to restrict their damage bonuses to melee weapons (opcode #285 works, but seems unused in game besides on TorGal).
Archers have two other major advantages, their THAC0 in the early game usually surpasses any other character, due to dexterity (even if not an elf) and the stacked bonuses of magical arrows fired from a magical bow, and their called shot special ability is really OP, it grants extra damage at lvl 16, but even before that penalizes the target's THAC0, saves vs spell and eventually strength. Archers do good teamwork with both invokers and avenger druids i.e. ensuring enemies get stuck in webs and effectively turning any Chromatic Orb into a Finger of Death.
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56 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:
EDIT - looking at the Free Action spell, I see that it grants immunity to Slow, and removes a Slow portrait icon, but I cannot see any effects that actually remove the Slowed state. Is that an oversight? Does it need an op337 effect against op40? Or does op163 remove applications of op40? (The IESDP entry on op163 is, as usual, not sufficiently clear.)
Free Action has always been strange like that, but it doesn't remove the hasted state either, and like I said, tends to be used as a prophylactic rather than a remedy.
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1 hour ago, jmerry said:
And by the way, you're wrong about Grease. The spell's description does not match the actual effect. Once applied, the slowing effect lasts for the spell's duration; if this happens later on, it can persist long after the grease field dissipates.
That is an introduced bug, it's not so with the vanilla game files. It's gone unfixed for a while because iirc no enemy spellcaster uses Grease.
The 3 rounds + 1 round/level duration should obviously be applied to the .PRO, not the duration in the feature block of the spell. Effectively this means 20 different projectiles with between 4 and 23 repetitions would be needed, or tbh just restore the behavior to original game and update the description to be accurate (11 rounds, the .PRO has 10 repetitions at 100 frames each ~66.67 seconds).
I tend to revert things like this and Burning Hands to their original state and thus forget about it.
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7 hours ago, jmerry said:
Opcode 337 on everything that Free Action grants immunity to sounds good, actually. Is that in scope for the Fixpack, or is it too much of a functional change?
Doesn't #337 ignore duration (except timing mode 9, "true permanent") in removing opcodes? I'd think it should be tied to the length of the Free Action spell or potion.
6 hours ago, Andrea C. said:This is, however, one of those fixes that warrants backporting to the BG2FP. It’s cool to adopt an EE-only solution for the EEFP, but a discussion on how to handle it universally still has merit IMO.
On the original engine it would require a dedicated sectype and associated removal besides the typical mess involved in doing things this way... or simply removing #126 from the Free Action spell/potion's feature block. As I said, with a greased or entangled subject, they are free to move on the subsequent AoE tick, and FA is more generally cast as a preemptive buff than a curative (touch range and single target, so Remove Paralysis is almost always a better choice for removing these debuffs even if it weren't a 3rd level spell).
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10 hours ago, morpheus562 said:
Yes, yes it does. For a class that isn't supposed to be able to use ranged weapons to be the best at ranged weapons is kinda messed up.
I've been saying for a while that kensai bonuses should be #284 & #285 - melee THAC0 and damage, rather than #278 & #73. Thus kensai could use a throwing axe or dagger, but only receive their kit bonuses if wielding it in melee.
Prior to EE throwing daggers did not allow a strength bonus, whereas axes always did, hence the unusually high base damage of things like Fire Tooth dagger, seems very questionable that strength was allowed with no nerf to damage which just puts the dagger ahead of any other ranged weapon, even late-game K'logarath (except against the very few creatures that require +4 weapons to hit).
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I believe in the past DavidW has said that he's not going to be immunizing creatures against traps.
About the general tactic of feeding spellcasters summons to waste their spells and wait for their buffs to expire, the plausible countermeasures are mostly outside SCS's design philosophy of AI improvements over hard changes to (most) enemies' powers and abilities:
- Improve the AC of mages so that they have little to fear from being left alone with low level summons that will only be hitting them on criticals.
- Improve the combat abilities of solo mages, allowing them to quickly kill such summons without spell use.
- Ensure high level mages have an escort of some tough bodyguards or allied monsters (Davaeorn already does with SCS), this is the most in line with SCS conceptually, but a skilled player will be able to separate mages from their guards.
- The mage could Dimension Door to the party if only summons and no PC's are visible to them, in which case they are indeed likely to get zapped by traps.
Balancing traps is also maybe outside SCS scope rather than a class/kit revision mod. Traps could do increased base damage but allow an intelligence check (with some penalty for higher level traps) to dodge it entirely, leaving enemy mages a bit more survivable than enemy fighters despite their low hp.
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There is the question of whether the Free Action spell or potion should even be attempting to cure movement rate malus from #126 considering that last I checked it didn't cure slow or haste. Besides which, true penalties to a stat (such as the on-hit effect of Mazzy's sword) are not "cured" by setting it to 100%, the main thing FA currently accomplishes is negating the movement rate set to zero (from Entangle spell) or one (from Grease), if cast after the recipient is already entangled or greased, even if it didn't cure this ongoing effect, they would be free to move anyway on the next round due to the immunity granted, and ofc free to move through the AoE if FA was cast prior. Would it not make more sense to do this through #321 rather than fiddling with the movement rate opcode, given that all effects of an Entangle or Grease spell should be negated?
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Except that the 2nd circle priest spell Spiritual Hammer creates a +3 hammer at caster level 13 and henceforth, and its duration is 3 rounds + 1 round/level, effectively allowing more strikes than Melf's Minute Meteors even if the priest had only 1 attack per round (much more if hasted, having fighter levels, Boon of Lathander or all three). Enchanted Weapon is only one spell tier higher than MMM at 4th, its duration is 5 rounds/level on EE, 24 hours (with a reduced selection of weapon types) in original BG, again, effectively allowing far more attacks. More importantly Melf's must be thrown by the caster, who as a mage probably has poor THAC0, Enchanted Weapon can be cast on (or on the original engine, given to) a single class fighter whose strength and specialization bonuses likely ensure much more damage with each swing than a hit from a wee meteor. It even works for dual wielders on EE iirc, thus getting two +3 weapons out of a single 4th level spell.
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8 minutes ago, ahungry said:
As I was reading your post, I immediately thought "try ctrl-y - if the creature is truly invincible, they'll have the min-hp opcode on their creature file or an item and the ctrl-y will fail)".
Yeah, iirc Ctrl+Y applies massive damage of every non-physical type in addition to the kill target (13) opcode. If it works to kill an "indestructible" creature they must have been either vulnerable to at least one damage type or to instadeath effects, so perhaps it's not a bug but intended design of that battle that you play around and find out the weakness. Disclaimer, I know nothing about this mod.
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The issue, to me at least, is that another SCS spell tweak increases the power of Mantle (to block weapons of <+4 enchantment), thus there's no need to reduce the meteors all the way to +2 rather than +3 missiles, considering that even a +3 weapon is now impotent against any of the Mantle/ProMW line of spells, besides, it's weird for the meteors to have an attack roll bonus so much less than the effective enchantment level.
That said, there are very few enemies that +3 Melf's Minute Meteors would be useful against compared to +2: Iron golems (+3 needed to hit) actually regenerate from fire damage, whereas stronger fiends (balors and pit fiends) are fireproof and have a low AC meaning a mage is probably missing a lot. I think greater mummies are the best target for MMM if these are +3 rather than +2, them and the extra tough vampires (vampire behaviour probably makes melee weapons a better choice though).
The duration and scope of weapon immunity spells is balanced as is, any longer/more comprehensive in protection and these become tactically equivalent to faster casting and cheaper (at levels 6, 7 & 8 ) or extended duration (Absolute Immunity) versions of Time Stop.
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21 hours ago, subtledoctor said:
Sure but then why would it make vulnerable a Hardying (hardinessing?) warrior whose super-tough state lets them ignore much physical damage? From an 'intent' perspective, a Berserker going into a frenzy and a warrior becoming Hardy seem identical to me.
The description of the Hardiness HLA says only this: "Calling upon hidden reserves of strength during times of danger, a warrior can use the Hardiness ability to gain 40% resistance to all forms of physical damage." there's no further clarification on how it enables a warrior to weather would-be lethal hits besides the intent - staying alive in battle. Breach foils temporary protections intended to protect the recipient from various sorts of harm, how it does so is just as mysterious as the actual mechanic of Hardiness (The fighter just takes hits better? He flinches away just in time to receive only a grazing wound?).
The berserker in his frenzy is just that, frenzied (and afterwards exhausted), harder to kill yes, besides being more dangerous and proof against mind affecting magic but not because he's carefully protecting himself, this is why, to my mind, breachability of Hardiness makes sense and breachability of the enraged state doesn't.
21 hours ago, subtledoctor said:Or: why does Breach distinguish between a cleric using a magical spell to make someone immune to panic and a wizard using a magical spell to make someone immune to panic? They are just people using magical spells, that are equivalent in both application and effect.
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Further, your subjective ideas seem to line up precisely with the way the game files already are, and I suspect this is not really a coincidence. You have played these games a lot, you have modded the game files and inspected their underlying structure and characteristics. You seem unsurprised at the fact that Remove Fear is not a specific protection and I surmise that you're a savvy-enough player and modder that you might even take advantage of that in your games.
Actually, I really do think clerical Remove Fear being unbreachable is a bug, because it has not only identical functionality but description and concept to the wizard spell, although I could sort of see why a cavalier's aura of courage might be unbreachable (as his inherent immunity to fear is). I also think Protection from Evil being classed as a specific rather than combat protection is a bug (it penalizes attack rolls) although a largely irrelevant one in a basic game where sectype removal usually strips both or neither of these sectypes, and I've already discussed Blade Barrier and Assassination. So no, I do not base my idea of appropriate sectypes on the vanilla game files unless these make sense.
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19 hours ago, Quester said:
Is it possible to fix this in an ongoing game with IRR installed before polyvorp?
Is polyvorp near the end of your install order? The ravager halberd is the only weapon substantially incompatible, in that it will now have a 15% chance of vorpal if target below 50% hp and also the IR 15% chance of a fast acting poison, overlapping. The silver sword and axe only have description errors.
You could uninstall polyvorp, and comment out (as above, editing with notepad /* ... */) the sections of polyvorp.tp2 referencing the halberd, beginning at lines 57 and 504 of the file, disregard the parts about EFF immunity beginning at line 125, that's harmless, then reinstall.
If polyvorp was installed before mods that shouldn't be touched midgame, like Item Randomiser and SCS, the halberd will be awkward to change and perhaps too powerful, you could either use it as your disgression, not forge the upgraded version, or if you prefer I could simply:
- PM you the item file as it should be in Item Revisions and you can place it in your game's override folder, restoring it to the usal IR behaviour (the in-game description would still be wrong).
- PM you the item file as it should be modified by polyvorp (the description will be correct).
This latter method has potential problems because it's a hard overwrite of item files, if for instances some other mod globally modifies halberd characteristics. The ravager halberd will only be used PCs, so enchantment labeling is irrelevant I guess (and irrelevant anyway on EE which can hot detect whether a target is hittable by script).
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19 hours ago, Salk said:
The vorpal mechanic itself could easily be used by Item Revisions items that include a vorpal effect, after all, right?
Yes, in both cases the weapon's proc is externalized as .spl, it could have been done without a spl, but polyvorp patches minhp1 type items (found on bosses who have defeated dialogue) to prevent bugs if they're below 50% hp.
Coincidentally, both in IR and my mod, silver sword has a 10% chance, axe of the unyielding 5%, so it could be as simple as overwriting dvorpal.spl (although I dislike interfering with other people's mod files unless necessary) and then only the description needs updating (no save, but only possible for targets already under half their normal hp).
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20 hours ago, morpheus562 said:
@polytope IWDEE Spells do need to be discussed because this is a fixpack that encompasses IWDEE.
Bringing IWDEE Spells into the conversation is a good way at determining dev intent which is what we need for the fixpack to show if or if not the HLAs should be changed to prevent breach.
Yes, but after five pages we still haven't resolved the initial question of Breach vs Hardiness, clearly the topic of general sectype inconsistency in the EEs needs to be submitted for review to Beamdog.
About the Ravager's awkwardly written script, it dates back to original BG before most spells had associated detectable states. I mentioned it only because he doesn't refresh his Blade Barrier in response to a Breach, which raises the question of whether BB should count as a combat protection (besides the obvious fact that it only damages, doesn't improve user's AC, soak hits or anything like that). Some other scripts in vanilla did check: SpellCastOnMe([GOODCUTOFF],WIZARD_BREACH) or something like that, as part of a trigger block to recast defensive spells.
@subtledoctor when it comes to fantasy magic, not real world effects based on the principles of logic and causality, things like intent and mindset clearly do matter sometimes. How else do you explain the function of the Detect Evil spell? Or Detect Invisibility, which reveals both those non magically hiding from the wizard in the shadows, and also those magically invisible from a potion or spell? Even so, Detect Invisibility doesn't counteract blindness by default, although being blind the wizard is equally unable to see his enemies. Similarly, Breach doesn't calm down a raging berserker or barbarian, even though they're harder to kill while in their frenzied state and ignore many disabling effects and charm type magic.
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It would be too powerful for players to have access to such cheap weapon immunity, some strong enemy human fighters do use non magical weapons.
Iirc no class besides the totemic druid (and the cleric beyond level 14) can summon creatures immune to normal weapons without expending a 5th level or higher spell slot. I.e. even the weak and awkward lesser elementals are summoned by a 5th level wizard spell, divine casters get from a 6th level slot either a fire elemental (druids) or an aerial servant (priests). Complete immunity to an enemy's physical attacks is much more powerful than a Stoneskin which can be chiselled through or Mirror Images which can be batted away, and even better than an AC which they can penetrate only with criticals, the fact that this spell is useless in many late game encounters is not really a justification to lower the spell level, which would trivialize many early game encounters.
I don't use the SCS option to change Protection from Normal Missiles to Protection from Missiles, it's good enough for a 3rd level spell as is.
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16 hours ago, subtledoctor said:
If you asked me to define specific protections I would say "protections against mental attacks and protections against elemental damage."
That doesn't precisely mirror the game's list though, because Protection from Evil is a specific protection but it penalizes attack rolls of evil creatures, thus would seem to fall under combat protections... possibly a moot point as Breach removes both, a Fallen Solar's arrows (FINSOL01.itm) dispel combat protections, but not specific, that's the only case I'm aware of in the original game where one can be removed by sectype, but not the other.
My point about wizard Resist Fear was that it's already rather arcane, figuratively and literally, in that it has more in common for the purposes of a Breach spell with Stoneskin - which does something completely different - than with the cavalier innate that does the same job.
13 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:Functionally, Courage just sounds like Mass Aid, while Hope sounds like Greater Bless, and neither Bless or Aid are breachable, so I'm not really seeing why those should be breached. Also, I have an alternative explanation for why polytope isn't responding about Emotion: every time you mention it, my immediate inclination is to say "who give a crap about IWD's terrible spells, who were also designed by a completely different developer: we're talking about Baldur's Gate here". I might be biased because of my dislike for IWD though,
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You're right, I don't want to branch into a discussion of IWD spells if we can't come to an agreement on BG spells and abilities.
Also, I think that in terms of defining what constitutes a protection in game we need to consider not only the functionality but the intent of the casting, if only the function of the spell is considered then any beneficial spell could be considered a protection insofar as it helps the recipient or user survive a battle.
Example: Hardiness vs Improved Haste, for a warrior (with 0 base physical resistance) fighting an enemy with purely physical damaging attacks and without special abilities such as regeneration, energy drain on hit, or attribute drain (Mindflayers) etc. the spell is actually more protective than the HLA! Hardiness reduces the damage the warrior takes from blows to 60%, while IH halves the time it would take the warrior to down his enemy, thus resulting in halved damage taken from them on average. Yet nobody has suggested that Improved Haste should count as a combat protection even though it helps to keep your fighters alive.
To be considered a protection, a spell or ability should specifically and exclusively thwart enemy attacks, not generally enhance the recipient even if such enhancement contributes to their chances of survival. The way that a Breach spell operates in stripping these effects must be considered in a kind of abstract sense here in dashing hopes of safety, of undoing failsafes. How does it work exactly? Who knows, it's magic. Like I said, a Knock spell will allow traverse down a corridor with a locked door, not a corridor blocked with boulders from a rockfall, a Disintegrate spell would do both, spells are often both highly specific and seemingly arbitrary.
This is why a berserker's rage should not be breachable, from an in-character perspective the berserk warrior works himself into a battle frenzy (and PnP-wise cares little for his own life) even though he's harder to kill and shrugs of most disabling stuff while berserk, his intent was not to protect himself but to make havoc. The fact that players use berserker's rages as much for their immunities as their combat bonuses is tangential to how it should operate and interact with spells like Breach that remove protections.
Incidentally, looking at the vanilla game Ravager's script, he recasts his Blade Barrier in response to either wizard or cleric Dispel Magic and wizard Remove Magic, Breach seems to have been forgotten. Is Blade Barrier anymore of a protection than Sunfire? The secondary type could have easily been inherited from Fireshield.
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1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:
The concepts of these spells and abilities do matter: while Clairvoyance also gives combat protection-like bonuses a la Shield, Breach doesn't do anything against it because it would make zero sense for Clairvoyance's concept of simply being a type of foreknowledge (likewise for the bonuses of Emotion: Courage being the result of one's enhanced emotional state). One could possibly stretch a similar kind of explanation for Berserker's Rage ability as well as some other edge cases.
It gets even stranger though, because Breach in vanilla specifically lists Resist Fear as a protection it targets, clearly it can "debuff" a state of emotional fortitude, but in the vanilla game casting Emotion, besides the hopelessness effect on enemies gives the caster a personal resist fear buff for the spell duration, which is not a strippable protection. The cavalier's innate Remove Fear ability (SPCL222) didn't count either.
Personally I have far more difficulty reconciling Resist Fear and Stoneskin as the same types of protections (which the cavalier innate isn't) than grouping Hardiness with Stoneskin.
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17 hours ago, CamDawg said:
And not just just planetars--several critical ToB characters have permanent regen that are now suddenly working: the chinchilla Bhaalspawn, Toop the Brave, and Tibbit, though thankfully Bondari, Nanoc the Barbarian, and Tim Goldenhand are unaffected. It also affects some less critical ToB characters like Balthazar, Draconis, and Demogorgon.
Oho, well on those last three:
Draconis's regeneration rate is pretty slow at 1 hp/2sec. He tends to use the combination of Invisibility + fleeing + healing spells to restore his health and so this regen is unlikely to be noticeable or really add to the dificulty of the fight.
Demogorgon regenerates 6hp/sec, so far as I can see, with 10% physical resistance vs Balthazar's 5hp/sec, no physical resistance, both are substantial but still less than a hasted planetar's 8hp/sec & 10% PR, unless Demogorgon somehow gets hasted, via an unlucky Wish, perhaps? Vanilla Balthazar, as a monk, is immune to haste. To my mind, the best summon in the game becoming a lot more resilient is a higher priority for fix than the two easiest ToB bosses anyway.
That said, Demogorgon's regeneration certainly can cause a bug if it keeps him above the minimum he needs to trigger the cutscene of his defeat since unlike Balthazar he has a minhp item, he has a fairly generous threshold of hit points less than 30 as a trigger though.
Vanilla Balthazar, unlike Demogorgon, is not an optional battle and possibly a problem for certain playthroughs as he kills most summons on hit and his AC+regen may prove a hurdle for certain characters without a lot of magical firepower or good combat abilities, I'm thinking solo single class druids might have difficulty with it (most other classes and parties certainly won't, at this stage of the game).
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Honestly, I thought I was done arguing with morpheus in this thread, but, since subtledoctor insists...
38 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:Well if that's the case then by your logic not only should Breach affect Defenstive Stance and Defensive Spin, it should also remove the Swashbuckler's and Kensai's natural AC bonus.
No, because those are not temporary protections but bonuses continuously operative while awake and alert. Same applies to the basic dexterity modifier, along with that of eg. bracers of defence compared to Ghost Armor spell, magical rings etc, this AC is lost only if the character is completely disabled.
43 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:Are you kidding? When's the last time you heard anyone talk about how great the Berserker kit is because of that sweet +2 damage bonus? The entirety of what makes Rage valuable in this game is that it combines Chaotic Commands (a specific protection removable by Breach) with a form of SI:Abjuration. "Not a protection." You lose all sorts of credibility with an assertion like that.
I'm losing credibility? You're literally the only poster trying to hyperextend the analogy and argue that Assassination and a berserker's rage should be breachable, seemingly for the sake of contrariness.
Rage is a substantial combat boost for the berserker and especially the barbarian, a +2 to hit is not minor in the early game (c.f. offensive spin), and still less is +4 strength which is what you'd get from DUHM at 12th level. Breach specifically removes temporary effects that are exclusively protective, but will not quell a berserker's battle rage (whereas PnP-wise Emotion:Fear could...), even though that rage incidentally provides him with useful immunities, it may or may not have been intended to strip other short duration circumstantial protections deriving from a character's inborn skill rather than magic (my belief is that it was).
Your argument sounds like this; If anti-tank missiles are useful against:
- Armored main battle tanks
- Armored light tanks
- Armored personnel carriers
- Armored self-propelled artillery
Why aren't these also useful against armored battleships? Well, because that's not what anti-tank missiles designed for, and it's a very different type of target, even if having some commonalities in being a military vehicle that has armor.
49 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:But... not to beat a dead horse, but if that's your position, then I don't see how it could possibly justify changing Assassination...
We have been over this before, there is absolutely nothing protective in Assassination's function and since it has both the same sectype and same school as Hardiness and (Greater)Evasion, unlike every other melee enhancing HLA (and melee enhancing special ability generally), it's a pretty obvious copyover bug.
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3 minutes ago, morpheus562 said:
What @subtledoctoris describing is not for a tweak pack but a correction to the identified bug. There is massive inconsistency in how breach is handled, and it would be within scope for a Fixpack to address. Either all combat protections whether they come from magic, divine, or natural means get removed via breach OR breach doesn't take down natural abilities. One has to give.
Okay, but I dispute the idea that abilities which grant increased survivability/immunities but also other combat boosts, such as berserker's enrage or priestly Boon of Lathander should be considered protections at all. The Boon has the combination sectype in vanilla and I'd be inclined to leave it so. The dwarven defender is Beamdog's creation, like the blackguard, and should be left to them to sort out and decide if nerfing is appropriate, small chance of that, I guess.
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22 hours ago, polytope said:
If Breach, as a special purpose removal spell for arcane protections cannot remove Hardiness - because that's a nonmagical special ability of high level fighters - then Pierce Shield likewise shouldn't be able to lower the magic resistance of monks or wizard slayers because that's due to their special training and conditioning, and doesn't have a magical origin as such.
17 hours ago, suy said:No, because both Pierce Shield, Lower Resistance or Greater Malison have a fixed reduction of some stat (irrespective of if you have it increased from your normal, or not). Breach doesn't reduce your stats in fixed ways. It doesn't apply penalties, it cancels existing spells. The same way that Remove Magic. Which only removes magic. And doesn't dispel Hardiness because it's not magic.
I don't see that as being the issue, commenters like Sam, and guests Lowman and Sigmundur said it was too conceptually implausible for a spell that removes magical protections to also negate a warrior's extraordinary but non magical short duration buffs and either way achieve the end state of vulnerability to physical attacks.
Lowering magic resistance is an entirely appropriate analogy, some creatures are difficult to affect with spells because of their supernatural nature unless softened by Lower Resistance/Pierce Shield. Monks and wizard slayers, however, are humans (or other non-magical races), knowing no magic but with skills and special training that achieves the same purpose and are equally susceptible to LR/PS increasing their vulnerability to magical attacks, the fact that they could still have some positive value of MR if it was high enough after the first cast is irrelevant. It's a similar issue with Detect Invisibility revealing both stealthy character who are non-magically hidden and those actually cloaked by illusion magic.
7 hours ago, subtledoctor said:You and @polytope are making excellent arguments as to why Breach should remove Defensive Stance and Defensive Spin. And probably Berserk Rage. I'm happy that you seem to agree with me.
EDIT - to address the argument that Defensive Stance, Defensive Spin, and Berserk Rage are out of the box because they have other effects in addition to the protective effects:
Honestly it is super weird to envision the Breach spell as failing to work if a protection has any extra benefit (like the +2 damage from Rage) OR any extra drawback (like the movement penalties attached to Stance, Spin, and IWDEE's Iron Body). What kind of crazy spell is Breach that it can remove Stoneskin, but if Stoneskin slows you down a bit then suddenly Breach is powerless against it?? Sorry, this is just too weird as a concept.
This really is material for a tweak collation rather than a fixpack, if you want it like so in your games, I've said so several times.
The fact that the dwarven defender gets a functionally better version of the Hardiness HLA from the beginning of the game is not an argument to make Hardiness unbreachable, that's power creep, nor is it necessarily an argument to nerf the DD ability within the scope of a fixpack rather than a kit mod because this overpowered EE kit does in fact work as intended.
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Protection from Undead, fixable?
in General Mod Discussion
Posted · Edited by polytope
In BG1 these scrolls might have been balanced, because most undead are randomly encountered fodder & pests (skeletons/zombies/ghouls/ghasts etc.) with boss types like the demon knight not being counted as undead (neither are original BG skeleton warriors). In BG2 where there are a lot of powerful undead who are worth massive amounts of xp and/or lootable for powerful equipment and/or being plot-important creatures the scroll just breaks things, in particular despite the description of not protecting from magical attacks it does prevent any undead targeting the user with single target spells and abilities.
Solutions I've seen other modders implement so far:
Other possible solutions:
Options #1 and #2 also need detectability of the scroll and revision of undead monster's scripts so that they'll realize the protected character can't be hit. The third choice looks to be the easiest, but also somehow the blandest and most obvious. Thoughts?