polytope

Also, Abazigal's Drakes (DRAKE01 to DRAKE04.cre) have only 12HD and can be killed in one hit with no saving throw by a warrior using Greater Deathblow HLA; this seems odd because while they have 125hp each (a bit more than the maximum of12d8 exclusive of bonuses) they have a base THAC0 of -3, save vs death of 4 and save vs spells of 5, which no 12HD creature should have. I'd be inclined to compromise and make them 18HD, base THAC0 3, hp and saves untouched.

Thanks, I've discovered a borderline bug with Yaga. At the Throne, on difficulties below hard, he's supposed to immediately reduce his damage resistances apart from cold to 70% through finyeasy.spl. However, this .spl actually reduces all resistances to zero! If SCS smarter Yaga is installed on top of Ascension, then he appears in his final form with 60% resistance (not 70%) and doesn't reduce his resistances further via script. Now, I imagine most Ascension players will also be using SCS (the Ascenion finale is still probably the hardest encounter in the trilogy, dependent on party composition, unless you tackle some of the other improved SCS battles at really low levels) so won't notice this bug (apart from the giant being a little less resistant than in his first incarnation). However, it will certainly be noticeable for those who installed Ascension + SCS and skipped the improved Yaga-Shura component.

I get an inexplicable parse error when the installation tries to compile certain bafs, specifically those referencing a LONG_BOW as the object: PARSE ERROR at line 98 column 16-57 Near Text: ) unknown object CLASS specifier [LONG_BOW] [ascension/tougher/abazigal/abazdrag.baf] ERROR at line 98 column 16-57 Near Text: ) Parsing.Parse_error ERROR: parsing [ascension/tougher/abazigal/abazdrag.baf]: Parsing.Parse_error ERROR: error compiling [ascension/tougher/abazigal/abazdrag.baf]: Parsing.Parse_error ERROR: compiling [ascension/tougher/abazigal/abazdrag.baf]! Stopping installation because of error. This is easily "fixed" by swapping LONG_BOW for MAGE_ALL but it still leaves me worried because firstly the engine always recognized arcane casters as falling under the general identifier LONG_BOW and secondly because there was no such parsing error the last time I installed this very same Ascension version.

I've been unsatisfied for a while about the behaviour of Vorpal weapons in BG2, both when used by and against (Balors, enemy mages' Dark Planetars) the player. In the vanilla game they either allowed a save vs death with a varying penalty or in some cases (the Ravager halberd and the aforementioned Balors) killed with a % chance and no saving throw whatsoever. In the former case the danger of enemy vorpal attacks is obviated once the player reaches a level where they can always make their save vs death (which varies depending on class, race and certain items like the Periapt of Life Protection), in the latter case - unsaveable vorpals - protecting from the vorpal threat requires certain class-exclusive abilities like the rogue HLA Avoid Death or arcane Protection from Magic Weapons, frustrating those classes who lack such (and with AI improving mods you can be sure that the balor will switch targets if his intended victim casts ProMW, meaning you need to keep the rest of your party out of his line of sight). Neither of these situations is particularly good design or adds to the gameplay as the threat level of an enemy with a vorpal weapon either drops dramatically once you're past a critical level or you are forced to confront them only with specific characters. SCS and aTweaks both allowed Death Ward to block vorpal instadeath but this seems conceptually wrong to me (protection from death magic shouldn't affect the severing power of a vorpal sword, no more than it prevents a fatal backstab) and is still highly dependent on party levels, since balors usually throw a high-level remove magic at you, easily dispelling Death Ward for most SoA parties. So I decided to redesign vorpal mechanics entirely. With this mini mod vorpal proc will trigger on a % of hits varying by the weapon, but affecting only those who are at 50% hitpoints or less. This reduces the margin of safety you have when meleeing a vorpal armed enemy, relative to a comparably damaging creature without this ability, but doesn't make it either a tactical irrelevance if your death saving throw is negative or put you at risk of being one-shotted as it was before. Incidentally, Stoneskin/Ironskin can now foil vorpal weapons as per the 2nd edition description "Even a sword of sharpness cannot affect a creature protected by stoneskin". The breakdown of vorpal probability is as follows: Axe of the unyielding 5% of hits (it was the least likely to score a vorpal hit even in vanilla) Silver Sword & Planetars' Swords 10% Ravager Halberd & Fallen Solars' Swords 15% Balors' Swords 20% Posting this in the Stratagems forum because it's most likely to be of interest to players with SCS & Ascension, vorpal capable enemies are very rare in vanilla: Two Balors in Watcher's Keep, possibly more at the Throne, and one Fallen Solar (whose sword, unlike the Balors' allows a save vs death). If you want to use it extract the rar and run polyvorp like any other Weidu mod. polyvorp.rar

@DavidW Regarding Maze, you've included a console option to prevent Mazing the protagonist but I don't think it's working as intended, the SSL block is as follows: IF TRIGGER IgnoreBlock(IsBG1Only) RequireBlock(Indiscriminate) TargetBlock(EnemiesInOrder) TriggerBlock(Maze|SpellTurn|MR|Helpless|SIConjuration) Range(scstarget,6) OR(2) InPartySlot(scstarget,1) // isn't Player 1 Global("DMWWMazePlayer","GLOBAL",0) /*slowspell*/ THEN DO Action(Spell,WIZARD_MAZE|150|50) END This returns true - the Maze spell is cast - if the Global Variable "DMWWMazePlayer" is unset and/or if the target is the protagonist, in other words it will still be cast on a solo character regardless of what the player does with the console. Maze is also defined as a "slow" spell although it's actually rather fast, it has a casting time of three segments. I think the solo-friendly block should look as follows: IF TRIGGER IgnoreBlock(IsBG1Only) RequireBlock(Indiscriminate) TargetBlock(EnemiesInOrder) TriggerBlock(Maze|SpellTurn|MR|Helpless|SIConjuration) Range(scstarget,6) OR(2) !InPartySlot(scstarget,1) // isn't Player 1 NumInPartyAliveGT(1) THEN DO Action(Spell,WIZARD_MAZE|150|50) END

Here are my thoughts on Splicer's criticism (I've played and playtested SCS since loooong ago, but hadn't touched BG2 in the past few years, until I dug it out during Coronavirus quarantine). As Jastey and DavidW said, the text-string bugs are almost certainly due to closing the Weidu executable mid install, never do that. The final battle of SoA with SCS indeed frustrates many new players; without two mages (or one mage with Improved Alacrity, and since your only mage is Aerie she'd need 6 million XP to cast it) you will have great difficulty interrupting Irenicus's Time Stops, and this is one place where you really need to interrupt Time Stops to reliably avoid getting characters (perma) killed. Encounters which demand a certain party composition to succeed without save-scumming and reloading are not my favourite, either. If you didn't install Ascension the battles will get easier from here. In 2nd edition Time Stop is supposed to last 1d3 rounds, personally I think it should be three rounds only when cast by a single class mage or sorcerer, two rounds for cleric/mages and one round for everyone else including fighter/mages and rogues using scrolls, this would also nerf this spell's abusability by the player. Holy Word might also work to disrupt Irenicus's Time Stops, especially 2X Holy Word from a priest and their Simulacrum if you have Vhailor's helm. Unfortunately, your only single class cleric is Viconia who can't cast that, and it's not reliable anyway due to his magic resistance (and if you can strip his magic resistance with eg. Pierce Magics under Alacrity then following up with an immediate Power Word: Blind is likely a better choice anyway). Valygar isn't meant to be used as an archer, that's likely why you find him ineffective, he's a good backstabber (and does good teamwork with Keldorn, backstabbing mages after their Stoneskins are dispelled) and a good flanker for dealing damage, although his poor armour class and lowish hp means he shouldn't be up front taking hits, not until he gets HLAs and can stack Hardiness with Armor of Faith. He can also protect himself with Minor Spell Deflection against most single-target spells, which includes most Save or Die magic. On the subject of Keldorn, even with the nerf to Inquisitor dispel magic it's useful, at 10th level he has a 50% chance to dispel 15th level mages, including Yuan-Ti mages who are often quite deadly for a low-level party and usually appear in packs. Agreed about Aerie but I've found melee-heavy parties to be very effective with SCS, they're viable at low levels because enemy mages at this point in the game focus on debuffing and disabling spells, if you can fan a (hasted) party out the moment you see the swirling golden graphic that indicates a mage is casting an Enchantment then you can usually avoid more than one warrior being disabled, with the remainder hopefully preventing the mage from completing a second spell. Not to mention fighters lose less from a Remove Magic than casters (prior to Spell Immunity). Melee power is also important in encounters with mid to high level mages because they usually rely on their summoned demons and Dark Planetars to kill you, if those are chopped up fast enough then things become much easier. My last party, playing with a maximal install of SCS + Item Randomizer was as follows: PC Invoker, fighter/mage/cleric, dual classed swashbuckler -> fighter, duelist and dreadnought (Prestige kitpack kits, but could easily be subbed for a vanilla kensai and cavalier). All humans except for the half-elf F/M/C so no racial save bonuses, and light on clerical defensive buffs, but made it all the way to mid ToB with no reloads or even party members needing to be raised from the dead (although the duelist was imprisoned a couple of times by liches), had already defeated Yaga and Demogorgon when I got my invoker killed by the demilich on the way out of Watcher's Keep. Fin, but surprisingly the easiest run up until then, considering I had only one pure mage and she wasn't a sorcereress, at that.

A hold effect has the same problems as feeblemind as far as dialogue goes - sleeping creatures can have dialogue with the player, held creatures cannot (though their scripts continue to run, unlike feebleminded creatures). It also has the additional problem that the creature is frozen in place (not showing the normal 'idle' animations) and can be struck automatically without an attack roll. Disabling spellcasting and setting physical attacks to zero via eff files is the way to go IMO.

Correct, if they have taken fire or acid damage in the past 1 round (by default six seconds) a timer ensures that the troll just dies and for simplicity's sake does not spawn a new 'downed' troll. This makes battles with trolls much faster. Turns out the planar sphere snow troll isn't affected by my mod at all, so his unwillingness to die is actually just vanilla troll bugginess (which the improved troll component aims to prevent). He should have been included in the trolls component, but I made a mistake and wrote OBSICE04 (actually a mountain bear, an apparently unused creature) rather than OBSICE01, the correct creature file. COPY_EXISTING ~trolsn01.cre~ ~override~ //Snow trolls, don't ask me why I bother with ~trolsn02.cre~ ~override~ //this rare and trivial creature... ~obsice04.cre~ ~override~ //Planar sphere snow troll

Valid points. Another option would be to replace the feeblemind effect with disable spellcasting (#145) and setting attacks per round to zero. So long as these were applied on a per-second basis via #272 repeating eff (and IDS targeted vs GOODCUTOFF i.e. player charmed creatures) then a charmed creature that breaks the charm due to being attacked could be ready to fight again in a second or two, party members would in this case need zero duration immunity to #272 instead of #177.

I know a way to make Charm Person work as desired (I've done this for my upcoming v3). Basically Charm Person already works properly when cast by enemies on PCs (they turn "hostile" or red-circled but don't participate in combat unlike Dire Charm or Domination). It's only overpowered when used the other way around. My solution was a follows: In the spell feature block after the charm effect add two EFF files, first one is zero duration, targeted at PC's (ids file=2, entry=2) and is called A^IMM177 which simply gives any PC failing their save against Charm Person immunity to the secondary EFF through #101 immunity to opcode #177 (this is necessary, because a PC can fail their save without actually being charmed, i.e. because they have charm immunity as a kit feature or via their equipment/buffs). The second EFF allows a saving throw vs spell (so it's checked simultaneously to charm success), has the same duration as Charm Person spell (30 seconds) and is targeted at any GOODCUTOFF (ids file=2, entry=30), meaning it will affect any creature successfully charmed by a PC, this EFF file is called A^FEEBLE and causes feeblemindedness - i.e. making the charmed creature uncontrollable, so they cannot be made to fight for the party. I decided to remove the saving throw bonus also to balance the spell being less useful. It would also be possible to allow 232 removal of the feeblemindedness effect for creatures that are attacked while charmed if that seems worthwhile.

It's the same for every opcode, that's just how probabilities work in the Infinity engine. If you have "disable portrait icons added by equipped items" from the Tweakpack installed you'll see that it actually sets the equipped effect probability of portrait icons appearing to zero, but sometimes they still do. There IS a way to ensure that different effects in a spell or item feature block won't overlap if that's undesirable (i.e. 80% chance of effect A, 20% chance of effect B) but it involves shell spells and is off topic anyway.

Well the days have a way of turning into weeks, then months, I'm finally on the verge of releasing version 3 though, the breakdown is as follows: Class & kit changes - done Item changes - done Spell changes - 90% done Mindflayers - done Golems - done Beholders - in progress, more than 50% done Other creature changes - bout the same as the beholders Now I just need to package it all and iron out the parse errors etc. Creature changes will now be grouped under one installation option (it's too long and messy otherwise - there's too many interdependent files) I won't post the full readme until I'm ready to release it, but I'll note a few things here. Regarding the berserker's rage, I eventually went with bonus hp of 5, 10, 15 and 20 at levels 1, 6, 12 and 18, usual immunity to mind affecting magic, +1 AC, +1 attacks per round and a cumulative 15% chance per round of losing control for one round, starting from the fifth round (with a 75% chance maximum). Can be ended at will if not uncontrollable, with the berserker automatically slowed for 1 round (ignoring free action) after snapping out of his rage, losing the excess hp (falling unconscious if brought to zero) and taking -1 penalties to THAC0 and AC for 5 rounds. Since kensai gets a plain damage bonus and barbarian a strength bonus during rage, giving the berserker an APR bonus seemed the most appropriate - it does make dual wielding a little unnecessary though and instead pushes this kit toward shield use, which doesn't seem right for a berserker. I could always make shields unusable by them. Testing a solo (pre HLA) berserker in some random melee heavy battles like House Jae'llat, ToB oasis and Karashur in WK shows that even with the chance of losing control he's still better off than the other warrior kits and monk regardless of my changes to them (Karashur and his devils always kill them). Speaking of the kensai I've made a few tweaks to this kit as well, the kai ability now lasts one extra round per 5 levels (maximum 4 rounds) since it tends to be overshadowed by HLAs and it applies a zero-duration luck penalty (opcode 133) as a "melee hit effect" - since melee hit effects are added to the block before weapon effects this means that when using kai they will inflict maximum elemental damage when wielding a weapon with this property. Here for instance the kensai always does an extra 6 damage with Spectral Brand (normally 1d6): Spell changes; some spells and abilities deal sonic or force damage, which was just implemented as "magic" damage in the vanilla game, but since that's now reserved for necromancy spells (with some spells specifically protecting from it) I needed to find a replacement. Crushing damage is the obvious substitute, but it is blocked by stoneskin - I've found a way to make it ignore stoneskin though, by applying it as an EFF through opcode 272 (once only), so Lance of Disruption for instance - the Skull Trap replacement - can affect stoneskinned/ironskinned creatures (like this druid). Concerning beholders, I think I've finally realized why they seem broken and too luck-based in vanilla: Their most deadly rays (Disintegrate and Flesh to Stone) are supposed to have a very short range, which wasn't implemented in game. I could have scripted them to only use these powers at touch range, but I didn't see what benefit it would add to gameplay except forcing the use of ranged weapons vs beholders (tedious), so instead I replaced these with a poison ray and level-draining "Enervation" ray (level drain is very dangerous though because of the beholder's Death Spell ray), I also added a "Shatter" ray so that they have a means of damaging summoned skeleton warriors or golems. Beholders are also now briefly protected from magic while using their Anti Magic ray (AoE bombardment was the way to go usually).

Unlike other effects referencing .spl files (146, 206, 232 etc.) this one apparently doesn't accept filenames longer than 7 digits. Or at least in my tests it does not differentiate between two 8-digit spl files which differ only in the last character. Ofc most spell files in the vanilla game are 7 digits, but quite a few are not. Just created this topic because someone could waste quite a bit of time discovering this bug.

I was bored, so ran some tests of Gram vs other weapons to determine if it was OP (base 20 strength and GM in each case). Versus a 75% resistant, 200hp monster: Plain 1d10+5 weapon, 33-34 hits to kill on average Staff of the Ram +6, 23 hits average Gram much more random because of the proc, as little as 14 or as many as 21, say 17-20 average AoU main hand, Crom offhand - takes about the same number of rounds to kill as Gram if more attacks (the creature is immune to vorpals) This is a "worst case" scenario, most boss creatures have less or equal physical resistance (Gram shines against that kind of enemy, since only two special hits are needed to bring 75% resistance down to 45% i.e. roughly doubling the damage). FoA would actually be even better if the creature was either vulnerable to elemental damage or to Slow... Foebane too, depending on MR. New Gram is not broken IMO, the duration of lowered resistance could be reduced to four rounds or so although that makes it much less effective against the party's fighters during the fight with Abazigal. Regarding other item changes... I've just realized my tweaks to Soul Reaver make it look pretty superfluous. Minsc and Keldorn can't use it (Keldorn has the Holy Avenger anyway). Sarevok can use it, but has his own improved Sword of Chaos with Ascension, he also doesn't benefit much from the strength bonus effect (going from 18/100 to 19 or even 20 is very minor). Not to mention you can get a vorpal 2-handed sword shortly after the Underdark I consider changing this item into either a long sword or bastard sword, each has pros and cons: Long sword - there aren't any really powerful long swords in SoA, but it looks too similar to blackrazor. Perhaps I'll remove haste + strength buff from blackrazor for consistency with other level drain effects (after all, vampires don't haste or strengthen themselves by hitting you...) Bastard sword - the only highly enchanted bastard sword besides Foebane is Purifier, the paladin-only sword, so another alternative is good. It feels kinda silly though that there are two other unique bastard swords in the Underdark (3 if you count Albruin, which I never get, or miss getting). Nalia's family ring: Changing her kit to Swashbuckler actually gives her a far too low AC with this ring considering it's stackable with other protection items. I might change it to grant luck as per the wizard spell (+1 luck, +1 all saves, +5% all thieving skills) not cumulative with the spell itself. Fire resistance can stay... It's really hard to balance the berserker because any proposed disadvantages EXCEPT loss of control end up overlapping with either the kensai or barbarian kits. Berserker definitely needs some sort of a penalty during his rage, whereas barbarian possibly doesn't (besides a cooldown period between rages) because he's already penalized by the armor restrictions and lack of weapon mastery. Another idea I had was that the berserker could gain a "negative" regeneration rate while enraged (have to be careful with this as it can cause bugs) but on the other hand gain hp back with each attack on an enemy. It would have the intended effect of forcing him to stay in melee, it'd work even if Improved Hasted since his number of attacks double but his rate of hp loss also doubles. Problem is that regular haste doubles the rate of hp loss without doubling attacks... Also it would make it very easy to weaken enemy berserkers simply by running away from them (the penalty could be implemented differently for them, I suppose. Maybe a simple penalty to max hp, reducing them to around 75% of norm perhaps). Lastly, I would need to make the berserker immune to silence during his rage so that he can snap out of it (via special ability) at any time when he's out of enemies to fight. It's possible the berserker doesn't even need a post-rage fatigue period if he suffers a significant debuff of some sort during rage.

Yes, I'd planned for him to be able to snap out of his rage any time prior to going uncontrollable. I don't see anything conceptually wrong with a berserker making an effort to calm himself before reaching an "uncontrollable" frenzy but I need to find a balance between concept and playability anyway. At least this way you're guaranteed several rounds of useful "rage" without any chance of attacking the wrong target. P.S., you can actually prevent an uncontrollable berserker from attacking the party, simply make enrage work so that any berserker in the party has their SPECIFIC set to a certain value and grant the rest of the party (target type 3) protection from creature type (opcode #100) vs that SPECIFIC value, I haven't used this because of the possibility of coincidental overlap with any chosen SPECIFIC value and enemy SPECIFICs. In the above case, a blotto berserker can still get himself killed easily by attacking groups of mind flayers and dragons and such. Like the wild mage the berserker probably just isn't a great choice for the protagonist in an ironman game. Concerning MM vs ProME, I believe remove magic and breach are higher priority (mages will always try to breach ProME on a fighter), so by the time mages get to MM in their scripts your non spell-casters should be vulnerable anyway. The situation that I really want to avoid is not a mage failing to cast spells on a potential target (particularly relatively weak spells like MM), but rather wasting spells and time on an invulnerable target (which they actually do in my version of SCS, mages who Wish for TS + Improved Alacrity consistently spam MM at party members protected by globes). There would be more of an issue if for instance ADHW was changed from magic damage (because it's a high priority spell used early in the encounter), so I'm not going to do anything like that. About negative resistances, with Kuroisan's katana it takes only 4 successful hits to lower acid resistance by 100%. On the other hand with Gram having a 10% chance to lower slashing resistance by 15% it takes just over four Greater Whirlwinds worth of attacks (assuming 100% hit rate, which is wrong anyway) to completely negate 75% physical resistance (I didn't actually test this in game, just going off raw probabilities). There is a chance though (about 8-10%) of getting 3 or more "resistance lowering" hits in the space of one GWW (and ofc, there is a larger chance of getting none at all). I could always change Gram to have 30% chance to lower resistance by 5%, which would make it more consistent and less likely to rapidly lower resistance by "chaining" special hits together, although for some reason -5% looks silly to me and it rules out any associated animation or special effects (because it would trigger too frequently and be an eyesore). As for Shield or Reflection/Balduran ofc I'll remove them from stores and replace with a new file to avoid AI issues. This method runs into problems if someone installs Wisp's Randomizer though (either before or after Polytweak).

Another longish post, I'm starting to use this thread as a diary, so I don't forget what I've been doing... Regarding area damage from Whirlwind, I will certainly make Absolute Immunity spell protect against it (as it blocks every weapon). Any other combat protection can be bypassed by some weapon in your possession by the time your warriors are epic level (unless soloing). I'm still not convinced that there are many battles where you will have a melee enemy standing next to a ProMW-using enemy mage for a full round to act as a target and SURVIVE the ten hits needed for the AoE damage to remove the mage's stoneskins. About archers and WW, it currently only works with melee weapons but I've designed a "reflected shot" ability for archers (same idea, deals d4 damage/4 levels up to 7d4, hits only one additional target and lasts two rounds). The only enemy archer with WW attack is Illasera (she doesn't even use it with my version of SCS...) but that's easily fixed by giving her GWW instead and REPLACE_TEXTUALLY ~"WARRIOR_WHIRLWIND"~ ~"WARRIOR_GREATER_WHIRLWIND"~ in her script. Concerning the berserker, it just occurred to me that the slayer forms granted with Ascension are a good approximation of how the ability should work (except for turning into a giant lobster and taking damage from it ofc), the character has control for a few rounds, but an increasing chance to lose it thereafter. For AI scripting purposes I have to limit the rage + fatigue period to no more than 15 rounds total, so say 12 rounds max rage, plus 3 rounds cooldown period. Rage has normal benefits for the first 6 rounds, each round thereafter the berserker has a 10% cumulative chance to be uncontrollable in that round up to 60% on the 12th and final round but the option to "calm rage" is added as an innate ability, which drops the berserker out of his enraged state immediately. Thus, the player can still get most of the benefits of enrage but after a while must choose between debuffing his berserker or risking a loss of control. For AI controlled enemies, berserker rage ends automatically after 6 rounds (easy enough to do with EFF files). I have to wonder about the strength loss at the end of the barb's rage, which could be fatal if you've been fighting spirit trolls or even a mass of shadows, or could immobilize the character (also often fatal). I might sub it for a plain penalty to attack/damage rolls although I'd like it to be more different from the berserker's post-rage fatigue. I did some work on spells and items this weekend. Spell changes I want to replace either Skull Trap or Flame Arrow. Flame Arrow is one of 3 fire-damage spells at the same level, very redundant, also it's not useful before level 10 (level 15, really) and OP by level 20. Skull Trap on the other hand is an annoying short range fireball (hard to protect your own party from, as well) unless you're going to use cheese and trap enemy spawn points with Skull Traps. I already have a great replacement spell in mind - Lance of Disruption - which deals crushing damage (2d12 +2/level, up to 2d12 + 30, save for half) and ignores MR when cast on golems/skeletal undead. Glyph of Warding has the same issues as skull trap, I'm replacing this with Static Charge (capped at 10d6 damage). Also this is now available to druids and rangers, so as to make druids somewhat more useful in combat compared to clerics (who have better buffs and Holy Smite). I recoloured the Static Charge effect to blue, to fit with other electrical effects in BG2. Save-or-die spells, I thought about making these deal massive damage on a failed save like in pathfinder so they would be somewhat useful versus bosses i.e. Finger of Death, 2d8 +7/level, succesful save reduces damage to 2d8 +1/level (also makes beholder fights a bit less luck-based). Wail of The Banshee, 8 points damage per level, save for none (stronger penalty vs vanilla, -2 at 18th level) Slay Living, 12d8 + 1/level, succesful save reduces damage to 2d8 +1/level (multiple attempts are allowed to hit the target, spell discharges only on hit or after two rounds) Harm, 10hp damage per level (save for half) also applies instantaneous minimum hp effect between 1 and 4 so target can't be reduced below 1d4 hp by this spell (one round to hit the target). Protection from Magic Energy (a spell that never made sense) will now become Protection from Necromantic Energy. It gives the same benefits as Death Ward, except it will not protect from PW:Kill/Symbol Death (which aren't Necromancy) but will protect from Vampiric Touch, (Un)Holy Smite, Harm and Horrid Wilting, this is powerful so will stay a single target buff (this shouldn't cause AI issues provided it sets SCRIPTINGSTATE2 like Death Ward). A few spells now need their damage type changed: Magic Missile changed to missile damage - it's supposed to remove stoneskins per the description and currently doesn't, Sunray changed to heat/fire damage. Item changes. Kundane I've completely redesigned this weapon, it now Grants no extra apr Is a +3 weapon for hit and damage 25% chance to deal 2d12 acid damage and heal the wielder by 3hp 5% chance for 25 acid damage and healing 6hp There's no short sword in vanilla that deals elemental damage (fire is already covered by Angurvadal, electricity by Crom/Storm Star, cold by Spectral Brand) or has useful abilities for a fighter (the entanglement from SSoM is mainly useful for thieves, and the upgrade to level draining is only provided in late ToB). Kundane shouldn't be OP as it's harder to get than the FoA imo, particularly with SCS, although the fighter in Planar Prison who currently wields it could be tougher considering she has 2 special items, (gauntlets of weapon skill and kundane), but 9 in every stat... Flail of Ages +3 version, 15% chance to deal an extra 3d6 damage total (divided between fire/cold/acid), and slow target for one round, grants +5% MR +4 version, 15% chance to deal an extra 4d8 damage (now adding poison or electricity), and slow 1 round, grants +10% MR +5 version, 15% chance to deal an extra 5d10 elemental damage, and slow as above, grants +15% MR, no more free action Defender of Easthaven Almost doesn't need tweaking with the changes to AoF and barbarian abilities, but add missile resistance (strangely the original flail gives piercing but not missile resistance) and remove crushing resistance (due to overlap with Roranarch's horn - which will now be +25% blunt resistance, or half vanilla value). Soul Reaver For some reason I dislike the THAC0 penalty on each hit, now 20% chance to drain 1d4 strength while raising wielder's strength by 1 point, 3 round duration, works only on living creatures. Gram the Sword of Grief Gram of myth was supposed to be sharp enough to cut an anvil in two, but how to implement this? I ruled out vorpal effect (it'd be a clone of the silver sword) as well as bleeding or extra slashing damage (overlaps with the new CS ability, and Sarevok's DBA), instead Gram now has a 10% chance per hit to lower the target's slashing damage resistance by 15%, lasting one turn. Dragon form Abazigal and Tamah both have "slashing" claws, so this ability can work against the party in the fight with Abazigal. I dislike the idea of "upgrading" a +5 artifact like Gram, also in vanilla it's not even very useful because to upgrade it you need to have defeated Abazigal and completed most of Sendai's enclave, leaving hardly any battles where level-draining enemies is possible and useful. I would rather make the Ice Star "upgradeable" with the Heart of the Damned to level drain on hit (save vs death at -2), it would give players at least one blunt weapon with an interesting effect besides FoA - the Heart of the Damned will also be moved from Sendai's Enclave to Von Goethe (a bit more appropriate as well). Girdle of Inertial barrier +25% resistance to fire/acid/missile damage and +5 saves vs breath, no magic damage resistance Since "magic damage" is now only dealt by necromancy spells, I restrict MDR boosting items to the Improved mace of Disruption (as a replacement for level drain immunity), Carsomyr (replacement for blanket Magic Resistance, Holy Avenger MR is supposed to apply only to "evil" spells anyway) and Valygar's armor (again, it makes sense here, although acid resistance doesn't...). AI frequently checks for 50% MDR as a trigger, so 40% for carsomyr, 20% for the mace. Shield of Reflection It is as OP as the SoB (though in different situations) but I can't change it's equipping effects without screwing up archer AI, so going to to "replace" it with a new shield granting +2 AC (as per original) +1 strength +2 critical hit roll Might be an appealing alternative for non dual-wielding fighters Shield of Balduran Simultaneously casts Physical Mirror and Spell Turning once per day (a replacement for the shield of reflection) No more passive beholder ray reflection or strength penalty Immunity to glitterdust/sunray/colour spray (flavour reasons, mostly) and a 10% chance to temporarily blind attackers by "reflection" on a failed save vs spell (this effect cannot trigger more than once per round, in case of insect plague for instance)

Hi Demi & Kreso First two I'm not overly concerned about; allowing full damage bonuses and special effects of weapons as an AoE - even if it could be done - would be overpowered (currently the 20-odd reflected damage per hit is already very good, better than GWW against hordes). The last is a problem, but unlike to occur often. Enemy fighters tend to converge on characters, while enemy mages (with SCS scripts, anyway) run away, so it would be rare for a mage to stand next to a fighter long enough for the whirlwinds to strip his skins through ProMW. Opcode #283, apply effect as a curse, ignores normal #101 vs the effect. You can always add a short duration #101 vs #26 (remove curse) if you don't want it reversible. In v3 I use it for "physical" knockdowns (Power Attack, Minotaur charge, Earthquake - the last has a much shorter duration than vanilla) on creatures that are immune to sleep, also to make undead flee in fear from the Turn Undead ability (player clerics will have this as a spell like ability, enemy AI only ever tries to turn summoned skeletons so will still use vanilla turning for now - less than ideal, but it tests okay). In my tests the ability for a berserker to regain control by delivering the deathblow to an enemy made him more viable (particularly because he didn't turn around and start attacking Viconia or whoever), though I suppose there are some creatures that uncontrollable berserk is simply to dangerous to use against though, such as mindflayers, dragons and the stronger golems. Another possibility would be to have the uncontrollable berserk trigger during the berserker's usual "fatigue" period between rages, since the barbarian already suffers a strength penalty after rages this would distinguish the kits further. The berserker won't suffer combat penalties (indeed he gains an extra +2 hit/damage from the berserk opcode unless you specifically try to work around it), but will become progressively more dangerous to use in combat the longer his enraged state persists. I'm convinced Illasera has more than 1 hardiness, she reuses it if you breach her first one.

This is going to be another long post, I had some time this weekend to work on fighter classes, which reminded me of the most useless HLA ever, Whirlwind Attack - which everyone takes just once to unlock GWW. Turns out in it's original concept whirlwind was supposed to hit every enemy within ten feet, so I changed it a bit: Now with every sucessful attack made by the fighter, all hostile creatures in a 10 ft radius (except the one initially struck) take extra damage - 1d6 per 4 levels up to 7d6 at lvl 28 (slashing damage for most warriors, crushing for fighter/priests and piercing for fighter/thieves). The ability to deal "AoE" damage should be interesting for warrior classes. It should also be useful for enemy fighters, usually the logical thing for the player to do is focus the entire party on attacking one guy at a time, the ability for an opposing warrior to strike and damage every nearby character - even if he is being tanked by soemone with stoneskin or summons - should at least complicate this tactic. Not sure about the animation - I wasn't just going to reuse blade barrier here (though I have used the "old" bg2 blade barrier for the blade's new defensive spin). As for power attack, since I discovered a way to get opcodes to effect creatures that are normally unaffected this HLA can now knockdown even enemies that are immune to the "sleep" effect, such as undead - also power attack now gives a +6 bonus to damage, and incurs a -3 penalty to mainhand weapon THAC0 and -6 offhand. Probably best to exclude kensai's from choosing this one as their kit negates the disadvantages (it won't be a prerequisite for critical strike anymore). Critical strike, this is the hardest one to balance. Its vanilla version is either almost useless, as against enemies with helmets (autohit is really nothing special for an epic level fighter) or overpowered against enemies without. Proposed new list of effects for critical strike (basing this on the critical hit charts from Combat & Tactics), lasts 2 rounds: +2 bonus to critical hit roll (doubled by 2 handed weapon style, or sws if anyone ever used it) 20% chance to inflict 2 extra "damage dice" - would translate to 2d10 slashing for regular fighters, 4d4 crushing for F/Cs and 2d8 piercing for F/Ts, no save and works even vs opponents with helmets (overlaps with Sarevok's unique ability, though) 20% chance to stun for 1d3 rounds, with a penalized save vs polymorph 20% chance to inflict bleeding, no save initially, then 3d4/round until a (penalized) save vs death is made (mainly a concern for the player, battles with HLAs are over very soon) 20% chance to inflict weakening wound, considered a disease (much like contagion spell, reduces str/dex/con and slows target) allows a save 10% to reduce the target's hp by 20% - this is quite powerful against bosses and highly resistant creatures Stun is an overused effect, but the others are not too common (either on weapons or as special abilities). I wonder how GWW compares to these new abilities, say CS in the above example gives a 10% bonus to damage due to increased critical hit chance, and about a 20% damage bonus (5-6 points average) due to the bleeding/extra damage dice/hp penalty, then the 30% increase in total damage output looks worse than the potential 250% increase in dps going from 4 to 10 apr due to GWW, that's assuming no Improved Haste though; going from 8 to 10 apr is indeed only about a 30% bonus. Even so, GWW lasts only one round and CS will now last 2. Perhaps I should enforce a 1 round cooldown between GWW's (this might cause AI problems, the scripts might assume GWW lasts for 1 round regardless of SCRIPTINGSTATE4) or alternatively a chance on every hit during GWW to penalize THAC0 and damage, so while you could chain GWW back to back after a time it becomes pointless due to the penalties... either option seems "realistic", the GWW spamming warrior should get tired eventually. Hardiness, I think there's nothing wrong with it per se, but it's far more powerful for certain classes than it should be: Reg fighter w hardiness, the 40% resistances effectively gives him 167% of his normal hp, respective to physical attacks, this is balanced imo Barbarian with hardiness, or fighter with Defender flail has 60% resistance, so effectively 250% of his normal hp, getting OP here Barbarian with hardiness + DoE has 80% DR, so 500% normal hp, which is ridiculous and fighter/clerics are just as bad, characters with this much DR are almost unkillable by physical damage because each potion of Superior Healing effectively heals 200 hp, not 40. The same problem is evident with any item granting damage resistance, I can't reduce the amount of DR hardiness grants, because high level fighter scripts have a trigger that goes like: CheckStatLT(Myself,40,RESISTSLASHING) ...and would potentially waste time trying to recast it. I thought instead about changing the barbarian's abilities, rather than damage resistance he gets +1hp per level after the 9th and during his rage takes one point less damage from every attack made on him (rather than vanilla constitution bonus, which also rather bizarrely healed the barbarian). Cleric armor of faith could instead grant an AC bonus (1 initially, 2 at level 10, 3 at 19) and resistances only vs elements (because elemental attacks usually ignore AC), it would still do the job of a blanket protection (and probably better at low levels, where AC is more important than resistance). Also, the barbarian should only get a movement rate bonus during his rage (i.e. during fights when it is tactically important), otherwise he is always getting ahead of the party and potentially alerting enemies before you want to. A passive movement rate bonus might be good for the ranger kits though, since they have stealth... I've revised the berserker and barb's rage a bit because they were far to similar in both concept and utility, since barb gains strength during rage, it should grant him immunity to weakening/incapacitating effects like unconciousness, hold, stun, slow (not web or entangle though), knockback and ray of enfeeblement; in contrast berserker rage should grant immunity to emotion affecting magic like charm, fear, confusion (Finger of Death too, per 2nd edition). Both rages scale with level now (zerks in BGTutu are well known to be OP). Berserker: lvl 1, +5 hp, +3 to hit, +1 to AC, +3 to damage, immunities, loses control for 6 seconds upon striking an enemy, control is restored immediately upon killing the enemy thus forcing a fight to the end, note that ProMW or similar will prevent a hit, so the berserker remains raged for one round attacking them, then "realizes" what's up and regains control (if someone else makes the kill of the enemy whom berserker is attacking he will also stay raged for one round) lvl 7, +10 hp, +3 to hit, +2 to AC, +3 to damage, immunities, loses control for 4 seconds upon striking an enemy, control is restored immediately upon killing the enemy lvl 13, +15 hp, +3 to hit, +3 to AC, +3 to damage, immunities, loses control for 3 seconds upon striking an enemy, control is restored immediately upon killing the enemy lvl 19, +20 hp, +3 to hit, +4 to AC, +3 to damage, immunities, loses control for 2 seconds upon striking an enemy (with 3-4 apr and good THAC0 even a 2 second duration means they'll be hard to command), control is restored immediately upon killing the enemy Penalties are the inverse of bonuses, lasting for half the duration. Berserkers can no longer be "gibbed" by damage from rage expiry (hilarious) but will fall unconscious, which seems more appropriate anyway - the hp loss will also no longer be absorbed by stoneskin or mirror image for berserker->druids or berserker->mages. Barbarian: lvl 1, +2 strength, +2 move, -2 AC, immunities & damage reduction, loses 5 points strength upon end of rage, regained at 1 point per round, cannot re-enrage until strength penalty expires (i.e. 5 rounds) lvl 10, +3 strength, +3 move, -2 AC, immunities & damage reduction, loses 4 points strength upon end of rage, regained at 1 point per round, cannot re-enrage until strength penalty expires lvl 19, +4 strength, +4 move, -2 AC, immunities & damage reduction, loses 3 points strength upon end of rage, regained at 1 point per round, cannot re-enrage until strength penalty expires Barbarian rage will now last 1 turn.

You could dispel SI:Abj with a single Pro Evil, or SI:Div with Know Alignment (True Sight will work differently), but only if the enemy mage doesn't have Spell Turning or equivalent. Ugh, it looks like my tweaked Spell Immunity has the same annoying bug as other protections like Spell Turning/Deflection/Shield. Occasionally it will go "uber" and start absorbing/reflecting an unlimited number of spells: Actually I have managed to "overload" a Minor Spell Deflection that went "uber" with about eighteen spell levels total (should be four), but usually when this bug appears it makes the spell as good as total immunity to the school as in vanilla, maybe that's a reason not to change the duration from vanilla 1 round/level. This bug is anyway only a real problem when it happens with Spell Shield, everything else can be removed with Pierce Magics and suchlike... I can't remember the last time an enemy mage turned the tide of battle in his favour by recasting Stoneskin mid combat - at most it let him throw a few more meteors. If a mage is out of ProMW type spells and illusions and is forced to use his action for the round to cast defensively he's on the ropes anyway. Contingencied stoneskin at least usually gives them time for another spell since their aura is still clear - that wouldn't be changed. Dragons are another story - stoneskin gives them a round or so of physical damage immunity to continue their vicious melee attacks, but they cast instantly. On the other hand I remember several times when the ability to quickly recast stoneskin made a tough melee enemy or enemies very simple to tank - SCS dragons are quite easy in Chapter 3 even with triple hp provided you have the appropriate elemental protection, enough Stoneskin spells, enough Breach spells and vanilla Spell Immunity. Good idea about allies for liches, undead for most types and perhaps elementals and salamanders for the elemental lich. Downtime for Spell Shield is out, because SCS AI recasts it by trigger.

In vanilla the best weapon + shield combo for immunities in SoA is Dragonslayer + Harmony but this leaves you with the problem of enemies that require +3 weapons to hit. Blackrazor could be swapped for Dragonslayer late game, but not everyone want's to turn evil for it - also they might prefer +2 to all saves anyway. Replacing the shield with a plate mail or somesuch is actually better for most fighters, since they're now free to use Dragonslayer offhand and a better weapon main hand, or a 2-hander if Cavalier... It shouldn't screw up AI scripts provided the armor uses the same file name as the shield (SHLD25.ITM). The only problem I forsee is if a mod like Wisp's randomizer equips a creature with the Plate of Harmony in their shield slot - I don't know whether the randomizer reads item type and usability before equipping stuff. Btw, sorry to see your no-reload berserker die in ToB, he looked really promising. Anyway I made some changes to Spell Immunity, it now works kinda like vanilla Spell Shield - absorbing only the first spell from a school: Much more balanced, I think, duration could possibly be increased to 3 rounds/level as with the other spell protections (I still have the horrible looking original SI graphics on my testing install...). While I was at it, dispel magic no longer displays an erroneous "dispel effects" string or animation on creatures who didn't get dispelled: Other changes I made to Dispel Magic, scales by 10% per level above target rather than 5% (previously scaled by 10% per level below, 5% per level above - I'd prefer it to be consistent), has a 5% chance of critical success or failure rather than 1% (wasn't even implemented in vanilla), doesn't auto-dispel illusions, but only if the casting level check succeeds, now dispels Mordy swords, lastly it's capped at 30th level (and a 30th level dispel magic has a 50% chance to work vs level 30+ opponents anyway). Bards and clerics had a rather anomalous advantage over archmages in vanilla with respect to dispel checks (impossible for a level-capped wizard to dispel either level-capped bards or clerics, even with ToBEx fix it's still only a 1% chance i.e. useless). Potions and such effects are now checked at the user's level. I actually did most of the work on dispel magic years ago, then took a long break from modding/playing, so it never got packaged into a mod. I also consider Dispel Magic temporarily (1 round) incapacitating golems on a successful level check vs their HD (i.e. Clay Golem is 10th, Iron Golem 18th). I think of making certain buffs undispellable, Stoneskin would be one (RM is otherwise as good as an AoE insta death vs groups of lower level mages), on the other hand Stoneskin should now take a full round to cast (IMO the most imbalancing thing about stoneskin is the ability to recast it instantly with AoP as soon as your enemies wear through it - AI mages usually have a contingencied SS and perhaps a sequencered one rather than trying to recast it in combat). Regeneration would also be undispellable (very annoying to see a 7th level, single target buff which is obviously meant for fighters keep getting dispelled right at the start of combat), spell duration also increased but regeneration rate reduced a little - or maybe it would be enough to make it unaffected by Haste (which would also make it unaffected by Slow)? Another spell that I think needs a change is Spell Shield; in it's "fixed" version (packaged with SCS) it makes certain high-level enemy mages really tedious: Mage is buffed with Spell Trap, SI:Abj, SI:Div, Illusions, Globe of Invulnerability and Spell Shield Party shoots some Secret Words/Ruby Rays at him Mage casts Time Stop (hard to interrupt because of his layered buffs), uses it to recast his protections (since they prioritize defense now) More Ruby Rays... Mage uses his Spell Trigger (SI:Divination, II & Spell Shield - again!) You're out of antimagic now unless you have a sorcerer I had this experience with nearly every high level ToB mage, they were no longer really threatening, just tedious. The other issue is that Spell Shield is very powerful in the player's hands, because enemy mages are willing to waste their most dangerous antimagic spells like Spellstrike and Warding Whip on a Spell Shield. I think Spell Shield was originally added by the devs so that certain boss-type mages couldn't just be breached, but since Breach is blocked by spell protections with SCS this role is redundant. I propose Spell Shield be changed to simply give +3 save vs spells/wands and +15% MR, at level 14 increases to +4/+20%, at level 20 caps at +5/+25%. Now Spirit Armor will improve save vs death instead of spells (more appropriate for Necromancy), Improved Invisibility will no longer grant save bonuses (not to save vs spells, anyway), so Spell Shield could be a sort of replacement in the role of a saving throw buff without leading to OP stacking.

Update: progress is unexpectedly slow because the components are becoming increasingly inter-dependent, i.e. if you want to redesign the mechanics of level-draining monsters you need to account for every item and spell that gives level drain immunity. Speaking of which, I have redesigned most level-drainers for the next release: Unless you have NPP, Improved Mantle spell or equivalent they will always inflict the penalties of level drain on your characters with each hit (i.e. to THAC0, saves and hp) but if a save vs death is successful then the character won't actually be level drained and the debuffing effects will only last for one turn (i.e. no restoration spell required, no spell slots lost for casters). Although the "real" level drain allows a save vs death the cumulative penalty to saves on hit should make it threatening even to dwarf fighters. My reasoning is that vanilla level drain is horribly annoying to deal with, pressing the player to avoid it entirely, but items that provide equipped protection from level drain totally spoil the challenge of those undead. The improved mace of disruption will instead give +2 AC vs undead and increased base damage dice and magic damage to undead on hit (1d8 instead of 1d6), the amulet of power OTOH will now provide immunity to feeblemindedness and spell drain effect (from Nishruus, Hive Mothers etc.). I also decided that all vampires (except Bodhi) will drain a fixed 2 levels per hit, but have varying apr. I.e. in vanilla an "eminent" vampire (VAMEMI01.cre) has 2 apr and drains 4 levels per hit, revised they will have 4 apr for 2 levels each, but the base damage of their attack is increased from 1d6 to 2d8 (+8 for strength) so it will not be trivial to just send in one character immune to level drain to take out a room of vampires. Lately I reworked the Turn Undead ability (it's pointless trying to design challenging undead with this imbalanced vanilla ability). It's now a spell like ability useable once per turn (should be once/encounter), and located under special abilities bar: Turning Undead now uses a proper "die roll", even the highest level priest needs a roll of 13+ to turn a "special" undead creature of 15HD or more, it also breaks invisibility/sanctuary (ridiculous to turn undead if they can't see the crucifix or whatever you're brandishing at them). The "Turn Undead" button now just shows whether a character is ready to turn undead (darkened if not, lit up when the ability returns): Making undead flee in fear from a spell was giving me problems as they're immune to fear, then in my last playthrough I noticed that opcode 283 - Use eff file as a curse - bypasses normal immunities to the specified effect (a character who draws Fool from the Deck of Many Things gets confused even with Chaotic Commands/Shield of Harmony). Incidentally, I'm thinking that a major factor in imbalancing fighter/mage types is that they can have all the item-based immunities of a regular fighter (since these are tied to things like Shield of Harmony, Equalizer or Dragonslayer), if the immunities were inherent to armors rather than weapons or shields then the pure class warriors would have a lot more going for them.

The latter, I'm afraid. Alright this is going to be a kind of long and rambling post, me brainstorming various gameplay changes. Mind flayer psionic blast will no longer cause stun, but feeblemindedness for the duration (a ulitharid's mind blast is supposed work like this), which also makes it possible to survive being incapacitated by a flayer for at least a couple of rounds, since they must roll to hit your AC, per 2ed rules stunned creatures shouldn't be autohit either, only paralyzed ones. To deal with stoneskin/mirror image etc. (since their attacks are now blocked by it) Mind flayers will get a new psionic power called Suppress Magic. This blocks use of their other psionics for two rounds and dispels combat protections and illusions (since these are usually short duration anyway - except stoneksin ofc., unfortunately temporary suppression of spell effects isn't really possible in the Infinity engine). They will use it only if presented with a target with magical protections (I didn't want to give flayers the same frustrating behaviour as beholders). Among other things they also get Psionic Displacement (50% miss chance for attackers not under True Sight). Regarding other creature improvements, to make them a bit better in melee combat those with only 1 apr (golems or elementals) will crit on 16-20, those with 2-3 apr (like the minotaurs, umberhulks and most Yuan-Ti) on 17-20, those with 4 or more apr on 18-20, except Mind Flayers who will still need a 20 (because 4 hits from a flayer will kill anyone). Also exempt are most low HD creatures such as encountered in BG1, because a string of criticals in BG1 is already dangerous enough. Chaotic Commands: Will no longer block "physical" stun (warrior power attack, monk fists, Kuo Toa bolts etc.) but will block stunning spells and will still block mind flayer psionics. Free action: will block all sorts of stun, but will no longer block either Slow or Haste, or be useful vs flayers. Slow and Haste always interacted badly with FA anyway, if it worked as intended they would be removed once it was cast, also the slow effect from certain diseases already bypasses FA. Only (Minor) Globes of Invulnerability or sufficiently good saves will prevent Slow. The movement rate advantage players tend to have over enemies is really imbalancing, so making Slow harder to defend against is good IMO. Slow and Haste: will now genuinely negate each other, Slow applies a -2 penalty to dex rather than vanilla game AC/THAC0 penalties whereas Haste gives a +2 dexterity bonus, a -2 dex is usually (for most PC's) more of a debuff than +2 is a bonus as there is no AC bonus for 19-20 dex. Improved Invisibility: I actually think it's silly for this spell to grant save bonuses vs spells. Single target spells can't be aimed at you anyway, and I can't imagine how being invisible would help to prevent getting stuck in a Web. II at lvl 4 and Shadow Door at lvl 5 should be swapped around, the former is actually better because it can be used to buff an ally. Blur: will keep the save bonus, but duration reduced, also it will be changed to alteration school (the blanket AC + save bonus is useful even against creatures who see through illusions, unlike II where attackers who detect the invisible don't suffer a penalty to hit, so it makes no sense for blur to be an illusion). Greater Malison: This spell annoys me because it lasts for a long time (forcing much waiting around between mage battles, i.e. in the planar prison), since it applies twice the save penalty it really should (-4 instead -2) it should last only half the duration (or maybe just one turn). I also think it should apply a 20% penalty to elemental/magic damage resistance (going off the 20% die roll penalty to saves), making it useful for wizards who rely on damaging spells instead of save-or-else (not that invokers can learn GM anyway). Cone of cold/Prismatic Spray: Casting time reduced to 1, but will hold the caster in place for a couple of seconds like Burning Hands and Color Spray, reason is obvious; it's impossible for the player to aim these properly (though AI opponents can). Doom: Revert the casting time back to 1 segment instead of 1 round. Even high level enemy clerics with SCS show a willingness to open a battle with it, so the one round casting time really screws up the AI IMO. Chant: The bonuses or penalties end one round after you move more than 30 ft from the chanting cleric (or if the cleric dies). It irritates me when I'm debuffed by an enemy cleric's chant long after he's ceased to be capable of chanting... Cleric dispel magic: Made single target, thus maybe actually usable. Mage Remove Magic will stay AoE since Protective Spells are now multi target. Holy Word/Smite: Neutral clerics are currently overpowered, they can cast Holy Word/Smite while being immune to Unholy Word/Blight. The latter will now affect all non-evil creatures except the caster and party (SCS scripts may have clerics w. neutral allies cast this), Holy Word/Smite will remain effective only against evil. Also, these spells now do 1d8/2 levels (max 6d8), they were far too damaging in vanilla. I consider reducing the duration of Holy/Unholy Word inflicted deafness because it ruins spellcasters with no saving throw, but I might add a secondary effect like a penalty to movement rate and attack rolls so it would be useful even against non spellcasters of high level. Class and kit changes: I'm currently playing with a blade PC (with Rogue Rebalancing mod). It's a good mod, but I don't like the Offensive/Defensive Spin abilities as they are now. In unmodded BG2, Offensive Spin hastes the blade, which does not stack with regular Haste and negates Improved Haste. With the fixpack it gives +1 apr and double movement rate which CAN be stacked with haste and IH if they're cast beforehand, quite overpowered. On the other hand, Offensive Spin's very short duration feels awkward for a caster whose aura is often tied up in battle with Remove Magic and suchlike. Rogue Rebalancing gives blades a "Weapons Display" skill which is basically slow casting Horror but also grants the party a THAC0 bonus, up to a +3 bonus at 20th level (Together with offensive spin that puts a blades THAC0 on par with Kensai 9->mage, and damage output almost on par, which is a bit much). I had in mind to combine those two abilities in a nerfed form, Offensive Spin will now be gained at 1st level and once per 10 levels thereafter. It will last 3 rounds + 1 round/level and still give +2 melee THAC0 and max damage per hit. However it no longer grants haste or extra attacks, and works with (Improved) Haste. for the first two rounds ranged attacks made by the blade will panic creatures of lower level if they fail their save (fear is a bad ability for a melee effect). As for defensive spin, I think inability to attack rather than inability to move is much more appropriate. AC bonus reduced to 2 + 1/2 levels (maximum 7), but anyone trying to hit the blade in melee must save vs death or take 4 + 1/level slashing damage (maximum 20) representing the blade's riposte, the saving throw penalty would increase by 1/4 levels up to -5. Defensive Spin would last 3 rounds and be gained at the same rate as vanilla, it could be used during an Offensive Spin, but negates that ability because no attacks can be made. Swashbucklers, sort of the thief counterpart to a blade. In vanilla they would eventually do more damage per strike than a fighter, albeit with less apr and worse THAC0, but they could surpass a fighter in burst damage using whirlwind, and their AC got ridiculous at epic levels. I'd tone down their AC, and rather than a flat damage bonus increasing with levels give them Insightful Strike (at levels 1, 5, 9, 13, 17 and 21 - the same levels as an assasin's backstab improves), providing an extra damage bonus versus humanoid creatures (including vampires), along with disarm maneuver which prevents a humanoid opponent to attack for one round (except monks) on a failed save, but has no effect on creatures relying on natural attacks, the latter ability would be "passive", i.e. always having a chance to trigger on melee hits (though improving with level). The swashbuckler should shine against enemy fighters and be less effective against monsters compared to other warriors. I also thought about removing swash hide in shadows ability (doesn't suit the character) and giving a hp bonus at low levels.

True, but then again a -3 dex penalty on armor means that the fighter/cleric or ranger/cleric with DUHM can easily work around that AC penalty... and those two classes are definitely not in need of a boost relative to other warriors. It's difficult to design opponents that can hit such a low AC tank regularly, without ensuring that the same creature will also hit an unbuffed character, or one wearing inferior armor (like a stalker or barbarian) with every swing, leading to frustration for the player who went with the latter, lightly armored build or didn't stack a bunch of AC buffing spells before the fight. A possible solution would be to give melee monsters an increased chance to score critical hits, after all a group of enemies hitting you on 17-20 is actually doing 4x as much as damage as if they all needed a 20 to hit you. Since PCs either wear helmets or are stoneskinned (or both) the crits wouldn't increase damage dealt to characters with poor AC, but would at least solve the problem of enemies being 95% unable to hit your buffed tank. (IMO Kensai should be allowed to wear helmets, no armor, shields or ranged weapons is enough of a hindrance and it just encourages the cheese of wearing Ioun stones for crit protection) Anyway, since - unusually for me - I'm playing a team of six in SoA for my current game I realized it's frustrating to spend time buffing everyone with single target spells (and buffs are needed, playing no-reload). I decided to change most single target protective spells to work on multiple creatures, much like the wand of lightning. Initially (at the level you can first cast them) they're single target, then affect one more target for every three levels (for wizards) or two levels (for priests) thereafter, simulating the rate at which new spell slots are gained. Also I changed the graphics, as it struck me as strange that everything from ProFire to Chaotic Commands has the same visual effect when cast. To compensate, most buffs are much shorter duration: 2 rounds/level for wizard elemental protection spells and 1/level for the priest version (this was already the case with priest ProFire). Chaotic Commands, Death Ward and Free Action each last 2 turns. I also increased the casting times, as it struck me as OP to be able to instantly protect your whole party. I won't use this for my current game, but will do a playthrough to test it for balance shortly. AI opponents only are able to cast the buffs on one target, but then again even with SCS they only ever buff themselves. Actually with the exception of Remove Paralysis, Remove Fear and Heal I've never seen an enemy priest cast something on an enemy fighter. Testing also reveals that placing one of these multi target spells in a sequencer causes it to only work on the initial target of the sequencer, this is fine for me, sequencers are powerful enough already.

NPC rogues/monks would have the same bad saving throws vs energy damage spells, barring regexp search and patch of every such character in the game... And this is likely to mess something up, i.e. a creature might intentionally have a saving throw of 20 so as to be killed during a cutscene, and the game might hang in cutscene mode if this fails to execute. Also, I'm not about to copy my own mod from SR/KR or anyone else's work, what would be the point of that? Again, if it's not a new idea, I'm reluctant to include it in my own work, but damage resistance added to armor creates game balance problems in any case, without the Hardiness HLA tweak from Kit Revisions it means a warrior's DR can be way too high once the party is epic level (+20% physical resistance on full plate might seem small, but a fighter with 80% DR can effectively take twice the beating that he could with 60% DR). Besides I think armor boosting DR is conceptually wrong, armor is basically a thin brittle shell covering a person's vulnerable body, you would expect it to entirely negate weak blows from puny attackers - such as goblins - (unless they find a chink in your armor i.e. a critical hit) and be more likely to fail against the powerful strikes of very strong enemies - like fire giants and golems. Armor class does this in a roundabout way in AD&D and the vanilla game, since creatures with high damage output typically have higher HD with good THAC0. Physical damage resistance on the other hand is equally useful vs the goblins and the firegiants (better vs firegiants actually, because of the way the game rounds it off...). Also DR implies an innate toughness versus a certain attack form (such as a mummy might have) and is not fitting for non-magical armor or shields. As for Dex penalties for armor, because 2nd edition stats give neither bonus nor penalty in the 7-14 range (usually), it means a highly dexterous character is equally easy to strike as a clumsy one when wearing the same plate armor... the more agile character should still receive some defensive bonus imo.

Okay, my thoughts on these: It'd be easy enough to patch every spell with the "colour glow pulse" effect for those who don't like it - personally I only find Aid spell to be an eyesore. I'd be against increasing NPP duration much longer than other Protection from Weapon type spells as it makes certain enemies almost irrelevant, I remember a pretty tense encounter (in my last game) with a Nabassu who kept becoming ethereal and returning to level drain my guys. Free Action changed to 2 turns versus vanilla 1 turn + 1 round/level? I don't see much difference there. It needs to be nerfed, yeah, I might make it work only versus mind influencing spells (not against knockout from s. cloud, earthquake, wing buffet - also earthquake knockdown should have a shorter duration) Bear in mind this also makes it easier for players to kill enemy mages, although SS and MI could be weakened (even justifiably) for multiclass mages versus single class and sorcerers. I also thought of making timestop last 3 rounds only for pureclass mages and 1-3 rounds for dual/multi/other (who also can use it for more powerful tricks like timestop-> harm or melee attacks). Web is more in need of a nerf imo, not least because most enemies bar lich/rakshasa can't use it, is plays into the player's hand. Sounds okay, but am I the only player who doesn't use healing spells in BG2? (Except maybe an occasional heal at high levels) I don't run out of healing potions - neither in SCS or vanilla - and my cleric's are usually otherwise busy in combat. I just wait for the rings of regen (or whatever) to heal up between battles. I was going to change goodberries though, the spell would only make a single use "handful" but it heals 1hp/round for 1 round/level, this would increase to 3hp/2 rounds at level 9 and 2hp/round at 17, rather than having to prompt your character's to eat them individually. This would penalize rogue classes quite a bit, I guess damage spells should use a different saving throw to mind affecting stuff - maybe the latter could use save vs wands (as some things like mind blast are already supposed to). Haha, this one would really screw up my playing style. Two rounds sounds too short though, maybe five. I had in mind to make it useable by anyone (non-evil) but only grant MR and dispel on hit for paladins - triggering with every swing, but dispel checked against wielder's level. I don't like this idea, I could go into detail why.