polytope

3 hours ago, auc42x said:

I can add one more detail, in case it is of interest.  I originally encountered the bug on the rest that triggers the "Life... is Strength" Irenicus dream.  The crash happened after the dream finished, after the "Loading Area" screen came up, and directly before the resting movie played.  I could then generate the crash on non-dream rests as well; it always happens before the movie plays (but, if a dream is triggered, after the dream completes and after it loads the original resting area).

Aha, I've been able to reproduce this, it looks to me like the problem is resting when a party member is injured and you have the bugged spells memorized. This triggers the "healing spells cast on rest" routine, this is why dismissing Keldorn, even though he's no spellcaster worked... he was probably lightly injured. Apparently the game parses through all your memorized spells if a PC is injured before resting, and found an opcode it choked and CTDed on.

Still no explanation as to why the bug triggers on resting rather than use of spells. I'd guess some party AI script is trying to cast the bugged spells out of combat, but none in that list seem obvious candidates as long duration prebuffs.

1 hour ago, CamDawg said:

A few other notes: ghast1 is used by the ghasts from Monster Summoning IV; cdiwdtr1 is used by the troll summons in Shades. These, and everything else flagged in argent's list, is also fixed in IWDification.

Actually it turns out this not a problem with the IWD spells packaged in SCS. MSIV calls a yuan-ti rather than a ghast from MSUMM04.2da, whereas the trolls from Shades don't have the peculiar pseudo-immortality of other trolls (in its various implementations).

Which is why I thought it was interesting, the spells enemy casters will use against you don't have these opcode bugs, the player should only see it if they're trying to cast the unused spells (although summoned orcs had a misassigned animation in SCS).

I didn't think it was a coincidence, those spells are obviously not very good, like "what if someone attacks me with a Flameblade tomorrow, I better memorize Cloudburst". Storm Shell at level 3 is hardly an improvement over Resist Fire/Cold at level 2, even though it grants electricity resistance, if you need electricity resistance use the 4th level Protection from Lightning for complete immunity and a duration of 5 rounds/level rather than a flat 1 turn. Mold Touch does a lot of damage at least (although less on average than the description says) but you end up needing to save yourself because of the way it chains, and it's still a touch range, slow casting deal, the damage over time aspect would seem to make it good for disrupting casters in the manner of Melf's Acid Arrow if it weren't for that.

10 hours ago, argent77 said:

As of Near Infinity v2.4-20230729 you can check the game for invalid effect opcodes. This is the result after installing SCS IWD spell components on oBG2:

(cdid325.spl, CDIWDTR1.SPL, SPPR327.SPL, SPPR328.SPL)

cdid325.spl is the subspell payload of SPPR326.spl - Cloudburst.

CDIWDTR1.spl doesn't seem to be attached to any troll on SCS installs, including those produced by the new monster summoning spells, this may be because I installed my own old modification of trolls over SCS (deprecated, don't install it on EE), but I doubt it, others would have noticed if trolls weren't working.

Interestingly, no druid encountered in my game has Cloudburst, Mold Touch or Storm Shell memorized as 3rd level picks, and I didn't have a druid in my party for the short time I was playing with IWD spells (and wouldn't have used any of these anyway).

It still doesn't explain why OP sees a crash upon resting, I can even memorize the bugged spells, and start casting them, the CTD does not occur until casting is successfully completed and the game tries to resolve the effects in the feature block of the spell.

Lol, I just tested and Wither indeed crashes the game but only when cast... which neither my party's priest nor any enemy cleric ever did.

As a short range, slow casting 7th level spell, Destruction is strictly better; instant kill on a failed save vs death at -4 or 8d6 immediate damage even if they save; compare to Wither's effect of 18hp damage/round (36 if hasted) on a failed save vs death at -4 for 1 round/2 levels, no effect on a successful save.

Quote

For example, I first encountered the crash when I had a party of CHARNAME, Yoshimo, Aerie, and Keldorn.  I can prevent the crash by:

• Removing Keldorn from the party, but keeping all others.
• Removing Aerie from the party, but keeping all others.
• De-selecting all L4 priest spells that Aerie is set to memorize that night, but keeping all characters in the party.
• And various other perturbations.

On the other hand, I can create a crash by going back to previous saves and adding various other spellcasters (priest or mage) to the party and resting, with or without Yoshimo/Keldorn/Aerie.

I'm surprised at your report that just recruiting NPCs who could cast these spells and resting with them in the party triggers the crash which definitely wasn't my experience. Perhaps Bubb or Kjeron could offer a better explanation.

3 hours ago, auc42x said:

Briefly, I found four spells that use opcode 61, which is only valid in BGEE.  In that game, it is "Creature RGB color fade" (https://gibberlings3.github.io/iesdp/opcodes/bgee.htm#op61), whereas in original BG2, it is a crash (https://gibberlings3.github.io/iesdp/opcodes/bg2tob.htm#op61).  The four spells with that opcode are from the IWD set added by this mod, specifically: GHAST1.spl, SPPR426.SPL (Cause Serious Wounds), SPPR524.SPL (Cause Critical Wounds), and SPPR740.SPL (Wither).

I tried installing IWD spells on oBG2, but don't play with it now, after discovering... balance issues with Divine Protection and Entropy Shield which some other players have also commented on.

I still have that install though, and on closer examination no enemy priest appears to have Wither or Cause Serious Wounds memorized, which is probably why I never saw a CTD.

GHAST1.spl is anomalous, it isn't actually triggered by ghasts... or anything else I could find.

Edit: @CamDawg does the current stand-alone IWDification have this issue on classic games?

1 hour ago, guyudennis said:

This also means for the majority of BG1 portion, players don't see much difference (apart from saving throws) between the specialist mages, unless he/she also install the specialist tweaks component. Don't know if you want to mention that in the description of this component.

Yes, I suggested it only as a partial solution as there should be other distinctions between kits.

In any case, even though specialist wizards may now seem to lack a disadvantage compared to the parent mage class bear in mind that:

1. So it was/is with cleric kits.
2. It's fine for kits to exceed the power of the base class because kit benefits are the reward for progressing as single classed, rather than a dual or multi class with all its emergent perks and powerful synchronizations.
3. Single class mages below 7th level are weak.

On that last point, compare a mage (not specialist) with 40,000 xp to a f/m multi or even a bard of the same experience.

• 6th level mage: Spell slots; 4 first level 2 second level, 2 third level, HD 6d4 (+12 max from con), THAC0 19
• 5th/5th level fighter/mage: Spell slots; 4 first level, 2 second level, 1 third level, HD (5d4)/2+(5d10)/2 (+20 max from con), THAC0 16
• 7th level bard: Spell slots; 3 first level, 2 second level, 1 third level, HD 7d6 (+14 max from con), THAC0 17

Then we get into the better armament of the F/M and even the bard, probable weapon specialization and not unlikely exceptional strength for the F/M etc.

At 6th level the mage can't even cast Stoneskin, can be one-shotted by a backstabbing thief (very relevant with SCS), a skeleton with a heavy crossbow can crit you for 20ish damage... and all the single class mage NPCs you can recruit in BG1 are specialists.

58 minutes ago, grodrigues said:

1. Allow specialists to cast spells from the opposition school of up to 3rd level. In this context, this means allowing Conjurers to cast Detect Invis.

2. Allow spell protections to pierce invis. In EE this can be done by setting the can target invis flag; on old BG2?

3. Rework non-detection to be more like the old Spell Immunity: Divination instead of what it is now (anti-invis buster). This gives Conjurers Glitterdust.

My gut feeling is that 1. and 2. are not good solutions and 3. is the best option.

Targeting improved invisible actors is possible on oBG2 with ToBEx, but I honestly preferred spell protection removal simply having a fast projectile and AoE, it made no sense to me that some single target spells would just disregard the visibility requirement out of convenience.

Glitterdust has the problem of its power level of 2, useless against any mage running a (Minor) Globe of Invulnerability unless you can strip him with the (by default) single target antimagic in the first place (i.e. requiring that he's not under the effects of Improved Invisibility and/or you're not a Conjurer) also useless against rakshasa and liches.

If anything Non Detection probably should be defeated by Glitterdust, a physical means of revealing unseen creatures, but should also protect even against a thief's detect illusion skill. Unfortunately, this is difficult to code, not least because anything protecting from a thief's detect illusion skill needs to be done with opcode #101 vs various effects unless someone has softcoded it. Any #101 protection versus opcode #220 (spell school removal) is also incompatible with my mod revising Dispel Magic.

The changes to specialists would be (part of) my own solution and need not be packaged Spell Revisions.

2 hours ago, Graion Dilach said:

The main issue IMO is that prior to ToBExAl, dynamic creature animation slot allocation was an EE-only feature and no currently released mod has an example to do that on top of ToBExAl atm.

I'm sure all classic players would appreciate that, but I'm unfamiliar with the process.

Speaking of dragons, Conster really should have Protection from Fire in his prep list, in case he's fought alongside Firkraag (depending on the dialogue).

I think it wouldn't be too much to give him wing buffet immunity either, obviously the dragon will try to avoid slapping the mage who's helping him.

No offense, but it would improve things for English speaking audiences if you had a native English speaker edit the .tras. I could do so, if you want, since a lot of work obviously went into this mod already.

14 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Does SR actually break anything here? Don’t Conjurers work similarly in the unmodded game?

Yes, but Conjurers will practically never encounter a similar problem without mods, given how illusion-stripping-divinations worked in vanilla; for that to happen the Conjurer would need to be the only spellcaster in the party, with no thief or even somebody who could use the Dragonslayer sword with its Detect Invisibility special.

It wouldn't be a problem for a solo Conjurer either, because he or she will level up fast enough that Remove/Dispel Magic becomes a reliable way to strip Improved Invisibility, and with SCS depending on the version spell protection removals (to strip SI:Abjuration) either bypass invisibility or have an AoE. Of course the higher level conjurer probably mainly wants to strip weapon protections rather than illusions from a mage who's then open to practically instant death from Energy Blades or summons (the one niche where your mage will make use of Energy Blades is when solo and dueling other mages, as a long duration reusable attack that gets around the 1 spell per round limit and prevents recovery).

14 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

This is an excellent idea, and would fit very nicely with my alternative opposition school options in Tome & Blood. 

But for SR on its own, we should remember that we are still running through betas/release candidates for v4. My recommendation for the full v4 release is 1) allow spell attacks to bypass invisibility the way SCS does, and/or 2) rework Nondetection to be defeated by Glitterdust and maybe even fully change it to a proper “Pro Divination” in both description and effect.

I’ll tag @grodrigues and @Bartimaeus in case the brain trust wants to actually move forward with these options 

Thanks, I had the idea to publish these along with some other low key modifications of vanilla classes and kits but my mods don't have the same audience reach as new versions of the better established ones.

Good to know about the boar, but it's still not a unique creature statwise and tactically, more of a cosmetic reskin. Not something DavidW generally added to SCS.

Some years ago players were requesting one of the two black dragons outside Abazigal's lair be replaced with a white, for variety and as a sensible place to actually find that white dragon scales component. Iirc he objected that it would need a unique animation (I would have used the existing aqua dragon, lightened a bit).

I figured it might actually be a forgotten project from the earliest days of BG2 modding.

The translations suggest the writer wasn't quite proficient in English and attempted to do so before better translation software like Yandex and the post 2016 Google translate (for European languages anyway) were available.

If anyone remembers Google translate ~2008-2010 it was a running joke to see how badly it would render translations.

It certainly is huge even for a quest mod, 289 new areas!

What prefix are they using? I'd guess PF but many of the files don't seem to be appended so. Hmm, looking at those files:
 

Quote

 

The Giant's Club

This is a quite deadly weapon, which is adored by both the giants themselves and their numerous "kin". Due to the giants are not the most skilled craftsmen, they are not concerned about the quality of weapons manufacturing. They simply break off a piece of a massive branch, or even a tree trunk, and hammer sharp stones, spikes or fragments of blades into the pommel. Such a simplified approach does not affect the effectiveness of weapons in any way.

STATISTICS:

20% chance to stun the target for 11 seconds on hit
5% chance to kill a target with a single hit
10% chance to deal 1d6 points of additional crushing damage

THACO: +3 bonus
Damage: 1d6 +3
Damage type: crushing
Weight: 8
Speed Factor: 5
Proficiency type: Club
Type: 1-handed
Requires: Strength 7

Not usable by:
  Mage
  Monk

 

Well, a mundane morningstar is weight 12, requires 11 strength, a regular mace weight 10, requires 10 strength, a typical flail weight 15, requires 13 strength, a non magic war hammer weight 6, requires 9 strength.

A club for giants has a lower strength requirement than all basic blunt weapons except the plain club. I'd think it should require 20 strength (so that no starting PC can use it unaided by magic) and weigh a lot more, somewhere between 8 and 27 times normal.

Then again, this weapons abilities aren't really giant related either, for instance the base damage is same as an average club, and the 10% chance of extra 1d6 damage is kind of trivial besides the 20% chance to stun, 5% chance to kill outright.

It'd take me a long time to look through the mod and its content... is it ready to play in the current version?

18 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Also I’m still not sure why Conjurers need “fixing” in this regard but Transmuters don’t.

It's fine to leave an already broken/underpowered kit alone under the view that it's a job for another day, but not okay to break kits that were working well previously. Just like it wouldn't be good to weaken the other 2 ranger and druid kits to the level of the vanilla Beastmaster or Shapeshifter.

Honestly the best solution in my view for specialists and critically important spells would be to allow spells of the opposition school up to 3rd level, similar to how 2e handled "minor access" to priest spheres.

Thus:

• A Conjurer could cast Detect Invisibility (True Strike also, for SR games)
• A Transmuter could cast Remove Magic & Spell Thrust
• An Abjurer could cast Vocalize , Haste & Slow
• An Enchanter could cast Magic Missile & Web
• A Necromancer could cast Blur, Invisibility & Mirror Image (Reflected Image also, with SR), if that seems too strong remember they'll never get Improved Invisibility, Mass Invisibility or Project Image.

19 hours ago, Chitown Willie said:

I would love to see a rework of it more in line with the Monster Manual:

"...Further, there is a 65% chance there will be guard animals: (70%) 2-5 wild boars (AC 7; HD 3+3;
damage 3d4 gore) or (30%) 1-4 giant weasels (AC 6; HD 3+3; damage 2d6 bite and blood drain). There
may be one or more shamans."

Who'll provide the new animations for boars, giant weasels etc? Boars are boring anyway, at least the giant weasel has a unique ability, whereas a boar has such similar AC, hp and attack and damage values to a worg that I don't think anyone will support new animations for a functionally indistinguishable creature.

ETA: Worgs have a bite for 2d4, but the ones in game have a damage bonus from strength. Boars also have the "last stand" ability to fight for 2-5 rounds if between 0 and -6 hp, then again bears were supposed to get this as well, but didn't.

10 hours ago, boof said:

So you think installing the kobold component first, then running scs again and installing the rest would fix him? Not that I'm going to bother, just curious. That particular kobold is strong enough as it is, though the whole cast one spell then run around trying to melee does annoy me a bit.

I believe so, this was a problem in earlier versions with Revanek in the TR encounter, also with one of the caster statues on the first floor of WK.

Maybe it still is a problem, I'd need to reinstall everything freshly to check, because I've already edited some of the setup tp2/tpas on my local version and can't remember if I changed those guys for this campaign (don't do this unless you're sure you can fix problems that arise).

4 hours ago, dunehunter said:

I’m not familiar with 2e rules, so does an oversized weapon will have more dice or bigger dice size? Like 2d4 -> 2d5. I mention this because some greatsword has 1d12 instead of 1d10 in game.

That's actually, by the book, what you were supposed to get for weapon grandmastery, rather than the (in game) +2 damage bonus relative to mastery. It was obviously felt easier to code in a flat damage bonus than fiddle with damage die ranges on a case per case basis (possible with the EE engine though).

Since there is no d5, the bastard sword would be a 2d6 in that scenario.

The base IWDification which adds new spells to BG2 also updates default mage scripts (like MAGE5.bcs) to randomly substitute them on the fly, as in your example:

IF
    See(NearestEnemyOf(Myself))
    HaveSpell(WIZARD_LIGHTNING_BOLT)  // SPWI308.SPL (Lightning Bolt)
THEN
    RESPONSE #100
        RemoveSpell(WIZARD_LIGHTNING_BOLT)  // SPWI308.SPL (Lightning Bolt)
        SpellNoDec(NearestEnemyOf(Myself),WIZARD_ICELANCE)  // SPWI323.SPL (Icelance)
    RESPONSE #100
        Spell(NearestEnemyOf(Myself),WIZARD_LIGHTNING_BOLT)  // SPWI308.SPL (Lightning Bolt)
END 

There are several other subs of spells at any given level like Emotion: Fear for Confusion, Lance of Disruption for Flame Arrow.

The mystery is why the kobold is using a vanilla game script rather than an SCS mage script, probably something to do with the install order (the kobold mage with his mage script should have been added to the game before the overarching replacement of original AI caster scripts).

7 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Given that Conjurers are the most powerful specialist, I’m not totally sure this needs a fix. I mean other specialists lose out on key spells.

Debatable, for instance SR improves Colour Spray and Grease (which is also bugged in current fixpack/EE anyway) to the extent that an Invoker missing Sleep at low levels doesn't seem quite so constrained.

The vanilla Transmuter was considered one of the worst mage kits because of their lack of anti-magic ability (tied with Abjurer, no Stoneskin is disastrous if solo, no (Improved)Haste is terrible with a party, no Time Stop is bad either way), Conjurers now share that problem against improved AI (Nondetection + Improved Invisibility).

7 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

IR potions of Sight fix this. Demi probably designed it on the assumption that SR and IR would be paired.

Are potion stores revised too? Because in BG2 it's a pretty rare random drop and only 20-something such potions are available prior to the underdark, being even rarer late game.

If we really wanted to nitpick, it should read "magic resistance is not effective against this spell".

In the way that a picket fence is not effective at keeping wasps out of your yard. Shouting at the wasps would not be effective either, but you could also say that the wasps were unaffected by your shouts, or that you shouted to no effect, whereas it would be strange to say that about the passive fence.

It's vague how magic resistance works, and the degree to which it's a wilful warding rather than a quality as of a substance, even between individual creatures this could vary.

8 hours ago, jmerry said:

So ... yeah, if Edwin's your only mage, you can't spell-break an enemy with improved invisibility. A priest such as Viconia can use True Seeing and target them with spells, but they don't have stuff like Breach and Secret Word in their spell list.

A balance problem indeed, not only Edwin but any PC conjurer is distinctly disadvantaged and it isn't obvious in the readme that you'll need a second arcane caster for functional antimagic.

Does the Book of Infinite Spells still grant True Sight with SR? You'd have to be lucky to get that option though, and make it past a lot of high level mages in the first place...

On 7/23/2023 at 8:28 PM, dunehunter said:

A bug I find out when killing the Improved Kangaxx, when I leave the floor, the Kangaxx chase out and is in same spot as my main character so my main is stuck with kangaxx, back to the tomb and kangaxx is again get stuck with my main.

Overlapping creatures trapping you (by teleport/transformation effects or even between-area chases) is a known vanilla bug in BG2. That said it seems to happen more frequently on EE, on the original engine I only ever saw it with creatures that have very large selection circles, like dragons, or in weird cases where a creature was given a specific command like EscapeAreaMove() where the indicated [x,y] coordinates were already filled by another actor.

On 7/23/2023 at 8:28 PM, dunehunter said:

Also Kangaxx is no longer using Imprisonment anymore, is this intended?

Known issue in the past couple of versions of SCS, several posters have offered fixes.

My own mod of demilich AI (in my signature) can be installed safely after SCS, as an alternative to changing your install order and possibly breaking your game, but I've no idea if it's compatible with whichever mod adds a new helmet to him (never heard of that one before).

Iirc scripts with a large number of OR() conditions run much more slowly.

Perhaps it would be preferable to add to the area scripts of the guarded compound AR0907.BCS and the second level of spellhold AR1514.BCS a single check to see if the party has either the original (not upgraded ofc) Celestial Fury or Malakar respectively in their inventory in order to set the variable that later spawns Kuro.

Although some mods notably Wisp's item randomizer might move or randomize the location of these swords, so the check might need to be in the always running background script anyway, memory issues aside (and there's no check if you still have them when you later meet him).

It could also be reduced to at least a 9 condition OR() by use of PartyHasItem() rather than individual player equipage checks.

1 hour ago, Endarire said:

I want to like this mod; however, how this mod handles disease made it unwise to use for a serious long-term game because of the chance of spreading it to NPCs and harming or killing them incidentally.  With this mod, corpses seemed to rot at record fast speed.  If we could somehow disable the disease component, I suspect more people would enjoy this mod.

SPPR317 Cure Disease appears to be patched to remove the new diseases added by Animate Dead Now (but unless I missed something in the tp2, the Elixir of Health and Staff of Curing were not). Also, Temnix said that NPCs would react badly to groups of undead marching into their city, as you'd expect, so it's intentionally inconvenient. And he hasn't posted here for a long time, indicating he didn't want to either, so I wouldn't expect a fix by bumping this thread.

He did update this mod in 2023 though.

I do like the detail that skeletons summoned by the "Skeletal Scion" spell are from Hades, so no "blood war" issues.