Great. I hope he does.
Hm forgot how it looks. Anyway i have faith in you you'l find something good.
Sounds ok to me.
As i see it, the difference between Fireball and Sunfire is in the fact that sunfire ignores mr. Ignoring mr isn't that great at the level you use this spell since groups of monsters (at this lvl) usualy aren't magic resistant and using an AE spell for a single target isn't that productive, especialy when it requires you to stand near the thing you want to blast. When it comes to comparing it to Dragons Breath, it does look like it, but dragons breath is party friendly; you can target with it and it has a much bigger range wich implements a whole different strategy of use (not to mention that by the time you get DB you will be near the end of bg2 if not in tob). So i suggest adding a small knockback effect maybe 10 feet around the caster and removing the ability to ignore mr.
I was thinking something like this :
you cast the spell the spell and it lasts 5-10 rounds :
1st round: the target is afected by slow (regular one) no save ; lasts to the end of the spell duration
2nd round : the target rolls to save vs imp slow at -X (and if succides rolls again the next round and
so on)
4th round the target rolls to save vs petrification (permanent stun) with normal saves or maybe bonuses
How does it differ from desintegrate ? Well desintegrate makes you roll agains high dmg usualy death with a high save penalty wich if you succed pretty avoids the spell. Flesh to Stone would have a higher "failed" efect but a lower succes efect that comes from mulitlple needs to save agains the imp slow ( verry high chance) and a low chance of petrification (permastun). Basicly it would work as a single target imp slow that has a small chance of permanent disable with the cosmetic efect of progresing from slow to imp slow to stun. It can also scale with lvls by incrising duration wich would also incrise the chance of imp slow and petrification occuring. And a stoneskin animation on the target would also be cool
Darn.
If i understand it corectly the the problem of absorbing AE spells lies in the fact that their efects act like multiplications of the same spell (some with no save and others with no efect on save). As i recall the log only states that only one spell was cast, so maybe if you could code the spell to count the number of spells cast and then calculate the amount of spells it can restore. ( and since the log doesnt mention at whom the spells were cast i suggested that the spell "collects magical residues from spellcasting" and restores spells, not the same amoun or level as the ones in the log ofcourse). If that can't be coded then maybe just make it restore x amount of spells per round. As i see it the spell would function as a regular spell deflection with more spell level points + a mages wounderous recall that restores Y amount of spell instantly and X amount of spells the longer it lasts. Y and X can be changed to balance it out. spell points and duration can be as well.
This spell used as a purelly dmg spell is imposible to balance. If you put one save penalty on it it does nothing, if you put another it is overpowered ( kills everything but the things that are imune) so i was thinking not to use it as a dmg spell but rather as a tactical one. In the situations where one powerfull foe has many weaker minions/summons this spell would negatate that advantage (like other lover level spells) and add your own minions (like another lower level spell) in one spell cast. And since summons are much easier to balance than save or else spells this is easily tuned. Basicly like a Dismis+low lvl death spell + high lvl summon.
Didn't know that it sets the THAC0 to 0. Then in balance terms it sound fine. I think it comes down to play stile. Do you like to blast things out of existance or buff your self up and hack them down to bits.