Angel

I'm not against adding a little spice to BG1, heck that's what my item pack is for after all, and why I added a few new items to NTotSC to begin with. But as you said in moderation, and further play-testing from my side has raised some concerns about a few of my own additions. I fully get handing out a few power items near the end of the game, but with SoD and EET in the playing field, the Sarevok battle is no longer truly the end of the game anymore. I am currently considering a few options for the robe, like that Rock Robe I mentioned earlier. Here's to hoping I don't create yet another problem. Unbalancing a game is surprisingly easy to do.

Yeah, I am inclined to bring this one to BG2 as part of my item pack instead. Single mage only is a big restriction, but still this is a very good item. Originally there was an even better one there, Namji's robe, which gave an even better AC and regeneration, and had less restrictions. ^^ Anyway, browsing my copy of Encyclopedia Magica for inspiration, I find an item called the "Rock Robe". No AC bonus, but it gives immunity to petrification and casts Stone Skin (well, actually Statue, but that is not in BG) and Stone to Flesh once a day. Not too powerful, but it could be fairly useful for BG1/SoD.

AC 4, strength 18/99, constitution +2. And yes, single-mage only. Mm, maybe it's not as bad as I thought. The Robe of the Archmagi is arguably better despite its worse AC. Maybe it can stay.

That's more the terrain of Unfinished Business, but well, I maintain that one too. ^^ Bala's Axe is restored by UB (it's in the Planar Sphere, I remember because I had to add code to not duplicate it on BGEE), would have to check for the others. There are more of then, like "The Practical Defense" plate mail +3, Kiel's Buckler and "The World's Edge" two-handed sword +3. In many cases, these are already equaled or superseded by other items, for example the Doom Plate +3 found in Spellhold has exactly the same stats as The Practical Defense (I like the latter for its cooler look though), and Lilarcor is much better (and funnier) than The World's Edge. In other cases, other mods already restore them and we could end up with duplicates. I know there are at least two mods that restore Kiel's Buckler (Rogue Rebalancing is one of them), and I am pretty sure I saw The Practical Defense in a mod once too. As for Durlag's Goblet, I suppose it would be fair to at least import it into Chateau Irenicus if not all charges had been used in BG1/SoD, but it being a unique artifact I'm a little wary about placing it fresh somewhere.

I hear you and agree (that was actually my philosophy behind "The Final Strike", the war hammer +3 from my Item Pack), but now that SoD exists items from the BG1 portion should IMHO not overshadow the stuff found there. I plan to revise exactly three items, these are Ghotal's full plate (which I have the biggest issue with), Tytus's umber hulk plate (not too big an issue actually, just redundant) and as mentioned above Ogi-Luc's Great Robe (which I like actually and might move to my own item pack for use in BG2). Note that I myself added all three of these to the current version, so the issue is of my own making. ^^

These are the ideas I send to Jastey and am currently working on: - Reduce the number of enchanted plate mails the mod gives out. Currently this mod hands out three enchanted plates and one enchanted full plate. I learned from two thorough plays that giving out too much enchanted plate makes the party practically invulnerable to all but a handful of enemies in BG1/SoD. Especially enchanted full plate with that massive bonus to slashing and piercing is problematic. I will replace some of the plate with enchanted scale/splint which is underrepresented in BG1 (only normal and +1 versions exist in an unmodded game, and the latter are quite rare), and will make sure nothing is stronger than "The Practical Defense" from Durlag's Tower. (Most will probably be weaker but have extra abilities to compensate.) - Take another look at Ogi-Luc's Great Robe. Much as I like this item, it is more powerful than anything found in SoD and thus a bit unbalancing. I am currently looking for a less powerful but still interesting mage robe to replace it with. - General Ghotal will become a full-fledged ghost of the 3rd or 4th magnitude as described in Van Richten's Guide to Ghosts, with appropriate resistances and a few salient abilities. I'm currently thinking the ability to summon ghostly orc warriors (like those encountered in The Hand in IWD) as backup, and a cold-based attack similar to Cone of Cold (which his goons will be immune to). - Give Haebal a second form of some sort, I am currently thinking ogre mage, to both present an extra challenge and to explain why he uses a scythe as a weapon. - Make the "lesser tanar'ri" in the Fireleaf Forest dungeon actual lesser tanar'ri as suggested earlier, of a level-appropriate type. NTotSC was meant to be played after TotSC, which would normally raises a party to about level 8-10 (the XP cap of TotSC was 161,000, and even with it lifted there is only about 200,000-250,000 xp in the entirety of BG1 + TotSC without extra mods or excessive grinding). Maurezhi, perhaps backed by a nabassu or other lesser tanar'ri seem to be the logical choice. - The reward for the Nim Furlwing encounter is currently the Summon Cow joke item, I'm thinking of replacing it with something less silly. Not that I am against some silly fun now and then (my Spell Pack currently installs a clip from My Little Pony as a hidden extra movie), but I would prefer this to be a mostly serious quest mod. The BG1UB version of this same restored encounter uses a scroll of Animal Summoning, perhaps that would be adequate for this one too. If people really, really wanted to I probably could write something that optionally reverses some of the nerfs, but as I see it now there wouldn't be many people that'd use it.

If you just want to differ between EE and non-EE engines, ENGINE_IS is a better choice. ENGINE_IS "bgee bg2ee" catches BGEE, BG2EE and EET, ENGINE_IS "soa tob" catches BG2, BGT, Tutu and everything else based on the old engine. If you are checking for specific game content, GAME_INCLUDES might be better. GAME_INCLUDES "bg1" catches BG1, Tutu, BGT, BGEE and EET. Note that unlike GAME_IS and ENGINE_IS, GAME_INCLUDES accepts only a single argument. Also, using GAME_INCLUDES "sod" on BG2(EE) produces a (harmless) warning in the current WeiDU version. Wisp confirmed that this is a bug and it will be fixed.

Dude, you have not "shut down" anything at all. You've not even been able to make your point in a consistent manner. All you are doing is painting yourself as an immature crybaby who's upset the modders won't follow your "vision" of this mod (whatever it is), and people are reacting accordingly. You've been nothing but rude and obnoxious from the start, and despite several attempts at civil discussion have not been able to come up with any positive contribution whatsoever, always resorting to whining and throwing petty insults when you are not getting your way. News flash, it's not getting you anywhere. But that's exactly what frustrates you, isn't it? Let's see now, who is ridiculing me? One anonymous troll who has probably not written a single mod in his entire life. If you seriously think that upsets me, when I have already gotten the praise from many people here, several of whom are well-known and respected modders themselves, then you have indeed chosen your nickname well because you sure are full of yourself. Now excuse me, I've got some actual contributions to make to the community.

Indeed, my item pack and spell pack contain a number of things that were suggested to me by other people. Not to mention a very nice new animation that someone went through the trouble creating specifically for a spell I wanted to implement. And I have gotten several useful suggestions for my encounters mod too. Even bringing up a bit of lore can be interesting, like someone pointing me to the canonical existence of a ghost dragon in the Candlekeep catacombs. Now I am not rushing off to program a super-hard ghost dragon encounter, but it being there in some way might be something I will explore. Not everything has to be a super-hard encounter to be memorable, for example the dopplegangers in Candlekeep are fairly easy but I like them for the way they mess with the protagonist's (and by extension the player's) head. Who can you trust anymore after something like that? I'm always imagining my PC to feel a thorough understanding for what Durlag must have gone through after having this experience themselves.

You are getting the same responses because you are going off on the same tangent each and every time. "You are violating the spirit/history of the mod yada-yada..." You were heard the first time, you know. Don't like the replies you are getting? Stop bringing the same subject up. Don't like the changes that are made? Go ahead and show that you can do better, and let the players be the judge. And nah, not holding my breath for that to happen. I tried to explain what I did and why I did it, and your none too subtle reaction was to call me an "inexperienced buffoon", when I had done exactly nothing to you. And judging by Arthas' and subtledocter's reactions to you, this is far from the first time you did something like that. You say you don't mind changes being made, yet you moan and whine at every single one of them, or even at suggested ones that have yet to be implemented, let alone seen in action. All the while without offering any input on what a "good" change would be, in your opinion, other than this vagueness about this "spirit of the mod" that is highly subjective. Have you even played the mod at all in its current state? Bottom line is I don't need your approval for anything, period. If you think you can do better, put up or shut up. Until then, I'm done with you.

Follow your own advice please, and try to understand what a total jerk you have been to anyone who presents an opinion differing from your own. Now, I thank you for at least making your last few posts in a civil manner. As Jastey and others have already told you several times, we heard you the first time, you don't have to keep repeating yourself. And you definitely don't have to insult anyone who presents a differing opinion, or merely tries to explain why they did what they did. You're not paying us, we don't owe you anything at all. You don't get to make demands of us. You are free to make whatever suggestions you want as long as you can do so in a civil tone, and don't throw around petty insults if we do not agree on it and don't hop to implementing your vision of the mod immediately.

But don't you know, when a mod fight is too difficult for you, donating a considerable amount of your personal time to write an actually balanced encounter, test it, publish it on GitHub and then somehow mind-controlling the maintainer into accepting your changes is so much easier than just control-Y-ing or story-moding past it, or not playing with the broken mod in the first place... Ah, the rewards of modding, all that time and effort just to be on the receiving end of the ire of someone who doesn't agree with the choices you had to make... Anyone who'd take a cursory look at my Encounters & Quests mod would know better than to think I'm in some sort of secret plot to dumb down all the mods. ^^

I'm open to any civil discussion about the subject. Like Jastey, I do not claim to be the best person for the job. But she sought someone who could edit items and creatures to help her, and I answered. If someone feels they can do a better job than me, they are welcome to show their work anytime. And it's true that I am not a very hardcore player (even though I did finish Ascension once and SCS is a staple in my mods), if anyone can reasonably convince me that I have made some enemies too "soft" I'd be happy to give it another look. Of course "reasonable convince" does require being able to make your point without swear words or insulting the other person's abilities or opinions. For now, what I plan to do is 1) revise the items, maybe add or replace some, and 2) go over the enemies I nerfed (which can easily be counted on one hand by the way, it's not like I turned the whole mod upside down) and see if I may have overdone it a bit. @subtledoctor, your point about the lesser tanar'ri is a good one, I will go through my source material and try to come up with something appropriate there if I can.

Yeah, the item nerfing was my contribution as well (originally, the mod gave you enough ankheg plate to equip half your party with), and I still fear it may be a little too much here and there. Specifically, I'm concerned about the unique plate I made for Gothal, and some of the loot from the new Firewine dungeon (which I like conceptually, though). If Jastey will allow me, I'd gladly go over them another time, and maybe create something truly unique instead of cheap Icewind Dale knockoffs. I do so enjoy designing new items. ^^ Yeah, clearly the author never intended for his mod to run on BGT/Tutu/EE, so maybe I should also revert all the item edits I did to actually make the items work properly on the newer engines. ^^ I figured that, but thanks for confirming.

It's merely warning you that the item currently being patched was not changed in any way. Which is to be expected with a regexp edit because the majority of items will probably not grant immunity to sppr105. Just add "silent = 1" to INT_VAR to suppress the warning. (It's there to tell you that you may have an ineffective patch.)

FYI, I did exactly that. That what GitHub is actually designed for, you know. Then I offered my changes back to Jastey explaining exactly what they did, and they thought them good enough to be included. Again, this is what GitHub was designed for. And I am done arguing with you, as it is quite obvious that you have no contribution to make and nothing positive will come of it. Wallow in your "Wah-wah-wah, you changed it, now it sucks!" if you must, see if I care.

SCS and many other mods have already proven it's quite possible to make challenging and memorable encounters without giving enemies insane stats or absurd immunities. Nowadays this is (correctly) seen as cheap, bad design. And FYI, I *was* around in those days, and I also remember several people protesting against such insanity. Okay, 1) this version of NTotSC is designed to be playable *without* DSotSC, and 2) there is literally no use for level 40 rules when all of BG1 + TotSC barely contains enough XP to get you level 9, maybe 10 for some classes. And I know, I have played through old BG1 + TotSC many times since its release in 1998. There is literally nothing stopping you from playing with intentionally broken mods if that's what you want to do. NTotSC is on github, what's stopping you from forking it and making your own "correct" version if you think this one is so bad? Just don't assume that your way of playing is the one true way. And no, neither do I. As I pointed out before, that's what difficulty settings are for.

Just adding my $0.02 as one who suggested (and personally made) some of the nerfs. First of all, if you're not the original author, please consider carefully about what you promote as "the author's intent". That is merely your interpretation/opinion, and nothing more than that. Also, let's try to be civil about this, yes? Secondly, why would a broken dialog be a valid bug, but a broken encounter not? Some of the things I encountered were monsters with stats completely beyond what would be valid under even the most liberal interpretation of 2e rules. Was that monster with more than ten times the HP even maximized rolls would give it the author's intent, or merely a typo of an extra zero? The fighter/mage with only druid spells memorized, but not scripted to use either wizard or druid spells, intentional or just a poorly edited creature file? The completely ordinary human fighter who could literally not miss a single attack due to a thac0 far beyond his level (and I do mean *far* beyond, what he had would make some ToB enemies green with envy), intentional or an oversight? Your opinion is as valid as my own. Please know that I did not suggest/do these nerfs lightly. But when I was testing and noting down these, I was playing a party that was already overleveled by BG1 standards and well beyond the XP cap of both TotSC and SoD, and they were still nearly impossible. Intentional, or just poorly thought out? As Jastey already pointed out, mod standards have changed over the years, and some old mods like this one just are completely broken in more than one way. Without the original author available, it's not always so clear what their intent was, and sometimes choices have to be made. And yes, I fully agree there can be such a thing as too much nerfing, but there can also very well be too little. Personally I think Jastey's way of keeping most of the original difficulty on insane, but toning things down at lower levels is perfectly reasonable. That's what those difficulty levels are for after all, so that everyone can play the game at a level they feel comfortable at.

Internally, ioun stones (which is what the spider egg becomes) are implemented as helmets, and the old engine was hard-coded to block critical hits on creatures wearing any kind of helmet, even an ioun stone. A "toggle" bit to turn critical hit protection off for helmets (and on for other items) was implemented by the ToBEx hack, and this same fix also made it into the EE engine. So yes, in EE ioun stones will not provide critical hit protection, including the core ones. As for what it should be, well, critical hit protection from helmets is non-canon to begin with but it makes sense to me. After all, critical hits involve getting a lucky blow on an especially vulnerable area of the body and the head is an obvious one. Think of head shots in first person shooters, for instance. Anything that is not covering the head should not provide critical hit protection IMHO. The ioun stones from my item pack will also not protect you from critical hits in EE or BG2/BGT with ToBEx (and without ToBEx, my mods will not function properly).

Well, hopefully it will lead to better code and a more stable and compatible mod! But most is behind the scenes, I haven't planned any major changes in content. Although that doesn't mean I won't make any. ^^

Alright, that is indeed a little typo. I'll correct it in the next release. I need to revise the documentation sometime anyway. And thank you for the compliment, it's nice to see that my work is being appreciated. There are only two spells that I completely made up myself, Ramazith's Slime Summons and Major Globe of Invulnerability. Everything else is either from other games (PST and Neverwinter Nights) or from official source material.

Oh my, that looks nice! I'll have to fiddle a bit to fit it in, but that shouldn't be any trouble. Thank you so much!

Scintillating Sphere is basically an electrical version of Fireball, used in the Halruua region of the Forgotten Realms (The Shining South). This is the description from the Wizard's Compendium: "This spell caused a grape-sized sphere to appear near the caster. The sphere then travels in a straight line at high speed to a location in the sight of the caster. Upon reaching this location, the sphere pulses outwards twice and then disappears." The picture on the same page shows someone getting blasted by multiple arcs of lightning.

Lots of better versions of Magic Missile, improving on the part of MM that was already its most OP aspect (lots and lots of projectiles) I'm considering dropping the Lesser/Greater Missile Storm, I have trouble getting them right anyway. They are from Neverwinter Nights, by the way. Improved Magic Missile being identical up to 9th level seems weird, a 3rd-level spell being exactly the same as a 1st-level spell for all of BG1? Maybe just have it make ~3 more missiles at the same level, or something. (So 6 vs. 3 at 5th level, and 8 vs. 5 at 9th level.) This one is actual P&P Forgotten Realms material. That really is how it works. The Wizard's Compendium even states this fact. And you can't get it in BG1, it's a rare spell and is only available in a few somewhat hidden places, the first being late in Siege of Dragonspear when your wizard is likely 10th or 11th. Otiluke's Acid Cloud seems superior to Cloudkill, at a lower level The cloud is much smaller. But yeah, not happy with this one. I'd trade it for Scintillating Sphere if I knew how to make a projectile for that one. Spell Matrix seems identical to Minor Spell Sequencer, doing the same thing but better, at the same level? Spell Matrix is 5th level, Minor Sequencer is 4th. And yes, this one is also P&P. Ironically in P&P all sequencer spells are unique to The Symbul, they should not be as wide spread as BG2 makes them. Anyway, I just thought it nicely filled the gap, all spell levels from 4th to 9th have one sequencer/contingency spell except 5th. ^^ The damage for Ball Lightning seems kind of high - 4d12 at 5th level, 8d12 at 10th level, 12d12 at 15th level, when Lightning Bolt does 5d6/10d6/10d6. At 20th level this 3rd-level spell can do over 200 electrical damage, which could be a fair amount stronger than 8th-level Deathbolt. Mm, fair point, although there is a drawback the description doesn't mention, the balls are very slow. Also, they hit only one target each while Lightning Bolt can hit many in one discharge, especially if it rebounds. Oh, and the theoretical maximum is "only" 192 (16x12), not over 200. ^^ Still I should perhaps tone it down a notch. Maybe have the versions with more balls do less damage per ball? That would be on par with the source material... Deathbolt seems just like Finger of Death, but it is a necromancy spell that does electrical damage, for what reason I don't know except that metagaming, I suppose few enemies are resistant to that damage type? This one is straight from PST down to the projectile and all. And they in turn got it straight from P&P, it is an existing spell in the Forgotten Realms (from the Shining South). To be honest, my main reason for including it is sheer coolness factor, I'm well aware of how similar to Finger of Death it is. It does deal more damage though. ^^ Faerie Sword is cool, but actually seems kind of better than Black Blade of Destruction which is 9th-level magic I haven't done much testing with this one yet, so I am not too certain of how good or bad it really is. Anyway, this is a P&P spell, it's elven high magic from Elves of Evermeet. Maybe I should give it to our favorite fallen high mage. ^^ In general though I like the spells - aside from the... focus... on magic missiles, they seem pretty cool. I like that you added Evard's Black Tentacles, it seems like a classic spell to me (was it in the PHB?) and is a nice wizard's answer to priests' Spike Growth and Spike Stones. Yes, Black Tentacles was a PHB spell even in 2nd edition (maybe even in 1st?). The enemies should just be glad I didn't make it Vaarsuvius' Spiked Tentacles of Forced Intrusion.

Indeed I have, but I haven't gotten around to testing it yet. In short, there will be 40 zombies, and they are all juju-zombies with 8 HD (immune to normal weapons, half damage from most spells). They should be roughly as tough as ankhegs. I'm still pondering on some sort of follow-up encounter that goes into where the zombies came from.