yarpen

Short story - immunity to +X just doesn't work if you can't predict ahead what weapon enchantments you'll be facing the next battle. Which is why I suggest to skip it entirely and make all the 6-9 spells immune to all weapons with target/duration/speed/etc. as variable parameters.

I think scripts rely on the duration of spells.

3-4th level Abjuration spell, something strong against physical fighters would really take Abjurers out of closet as all they lack now is Stoneskin.

What about making Stoneskin Abjuration/Transmutation?

Absolute Immunity should protect you from everything that deals damage. All weapons and all types of damages. It shouldn't protect you from spell effects actually. So - with that in mind, it's main advantages over Time Stop would be

a) Cast Time: 1

b) Duration: 4 rounds (maybe more?)

I think that'd be something I'd call balanced.

With Contingencies becoming Innate abilities I think both Abjurer and Transmuter are slowly getting out of the closet. All that Abjurer lacks is the Stoneskin-good early game spell to deal with pesky fighters trying to get his ass beaten.

To be honest I'd rather rework/remove Stoneskin.

There are too many "Protection from X Weapons" spells. I believe the only spells left should be:

6: Lesser Mantle up to +2

7: Mantle up to +3

8: Greater Mantle up to +4

9: Absolute Immunity any kind of damage

And Dem, try to find some kind of sweet LVL3-4 Abjuration spell that protects them from physical damage.

Basing on it's description:

Chaotic commands renders a creature immune to magical commands. Taunt, forget, suggestion, domination, geas, demand, succor, command, enthrall, quest, exaction, and other spells that place a direct verbal command upon a single individual automatically fail.

In addition, anyone casting one of these spells on a creature protected by chaotic commands must save vs. spell. Failure means that the caster must obey his own magic; the spell's effect has backfired on the caster.

Chaotic Command protects only against compulsive spells. Things which say to you what to do. Command: Die, Hold Person, Charm Person, Dominate. It doesn't protect you from randomization spells like Chaos or Feeblemind.

On the other hand Mind Blank creates shield which makes your thoughts unavailable to anyone - so it grants full protection against mind-affecting spells.

About high-level Divination spell which makes you "prepared for everything" - what about something like: first time when you'll encounter opponent (hostile creature) you get free round of time stop? That makes you really prepared for everything. That'd also justify the fact that SCS mages have their defences up (and even this funny tick when they do so). I'd say level 6 or 7 would be fine for effect like this.

Aren't fireballs dispelling Web and Insects even now in SR3?

Nevertheless that item or creature owes its existence or connection to the current plane to an act of magic, you might say it is tethered or bound by magic. Thus a dismissal spell will banish summons and extra-planar creatures, even though they are "real". So presumably if an insect plague spell hit someone with high magic resistance and they passed their percentage check the insects would simply disappear in little puffs of smoke as the magic guiding and keeping them there is gone (same reason these spells have durations).

Then other summoned creatures should have the same thing. Think about Insect Plague as a creature, not as a spell. Also, summoning act is magical only in the moment of summoning stuff. BAM and there is Flame Arrow. And well, I think that Demi is right about Conjurations bypassing MR.

BUT, because there always has to be but. Are you sure that arrows should be conjurations? If there were a physical arrow which after casting appears in your equipment, no problem. But both spells works as a bolts already targeted on enemy. It looks a bit more Evocation to me.

IR already provides enough ways for Yarpen to buff his solo fighter as if he was a first grade wizard. I'd keep all Stoneskin spell self-only. To compensate for higher slot of druid version, maybe increase the amount of skins.

Also, I don't need those puny spells at my glorious fighter! But well, such a change for druid's Stoneskin would be nice. On the other side, that'd make them better buffers than clerics - so I'm not sure if it's a good change.

In thread you mentioned there was very nice idea of nerfing True Seeing to allow caster to see trough any illusions. Well, now I understand what does that mean. He can target invisible creatures but cannot for example allow his allies to do so. It sounds very good and it will surely make Dispel Illusion (3rd level spell) and Oracle (5th level spell) needed. Also, True Seeing grants immunity to any Illusion spells (Spook etc.), right?

I don't mind it having both 1 casting speed and immunity to divination. If it doesn't allow any offensive move, I see little room for exploiting the spell.

But for sure, Blade Barrier should remove it. But then... damn, Fireshield should too. But that's a bit logical. ;]

(*) David, I don't know if I've already suggested you this, but have you ever thought about making SCS copies of pre-buff spells with no animations? I know it's only a cosmetic tweak but for me it would make the pre-buff option A LOT better. In theory I'd remove also spells names (to avoid all those text messages saying those spells are cast at the start of the encounter), but some players may not like it because they wouldn't know the ongoing buffs as usuals.

That 'd create a nice place for spell called Detect Magic. As far as I know there is an opcode which is called like this - but spell itself would show to player all active spells on creatures in x radius. What about improving Identification to Detect Magic? As knock gained some combat capabilities, that'd grant a nice edge to Diviners. I mean spell which can be casted on battlefield (which detects buffs and active spells) or identifies items.

Additional hit points are probably more appropriate for a necromantic spell like Spirit Armor. Regarding it being a poor alternative to Mage Armor I can only say that it has slightly better AC, it's not affected by Breach and can be cast on others (this last feature alone is worth a +1 lvl), but I agree it's not particularly appealing.

Adding hit-point bonus to this spell isn't so bad. In 3rd edition there was a spell called False Life. Or did I created it? I don't remember. Still, it added 20 additional hit points, but lowered saving throw vs. death by 2. What about making such a spell 1-shot protection from necromancy spell?

@Yarpen, it would be quite interesting to make Breach work exactly as per PnP, but a) I fear it's almost impossible to do and b) it would drastically affect gameplay, with potentially disastrous consequences. For example allowing it to make liches vulnerable to normal weapons would almost surely break SCS AI that heavily relies in the trick of "exploiting" such innate feature in combo with PfMW.

Well... that'd need to move all of the weapon protections into other item which would be removed for certain time. We could even add SPECIFIC.ids entries to make it fully detectable by AI. But that'd need a lot of overhaul with creatures. But I still don't know how to balance it to not make it game-breaking. Maybe it shouldn't go trough Deflect/Turn Spells (it's not magic-protection affecting spell anymore, so why not?). Also, time when enemy's defences are breached should be very limited: 3 rounds?

Second way is I think more extreme. What about making weapon immunities detectable by SPECIFIC.ids and then... removing it via Secondary Types. And granting them back after 3 rounds? That'd be sick - I know.

I've played NWN2 and my FM had two duels with fighters. Quite disappointing it was, as it looked beyond silly, because I'm supposed to fight a duel, yet I have to run away like a coward instead of doing what FM is supposed to do - laugh at their feeble attacks while wasting their lives.

That's why we NEED cheap teleportation spell.

That custom item is gonna have 'fighters rule' effect while equipped, isn't it?

Hey! I'm not that bad at modding kits to need to do such a thing. I was mainly thinking about '1 point of proficiency in any weapon at 10th level and specialisation at 18th', because that would be really helpfull in using weapons special abilities against enemies.

Not quite.

We were talking about theoretical situation of fight between wizard and warrior. In IWD that'd be fair duel (wizard can make himself invisible, teleport and stuff to evade fighter's blow) - but in BG2 it's very one-sided.

There has been some discussion about SI being "over powered" or "cheesy." I'd suggest that SI is simply "inelegant" in the way that a solution to a math or engineering problem can be inelegant. This might explain the difficulty in defining exactly why SI is "bad" - it is, in part, a matter of taste. That said, SI is inelegant because it presents a blunt solution to problems (Dispel Magic, Divination Spells) that might be addressed by a more subtle approach.

Well, that's probably the best description of that why people dislike SI. We tried to use words 'cheesy' 'op' but yeah, inelegant is the most accurate one. Call it fancy, but it's alternative versions (Non-detection, True Seeing etc.) just looks better. Also it improves spell selection of other than Abjurers Speciality Priests.

The point is - "absurd" or not - that lone wizards are a major feature of BG2, and (contra your comment) they weren't "meant to be weak" in BG2. (Exhibit A: Irenicus. Exhibit B: Vongoethe. Exhibit C: Kangaxx. Etc.). So insofar as it isn't possible to protect them adequately in a given set of modifications, that's a problem. (The combat and movement system in BG2 makes meatshields all but useless as a way of protecting casters, and the chance of hitting a wizard with your axe isn't "very very low": as I've demonstrated, it's actually pretty high in mid SoA and later.)

You forgot about a) most of protection spells will make wizard invincible for few rounds b) during which he can cast sh*tstorm of disabling/damaging/slaying spells. Also, he can use AoE spells which allows him to easily deal with many creatures at once. I just say as always: I don't like the fact that game favorizes wizards. Well, I'm gonna live with that. And still, you're right about weakness of 'meatshield' system in BG2. Still, I think that without all of those fancy magical defences game would turn back into original state where warriors were fighting each other and wizards were at first trying to make their warriors chances of win greater and to disable enemy wizard. Meh. They weren't arogants who were sitting, drinking tea and saying "silly b****, your weapons cannot harm me".

Well, after release of IR3 I will try to make solo fighter game with IR + SR + some of Kit Revision changes and maybe custom item.

Well, GWW and CS are ToB things, but you're right, those abilities make AC much less relevant. Anyway even epic fighters should have a bunch of those HLAs not tons, and those few should can be stopped by Stoneskin, or seriosly lessened by Mirror Image. Put an outstanding AC on top of them and even GWW may hit very few times. No?

Also, sorry for the fact that wizards are even touchable. That's weird to me that there is a discussion of "Oh noe, my wizard has the slightest chance of dying from sword! It's a bug, we have to fix it." Wizards were meant to be weak, deal with it. BG2 is stupid in this case, because many times you're going to fight lone wizard (which is absurd) - that's why we have got Chain Contingencies and PfMW here. Giving them some meatshield (or making them summon it) would be a far better idea than reducing this very very low chance of hitting goddamned wizard with your axe to zero.

Changes to Breach/Spell Shield

Both of those sounds good. But well, stupid question. Is there a possibility of making Breach work like in PnP? So it strips creature's Weapon Immunity? With saving throw of course. That'd be neat.

nothing can replace SI: Abj or SI: Div, so far as I can see

SR4 can introduce neat implementation of Spell Shield and PnP Non-Detection (which instead of making you immune to Divinations, allows saving throw). Spell Shield is far more usefull and... just balanced than SI: Abjuration. Non-Detection is lower level spell, but it's effect isn't as cheesy as absolute immunity to divinations.

- We're both happy with SI: Nec.

Maybe Protection from Negative Plane should work like that? For example Chilling Touch is damaging character by channeling Negative Energy - why not to make it protect you against it? And from most of damaging necromantic spells? That'd make this spell a lot more usefull (to be honest: without vampires attacking you for long part of the game that'd be just pathetic spell).

And against deadly attacks we do have Death Ward.

Well, clerics gets most of buffs and protections which I think is nothing wrong.

SI: Ill

As Demi said, there is True Seeing.

Also: if I can throw my three cents to this discussion - why to bother with changing SI: Everything into few distinctive spells? My argument is: SI protects you against schools, SR protects you against more specific attacks. SI allows players to abuse mechanical stuff (like near-to-unbeatable SI:D with Improved Invisibility) which is a) cheap b) terrifyingly effective. It's current implementation lacks of finesse and well... possibility of stopping it, even if you're correctly prepared. Characters abusing SI are sometimes just like "Hah, I've got immunity to everything and you suck". Also SI is just too versatile. When learning Non-Detection, True Seeing or Spell Shield you're deciding what sort of danger is going to wait for you. Learning SI is close to automatic, it's just "Well, no matter what it's going to rule".

And then, does anybody remember Spell Immunity and the idea to remove it from the game? In this light, MB makes a perfect substitute for SI:Ench.

Yay for that, really! Our current roster looks like this:

Non-detection as minor SI: Divination (allows save for detection).

Impregnable Mind and Mind Blank as SI: Enchantments.

Death Ward as minor SI: Necromancy (only against deadly effects).

Spell Shield as limited SI: Abjuration.

Other protection spells are good substitute for SI: Evocation.

And I think that it looks much better than terribly overpowered Spell Immunity.

And yes for MB being caster-only. Buffs are for clerics!

Mind Blank vs. Chaotic Command

I think that adding Mind Blank isn't so bad idea. Fact that someone is a wizard doesn't make it impossible to him to have some more interesting protections. Clerics can use very non-effective and penalised version of Spell Deflection - why Wizard cannot try this.

Chaotic Command in PnP granted protection from orders and compulsing anything on caster. So it was making him immune to Charm, to Command, to Hold. But for example it didn't touched in any way spells like Confusion or Chaos. But, because it's BG2 and we don't know why but Bioware used Chaotic Command instead of Impregnable Mind (as in IWD) - it protects from everything. My proposition is to make them work like this:

Impregnable Mind: protects against all enchantments affecting mind. Spells like charm/domination, hold, feeblemind, confusion/chaos.

Mind Blank: protects against any spells affecting mind. Spook, Phantasmal Killer, Know Opponent, Emotion, Doom. Shouldn't protect against any psionics I think. Should it allow to gain benefits from positive spells (Bless, Emotion: Courage, Wondrous Recall?).

Impervious Sanctity of Mind: protects agains all enchantments affecting mind and most of psionic attacks.

Chaotic Commands (Enchantment/Charm)

Sphere: Chaos

Range: Touch

Components: V, S, M

Duration: 1 turn/level

Casting Time: 3

Area of Effect: One creature

Saving Throw: Special

Chaotic commands renders a creature immune to magical commands. Taunt, forget, suggestion, domination, geas, demand, succor, command, enthrall, quest, exaction, and other spells that place a direct verbal command upon a single individual automatically fail.

In addition, anyone casting one of these spells on a creature protected by chaotic commands must save vs. spell. Failure means that the caster must obey his own magic; the spell's effect has backfired on the caster.

The material component is a piece of eelskin.

BAM is multi-colored, I'm not sure about changing head colour into blue. But I hope you'll like it.

Mind Blank

As far as I remember Demi thinks about turning Chaotic Commands into Impregnable Mind, which is close to Mind Blank - but it's 5th level spell and it doesn't protect against psionics. There is 7th level spell which grants full immunity to any mind-affecting effects of Impervious Sanctity of Mind - I'm not sure if Demi thinks about implementing this one.

Ice Storm

I think that it is the difference between Druidic and Arcane elemental spells. Druids are summoning powers of elements - ice blocks which hit enemy's head and which should deal crushing and cold damage. Wizards don't. Instead of they shape pure magic into elemental shape similiar to those ice blocks... still, their attack is clearly energetic - not natural. That's how Invocations work as I think ... Well, that'd suggest turning druid's elemental spells into non-Invocation spells. ^^'

Probably from manual for Baldur's Gate I. I remember that Volo there was at 5th level, and Elminster probably 12. I think it was based on old core rules without High Level Characters campaign. It introduced for example tabels for high level characters...

Just play Temple of Elemental Evil and you will see what I mean.

Then I'll tell you that there are people who don't reload game and just deal with the fact that part of their team is dead. ;]