Lord_Tansheron

Probably just a case of natural vernacular vs. specific terminology. "Helpless" is a pretty broad term when used colloquially, but the game's mechanics are very precise about it. It's nice to have the two be congruent, but of course that's difficult with broad, somewhat vague terms and can't always be achieved - see above's example with petrification for example, which is definitely more "helpless" in the vernacular sense than feeblemind would be, yet neither triggers "helpless" in a mechanical sense. I guess you could argue that feeblemind would reduce you to a mental state where you couldn't even articulate helplessness, consciously or unconsciously. You'd be too stupid to even realize how stupid you are, that sort of thing.

Stop bringing logic into my fireballs & dragons game!

Aren't short swords usually piercing, not slashing? Was this changed for the SSoBS in particular?

It's ESPECIALLY egregious for melee as they usually don't have alternative actions (like casters do) so it's a hard disable, period. You can walk away and they stand there doing nothing. Even at one turn, to have a lvl 1 spell disable a target for a minute straight seems disproportionately powerful to me. Spook is already borderline in that respect, and at least there's lots of enemies immune to fear - far fewer enemies are immune to blind. Maybe it's just the way I play the game, but when a caster's defenses are stripped, they're DEAD - not to Lightning Bolts or whatever, but to an entire party clobbering their heads in. Invisibility has a hit penalty, but that won't stop most attackers from effectively locking the caster out from ever casting again the moment the dispellers connect. Invisibility adds a buffer to that, generating extra time in which they can actually do something dangerous. Granted, maybe it's my settings specifically that make a lot of caster battles - especially at the high end - devolve into "did you remove all defenses instantly? yes? I'm dead. no? game over." So I guess I might be biased here.

Ah yes, SCS's answer to EVERYTHING, just summon oodles of stuff Sometimes it feels like it takes the idea of "throwing everything at you" very literally indeed... Jokes aside, it's not like Blindness has no answers to it of course, but it's still ridiculously powerful for a lvl 1(!!) spell. Even remnants of it like the Nymph Cloak from IR(R) are super good. This feels like a case to me where if people really want to play with OP stuff like Blindness, then why are they even using SR... You might as well give them an option for the old Improved Haste, too, then, or stuff like that.

The obvious caveat first off is that more options for people tends to generally be better than fewer options; until it gets confusing and overwhelming at least. That being said, some comments on the specifics: - Blindness used to be INSANELY powerful, practically a hard disable for most enemies because the zero sight range made them basically do nothing for 2 HOURS. Unreal power for a lvl 1 spell - Dispel/Remove Magic are a constant pain to get right, partly because LoB makes level-based comparisons almost moot; ST is an option but tends to fail against the enemies you need it most against (mages) so it's not very satisfying either. Having options is fine, but I'm not happy with any of them; I also have no real solution, though - Imprisonment absolutely needs a save, honestly this could just be baseline - Web makes sense to me; for that matter, I've always found it weird how many movement impairing effects actually just straight disable; why is there Hold and Paralyze when they both work the same? Why does Web not work like Entangle, and why? Very strange - Targetable Chant makes little sense to me tbh; are Priests that good at throwing their voice? Never seemed a problem to me that it's caster-centered - Allowing (targeted) dispels to go through Invisibility seems like a pretty severe intervention to me, as getting around that is a big part of caster battles - friendly spell pierce seems entirely reasonable; already the case with MR, should probably work for friendly Inivs, too. Barely if ever a balance concern, and simply QoL++ - Innate HLAs has been something I very much enjoyed, but I get that some people prefer to stack up on those spells; giving that option seems reasonable

It does, in principle. It's allegedly bugged, not sure if that's outdated information though. Here's a list of the LoB changes for enemy units, from the wiki: HP x3+80 (player summons/familiars get x2+20, double the damage taken option, if not disabled, doesn’t apply to them) +1 APR THAC0 -5 bonus -11 AC bonus Saving throws -5 bonus (note: there appears to be a bug where STs are 5 points worse, not better) Levels are treated as level + 12 for some checks Non controlled sprites cannot fail morale checks +75 gp per pickup Player max rest encounters increases by 1

That's a fair point. And yeah Dispel is such an awkward spell to say the least... I'm no great fan of the highly random nature of a lot of what's going on in BG but I guess that's just part of the game's identity. I prefer trade-offs where you get guaranteed results, but at some kind of cost - be that ease of use, class/kit choice, or whatever. And as you keep saying, LoB is not how most people play and so designing around that made specifically is perhaps not the best way to about things I'll just modify things myself as needed, but I'm always looking for new inspiration on old mechanics.

In non-LoB play, unmodded Inquisitor Dispel has always been pretty much 100% dispel already (barring the VERY start of the game against high-level enemies). This is no different, but toned down in terms of AoE and double dipping - before, you could dispel an entire group of enemies, including multiple casters, with a single action. Meanwhile in LoB Dispel Magic (of any kind) is practically useless because the increased enemy levels mean you won't ever dispel anyone, period, until pretty much ToB levels. Which also feels very... bad. Not to mention that the level disparity also means enemy dispels work practically 100% of the time. I agree it's powerful - I think I might modify it further to be subject to spell immunities (like regular Dispel) so it gets stopped by Liches. Then again, it's also not fun to have fights vs. mages devolve into whether or not you can load enough protection removers to counter their 5,000 sequencers and contingencies that re-buff them instantly... It feels like having a silver bullet at the cost of a party slot is not an unreasonable trade-off when the alternative is to bring 3+ arcane casters or go home.

Not sure if this is within the scope of SRR, but I've experimented with Inquisitor Dispel a lot and changed it to be 100% dispel but single-target only - which led to a VASTLY improved playing experience for me. Not only does it tone down the power of the dispel without it bricking on LoB (where the extra monster levels basically mean even x2 level dispel almost never works for most of the game, let alone the x1.5/x1 nerfed versions on some mods), it also makes it synergize nicely with Inquisitor's True Sight since you need to see invisibles to target them, is more party friendly (easier to dispel someone who's charmed, for example, without dispelling your entire team), requires you to choose between dispelling an enemy or a friend (rather than double dipping), and even works better in terms of class fantasy as you're a zealot who's REALLY focused on the bad guy Don't need this to be added to any mod of course since I can just do it myself, but I thought it might be something worth sharing.

Don't let them hate on LoB. LoBers unite! LoB forever! In any case... Chant is very good. One of the big reasons to have a cleric, imo, as it skews rolls considerably with the bonus PLUS penalty spread. I 100% agree that's an offensive spell (in the tactical sense) and should break invisibility. IMO anything that affects others - enemies or allies - should break invisibility. Things that PURELY affect self - buffs, heals, whathaveyou - are probably fine; I can't think of an example right now where I think it wouldn't be. The reasoning is simple: even if you're invisible, people will notice something just happened to someone else (or themselves). Is that too broad a perspective?

I honestly don't remember, I've started like 10 new games over the past two days and re-installed/re-modded the game about 25 times, too. I did a quick test though by removing the spell from the spellbook, and adding a regular Dispelling Screen scroll (correct description and all) - upon learning, it gave me the Spell Immunity version, not the proper DScreen. It's too late now to start a new game and see what happens but I'll check that tomorrow.

So, I thought I'd give this another whirl and installed the latest versions of IRR/SRR/SCS as usual. Now there's a peculiar thing: the Dispelling Screen spell (tried and true) is still called Spell Immunity: Abjuration. It functions like Dispelling Screen always did (graphics and function both) but the description is the old Spell Immunity one - and, most crucially, it has zero cast time and ignores spell timing. Which makes me think it's somehow trying to function like the old Spell Immunity did, i.e. effect is instant/ignores timing because you first need to choose the school. (EDIT: it appears the spell description on the SCROLL is correct; the one in the spellbook is not) Seems like it must be one of the mods I'm using that's interfering, but I'm having a hard time figuring out which one and why, since none of them should affect spells. I've tried various install orders - the one in the first post here caused several problems for me by the way, including the one above - but I've not really taken on board any new mods and it's always worked fine before. WeiDU.log is attached maybe you can tell me where I'm doing something wrong. WeiDU.log

I am conceptually entirely fine with the potion revealing invisible creatures to the player (and thus the party). It makes as much sense to me as Detect Illusions from thief/monk does, i.e. they're using perception and not magic and yet somehow they are able to communicate that perception to other party members in ways that effectively DISPELS illusions/invisibility. Sure let the potion be a bit more limited (not actual dispel, but everyone gets to see) since you're not rigorously trained in detecting/communicating your detection. But there's no need to make it so complicated you end up with characters clobbering empty air because there's something invisible there. That's just goofy gameplay.

There's a big difference - individual detection doesn't allow party members to target the enemies with spells; dispelling the invisibility does. I think the issue here, from the sound of it, is that you as the player can't actually see the enemy and it looks weird to have something hitting empty air. Whereas something like True Sight also allows the caster (and only them) to attack enemies as though not invisible, but you the player still actually see the model. Which I guess makes sense from an RP perspective: even if other party members can't see the enemy, the one who does see them can tell them that there's someone/something there.

Solo is a different story, especially with SCS. I did some testing long ago and IIRC there was an AI quirk with SCS where mobs started ignoring you as soon you got to 75% physical damage resistance, and went for other party members instead. So you can be immune to physical damage all you like, but they won't just keep stupidly pounding on you. That obviously doesn't apply when you play solo as there's nothing else to attack I haven't played in a while so I don't know if SCS still behaves like that, though.

The only thing I could see as being a relevant problem is the already mentioned Sanctuary, as priests in SCS like to go in a corner and heal themselves back to full while in Sanctuary. If that breaks instantly on the first heal, that's a bit awkward.

Probably nothing super broken since it's only +1. Can't remember how Mislead works with SR... is it still perma invis if the image is stored in a safe place? Could potentially give rise to some kind of F/M abomination using (off-handing?) Sword of Backstabbing for effectively constant double damage attacks without having to "waste" XP on being a thief.

@Bartimaeus Sorry, I said it wrong. It's not the .eff file, they're both there as you say, it's a .spl file. Specifically, ring33b.eff refers to a resource DVKNDOWN.SPL which doesn't seem to exist. I changed it to Opcode 45 (stun) for myself, but I tested Opcode 39 (unconsciousness) as well and it works fine. Not sure what the reason behind using an .spl resource was here. As for the rat... I mean, I don't know how easy it is to change but I guess it's up to everyone individually whether or not to use it. Seems to me shapeshifting shouldn't use any armor effects at all, really, but idk how it all works technically and whether it can be implemented that way. The Cloak transformation is on-use at least, and so it's easy to just... not use it. It won't interfere with people that don't want to abuse this behavior so it's not a high priority to fix at least.

@BartimaeusPersonally I LOVE the resistance on armor because it helps with the overly binary hit/miss system of AC that favors avoidance over mitigation. Resistances make going for pure armor a lot more viable, which makes tanking without mage buffs (MI, SS) a lot more interesting. This is most relevant on high difficulties of course (I only play LoB) where it's a bad feeling to stand there taking either 0 damage or 50 damage. Also the Ring of the Ram effect that gives Monk a chance to knockdown doesn't appear to work at all. From what I could tell in NI it references a .eff file that doesn't exist. I replaced it with a simple stun OPcode for my own use and it works fine (same chance, same save; went with stun over knockdown for balance reasons though I guess knock is better flavor).

It seems the Cloak of the Sewers shapeshift ability that turns you into a Rat with 90% physical resistances stacks with IR's resistances from equipped armor (even if STR drops below the min requirement to wear it due to the shapeshift). Any armor with at least 10% resistance will result in a Rat that's immune to all types of physical damage. #BestTank

BG modding is a long game - we've been waiting two decades to get to this point, we can wait a bit longer if it means quality content. Thanks for keeping the work going!

I couldn't find anything on this, but what's going on with inquisitor Dispel in this latest version of SCS? I came back to the game after a hiatus and checked out the new SCS version, and while it does mention the familiar component that can reduce Inquisitor Dispel to x1/x1.5 if applied, I didn't find anything that would actually let me set the values for that component. It doesn't show up on the in-game tweak tool, it doesn't show up in the Stratagems .ini configuration file, it doesn't even show as a component in WeiDU.log - but it does show up in the current readme, and in the game, Inquisitor definitely dispels with x1 now. I even checked with NearInfinity, and SPCL231.spl (Inquisitor's Dispel Magic) shows "Use caster level (1)" under "Dispel type". I tested with various enemies in the game, and the behavior seems consistent with a x1 lvl Dispel, i.e. anything higher than the caster is virtually impossible to dispel. Now, ordinarily this wouldn't be a big deal (Inquisitors were nerfed for a reason), HOWEVER if you play Legacy of Bhaal mode then the increased levels in that mode make Dispel Magic effectively unusable - or literally, since with the start of ToB you already encounter enemies above lvl 40, which is past the level cap for Inquisitors. Without a dispel level buff, Inquisitors are effectively crippled in LoB since their marquee ability basically might as well not exist. I can probably fix this via NearInfinity, but it'd be great if this just had something to control the behavior of the component in SCS.

Even as someone who plays with everything cranked to 11 and likes it, they do seem a bit out of place there. That pack of vampires is the hardest fight in Firkraag's Lair, including Firkraag himself (who in all honesty might also just be a little undertuned for who he is but I guess people like getting their Carsomyr asap). On LoB especially the rat swarms and the tight quarters make the pack an absolute nightmare to deal with - and not in a good, boy-did-I-enjoy-being-challenged kind of way.

While we're on the topic of vampires.... I'm the last person to eschew a challenge, but GODS are those rat swarms ridiculous on LoB mode. Even with reduced bonus HP for summons they soak up a damage total that's beyond belief. The wolves seem fine, but the rats are just frustratingly tedious to deal with.