bob_veng

project infinity is more modern and has superseded BWS, and by extension, it's derivatives. BWS is still interesting as a reference for various mod choices and recommendations, but i would stick to the latest and greatest tool for the actual work. 

1 hour ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

Potions being alchemical compounds rather than external imputations ... aka they release their content as a stream rather than a casting, so their effects should be stream like. AND really hard to dispel with unspoken words.

The sold amount of potions also drains the party gold, so the unlimited is not really unlimited, just a reduction to find the next 20 places to buy them from. That's the idea of the request.

And nope, I don't use healing potions... really, which is why I have 2 healers... most of the runs.

..

Trouble with THE canon party is that you don't have enough heals to get cured from the damage taken during combat, the next combat's going to get everyone dead. This has nothing to do with healing spells being slow to cast... but being unable to cast barely any at all even after the combat ends. Level 8 party: Ranger, zero healing spells. Druid/fighter has a few. Invoker, zero healing spells. Fighter, zero healing spells. Thief, zero healing spells. With them, it takes days to heal completely, and the SCS fights whip out pretty much the whole party ... in some cases. And no, the game area should only take 1 rest... not 25. Which is why the Branwen... but that's a topic on it's own, and should there in the above-linked topic.

It's a pretty grim brother.

1. is this a p&p idea? i don't think so. it seems like a ridiculous post-hoc realist conceptualization of something that's not supposed to be realistic. magical potions produce magical effects. dispel dispels magical effects. a more abstract level of conceptualization without the anatomical nitty-gritty is much more appropriate for such high fantasy...

2. with the present amount of gold you could buy many more potions of all sorts than you could ever hope to use. so, that game economy rationale is not very sound. currently, potion scarcity is real and meaningful (a little bit at least)

3. that's fine i guess, but i never use healing spells, and never have. i use healing potions all the time, often to just heal between fights (instead of rest-scumming)

(..)

4. mods don't have to support the sad canon party construct because it's a crutch of the original (...and subsequent ) developers, not modders. SoD technically retcons the canon party into "forced party" anyway...

the state of affairs in IWD(EE) is not necessarily relevant for determining whether there may be inconsistencies in BG, under the current EE baseline standard

so while the existence of all these spells in iwd points to you that there isn't a consistency problem, it does not point so to me.

IWD is more flakey and rudimentary in it's application of rules and d&d concepts

as undead, they would still be affected by something such as false dawn... undead hunters would have a bonus aganst them, they would be disrupted by appropriate weapons etc.

you should not be able to turn them, so they shouldn't be undead

they should be immune to death spell, because they are merely conjured matter rendered illusionary entities by the illusionist; they are not beings per se

however, they should be dispelled by detect illusion, or at least reverted to their raw non-illusionary form ("vague shadowy form")

yeah, your saving throw idea accords with the spells' pnp description (i've checked and all three spells are valid pnp spells in the "shadow conjuration" group)

pnp:

A wizard casting the shadow monsters spell uses material from the plane of Shadow to shape semi-real illusions of one or more monsters. ...

The actual hit point total for each monster is 20% of the hit point total it would normally have. ...

Those viewing the shadow monsters are allowed to disbelieve as per normal illusions, although there is a -2 penalty to the attempt. The shadow monsters perform as the real monsters with respect to Armor Class and attack forms. Those who believe in the shadow monsters suffer real damage from their attacks. Special attack forms such as petrification or level drain do not actually occur, but a subject who believes they are real will react appropriately.

Those who roll successful saving throws see the shadow monsters as transparent images superimposed on vague shadowy forms. These are Armor Class 10 and inflict only 20% of normal melee damage ...

On 4/25/2019 at 8:14 PM, Luke said:

I think that shadows summoned by WIZARD_SHADES, WIZARD_DEMI_SHADOW_MONSTERS and WIZARD_SHADOW_MONSTERS need some boost. I mean, they currently have only the appearance of a shadow (via opcode #66 and #51), but not any other useful feature (combat-wise) => As a result, they're pretty weak. So, IMHO:

• They should be flagged as UNDEAD (RACE set either to SHADOW or SPECTRAL_UNDEAD, SEX set to ILLUSIONARY) => Consequently, they should receive RING95.itm.
• They should either receive a sort of WIZARD_BLUR (maybe +4 AC instead of +3 and no boost to saving throws) or a permanent Invisibility effect (this is probably too much since you won't be able to target them with spells.....)
• They should be immune to normal weapons.

The spell school is illusion, so they can't be undead. for example, shadows from umar hills drain strength, and that especially doesn't seem proper for the illusion school. 

An example of a non-undead shadow would be the invisible stalker. spell school for summoning him is conjuration because he's a type of an air elemental. Invisible stalker is "permanently invisible" like you say, so that idea is already covered by another spell in the game. The IWD description says that the shadow monsters are also sorta elementals, but they come from the demiplane of shadow instead. that still seems like a conjuration spell.

The problem with these iwd spells is that the descriptions say that the shadow monsters are "illusionary"...in SoA, a precedent with illusionary (is that a word?) creatures is set with the circus tent quest - illusionary really should mean "not real"...

Seeing how non-illusion invisible stalker is more "illusionary" by virtue of being invisible than these iwd illusion school spells can ever hope for, i think there's a consistency problem with these spells... @DavidW you should probably do something. maybe make the monsters physically very weak (low HP and very low damage but high AC and thac0), but quite resistant to magic (or to magic energy mainly)

About pt. 2: let's take the lvl4 spell - if summoned creatures are about as strong as monsters from monster summoning ii and get blur, that's like getting multiple free lvl2 spells, which doesn't seem appropriate, and would just make shadow monsters a vastly better version of ms ii.

3 is a nice number

2 is a really lame looking number

the spell doesn't need to scale at all if it's effects "stack" with other forms of regeneration. it would be scalable by the way of stackability. on lower levels this spell would effectively mean "mediocre regeneration", and on higher levels, it would effectively mean "significant added regen rate"

too strong. how about a slow and short regen?

OT

yeah, "abyssal aura" or something...

I don't mind just "fixing" the year. thematically there's no real mismatch, the technology is the same... etc. iwd story is highly derivative and non-canon. It's a generic retelling of one of R.A. Salvatore's trilogies. This canon trilogy includes drittzt as the protagonist, and it takes place very close to the time of BG. Therefore, iwd-in-eet story as a whole is a legitimate readaptation of the same story...

it seems smart to attack, and neutralize, threatening targets first, instead of those that are harmless (while paralyzed), even if they are momentarily vulnerable. 

in theory seems fine, but the general method of protections is the same as in arcane magic, which makes arcane and divine magic feel much more similar.

i feel that priests' defense, thematically, works mainly in the way of magic resistance and supernatural stats.

so instead of your tweaks, which are in themselves justified, i'd make all those three spells remain the same, and just add a percentage of magic resistance on top.

cumulative with magic resistance which should maybe be changed to have a rather long duration and be pre-castable

Watch out, the grammar is not correct. 

'That' should be used instead of 'this'. Some ambiguity remains (his and her, correspondingly, would certainly be better) but i think it's ok, and better than 'their'.

it seems that there is no justification for using sizes greater than 210x330

My intention wasn't only to end the game for solo players; that will happen even now. If you're not soloing, but have no means to revert petrification, you'll be stuck (can't travel between areas) and the only way to proceed is to kill petrified character. That's what I want to avoid, since it breaks immersion.

it's a relatively niche problem, while an inconsistent spell (perified characters you meet work differently) is a general problem...so you're beating a specific problem by creating a general problem (inconsistency), and for me it's just unappealing, so I have to agree with Ulb

that's a really good cantrip

SoA tries so hard to get the player out of the "boring level zone", according to the original developers who apparently saw no specific appeal to levels 6 through ~10 because they wanted to showcase their implementation of the fancy 2e spell system which only gets really intricate on higher levels.

in order to accomplish this, the game "force levels" you on many occasions, such as the gratuitously high rewards at the start of the game, when you exit the dungeon, complete the circus quest etc. also the massive XP reward when you pay gaelan. there are several such examples i can't remember right now.

as it turns out the "boring level zone" isn't boring at all. this has only been understood by modders and subsequent developers who created interesting mid-level content. also people have learned from IWD which did well in mid-level game flow and encounter design.

SoD has been developed as a sort of integration of all of this experience and nerdy affinity for balanced AD&D gameplay into a mid-level module that takes it to the max, really squeezing the last drop of challenge, and original AD&D epicness that is associated with this level range, which had previously been seen as "high", not "mid". it's like a thesis on "why levels 6-10 are NOT boring". I think it borrows a lot from IWD too.

so when you complete SoD and import into SoA, that makes you fight goblins while wanting to get you out of the level range you've already left, things make no sense whatsoever, and the flow and dynamics of getting XP gets really bad... that's why i think a lot of SoA quest XP rewards need to be a lot lower. The most problematic ones are when you exit Irenicus' dungeon, the reward from the circus quest, when you pay gaelan bayle and a few other distinct examples i can't remember right now. all of that "force leveling" needs to go away, and some of that brawny and tactical IWD feel needs to come into play in early portions of BG2.

all of this goes for EET as well, because the difference between a 500k import and ~650k (with no cap) is pretty small, while the difference between 500k and 161k is big.

IWD2 was within the scope from (almost?) the beginning, so when you see IWD-in-EET you shouldn't automatically presume "IWD1-in-EET". it's not possible to cut out IWD2 now, i think that can reliably be said.

Yeah, extra numbers were quite good.

However SoD areas were seemingly designed to have enough space to handle larger numbers of creatures.

Narrow corridors in BG1, and, also some relatively cramped interiors in BG2, can't really handle more. I'd limit more creatures only to those encounters that happen in sufficiently large spaces, and where it makes sense for to spawn continuously.

for example, ankhegs and umber hulks can spawn continuously in various places because they emerge from underground.

the encounter with the army in ToB (the oasis) can have large groups of enemies spawning continuously

i remember one example where it's strange how few enemies there are: the green caves in durlag's tower lvl 4

oh sorry, i've been playing iwd2 a little lately and got it all mixed up...

- - -

another idea:

how about including the additive mechanic but reducing launchers +2 to +1, +3 to +2, +4 also to +2, and +5 to +3?

so that launcher +3 and ammo +3 would have an ench. level of maximum +6?

or

launchers +4 to +3, and +5 to +4, but remove projectiles +3

or

a combination of those two so that a maximum of +3 launcher and a maximum of +2 projectile would make for a max ench lvl +5 which seems the most appropriate to me

@jarno

On 10/2/2018 at 12:35 AM, Jarno Mikkola said:

...

So yeah, in my mind, the arrows should set the damage, while the bows say how accurate they are and they can give a small damage via class. So for example all composite long bows could give +1, but their enhantment doesn't give damage bonus. And yeah, there probably should be one bow that gives damage bonus too... but that's for the mod maker to deside on how to go about doing that, and for what bow.

i've been thinking about it and i that if thac0 and damage bonuses were split between ammo and launchers, ammo should get the thac0 and launchers the damage because an enchanted launcher can launch, say an arrow, with supernatural force, and an enchanted arrow can home in on the target, but in other respects it's just an ordinary arrow that doesn't do anything magical once it hits the target, so if it was launched with relatively weak force from an unenchanted shortbow, it wouldn't do any greater damage. this is more in line with the vanilla state of things, so less of a radical change

Could some ammo be kept working as-is, and some particular ammo made to work with the additive enchantment bonus? The fluff concept could be that it takes a special material for the arrow to carry the dweomer over from the launcher.

so:

taralash +5 w. arrow +3 = ench. level +3, +8/+8

taralash +5 w. carry-over arrow +1 = ench. level +6, +6/+6

/edit: fail/

Seems balanced...

maybe void-tipped arrow could be changed to work like that, and keep doing magic damage etc.