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Revised SCS


Demivrgvs

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a) ok

b) scrap all I said, MM needs magic damage. Or an eff which kills Mordy. Since the latter isn't probable to be implemented, keep MM as it is. SCS needs MM to kill the sword.

c) I'd still change it to slashing. It would be more unique (is there a single player who picks Fireball over Skulls, ever? Even if you change save type Skull is always a better pick, both for it's "ambush" mechanics and it's damage type), it would be less effective against armor (imo a good thing), and it would have a clear purpose as the spell you'll use against MR.

d) I wouldn't really go into what exists in BG2 and nowhere else, here you can summon Planetars to do your bidding, discuss contracts with Wish genies in the middle of combat and similar stuff so ProMagicEnergy/Shadow Shield being in the game is not such a big deal. :)

My gripe with ProMagEnergy is that it's simply too situational to use. I never bother with it and simply pick 8th Pro Energy for rare few instances I want it like Beholders lair in Underdark. Level 6 slot means it competes with Chain Lighting, Globe of Invlnerability, PfMW and the like. I see no space for PfME being on this level. Those few times you know you're gonna eat an ADHW one drinks a Magic Shielding potion.

One purpose I found for this spell is to cast it on a tank character and then blast Skull traps on him. Other than that, it's too underwhelming.

Even if tweaked, the spell would need to keep it's MDamage resistance factor or Disintegrate would become seriously OP... How and why a Shadow Shield would stop Disintegrate/Magic missiles (transmutation & evocation) I don't know. :undecided:

AI uses Shield on a regular basis.

 

All in all, probably just leave things as they are. May not be perfect, but it's a known system that works well in practice.

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I'd love to make some aspects of KR usable in SCS, but

Don't take this the wrong way but I'd love it if this didn't happen. I really really really want to use all these SR-specific improvements to SCS, but a bunch of mods that I use are not compatible with KR. So if KR becomes a *requirement* to use this, I will sadly miss out. :(

 

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The tension between ADHW/ST doing "necromantic" damage and MM doing "magic" damage, but those two very different-sounding damage types being the same, still ought to be resolved somehow IMHO. I see three options:

 

1) Change necromantic damage to some other type. Cold makes the most sense, as it's somewhat underused in the game, and cold is literally a lack of energy, a draining of energy, just like necromantic/negative energy.

 

2) Change Magic Missile to do missile or piercing damage. Isn't this what the PnP spell actually does/describes?? Think about Mord's Sword: it's a blade of pure magical force... but it does slashing damage, not magic damage. Why shouldn't magic missiles be exactly the same? The "magic" doesn't have to described the damage type, it can just refer to the fact that they are magically created out of thin air, and magically aim unerringly at the target.

 

3) Consider "magic damage" to encompass *both* positive energy (the traditional magic force that comprises MM/Mord's/etc.) and negative energy ("necromantic" damage from ADHW/ST). Just spell this out much more clearly in the spell descriptions, and spell out that Pro Magic Energy blocks both positive and negative energies.

 

I actually surprise myself by leaning toward option 2. It makes sense from a lore perspective, and it would be a bit of a check on the best spell in the game, without nerfing it into oblivion. Just copy the MM protection from Shield into ProMagicEnergy so gameplay doesn't otherwise change.

 

(And hey, if ProMagicEnergy can block physical darts of magical energy... why shouldn't it block a physical sword of magical energy? Make it protect from Mordy... that would be interesting...)

 

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Re: vamp Con drain & Restoration: I suggested in another thread that Restoration spells should cure all stat drains. (And even diseases.) Makes sense from a lore perspective, more convenient for the player, but won't seriously affect gameplay much. What's not to like? :)

Edited by subtledoctor
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I'd love to make some aspects of KR usable in SCS, but

Don't take this the wrong way but I'd love it if this didn't happen. I really really really want to use all these SR-specific improvements to SCS, but a bunch of mods that I use are not compatible with KR. So if KR becomes a *requirement* to use this, I will sadly miss out. :(

No worries. If I implement it, it will be detecting a KR-specific file :) .

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I've said it countless times before, but this is the worst forum engine I've seen ever.

 

ADHW

If we want to change its damage type, I'd go for disease instead. It is naturally blocked by poison, however, which is both good and bad.

 

Magic Missile

I see no point, really. It's a magic missile, for Christ's sake :D

If any spell should keep magic damage type, it would be it - the problem with others is that they also use this type despite being more negative/divine in nature.

 

1) Change necromantic damage to some other type. Cold makes the most sense, as it's somewhat underused in the game, and cold is literally a lack of energy, a draining of energy, just like necromantic/negative energy.

Actually, I think cold damage may be getting over-represented with SR. At some point I was worrying it was becoming more common than fire.

 

2) Change Magic Missile to do missile or piercing damage. Isn't this what the PnP spell actually does/describes?? Think about Mord's Sword: it's a blade of pure magical force... but it does slashing damage, not magic damage. Why shouldn't magic missiles be exactly the same?

Because of the energy ball animation. :)

 

Skull Trap

A bit of slashing and/or piercing dmg from the exploding skull is understandable but having multiple creatures taking massive dmg from small splinters coming from a human-sized skull makes much less sense imo than assuming that the skull was just a mean to unleash a blast of negative energy.

A fragmentation grenade of this size shredding everything to pieces? I can totally imagine it ;)

 

Shadow Shield

 

Let's assume we tweak it as per Arda's wish, should we keep the magic dmg res or not? MM could become too effective at disrupting spellcasting if SCS doesn't rely on Shield regardless of ProMagicEnergy (does it?)

NWN still gives it moderate magic damage resist. So, between Shield, GoI, Spell Deflection, Invis, and concentration+resist, I realyl don't think there'll be a reliable chance to interrupt casting this way.

 

and what about Disintegrate (my tweak assumed ProMagicEnergy as a counter, and I don't see any alternative...)?

Not a big issue, I think? I'd much rather spend Disintegrate on beefy fighter grunt, than risk the effort of stripping mage's protection going to waste because they made a save. Edited by Ardanis
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Magic Missile

I see no point, really. It's a magic missile, for Christ's sake :D

...

Because of the energy ball animation. :)

pew pew!

 

Skull Trap

A fragmentation grenade of this size shredding everything to pieces? I can totally imagine it ;)

 

One of my preferred ways to nerf Skull Trap is to change it from magic damage to slashing damage - make it literally pieces of bone exploding from an actual skull. Then you can protect yourself with Armor (with IR, YARAS, or FPPS) but the armor is of no help against fireballs. The problem is with scripts, when the AI expects ProMagicEnergy to make it immune to Skull Traps.

 

Then I tried to lower its range - so you actually have to set it like a trap, and move away from it before it triggers. But then the AI just committed suicide.

 

What should really happen, is this should simply be taken away from the AI. Override the .spl file to be a clone of Fireball, add it to hidespl.2da, then ADD_SPELL a new short-range version of Skull Trap that actually works like a trap (!) for players only, so the AI won't use it to commit suicide. And switch the scroll to learn the new version.

 

Shadow Shield

NWN still gives it moderate magic damage resist. So, between Shield, GoI, Spell Deflection, Invis, and concentration+resist, I really don't think there'll be a reliable chance to interrupt casting this way.

It's worth bearing in mind that concentration is bugged on the current version of the EEs, and who knows if it will be fixed in v2.4... (if only there were some Beamdog employees around...)

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It's worth bearing in mind that concentration is bugged on the current version of the EEs, and who knows if it will be fixed in v2.4... (if only there were some Beamdog employees around...)

What? What's bugged about it? I haven't really payed much attention to it, does it not work properly yet?

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Then I tried to lower its range - so you actually have to set it like a trap, and move away from it before it triggers. But then the AI just committed suicide.

Well, you can't really make AI trap the area in an intelligent manner...

Best it can do, is to check there're no allies within the blast radius, when casting it at a target (ToBEx/EE only, obviously, although BP also tried to accomplish it with different method). Anything beyond that doesn't strike me as sufficiently robust or reliable.

 

It's worth bearing in mind that concentration is bugged on the current version of the EEs, and who knows if it will be fixed in v2.4... (if only there were some Beamdog employees around...)

 

I might be in the dark here... It seemed to work fine when I tested it couple weeks ago?

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I've said it countless times before, but this is the worst forum engine I've seen ever.

There are definitely some really dumb bugs in the version we have now. The quote functionality has a tendency to completely fuck up and even change what happens between previewing and posting. Oh yeah, lists are screwy too.

 

I'd like to update to the latest version to hopefully get something that works better and is more modern. IPB version 4 was a complete rewrite released in 2015, while we're using version 3, which was released in 2009 but based on code originally from 2002. We'd need to get control over the site again to make that happen.

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I just tested it on EE2, value set to 1 seems to work fine.

Otoh, value set to 2 seems to make casting nearly impossible to interrupt. :p

Admittedly I only tested on BGEE/SoD. But with the value set to 1, I could not ever interrupt a spell. Seemed like it wasn't taking damage into account. (Hits for double-digit damage would not interrupt.

 

I think it works with the value set to 2, but the chance to avoid interruption is very low on that value (and is actually impossible on spells of 6th level and higher).

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Uploaded new version, same link.

Change-log:

- added EET compatibility code

 

 

Still an issue with installing this on EET, seemingly the same file that was causing problems earlier due to some incompatibility with the Ascension beta. While installing SCS v30 onto EET this was solved through the BWP fixpack patching, but that isn't applicable for SCSforSR afaik:

Compiling 1 script ...
[stratagems/initial/baf/ds52329.baf] loaded, 462 bytes
Processing 1 dialogues/scripts ...
[override/player1.dlg] loaded, 63948 bytes
Processing quests and journals
ERROR: No translation provided for @314
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.

Edit: Solved by adding player1.tra to stratagems.tp2 so the .tra that contains line 314 gets processed.. but doesn't exactly feel like a great solution.

Edited by Shin
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Kreso, did you code this in a way that the behavioural changes are only active if SR is installed? Does this version of the mod behave any differently from v30 on non-SR installs?

No on both accounts... I didn't have the time to do it in such a manner, altough it could be possible I reckon. My main gripe against it is that I couldn't get the v30 option of using a custom library file to work, it should be very easy (a matter of adding one line) but it doesn't work. And I need that file. The code governing those is beyond my comprehension, and I don't even know where to start looking for the bug preventing this to work.

This version installs and works the same as SCS. You can tweak it (i.e. dragon's HP, slowcast etc.) via ini file just like the original.

Edited by kreso
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Edit: Solved by adding player1.tra to stratagems.tp2 so the .tra that contains line 314 gets processed.. but doesn't exactly feel like a great solution.

I haven't tried installing this on EE2 or EET. I used patches from BWP and EET, I have no idea what went wrong with this or if I should add some line somewhere. Maybe ALIENQuake/K4thos can point me. I haven't found Asension Beta fixes.

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Edit: Solved by adding player1.tra to stratagems.tp2 so the .tra that contains line 314 gets processed.. but doesn't exactly feel like a great solution.

I haven't tried installing this on EE2 or EET. I used patches from BWP and EET, I have no idea what went wrong with this or if I should add some line somewhere. Maybe ALIENQuake/K4thos can point me. I haven't found Asension Beta fixes.

 

Hm.. I've found now it also skips the BG1 components when installing on EET, so unless it's just me, it could be something isn't right with the compatibility yet.

 

Edit: Possibly fixed by adding eet to the relevant GAME_IS checks in the .tp2

Edited by Shin
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