Feedback

[Jarno Mikkola]

H... and True Sight is 5lvl spell - WTF???

It's just a small inconvenience to dispose off, that can be fixed by making the spirit Troll immune to FF while the True Sight should make all the revealed targets immune to "Improved Invisibility" effects, aka the opcode, so there's no need to make them immune to other such BS things.

[Filippo]

I just wanted to give some quick feedback. Overall this mod is A+ and feels really essential. Here's some quick feedback on some things that stood out for me:

 

*Changes in casting time. Making spells such as Doom and Prismatic Spray have a casting time of 1 (and thus actually making them useful) is great. Good job.

 

*Changes to Druids. Mostly great. Changes the role of the Druid to be a more offensive caster. The addition of Ice Storm, the tweak to Call Lightning and Barkskin stands out.

 

*Awkward changes to Divine Casting. There are a couple of instances in the story (Underdark and Watcher's Keep) where you can cast the Heal-spell on an NPC and get some benefits. In the original game Druids and Clerics can cast them (and use scrolls). This is of course not the case in SR. This was kind of annoying as I had to use SK/EEK to give myself some scrolls as to be able to cast it with my other divine caster (Keldorn) as opposed to just using the Druid (Jaheira).

 

*Chaos. This is/was my favorite spell in the whole game so maybe I'm biased - but isn't level 7 a bit much? Perhaps it is justified.

 

Overall, great changes!

Edited October 21, 2018 by Filippo

[475513a]

Is there a chance to make SCS AI Scripts compatible with SR? As is, Clerics cast Cure Light Wounds out of combat, but none of the other heals. They also do that even if the character is cursed and unhealable, wasting their spells. Clerics never heal themselves. Goodberries are eaten but not casted (by my Ranger, at least). Sorcerers don't pre-cast anything at all, not stoneskin, not mage armor (not sure if it's vanilla SCS behavior or not). Would be great if Druids and Rangers could cast regen spells out of combat too, just check if any of the characters are wounded and has regen status, if not use lowest available regen spell tier.

 

SCS has pre-cast Death Ward and Chaos Command option, would be great if its use with SR's Wondrous Recall could be automated somewhat (e.g. a cleric with 2 Wondrous Recalls + 2 Chaos Commands should be able to buff the whole party with CC with a shortcut).

Edited October 29, 2018 by 475513a

[KronoKinesis]

Hi, here to offer some feedback.

First off, this mod is superb, the changes to druid spells especially are A+

One thing I dislike is that cure spells heal WAY too much damage. I was initially attracted to this mod because it changed the spells to work a lot closer to their PnP versions, for the most part. Which it does a brilliant job of. However, I noticed that the balance on most damage spells remained the same - some scale much better than before but for the most part the average damage to be found at each spell level was not changed significantly. The curing is much, much more powerful than before compared to damage dealing spells though. Both in PnP and the Infinity Engine DnD games, one of the basic design philosophies is that healing effects should be strictly and always inferior to damage effects of the same level - the idea is that healing is largely something to be done *out* of combat, and your clerics/druids etc should be more encouraged to cast buffs or defenses that prevent the damage in the first place. The formula was this: 1d8 rolled per spell level, +1 per level with a cap of x5 the spell level. So Cure Moderate, for example, would do 2d8+1/level, max +10. In SR it's a lot higher, with a more noticeable difference the higher in spell levels you go. They also all seem to all cap out at the same level, which I find rather odd.

Vanilla BG holds up to this "healing should be an inferior option" ideal, the seemingly random fixed values of the default cure spells are actually just the average that the PnP version would roll. But the averages skyrocket with SR and it understandably gunks with the balance of a LOT of other spells.

If this is intended behavior, then cool! If possible please let me know how to make the changes I would like to my own game, I'm guessing with NearInfinity or something. Although if not I would strongly recommend toning down the cure spells, as they are far too good right now.

[DavidW]

This isn’t quite correct. The 1d8 per spell level +1 per caster level is from 3rd edition D&D, but the Infinity Engine games are mostly based on 2nd edition, albeit with a smattering of 3rd edition influence.

 

In 2nd edition AD&D, there are Cure spells at levels 1, 4 and 5, healing 1d8 hp, 2d8+1 hp, and 3d8+3 hp respectively, independent of caster level. The BG spells just assume maximum results: hence 8 hp for Cure Light, 17 for Cure Serious, 27 for Cure Critical. BG2 and IWD introduce new 2nd and 3rd level spells and basically interpolate their effects from the 1st and 4th level spells.

 

As for design philosophy, AD&D is a lot of fun and I had some great times with it, but I think it’s implausible to read anything much in the way of systematic goals and structure into its fairly arbitrary design choices!

[KronoKinesis]

This isn’t quite correct. The 1d8 per spell level +1 per caster level is from 3rd edition D&D, but the Infinity Engine games are mostly based on 2nd edition, albeit with a smattering of 3rd edition influence.

 

In 2nd edition AD&D, there are Cure spells at levels 1, 4 and 5, healing 1d8 hp, 2d8+1 hp, and 3d8+3 hp respectively, independent of caster level. The BG spells just assume maximum results: hence 8 hp for Cure Light, 17 for Cure Serious, 27 for Cure Critical. BG2 and IWD introduce new 2nd and 3rd level spells and basically interpolate their effects from the 1st and 4th level spells.

 

As for design philosophy, AD&D is a lot of fun and I had some great times with it, but I think it’s implausible to read anything much in the way of systematic goals and structure into its fairly arbitrary design choices!

Ah, yes I was thinking of 3E there. Good catch. As for design philosophy, this was something stated by some of the developers at WotC - of course I can't find the link right now though.

 

Regardless, my opinion is still that they scale way too strongly. The average damage they can offset in SR has risen by a large percentage at almost all levels comparative to other changes

[kreso]

I would strongly recommend toning down the cure spells, as they are far too good right now.

You're the first person ever to say that I guess.

[DavidW]

On design philosophy: WotC definitely had a coherent design philosophy. But they didnt take over D&D until after TSR went bankrupt, right at the end of the 2nd edition era.

[TheLoneTremere]

More feedback gang, it seems secret word doesn't remove dispelling screen as it should, it seems you have to remove it with a breach or so.

 

Neither does spell thrust remove dispelling screen.

Edited January 6, 2019 by TheLoneTremere

[Relay]

Secret word is not meant to remove dispelling screen. Dispelling screen is there to protect against spells that remove specific and combat protections but it is not a spell protection itself so it should not be removed by a spell protection removal like secret word or spell thrust. It won't however, block any spell protection removal

For anyone who's unsure,

breach/dispel magic are meant to remove stoneskin (and similar defensive spells) ===> Dispelling screen protects against the first removal.

Spellthrust/secret word/spellstrike are meant to remove spell deflection (and similar spell protections) ===>  Spell shield protects against the first removal

 

The confusion with this tree comes because spell deflection also protects against breach (as well as any other single target spell) for balance reasons.
Here is a very simple example (without invisibility)

Mage is protected by

Stoneskin
Minor Spell Deflection
Dispelling screen

In order to wack the mage with a weapon your dispelling order would go like this

Dispel Magic ==> dispelling screen dissipates
Secret word ==> Minor spell deflection drops
Breach ==> Stoneskin removed

 

If anyone is interested I can do a more indepth mage dispelling flowchart using some of the SCS mages with many more layers protecting their stoneskins
 

 

 

[TheLoneTremere]

4 hours ago, Relay said:

Secret word is not meant to remove dispelling screen. Dispelling screen is there to protect against spells that remove specific and combat protections but it is not a spell protection itself so it should not be removed by a spell protection removal like secret word or spell thrust. It won't however, block any spell protection removal

For anyone who's unsure,

breach/dispel magic are meant to remove stoneskin (and similar defensive spells) ===> Dispelling screen protects against the first removal.

Spellthrust/secret word/spellstrike are meant to remove spell deflection (and similar spell protections) ===>  Spell shield protects against the first removal

 

The confusion with this tree comes because spell deflection also protects against breach (as well as any other single target spell) for balance reasons.
Here is a very simple example (without invisibility)

Mage is protected by

Stoneskin
Minor Spell Deflection
Dispelling screen

In order to wack the mage with a weapon your dispelling order would go like this

Dispel Magic ==> dispelling screen dissipates
Secret word ==> Minor spell deflection drops
Breach ==> Stoneskin removed

 

If anyone is interested I can do a more indepth mage dispelling flowchart using some of the SCS mages with many more layers protecting their stoneskins
 

 

 

 

I was just confused because spell thrust/secret word in their descriptions were telling me otherwise. Maybe a mistake then.

[Jarno Mikkola]

5 hours ago, Relay said:

....

If anyone is interested I can do a more indepth mage dispelling flowchart using some of the SCS mages with many more layers protecting their stoneskins

2

Well, there's a few posts that link into here, where the list is. But there's still no PINNED TOPIC that ought to show the MAP as a document.

As you can probably see, this list is OLD and but feature " Dispelling screen".

But NO illusion spells. Or their counters. It's like they were never a feature.

Edited January 7, 2019 by Jarno Mikkola

[Bartimaeus]

Oh my, you're quite right, antimagic attacks do mention removing Dispelling Screen when it shouldn't (applies to both SR and SRR). Thanks! Dispelling Screen also mentions that it is dispelled as a "specific protection" by the likes of Pierce Shield and Spellstrike...but uh, neither of those two actually do that - Pierce Shield breaches combat protections, not specific protections, while Spellstrike should not be affecting specific or combat protections, either. However, nevertheless, kreso's code still patches both of these spells to remove the Dispelling Screen sectype, which I'm really not sure that they should.

Edited January 7, 2019 by Bartimaeus

[TheLoneTremere]

I'm trying for the life of me remember where this spell came from, it seems that SCS didn't change this in anyway, so i'd figure i would post this on here. The spell in question is emotion:dispair.

 

 

spwi411.spl

[Guest Danacm]

Hi im new there. I tried this mod and it has a lots potential. 

Some questions. Shouldnt be not too op to forbid attack under time stop ? I really dislike this ability because its no counterplay with devour brain combo. 

Absolut immunity and protection from magical weapons are op as hell, regardless of short duration. Can it modified smthing else ability ?