humble suggestions for DR

[yarpen]

http://www.sendspace.com/file/odvv9z

Done.

[Guest maanape]

Hi. I know it's an old post and DR has just came with v6, which means it will probably take a long time to a new release. But I would like to share some thoughts about the sphere system implementation, at least as it concerns to the PC. The problem is, instead of the NPCs, which have their race/alignment/class/kit choices set beforehand, the player must choose them at character creation and then the spheres should aply. But certain spells cannot be granted nor taken off only by alignment/god restrictions: a Watcher can be either good or evil, so spells as Harm, Animate Dead and Gate should not be granted to a good Watcher; on the other hand, lawful spells should not be granted to a chaotic Morninglord.

There is a way to go around this, returning some of the problematic spells to the vanilla alignment/class exclusion system. This way, one could be able to cast Bolt of Glory as a good aligned Silverstar, and prevent it from a chaotic neutral one, as well from Jaheira (if she's changed to Neutral Good). But, this leads to other problems: this mixed solution lets a good Battleguard to cast Bolt of Glory, which is undue by his/her minor sun sphere restriction. And for the evil spells, this would lead Viconia to cast Harm, as she could not. Same goes with the chaotic/lawful spells (Feywarden should be restricted to casting Chaotic Commands).

I say this affects mainly the PC because as per PnP rules, specialty priests cannot dual/multiclass, which leaves the majority of NPC priests as generic priests (Yeslick, Jaheira, Tiax, Quayle, Aerie, Anomen). Since generic priests usually have major acess to the spheres they get, one should only see improper spells granted to kitted characters (Branwen, Viconia, and the PC). But as new spells are added and new kits are offered it can turn out to become more evident. I think the problem could be solved generating the clabs "on the fly", at least at character creation. Don't know if it's possible, though.

[Mike1072]

Hi. I know it's an old post and DR has just came with v6, which means it will probably take a long time to a new release. But I would like to share some thoughts about the sphere system implementation, at least as it concerns to the PC. The problem is, instead of the NPCs, which have their race/alignment/class/kit choices set beforehand, the player must choose them at character creation and then the spheres should aply. But certain spells cannot be granted nor taken off only by alignment/god restrictions: a Watcher can be either good or evil, so spells as Harm, Animate Dead and Gate should not be granted to a good Watcher; on the other hand, lawful spells should not be granted to a chaotic Morninglord.

There is a way to go around this, returning some of the problematic spells to the vanilla alignment/class exclusion system. This way, one could be able to cast Bolt of Glory as a good aligned Silverstar, and prevent it from a chaotic neutral one, as well from Jaheira (if she's changed to Neutral Good). But, this leads to other problems: this mixed solution lets a good Battleguard to cast Bolt of Glory, which is undue by his/her minor sun sphere restriction. And for the evil spells, this would lead Viconia to cast Harm, as she could not. Same goes with the chaotic/lawful spells (Feywarden should be restricted to casting Chaotic Commands).

I say this affects mainly the PC because as per PnP rules, specialty priests cannot dual/multiclass, which leaves the majority of NPC priests as generic priests (Yeslick, Jaheira, Tiax, Quayle, Aerie, Anomen). Since generic priests usually have major acess to the spheres they get, one should only see improper spells granted to kitted characters (Branwen, Viconia, and the PC). But as new spells are added and new kits are offered it can turn out to become more evident. I think the problem could be solved generating the clabs "on the fly", at least at character creation. Don't know if it's possible, though.

From the readme:

Alignment now also plays a larger role in spell selection as the selection of spells considered 'good' and 'evil' has been expanded. The added wrinkle is that deity alignment now plays a role: if a spell is considered an 'evil' spell, your neutral deity may not grant it to you even if your character is evil. The biggest change on this front is that the harmful versions of necromantic spells (i.e. Cause Wounds, Slay Living, Harm, etc.) are now considered 'evil' spells, as they're treated in PnP. (Note that Oghma and Kossuth are the two exceptions--as they welcome followers of all alignments, they do not restrict granting spells based on their evil or good connotations, though your character's alignment will still apply.

However, it is technically possible to have the behaviour you describe, so maybe that option could be added as a tweak.

[Guest maanape]

From the readme:

Alignment now also plays a larger role in spell selection as the selection of spells considered 'good' and 'evil' has been expanded. The added wrinkle is that deity alignment now plays a role: if a spell is considered an 'evil' spell, your neutral deity may not grant it to you even if your character is evil. The biggest change on this front is that the harmful versions of necromantic spells (i.e. Cause Wounds, Slay Living, Harm, etc.) are now considered 'evil' spells, as they're treated in PnP. (Note that Oghma and Kossuth are the two exceptions--as they welcome followers of all alignments, they do not restrict granting spells based on their evil or good connotations, though your character's alignment will still apply.

However, it is technically possible to have the behaviour you describe, so maybe that option could be added as a tweak.

Yeah, but what option are you calling a tweak? Letting some spells out of the clabs and assigned due to alignment/class restrictions? If so, then maybe I've expressed myself bad. What I meant is: either with a pure sphere system install, or a mixed alignment/sphere install, there will be problems. The way it is now, the NPCs get all the due spells, but if the player choose to be a Watcher of Helm, will be granted the lawful spells, but being good or evil doesn't help to grant good or evil spells, as if all Watcher was in fact always neutral. The same goes with Lathander, when it comes to chaotic or lawful spells, since the only requisite to being a Morninglord is sticking with good alignment. This means all specialty priest will be forced to actually have spells as if being neutral in some alignment axis.

The mixed system, as I said, could solve this, but have the problem of granting major spells to specialty priests which must not have it: Feywardens getting major chaotic spells, Nightcloaks getting major "evil" healing spells, and so on. And I can't think of a unique way to solve this problem without either nerfing the PC or messing with the kitted NPCs. I choose the latter because there's few vanilla NPCs elegible to kits, and it doesn't improperly restrict the spell choices of the PC. But to do so I had to revert many changes made by DR, at spell level and with the clabs.

[Mike1072]

Right now, there are two alignment restrictions on spells: the character's and their deity's. If either the character's alignment or their deity's forbids a spell, they aren't able to use it. So, all Watchers of Helm are prevented from using False Dawn (which is good-only), but only evil Watchers are prevented from using Holy Word (which is good- and neutral-only). If you removed the deity restrictions, good Watchers would be able to use False Dawn.

 

To make this change for all DR kits, you'd just have to comment out or remove these lines in the .tp2:

 

LAUNCH_PATCH_MACRO ~spell_remove_good~

LAUNCH_PATCH_MACRO ~spell_remove_neutral~

LAUNCH_PATCH_MACRO ~spell_remove_evil~

[Guest maanape]

Yes, but this character/deity alignment restriction only functions properly to NPCs. Since there's no way to know if a Watcher PC will be Good or Evil, or a Morninglord will be Chaotic or Lawful, the clabs must be set to either allow all spells (this way granting the good Watcher PC evil spells, and the evil Watcher good spells, and the same to Morninglords regarding to Law/Chaos axis), or excluding alignment required spells altogether (this way making the PC character effectively Neutral).

The problem I see is that this situation forces editing the mod at almost a spell-by-spell basis, which tends to aggravate as long as other mod's spells are created and intended to integrate under the Sphere System. I'm talking about Galactygon's Spellpack, which I think expands greatly the Priest spell pool, and improves the Druids with elemental spells. This would be great to see under the sphere system, but then, every time a new release comes out, one must redo all the clabs and reassign the spells to match the renamed ones and add the new. I know you Divine Remix guys cannot handle how every new mod spell may integrate with sphere system, but the increasing number of new spells makes the inconsistencies I pointed even more difficult to ignore. As this causes "spell leaking" from the sphere restrictions, maybe you could think of a way to prevent this...

[Mike1072]

Yes, but this character/deity alignment restriction only functions properly to NPCs. Since there's no way to know if a Watcher PC will be Good or Evil

There is a way, and the mod uses it already. Each kit's CLAB applies a spell at each level-up that casts EFFs based on the character's alignment to remove inappropriate spells.

[Guest maanape]

You're right. I just oversighted that. This spell completely cleans up inapropriate spells, so I think it's up to me to go and insert the spells from Spellpack which need to be reasigned. But this makes me think: it would be much more easy to tweak the spells if they weren't hardcoded into the .spl, but instead stored in a .2da, don't you agree? This could very well result in a single spell list shared by every mod wanting to grant spells through the sphere system, in a manner much alike to what Infinity Animations does with regards to animations. This could even prevent duplicate spells, and mods could refer to the list to improve compatibility. Divine Remix could be breaked into two mods, one with only the vanilla sphere system, intended to be instaled before other new spell mods, and then the actual Divine Remix, with the kits. This way, after other mods had inserted new spells at each corresponding sphere, kitted priests could benefit from new spells. I think the sphere system could become the pattern to be followed by every BG spell mods.