Protection Against Dispel Magic

[VagPen]

I am not underleveled. In fact i am over lvl 20 when facing most of the Liches. I can solo ScS without a problem. Timestop is not an issue when your buffs up because Lich can dispel X amount of your buff in a given time. Not all of your buffs. Especially when you can cast spell shield after timestop ends. With SR all of your buffs are dispelled by a level 3 spell which you can't prevent from in any way.

Liches in SCS are what, 29lvl mages? And dispel magic's success is based on caster level difference, right?

[Hicuty]

 

I am not underleveled. In fact i am over lvl 20 when facing most of the Liches. I can solo ScS without a problem. Timestop is not an issue when your buffs up because Lich can dispel X amount of your buff in a given time. Not all of your buffs. Especially when you can cast spell shield after timestop ends. With SR all of your buffs are dispelled by a level 3 spell which you can't prevent from in any way.

Liches in SCS are what, 29lvl mages? And dispel magic's success is based on caster level difference, right?

 

So what does it mean? Do i need to hit exp cap to fight them? There are a lot of liches triggered as encounter in SoA when you past level 15. You have no chance but to fight. In fact, only in temple ruins, you encounter 2.

Edited October 4, 2018 by Hicuty

[Jarno Mikkola]

Dispelling Screen: Personal - only affect caster and Dispelling Screen (AoE)

In alternative...

I could see this to work... but it's better to use two .spl files and in so doing guarantee what happens in each case. The two spell selection can work, but it's more work for the player to click on things... mostly, cause the GUI is bad(or rather how it works is bad).

 

Liches in SCS are what, 29lvl mages? And dispel magic's success is based on caster level difference, right?

Which is why it's good to limit the DM to power level 5. This make it so it can't dispel say Spell Trap.

[VagPen]

 

 

I am not underleveled. In fact i am over lvl 20 when facing most of the Liches. I can solo ScS without a problem. Timestop is not an issue when your buffs up because Lich can dispel X amount of your buff in a given time. Not all of your buffs. Especially when you can cast spell shield after timestop ends. With SR all of your buffs are dispelled by a level 3 spell which you can't prevent from in any way.

Liches in SCS are what, 29lvl mages? And dispel magic's success is based on caster level difference, right?

 

So what does it mean? Do i need to hit exp cap to fight them? There are a lot of liches triggered as encounter in SoA when you past level 15. You have no chance but to fight. In fact, only in temple ruins, you encounter 2.

 

I am just not sure if these fights are even doable with a solo arcane caster without ProUndead OR 9lvl spells.

Edited October 4, 2018 by VagPen

[Hicuty]

They are doable in a normal SCS install. But not with SR.

Edited October 4, 2018 by Hicuty

[subtledoctor]

 

 

I am not underleveled. In fact i am over lvl 20 when facing most of the Liches. I can solo ScS without a problem. Timestop is not an issue when your buffs up because Lich can dispel X amount of your buff in a given time. Not all of your buffs. Especially when you can cast spell shield after timestop ends. With SR all of your buffs are dispelled by a level 3 spell which you can't prevent from in any way.

Liches in SCS are what, 29lvl mages? And dispel magic's success is based on caster level difference, right?

 

So what does it mean? Do i need to hit exp cap to fight them? There are a lot of liches triggered as encounter in SoA when you past level 15. You have no chance but to fight. In fact, only in temple ruins, you encounter 2.

 

I mean... yes? The Lich just about hit the XP cap... you have 3 million XP and you expect to be able to take down an opponent with 8 million XP? Who also has undead and lich immunities? It seems unrealistic... it seems like it should be unrealistic.

Edited October 4, 2018 by subtledoctor

[Wyrd]

 

 

I mean... yes? The Lich just about hit the XP cap... you have 3 million XP and you expect to be able to take down an opponent with 8 million XP? Who also has undead and lich immunities? It seems unrealistic... it seems like it should be unrealistic.

 

If we were talking P&P I'd agree with you, but this is a game, and SoA throws epic level liches in your face when you are long away from XP cap and expect you to win. After all If it's unrealistic that a lv 20 wizard defeats a epic lich, then it is also unrealistic that a 14 level six man party or something like that defeats said epic lich.

 

All imho of course.

Edited October 4, 2018 by Wyrd

[subtledoctor]

 

• Don't let DM/RM be an exception to (M)GoI, thereby protecting you from its effects. The effect is that your GoI must be dispelled by normal antimagic (Secret Word et al.) before DM/RM can be cast upon you.
• Make Dispelling Screen single target (self-target only?) and not be dispelled if DM/RM is cast upon you. Same as above, but with DS instead of the GoIs.

2. It sounds great. That would make GoI a decent spell pick.

 

Re: 2) - but MGOI blocks DM/RM, what is the point of Dispelling Screen? It seems strictly inferior.

 

Or, I guess, it would become another layer of protection? You would have to Pierce the GOI, and the Dispel the Dispelling Screen? Not sure I like the idea of adding more layers to this onion...

 

3. Dispelling screen can still be aoe but caster get the benefit of immunity for a duration.

I swear I've seen kreso post around here about Screen giving one "charge" of protection to allies while giving an indelible, duration-based protection to the caster via a subspell. With pictures, even! I even thought that was the current behavior in 4b15. But I can't find it now.

 

 

Best I can think is, make GOI set the detectable state for SI:Abj so SCS won't use DM against it. But it will use ST/SW/PM/etc. to remove the GOI, and then it can use DM to remove buffs. Of course even then you might still have a Dispelling Screen up, so DM still wouldn't work... eh, this might take things too far in the other direction.

This wont work: on SR installs SCS doesnt check for SI:Abjuration.

 

Does this mean giving Dispelling Screen a duration, instead of having it disappear after the first RM, is also off the table? Because the more I think about this issue, the more I think that's the best solution. Have DS give a few rounds (3-5... a magical analogue to PFMW/Ab. Immunity?), rather than being canceled by the first RM that hits. Probably should be caster only; or as I say give allies one "charge" of immunity and a duration for the caster. This would make it more like vanilla SI:Abj against RM only, without modelling the stupid vanilla SI behavior of blocking the entire spell school.

Edited October 4, 2018 by subtledoctor

[DavidW]

Just to be clear from an SCS perspective: I will code (indeed, basically have coded) SCS v32 to match the spell system in SR v4b15 if it’s installed.

 

I will not subsequently be changing the way SCS reacts to SR, until and unless there is a new “official” release of SR (i.e. a proper v4). I don’t want to chase a moving target.

 

I’d also recommend reading (at least the first page of) the “revised SCS” thread; it’s clear from there that at least Kreso, and probably also Demi, were just fine, rightly or wrongly, with SR making solo play very difficult.

[subtledoctor]

Just to be clear from an SCS perspective: I will code (indeed, basically have coded) SCS v32 to match the spell system in SR v4b15 if it’s installed.

 

I will not subsequently be changing the way SCS reacts to SR, until and unless there is a new “official” release of SR (i.e. a proper v4). I don’t want to chase a moving target.

Well since we (for admittedly vague values of "we," but at any rate Mike/Mad_Mate/myself, with input from Bartimaeus) are tooling around with getting a v4b16 out the door as a definitive, updated version of SR, and you are concurrently working on an update to SCS, I figure this is the time to hash these things out. That's why I, at least, am here talking about this.

On this specific issue, I have to ask what the upside is to removing the normal SCS behavior in detecting SI:Abj. I take it that basically, without SR, if SCS detects SI: Abj, it will not cast RM or other abjuration spells against the player. (Setting aside the Pierce Magic family which bypass SI:Abj.)

 

Now, with SR 4b15+, the replacement for SI:Abj, Dispelling Screen, is not detectable as SI:Abj. The AI is more or less meant to cast RM at it, to remove the Screen. I don't believe there are any spells available to the player which are detectable as SI:Abj. So leaving the typical SCS response to detecting it has no effect - there is no downside. Whereas, it clearly has some upside, in that players or modders can tweak how they want the game to behave if they want to exploit that. Like, maybe SR 4b17 will want to give Dispelling Screen a duration, and of course we don't want SCS to waste castings of RM against that. So we could make it detectable and SCS would behave as expected and all would be well.

 

So this seems like a "less is more" situation as far as adapting SCS to SR. (Of course please correct me if any of my premises are inaccurate. It's hard to reason this stuff out when we don't know the basic behavior we're dealing with.)

I’d also recommend reading (at least the first page of) the “revised SCS” thread; it’s clear from there that at least Kreso, and probably also Demi, were just fine, rightly or wrongly, with SR making solo play very difficult.

I was actually just reading that, with approval. kreso made a lot of good strides there. Using his "revised" SCS has led to the most fun versions of these games that I've played. Stuff like targeting when Deflections are up, etc. Even his "pre-summoning" which has been controversial - I think it's usually pretty reasonable given the in-game circumstances, and it's not too hair-raising when you take basilisks out of the mix (which 4b16 is doing).

[DavidW]

Well since we (for admittedly vague values of "we," but at any rate Mike/Mad_Mate/myself, with input from Bartimaeus) are tooling around with getting a v4b16 out the door as a definitive, updated version of SR, and you are concurrently working on an update to SCS, I figure this is the time to hash these things out. That's why I, at least, am here talking about this.

Makes sense. But if you're going to do a "definitive, updated version", shouldn't it just be v4, not yet another beta?

 

On this specific issue, I have to ask what the upside is to removing the normal SCS behavior in detecting SI:Abj.

Two reasons:

 

1) It saves me maybe 20-50 lines of code in every mage script. Which might not seem to matter in a 10,000 line script, but I only keep SCS scripts as short as that by trying to be disciplined about avoiding bloat. (And leaving out all the SI detection lines on SR installs probably saves me several hundred lines on average.)

 

2) As a matter of good coding practice, I'm not leaving pieces in the code that don't have a clearly identified purpose. That leads to confusion and bugs. In particular, if SCS mages respond in a certain way to enemy spellcasting, I want that to happen because I've intentionally decided it should happen, not as a consequence of SCS's behavior effectively being hacked by another mod. Otherwise I will lose track of how the system is actually supposed to work.

 

If v4 is actually released, and it turns out that I need to avoid Minor Globes when casting Dispel Magic on SR installs, that can always be done just by checking for MINORGLOBE. (But in any case, I don't want to make that change until it is actually necessary in response to something implemented in an official, released version of the mod - after all, this whole conversation is the result of a post made less than 24 hours ago, and for all I know it will dissolve like smoke in another 24 hours.)

Edited October 4, 2018 by DavidW

[subtledoctor]

if you're going to do a "definitive, updated version", shouldn't it just be v4, not yet another beta?

I can do (have done) some work to get it ready for that. But only Demi, Mike, Ardanis, and/or kreso can really make that determination.

 

Realistically, Demi and kreso aren't around and Mike and Ardanis have other responsibilities and aren't directly working on SR. So while the ship may seem rudderless, it is actually good in one sense: the work being done now is solely in the spirit of implementing Demi's and kreso's desires as expressed in their last posts. The talk about Dispelling Screen, and Monster Summoning 9, and Haste and a couple other spells, is talk about spells that have been up in the air and experimented with for as long as v4 has been around. These are, in other words, the only remaining issues still to be decided. Once they are decided, neither I nor Mad_Mate want to go changing things or adding new features. (Bartimaeus may feel otherwise be he can make what changes he wants in his SRR project.) We are looking at the prospect, in other words, of finally having a really definitive version of SRv4. Not because anyone is going to put it up on a pedestal, but simply because there will be nothing left to do without risking violation of the authors' intent.

 

So, like I say, especially since SCS is now also seeing some active work, this seems an ideal time to make some of those final decisions and call it a day. (Maybe it's worth making a thread just for that purpose...)

[Bartimaeus]

>Bartimaeus may feel otherwise be he can make what changes he wants in his SRR project

 

Not really a concern, since I'm not interested in making anything that breaks SCS, which means that even if I wanted to change some stuff, SCS compatibility (and therefore staying true to SR) is more important. Also not really a concern since it's my personal project, and nothing that SCS should worry about to begin with.

 

Dispelling Screen if (M)GoI gives immunity to DM/RM: It still serves a purpose, since it acts as an additional layer of defense for the mage, as well as the *only* defense for other characters. DM and RM are big AoE spells that are frequently cast by SCS, after all, and having no defense, even a single line of it, for your fighters is probably more devastating on an encounter-by-encounter basis than the lack of a more "complete" protection in our theoretical (M)GoI.

 

Dispelling Screen providing special protection for caster: This seems like a weird solution to me. Creating a specialized version of the spell that only affects the caster while no-one else in the AoE seems...atypical of sensible spell design. I definitely would not want this principle applied to other AoE buffs and protections, so I would probably not want it applied here. Ultimately, I would accept if it that's what people really wanted, but I'd definitely prefer the idea above.

Edited October 4, 2018 by Bartimaeus

[subtledoctor]

>Bartimaeus may feel otherwise be he can make what changes he wants in his SRR project

 

Not really a concern, since I'm not interested in making anything that breaks SCS,

 

I only meant that you are willing to consider changes that Demi et al. have not considered and/or will not consider (I consider such things too, I made a mod for them!). So SRR may not break SCS, but it will still be a moving target generally speaking. Whereas, SR is likely to become ossified in something very close to its current form.

 

Dispelling Screen if (M)GoI gives immunity to DM/RM: It still serves a purpose, since it acts as an additional layer of defense for the mage, as well as the *only* defense for other characters. DM and RM are big AoE spells that are frequently cast by SCS, after all, and having no defense, even a single line of it, for your fighters is probably more devastating on an encounter-by-encounter basis than the lack of a more "complete" protection in our theoretical (M)GoI.

Well, GOI has an area of effect! So there actually is a way to protect your party members without Dispelling Screen.

 

Allowing (M)GOI to protect from RM would be a very, very big change. I know it's been discussed around here so I want to review what Demi et al. said about it before I come down in favor or against.

[Bartimaeus]

>Well, GOI has an area of effect! So there actually is a way to protect your party members without Dispelling Screen.

 

Uh, what now?

 

@664=~Globe of Invulnerability
Level: 6
School: Abjuration
Range: Personal
Duration: 1 round/level
Casting Time: 6
Area of Effect: Caster
Saving Throw: None

This spell creates an immobile, faintly shimmering magical sphere around the caster that prevents any 1st-, 2nd-, 3rd- or 4th-level spell effects from penetrating (i.e., the area of effect of any such spells does not include the area of the globe of invulnerability). This includes innate abilities and effects from devices. However, any type of spell can be cast out of the magical sphere, and these pass from the caster of the globe to their subject without affecting the globe. Fifth and higher level spells are not affected by the globe. The globe can be brought down by a successful dispel magic spell, as well as other forms of magical attack such as Pierce Magic and Spellstrike.~

 

I'm pretty sure it does not.

Edited October 5, 2018 by Bartimaeus