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Opposite schools and specialist mages


subtledoctor

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I already tweaked Enchanter. (gains save vs spells bonuses, 1xday Free Action from level 11, immunity to Charm at 15th and is prohibited from Necromancy.

This would be better if done via patching code, but that's waaay beyond me. Anybody? You know, patch spells so Enchanter cant learn Necro/Evo, Conjurer can use Evo/Div, Necro can't Ench/Illusion etc. a la PnP?

I don't think it would be very hard to do that, it would probably be very similar to patching item usability. Or patching creature characteristics. Both of which I've learned to do recently. That stuff is probably not appropriate for this Fighter thread but I could consider making a component for that in my mod (and then giving you the code to play with.)

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I already tweaked Enchanter. (gains save vs spells bonuses, 1xday Free Action from level 11, immunity to Charm at 15th and is prohibited from Necromancy.

This would be better if done via patching code, but that's waaay beyond me. Anybody? You know, patch spells so Enchanter cant learn Necro/Evo, Conjurer can use Evo/Div, Necro can't Ench/Illusion etc. a la PnP?

I don't think it would be very hard to do that, it would probably be very similar to patching item usability. Or patching creature characteristics. Both of which I've learned to do recently. That stuff is probably not appropriate for this Fighter thread but I could consider making a component for that in my mod (and then giving you the code to play with.)

Well, let's take an example, the Fireball spell(spwi304.spl), exclude it from Conjurer, cause Edwin should not be using the spell, also you need to patch the NPCs... he couldn't in BG1, because of the ruleset it had, but in BG2 it suddently is possible... so to it then, the .spl part:

    COPY_EXISTING ~spwi304.spl~ ~override~                        //each individual spell you wish to patch
    PATCH_IF (SOURCE_SIZE > 0x71) THEN BEGIN                         // protects against invalid files
      READ_LONG  0x001e ~spellusability~
      PATCH_IF ("%spellusability%" AND 0b100000000 != 0b100000000) BEGIN
      WRITE_LONG ~0x001e~ ~spellusability + 0b100000000~                 //reference: http://iesdp.gibberlings3.net/file_formats/ie_formats/spl_v1.htm#Exclusion_Flags aka bite 9 is the 1 in the 9th binary digit.
    BUT_ONLY

You could make a larger than life macro out of this with ANDs, BOR's etc that does the correct things for all the inclusion and exclusions you need to the .spl file, or you can include and exclude specific spell files one at a time, and then you have to do the scroll editing too.

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t I could consider making a component for that in my mod (and then giving you the code to play with.)

 

Making a component would be great (i.e. read spell school, than mark both spell and spell scroll as unusable by opposition specialist schools). Do you need info about what specialists are banned from specific schools?

Keep in mind; this is a drastic nerf to some schools (I don't think many people would use this).

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t I could consider making a component for that in my mod (and then giving you the code to play with.)

 

Making a component would be great (i.e. read spell school, than mark both spell and spell scroll as unusable by opposition specialist schools). Do you need info about what specialists are banned from specific schools?

Keep in mind; this is a drastic nerf to some schools (I don't think many people would use this).

Well, if you balance them out properly, not according to PnP or the original:

- Abjurer: Cannot scribe/cast Alteration(Transmuter) spells

- Conjurer: Cannot scribe/cast Divination spells

- Diviner: Cannot scribe/cast Conjuration spells

- Enchanter: Cannot scribe/cast Invocation spells

- Illusionist: Cannot scribe/cast Necromancy spells

- Invoker: Cannot scribe/cast Enchantment/Conjuration spells

- Necromancer: Cannot scribe/cast Illusion spells

- Transmuter: Cannot scribe/cast Abjuration spells

where the invoker was the only real looser...

... but make 4 pairs of opposites, it should be fine, unlike it's now where one school has multiple and others have just one.

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- Conjurer: Cannot scribe/cast Divination spells

- Diviner: Cannot scribe/cast Conjuration spells

- Enchanter: Cannot scribe/cast Invocation spells

- Illusionist: Cannot scribe/cast Necromancy spells

- Invoker: Cannot scribe/cast Enchantment/Conjuration spells

- Necromancer: Cannot scribe/cast Illusion spells

- Transmuter: Cannot scribe/cast Abjuration spells

 

 

 

- Abjurer - Alteration & Illusion

- Conjurer - Invocation & Divination

- Enchanter - Invocation & Necromancy

- Diviner - Conjuration & Abjuration

- Illusionist - Necromancy & Invocation

- Invoker - Enchantement & Conjuration

- Necromancer - Illusion & Enchantement

- Transmuter - Necromancy & Abjuration

 

This would probably make little to no sense without Spell Revisions, and some specialists (Transmuter, Diviner, Conjurer) would be severely gimped. Enchanter would have no low level damage apart Chromatic Orb, Acid/Flame Arrow.

I'd love it, but I'm fairly sure plenty people wouldn't... :rolleyes:

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Well my mod is described as a "post-hac tweak mod," very much designed to be applied after stuff like IWDification and SR. I could even make installation of this component contingent on the presence of SR.

 

As for implementation, it would be pretty easy to go through every spell and apply a patch to exclude the chosen specialists, and then do the same for scrolls. (Scrolls might be a bit trickier, but it should be doable.)

 

As Jarno points out though, fixing the spell books of every .cre in the game is another matter altogether, probably more work than it's worth. I would limit such corrections to joinable NPCs and let SCS deal with enemies.

 

Feel free to hop over and discuss it more on my Dev thread, linked in my sig, if it isn't appropriate to talk about it in this Fighters thread. I'll be a week or so getting the next version of my mod out, but maybe I can turn to this around Thanksgiving. (I'll call it a wizard-focused update, I might also add a 'wild sorcerer' kit.)

 

(Btw isn't KR basically doing something like this? And I think Aquadrizzt's Tome & Blood mod does/will as well.)

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(I'll call it a wizard-focused update, I might also add a 'wild sorcerer' kit.)

A fair bit of warning, the wild mages 5% chance of a wild surge on any spell is hard coded to the kit in question, so you can't actually make a proper Wild Sorcerer. Yes, you can give the sorcerer the 3 pre made spells, but that's as wild as you are going to get. Without custom spells that have random out come, or spells that work or don't via the mechanic in spell immunity spell where you end up choosing one out of many possible. And that's not quite as much wild as you might thing.

 

I'd love it, but I'm fairly sure plenty people wouldn't... :rolleyes:

This is cause people usually like when you allow more possibilities instead of removing them.
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A fair bit of warning, the wild mages 5% chance of a wild surge on any spell is hard coded to the kit in question, so you can't actually make a proper Wild Sorcerer. Yes, you can give the sorcerer the 3 pre made spells, but that's as wild as you are going to get.

Some people messed with it a few months ago and reported that if you create a sorcerer kit with the wild mage unusability flag then it will have the standard chance for wild surges and changing casting level. Kind of like how thieves' backstabbing and points-per-level is determined by the kit unusability flags in vanilla BG2.

 

I haven't yet turned my attention to it to confirm or deny, but it sounds plausible. They might have even uploaded a proof-of-concept. Anyway we'll see in a couple weeks...

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(Btw isn't KR basically doing something like this? And I think Aquadrizzt's Tome & Blood mod does/will as well.)

I don't really think Demi would go that far as to block 2 schools, no. (?) Maybe for Edwin (due to his amulet).....

I also don't know if Tome & Blood is only EE. I've read about it now, seems it is. I don't want to mess with my current install now so I won't try to install it over (yet!).

It also seems to have some things I don't like (kits aren't really to my appeal, tbh - I don't know what sources Aquadrizzt used for kit specific bonuses but those aren't the ones I'd use). Sorcerer kits are very neat, however.

Basically, I don't need any kit changes. Those I plan to use I can add myself - just the patching component for spells.

 

 

As Jarno points out though, fixing the spell books of every .cre in the game is another matter altogether, probably more work than it's worth. I would limit such corrections to joinable NPCs and let SCS deal with enemies.

Well, I can easilly alter spells SCS uses to take into account whatever is done with mage kits before, and about vanilla game I don't really care too much (does it even have kitted mages?).

There's no need to fix spellbooks of every .cre in game, SCS already does that. NPCs would be nice ofc.

And yes, this is completely off-topic....

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My 2 cents on this matter.

 

Specialist mages should be defined by what they can do instead of what they cannot do. I'm keeping a single barred opposite school only because it helps the non-specialized True Mage, but if I had to write a D&D edition I actually wouldn't use the whole opposite school mechanic.

 

Right now picking a specialization is more about "which spells am I going to lose?", while I want players to say "I pick the Evoker because he has more powerful damaging spells", or "I want a Conjurer because his summons are more tough", etc.

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My 2 cents on this matter.

 

Specialist mages should be defined by what they can do instead of what they cannot do. I'm keeping a single barred opposite school only because it helps the non-specialized True Mage, but if I had to write a D&D edition I actually wouldn't use the whole opposite school mechanic.

 

Right now picking a specialization is more about "which spells am I going to lose?", while I want players to say "I pick the Evoker because he has more powerful damaging spells", or "I want a Conjurer because his summons are more tough", etc.

Part of that is about the BG2 implementation of D&D, though, rather than D&D itself - specifically, BG2 doesn't enforce the rule that your extra spell has to be from your speciality school.

 

(But I agree with the broader point, and it's very much what drives the way SCS handles specialists.)

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Btw kreso are you still interested in this? 5 months later, I have a component in my mod that does this in a dead-simple way - you can edit a simple text file to give any specialists whatever school exclusions you like. (I borrowed the method from the Tome & Blood guys.) I could chop it out as a standalone mini-mod.

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Btw kreso are you still interested in this? 5 months later, I have a component in my mod that does this in a dead-simple way - you can edit a simple text file to give any specialists whatever school exclusions you like. (I borrowed the method from the Tome & Blood guys.) I could chop it out as a standalone mini-mod.

Yes.

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Okay @kreso and @jarno (and anyone else, but they specifically asked me for this): here is a little mod that makes wizard spells act as kreso requested below. I borrowed the code from aquadrizzt of Tome and Blood over at the baldursgate.com forums - upon inspection I now see that he borrowed or adapted it from Mike1072...! I hope it's okay to be using it - Mike, please let me know if it's a problem.

 

It edits the school restriction flags for spells, and the usability flags for scrolls, with a check to work with and without SRv4. (Though I haven't checked it against the latest beta, some of the new spells like the MS stuff might not be included.) It's pretty well documented, I think, it should be fairly easy to change it to your liking - you just need to understand how to edit the spell restriction and item usability offsets. You can change opposition schools for each school by editing the .tp2 file. You can change which spell belongs to which school very simply, by editing the lists inside the /lib folder.

 

I daresay this could be done better - really it should first apply the school based on the lists, and then have a separate function to loop through all spells with that school and apply the restriction and text changes - that way it will find and modify even spells that aren't on the list, like new spells from other mods. No doubt Mike could make it massively more effective and efficient. But still, it's pretty good for now. With this as a skeleton, you can really mold the wizard spell schools to be however you want them to be... this is the foundation of my upcoming wizard kit overhaul. Enjoy.

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/86011511/opp%20schools%20mod.zip

 

- Abjurer - Alteration & Illusion

- Conjurer - Invocation & Divination

- Enchanter - Invocation & Necromancy

- Diviner - Conjuration & Abjuration

- Illusionist - Necromancy & Invocation

- Invoker - Enchantement & Conjuration

- Necromancer - Illusion & Enchantement

- Transmuter - Necromancy & Abjuration

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