Protection Against Dispel Magic

[DavidW]

From an average player's perspective, SCS alone is functionally close enough to SR that I would lump them together.

Insofar as that's true, the academic in me would want to take issue with you referring to "SR"'s spell system, since I got there first and SR originally built its system very closely around SCS (largely because Demi wanted to maintain SCS compatibility) and has only later wandered away. But actually I think the changes are by now fairly significant:

 

1) SR's approach to Improved Invisibility is actually a major change to the system, because an SR wizard with Detect Invisibility running can cast *Breach* at an invisible enemy, and doesn't need to do anything to drop that enemy's anti-invisibility protections. In SCS, Improved Invisibility is one of the two ways in which wizards block Breach (the other being spell-defense spells that can be dropped by Ruby Ray and friends), and in turn blocking Breach is the key to survival. Improved Invisibility requires True Sight or Oracle to drop (both of which are relatively high level), can be protected by SI:Divination, and can be put back up again. None of that works out in SR. (The existence of SI:Div isn't the point - SR's Nondetection is functionally identical - it's that Detect Invisible targets the *player* and can't be blocked, either by protections or by recasting Invisibility). So for better or for worse, SR's approach to invisibility really changes the game. Now I can take down a lich pretty quickly at high levels, for instance, by Spellstrike + Breach + Sarevok (perhaps +1 spell if I need to clear out a Spell Shield). The extra chunk of action economy required to drop the lich's (probable) II or Shadow Door makes a material difference.

 

2) As you note, SR cuts a big hole in SCS's spell system by removing SI:Abjuration. I don't agree that spell's a silver bullet (not least because it's self-only, so no use for party play) but it does fill an important niche, especially for solo players.

 

3) Spell Deflection and Spell Turning are in principle importantly different because you can burn spell slots to get through Spell Deflection but you can't do that with Spell Turning unless you're immune to your own attacks (and even then, you're burning down your own spell slots). Spell Trap and Spell Turning differ in occasional situations only (a glabrezu at full hit points might spam PW:Stun to drop Spell Turning, but not Spell Trap). These are differences that v31 and below of SCS haven't really exploited, to be sure.

 

 

On a couple of details:

 

 

Further, I know SCS doesn't cheat but I'd call this borderline due to the mechanics of opcode 58. Players cannot ever hope to resist being dispelled by high-level enemy casters; and they cannot ever hope to dispel high-level enemy casters. RM is a silver bullet which is, de facto, available to the AI and unavailable to players.

"Cheat" means that player and enemy use the same 'laws of physics', so I take issue with the idea that this is a borderline case (even more so since this is an implementation of by-the-book AD&D). Lots of spells in BG2 get more powerful with level; RM is one of them; I don't see it as cheating any more than it's cheating for enemy Horrid Wiltings to do more damage than yours.

 

I also don't think it's correct that RM is 'de facto, available to the AI and unavailable to players'. I agree that's true in what's probably the most iconic SCS context - a single super-high-level mage against a party - but it won't be true in: (i) many party-vs-party encounters, at all stages of the game; (ii) combat with fiends, especially in the late game; (iii) many solo-play situations, where the PC is much higher level than the normal calibration; (iv) for bards, who are significantly higher level than same-XP mages.

 

 

antimagic attacks can penetrate improved invisibility;

This is neither here nor there, but that bit always bothered me about SCS.

 

The in-game spell descriptions say that the spells have a small area effect, and that that's why it works. Earlier implementations of this tweak actually worked that way (and so were perfectly legal in the normal system), but it can be a bit fiddly, and advantages the AI in certain ways - hence the current implementation, which relies on ToBEx or EE. The name should probably be 'bypass' or something, not 'penetrate'. (But, as I discuss above, moving to SR's system would quite radically change the spell-combat structure, so I'm not going to do it in core SR even though I think it's elegant. I have implemented it in v32's SR support.)

[Jarno Mikkola]

"Cheat" means that player and enemy use the same 'laws of physics', so I take issue with....

Yeah, so when and what exactly did the Liches do to earn their super powers to get to level 29 ? That's just a number for them, but for the player, it's their experience in the game. So you are OK with the player then cheating their chars to level 50 ? Good, cause in that case, the whole thing is easy to have already to been solved. But then why would one even need to fight against the liches, cause it's not like they can provide anymore XP.

This is why the whole make DM & RM capped at level z is a good solution. Yeah, the bards get a few level ahead of mages, but it's no +10 levels at level 20. Or that would be broken. And Kit Revision intends to set the levels to be the very same for all the classes, that of the Paladins progression. Even to Fighters.

And let's not forget that most spells power is capped, the Fireballs damage is capped to 10d6 damage. The Lightning Bolt is capped at 20d6 if memory serves in SR. They don't progress beyond. But the DM&RM do ? Why ?

[DavidW]

 

"Cheat" means that player and enemy use the same 'laws of physics', so I take issue with....

Yeah, so when and what exactly did the Liches do to earn their super powers to get to level 29 ?

 

Through long years of study, one assumes.

 

So you are OK with the player then cheating their chars to level 50 ?

I have always been fine with people cheating if they want to. To quote Wes Weimer, "I'm not the police".

[kreso]

1) Now I can take down a lich pretty quickly at high levels, for instance, by Spellstrike + Breach + Sarevok (perhaps +1 spell if I need to clear out a Spell Shield). The extra chunk of action economy required to drop the lich's (probable) II or Shadow Door makes a material difference.

Breach doesn't affect Liches in SR, you'd need Pierce Shield for that. Also, True seeing in SR only allows the mage who cast it to debuff imp.invisible mages. It also doesn't dispel II (so you keep +4 AC/saves/untargetability to all beside True Seeing caster).

From my experience, it takes a while to kill a Lich in this setup unless you're under Alacrity+Vecna robe.

They start virtually invulnerable, open with Time Stop (or two), summon a Planetar so your mage can't do anything for a round apart cast PfMW.

Of course, this may depend on install options (HLAs in SoA, prebuff options etc.). I play with full prebuff + HLAs for everyone who can use them; and Liches ended more of my gaming runs than pretty much everything else combined.

[DavidW]

Thats certainly interesting to hear. And I wasnt particularly trying to argue that SRs system doesnt work, only that its got some important differences from vanilla + SCS tweaks.

[subtledoctor]

the academic in me would want to take issue with you referring to "SR"'s spell system, since I got there first and SR originally built its system very closely around SCS (largely because Demi wanted to maintain SCS compatibility) and has only later wandered away. But actually I think the changes are by now fairly significant:

 

1) SR's approach to Improved Invisibility is actually a major change to the system, because an SR wizard with Detect Invisibility running can cast *Breach* at an invisible enemy, and doesn't need to do anything to drop that enemy's anti-invisibility protections. In SCS, Improved Invisibility is one of the two ways in which wizards block Breach

I didn't mean to imply anything about the origin or creditworthiness of the setup; only that, specifically as far as spell protections vs. protection removals goes, SCS and SR are broadly similar:

- in both situations, every spell protection stacks with all the others (up to 7 layers of protection);

- in both situations, spell protections block Breach;

- in both situations, spell protections do not block DM/RM.

 

I more or less count the invisibility system as a parallel, separate-but-interacting system and I was ignoring it on purpose. There, SR is indeed different and unique. (And my mod takes it a step further, allowing See Invisible/True Sight to target-but-not-cancel normal invisibility in addition to Improved invisibility.)

 

3) Spell Deflection and Spell Turning are in principle importantly different because you can burn spell slots to get through Spell Deflection but you can't do that with Spell Turning unless you're immune to your own attacks (and even then, you're burning down your own spell slots). Spell Trap and Spell Turning differ in occasional situations only (a glabrezu at full hit points might spam PW:Stun to drop Spell Turning, but not Spell Trap). These are differences that v31 and below of SCS haven't really exploited, to be sure.

Well, except you could burn through Turning, if you really need to. Especially if, say, you have protection from fire, you could blast the enemy with Flame Arrow or Fireball... a few of those is enough to drop a Minor Turning, and it can be done pretty quickly if you have a pair of casters who are out of Spell Thrust/Secret Word. The broader point being, a human player is always going to be better at figuring out the right circumstances in which to do this, so this is an inherent (de facto, again) advantage for the player. This can be addressed in several ways, of course - having AoE spells weaken protections helps, as does having all protections use the same opcode (thus minimizing the circumstances in which it goes from a moderate advantage to a huge advantage). The little mod I just wrote experiments with taking it in a different direction: having the number of spell levels blocked matter more, rather than less. Playtesting will tell if that is a good idea.

 

I take issue with the idea that this is a borderline case (even more so since this is an implementation of by-the-book AD&D). Lots of spells in BG2 get more powerful with level; RM is one of them; I don't see it as cheating any more than it's cheating for enemy Horrid Wiltings to do more damage than yours.

Actually no, the player's ADHW and a lich's AHDW will both cap out at 20d8. Almost every spell in the game caps it advancement at 20dx. Dispel is an exception to this rule, which I've never seen adequately explained. That's why I say "de facto" - I don't think SCS does anything but play by the rules here... I'm just saying it plays by a rule which is, in many situations, inherently in favor of enemy wizards. And a rule which, in the context of SR, takes on increased importance. (Which is why we're discussing how and whether SR could address the situation.)

 

I'm curious what you would think of a tweak mod that caps effective caster level for purposes of Dispel at 20. So a 21st level cast and a 29th level caster would have equal chances of succeeding, and the 29th level caster could (and presumably would) find advantages elsewhere. (EDIT - ninja'd by the imp, which, wow.)

 

antimagic attacks can penetrate improved invisibility:

 

moving to SR's system would quite radically change the spell-combat structure, so I'm not going to do it in core SCS (sic?) even though I think it's elegant. I have implemented it in v32's SR support.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I would not suggest you wholeheartedly move to the SR invisibility system. Only that it would be great if SCS recognized it when it detects SR is installed. (And possibly when Tome & Blood is installed - I can give you the means of detecting that.) And even then only if it's not much work.

Edited October 15, 2018 by subtledoctor

[subtledoctor]

While we're (sort of) on the subject, I noticed in my current game that while Khalid has Minor Spell Deflection active, I can't cure him. This is annoying. The two options I can see to allow healing spells to bypass Deflections are

1) set the power of healing effects to zero

2) set healing spells to the MAGICATTACK sectype

 

Any thoughts are to which, if either, would be less likely to cause problems?

 

EDIT - I guess #2 would make Spell Shield block them...

Edited October 16, 2018 by subtledoctor

[Bartimaeus]

An AoE projectile that's the minimum size might work, too. Are other single target spells affected like this, like trying to cast Barkskin on an SD character? That would be silly if we had to convert every buff to use the same minimum size AoE projectile to make them work for SD.

 

On the subject of annoyances like that, Haste not granting movement speed for Free Action characters is pretty annoying, too, but I don't think there's anything to be done about it.

Edited October 16, 2018 by Bartimaeus

[VagPen]

 

"Cheat" means that player and enemy use the same 'laws of physics', so I take issue with....

Yeah, so when and what exactly did the Liches do to earn their super powers to get to level 29 ? That's just a number for them, but for the player, it's their experience in the game. So you are OK with the player then cheating their chars to level 50 ? Good, cause in that case, the whole thing is easy to have already to been solved. But then why would one even need to fight against the liches, cause it's not like they can provide anymore XP.

This is why the whole make DM & RM capped at level z is a good solution. Yeah, the bards get a few level ahead of mages, but it's no +10 levels at level 20. Or that would be broken. And Kit Revision intends to set the levels to be the very same for all the classes, that of the Paladins progression. Even to Fighters.

And let's not forget that most spells power is capped, the Fireballs damage is capped to 10d6 damage. The Lightning Bolt is capped at 20d6 if memory serves in SR. They don't progress beyond. But the DM&RM do ? Why ?

 

Liches got their xp from adventurers who thought they could solo revised scs

[Jarno Mikkola]

Liches got their xp from adventurers who thought they could solo revised scs

Yeah, I know you are kidding, but just to ... the in game lore is completely against this, because the world is lived in, and so the rules reflect that. One being that the Lichdom is like said, a curse like state of a failed ascension ... which leaves the Lich itself unable to live and learn more.

[VagPen]

 

Liches got their xp from adventurers who thought they could solo revised scs

Yeah, I know you are kidding, but just to ... the in game lore is completely against this, because the world is lived in, and so the rules reflect that. One being that the Lichdom is like said, a curse like state of a failed ascension ... which leaves the Lich itself unable to live and learn more.

 

From this page: https://www.realmshelps.net/monsters/aboutundead.shtml

 

"The living spend their time living life and gathering experience, thereby shaping their personalities and adjusting to the world as it changes around them. In contrast, the undead mind sees the passage of time very differently. Undead exist, they do not live. Life means change, and while undead endure over time and learn new facts, they rarely change or appreciate new paradigms. Aside from a rare few exceptions, an undead's outlook remains stagnant over the decades, or centuries, of its existence, despite new experiences and new situations it may encounter."

 

As far as i understand, intelligent undead can learn new skills/stuff but have trouble adjusting to changes concerning their sense of self importance, morality and general outlook. That's enough lore for me to justify their high mage levels. I mean, a Lich reaches the pinnacle of it's magic prowess well after its last breath as a mortal through means like spell research, rituals, journeys to other planes, fiendish bargains, wish spells and yes, even killing hapless adventurers.

[Jarno Mikkola]

That's enough lore for me to justify their high mage levels. I mean, a Lich reaches the pinnacle of it's magic prowess well after its last breath as a mortal through means like spell research, rituals, journeys to other planes, fiendish bargains, wish spells and yes, even killing hapless adventurers.

If it does that, then it's not a Lich.

If you please, read the "Purposeful Reanimation" in your own link, you'll find: "To their sorrow, most find that forsaking all the pleasures of life while continuing to exist is a fate worse than the absolution of true death".

But it's a immortal Necromancer. We are talking about Gaxx, or who else; but Vecna.

 

Now, back to the subject of DM -spells. From where that started at. I think that the power level 5 would be optimal... and if one were to then want to, one could add in a power level 7, 8 or 9 same effect to a higher level spell, that could work easily. Say to Ruby Ray of Reversal.

This comes from the later editions of D&D games having the ability cast the same spell at a higher level. Just like Cure x wounds.

Edited October 16, 2018 by Jarno Mikkola

[subtledoctor]

An AoE projectile that's the minimum size might work, too. Are other single target spells affected like this, like trying to cast Barkskin on an SD character? That would be silly if we had to convert every buff to use the same minimum size AoE projectile to make them work for SD.

 

On the subject of annoyances like that, Haste not granting movement speed for Free Action characters is pretty annoying, too, but I don't think there's anything to be done about it.

Except not if you have AoE deflection installed.

 

I don't think this has anything to do with SR; it's vanilla behavior AFAICT. I don't think it's a big deal for most spells - any mage that can protect himself with Deflection can buff himself just fine. If you really need to add some buffs from an external source (Barkskin, Chaotic Commands... not much else) it can be done before you put of the Deflection. But healing spells are different, and more likely to need casting mid-combat while the Deflection is already up.

 

Plus Deflection spells have kind of a long duration; they fairly often hang around for a long time after a battle is done, when I would like to be healing and moving on. Another solution might be to simply drop all Deflections' duration to 1 turn.

 

As far as Free Action, I'm agnostic. It is such a powerful protection, immunizing you from some real game-ending possibilities, that I think it's worth sacrificing Haste for. From a risk-reward standpoint, I think that is a perfectly fine decision to be faced with.

[subtledoctor]

The thing is:

new EE patch finally fixed the long-standing spell shield opcode bug. (I might be wrong here, I don't have the latest patch but running through change-log I think it's fixed)

"Old" spell shield used a special opcode which was bugged in several ways; but what it was supposed to do was to block one single attack coded as "magical" (Secret Word, Spellstrike etc.) and then remove itself.

Part of the buginess was in the opcode itself, while the other part was in the fact that some attacks were wrongly coded as "magical" like some Dragon breath attacks and similar which Spell shield would protect you from.

I did test the opcode vs "offensive" type attacks few years ago, seemed to work as it should. Apart the sporadic bug which would prevent the protection from ever getting depleted, which made the opcode non-usable and made SR and SCS use a custom secondary type + splitting spell removals into 2 different spells.

Now, if this is all fixed----------------------------------------

 

Just an example of what could be done:

- Spell Trap prevents x ammount of "offensive damage" type spells

- Chaotic commands prevents x ammount of "disabling"

- you name it...,maybe one could append the table with extra attack types as well for a full-blown gameplay overhaul....

 

What's great about it is that it would work automatically, even with mod-added spells, for as long as they have their secondary type correctly set.

Imagine a system where AI doesn't depend on detecting your protections like Chaotic Commands, but rather uses the spells Chaotic Commands is meant to stop to remove it from you. You could probably make it scale with levels (level 10; 2 disabling attacks blocked, level 15; 3 attacks etc. - similar to stoneskin blocking physical attacks). Hell, Mind Flayers would now be worth those 9k xp you get for killing them.

How AI would play along with this; I can't say. It would be far less reliant on Dispel/Breach, that's for sure.

I took a glance at this and it looks like there is a LOT of possibility for doing interesting things with this. The big caveat is that, like Deflections, it wouldn't work against AoE spells. Chaotic Commands would stop 3 Rigid Thinking or Confusion spells cast directly at you, but not a Confusion spell cast at the guy next to you. So this would pretty much require "NWN-style deflection" to really work well.

 

Meantime I've more or less created a similar thing in my psionics mod: you cast Mind Ward, and it blocks but is canceled by the first fear/confusion/charm effect that hits you. My version uses a spellstate so it can only protect against one attack; you could extend it to an arbitrary number of attacks by devoting a stat to it, or by using Spell Shield opcode + NWN-style Deflection.

[Jarno Mikkola]

The big caveat is that, like Deflections, it wouldn't work against AoE spells. Chaotic Commands would stop 3 Rigid Thinking or Confusion spells cast directly at you, but not a Confusion spell cast at the guy next to you.

But if I need to be protected, then there is no one next to me... as they can have their own protections and so long as I am won't be effected, I'll be fine. And if you want, you can make the area of effect spells cast lower level spells on mass. As I would say that a max leveled casters 10d6 fire damage spell on a single target is not a 3rd level spell, but a 2nd. And then the AoE spell is and so you have a Fireball. But does it take 2 or 3 levels of protection away... it's up to the magic system, but the 2 would be a better option in my minds.

Edited October 16, 2018 by Jarno Mikkola