Too Far

[RestInPeace]

Right to the point:

 

1.

Please don't decide for players what spells should be clerics' and what should be druids'. I was really upset when I found in the middle/later part of the game that my cleric could not cast Sunray and Jaheira could not use CS+Harm. Moreover, I don't think Level 7 divine spells should be some counterparts of Arcane ones of the same level, so why no Gate for a cleric. I always think priests should be better at summoning creatures than wizards.

You can make a separate component, such as "heavily modified priest spell book".

 

2.

Please don't make radical changes to spells. Nature's Beauty, Symbol Fear, etc. You can make overpowered spells less powerful (saving throw, duration, etc), weak ones more useful, but please don't change those spells to totally different ones. Both for game play consistency and compatibility.

No animate dead for wizards? It's odd that a necromancer cannot raise skeletons.

 

3.

Some summoned creatures are a bit overpowered compared with those "natural" ones in the game or with those should-be-powerful-but-weak creatures.

For example, if one don't have SCS installed then SR's demons are much more powerful than those in the game.

Demons:

a. vanilla - weak

b. atweak - slightly more powerful and useful

c. scs - extremely powerful, overpowered if you don't have other creature enhancing components installed

I think you can use atweak's pnp demons by default (and tweak other summoned creature a bit accordingly). So we can use atweak's pnp fiends with SR if we don't want those overpowered ones from scs. If we want a more challenging game then we can just install SCS as SR's demons will be overwritten by SCS.

 

4.

Please give players xp for killing hostile creatures (unhappy demons and those summoned by enemies). This is reasonable. It is strange that you get no xp after doing quite some work.

Some one may think this will be exploitable (killing demons for xp), but whether to exploit it or not depends on the player. I don't think this is what modders should consider. We can get infinite xp on the walls of Saradush if we like that.

 

5.

Summoning cap has been removed. I like this idea but can we restrict the number of demonic/celestial creatures to 1? When my low level charname was surrounded by 8 SCS enhanced glabrezus and 2 mordy swords summoned by a nameless lich, I felt hopeless.

Another problem is that skeletons are not affected. You cannot summon more creatures if you already have 5 skeletons, but you can summon up to five skeletons no matter how many other creatures are already there in the field.

 

p.s.

Please make SR version of spells cast by items for people who don't want IR. And for IR, please make item re-allocation a separate component.

[Shaitan]

lol

 

SR is perhaps just not your cup of tea?

[Demivrgvs]

Cleric & Druid's spellbooks

1.

Please don't decide for players what spells should be clerics' and what should be druids'.

Actually I'm not deciding it myself, I'm following PnP, and I was even quite "forgiving" for player's sake because else I should have removed from druids quite a lot more spells (e.g. Doom, Bless, Cloak of Fear, etc.), and clerics should have the incredibly more restrictive sphere system used by Divine Remix.

 

I was really upset when I found in the middle/later part of the game that my cleric could not cast Sunray and Jaheira could not use CS+Harm.

Only Morninglords of Lathander should be able to cast from the sun sphere, and druids were never able to cast the Cause Wound serie of spells. What's CS by the way?

 

P.S Cleric should be able to handle undead monsters with their innate ability to Turn Undead (if not, what's there for?), and already have a bunch of anti-undead spells.

 

Moreover, I don't think Level 7 divine spells should be some counterparts of Arcane ones of the same level, so why no Gate for a cleric. I always think priests should be better at summoning creatures than wizards.

Actually it's not a matter of divine spells being counterparts of arcane ones (not to mention gate is another arcane spell thus I don't see much difference in that regard), it's that, as you noticed, summoned demons are extremely powerful, and letting a L14 priest summon a 24HD Pit Fiend would be outstandingly OP.

 

In theory I could restore Gate, but it would still summon weaker creatures than its 9th lvl counterpart for obvious reasons. I even though about making it more like PnP, using good aligned creatures too for non-evil characters (e.g. Devas), but that's another story.

 

Last but not least, I really don't think priests should be better summoners than mages (the latters even have a specialized kit, the Conjurer), there's absolutely no reason behind it.

 

You can make a separate component, such as "heavily modified priest spell book".

I'm sympathetic to this, but I don't think it will happen, sorry.

 

 

Heavily modified or replaced spells

2.

Please don't make radical changes to spells. Nature's Beauty, Symbol Fear, etc. You can make overpowered spells less powerful (saving throw, duration, etc), weak ones more useful, but please don't change those spells to totally different ones. Both for game play consistency and compatibility.

When it comes to compatibility I assure you there's no such issue, but I partially agree with you. Anyway this is something I very rarely do, when it happens it's for good reasons*, and I never do it without asking player's opinion.

 

I consider SR a community mod almost as much as a mod of mine, thus I try to discuss everything with players (which also makes much harder/slower to mod trust me), and what you see generally is the end result of long debates. Both NB and Symbol changes were heavily discussed back then, especially the former. If your wishes meet the ones of the majority of the community then it's quite probable I'll please them. Long story short, I always encourage feedback (even negative one) and feel free to open discussions on those things (like this post) but remember I can't please EVERYONE, I think it's obvious such task is almost impossible.

 

 

*Vanilla's NB was almost broken because the AI cannot cope with blindness as players, whereas Symbol of Fear was kinda weak as a 7th lvl spell considering a 1st lvl spell can both cure and protect the entire party from it (in fact it's a 6th lvl spell in PnP - as a side note I may restore it as such).

 

No animate dead for wizards? It's odd that a necromancer cannot raise skeletons.

I agree, in fact this won't happen in V4, and Mages will probably get both Animate Dead and Summon Shadow.

 

 

Summoned Creatures

3.

Some summoned creatures are a bit overpowered compared with those "natural" ones in the game or with those should-be-powerful-but-weak creatures.

We recently discussed this a little and within V4 quite a few summoned creatures will be slightly weaker (e.g. less hit points), but most of them are very fine in terms of concept, abilities and qualities.

 

For example, if one don't have SCS installed then SR's demons are much more powerful than those in the game.

I know, and I agree, though SR almost gives for granted that SCS will be installed with it. What I said above (about nerfing some summons) is particularly true for demons and celestials but don't expect them to become extremely weaker than they are now

 

 

Summoned creatures granting XP

4.

Please give players xp for killing hostile creatures (unhappy demons and those summoned by enemies). This is reasonable. It is strange that you get no xp after doing quite some work.

Some one may think this will be exploitable (killing demons for xp), but whether to exploit it or not depends on the player. I don't think this is what modders should consider. We can get infinite xp on the walls of Saradush if we like that.

Well, time permitting I could make it so that only AI summoned creatures grant XP, removing possible exploits. I'll take it into account when I start to seriously work on V4.

 

 

Summoning Cap

5.

Summoning cap has been removed. I like this idea but can we restrict the number of demonic/celestial creatures to 1? When my low level charname was surrounded by 8 SCS enhanced glabrezus and 2 mordy swords summoned by a nameless lich, I felt hopeless.

Another problem is that skeletons are not affected. You cannot summon more creatures if you already have 5 skeletons, but you can summon up to five skeletons no matter how many other creatures are already there in the field.

SR doesn't remove such cap, though many players asked for it, and I may be favourable to add it as a separate component.

 

Do summoned demons ever had a cap? I'm not sure. Anyway, SCS removes their "summoned demon" flag, thus any eventual cap, and it's not SR's "fault" if you end up fighting tons of them.

 

 

Various

Please make SR version of spells cast by items for people who don't want IR.

I'm sympathetic, but I'm not sure this will happen. Vanilla's items are very "outdated" in this regard, and don't use actual spells but custom effects. I could spend a lot of time to explain you what this means, but let's just say that I would have to seriously alter the itm files to make them work as they should, and that I'm not sure doing it within SR is a good thing (even if it can be done via patching code the end result would be a heavily modified item).

 

That being said, how many times SR spells are so much different than vanilla's ones? Not to mention you can consider spells cast from items as custom spells rather than perfect copies of the original ones, which is even more true in vanilla because it's exactly what they are and how they work.

 

And for IR, please make item re-allocation a separate component.

Except a few "must have" re allocations (e.g. SCS ones are mandatory for compatibility reasons) such component will surely be separate from the main one, though, as with many other IR components, I'll always give for granted they are installed for various reasons. Edited December 13, 2010 by Demivrgvs

[Guest Guest_Constantine_*]

Right to the point:

Bah! If there's so many things you can't tolerate in the mod, why bother and install/play it?

[yarpen]

Please don't decide for players what spells should be clerics' and what should be druids'. I was really upset when I found in the middle/later part of the game that my cleric could not cast Sunray and Jaheira could not use CS+Harm. Moreover, I don't think Level 7 divine spells should be some counterparts of Arcane ones of the same level, so why no Gate for a cleric. I always think priests should be better at summoning creatures than wizards.

You can make a separate component, such as "heavily modified priest spell book".

I'll just throw my three cents here and say that Demi shouldn't be blamed for fact that Druid and Cleric are separate classes and should have different spell repertoire. In SR4 as far as we know there are going to be additional Druid's spells which will grant them more offensive edge which they're currently (with exception of Insects) lacking.

[Ardanis]

Moreover, I don't think Level 7 divine spells should be some counterparts of Arcane ones of the same level, so why no Gate for a cleric.

You have a point, but priests in ADnD were given only 7 levels of spells for a reason. They're far more capable in melee and also can turn undead, and wizards counter it by having access to higher levels of magic (which imo is logical - they are, after all, are based on stereotypical sorcerers from fantasy novels).

What's CS by the way?

Critical Strike

 

4.

Please give players xp for killing hostile creatures (unhappy demons and those summoned by enemies). This is reasonable. It is strange that you get no xp after doing quite some work.

Some one may think this will be exploitable (killing demons for xp), but whether to exploit it or not depends on the player. I don't think this is what modders should consider. We can get infinite xp on the walls of Saradush if we like that.

It's reasonable... but has it not been in many games since ancient times that summons do not grant XP or loot? And if they do - if they're treated equally to 'real' combatants - then party shouldn't receive XP for whatever summon kills, etc.

Personally I'd prefer to remain true to historically developed concept and treat summons as if they were a form of magical manifestation, not real flesh and blood.

 

Another problem is that skeletons are not affected. You cannot summon more creatures if you already have 5 skeletons, but you can summon up to five skeletons no matter how many other creatures are already there in the field.

I think it is hardcoded issue. A player on russian boards recently encountered a bug where four active party-aligned summons had stuck somewhere he couldn't find them and thus inhibited any further summoning. I've suggested to install the XP cap removal as a form of cure, and game only permitted to summon a single creature per cast (Summon Monster X conjure several things), despite them no longer being marked as 'summons'.

 

PS Regarding Gate, I'd let priests to pick it as a HLA.

Edited December 13, 2010 by Ardanis

[DavidW]

Commenting on the narrow point of XP for summoned monsters: The argument against, as I understood it, was that killing summoned monsters was part of what was involved in killing the summoner, and so shouldn't give experience over and above that.

 

Scenario 1: the Evil Wizard casts Horrid Wilting. You survive and kill him.

 

Scenario 2: the Evil Wizard summons a Glabrezu. You defeat it, and then kill him.

 

 

 

Shouldn't you get the same experience in both cases?

[Daulmakan]

Scenario 1: the Evil Wizard casts Horrid Wilting. You survive and kill him.

 

Scenario 2: the Evil Wizard summons a Glabrezu. You defeat it, and then kill him.

 

Shouldn't you get the same experience in both cases?

No. Why should you? You whacked 2 critters instead of 1 in scenario 2.

 

IMO, hostile summons should yield XP when killed, and friendly summons should yield none if force-attacked (this is an obvious exploit).

 

aTweaks employs this behaviour for the summoned fiends.

[Ardanis]

You whacked 2 critters instead of 1 in scenario 2.

And? Another critter is an 8th spell of the main one.

 

PS Otherwise the caster should yield less XP, because he only summoned a demon and then stood idly watching the fight.

Edited December 13, 2010 by Ardanis

[Daulmakan]

You whacked 2 critters instead of 1 in scenario 2.

And? Another critter is an 8th spell of the main one.

No, the Glabrezu is not a spell. The spell doesn't CREATE it, it just brings it to the fight from somewhere else. If you encountered that same Glabrezu in the lower planes, you'd get XP for killing it.

 

PS Otherwise the caster should yield less XP, because he only summoned a demon and then stood idly watching the fight.

I'm not sure what to make of this, it doesn't seem sensible beahaviour and neither do I see the relevance to the point of discussion.

[Ardanis]

You're as stubborn as ever

 

No, the Glabrezu is not a spell. The spell doesn't CREATE it, it just brings it to the fight from somewhere else. If you encountered that same Glabrezu in the lower planes, you'd get XP for killing it.

It IS a spell in a sense that a wizard has to waste one of his spell slots in order to summon it from the Abyss.

 

I'm not sure what to make of this, it doesn't seem sensible beahaviour and neither do I see the relevance to the point of discussion.

There's an enemy lich worthy of 20k XP. It can toss at PC three 8th level spells.

 

Now, in the 1st scenario the lich covers itself with Improved Mantle, shoots Incendiary Cloud, shoot Abi-Dalzim. Pretty tough for 10th level party, right? I think anyone who managed to withstand the Cloud and Abi, for they were unable to interrupt them due to Mantle, surely deserves those 20k XP.

 

2nd scenario, lich summons three glabresu (let's assume they're of vanilla's strength, since SCS/SR does boost them significantly), and that's all. Party manages to kill those three vanilla-weak demons, gets XP for them, then turns to lich. The only thing a lich can do is to watch as it's being sliced in pieces, because it has no spells to fight with. Is this easy kill worth 20k XP? Never.

 

In BG however, in the second case party would rightfully gain XP for killing summons, and also those 20k that lich is no longer worth of. I think you get the general idea.

[RestInPeace]

Right to the point:

Bah! If there's so many things you can't tolerate in the mod, why bother and install/play it?

The fact is that I installed and played, I had a reason.

 

I love most part of the mod and I don't think things that I don't agree with are "many".

[Daulmakan]

You're as stubborn as ever

I could say the same.

 

There's an enemy lich worthy of 20k XP. It can toss at PC three 8th level spells.

 

2nd scenario, lich summons three glabresu (let's assume they're of vanilla's strength, since SCS/SR does boost them significantly), and that's all. Party manages to kill those three vanilla-weak demons, gets XP for them, then turns to lich. The only thing a lich can do is to watch as it's being sliced in pieces, because it has no spells to fight with. Is this easy kill worth 20k XP? Never.

XP is granted on account of level of power, which in itself has a varying degree of efficiency when applied. There's no discerning between levels of success when computing it, because two same creatures with the same power level could obtain different results. Quick examples: 1. after a vicious fight, the party manages to defeat a level 20 wild mage, but half the party is killed in the process. 2. An equivalent level 20 wild mage casts a spell but gets a wild magic roll that polymorphs him into a rabbit, party kills him with ease, no casualties. In both cases, the party gets the same XP for defeating the same creature, even though the process for each case differes greatly.

 

By your rationality, if I manage to defeat Firkraag in just a couple of rounds via use of Timestop+Alacrity+ABDH or malisoned Finger of death or whatever, I should get less XP (or even nothing) because it was a walk in the park THAT time. It doesn't work that way. You get the corresponding XP because you whacked a red dragon, regardless if you got lucky or not while doing it.

[Ardanis]

The XP value represents the overall amount of challenge a creature may pose in a fight. Basically, you get XP for surviving Fireballs, dispelling protectons, etc., not for landing a killing blow.

Similar to how AC is not a chance to avoid an attack, as some novice players think, but an summary chance to not being dealt a damaging blow, either through evasion or damage reduction.

 

So if there a single lich in a dungeon, I would expect a 20k XP worth of challenge in there. In what form it may come - Abi-Dalzims or fiends - doesn't really matter, because the DnD is a game system with simplified rules, not a reality simulator.

 

In both cases, the party gets the same XP for defeating the same creature, even though the process for each case differes greatly.

That's what I'm saying. The process is different (fireballs or demons), the end result is the same.

 

PS In case it's not obvious - I'm advocating the position that granting XP for killed summons is not justified within game rules.

Edited December 14, 2010 by Ardanis

[RestInPeace]

Cleric & Druid's spellbooks

1.

Please don't decide for players what spells should be clerics' and what should be druids'.

Actually I'm not deciding it myself, I'm following PnP, and I was even quite "forgiving" for player's sake because else I should have removed from druids quite a lot more spells (e.g. Doom, Bless, Cloak of Fear, etc.), and clerics should have the incredibly more restrictive sphere system used by Divine Remix.

 

I was really upset when I found in the middle/later part of the game that my cleric could not cast Sunray and Jaheira could not use CS+Harm.

Only Morninglords of Lathander should be able to cast from the sun sphere, and druids were never able to cast the Cause Wound serie of spells. What's CS by the way?

 

P.S Cleric should be able to handle undead monsters with their innate ability to Turn Undead (if not, what's there for?), and already have a bunch of anti-undead spells.

 

Moreover, I don't think Level 7 divine spells should be some counterparts of Arcane ones of the same level, so why no Gate for a cleric. I always think priests should be better at summoning creatures than wizards.

Actually it's not a matter of divine spells being counterparts of arcane ones (not to mention gate is another arcane spell thus I don't see much difference in that regard), it's that, as you noticed, summoned demons are extremely powerful, and letting a L14 priest summon a 24HD Pit Fiend would be outstandingly OP.

 

In theory I could restore Gate, but it would still summon weaker creatures than its 9th lvl counterpart for obvious reasons. I even though about making it more like PnP, using good aligned creatures too for non-evil characters (e.g. Devas), but that's another story.

 

Last but not least, I really don't think priests should be better summoners than mages (the latters even have a specialized kit, the Conjurer), there's absolutely no reason behind it.

 

You can make a separate component, such as "heavily modified priest spell book".

I'm sympathetic to this, but I don't think it will happen, sorry.

 

 

Heavily modified or replaced spells

2.

Please don't make radical changes to spells. Nature's Beauty, Symbol Fear, etc. You can make overpowered spells less powerful (saving throw, duration, etc), weak ones more useful, but please don't change those spells to totally different ones. Both for game play consistency and compatibility.

When it comes to compatibility I assure you there's no such issue, but I partially agree with you. Anyway this is something I very rarely do, when it happens it's for good reasons*, and I never do it without asking player's opinion.

 

I consider SR a community mod almost as much as a mod of mine, thus I try to discuss everything with players (which also makes much harder/slower to mod trust me), and what you see generally is the end result of long debates. Both NB and Symbol changes were heavily discussed back then, especially the former. If your wishes meet the ones of the majority of the community then it's quite probable I'll please them. Long story short, I always encourage feedback (even negative one) and feel free to open discussions on those things (like this post) but remember I can't please EVERYONE, I think it's obvious such task is almost impossible.

 

 

*Vanilla's NB was almost broken because the AI cannot cope with blindness as players, whereas Symbol of Fear was kinda weak as a 7th lvl spell considering a 1st lvl spell can both cure and protect the entire party from it (in fact it's a 6th lvl spell in PnP - as a side note I may restore it as such).

 

No animate dead for wizards? It's odd that a necromancer cannot raise skeletons.

I agree, in fact this won't happen in V4, and Mages will probably get both Animate Dead and Summon Shadow.

 

 

Summoned Creatures

3.

Some summoned creatures are a bit overpowered compared with those "natural" ones in the game or with those should-be-powerful-but-weak creatures.

We recently discussed this a little and within V4 quite a few summoned creatures will be slightly weaker (e.g. less hit points), but most of them are very fine in terms of concept, abilities and qualities.

 

For example, if one don't have SCS installed then SR's demons are much more powerful than those in the game.

I know, and I agree, though SR almost gives for granted that SCS will be installed with it. What I said above (about nerfing some summons) is particularly true for demons and celestials but don't expect them to become extremely weaker than they are now

 

 

Summoned creatures granting XP

4.

Please give players xp for killing hostile creatures (unhappy demons and those summoned by enemies). This is reasonable. It is strange that you get no xp after doing quite some work.

Some one may think this will be exploitable (killing demons for xp), but whether to exploit it or not depends on the player. I don't think this is what modders should consider. We can get infinite xp on the walls of Saradush if we like that.

Well, time permitting I could make it so that only AI summoned creatures grant XP, removing possible exploits. I'll take it into account when I start to seriously work on V4.

 

 

Summoning Cap

5.

Summoning cap has been removed. I like this idea but can we restrict the number of demonic/celestial creatures to 1? When my low level charname was surrounded by 8 SCS enhanced glabrezus and 2 mordy swords summoned by a nameless lich, I felt hopeless.

Another problem is that skeletons are not affected. You cannot summon more creatures if you already have 5 skeletons, but you can summon up to five skeletons no matter how many other creatures are already there in the field.

SR doesn't remove such cap, though many players asked for it, and I may be favourable to add it as a separate component.

 

Do summoned demons ever had a cap? I'm not sure. Anyway, SCS removes their "summoned demon" flag, thus any eventual cap, and it's not SR's "fault" if you end up fighting tons of them.

 

 

Various

Please make SR version of spells cast by items for people who don't want IR.

I'm sympathetic, but I'm not sure this will happen. Vanilla's items are very "outdated" in this regard, and don't use actual spells but custom effects. I could spend a lot of time to explain you what this means, but let's just say that I would have to seriously alter the itm files to make them work as they should, and that I'm not sure doing it within SR is a good thing (even if it can be done via patching code the end result would be a heavily modified item).

 

That being said, how many times SR spells are so much different than vanilla's ones? Not to mention you can consider spells cast from items as custom spells rather than perfect copies of the original ones, which is even more true in vanilla because it's exactly what they are and how they work.

 

And for IR, please make item re-allocation a separate component.

Except a few "must have" re allocations (e.g. SCS ones are mandatory for compatibility reasons) such component will surely be separate from the main one, though, as with many other IR components, I'll always give for granted they are installed for various reasons.

 

Alterations in the spell system is what concerns me most as I doubt the AI can use their new spell book efficiently. Maybe SCS can deal with that but what will happen if SCS is not installed? I have two copies of BG installed, one with SCS and one without.

 

The summoning cap -

I had no other spell tweaks installed. No summon cap removal or celestial cap removal.

I found this not long after I had started a new BG2 game when I used Monster Summoning I in the starting dungeon. I was able to have more than 5 hobgoblins under control. Then I tested with those celestial summoning spells and found that celestial creatures was no longer limited to 1.