Innate sequencers/triggers is not created correctly for player charather Sorcerer

[CrevsDaak]

10 hours ago, polytope said:

It would be good to have such a thing, but make sure the AI knows it can't breach someone under your enhanced globe. I think that should probably be an 8th level spell BTW.

While I did make it knowing about it blocking Breach, I think being forced to strip an extra protection from enemy mages goes along with what I'm aiming for, which is making the fights against enemy mages harder. However, yes, it's absolutely broken, but I also wouldn't ever feel bothered by that to use it, I think you can get the defensive benefits it provides elsewhere and those alternatives are usually more universal as to what they apply to (eg. ele dmg immunity would also work against high level damage spells), except being immune to Cloudkill since Poison immunity is otherwise quite hard for mages to obtain, and pretty much nothing else is going to deal Poison damage to them without also taking physical damage. I think making it into Major Globe and renaming MGoI into mGoI to allow for it might also be a good idea (balance wise at least, I would need to figure out how to distribute new spells to SCS Mages reliably first).

[polytope]

24 minutes ago, CrevsDaak said:

except being immune to Cloudkill since Poison immunity is otherwise quite hard for mages to obtain, and pretty much nothing else is going to deal Poison damage to them without also taking physical damage. I think making it into Major Globe and renaming MGoI into mGoI to allow for it might also be a good idea

I'd consider nerfing Cloudkill (much as Insect Plague was nerfed) to be a better solution than enhancing Globe of Invulnerability to block it.

Currently, as implemented in game Cloudkill instakills any creature with less than 4HD (no save), kills those with 5-6 HD if they fail as save vs death at -4 but deals 1d10 damage per round to anyone else without a save. The poison damage from Cloudkill should probably allow a saving throw vs death (unmodified), while being increased to about 4d6 damage per tick, about the same per round damage on average against high level mages, more against low level mages, but no longer such a reliable spell disruption.

Death Fog probably doesn't need to be changed, it's 6th level after all and can't be cast from a wand.

Edited July 4 by polytope

[CrevsDaak]

1 hour ago, polytope said:

I'd consider nerfing Cloudkill (much as Insect Plague was nerfed) to be a better solution than enhancing Globe of Invulnerability to block it.

Currently, as implemented in game Cloudkill instakills any creature with less than 4HD (no save), kills those with 5-6 HD if they fail as save vs death at -4 but deals 1d10 damage per round to anyone else without a save. The poison damage from Cloudkill should probably allow a saving throw vs death (unmodified), while being increased to about 4d6 damage per tick, about the same per round damage on average against high level mages, more against low level mages, but no longer such a reliable spell disruption.

Death Fog probably doesn't need to be changed, it's 6th level after all and can't be cast from a wand.

I think the 4HD instakill isn't much of an issue in SoA already, and in BG1 Cloudkill is quite rare and by the time you can cast it, against anything that could survive it, you'd be better off casting something else. But 4d6 would be way too much damage, on a high roll that's 24 damage, per round it's 12 on a mean average distribution. For SoA, now the spell is even more busted because you can get Saves penalties on enemies and this would rapidly kill them as the spell is basically dealing over twice as much damage. I think making it have a Save vs. Death and keep it dealing 1d10 might also work as a nerf though, since fully disabling the useful properties of Cloudkill against higher level targets is kindof what's intended with this change, though it might be quite severe of a nerf (save. vs half won't save casters' asses without ToBEx's casting interruption tolerance changes).

Edited July 4 by CrevsDaak

[polytope]

9 minutes ago, CrevsDaak said:

 But 4d6 would be way too much damage, on a high roll that's 24 damage, per round it's 12 on a mean average distribution. For SoA, now the spell is even more busted because you can get Saves penalties on enemies and this would rapidly kill them as the spell is basically dealing over twice as much damage.

Average of 4d6 is 14, assuming RNG is fair (we know it isn't for an engine developed in the 90s but I digress, it's probably more the curve than the average that deviates from expected).

I don't agree that it would do more damage per round to actually threatening mages rather than the occasional kobold witch doctor, let's take the example of a 9th level fighter, base saving throw versus death of 8, expected damage from 10 rounds of original Cloudkill = 55, expected damage if they can save vs death to completely avoid 4d6 = 49 (0.35 X 14 X 10), high level mages have the same base death saving throw as 9th level fighters (before Blur and other buffs), although low and mid level mages would be taking more damage. The main point is that it's no longer a certain damage tick each round, so less reliable at interrupting spells.

Also, worsening enemy saving throws needs a Greater Malison (for those who aren't running Globe of Invulnerability) and/or a Doom spell (for those who have neither GoI, the Minor Globe, nor Spell Turning), so it still requires stripping enemy mages with Ruby Rays for instance, archer Called Shot special only lowers saves against spell (which is very weird, conceptually), and of course requires the mage to be struck with arrows i.e. lacking relevant weapon protections without which the archer could be disrupting their spells anyway.

[JDSilvergun]

I used to play on double damage a lot. So, I'm willing to admit maybe my views have been partially skewed by switching back and forth. I've also seen some very aggressive Chain Contingencies from SCS liches and mages. I err on the side of caution if in doubt. Anyway. 
 

19 hours ago, polytope said:

About Protection from Cold, cold resistance is only worthwhile with SCS or some other mods, and in recent versions of SCS its only because I have seen 3 X Cone of Cold Spell Triggers, which are potentially 60d4 + 60 damage to the face. Still, if you have a cleric the 2nd circle priest spell Resist Fire/Cold halves Cold Damage without being a sorcerer pick,

There is actually a fair amount of cold damage in the game. It's just not super common like fire. It's seen even more in SCS as well. Rakshasas and a lot of mages like Ice Storm, not just Cone of Cold. Just the fact that SCS changes spell selections every install means you need to be somewhat prepared for everything. That Cone of Cold Spell Trigger does sound quite nasty. Ice Salamanders are around in early SoA in locations like Mekrath's and the Planar Prison (if you're not doing the force hardest spawns option), and they're around more in ToB too. Adalon is a cold dragon. (I play with item randomizer, so sometimes I'm killing her for her item).The Ravager and Amellysan both have on hit cold damage weapons. I'm sure there are others I'm not thinking about off the top of my head. It's certainly possible to get away with using consumables for cold resistance if you want to, especially for solo. It's nice to not have to worry about that stuff though; so I could go either way on it. I'm not a big fan of the divine resist fire/cold because it's only 50% and short duration. I admit that I have used it, and it's better than nothing, If you stack it with an FS Blue you get short term full cold protection. For longer protection the consumable route seems better. I still think that Pro. Energy being round/level duration is a serious downside though. It should be at least 2 rounds/level for being a level 8 spell if you ask me.

19 hours ago, polytope said:

Acid Resistance is a bit the same, only useful against Draconis, the various SCS black dragons, and/or if you've installed IWD Arcane spells so that you have to worry about enemy Vitriolic Sphere and Acid Storm. I'm also reasonably sure that 75% resistance (to cold, acid, whatever), even if it doesn't feel as safe as 100% still deprioritizes you as a target for spells with that damage type

As for Acid, yeah maybe you don't need it, but it's super nice to have. You're forgetting about Nizi in Suldanessellar as well. I admit it's not super commonly used by enemies, but I think you are minimizing with this as well. Even if no one casts a Death Fog/Acid storm/etc. at you, it's nice to protect yourself from your own casts of those spells. Forcing melee fighters to have to stand in that stuff if they want to attack you is a good strat. And I already mentioned buffing a planetar with it, which also synergizes with you casting AoE acid damage. Then there's traps. I rarely play with a thief these days. So all these protection spells are really nice to have. Sure Minor Globe and S.I. cover most forced traps, but Pro. Acid still provides value even after the traps are dealt with due to the long duration. The fact that it has no equivalent spell in divine form or item form (other than the arcane scroll itself) means this is the way to go if you want to have Acid protection. From what you said you have other arcane casters in the party than the sorcerer so I could see not wanting to take too many protection spells. I realize that probably not a lot of people will agree with me on this, but I don't feel like I'm losing out on anything by taking Pro. Acid. S.I. and Spell Shield are the only "must haves" at 5th level and the other 2 are preference or party dependent. You may get a fifth pick for level 5 if you get to high enough level.

19 hours ago, polytope said:

the priest spell Chant (cast as a pre-buff, works well if you time a Limited Wish for globes to resolve slightly later so that enemies can't scam you with a "counter-Chant") substantially reduces spell damage from those spells with a lot of small dice

Are you saying Chant actually gives a luck bonus as well? Luck is the only mechanic I've heard of affecting offensive damage dice in this way (ex. 10d4 becomes 10d3). This is interesting if true. Using Minor Globes to counter the enemies' debuff Chant is interesting. I know you said it's good against Unholy Blight as well, but I'm not really seeing enemies cast this very much when I play. It could be luck of the draw or me just not bothering with some of the fights that you're doing. I think the upgraded trolls in the de'Arnise keep are probably where you're seeing this, but I'm not sure. It could be just not having dealt with it, but I'm having a hard time seeing Unholy Blight being an issue by the time you have level 7 spells though. Is it multiple enemies all casting it at once making this a concern? Pro. Magic Energy at least mitigates the damage of Unholy Blight if you come across it though, even if it does nothing for the debuff. Something else I thought of is that I use Viconia as my cleric. If the A.I. simply just knows that she's evil and my PC sorcerer already has a minor globe up, then maybe they just won't bother with Unholy Blight. Or maybe they already know if I'm using Pro Magic Energy (even though I think they're not supposed to). If any of that is true, then that also leads to you getting more value out of the spell than I would. This goes in line with you saying that the enemy knows you're partially resisting elemental damage with Pro. Energy, which I don't know if/how they would know without trying to hit you with something first. The way you described it seems like it's a way of manipulating the A.I, and this would explain some stuff if this is true.

19 hours ago, polytope said:

the duration of the lower level spells seems better, it's just that sorcerers have a lot of casts for each known spell (even if you're not utilizing Project Image, which I'd rather not, because it really is OP as a 7th circle spell

The duration makes them for sure better. I often can do whole dungeons/areas on one set of most of the buffs no problem. I also saw a video on youtube recently of someone playing SCS/Ascension insane as a solo dragon disciple, and some of the fights were so drawn out that the round/level duration from Pro. Energy wasn't enough, which really isn't surprising. I know from my own play that S.I. doesn't last long enough in several cases and it's the same duration.

19 hours ago, polytope said:

Most of the time I use a party of four and consider a larger or smaller party to be making things harder for myself (in the case of a six person party, not only dividing the XP six-ways but simply the path-finding getting really bad with that many, plus the difficulty of outfitting them all usefully and sharing scrolls between the non-sorcerer arcane casters), but there is a strong argument that three is more optimal, if going with three and they're all spellcasters Limited Wish for spell recharge becomes that much better.

Lately I do play with all caster parties and usually 2 or maybe 3 people. I'm still not seeing getting spells back from Limited wish as being ultra valuable. I'm sure it's helpful and convenient though. If you're thinking literally about the final ToB battle, you can just use Wish instead for greater effect, but I admit it can be risky. Pretty much any other time, resting is not an issue unless you are enforcing some kind of rules on yourself. This is certainly not unheard of and there's nothing wrong with that, but it changes the context of the value of that effect for sure. You said you're not using PI; so that's a big reason you like this effect. The other conclusion I can draw about this spell is that you're selling it as "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." Maybe I'll try it one time, maybe not.

I agree 100% that playing with 6 people is asking for pain with the pathing. XP is whatever. The game gives you way more than enough XP to work with. Because of the quest XP mechanic and the fact that a lot of enemy groups spawn with fewer numbers if you have a small party (even with the setting that maxes out the XP scaled encounters), the actual XP gain from using smaller parties is often exaggerated. (I.e. solo play =/= 6 x experience, etc.).  This is especially true the way I play, but I realize a lot of people can't help themselves and have to kill everything in an area before they can call it done. I'm not saying that's you necessarily, but I have seen and heard that a lot of people go above and beyond with the murders. It's still not directly proportional though.

If you're talking "optimally", most people that I've talked to agree that it'd be a party of 2-4. It ultimately depends what you mean by optimal. The vanilla item pool in SoA only has 3 pairs of boots of speed (and the Spellhold boots are a fair bit later than the other 2 and they're out of the way), so you're slower if you're going with 3, and slowest with 4. If you're talking about power and ease of combat instead of speed, there's very little doubt in my mind that 4 would be easier. Better action economy goes a long way if you're dealing with the large groups of enemies in ToB and especially the beefed up Ascension fights. Ultimately more people is more DPS and additional utility when needed.

Edited July 4 by JDSilvergun

[JDSilvergun]

I personally don't agree with nerfing Cloudkill. I'm not a huge fan of buffing Globe of Invul. either, but that sounds less bad. I'd say make Globe a 5th level spell with the vanilla effect, but that doesn't do what CrevsDaak wanted it to do. Many enemy mages have clerics in their parties as well. In my opinion forcing Zone of Sweet Air to be in their memorized spells, but still leaving the spell selection mostly random is a better solution than either of what was proposed here. I also think Minor Spell Deflection, and Spell Deflection/Turning/Trap blocking Breach is more than enough. They don't need Globe for that as well.

[CrevsDaak]

11 hours ago, polytope said:

The main point is that it's no longer a certain damage tick each round, so less reliable at interrupting spells.

Yeah, that's what the ToBEx change + solely imposing a save. vs. death on Cloudkill achieve, the issue is that you can still stack Cloudkills and reduce enemy saves, so if the damage potential is higher they'll most likely end up taking more damage on the Cloudkill abuse case situations that I wanted to remove as an option for the player to use against enemy Mages. 1d10 isn't normally going to interrupt most Mages given the ToBEx concentration check algorithm, but it WILL eventually kill them, even faster if there's a chance they take a lot more damage. I do think it's probably a good idea to change Cloudkill to only deal damage on a failed save, but more damage on the spell doesn't seem necessary to me, no need to compensate the nerf.

6 hours ago, JDSilvergun said:

I also think Minor Spell Deflection, and Spell Deflection/Turning/Trap blocking Breach is more than enough. They don't need Globe for that as well.

While that's true, those get absolutely destroyed by Spell Thrust, and RRoR which even bypasses SI:Abj (which is also fairly lacking on many SCS Mages under the current version), on top of that you can time your spells to hit the enemy wizard in an ordered sequence in a single round, and if they are casting basically anything not immediately useful to remedy their buffs situation, they immediately die to melee attackers or some high damage spell. So an extra layer, or at least an extra layer as far as removal priority goes on enemy buffs, helps the AI plenty.

6 hours ago, JDSilvergun said:

I'd say make Globe a 5th level spell with the vanilla effect, but that doesn't do what CrevsDaak wanted it to do.

That'd make the level 5 spell pick situation waayyy worse for enemy casters. Letting it stay at lv6 makes it more useful to them as they can cast it alongside SI, Spell Shield and other lv5 spells that are much more necessary to AI survival than memorizing a lot of Improved Hastes which is normally what puts GoI on the "would never bother using" category.

6 hours ago, JDSilvergun said:

Are you saying Chant actually gives a luck bonus as well? Luck is the only mechanic I've heard of affecting offensive damage dice in this way (ex. 10d4 becomes 10d3). This is interesting if true.

Yep, it's absolutely busted as a spell. Sucks that the IWD concentration check speed reduction thing reduces potential usage of the spell by so much, I wanted to implement it and other (Recitation and Prayer) spells as sort-of an aura that'd go away if the concentration check is failed, but then it might just not be worth casting, and I'm not sure how to implement this without it being extra wonky. But Recitation+Prayer+both Emotion buff spells is too broken of a thing for it to be allowed to exist as-is. At some point I'll manage to come up with something interesting to change them into.

7 hours ago, JDSilvergun said:

I agree 100% that playing with 6 people is asking for pain with the pathing.

Aaand this is the biggest reason out of all of them (fake UI clicks aside actually, that's actually way more annoying) that makes me rather play BGT over the EEs. I can't take it when I order my party to just move a little bit, and it takes ten seconds for them to stop bumping into each other. I don't care if they can't go around the corner in the Slums, I can see and micro-manage the situation to solve that. But if the pathfinding is going to actively make my party get stuck during combat and act in a way that makes my micromanaging less efficient, yeah, that kindof ruins the game for me, though it does put me at a level closer to the AI that can't do all the movement nonsense as precisely. But it's just really annoying (not to mention the "stuck on top" bug requiring one to be using the console basically hourly).

[JDSilvergun]

2 hours ago, CrevsDaak said:

While that's true, those get absolutely destroyed by Spell Thrust, and RRoR which even bypasses SI:Abj (which is also fairly lacking on many SCS Mages under the current version), on top of that you can time your spells to hit the enemy wizard in an ordered sequence in a single round, and if they are casting basically anything not immediately useful to remedy their buffs situation, they immediately die to melee attackers or some high damage spell. So an extra layer, or at least an extra layer as far as removal priority goes on enemy buffs, helps the AI plenty.

Spell Thrust only removes 5th level and lower spell protections, unless I missed something and haven't been using the spell enough. So that literally does nothing for most of the spells I listed (Deflection (6), Turning (7), Trap (9)). Ruby Ray doesn't come early either. I use Item rando, sometimes I can get a scroll of it earlier than in vanilla, but it's hard to know when to use it since it only removes one protection. Yes, I realize you can time spell protection removers and Breach so that it's possible (depending on the specific fight of course) to do this. To this, I say people are spoiling themselves with having so many people (specifically arcane casters) in their party if this is a go-to solution, and this supports my saying bigger party = easier. (Which gets contested fairly regularly, from when I've seen players talking about it. I'm not saying you're necessarily asserting that, though). At the end of the day people can play however they want though, and it doesn't bother me.

2 hours ago, CrevsDaak said:

Yep, it's absolutely busted as a spell. Sucks that the IWD concentration check speed reduction thing reduces potential usage of the spell by so much, I wanted to implement it and other (Recitation and Prayer) spells as sort-of an aura that'd go away if the concentration check is failed, but then it might just not be worth casting, and I'm not sure how to implement this without it being extra wonky. But Recitation+Prayer+both Emotion buff spells is too broken of a thing for it to be allowed to exist as-is. At some point I'll manage to come up with something interesting to change them into.

So Recitation and Prayer do not buff luck? What about the Emotion spells?

2 hours ago, CrevsDaak said:

Aaand this is the biggest reason out of all of them (fake UI clicks aside actually, that's actually way more annoying) that makes me rather play BGT over the EEs. I can't take it when I order my party to just move a little bit, and it takes ten seconds for them to stop bumping into each other. I don't care if they can't go around the corner in the Slums, I can see and micro-manage the situation to solve that. But if the pathfinding is going to actively make my party get stuck during combat and act in a way that makes my micromanaging less efficient, yeah, that kindof ruins the game for me, though it does put me at a level closer to the AI that can't do all the movement nonsense as precisely. But it's just really annoying (not to mention the "stuck on top" bug requiring one to be using the console basically hourly).

I do use the original BG2 as a base myself, with Fixpack/ToBEx/Afterlife/Widescreen/Improved GUI of course. It's funny that you're saying the pathing is worse, considering it was never great to begin with. I don't doubt it though. I've seen on other people's streams and videos people getting stuck on each other and things teleporting on top of people/things as well.

[JDSilvergun]

I forgot something. In response to "S.I. Abj.  being fairly lacking." I like that not every mage has the same defenses or the best defenses. One of the best things about SCS is that it offers a lot of variance, especially by reassigning spells on every new install. I've heard people say that they don't agree with this and they'd prefer specifically "harder" spell picks, but that's just not what SCS is to me. If every Lich and decent level mage had an S.I. Abjuration prebuff, that would be pretty absurd in my opinion. It also wouldn't be fun.

[subtledoctor]

9 minutes ago, JDSilvergun said:

If every Lich and decent level mage had an S.I. Abjuration prebuff, that would be pretty absurd in my opinion. It also wouldn't be fun.

SI Abj. doesn’t actually do much… doesn’t it basically block Breach and Remove/Dispel Magic? 

I suppose it forces you into magic duels instead of using the dumb “Breach + pound” tactic… but IIRC doesn’t SCS make all spell protections block Breach? In which case SI Abj. adds very little, and it is quite reasonable for mages to ignore it. 

[JDSilvergun]

6 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

SI Abj. doesn’t actually do much… doesn’t it basically block Breach and Remove/Dispel Magic? 

I suppose it forces you into magic duels instead of using the dumb “Breach + pound” tactic… but IIRC doesn’t SCS make all spell protections block Breach? In which case SI Abj. adds very little, and it is quite reasonable for mages to ignore it. 

Blocking Remove/Dispel magic is actually a huge deal. Because of the reasons you just said, "all spell protections block Breach."  This isn't technically true because some protections don't block 5th levels spells, such as Minor Spell Turning, but anyway. The way SCS works with spell protections and removers, Dispel/Remove magic is very buffed (or at least it's much higher value) compared to vanilla. Why go to the effort the above poster described of having multiple casters cast removers to strip a mage in one round, (You need one for Spell Shield, and then one for each protection that's level 6 or higher because Spellstrike comes late for most people, and then one Breach at the end), when you could just cast a single Dispel or Remove magic which bypasses all of the spell protections except S.I. Abjuration? Also what if there's more than one mage? The Dispel route is clearly better. Liches are immune to Spell Thrust. This means in order to remove their S.I. Abjuration you have to remove everything on top of it first because the removers prioritize the highest level protections first. So for specifically Liches that have S.I. Abj up, the Breach route may end up being better just because of arbitrary immunities, but it still feels like it's a bit much. If it was just a mage you could use Spell Thrust to remove S.I. Abj. (assuming no Spell Shield) and still not worry about the other protections if you're going the Dispel route as opposed to the Breach route.

[CrevsDaak]

3 hours ago, JDSilvergun said:

So Recitation and Prayer do not buff luck? What about the Emotion spells?

Only Chant buffs Luck, the others just give similar bonus to basically all relevant stats (saves, to hit, damage), which when stacked together is just too OP.

3 hours ago, JDSilvergun said:

It's funny that you're saying the pathing is worse, considering it was never great to begin with.

It was fully invariant and had very little intra-party positioning conflicts, but the EE changes that which makes it "work nice" walking you through the Slums corner but if you have your party re-order facing the opposite direction, it takes 10 seconds for them to stop bumping into each other. All in all, a worthless change to acommodate for lazyness while also ruining delicate positioning. Not to mention the stacking nonsense, that's a bug of epic proportions on its own right.

3 hours ago, JDSilvergun said:

Spell Thrust only removes 5th level and lower spell protections, unless I missed something and haven't been using the spell enough. So that literally does nothing for most of the spells I listed (Deflection (6), Turning (7), Trap (9)). Ruby Ray doesn't come early either. I use Item rando, sometimes I can get a scroll of it earlier than in vanilla, but it's hard to know when to use it since it only removes one protection.

Yeah I put too much on Spell Thrust, should've mentioned Secret Word as well, but really what shines is the combination of all those spells hitting before the enemy wizard can re-buff. Spell Thrust ignoring higher level protection spells is fairly positive because it guarantees that SI:Abj will be removed if that's present, and there's a few other things that you can implicitly target with it. I don't really remember what the fundamentals for the procedure of debuffing an SCS wizard are on paper, but rather just work on muscle memory alone to do it, it's a really effective heuristic. And when in doubt Spellstrike the opponent a couple of times (or just use IA+Vecna+Wish to throw like 15 RRoR at a single enemy before they can get a single spell off).

3 hours ago, JDSilvergun said:

In response to "S.I. Abj.  being fairly lacking." I like that not every mage has the same defenses or the best defenses.

Yeah I don't think that's bad, the issue is that 3x Remove Magic sequencers/triggers become invariantly the superior strategy. I think SI:Abj should be rather uniformly more present, many Mages in the current version will go 100-0 on a single round because of no SI:Abj/Spell Shield.

3 hours ago, JDSilvergun said:

this supports my saying bigger party = easier. (Which gets contested fairly regularly, from when I've seen players talking about it. I'm not saying you're necessarily asserting that, though).

Different party sizes will have different strategies that are ideal for them, but you DO get more actions per round. I think it doesn't matter anymore once you can chain cast them all on a single Mage but until you can do that, it's strictly superior, however you need a higher average level, and thus way higher XP gained, to fully buff a 6-man vs. a 4-man party. Having a full buffed party is basically a binary check for "Do you take any damage?" and when the answer is no you basically just steamroll every enemy you come across. With Entropy Shield, any caster class is undispellable or requires to be targeted with single-target dispels which are inefficient for the AI and will never fully dispel a party memeber. Meanwhile if you have party members that can get dispelled/hurt, having to waste potential offensive resources on healing/re-buffing them makes an encounter harder compared to how a 4-man party would perform (you CAN make them sit the fight out in some cases, and in many cases, at least early on, this is actually ideal. So yeah, not harder, just inconvenient at times).

3 hours ago, JDSilvergun said:

I've heard people say that they don't agree with this and they'd prefer specifically "harder" spell picks, but that's just not what SCS is to me. If every Lich and decent level mage had an S.I. Abjuration prebuff, that would be pretty absurd in my opinion. It also wouldn't be fun.

I think the current version has definitely lost out on some of the difficulty the more standarized spell choices had, however it is infinitely more fun, but I think the issue might be that there aren't any alternatives to cover some defensive aspects, so spell variety directly damages the ability enemies have to defend themselves.

2 hours ago, JDSilvergun said:

when you could just cast a single Dispel or Remove magic which bypasses all of the spell protections except S.I. Abjuration?

It has the issue of not being entirely deterministic, so if you see the enemy mage pop up an Alteration casting effect, I just go "Oh shit" and obliterate that fucker before he gets any funny ideas about actually completing their Time Stop. Meanwhile if the enemy mage's buffs survive my Remove Magic bombardement, it could be game over.

2 hours ago, JDSilvergun said:

If it was just a mage you could use Spell Thrust to remove S.I. Abj. (assuming no Spell Shield) and still not worry about the other protections if you're going the Dispel route as opposed to the Breach route.

Yep, that's the true power of Spell Thrust.

Edited July 4 by CrevsDaak

[subtledoctor]

2 hours ago, JDSilvergun said:

The Dispel route is clearly better

It’s great - I’d even say properly OP - if you are over-leveled. It’s dog poop if you are under-leveled. I personally don’t like how variable its utility is (and, I like playing a bit under-leveled), so I don’t use it much.

[jmerry]

Spell Thrust is a great option to have.

- If they have a Spell Shield up, it'll take down the Spell Shield. Even against liches and others with immunity to level 4 spells.

- If they don't have a Spell Shield up and aren't immune to level 4 spells, it'll take down any instances of Spell Immunity, Minor Globe, or other low-level protections that you'd otherwise have to peel away quite a bit to get at.

My "don't bother me with the details, I just want those protections gone" combo is Spell Thrust into Spellstrike. It's a lot cheaper than running a Spellstrike into a Spell Shield, after all.

Dispels have one key advantage over Breach - they hit offensive buffs as well as defenses. If you're up against a dragon with Improved Haste active, you want that dispel.

[JDSilvergun]

3 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

It’s great - I’d even say properly OP - if you are over-leveled. It’s dog poop if you are under-leveled. I personally don’t like how variable its utility is (and, I like playing a bit under-leveled), so I don’t use it much.

I'm usually underleveled for a while myself, but by late SoA and ToB there's so much XP that's unavoidable you will catch up eventually (relative to enemy levels). In an earlier post I described how I usually skip most fights that aren't item checks (I'm using Item randomizer), or required for quest or story completion. Early on I admit you will not be able to dispel much, but if you have a bard or single class cleric in your party you will eventually be high enough level to get value out of their dispels without going out of your way specifically to acquire XP. I don't really use inquisitors, but the 1.5x level Dispel should be similar. You can't avoid XP in BG2 no matter how hard you try, at least not without mods that reduce XP acquisition. Fortunately though, there are still strats that don't require you to use Dispel or Breach for a lot of fights against spell casters. If this is ever not the case, I'll be sticking with old versions of SCS.

3 hours ago, jmerry said:

If they have a Spell Shield up, it'll take down the Spell Shield. Even against liches and others with immunity to level 4 spells.

I didn't think this was true, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I just tested this in SCS 35.15. Spell Thrust on a Lich gives the "spell ineffective" message, even with a Spell Shield up.

3 hours ago, jmerry said:

My "don't bother me with the details, I just want those protections gone" combo is Spell Thrust into Spellstrike. It's a lot cheaper than running a Spellstrike into a Spell Shield, after all.

Spellstrike comes quite late. There are so many mages and liches you're going to have to deal with in BG2 before Spellstrike is a regular option. This is one of the few advantages of having a mage over a sorcerer. You're not taking Spellstrike as your first or even 2nd pick most likely. Even taking it as a 3rd pick feels bad to me, but I may change my mind about this. Once again, fortunately you don't always HAVE to remove protections from mages/liches. SCS does majorly buff Spellstrike though. That is objectively true. I think even with a mage you're still casting it from memory pretty late in SoA. If I wasn't using item randomizer, I'd not even hit  three million XP at all in SoA. Not knowing where the items I want are, incentivizes going to more places and doing more quests than I normally would do. Because I'm clearing more, I do tend to get to level 18ish in late SoA lately. I know everyone plays differently, but I'm just putting it out there that this has been my experience. No pun intended.

3 hours ago, jmerry said:

Dispels have one key advantage over Breach - they hit offensive buffs as well as defenses. If you're up against a dragon with Improved Haste active, you want that dispel.

Yes, this is one thing I could have mentioned earlier to help prove my point. Because there are almost always other enemies in mages' parties, you get additional value from dispelling their potions of giant strength, potions of invul., oils of speed, etc. at the same time. These also don't require a very high level to dispel either. So if a mage has S.I. Abjuration up, it's providing value for their friends as well by most likely deterring you from casting a dispel/remove magic. S.I. abjuration is really strong, and I was shocked someone would even suggest that it doesn't matter.

Regardless of how you personally feel about it (one person said not enough had it, one person said it didn't matter), making sure every mage and lich (or even most of them) prebuffs  with S.I. Abj. would make all the fights too similar. This goes against what SCS is trying to do in the first place.  At least this is the impression that I get, and that is certainly not what I'm looking for from this mod.

Edited July 5 by JDSilvergun