14 replies to this topic

[Konalan]

After several weeks of coding, I now release to you all my very first mod! I've reinvented the wizard slayer to be a much more formidable fighter kit than the standard kit provided by Bioware. Here's an excerpt from the readme:

ADVANTAGES:
- Gains 4% innate Magic Resistance every odd level (1, 3, 5, etc.)
- For each successful hit (melee or ranged) on an opponent, a 10% cumulative spell failure is applied
- Gains +2 bonus to save vs. spells

DISADVANTAGES:
- Cannot wear magical items that have spellcasting special abilities unless they protect against magic
- Cannot use scrolls, wands, rods or potions (excluding healing and grenade-like potions) unless they are beneficial against spellcasters
- Cannot dual-class to Mage
- Limited to Mastery (***) in any weapon

The advantages haven't changed much. Only magic resistance and the save bonus have been added. The removal of mages dual-classing makes a lot more sense and proved to be a well-justified disadvantage (since magic clearly rules in Baldur's Gate II). This allowed me to open up the item restrictions, giving the wizard slayer access to previously unuseable items. Limiting weapon proficiencies to mastery helps to further balance the kit in my eye.

To clarify which kinds of items wizard slayers can't use, basically anything that casts a spell. This includes items with charges (wands, staves and rods), items with X/day uses (such as Daystar's sunray ability), green protection scrolls, potions and anything that can't be used by a vanilla fighter. Exceptions to these include items that grant protection from magic (green protection from magic scroll, potions of magic blocking/shielding), healing potions, grenade-like items (potion of explosions, oil of fiery burning, necklace of missiles) and items that otherwise state in their description they are usable by wizard slayers (wand of striking).

In addition, I included a few new high level abilities (HLAs) solely for the wizard slayer:

Amnesia Strike
Amnesia Strike allows the wizard slayer to disrupt an enemy mage's memory. For each successful attack, a spell is removed from the enemy mage's memory, starting from the highest level spell memorized. This ability lasts 2 rounds.

This is identical to the effects of Everard's Morning Star. It is unknown as to whether these effects will stack if used in conjunction.

Breaching Blow
This ability enables the wizard slayer to tear down the defenses of enemy spellcasters. For the next 2 rounds, every hit the wizard slayer scores on an enemy spellcaster brings down a magical protection.

This is similar to the spell Breach except only one spell protection is removed per hit.

The second component adds a third HLA described below:

Immunity
Immunity is a unique ability that allows the wizard slayer to gain immunity to one school of magic. This mimics the 5th level wizard spell, Spell Immunity. The effects are permanent and the wizard slayer may only pick one school ever.

This is a separate component consisting of eight subcomponents for each of the eight schools of magic. Only one school can be installed at a time so choose wisely. At this time, there is a globe effect (aka, the wiffle ball) which I intend to remove by the final release.

The HLAs Resist Magic and Hardiness have been removed from the wizard slayer's HLA list. Resist magic, which sets magic resistance to 40% is now useless since they get this much by the time this ability becomes available. Hardiness has also been removed for balance reasons. To justify this, I figure the wizard slayer focuses so much effort in resisting magic that resistances in other areas suffer because of this. Therefore, no hardiness.

Technically, this mod is still in BETA. All I have to figure out is how to remove that pesky wiffle ball effect from the immunity HLA. I'll be taking a look at code from the G3 BG2 Tweakpack as it has a component that removes the wiffle ball for the cloak of mirroring.

Feel free to try this out and lend any suggestions you may have. Also report any bugs.

EDIT: I want to point out to everyone that the Throne of Bhaal expansion is required in order for this mod to work properly.

This mod has been depreciated. Please download Konalan's Tweaks for this component.

Attached Files

•  KonWSE.zip   470.75K   476 downloads

Edited by Konalan, 26 March 2009 - 10:32 AM.

[Icendoan]

Go Konalan!

My old Forums Only Items is up here as well, and let me be the first to welcome you into the fold!



Icen

[Demivrgvs]

Congratulations...I've done myself a revision of the Wizard Slayer for an upcoming mod at G3 and it looks pratically the same!
Regarding HLAs I imagine you do know Refinements, I think you should make your kit compatibile to that wonderful mod (which happens to have exactly a Spell School Immunity HLA for Wizard Slayer).

Technically, this mod is still in BETA. All I have to figure out is how to remove that pesky wiffle ball effect from the immunity HLA.

Use the "disable visual effect opcode", the effect is:
"53 50 4d 41 47 47 4c 4f" if you edit in hex, or "083 080 077 065 071 071 076 079" in decimal.

Edited by Demivrgvs, 15 July 2008 - 11:52 AM.

[Zyraen]

Sweet changes

[Konalan]

Congratulations...I've done myself a revision of the Wizard Slayer for an upcoming mod at G3 and it looks pratically the same!
Regarding HLAs I imagine you do know Refinements, I think you should make your kit compatibile to that wonderful mod (which happens to have exactly a Spell School Immunity HLA for Wizard Slayer).
Use the "disable visual effect opcode", the effect is:
"53 50 4d 41 47 47 4c 4f" if you edit in hex, or "083 080 077 065 071 071 076 079" in decimal.

Ahh, I actually haven't heard of Refinements. I'll download it and take a look at it. Maybe I won't need eight separate subcomponents for that HLA ability. Thanks for the tip on removing the globe. I'll try it out.

[Konalan]

That's because wizard slayers are considered by many to be one of the weakest, if not the weakest, kit in BG2. I actually based my mod partly on Grey Acumen's mod. Personally, I didn't like his version very much mainly due to the lack of weapon styles but also for the "magical" abilities he gave the wizard slayer. I don't see how a kit that seeks to destroy magic can use magical abilities.

[Konalan]

I managed to remove the globe effect for the Immunity HLA. Also, I took a look at the Refinements mod to see how they did their spell immunity HLA. It seems the Refinements version is in the form of a spell casting which I don't like. Mine is much different in that it is permanent and only one school can be chosen.

I seem to have run into a bit of a problem with regard to the HLAs. For some reason, the descriptions are all messed up. Amnesia Strike was showing the description for Deathblow and Breaching Blow was showing Muddy Slide or something in its description. Also, the descriptions for Immunity weren't displaying correctly. Just letting you all know in case you come across this problem. They should still be fully functional.

[Icendoan]

I would reinstall the GTU.

Icen

[Miloch]

Use the "disable visual effect opcode", the effect is:
"53 50 4d 41 47 47 4c 4f" if you edit in hex, or "083 080 077 065 071 071 076 079" in decimal.

Why would you do this instead of just specifying "spmagglo" in plain ascii text?

If your dialog.tlk is corrupted (sounds like it) you might need to do more than install the GTU (either restore an uncorrupted dialog.tlk or reinstall the game).

[Icendoan]

Reinstalling the GTU works for me, until WeiDU recorrupts it because I am constantly reinstalling the same thing again and again for bugtesting.

Icen

[Miloch]

Well, the Fixpack GTU only STRING_SETs particular strings (though a hell of a lot of them) so the ones it doesn't touch might still be garbled.

[Konalan]

I managed to fix the descriptions for Amnesia Strike and Breaching Blow, but I still can't get Immunity to display correctly (still only displaying the word Immunity). Will try reinstalling the game to see if that works.

I also discovered another unrelated bug while playtesting in Tutu. When my WS leveled up he lost his save vs. spell bonus. I then compared the spell file with a similar spell file from Grey Acumen's enhancements. Apparently, the duration for his was set to "permanent after death" while mine was set to "permanent". I changed it and it worked flawlessly. Who'd have thought that you die when leveling?

Edited by Konalan, 21 July 2008 - 07:41 AM.

[Konalan]

Version 0.7 is now available! This version has corrected descriptions for the HLAs (except for Immunity, I still can't get that to display correctly). Also the save vs. spell bonus bug I mentioned above has been fixed in this version. I would like to reiterate that this mod does require Throne of Bhaal in order to work properly. Please notify me of any bugs you may find, especially if you are also having problems with the Immunity description not displaying properly.