175 replies to this topic

[Andrea C.]

I've changed my mind about this and decided to make [whatever] work pretty much exactly as per 2E AD&D, rather than borrowing elements from D&D 3.5.

Music to my ears!

[aVENGER]

FYI, I've moved the documentation for the Fiend components to a separate readme.

You can find more detailed descriptions of the Fiends' new special abilities there as well.

[aVENGER]

Hmmm... How feasible might it be to make a character wearing the Boots of Etherealness be able to interact with an ethereal fiend?

Not very much I'm afraid. Due to engine constrains, it would be practically impossible to code that up properly considering how the ability is implemented from a technical standpoint.

I'll remove that bit from the description to prevent confusion.

Edited by aVENGER, 16 January 2010 - 09:07 PM.

[Galactygon]

What you could do is (technically feasable) allow ethereal characters to see and attack other ethereal characters, but not cast spells (technically impossible).

Ethereal characters would still be protected from spell levels 1-9 and area effect dispelling spells (including SCS's small area effect protection removing spells).

For Attacking: The etherealness effect sets Protection from creature type with GENERAL.IDS values (1-6, 255), and sets the GENERAL of the fiend to something other than the aforementioned values. IIRC GENERAL.ids is used in certain spells and turn undead, so you could get away with disabling spellcasting and turn undead in the ethereal plane.

For Seeing: Boots of etherealness cast a spell (opcode 272, anyone?) that renders creatures with a certain GENERAL.IDS visible (opcode 136). Easily doable.

This way fiends can continue the blood war in the ethereal plane.

This is really good stuff, I will be trying it. Are you thinking of doing celestials? There is a celestials mod I took part in with Caedwyr, but I remember there were problems with their scripts, because I wasn't skilled at that time.

I imagined the Summon Planetar spells as being repetitive, and should be merged with the Gate spell, so good characters summon them instead of fiends.

-Galactygon

Edited by Galactygon, 17 January 2010 - 01:53 AM.

[aVENGER]

What you could do is (technically feasable) allow ethereal characters to see and attack other ethereal characters, but not cast spells (technically impossible).

Interesting. It sounds like a fairly complex workaround but, in case it does prove viable within my current implementation, I may consider it for some future release.

IIRC GENERAL.ids is used in certain spells and turn undead, so you could get away with disabling spellcasting and turn undead in the ethereal plane.

Wouldn't it be better to use SPECIFIC.IDS then?

This way fiends can continue the blood war in the ethereal plane.

Well, only the Nabassu and the Succubus have the ability to become ethereal, and since they are both Tanar'ri, they wouldn't be fighting each other.

This is really good stuff, I will be trying it.

Thanks!

Are you thinking of doing celestials?

We'll see. Generally, I like what you and Caedwyr did, but I do have a few different ideas of my own as well.

I imagined the Summon Planetar spells as being repetitive, and should be merged with the Gate spell, so good characters summon them instead of fiends.

Conceptually, such a change does make sense. However, in practice, it would adversely affect AI mods which rely on summoned Planetars and I'm not too keen on that.

[Setharnas]

That sounds awesome, even though I realize that the player characters' options to go ethereal are rather limited so far. But isn't the vampires' Gaseous Form also an ethereal effect? Imagine their surprise if they try to make their getaway and you send a little surprise after them...

Seriously, though. I've been loosely following the IE modding community since about 2004 and just yesterday came around to gather all the updated modding goodness for a new playthrough. Between this, IA and so much other stuff on the various sites, for the first time I've felt the urge to register here - even though I've still not managed to pick up my jaw from the floor again.

So, at this point, to you and any other modder who might read this: a heartfelt "Thank you!" for creating so much wonderful fun stuff!

[Galactygon]

Wouldn't it be better to use SPECIFIC.IDS then?

Most creatures do not have a SPECIFIC set, so you cannot protect yourself from a certain swath of creatures, unless you are willing to patch all characters to have some sort of SPECIFIC value being set (NOT_ETHEREAL or something like that). Some mods tamper with the SPECIFIC.IDS, so you will have to account for that, and exclude those values as well.

The least amount of work comes with GENERAL.IDS, since all creatures have a GENERAL assigned, and there are only 7 I know of.

EDIT:

Conceptually, such a change does make sense. However, in practice, it would adversely affect AI mods which rely on summoned Planetars and I'm not too keen on that.

I don't have an opinion on this, I haven't looked at AI mods in too much detail. Enemy planetars are controlled by the same AI anyway, so it doesn't make much of a difference if these HLA's are dropped for the player, while still allowing SCS spellcasters to use them disguised with a "Gate" string.

-Galactygon

Edited by Galactygon, 17 January 2010 - 03:51 AM.

[Demivrgvs]

aVENGER, may I ask few things concerning the new Curse spell?

- which opcode do you use? Bless one?
- If yes, being it non-cumulative, what happens when applied over a character affected by Bless?
- which Portrait Icon are you using? Doom's one?
- which is the file name of this spell?

I'm asking because I'm going to make IR's Girdle of Beatification grant protection from these kind of spells (Doom and "bad" Chant), but also because I want to introduce it within SR v4 (hoping it doesn't require a cutom sec type to make Bless remove Curse and vice-versa).

P.S shouldn't Curse be named Bane? Or Bane is only the 3rd edition name?

Cheers
Demi

[aVENGER]

aVENGER, may I ask few things concerning the new Curse spell?

- which opcode do you use? Bless one?

Nope, I use #137 (Negative Chant)

If yes, being it non-cumulative, what happens when applied over a character affected by Bless?

Effect #137 is non-cumulative by nature and it affects blessed characers as it does anyone else (i.e. it reduces to hit and damage rolls by the designated amount).

which Portrait Icon are you using? Doom's one?

Icon #33 (Bad Luck).

which is the file name of this spell?

It's RR#CURSE.SPL.

P.S shouldn't Curse be named Bane? Or Bane is only the 3rd edition name?

Curse is the proper 2E counterpart to Bless. Bane's a 3E thing.

[Demivrgvs]

Thanks for your reply!

Effect #137 is non-cumulative by nature and it affects blessed characers as it does anyone else (i.e. it reduces to hit and damage rolls by the designated amount).

Interesting...though it means that Chant doesn't stack with Curse, but stack with Bless, and that a character can be blessed and "cursed" at the same time.

Anyway, I understand this is not a problem for you as fiends don't cast Chant.

which Portrait Icon are you using? Doom's one?

Icon #33 (Bad Luck).

I would have suggested Doom mainly because it's more "distinctive" with a quick glance (I used it for the negative effects of Chant within SR), while "bad luck" can be confused for "luck" (as its the very same icon).

Curse is the proper 2E counterpart to Bless. Bane's a 3E thing.

Ok, I feel "Curse" is slightly misleading because it sounds like something removable via "Remove Curse" while it's not really a "curse" at all... but I'll probably use the same name for consistency.

[aVENGER]

It's pretty funny if you do use negative Bless for Curse, almost everything you cast it on goes into immediate morale failure

I can confirm this. The morale failure is especially evident when using high negative values (i.e. -20). Heh, I'm glad I opted for effect #137 instead.

Anyway, I guess this means that the Bless opcode does raise the targets' morale after all, which is kinda cool. Dev, you should really put your local stuff on IESDP someday.

[aVENGER]

devSin may have many choice profanities for you, should he find out how you've just mistaken us

Heh, sorry about that, but he's pretty much the only active IE guru with that kind of knowledge, so he was the first person who came to my mind.

SimDing0 would have been my next guess though.

[Miloch]

Heh, sorry about that, but he's pretty much the only active IE guru with that kind of knowledge, so he was the first person who came to my mind.

SimDing0 would have been my next guess though.

There's always Nythrun. Or perhaps some hitherto unknown lurker who knows it all. Why can't these people use their real fake names? Are they afraid of getting banned for carnal knowledge of the engine or something?

Anyway, I noticed you have Aec'Letec down as a nabassu in your latest version. I'm almost certain he's supposed to be a balor? Particularly since the BG1 balor animation was pretty much invented for him. Maybe you've come to a different conclusion though.

Also, you change Velithuu to a gelugon. Now I don't know what a Velithuu is supposed to be unless it *is* a gelugon, perhaps a named one (googling it gets nothing conclusive except related to BG2). Anyhow, it's a lawful evil fiend what uses the blue salamander animation. Why not just patch it with your gelugon abilities?

Edit: I guess I should explain why your approach should be different from DavidW's replacement of a CRE in an area file that we just discussed. He's replacing an abishai with a nabassu, a completely different type of fiend. Whereas you're replacing what seems to be basically the same sort of fiend. Now if someone's gone and added a plot-critical item (unlikely but possible) to gordem2.cre, it'll get lost when you overwrite the area CRE reference with your custom CRE, so there are advantages to just patching the existing CRE. There are 2 of these in fact in ar3004 but I think you replace both. Of course you could even call it a Gelugon - might make more sense.

Edited by Miloch, 30 January 2010 - 07:04 PM.

[aVENGER]

Anyway, I noticed you have Aec'Letec down as a nabassu in your latest version. I'm almost certain he's supposed to be a balor? Particularly since the BG1 balor animation was pretty much invented for him. Maybe you've come to a different conclusion though.

I'm pretty sure he's a Nabassu since he uses Death Gaze (a.k.a. Ghastification?), Vampiric Touch and Silence 15' Radius even in unmodded BG1.

Now I don't know what a Velithuu is supposed to be unless it *is* a gelugon, perhaps a named one (googling it gets nothing conclusive except related to BG2).

Velithuu seems to be a custom Baatezu created by Bioware designers. The creature's stats, abilities and weapons are completely different from those of a Gelugon.

Now if someone's gone and added a plot-critical item (unlikely but possible) to gordem2.cre

I think that's fairly unlikely since the creature seems to be fairly generic and appears in multiple instances which would inadvertently lead to the duplication of said item.

There are 2 of these in fact in ar3004 but I think you replace both.

Actually, Ka'rashur (the Baatezu leader in Watcher's Keep) also summons a bunch of Velithuu as reinforcements in the unmodded game, but I exchanged those for Gelugons as well.

[agris]

aVENGER- this component looks amazing. It's a shame I started my new BG2 run in early January. I'm playing with SCSII's improved fiends but this looks more like my thing. A few questions for you though:

If I install SCSII's improved fiends, and then PnP fiends, what is the resulting behavior? Will summoned fiends behave as scripted in SCSII (i.e. not take advantage of etherealness, Mage's summoned fiends won't be alignment dependent, etc) and only the non-summoned fiends will use your new scripting / .CREs? What about fiends summoned by the player? DavidW's Marilith's use stoneskin, a lot of spells, etc. Would a player encounter some Mariliths as you have designed them, and some as he has?

What about the opposite case: PnP fiends followed by SCSII- will SCSII over take all your components?

Lastly, what is the time limit on etherealness? I read 1 hour / level earlier, but couldn't that cause problems with certain encounters finishing (I'm thinking of the 'seals' protecting demogorgon, 1st level of guarded compound). Does AoE damage still inflict 50% to ethereal fiends?

[aVENGER]

If I install SCSII's improved fiends, and then PnP fiends, what is the resulting behavior?

See here.

Will summoned fiends behave as scripted in SCSII (i.e. not take advantage of etherealness, Mage's summoned fiends won't be alignment dependent, etc) and only the non-summoned fiends will use your new scripting / .CREs?

Correct, if SCSII's is installed, any Fiends summoned by enemies won't use aTweaks' stats and scripts. This was done in order to prevent AI clashes. However, if SCSII isn't installed, enemies will be subject to the same Fiend summoning rules as the players.

What about fiends summoned by the player?

As long as aTweaks' "Revised Fiend Summoning" component is installed, all Fiends summoned by the player will use aTweaks' scripting and stats, even if SCSII is installed.

DavidW's Marilith's use stoneskin, a lot of spells, etc. Would a player encounter some Mariliths as you have designed them, and some as he has?

Generally, most non-summoned Fiends will use aTweaks' scripts and stats if both mods are installed. There are a few exceptions though. For example, any Fiends added by Ascension will remain untouched by aTweaks, for compatibility reasons.

What about the opposite case: PnP fiends followed by SCSII- will SCSII over take all your components?

No, that install order would cause compatibility problems. Don't use it.

Lastly, what is the time limit on etherealness? I read 1 hour / level earlier, but couldn't that cause problems with certain encounters finishing (I'm thinking of the 'seals' protecting demogorgon, 1st level of guarded compound).

In theory, it can last up to 1 hour/level, however, in practice Fiends generally won't stay ethereal that long. To clarify, aTweaks' Fiends primarily use Etherealness as a means to temporarily escape a life threatening situation (i.e. a Succubus being simultaneously attacked by 3 fighters) however, as soon as the imminent danger has passed, Fiends will leave the Ethereal Plane, which should give the player ample opportunities to target and dispatch them.

Does AoE damage still inflict 50% to ethereal fiends?

Nope.

[agris]

Will summoned fiends behave as scripted in SCSII (i.e. not take advantage of etherealness, Mage's summoned fiends won't be alignment dependent, etc) and only the non-summoned fiends will use your new scripting / .CREs?

Correct, if SCSII's is installed, any Fiends summoned by enemies won't use aTweaks' stats and scripts. This was done in order to prevent AI clashes. However, if SCSII isn't installed, enemies will be subject to the same Fiend summoning rules as the players.

Cool, thanks for the detailed reply. If I don't install SCSII's improved fiends, but did install its improved mage AI, is there a way for mages to summon your fiends?