384 replies to this topic

[Rathwellin the Bard]

I'm not so sure that Illasera should be coded to have a 'cold iron' weapon. The rest, probably. Surely GWW should have an advantage against *one* of the 5+.

And Balthy seems a bit questionable as well. Eat fists of 'cold iron' were-creature!

Rathwellin, have you not read my previous post about this ? Greater Werewolves are NOT immune to +3 weapons or more even it were not cold-iron. If an enemy has a +3 weapons (and, in TOB, not only the Five, but almost 75% have such weapons). the Greater Werewolf is in trouble.
The same thing for Caedwyr. If Balthazar fist are +4 weapons, he won't have problems hitting the GWW.
Maestro has told me Littiz made the GWW immune to non cold-iron weapons. That is HIS idea, in ADD it is as I said above.

As I recall I was not replying to you.

Feanor BGII is *not* PnP AD&D. It's close but not exact.

[Baltrek]

On the fighter kit selection screen, all of the original kits are in all caps, the Sword Angel kit name is in Small Caps. I know, it's nit-picky, but it does not fit in seamlessly, if that makes sense.

[Feanor]

Your second link does not appear to work.

I know, it seems to be unavailable for now (the address is correct), but I posted that link also because it could be something temporarly (yesterday was working). If after 2-3 days the site is still unavailable, that will mean the site was moved and I will remove the link.

[Rathwellin the Bard]

The site is there ... it's just that that particular area is gone.

[Feanor]

The site is there ... it's just that that particular area is gone.

Yes, but some weeks ago, I had EXACTLY the same problem with www.shsforums.net, which was unavailable a whole day, so I'll wait a little bit more.

[Feanor]

Feanor BGII is *not* PnP AD&D. It's close but not exact.

The GWW are not immune to all non cold-iron weapons neither in BG2, neither in PnP AD&D. Only Anath has such an immunity and the developers introduced it probably because killing Anath would have affected the plot.

[Rathwellin the Bard]

The GWW are not immune to all non cold-iron weapons neither in BG2, neither in PnP AD&D. Only Anath has such an immunity and the developers introduced it probably because killing Anath would have affected the plot.

At this point I'm compelled to point out that:

1. Anath is a Wolfwere *not* a Werewolf.

2. Shapeshifters are Werewolves not Wolfweres.

3. Speculation on the intentions of the developers is pretty much just that - speculation. It's worth noting though that, in general, other methods were used to protect plot critical characters. And for the record Anath is not critical to the plot IMO.

4. I can hardly speak for Littiz & TG, but from what I have seen the intention of Refinements is *not* to make BGII into a more PnP 'pure' AD&D game and thus PnP stuff has limited bearing on the mod. Perhaps one of them will clarify.

5. I think that we've gone *way* beyond bugs at this point. I move that further balance discussion of GWW be moved to a new topic.

[Feanor]

OK, Rathwellin, maybe this discussion went a bit too far. But what's the point here : actually, I did not try yet the Shapeshifter. But Maestro said me this :

[QUOTE]Yes. Greater Werewolves have a "dormant" immunity to normal (non-cold iron) weapons effect, but it isn't working in the unmodded game (only on Anath). Littiz re-applied this effect, so the shapeshifter version of GWWs are almost unstoppable. This is a heavy balance issue, one that must be dealt with in time.
[/QUOTE]

And what's the idea :
1. In BG 2, GWW don't have the immunity to non cold iron weapons. Why a Shapeshifter should have it in Werewolf form ? There is no logical reason for this, because neither BG2, neither ADD (Maestro is wrong here) don't state such a thing, and, in balance terms, the GWW will become too powerful (almost as powerful as a fighter having Absolute Immunity, in fact).

[/QUOTE]I can hardly speak for Littiz & TG, but from what I have seen the intention of Refinements is *not* to make BGII into a more PnP 'pure' AD&D game and thus PnP stuff has limited bearing on the mod. Perhaps one of them will clarify.[QUOTE]

But BG2 is based on ADD, so they should follow its rules.

[the bigg]

Another pair of quick bugs with the Sword Angel:
1) the +5 Celestial Fury is unusable, but the +3 is usable by the S.A. Nowhere in the tp2 the +5 CF gets flagged as unusable, and the jester's kit is flagged as usable in the itm file. What did my strange fantasy undig?
2) when copying over the itm files, use the BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES line, to avoid copying non edited files to the override.

COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~.*\.itm~ ~override~
  READ_LONG     "0x8"  "gname"
  READ_BYTE     "0x1c" "type"
  READ_BYTE     "0x2b" "current"
  WRITE_BYTE 0x2b ("%current%" BOR "0b01000000")
IF_EVAL ("%type%" = "0x0c") OR ("%type%" = "0x35") OR ("%type%" = "0x07") OR ("%type%" = "0x29") OR ("%type%" = "0x2f") OR ("%type%" = "0x31")
IF_EVAL NOT ("%gname%" = "0x00001ff5")
IF_EVAL NOT ("%gname%" = "0x000103a7")
BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES

[Littiz]

[quote]This was not a suggestion. Those are ADD rules and it was not I the one who made them.[/quote]
And this is not a retribuited work. We try to follow Ad&d rules when

• we have them at hand;
  
  
• it makes sense;
  
  
• it is doable;
  
  
• we're not in the mood to do otherwise.

[quote]And, by the way, changing the weapons to be cold-iron it's not such a huge work, it can be done in 1-2 hours.[/quote]
Do you VAGUELY imagine how many 1-2 hours works I have done for Refinements?
I'll do only bugfixing now, I will assemble a (hopefully) bugfree Version 1 build, and then the work will be freezed for a LONG while until I decide that I have some time for version 2.

[quote]There is no logical reason for this, because neither BG2, neither ADD (Maestro is wrong here) don't state such a thing,[/quote]
Why do I even bother to "justify" myself.
No, TGM *isn't* wrong here, he was just using my words, and I am not wrong in my turn.
For the 300th time: the guys from bioware tried desperetely to overcome the engine limits, when they noticed that shapeshifting didn't work.
The additional effects they tried at first to place on the target cre files didn't get passed on the shapeshifted char. So they tried to give items to the target cre files (files used only for shapeshifting!), and placed the effects (effects such as immunity to web for the spider form) there. A "desperate" move which of course still didn't work.
In my fix, among the rest, I reapplied all of those effects, which I found in the target cre files and in their items.
YES, Immunity to non cold-iron weapons was there for the GWW form, so I just reapplied it, I wasn't wrong on this point.

If it's unbalacing, then this is ANOTHER matter. But IS it unbalancing? If really +3 weapons already pass through, what is the problem?
Also, in my local build, that effect is only applied to GWW after Feral Spirit.

[quote]the +5 Celestial Fury is unusable, but the +3 is usable by the S.A. Nowhere in the tp2 the +5 CF gets flagged as unusable, and the jester's kit is flagged as usable in the itm file. What did my strange fantasy undig?[/quote]
I don't remember if I intended to leave that as usable or not.
I do remember that I've always considered CF +5 more than a bit cheesy...
Might be a simple redundant flag anyway, there are many, alas.
For example, all the katanas originally have a REDUNDANT shapeshifter flag... it is redundant, since katanas are already unusable by druids, and druids cannot dual. I had to remove it via WeiDU, since the shapeshifter's is one of the 4 UNUSABLE values used by the Sword Angel...

[quote]BUT_ONLY_IF_IT_CHANGES

A nice new feature, I see...
Thanx for the tip!

Ever forward, my darling wind...

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[Caedwyr]

The first link does not have any info on Greater Werewolves, and I do have that particular Monster Manual already. As has been said, the second link also does not work.

If you could tell me which book, page, etc the Greater Werewolf entry is in, I can probably look it up. I have most of the 2nd edition monster manuals.

[Rathwellin the Bard]

I don't remember if I intended to leave that as usable or not.
I do remember that I've always considered CF +5 more than a bit cheesy...
Might be a simple redundant flag anyway, there are many, alas.
For example, all the katanas originally have a REDUNDANT shapeshifter flag... it is redundant, since katanas are already unusable by druids, and druids cannot dual. I had to remove it via WeiDU, since the shapeshifter's is one of the 4 UNUSABLE values used by the Sword Angel...

Isn't CF +5 part of Wes' Item Upgrade mod?

Druids can dual class to fighter and fighters can dual class to druid ... I've played a Kensai/Druid dual before &, via shadowkeeper, a dual Fighter/Shapeshifter. And it is very possible to have a Shapeshifter dual class to a pure fighter.

That's one of the balancing issues I have with the current Shapeshifter changes. With Refinements limiting a Shapeshifter to just one change it makes tons of sense to get to level 13 or 15 as a Shapeshifter & then dual over to fighter. It would make a heck of a powergamer character.

Not really as on topic here, but I always tweak my 2da files so that my druids can be NG, NE, LN, CN, or TN like 3rd ed and there may be mods out there that do this as well.

[Littiz]

On the fighter kit selection screen, all of the original kits are in all caps, the Sword Angel kit name is in Small Caps. I know, it's nit-picky, but it does not fit in seamlessly, if that makes sense.

Maybe I've not understood exactly, it looks fine in my game...

[Littiz]

Druids can dual class to fighter and fighters can dual class to druid ...

Sorry, I was quick and imprecise...
They can dual to fighter, but Katanas are even flagged as unusable by fighter/druids, so the shapeshifter flags is still redudant

About shadowkeeper... you don't expect anyone to do a mod "compatible" with shadowkeeper hacks, do you?!

[Littiz]

So, simply change those three Protection from Melee Weapons entries from parameters (0,2) (1,1) (2,1) to (0,2) (1,0) (2,0) or remove two of them and use only one set to (2,0) and it should work fine.

It seems this was right.
TGM, did you use that effect elsewhere? Can't remember by heart.

[Littiz]

@The bigg:
Mistery solved, I forgot to use the GLOB specifier even when removing redundant flags.

Hey, at least I am quick in killing bugs

[Rathwellin the Bard]

Hey, at least I am quick in killing bugs

Almost as fast as you are at producing spam!

B)

[Rathwellin the Bard]

On a more serious note during my testing of Energy Storm during and before the Improved Illasera fight I've noticed some odd things.

1. Energy Storm doesn't always kick off when selected. For testing I have auto pause when spell cast on. Two or three times I cast a spell, the game paused, I selected ES, & unpaused the game ... and nothing happened. When I looked at my innates the ES was gone, indicating that it had been used. This happened once when I was just in the glade messing around & twice in the fights.

2. Inside Timestop, if the caster moves, the Energy Storm intial animation appears where the sorcerer first stood, not where he was when the ability was used. When Timestop ends the animations then center correctly.

3. The 'blowback' effect is too strong. When used outside of Timestop most foes are knocked outside the damage area. When used inside Timestop foes go *flying* when it ends.

4. I seem to be doing a *lot* more damage with Abi's than I do with Energy Storm to all the raiders.

5. Illasera's script seems to have a problem with the spellcaster being unconscious. She can target him, even when invisible, but not when he is out cold. She just runs around.

6. This may just be Illasera since she dispels like mad, but it was near impossible in many fight for my Cloak of the Sewers polymorphed forms to keep their 'claws' in this fight. Eventually my game crashed ... and I am suspicious that your script to fix this bug might be involved since I had a major slowdown after a while of this. Nothing else was going on. No spell animations, etc.

(just fyi system specs AMD Barton 3200 processor, 1.5 gig of memory, 256 mb video card)

Totally unrelated to Refinements I had a good laugh at something I had never considered with Illasera. After I had killed the other raders, used ES & had my sorcerer's spells disabled, I was grasping at straws at what I could do to continue the fight. Out of desperation I used the cloak of the sewers to change into rat form since it had 90% resistance to piercing damage. After a while I realized that Illasera wasn't hurting me ... and then it hit me. My PC also had the Belt of Inertial Barrier, raising his piercing resistance to over 100%! She was healing him with every hit....

[Littiz]

I hope TGM (where is he??) will have a look at these issues since I have no more time for this.

Anyway quickly: if Illasera doesn't target unconscious targets, it's a flaw in her script, not in everything that causes inconsciousness.
Such scripts might be refined in future versions, but we haven't touch them so far.

Shapeshifting: as is say in the docs, I've fixed the druidical shapeshifting.
The cloak of the sewers hasn't been touched so far (maybe it will be in future version).
Please don't always rush to blame us

[Rathwellin the Bard]

Shapeshifting: as is say in the docs, I've fixed the druidical shapeshifting.
The cloak of the sewers hasn't been touched so far (maybe it will be in future version).
Please don't always rush to blame us  

I apologize.

Should have read the doc more carefully. I was under the impression that you had fixed all shapeshifting stuff. That's what you get for doing good work. Raised expectations.

But in any event that's why I said I suspected your stuff not that I was sure. Hey this is a Windows OS. Stuff happens that's outside of any of our control.

After sleeping on it, I see that I didn't bother to post one of my thoughts on a possible cause of the ES thing. In the glade I had just cast chain contingency. I exited out of the menu. The game paused due to 'on spell cast' and I selected ES then unpaused. However the Sorc was still going through the CC 'casting motions' even through he was free to cast another spell or use another innate. I remember wondering if this could have been an issue.