Chance to learn spell
RedWizard
Member Posts: 242
Sheesh, it always seems lower than showed on screen, I mean poor Edwin just failed twice in a row with apparently 98% chance from 22 INT...
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I just think the concepts bad, but then that's why a lot of rules get ignored or have an alternate less insane variation in 2E. I'd just set it to normal if you got 98% chance so it doesn't screw up. I mean that's the only real difference between Normal diff and Core, it removes a lot of the awkward 'ha ha gotcha!' rules that rarely make sense. Ehh guess it also lowers monster dmg... wish the gotcha rules where in another option, meh.
Anyway its stupid, like a lot of 2E.
@Adhin Never played pnp D&D myself, but I'm pretty sure the nature of magical scrolls, and the magical language itself, is that once read, the words fade out immediately. That's why scrolls are single-use, and why mages need to re-memorize spells each day. The process of adding a spell to one's spell book (And don't ask me how spell books work in a D&D world, I have no idea) involves a process with no room for error. I imagine that the scroll is disappearing in the mage's hand while they're trying to commit it to memory, and if they make any mistake, they've wasted the scroll.
I may be completely off-base, though.
The same thing applies to to hit rolls and to save rolls, in practice.
BG fans almost universally decry the implementation of the INT stat for mages. An 18-20 INT stat gives you a scribe-scroll failure rate far, far higher than the probability percentages would imply.
Many if not most people ignore the INT stat for mages, and simply move the difficulty slider down to "normal" for spell-scribing. You might want to play it on core rules for scrolls which abound, but there are certain once-in-a-game scrolls (Cloudkill, Fireball, Web, and a few others) that you cannot afford to destroy.
Even a potion-enhanced INT on core rules will have you failing to scribe scrolls far, far more often than you would think. As in, a 99% chance of success still makes you fail as much as half the time with a once-in-game scroll.
This is a well-known and often groused-about complaint about the mages and INT. The INT stat winds up being irrelevant for mages, unless you really want to play dice with game-changing scrolls.
"God does not play dice with the Universe." - Albert Einstein.
Actually, Al, He totally does. And the dice are stacked against human life.
EDIT: Oh, I see that you say that the PoINT stacks. Which might be a thing, although, PoINTs are very hard to come by in BG1, and, so are certain vital scrolls. (Haste, Fireball, Web, Cloudkill).
Edwin : "Careful now... Ess... pee... ee.... el... el... en.... a... em... ee... "
Imoen : "HEYA IT'S ME IMOEN!!!!"
Edwin : *cracks his quill* "DAMN IT!!
@Bercon : shouldn't that be 2500 tries?
Every Wizard has their own version of magic writing. The chance to copy represents you decrypting the spell then making a perfect copy in your own language.
The reason it's used up is because you have to use magical ink (Which you're meant to buy) and in the process of copying the magic within the scroll is used up.
If you're copying spells from another mage's spell-book then when you fail the spell ISN'T destroyed.
but due to the temporary nature of scrolls a failed attempt destroys it. It's the catch 22 of a spell scroll really, they allow you to cast a spell you normally wouldn't be able to without having to memorize it but if you ever read them or attempt to copy them they're destroyed.