Can't scribe Time Stop?

pkmn

I purchased a Time Stop scroll from the adventurer's mart, but neither Nalia nor Imoen is able to scribe it.

And no, they don't already have it in their spell books.

Is this a bug, or was time stop made scroll only for some reason?

Mathsorcerer

They have an 18 intelligence, yes? I can't think of anything else that would prevent them given that neither of them are specialists.

Cuv

Neither Nalia nor Imoen can scribe it, their INT is only 17

elminster

You'll want to buy a (or multiple) Potion of Genius or Potion of Mind Focussing from one of the temples. That should let one of her (or both) learn any level 9 spells you want them to have.

SpiffyMcBang

The only issue I've had scribing scrolls was when I had max spells in the book for Edwin's intelligence without realizing it. I don't recall scribing level 9 spells being a problem when I used Nalia, Imoen, and Aerie, but try the potion of genius idea and see what happens.

elminster

SpiffyMcBang said:

The only issue I've had scribing scrolls was when I had max spells in the book for Edwin's intelligence without realizing it. I don't recall scribing level 9 spells being a problem when I used Nalia, Imoen, and Aerie, but try the potion of genius idea and see what happens.

Intmod.2da now works. It didn't used to fully.

On the left is character intelligence. On the right is the highest level of spells they can learn without boosting that intelligence.

INT/Max Spell Level
0-8  	:0
9	:4
10	:5
11	:5
12	:6
13	:6
14	:7
15	:7
16	:8
17	:8
18	:9

SpiffyMcBang

Oh. :x That's... unfortunate. Does that limit what they're able to cast, or just what they're able to scribe? In other words, once you pop that potion and get level 9 spells in the book, will reaching level 18 (?) allow them to cast those spells or will they need a permanent intelligence boost to maintain level 9 spell slots?

enqenq

It only limits their scribing, so don't worry.

Mathsorcerer

No, they will need to have their intelligence raised to 18 to memorize 9th-level spells from their book.

elminster

Mathsorcerer said:

No, they will need to have their intelligence raised to 18 to memorize 9th-level spells from their book.

Nope. You just need 18 intelligence to scribe spells into your book. Once they are in there you won't need a potion or anything to memorize those spells.

Ammar

Just as with racial level limits I think there werw very good reason BG 2 did not implement that rule. Besides, it is still implemented incorrectly since the rules clearly refer to caating/memorizing instead of scribing. As it is this is a trivial annoyance which does not add anything to the game. I hope this will be changed in the first patch.

pkmn

Thanks, didn't realize it was a fix of a broken feature. I just knew I never had trouble scribing level 9 spells in the original.

Using a potion of genius worked.

Dee

Ammar said:

Just as with racial level limits I think there werw very good reason BG 2 did not implement that rule. Besides, it is still implemented incorrectly since the rules clearly refer to caating/memorizing instead of scribing. As it is this is a trivial annoyance which does not add anything to the game. I hope this will be changed in the first patch.

It's not that BG2 didn't implement it; BG2 implemented it brokenly. If your intelligence wasn't high enough to scribe spells of a given level, instead of stopping you from scribing it you could scribe it at 100% success, with no limit to the number of spells for that level.

All we did was fix the behavior that was supposed to be there to begin with.

DetectiveMittens

I was beginning to wonder why I was unable to scribe chain contingency - this clears up everything nicely. In all the years of playing it never cross my mind scribing level 9 spells with Mediocre Int characters.

Ammar

@Dee Well, it was still better before and I strongly suspect that it was never fixed for the original Bg 2 on purpose which would not be unusual. There are all sorts of ascended bugs out there. The only part that needwd to be fixed was the max spells per level.

However ,regardless if what was intended it is a change for the worse since it is just a small bother that does not require you to make any interesting choices. By the time you can cast level 9 spells the cost for a potion of genius is trivial. The scribing limitation is not even true to P&P where it is a serioua handicap.