[1.2] The State of the Dimension Door Spell

Endarire

Greetings, all!

The dimension door spell is famous throughout some parts of the BG community. In BGEE 1.2, it allows you to teleport anywhere within the caster's line of sight.

How do you get it? A third party program like EEKeeper, or using the console! (It's probably impossible to get in an unmodded BGEE otherwise.)

Using EEKeeper, a level 10 Wild Mage, and a level 9 Sorceress, I've found these things:

-A scroll of dimension door works just fine.

-A Wizard can scribe dimension door into his repertoire. There's no way to see the icon in the spellbook, nor prepare the spell, nor cast the spell as a Wizard. Not even if you have 3 preparations of it. Oddly, a spell slot filled with dimension door is invisible, as if it weren't there. You can be a level 10 Wizard with 2 preps of dimension door and it seems like you're missing 2 spell slots.

-A Sorcerer, however, can add it as one of his spells known and cast it normally.

The effect is... normally underwhelming. It only allows the caster to teleport within his sight range, not the entire revealed sight range. Far sight, wizard eye, other party members, and other means of revealing the map beyond the range of one party member don't work in an unmodded game.

Why would you want to cast dimension door like this? Sequence breaking and bypassing things and personal fun time!

Tsyrith

Are you saying that in a modded game sight ranges can be implemented correctly? Would love that, could never get it working properly with Lutzaen's Frequent Jaunt. The extra level 4 spell requirement would make an excellent balancing factor to being able to ping-pong 1 person around the map.

Endarire

I'm not sure if a sight range can be implemented correctly, but in an unmodded game (in version 1.2 of BGEE), dimension door requires line of sight from the caster to the destination.

Shin

Hmm.. as far as I know the only options are the limited line of sight sphere, or anywhere on the map. Both of these are obviously available to anyone with a little bit of modding knowledge, as stated. Not sure if there's an easy way to fashion a version that works by way of extended line of sight.

Flashburn

aTweaks has a proper Dimension Door implementation, but I don't use it because of the aforementioned sequence breaking, and because it's not worth having a level 4 spell mem'd which basically amounts to a ctrl+J command.

Mathsorcerer

There is a new 2da file called hidespl.2da and Dimension Door is on that list, meaning that you shouldn't normally be able to obtain it or see it. I have already removed spwi402 from that file in my game. Don't forget to set the "no LOS required" flag so that you can teleport into areas you cannot directly view.
The reason that Dimension Door was removed is because it is possible to break the continuity of BG2 by combining either Clairvoyance or Farsight followed by Dimension Door and teleporting into a room that you aren't supposed to enter without doing something else first. This is also why there is another failsafe, at least in the Shadow Thief areas, with the nigh-unkillable version of Arkanis Gath and his Sword of Instant Death.

Silverstar

Mathsorcerer said:

The reason that Dimension Door was removed is because it is possible to break the continuity of BG2 by combining either Clairvoyance or Farsight followed by Dimension Door and teleporting into a room that you aren't supposed to enter without doing something else first. This is also why there is another failsafe, at least in the Shadow Thief areas, with the nigh-unkillable version of Arkanis Gath and his Sword of Instant Death.

I remember Trent saying something like that in the question-answering-thingie, aye. It should still be in BG:EE though. It was never patched out or anything so it being missing in the enhanced edition which should be about more goodness, not less, is just plain wrong.

Aranthys

Dimension Door also caused problems in original BG saga, hence why it's been removed.

Mathsorcerer

I can see the logic in this. Clairvoyance + Dimension Door would allow you to exit Candlekeep without going through the Gorion dialog (presuming you had the spell) thus putting you onto the worldmap in the Prologue, would let you get to the exit of the Island without going through that dialog, allows you to jump past the gate of Baldur's Gate and enter the city before chapter 5 (even though my game is currently edited to allow this to happen if you charm the gate guard), and let you jump into rooms in Durlag's Tower you have not properly opened yet.

On the other hand, this is magic so logic does not necessarily apply. I just happen to like Dimension Door and make sure that my mages can obtain it and use it.