Making Auto-Cast & Channeling Healing Spells
TvrtkoSvrdlar
Member Posts: 353
Since BG uses the Vancian magic system, all spells must be prepped beforehand, and then cast. This is alright for arcane spells, because a mage/sorc is wrapped in a bunch of buffs that protect him/her from interruption (stoneskin, mirror image, blur), but clerics have no such safety net, and run the risk of having their spells fizzle as enemies attack them during casting.
With that in mind, would it be possible to create a clerical 'auto-cast' type of spell, or a 'channeling' one, for healing?
If you've ever played Warcraft 3 (or even WoW), you know how these spells function; auto-cast means the character keeps 'spamming' a low-powered, quick-casting spell over and over, while 'channeling' has the character tied up in the act of casting during which beneficial (healing) effects keep happening in a moderately-sized area around them.
I feel that a cleric's job during fights is to keep allies' HP high (*not* running in to save them when they're almost dead!), and the problem is that healing spells are just too cumbersome for that particular role. Not only do they take time to cast, but the cleric has to get close to the wounded target, and risk getting hit/imprisoned/fried by enemies, which disrupts the spell and can sometimes even get the cleric killed. I can't count the number of times I've lost someone because Viconia had been just 1 second too late with firing off one of her heals.
Personally, I think healing spells are a good way to patch up the party *after* fights, not during!
One could argue that potions should be used, but they're an extraneous resource and should not be taken for granted. Another reason I'd like to make these spells is because clerics really suck at combat, and watching them miss miss miss miss miss tends to get on my nerves. Sure, you can buff them with self-cast roid spells, but those slots are much better used for party-buffing stuff like Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, Protection from Fire, etc.
So, with all that said, is there any way to rig, say, Turn Undead to also heal nearby party members for 1HP/sec?
Or make a clerical spell which transfers life from the cleric to her target for as long as the cleric channels?
I've tried messing with DLTCEP, but the problem is that no matter what the casting duration is set to, the spell effects will not occur until the spell itself has been finished. Making the cast duration something like 99 seconds would be ideal if there was some way to actually make stuff happen *while* the cleric is busy casting spell, instead of after it's been cast.
TL;DR: any way to duplicate Warcraft 3's auto-cast healing and channeling spells via DLTCEP?
With that in mind, would it be possible to create a clerical 'auto-cast' type of spell, or a 'channeling' one, for healing?
If you've ever played Warcraft 3 (or even WoW), you know how these spells function; auto-cast means the character keeps 'spamming' a low-powered, quick-casting spell over and over, while 'channeling' has the character tied up in the act of casting during which beneficial (healing) effects keep happening in a moderately-sized area around them.
I feel that a cleric's job during fights is to keep allies' HP high (*not* running in to save them when they're almost dead!), and the problem is that healing spells are just too cumbersome for that particular role. Not only do they take time to cast, but the cleric has to get close to the wounded target, and risk getting hit/imprisoned/fried by enemies, which disrupts the spell and can sometimes even get the cleric killed. I can't count the number of times I've lost someone because Viconia had been just 1 second too late with firing off one of her heals.
Personally, I think healing spells are a good way to patch up the party *after* fights, not during!
One could argue that potions should be used, but they're an extraneous resource and should not be taken for granted. Another reason I'd like to make these spells is because clerics really suck at combat, and watching them miss miss miss miss miss tends to get on my nerves. Sure, you can buff them with self-cast roid spells, but those slots are much better used for party-buffing stuff like Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, Protection from Fire, etc.
So, with all that said, is there any way to rig, say, Turn Undead to also heal nearby party members for 1HP/sec?
Or make a clerical spell which transfers life from the cleric to her target for as long as the cleric channels?
I've tried messing with DLTCEP, but the problem is that no matter what the casting duration is set to, the spell effects will not occur until the spell itself has been finished. Making the cast duration something like 99 seconds would be ideal if there was some way to actually make stuff happen *while* the cleric is busy casting spell, instead of after it's been cast.
TL;DR: any way to duplicate Warcraft 3's auto-cast healing and channeling spells via DLTCEP?
Post edited by TvrtkoSvrdlar on
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Duration-wise you could make it last for x amount of seconds at a time (easier) or if you want it to last until you cancel it, have it add an innate ability that when used cancels the spell effect (more complicated).
Sounds good. I'm interested in the latter part - making it cancel via an innate ability. The entire point is to have the cleric 'casting', and just focus on other stuff during battle; having to baby-sit said cleric and have him/her re-cast the spell every N seconds kind of defeats the purpose.
Which brings us back to the beginning... when you say 'more complicated', just how complex are we talking here? Custom scripts, or what?
1) Arcane class access (dual or multiclass to a wizard, or be a bard)
2) Create a customized arcane healing spell that does what you want it to, and have your character memorize it
3) Create a contingency that includes this spell - but then as stated you're still limited to the existing conditions which afaik don't include party members getting hurt
Auto-cast sounds like a major PITA. I'd be cool with making just 1 innate ability that locks down the cleric (as you said, it simulates them casting), and periodically replenishes HP to all allies within range.
Something like:
- cleric loses N HPs per second (easy to do)
- every ally (or just a single one) within range gains N HPs per second (easy to do)
- while active, the cleric is locked down, can't move, can't fight, can't cast (easy to do)
- toggle-able on and off at will ---> tricky part!
Also, is it possible forcing a character to play a certain animation? This is just cosmetic, but it would look better if the cleric is busy waving their hands about while casting, than just standing there and idling like they've got nothing to do.
You could theoretically try to do this by having the innate ability remove effects by resource (channeled spell) bestow temporary protection from the channeled spell, or assign a certain unusual "protection school" classification to the channeled spell and then have the innate ability remove all spells with that protection. And you'd have to make it a wide-range aoe projectile to make sure it hits both caster and target.
Solutions like that aren't all that easy, may not work 100%, and may have side effects - so if you wouldn't mind making it say, a 6-second channel that refreshed itself after casting so you could channel it several times in a row, that'd be a lot easier for you.
Two questions:
1) Does temporary protection from a spell interrupt the spell's entire chain?
2) How does one get a 6-second channel to refresh itself after casting?
Galactygon is better at this than I am, for sure, but his spells may be too complicated and too difficult to understand for someone who is just starting to mod BG. Also his spellpack wasn't updated for BGEE and you won't be able to install it (over bgee/bg2ee) without modifying its tp2 file. IIRC his chant spell is one of the "concentration" type.
@Kwiat_W
Would you guys be so kind and upload the spells you're talking about? I tried looking for Galactygon's mod, but it seems it's not hosted on BWL anymore (I keep getting an error when trying to download). I read through his mod's readme, and it seems his Chant spell does exactly what I need, and it's only one single spell (from what I've read, it doesn't have other spells attached to it).
@Tivaan: Sure, I can upload it here when it's done. But I've no idea when that will be, currently it's one hell of a mess
The way things have been progressing, you're gonna be waiting a while
@Shin
Do you have a working link for Galactygon's mod? I've looked everywhere, and still can't find one.
@Kwiat_W
I've checked out your mod, and have used DLTCEP to poke around a bit in the hopes that I could find and use one of the spells therein as a template for my own channeling ability (hope you don't mind). 'Mental Rage' in particular sounded promising, but upon opening it, I saw that it uses the 'Unknown(214)' opcode.
In fact, many of the abilities/spells found within your Psionics mod rely on these Unknown opcodes. Is my DLTCEL somehow bugged, or are you using some sort of hidden opcodes list that one needs specialized scripts to run? I'm fearing the former, because everything from 192-457 is listed as 'Unknown' by my DLTCEP.
The last viable, visible one that I can read is 'Spell: Casting Level Modifier [191]'.
Opcode 214 is select spell. I think your DLTCEP might be out of date or not properly installed.
Replicating the 3e vigour spells however, should be quite doable as 5 round Regeneration spells restoring 1 HP/round, 2 HP/round, and 3 HP/round or so.
Additional: Clerics suck at combat? You sirrah, need to better familiarise yourself their Buff and Debuff spells, well used clerics will save far more hitpoints than they could heal with every spellslot.
Her is a tutorial on how to do this:
http://forums.gibberlings3.net/index.php?showtopic=5895
Wall of text incoming...
(http://www.shsforums.net/topic/48555-healing-spells-in-bg2/ --> thread that got me thinking)
I dislike the concept behind D&D clerics in general. It's not that they're weak in BG2 (and I mention this in the OP; one can be made into a somewhat competent combatant via self-buff roid spells), it's the fact that they walk the line between a wannabe fighter and a pseudo-healer. Can a cleric engage in combat? Sure. Should s/he? Um... no. If I wanted an in-your-face, plate-wearing, decapitating machine, I'd pick a 'zerker. If I wanted arcane damage, I'd get a ranged nuker. Ranged crits? Archer. Melee dervish? Dual-wielder. Why, then, do I need some self-buffing, weapon-type-restricted, interruption-prone, attack-per-round-capped wannabe?
IMHO, a cleric ought to stand back, chanting, healing, buffing (allies) and debuffing (enemies), *NOT* walking around the front line like a headless chicken trying to pound on enemies while at the same time attempting to heal allies. You know what's also not fun? Having to time your heals so they're finished exactly when you need them - start too early and they're 'wasted' (since the target still has a sizable amount of HP left), start too late and the allied target gets killed and/or chunked.
As much as I hate WoW, it did some things right - namely, paladins (Holy specced, mind you). That's what a cleric ought to be like in a hack'n'slash game (tabletop is a different can of worms altogether). Ideally, aside from pre-battle buffing and post-battle healing, a cleric should have a repertoire of insta-cast single-target quick-firing mini-heals, toggle-able party-wide AoE regenerative auras, and long-casting (~6 seconds) ranged healing abilities (like their vanilla Heal spell in BG2), as well as additional HP-restoring mechanisms and HoT abilities (the latter are thematically more in the sphere of druids, but whatever).
I want my cleric in the back, keeping the party's HP high during battles, and patching them up afterwards.
Because if the cleric can't do that (and in vanilla BG2, they can't - at least not efficiently), then what's the point of taking one along? You're sacrificing a party slot for someone that's only semi-useful (yes, their buffing abilities are incredibly potent, but their healing utility is severely limited). The cleric ought to be able to keep the other partymembers alive through thick and thin, because if s/he can't, then s/he'll lose that coveted party slot to an arcane caster who can dish out hundreds of damage per round, or an assassin who can one-shot high-priority targets like enemy nukers/healers.
If you're sacrificing flat-out damage output, you better be getting utility+survivability!
And right now, clerics can't offer that. They're moderately useful for pre-buffing and post-patching, but they absolutely SUCK at healing *during* battles, which, as one would expect, should be where they shine the most (since, you know, they're *healers* and all - that's kind of their MO). I genuinely like the concept of the class, and feel they're underdeveloped because it's sad that 75% of their usefulness lies in and is used up during the buffing phase (once the party is buffed, the cleric's job, aside from a random heal here and a clutch dispel there, is mostly done). Plate-wearers are cool. Healers are cool. Combined? Uber cool! So why can't we that?
I guess it boils down to personal preference, but I simply dislike clerics in their current incarnation.
Personally, I want a pure healer class, not a pseudo-fighter self-buffing wannabe.
Fighter/Clerics make for excellent combatants. What I want is a pure cleric.
Something similar to a Holy-specc'd WoW Paladin.
Impotent, as far as fighting is concerned.
Potent, as fear as healing is concerned.
A miniature pocket healer! :P
@Kwiat_W
Thanks, I'll give it a look
@kungfuhobbit
BG2 is loads of fun, but aspects of it are hindered by the fact that the devs followed the D&D rules to the letter. You can't burden healers with all those restrictions, and then expect them to perform in a hack'n'slash game. People will flame me for this, but clerics suck at their supposed role (ie., healing). Just like thieves lose a lot in translation from tabletop to video game.
They arbitrarily made a bunch of a house-rules, which in of itself isn't a bad thing, but did so with mindset of a complete noob DM with a poor understanding of the rules and why things were supposed to work the way they did, and utterly destroyed the game in the process.
2ndly...priests are not nor have they ever been "healers". They are a support class just like mages are, but more oriented towards the defensive side of support, while mages are more oriented towards the offensive side of support. That's why healing spells have such crap cast-speeds and healing amounts until 6th+ spell level. They're meant to be used outside of combat (usually post-battle) or at least away from the main heart of the fighting, with damage prevention being the clerics primary in battle purpose, but can actually fight reasonable even without spells due to their medium-high thac0 progression, medium-high saves, medium-high hp, and heavy armors/shields, and their later hostile spells are actually pretty ridiculous (Harm especially).
One of the current biggest problems with BG clerics is that reversible spells aren't implemented. So the clerics versatility has received a major blow.
Reversible Spells include like 90% of divine spells, which have a beneficial OR hostile effect which is chosen at the time of casting (NOT memorization). While a lot of the spells are easy enough to fix since both parts are implemented and simply needed to be converted to a nested spell, some of the hostile versions of spells are missing. (the Cause line of spells (the reverse of the Cure spells) or Bestow Curse (the reverse of remove curse) being some examples where most are missing).
Depending on their Mythos rules, they might be denied certain facets of certain spells, such as a druid's inability to cast raise dead (due to resurrection being counter to the natural order) but can cast slay living, despite them being the same spell. (Druids in fact couldn't get any form of resurrection spell until the Complete Druid guide erratad Reincarnation to be part of the animal sphere (but only natural animals were possible results for the new body, rather then mostly humanoids like the cleric or mage versions).
the poor implementation of Touch Attacks is also a blow against clerics, since that is one area they shine above others (and the fact that a lot of their hostile spells are touch attacks). Their high defenses allow them to get into the thick of battle with fighters, and their high thac0 allows them to utilize touch attack spells better then a mage could dream of. But currently touch attacks are merely treated as melee attacks (usually with a +3 or so to hit bonus), instead of treating the enemy base as AC as being 10, horribly nerfs the touch attacks vs enemies as their AC totals rise, where as touch are attacks actually are supposed to become more valuable vs such enemies.
More importantly, you're wrong about how reversible spells are memorized. From the Player's Handbook, Chapter 7: Magic (emphasis mine): And finally, touch spells... You are wrong again here. Touch spells don't get to treat the target AC as 10 unless the recipient is willing. Against unwilling targets, the caster must make a to hit roll against the full AC of the target.
Again, from the Player's Handbook, "Touch Spells and Combat" section: The only thing the developers didn't get quite right is allowing friendly touch spells to succeed automatically in combat (and that's too minor to even care about - heck I can't think of a PnP session where we enforced that rule). Basically, the developers got reversible spells and touch spells RIGHT.