I've said this many times before, but free action is an absolute mess in vBG2. Just a small sample:
Being under free action at level-up would permanently prevent monks and barbarians from receiving their innate speed increases
Most forms of free action also included immunity to charm
Arbane's Sword says immunity to hold, but was actually providing free action-ish protections
Just about all free action items and spells let through some cosmetic side-effects that it actually protected against (strings like 'slow' and 'held', portrait icons for web or grease, etc.). Some were also outright missing protections against effects.
Some forms of free action also included immunity to stun, which was confirmed by Gaider to be outside the scope of its protections
FoA +5, Ixil's Spike +6, RoFA and the spell all prevented haste in vBG2, there were simply easy exploits to work around it. This isn't something new or different. Keldorn's armor did not, but it was also wearable by monks and could have its free action dispelled, so let's just say it isn't the best example of a well-coded item.
Now, defensive spin and free action should co-exist happily in EE, i.e. you should be able to enter DS while under free action, but still not be able to move. If this is not the current behavior, we'll get a fix in for it.
Yes, FA was badly coded and a mess from the start... with inconsistencies everywhere. That have always not been totally fixed either anyway (item/etc orders can make it work or not even now), etc.
Thx for the DS fix in the next patch though.. will look at that indeed (even if that's one of the easiest thing to fix right now..already did here/ ).
This game is quite accurately based upon the ADnD 2nd edition ruleset.
No, it's an incredibly house-ruled version of 2e. One of the house rules the original devs decided upon was free action precludes haste, and EE has not changed that.
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Thx for the DS fix in the next patch though.. will look at that indeed (even if that's one of the easiest thing to fix right now..already did here/ ).