Oh. Not that wasn't already longer than reasonable attention span, but: Spell Trap Yeah. That's tough given AI constraints. Assuming we're not talking about the staff version (which is useful simply for duration - and is a separate spell in code) and assuming you don't want to replace it with a variation on Prismatic Sphere instead?
Every idea I come up with is boring or hard not to exploit. (Applying it to area affect attacks, even if it doesn't block them turns multiple mages into spell recover systems without arbitrary restriction based on allegiance.)
One minor tweak (from gameplay - not from coding necessarilly) would be to have spells NOT instantly returned, but instead make that an ability. The advantage here is flexibility - you can go to your spellbook and change your unmemorized spells for whatever you want to know - then harness the trapped spell energy. Questionable from a PnP standpoint.
If you could create a variation of Prismatic Sphere -- treat it like a stationary mass-sanctuary. Don't let spells go out of it, but allow the mage and companions to buff and heal within it.
Make its presence/immunities binary, but allow it to be taken down by, say, any 3/4 of 8 spells (from a list). -- This means most mages can take it down, but it buys the party time to regroup.
Graphics may be a bugabboo if you really want to keep everyone stuck in an area. AI shouldn't be too difficult since its basically just a mass-sanctuary with a specific option to remove. [Though I think SCS handles sanctuary incorrectly anyway - still treats it as an illusion.]
Ehm... @syllog it was probably best to have such a huge discussion elsewhere. I'll try to be short and not go off topic too much.
Imprisonment Increasing casting time may help balancing it yes, but not that much if you take into account mages can make themselves immune to almost everything (PfMW, Time Stop, etc.) and buy them enough time to cast it unpunished. Note that casting time >1 round is not really doable, it would screw AI scripts. The real problem of this spell imo is that Maze is cheaper, and performs the same role without risking to lose some precious loot or xp. Any consistent nerf to Imprisonment risks to make Maze better than its higher lvl variant, and it's not like we can nerf Maze as it is already barely appealing for a 8th lvl spell slot pick imo.
Meteorswarm I will consider about making this spell work like that (aka multiple Fireballs fired at once with potentially different targets) but it's a kinda complicated tweak. Also note that the AI actually cannot handle the "multi-target" thing, that's why the current Flame Arrow spell selects random targets by itself around the first one (eventually hitting the same one multiple times) instead of allowing you to direct each arrow.
PW:Kill I'd like to point out that it's not a "complete gamble" anymore. At worst, you can now use the spell just like you would use a Finger of Death with instant casting time (not bad imo). At best, if you use it against an injured target he may not be allowed to save. Just consider the latter as a secondary, rather nasty feature, rather than the only thing the spell does like in vanilla. On a side note, within SR all Power Words, including 4th lvl Secret Word (which is now a PW spell itself) do not belong to Conjuration anymore, they are Enchantment spells (a school which previously had pretty much no 6th+ level spells in vanilla) as per more recent PnP editions (since 3E all PW spells are mind-affecting spells).
Gate We do have plans to make the caster "bargain" with the gated creatures. It will take time though because it's not uber fast to implement, and with the few spare time we have it's not on top of our to-do list.
Spelltrap I do thought about both your suggested solutions quite a while ago but: - A proper Prismatic Sphere is almost impossible to implement, but most importantly the AI would really be unable to handle its complicated removal mechanic. - I suggested to turn it into a sort of trap-like AoE spell, like a symbol or trap spell which prevents spell from harming party members for a while within its AoE, but SR players did not seem to like the suggestion that much, and making it AI-friendly is once again a very difficult task (albeit doable with some sort of workaround imo).
On a side note, yes syllog, the AI treats Sanctuary just as an illusionary protection, aka an Invisibility spell. SRv4 will try to improve this a little bit (e.g. Detect Illusion will not dispel Sanctuary anymore), but a full PnP-like Sanctuary cannot be properly implemented because the AI would not handle it properly.
@Kaltzor what @stargazerb says is correct, commenting out that line from SR's tp2 (which is easy to do with any txt editor or notepad) allows you to install SR on BGEE games. Unlike Item Revisions, which includes more complicated components/tweaks, even the old version of Spell Revisions works pretty well with EE. Aside from very few string errors I don't think there's any real compatibility issue, at least nothing which could effectively affect the gameplay. I've worked on a heavily refined new version of both mods and they are pretty much finished, but RL issues are keeping official releases on hold right now. I hope we can release both of them asap but I cannot give any real eta.
Imprisonment is pretty safe to use on enemies when fighting several very powerful foes. Imprisonment on one of them => Kill the remaining guys => Freedom => Kill the poor guy that just reappeared.
Imprisonment is pretty safe to use on enemies when fighting several very powerful foes. Imprisonment on one of them => Kill the remaining guys => Freedom => Kill the poor guy that just reappeared.
And you won't lose any loot this way.
Not a bad idea, but aren't two 9th level spell slots a bit expensive for crowd control?
@Demivrgvs Heh, I was just killing time (a terrible use of it I know) - no worries about responding.
Re: Sanctuary: I'm pretty sure BG:EE already treats sanctuary as an abjuration. Anti-illusion spells already don't affect it. This is why I was mentioning that (in SCS at least) the ai respond inappropriately. It tries to dispel it like an illusion - which fails.
Imprisonment is pretty safe to use on enemies when fighting several very powerful foes. Imprisonment on one of them => Kill the remaining guys => Freedom => Kill the poor guy that just reappeared.
And you won't lose any loot this way.
Not a bad idea, but aren't two 9th level spell slots a bit expensive for crowd control?
If the crowd is a giant Dragon or Bhaalspawn or the like? No. (I think [And it's only one spell for the fight. You can cast freedom at leisure. And unlike Maze it ignores MR.]
Also - for RPers who would normally shy away from trap abuse - trapping the heck out of an area where an Imprisoned monster is going to pop out seems perfectly legit I think...
Used by you... It means u don't get any loot from whatever u kill with Imprisonment. For that reason alone, I will pretty much never use it. Cos any enemy strong enough to merit a lv9 single target spell thrown at it is likely to be very powerful... and powerful foes normally have good loot!
Just the most difficult fights boss solo in BG2 drop junk or they don't drop anything at all. Lets see. [spoiler] Demogorgon. Amelyssan. Balthazar (he drops some gold and King's Tears, bad treasure). Jonaleth Irenicus (you will break the game if you use it in Sundalessenar, so only use it in the Nine Hells). Bodhi. Ascension's final enemies.
In Maze's favor though, it's conjuration while everyone and their mother runs SI:abjuration. (as an aside, SI:conjuration is kind of awesome for a player because besides maze it also blocks the symbol spells and the annoying as hell power words, and insect plague!!)
Comments
Oh. Not that wasn't already longer than reasonable attention span, but:
Spell Trap
Yeah. That's tough given AI constraints.
Assuming we're not talking about the staff version (which is useful simply for duration - and is a separate spell in code) and assuming you don't want to replace it with a variation on Prismatic Sphere instead?
Every idea I come up with is boring or hard not to exploit. (Applying it to area affect attacks, even if it doesn't block them turns multiple mages into spell recover systems without arbitrary restriction based on allegiance.)
One minor tweak (from gameplay - not from coding necessarilly) would be to have spells NOT instantly returned, but instead make that an ability. The advantage here is flexibility - you can go to your spellbook and change your unmemorized spells for whatever you want to know - then harness the trapped spell energy. Questionable from a PnP standpoint.
If you could create a variation of Prismatic Sphere -- treat it like a stationary mass-sanctuary. Don't let spells go out of it, but allow the mage and companions to buff and heal within it.
Make its presence/immunities binary, but allow it to be taken down by, say, any 3/4 of 8 spells (from a list). -- This means most mages can take it down, but it buys the party time to regroup.
Graphics may be a bugabboo if you really want to keep everyone stuck in an area. AI shouldn't be too difficult since its basically just a mass-sanctuary with a specific option to remove. [Though I think SCS handles sanctuary incorrectly anyway - still treats it as an illusion.]
Imprisonment
Increasing casting time may help balancing it yes, but not that much if you take into account mages can make themselves immune to almost everything (PfMW, Time Stop, etc.) and buy them enough time to cast it unpunished. Note that casting time >1 round is not really doable, it would screw AI scripts.
The real problem of this spell imo is that Maze is cheaper, and performs the same role without risking to lose some precious loot or xp. Any consistent nerf to Imprisonment risks to make Maze better than its higher lvl variant, and it's not like we can nerf Maze as it is already barely appealing for a 8th lvl spell slot pick imo.
Meteorswarm
I will consider about making this spell work like that (aka multiple Fireballs fired at once with potentially different targets) but it's a kinda complicated tweak. Also note that the AI actually cannot handle the "multi-target" thing, that's why the current Flame Arrow spell selects random targets by itself around the first one (eventually hitting the same one multiple times) instead of allowing you to direct each arrow.
PW:Kill
I'd like to point out that it's not a "complete gamble" anymore. At worst, you can now use the spell just like you would use a Finger of Death with instant casting time (not bad imo). At best, if you use it against an injured target he may not be allowed to save. Just consider the latter as a secondary, rather nasty feature, rather than the only thing the spell does like in vanilla. On a side note, within SR all Power Words, including 4th lvl Secret Word (which is now a PW spell itself) do not belong to Conjuration anymore, they are Enchantment spells (a school which previously had pretty much no 6th+ level spells in vanilla) as per more recent PnP editions (since 3E all PW spells are mind-affecting spells).
Gate
We do have plans to make the caster "bargain" with the gated creatures. It will take time though because it's not uber fast to implement, and with the few spare time we have it's not on top of our to-do list.
Spelltrap
I do thought about both your suggested solutions quite a while ago but:
- A proper Prismatic Sphere is almost impossible to implement, but most importantly the AI would really be unable to handle its complicated removal mechanic.
- I suggested to turn it into a sort of trap-like AoE spell, like a symbol or trap spell which prevents spell from harming party members for a while within its AoE, but SR players did not seem to like the suggestion that much, and making it AI-friendly is once again a very difficult task (albeit doable with some sort of workaround imo).
On a side note, yes syllog, the AI treats Sanctuary just as an illusionary protection, aka an Invisibility spell. SRv4 will try to improve this a little bit (e.g. Detect Illusion will not dispel Sanctuary anymore), but a full PnP-like Sanctuary cannot be properly implemented because the AI would not handle it properly.
@Kaltzor what @stargazerb says is correct, commenting out that line from SR's tp2 (which is easy to do with any txt editor or notepad) allows you to install SR on BGEE games. Unlike Item Revisions, which includes more complicated components/tweaks, even the old version of Spell Revisions works pretty well with EE. Aside from very few string errors I don't think there's any real compatibility issue, at least nothing which could effectively affect the gameplay. I've worked on a heavily refined new version of both mods and they are pretty much finished, but RL issues are keeping official releases on hold right now. I hope we can release both of them asap but I cannot give any real eta.
Imprisonment on one of them => Kill the remaining guys => Freedom => Kill the poor guy that just reappeared.
And you won't lose any loot this way.
Heh, I was just killing time (a terrible use of it I know) - no worries about responding.
Re: Sanctuary:
I'm pretty sure BG:EE already treats sanctuary as an abjuration. Anti-illusion spells already don't affect it.
This is why I was mentioning that (in SCS at least) the ai respond inappropriately. It tries to dispel it like an illusion - which fails.
[And it's only one spell for the fight. You can cast freedom at leisure. And unlike Maze it ignores MR.]
Also - for RPers who would normally shy away from trap abuse - trapping the heck out of an area where an Imprisoned monster is going to pop out seems perfectly legit I think...
Lets see.
[spoiler]
Demogorgon.
Amelyssan.
Balthazar (he drops some gold and King's Tears, bad treasure).
Jonaleth Irenicus (you will break the game if you use it in Sundalessenar, so only use it in the Nine Hells).
Bodhi.
Ascension's final enemies.