I think that it would be awesome to have styles scale with level/THAC0, if such a thing would be possible...
Well, APR and damage basically do, since they both work in tandem with to-hit rolls. With the shield bash, I gave increased damage and penalties to the save to avoid it as the shield-bearer levels up. So that scales as well.
The SoB shield style is my favourite weapon style of all. There's something really cool about a heavily armoured bruiser dispensing beatings* with a mace and a shield. For max fluffiness, roll a FnP Champion of Bane.
This discussion got me thinking: since beholders' abilities are fired as if from a ray gun, rather than being cast in the traditional manner... well, those rays looks like the kind of thing that can be, shall we say, evaded. Should all beholders' ray abilities be included in the optional expanded group of spells subject to Evasion, in the component that brings IWD-style Spell Evasion to BGEE?
Speaking of which, should the beholders themselves get Evasion or is my mod install just that horribly bugged? Watching four consecutive Fireballs do nothing against a bunch of clustered Beholders is kinda damaging to morale...
Speaking of which, should the beholders themselves get Evasion or is my mod install just that horribly bugged? Watching four consecutive Fireballs do nothing against a bunch of clustered Beholders is kinda damaging to morale...
I knew SCS beholders didn't have evasion and couldn't remember if they did in the original. I thought to say that their lack of evasion was a nerf that made the game slightly easier in SCS but then I checked and realized they are not supposed to have evasion. It's a mix up.
Regarding evasion for thieves. They have worse armor class than a fighter and most of their utility requires that they go first to scout or up close for backstabs so I don't think it's all that imbalanced to give them special opportunities to avoid damage. In TOB they do have armor that is near a fighter's without disabling their abilities plus they have nice traps so it may not work as well toward the end game but HP is a little lower on them anyway. In regards to beholders I would think that this could help if you are using a thief to do hit and run tactics. It would insure that your thief could run away if he gets caught with his pants down. With UAI and a scroll of mislead coupled with evasion this would allow a single thief to scout and do a small amount of direct damage for a limited time and mix it with long range hit and run with added protection. I don't see anything wrong with it.
I rarely use a pure class thief as my main character though so I don't have a lot of input regarding the overall balance of the game. There could be many things I am overlooking.
This discussion got me thinking: since beholders' abilities are fired as if from a ray gun, rather than being cast in the traditional manner... well, those rays looks like the kind of thing that can be, shall we say, evaded. Should all beholders' ray abilities be included in the optional expanded group of spells subject to Evasion, in the component that brings IWD-style Spell Evasion to BGEE?
It should not change much in practice thought, should it ? I mean beholders launch so many rays per round, that few allowed saves won´t save the character, especially if he/she becomes targeted by more beholders.
That is unless thieves can reach near zero Breath saves by underdark, which would make it Shield of cheese like broken and would probably require ensuring SCS can recognize it, so such thief cannot tank the rays for entire party.
I agree with the point about there being so much beholder ray spam. That is a good point. If your time stop trap runs out and you are not out of sight yet, it could give you a slightly better chance of running around the corner to get away or go invisible. Assuming you are not using items that allow you to go invisible at will. Probably not a huge game changer. Allowing a thief to act like the SOB would be pointless since you could simply use the shield in vanilla and if you modded it out then you wouldn't want an ability that does the same thing.
I still have a large portion of TOB left to do on my current play though but when I am done I may do a new run with scales of balance and a thief protagonist. Looks interesting.
beholders launch so many rays per round, that few allowed saves won´t save the character, especially if he/she becomes targeted by more beholders.
That is unless thieves can reach near zero Breath saves by underdark, which would make it Shield of cheese like broken and would probably require ensuring SCS can recognize it, so such thief cannot tank the rays for entire party.
Your implication is that beholders = automatic death, and that the only way to survive is to get cheesy 100% immunity. You're not totally wrong, which is why I always thought they were a stupid monster in PnP. And BG2 took that stupidity further by figuring that, as long as you can cheese-tank one beholder, you can cheese-tank 20 beholders! So why not throw 20 beholders at the party? It won't make any difference.
My only successful strategy vs beholders involved a lot of aoe arcane artillery and slowly falling back. If anything gets trough cloudkills and web send in buffed fighters and pray. Also ressurections, a lot of them.
The only surefire strat to win is either "christmas tree strategy" (carry magical items making you immune to everything) + potions, or epic level abilites (timestop + GWW), both of which i consider heavy cheese. I have yet to actualy try shield of Balduran, but SCS is actualy supposed to make the Tyrants try stealing it via telekinesis.
But anyway I'm stuck with what we have. The idea here is simply to let a member of the weakest class, who can dodge spell projectiles, to dodge these spell projectiles. Maybe you lose your Hide in Shadows and this could help you survive the 3 seconds it takes to gulp a Potion of Invisibility. Even if you buff your breath save, a) buffing saves is how you tank behokders anyway; and b) it's not blanket immunity because in the best-case scenario you still have a 5% chance to roll a 1 and fail. (And we could add penalties to the save if people think it's appropriate.) This game is supposed to be about rolling dice; I'd rather have a chance of immunity than total immunity.
Thief with buffed up saving throws and few basic protections againts the instant death effects could become the Eye slayer. With each ray having only 5% to hit, the raw magical damage would probably be less than the damage the thief can dish out (might and guile thiefs are not actualy that weak, especialy swashies). The thief will eventualy fall to death effects, but this is very likely to take multiple rounds, as it requires specific natural 1 rolls to occur (that is natural 1 on dispeling ray effects than another natural 1 on an instakill ray), to which the player can react by either reenacting the buffs or disengaging.
To balance it out you could simply do with gauths imposing -2 to saves, beholders -4 and elder orbs -6. This would make it harder but still viable to have nimble thief fight them, while trying to evade the reays.
@subtledoctor It seems I can´t catch a break. After successfully installed both your versions of spell revisions and F&P I am getting yet another error. This time it is SoB, respective the Systemic Proficiency Changes component.
ERROR: illegal 2-byte read from offset 196609 of 1248-byte file ACCALIA.CRE ERROR: [ACCALIA.CRE] -> [override/ACCALIA.CRE] Patching Failed (COPY) (Failure("ACCALIA.CRE: read out of bounds")) Stopping installation because of error.
I suspect the issue is caused by conflict with Spell revisions and probably something with the Priest of Tempus kit, but other than that I am clueless.
Got an issue while installing. I keep getting this error when trying to install
Copying and patching 6014 files ... [./override/(AL)003A.CRE] loaded, 3740 bytes ERROR: illegal 2-byte read from offset 3682364 of 3740-byte file (AL)003A.CRE ERROR: [(AL)003A.CRE] -> [override/(AL)003A.CRE] Patching Failed (COPY) (Failure("(AL)003A.CRE: read out of bounds")) Stopping installation because of error. Stopping installation because of error. Stopping installation because of error.
The file looks to be from the alchemist mod. Is there something in there causing the issue?
So I attempted an EET install and didn't include the alchemist kit mod, but I'm getting the same issue, this time with a different mod.
ERROR: illegal 1-byte read from offset 875 of 824-byte file 0XCOM1DG.CRE ERROR: [0XCOM1DG.CRE] -> [override/0XCOM1DG.CRE] Patching Failed (COPY) (Failure("0XCOM1DG.CRE: read out of bounds")) Stopping installation because of error. Stopping installation because of error. Stopping installation because of error.
If this could be looked at and hopefully fixed, I would appreciate it. I've been itching to play again, and have a little free time on my hands.
I was playing around with it and removed the files from the override that it referred to, and it would change to a different file causing the error. Is that a possible workaround to this, or would that cause more issues than its worth?
Ok, new weird thing. I attempted an install first by installing EET first (AND ONLY EET), then seeing if it would work, and the same error occurs, but with this file:
Copying and patching 8152 files ... ERROR: illegal 2-byte read from offset 3223615 of 1592-byte file 25SPELL.CRE ERROR: [25SPELL.CRE] -> [override/25SPELL.CRE] Patching Failed (COPY) (Failure("25SPELL.CRE: read out of bounds")) Stopping installation becau of error. Stopping installation because of error. Stopping installation because of error.
Dunno if that helps. I put the full debug this time.
Edit: Looking through my override folder, this file doesn't even seem to exist...
Edit 2: Welp, tried a pure install with no EET done, and the same exact issue occurs:
ERROR: illegal 2-byte read from offset 3223615 of 1592-byte file 25SPELL.CRE ERROR: [25SPELL.CRE] -> [override/25SPELL.CRE] Patching Failed (COPY) (Failure("25SPELL.CRE: read out of bounds")) Stopping installation because of error. Stopping installation because of error. Stopping installation because of error.
Maybe I'll try an earlier version of Scales. Sorry for spamming the thread lol.
Edit 3: Ok, last edit I hope. I did a clean install with no mods involved except for Scales and it finally installed. There must be some mod it sees that ends up causing an issue with the installation.
I did multiple times so far lol. You wouldn't mind posting your weiDU log, would you? Maybe I can see something you didn't install. In the meantime, I'm gonna play around with an earlier install that I did get working earlier this december. Perhaps its a version of an addon I have that's causing this issue.
Welp, I copied my old install from a while back, and it worked with the latest version of Scales. Some mod that I updated/added on this list may be causing an issue. Perhaps that may help find the culprit?
Edit: Ok stupid weird thought. I am not a coder, but I had an idea. I noticed that sometimes when I attempted an install with a mod that had a WeiDU version of 24500, the rest of the mods would change to use that version. This includes Scales. Do you think that may cause an issue? I tested and made sure the mod versions that were used were 24400 or below and so far it seemed to install.
Again, this is just a dumb guess, but something I noticed. Feel free to point and laugh if its wrong.
Edit 2: Yep, its installing just fine now lol. I found that Improved Shamanistic Dance and Atweaks were at version 24500 of Weidu, so I switched them out for a slightly older version, and its able to install. I'll try a full install and see if everything works.
Awesome mod, I am particularly interested in revised saving throws. Checked your tables and I quite like them. However, if we install this component, will all creature files (enemies in the game) be patched accordingly? So my thieves will have good save vs breath weapons, but if enemy non-npc shadow thieves will have the old-sucky breath saves, I will feel like cheating.
@Jarinex I would make my bet on mod components not being properly updated to new Weidu or new IWDEE patch (or both).
In my case the conflict was caused by subtledoctors´s special SR version and SoB WPO - Systemic Proficiency Changes: v5.12.5. I bypassed the problem by installing the SoB component before SR and everything seems to work fine so far. Best luck with your installation.
@subtledoctor Would you recommend me using no murder xp component on IWD ? It has been ages since I have last play it, so I do not remember where does the major part of XP comes from. I am already using Slower, standardized XP Tables and will be playing with IWD NPC mod, meaning quite power-level party.
FWIW, I find many errors go away if you just use your own version of Weidu, whatever's the latest, (right now on macOS it's 24600), and running weidu modname/setup_modname.tp2 from the command line within the game folder. Anything else is too variable (and, at leats for me, almost always leads to issues, including using the good doctor's own launcher or the bundled versions that come with many mods.)
Comments
*pour encourager les autres
Regarding evasion for thieves. They have worse armor class than a fighter and most of their utility requires that they go first to scout or up close for backstabs so I don't think it's all that imbalanced to give them special opportunities to avoid damage. In TOB they do have armor that is near a fighter's without disabling their abilities plus they have nice traps so it may not work as well toward the end game but HP is a little lower on them anyway. In regards to beholders I would think that this could help if you are using a thief to do hit and run tactics. It would insure that your thief could run away if he gets caught with his pants down. With UAI and a scroll of mislead coupled with evasion this would allow a single thief to scout and do a small amount of direct damage for a limited time and mix it with long range hit and run with added protection. I don't see anything wrong with it.
I rarely use a pure class thief as my main character though so I don't have a lot of input regarding the overall balance of the game. There could be many things I am overlooking.
That is unless thieves can reach near zero Breath saves by underdark, which would make it Shield of cheese like broken and would probably require ensuring SCS can recognize it, so such thief cannot tank the rays for entire party.
I still have a large portion of TOB left to do on my current play though but when I am done I may do a new run with scales of balance and a thief protagonist. Looks interesting.
The only surefire strat to win is either "christmas tree strategy" (carry magical items making you immune to everything) + potions, or epic level abilites (timestop + GWW), both of which i consider heavy cheese. I have yet to actualy try shield of Balduran, but SCS is actualy supposed to make the Tyrants try stealing it via telekinesis.
ERROR: illegal 2-byte read from offset 196609 of 1248-byte file ACCALIA.CRE
ERROR: [ACCALIA.CRE] -> [override/ACCALIA.CRE] Patching Failed (COPY) (Failure("ACCALIA.CRE: read out of bounds"))
Stopping installation because of error.
I suspect the issue is caused by conflict with Spell revisions and probably something with the Priest of Tempus kit, but other than that I am clueless.
[./override/(AL)003A.CRE] loaded, 3740 bytes
ERROR: illegal 2-byte read from offset 3682364 of 3740-byte file (AL)003A.CRE
ERROR: [(AL)003A.CRE] -> [override/(AL)003A.CRE] Patching Failed (COPY) (Failure("(AL)003A.CRE: read out of bounds"))
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
The file looks to be from the alchemist mod. Is there something in there causing the issue?
Heres the Weidu as well
ERROR: [0XCOM1DG.CRE] -> [override/0XCOM1DG.CRE] Patching Failed (COPY) (Failure("0XCOM1DG.CRE: read out of bounds"))
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
If this could be looked at and hopefully fixed, I would appreciate it. I've been itching to play again, and have a little free time on my hands.
ERROR: illegal 2-byte read from offset 3223615 of 1592-byte file 25SPELL.CRE
ERROR: [25SPELL.CRE] -> [override/25SPELL.CRE] Patching Failed (COPY) (Failure("25SPELL.CRE: read out of bounds"))
Stopping installation becau of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
Dunno if that helps. I put the full debug this time.
Edit: Looking through my override folder, this file doesn't even seem to exist...
Edit 2: Welp, tried a pure install with no EET done, and the same exact issue occurs:
ERROR: [25SPELL.CRE] -> [override/25SPELL.CRE] Patching Failed (COPY) (Failure("25SPELL.CRE: read out of bounds"))
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
Maybe I'll try an earlier version of Scales. Sorry for spamming the thread lol.
Edit 3: Ok, last edit I hope. I did a clean install with no mods involved except for Scales and it finally installed. There must be some mod it sees that ends up causing an issue with the installation.
Edit: Ok stupid weird thought. I am not a coder, but I had an idea. I noticed that sometimes when I attempted an install with a mod that had a WeiDU version of 24500, the rest of the mods would change to use that version. This includes Scales. Do you think that may cause an issue? I tested and made sure the mod versions that were used were 24400 or below and so far it seemed to install.
Again, this is just a dumb guess, but something I noticed. Feel free to point and laugh if its wrong.
Edit 2: Yep, its installing just fine now lol. I found that Improved Shamanistic Dance and Atweaks were at version 24500 of Weidu, so I switched them out for a slightly older version, and its able to install. I'll try a full install and see if everything works.
In my case the conflict was caused by subtledoctors´s special SR version and SoB WPO - Systemic Proficiency Changes: v5.12.5. I bypassed the problem by installing the SoB component before SR and everything seems to work fine so far. Best luck with your installation.
@subtledoctor Would you recommend me using no murder xp component on IWD ? It has been ages since I have last play it, so I do not remember where does the major part of XP comes from. I am already using Slower, standardized XP Tables and will be playing with IWD NPC mod, meaning quite power-level party.
weidu modname/setup_modname.tp2from the command line within the game folder. Anything else is too variable (and, at leats for me, almost always leads to issues, including using the good doctor's own launcher or the bundled versions that come with many mods.)