SCS spell actions per round for NPCs question
fischsemmel
Member Posts: 40
I just started BG2:EE for the first time in a year or so, after having played through 1 a few times with SCS recently. I have SCS installed now for 2 also, with most options enabled, though no mage or cleric prebuffing is on atm. I am fighting into the slaver ship right now, and the first "Slaver Wizard" I saw immediately fired off minor globe of inulnverability and shield and drank a potion (cause I had skull trapped him when he from off screen) the instant I saw him.
How does SCS make that happen? When he cast magic missile at me, it was only firing 4 missiles, so he shouldn't have any contingencies. So he took 3 spell actions in one round. Which is crazy illegal, despite SCS saying NPC mages aren't supposed to do anything that PC mages can't do.
What gives? I've said before that perhaps I just don't understand the way the scripts work and everything is kosher here... but I keep running into situation after situation that frustrates the hell out of me regarding SCS after having such high hopes due to "SCS doesn't cheat!" claims in the readme and stuff
How does SCS make that happen? When he cast magic missile at me, it was only firing 4 missiles, so he shouldn't have any contingencies. So he took 3 spell actions in one round. Which is crazy illegal, despite SCS saying NPC mages aren't supposed to do anything that PC mages can't do.
What gives? I've said before that perhaps I just don't understand the way the scripts work and everything is kosher here... but I keep running into situation after situation that frustrates the hell out of me regarding SCS after having such high hopes due to "SCS doesn't cheat!" claims in the readme and stuff
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Comments
The mage and cleric pre-buff option allows them to cast shorter term defences (like Minor Globe and Mirror Image) instantly at the start of combat as well as their long duration defences.
However, I think it's worth noting that SCS was (likely) made by experienced players for experienced players.
What do experienced players do? They walk around looking like statues... as in, they cast spells like stoneskin, shield and armour (which have durations measured in hours) as a post-waking routine or upon entering a new area, that way they are always ready for a fight with these minimal defences whether they've encountered an enemy or not, and whether or not they even know they're heading into a fight.
SCS is mimicking this behaviour, as far as I know, by insta-casting minor defensive spells on enemy mages to simulate the behaviour of the mage having casted these spells before you even got there. The enemy mage did not know you were coming, but like an experienced player they probably just walk around wearing stoneskins and magical armour/shields everyday, just in case.
It isn't giving them any real extra actions as far as I can tell, and the 'extra' castings are limited to these long duration, precautionary spells. I have never seen any mage take extra actions like drinking potions or casting more than one offensive/utility spell--unsequenced--in either BG1 or what I've played of BG2 (which is not much). Unfortunately it's hard to know what actually happened in your own game, from where I'm sitting. Like you, I also only just completed the slaver quest, and I saw nothing like what you described on my two playthroughs (one as mage, one as fighter, which I'm playing in parallel).
After observing this behaviour in enemy mages, I came to the realization that I could also walk around looking like a stoned idiot, too. It has been educational.
I just never would have guessed SCS would treat a 1-hour buff as something mages would always have cast coming into battle, what with that meaning they'd need to be able to cast shield 16+ times per day and all and that is most definitely the "cheating" that SCS says it avoids.
Oh well. Maybe SCS just isn't the mod for me. I guess I'm not playing BG for intense tactical challenges so much as the fun of being the son of a god mucking about the world adventuring and having some twists and tricky fights here or there... but not every random level 4 mugger owning 1000gp worth of invis pots even though he only uses 10gp worth of equipment, mages doing all sorts of questionable stuff, etc etc. Some NPCs acting idiotically does less to ruin my suspension of disbelief than some NPCs doing things SCS makes them do, I guess.
Hell. I just tried to engage the cowled wizards in a way I thought fitting for a FMT: bring them teleporting onto me by casting a cloudkill on myself in a remote corner of the city, then as the first guy appears I run out of the cloud and start casting a second, then as soon as my second casts (just about the time the other cowled wizards come in and throw their contingencies and triggers and stuff), I duck around a corner and stealth (non-detection cloak equipped, naturally) before going back to check on what's happening with the wizards in the toxic cloud. They ran around in it confused for a bit, got down to badly wounded, and then just fucking vanished. No spells cast, no particle effects, no doors or zonelines nearby for them to get out with. I guess they jumped off the dock we were fighting on and swam to safety?
Sometimes it's clear from the dialog, however, that they were caught by surprise, and didn't see you coming at all. They therefore shouldn't pre-buff. But the same applies to the player: sometimes you get caught by surprise, die, reload, and then pre-buff before you start the fight again to make sure you don't die again, even though your character has no idea what's about to happen, and therefore has no reason to pre-buff.
Is it realistic for the Slaver wizard to cast Minor Globe of Invulnerability before the fight begins, and then act surprised when you appear? No, of course not. That's silly.
But is it any more realistic that you hit him with a Skull Trap from off-screen? No. You certainly knew the mage was there, and that the mage was going to attack. But did your Bhaalspawn know the mage was hostile before the fight even began? You played this game before and know enough to cast Skull Trap at an off-screen enemy, but your character has not, and therefore shouldn't know enough to cast a Skull Trap at an off-screen enemy. Your pre-emptive Skull Trap was just as unrealistic as the enemy mage's pre-emptive MGOI--neither makes sense. In the situation you describe, the enemy isn't "cheating" any more than you are.
I don't know what the absolute minimum for pre-buffing is, but the maximum is pretty extensive, with higher-level mages casting Protection from Magical Weapons, Stoneskin, Globe of Invulnerability, Spell Immunity: Abjuration, Improved Invisibility, Spell Shield, Spell Deflection, Protection from Fire, Protection from Cold, Mirror Image, Shield, and Protection from Magical Energy, all at once at the start of combat. Why would anyone tolerate this? Because the people who play SCS with maximum pre-buffing, like me, do the same thing with our mages. I cast SI: Abjuration and other defensive spells before the fight begins, so I expect the enemy to do the same.
Bottom line is, SCS makes the enemy mages do what players tend to do with their own mages. They use better spells, they cast buffs before combat to prevent damage and disruption, they turn invisible and drink potions when injured, they move around to avoid attacks, and they use sequencers and contingencies. There's almost nothing that SCS mages do that you can't do as well. In fact, there are a lot of things that you can do, but which SCS mages can't. For one thing, SCS mages can't ambush you with an off-screen Skull Trap.
The "Smarter Mages" component of SCS might not be for you--many people feel it complicates gameplay and makes things more difficult than they should be. I'd take that out of your install. But for the record, SCS mages don't really cheat: there's almost nothing they do to you, which you can't do right back to them. And there are a lot of things you can do to them (like reloading!) that SCS doesn't let them to do you.
This is what an adventuring party "should" play like when their lives are on the line. Scouting, carefully preparing for impending and apparently difficult fights, doing their best to end fights before they begin, perhaps entirely avoiding fights when possible, etc. The base game rewards this (most of the time) because NPCs react poorly to being surprised. SCS works to NOT reward this "proper" kind of play with the apparent assumption that the only way I could know there is a fight coming in the next room is if I am reading a spoiler walkthrough on the web while playing... and that yes, does seem to mean a lot of the SCS mod is not for me.
I just can't suspend my disbelief that they should be as well prepared for that assault as I am
It's one thing that I can't sneak into Sarevok's sanctus sanctum to find him and his buddies are sleeping around a campfire with the guy whose turn it is to take watch nodding off in boredom. It's something else that I can't EVER enter combat, no matter what steps I take to be sneaky, without the enemy, no matter how lowly he is, knowing I'm coming.
Oh well.