#17695 Black Blade of Disaster should set long sword proficiency to 5 pips

Tresset

Repro steps:
1. Start a new ToB game with the attached character file.
2. Once the game begins enter the following code in the console.

C:Eval("ActionOverride(Player1,ForceSpell(Myself,\'wizard_black_blade_of_disaster\'))")

3. Open the character record and look at the proficiencies.

Observed: The character has 2 pips in long swords.

Expected: The character should have 5 pips in long swords while the black blade is equipped.

Notes: This is likely more a problem with opcode 233 than it is with the black blade spell. This bug only seems to happen if the character in question already has pips in long sword.

Side note: The black blade has the equipped appearance of a short sword in BG2:EE... It should have that of a long sword. Would you like me to make a separate issue report for that?

Gate70

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Tresset

@subtledoctor I am not sure exactly what is going on, but what I have noticed is that the black blade does not set proficiency points to something different if the character in question already has at least 1 pip in their longsword proficiency.

The IESDP appears to back this up in some ways as some of its notes on the opcode say:

"NB: The Proficiency Modifier effect cannot increment proficiency points, it can only SET them.
NB. The Proficiency Modifier cannot decrement the proficiency points. "

As for the issue being BG2:EE specific, that does not appear to be the case. I ran the same tests on the item in BG1:EE and the same thing happened. Characters who already had longsword pips did not get their proficiency level changed by the blade. You can go ahead and use this console command to make anyone cast black blade; just make sure you have your cursor over them at the time.

C:Eval("ActionOverride(Myself,ForceSpell(Myself,\'wizard_black_blade_of_disaster\'))")

kjeron

Tresset said:

The IESDP appears to back this up in some ways as some of its notes on the opcode say:

"NB: The Proficiency Modifier effect cannot increment proficiency points, it can only SET them.
NB. The Proficiency Modifier cannot decrement the proficiency points. "

That second sentence can be misleading.
It cannot increment or decrement a proficiency by a set amount.
It can increment or decrement a proficiency to a set amount.

Tresset said:

As for the issue being BG2:EE specific, that does not appear to be the case. I ran the same tests on the item in BG1:EE and the same thing happened. Characters who already had longsword pips did not get their proficiency level changed by the blade. You can go ahead and use this console command to make anyone cast black blade; just make sure you have your cursor over them at the time.

It's nothing to do with the opcode itself, most other opcodes function this way as well.

An item's "Equipped" effects do not have priority over effects attached to a Creature file.

There are a few opcodes that were designed with multiple values in mind, such as Base AC, to automatically use the "best" available value, regardless of priority order. So changing Modify Proficiency to function this way should be possible, but that would also mean you could no longer override a creatures proficiencies to a lower value.

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kjeron

subtledoctor said:

Which is really a totally fine price to pay. While I could certainly envision a usage scenario where someone might want to reduce proficiencies for some story reason, I don't think any mod actually does this right now, or plans to. The *actual* utility of making this change likely far outweighs any possible unfortunate side effects.

Well, the other option is to move such Equipped effects of these weapons into the spell that creates them, with the same duration.

Maxxximus

and it have ench level 6 instead of 5