Spell Scrolls missing Feature, already in your spell book

rashkae

When examining scrolls in 1.3, if the spell was already in your spellbook, the spell description would say so, with an (Already in your Spellbook), or something similar, next to the spell name. This was useful, because if that message was missing from the description, you knew that you needed to incrase intelligence to scribe more spells of that level.

Now I have to double check the spell book myself when in doubt, (which, to be fair, was always the case prior to the 1.3 update.)

Franpa

Well, when looking at a scroll in your inventory:

If it is green tinted then it is not inscribed in your spellbook.
If it is red tinted it is incompatible with the character.
If it is untinted then it is already inscribed.

You no longer need to look at the scrolls description.

rashkae

Wrong,, if you have already scribed the maximum spells for your current intelligence, the scroll will not be green tinted.

mf2112

It was always that way in 1.3. Imoen and Nalia have to drink genius potions to learn extra spells. I have watched a number of scrolls change from green to not tinted simultaneously when I learned the max for that level of spell. I drink the genius potion and they all turn green again.

Franpa

rashkae said:

Wrong,, if you have already scribed the maximum spells for your current intelligence, the scroll will not be green tinted.

mf2112 said:

It was always that way in 1.3. Imoen and Nalia have to drink genius potions to learn extra spells. I have watched a number of scrolls change from green to not tinted simultaneously when I learned the max for that level of spell. I drink the genius potion and they all turn green again.

I would call that a bug.

rashkae

Yes, it was always that way, no, it's not a bug,, but keeping this new knowledge in mind, consider my *first* post. It's not about the green tint or lack thereof, but a nifty feature 1.3 had of stating, explicitely, in the spell item description, that the spell i'm looking at is already in my spellbook.. (or, more importantly, if that info was missing, the spell was *not* in my spellbook.)

mf2112

Franpa said:

rashkae said:

Wrong,, if you have already scribed the maximum spells for your current intelligence, the scroll will not be green tinted.

mf2112 said:

It was always that way in 1.3. Imoen and Nalia have to drink genius potions to learn extra spells. I have watched a number of scrolls change from green to not tinted simultaneously when I learned the max for that level of spell. I drink the genius potion and they all turn green again.

I would call that a bug.

They can learn up to their max numbers of spells per level. Then any scroll spells of that level that they don't know will not turn green until they drink genius potions and increase their max number of spells per level. Not a bug.

Franpa

mf2112 said:

Franpa said:

rashkae said:

Wrong,, if you have already scribed the maximum spells for your current intelligence, the scroll will not be green tinted.

mf2112 said:

It was always that way in 1.3. Imoen and Nalia have to drink genius potions to learn extra spells. I have watched a number of scrolls change from green to not tinted simultaneously when I learned the max for that level of spell. I drink the genius potion and they all turn green again.

I would call that a bug.

They can learn up to their max numbers of spells per level. Then any scroll spells of that level that they don't know will not turn green until they drink genius potions and increase their max number of spells per level. Not a bug.

You've explained it twice now, and I still believe it to be a bug. It means you can not effectively determine what scrolls you can/can't sell/consume if you've scribed the most that you can for any spell level. In that situation its pot luck whether you are consuming/selling a scroll that you don't yet have in your spell book.

mf2112

It isn't pot luck. It seems like you haven't really tried it to see how it works. Imoen has a inventory full of newly discovered level 2 scrolls. All of them are green. She starts writing them to the spell book in the order desired. Suddenly after reading one scroll the rest of them change from green to not green. This happens when the number of spells in her level 2 spell book equals 14, which is the max number of spells a mage with 17 intelligence can put into their spellbook. She can sell the rest of the scrolls or use them. I usually opt to read the genius potion and scribe every spell I can for every mage I have. Up to you, file it as a bug if you believe it is.

I guess I interpret the max spells per level is that due to their limited intelligence (i.e. not superhuman 19+) , the character does not know and is incapable of knowing that there are more spells of that given level, which admittedly the whole "level" concept is really a stretch if you think about the various spells that change power output dramatically based on caster level where other spells of the same "level" don't scale up. Also, PfMW seems more powerful than Mantle, Improved Mantle, and even Absolute Immunity since PfMW will protect even against +6 weapons?

You as a player know there are more spells but in game your character does not. So to me not having the green tint and not having the scroll say "This spell is already in your spellbook" are right. It is easy enough to deduce which ones you have and don't have, or to raise your characters intelligence to superhuman levels, where even the lowest superhuman rating of 19 raises the max number limit to All.

Franpa

Yes so lets say she has 8 different spell scrolls, she writes 4 of them in to her spell book and the rest no longer appear green because "reasons", after continuing to play the game for an hour or so you're likely to forget the status of those scrolls so unless you have excellent memory how are you supposed to know if those remaining scrolls are or aren't in your spell book without opening your spell book? Unless you take that annoying step of opening your spell book to check things out you're stuck in a situation where you're likely to forget what scrolls she does/doesn't know if you don't sell them or cast the scrolls soon after they've all stopped being tinted green and it can be especially confusing if you reshuffle your inventory after getting more scrolls/gear etc.

If the spells remained tinted green then there would be no way to be confused and you won't need to open your spell book to check if any of her scrolls can be written or not (once you free up space, if there is an upper limit to how many you can write).

I have a feeling there's some confusion with my understanding of what is being discussed, are you talking about number of spells memorized, or written in to the book? Because in my experience I can fill each spell level with as many spells as I want (I never hit an upper limit when writing spells, or at least didn't notice an upper limit) but can only memorize a limited amount of spells for casting.

Regardless of how it all works, keeping them green tinted is better than not. Display an error when attempting to write a green tinted scroll while you're unable to write anymore spells of that level.

Anywho this last sentance will probably be my undoing, I'm basing everything off of my recent experience with Ice Wind Dale Enhanced Edition v1.4 and the spell system might be wildly different in BG.

mf2112

The limit is for the max number of spells which can be written to the spelll book for a given level. It definitely is present if you play a mage with less than 19 intelligence. Max spells for 18 intelligence is 18 spells per level and some levels don't have 18 spells so you might not notice it.

If you stack rings of wizardry you can memorize more. I am not aware of any limit there, I haven't tried it but I guess you could have a mage with medium intelligence of 12 or so with max spells per level of 7, but with a ring of wizardry doubling first level spells then it should be easy to get to 8 per day.

I haven't played IWD:EE in a few months but I thought this part of the spell system worked the same. I can't remember for sure, I was more focused on playing a druid and a bard since they work well in IWD.

Yeah, the last sentence might get you. Sounds kind of meta-gamey/immersion breaking where your character gets some of the benefits of having higher intelligence when they don't have that high a score.

Goggur

Just noticed the same exact thing. I agree, it's annoying as hell.

hook71

Note this setting in baldur.lua:
SetPrivateProfileString('Game Options','All Learn Spell Info','0')

It currently defaults to 0 but if you change the setting to 1 you will get the desired behaviour.

rashkae

Not Quite. That option permanently enables the "Write Spell" Button, and pops up an error window when Writing the spell is not a valid option, but that's still more time and labour consuming than the previous, 1.3 behaviour described in my first post.

Although, I'm starting to think I'm about the only person who ever even noticed it, so maybe the devs weren't so wrong to do away with it.

fkirenicus

I miss this function as well. Since mages can only learn # spells allowed by their INT, having a quick way to see whether the spell is in the spell book already was a nice feature in 1.3.

cloudkillbeatsall

It would be nice if there was some way to distinguish scrolls than you could learn but don't have the intelligence for and also to distinguish scrolls that are of your specialist school (and so you can write with a much higher chance). Also there should be an option to automatically write scrolls like there is an option for maximum hit points gained at level up.

00zim00

hook71 said:

Note this setting in baldur.lua:
SetPrivateProfileString('Game Options','All Learn Spell Info','0')

It currently defaults to 0 but if you change the setting to 1 you will get the desired behaviour.

Im curious, is this a bug then or as intended?

If its not a bug I might make a feature request to have an easy toggle option to turn it on from the menu.

Edit: I just realised that all the change does it make it so all scrolls have the "Write Magic" option. Is there an option to make scrolls stay green if you don't know them but simply don't have the Int for more spells? Im guessing its not a bug so the only option is to make a ticket but was curious if there was a temporary fix. Cheers!

hook71

Yeah it's a regression. I've now reported it in the internal tracker as issue 22364.