I don't think the "cast and attack in the same round" exploit really matters much for mages. Sticking the example above: where an Archer can average ~12.5 damage per round..........
From a design perspective, do you suggest one of those tactics/exploits should be assumed while the others should not? You can't design that way. If you are going to implement a gameplay mechanic, you have to design for normal gameplay. If people find interesting/exploity things to do with the mechanics, that's on them.
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You still fail to get my point, my bad because maybe I am not so clear. Let's try this way: how many enemies are killed in SoA? Multiply it for the average rounds needed and you have the rounds that a mage is involved in combat. Some thousand I guess, at least half of them the mage don't use a regular spell (if rest is not abused or infinite spells strategies used, an average run of an average player). With the cantrips you give some thousand free spells to each mage, MM will be one used, for spell disruption at no cost. And this alone is an advantage that the mages don't need. But
- Grease would not stack with itself - Charmed victims cannot fight, and the Charm is dispelled if they take damage, and they can only be affected by the spell once per day - Sleep victims wake up (slowly) when struck, and they can only be affected by the spell once per day - Spook victims can only be affected by the spell once per day - Chromatic Orb doesn't scale; instead it has a random chance to do different kinds of damage with different secondary effects, which are all minor (blind 1 round, stun 1 round, panic 2 rounds, etc.) - Blindness only lasts 2 rounds
You even think to mod Chromatic Orb to give blind 1 round, stun 1 round, panic 2 rounds, etc. I guess that the logic thing to do is to use those spells, you can not make the ST ridiculously too bad even if you nerf them. Given the thousand free castings they will hit a lot in the long run. Having an enemy or more disabled for a couple of rounds is a real advantage, on top you put the free infinite spell disruption as a cherry. I am talking of the most logical tactic of a player who don't want to abuse but use the new feature, cast a cantrip if a better spell is not needed. As the damage of them has been severely limited the damaging ones will be not the chosen. Thousend of charm, sleep, grease, spook is the result. If you want the cheesy abuses I have also them, but I am talking of the normal use trying to think which is the normal for you, according to your tastes, and it seems to me that you have not still got all the consequences that the changes that you want to introduce will have. I really only want to be helpful, believe me.
I am not playing minimum rest games, but if my casters would cast a spell at each round a battle is going on my parties would rest a lot more. Seeing some YT players I get the same impression, even if some of them like to cast long series of pre buffs, that don't affect the number of combat rounds, but lower the number of spells that are available in combat. Let's assume that an average (experienced) party clear a dungeon with one rest and use the second day to fight the boss. How many slots has a mage? How many are left unused at the end of the day? In how many rounds he was involved clearing that dungeon? The battles are fast, but not so fast, there are not enough spells to cast them every round, a day is long and they are precious. A less experienced party (or player) uses in a less efficient way the regular spells, but also needs more rounds to win each battle. He need 2 or 3 rests to clear the dungeon but the number of rounds in each day is probably the same of the one of the experienced player. You can test it yourself, I can only play a couple of savegames and notice when my mages spend a round without casting, given the number of kills that my parties have at the end of SoA I find that is reasonable to think that the amount of time a mage don't cast is more in the thousand than in the hundred range of rounds. SoA is long, so the whole thing is diluted in a long time, but a thousand or more castings of disabling spells seem to me a good present for the mages. And GM and Doom will become even more powerful, often the only spells needed to win a battle. The rest is free. If is fine for you is fine also for me, at least we will have a reason to dual from mages and not into mages. But I told that I don't even want to go into the cheesy part, that is not about kiting, I have better ideas, so I'll better stop.
@subtledoctor I can not do it as EE does not work on my old BGgaming notebook. But I am really interested in the results of the testing. I just repeat for the third time that the 1d4 DPR is NOT the point, unless when is used for spell disruption, imo only a weak player would chose the damaging cantrips against the disabling ones, I also explained that I calculate only the rounds where a regular spell is not cast anyway, you also will be casting those Chaos and Symbol: Stun and ADHW, on top of that many charm, fear, blind, grease. And the fact that this works for the AI as well, so SCS will be able to spam infinite disablers at you affects the balance between the party and the enemies, but I was clear about how the balance is altered in favor of the mage class when I was talking of an unneeded gift for the mages.
You answer to me using as motivation that 1d4 DPR is a little damage, ignoring that I wrote before that is not the thing that break the balance, then that the enemy will use much better spells, when I never told of replace completely the party spell casting using only cantrips, but always assumed that they are on top of the normal spells. Then you conclude saying that also the enemies will have the cantrips (and if the AI can use them properly is great) ignoring that I had told that the problem of balance is between the mages and the other classes. If you continue to answer with reasons that I already explained why are not relevant to my points I doubt we can find a common agreement. The testers will find the truth.
Couldn't you create cantrips as "special abilities" (with spell level "zero") instead?
Yeah - that's more or less what I've already done. But that results only in extra abilities for the player, it's not something the AI can benefit from.
You can give opponents the individual level 0 cantrips and add a bit of AI into their scripts to use them. Then the player can just use the main cantrip innate that unlocks the individual cantrips. If you go back to level 0 cantrips... At least the AI will then use them.
Can you make a level 1 spell that keeps refreshing itself (I guess alphabetically it will be called "aaaa cantrip" then if you use the wondrous recall thing?). Then hide all the cantrips in that spell? Then you don't need to change the other level 1 spells.
I played around with unlimited innates in the past and all you need to do is add the effect that adds the same spell back to the innate bar.
Okay i can see your motivation with AI coding, but then isn't it easier to team up and really do the thing you actually want to in a smart way?
No need to start with immediately three missiles. Start with one missile for higher damage a piece and gain per level. Cantrip doing at some point two missiles is actually good, must be done while two missiles is similar damage as the powered up one.
Replacing spells... The AI rarely uses the ones you suggest so i don't know how effective it will become. Would they use your spell at all?
All the ones I had before as the proposed modification of the MM don't fix its unlimited disrupting potential and I always told that the damaging cantrips are not the problem.
And some new thoughts. You opened the topic with "Floating an idea that I've been tinkering with in my BG-modding garage: making all 1st-level spells castable at-will. " and now we know that the AI will not be modified updating the combat scripts of the enemy but instead a very basic trick will be used for at least make the enemy use some of the new spells, without any attention to the fact that now are free spells. It seems to me quite far from the perfection of a mod like SR that operates big changes in the spell system, changes well used by the AI and that perfectly integrate with mods like SCS.
I started participating this topic with a neutral but positively neutral and interested position. At now I have more doubts then at the beginning, mine is now a doubtful and concerned neutrality. I still wait for the results from the beta testers, hoping that someone of them try, as I suggested, to cast a disabling cantrip (charm, blind and so on) each round his mage is not using a normal spell, using MM only for spell disruption.
In other news, it seems that the MM projectile cannot be cloned, or edited in any way. But I have various recolored single-missile projectiles already, courtesy of Pecca. So, the cantrip will end up having to be a single missile only, using one of those projectiles; that way I can use the regular MM projectile for the Greater MM spell.
It's projectiles are still hardcoded, but as of 2.0 / IWDEE they can be reproduced. I would suggest looking at Mordenkainen's Force Missiles to see how it is done. Replace the travel animation, uncheck the "Random Path" flag so they fly in a proper arc. Last I tried, Weidu's ADD_PROJECTILE can not handle adding projectiles the way Mordenkainen's is set up though, since it uses the same filename over and over(Weidu won't add the same Projectile multiple times, it just returns the index of the existing entry after the first), had to resort to manually patching PROJECTL.IDS/MISSILE.IDS. The order of the projectiles as listed PROJECTL.IDS is mandatory, they must be sequential without gaps.
Hmmm. Not sure how scs knows which spells are damaging spells but by larger purpose is this not definable in some sort of way? That is, you change a buff spell to damaging spell and presto scs knows it is now a damage spell and adds proper AI handling for it?).
Fom wikipwdia: "In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[2] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion,[3] often for their own amusement." Nothing of what I posted here was inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic, I only posted on-topic arguments and defended them with examples and explanation, being polite and avoiding any personal attack. My intent was never to provoke into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion, I always focused on the new cantrips and how they will affect the balance and the playability of the game, that is the topic matter. On my last post I exposed how my thoughts had changed as the topic was evolving, and only to answer to your question that I quoted, is answering a question enough to become a troll?
I am quite offended by your insinuation, trolling is a completely different thing from what I am doing here. I remind you also that this is not YOUR personal topic, but a public poll about the opinions of the readers on a proposed mod, this topic is about the opinions, no matter if you or me like them, everyone here is free to expose them, in a polite way. The question was "So: what do you think? Worth putting in the time? Would something like this interest you? Do you have any/better ideas for how to balance low-level spells that are infinitely spammable?" and all that I told here is related to those questions, polite and with motivations. I bring data, like the number of memorizations that a mage has (lev5 7 spellslots, lev 10 15 spellslots, lev 15 28 spellslots to see how many rounds he will have to use the cantrips outside the 7-15-28 rounds when he will cast regular spells in a day. But you don't analyze my data, it would be immediately apparent that a lev5 mage's day is way longer than 7 rounds. You just "don't think so" without bringing anything outside your opinion as motivation. And you assume that I am promoting ultra cheesy tactics when I am talking of casting the best cantrips in the rounds when a spellcaster don't cast a regular spell, casting a charm or fear instead of a nerfed MM is not cheese, is just be not too stupid. Same for the use by high level mages, you admit that is more then one year that you are not playing ToB and you don't have a real idea of how much cantrips can be spammed using RoV and IA, you maybe should give it a try and then be thankful of the constructive feedback instead of accusing other forum users of trolling.
Hmmm. Not sure how scs knows which spells are damaging spells but by larger purpose is this not definable in some sort of way? That is, you change a buff spell to damaging spell and presto scs knows it is now a damage spell and adds proper AI handling for it?).
I am guessing no...
I am guessing the same. But this is not a problem in a mod like SR where the spells was not moved in other levels or the way a whole level of spells is completely changed. SR is a masterwork because it modify and re balance many spells in a way that don't prevent the vanilla AI and even the modded SCS AI to utilize them properly. The trick there works, but it works because each spell is substituted by a spell of the same name but rebalanced, there can be some minor problems, like a mage casting more than 1 IH because the original is a single target spell, but it work wonderfully. Here imo the things are different even if the same trick is used, some spells are moved to a different level, other ones can have names that the AI can not understand and use (like the new cantrip MM and the new lev2MM) and the whole first level works in a completely different way, the AI of the enemies should be rewritten to have a compatibility similar to the one SR has, and this is an immense work for a modder.
I could switch Chromatic Orb to only magic damage, instead of random damage types, so that Pro. Energy still protects from it. And patch Shield to block it. Chromatic Orb will basically take the place of the old Magic Missile: quick to cast, low-damage, useful for disruption, blocked by Shield.
Will the AI be able to use the new lev1 disrupter instead of the old one? WIll it at least use the new lev2 MM? I am just asking as I know very little about scripts.
I could switch Chromatic Orb to only magic damage, instead of random damage types, so that Pro. Energy still protects from it. And patch Shield to block it. Chromatic Orb will basically take the place of the old Magic Missile: quick to cast, low-damage, useful for disruption, blocked by Shield.
Will the AI be able to use the new lev1 disrupter instead of the old one? WIll it at least use the new lev2 MM? I am just asking as I know very little about scripts.
The AI will use whatever the WIZARD_MAGIC_MISSILE row in the spell.ids file points to. At least SCS AI will, admittedly I haven't seen a vanilla script in years.
@gorgonzola you are simply wrong about some things. But I am not going to be able to convince you of that. Which is fine - you have made your points, repeatedly and at length. And I am appreciative of and responsive to constructive criticism. This concept has already been improved by the theoretical discussion, e.g. in preventing IA spamming. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating - some of your concerns can only be addressed by play-testing. Further argument is not productive.
Further argument is not productive, some of mine concerns can only be addressed by play-testing. I agree and wait the test results. As I told I can not contribute to the testing as EE refuses to work on my gaming notebook. Anyway I was just speaking about me being or not being a troll and the argument about how the AI will deal with the mod (if using the same trick of SR is working also here or not) is not only an issue of mine and it seems to me that at least on this further argument can be productive.
EDIT - and you do not seem to understand how SR works, or how my changes will work.
This is perfectly true, I am not a modder, I don't use SR and have a very limited experience with it. About this I can only guess and ask... And is what I am doing.
Comments
Let's try this way: how many enemies are killed in SoA? Multiply it for the average rounds needed and you have the rounds that a mage is involved in combat. Some thousand I guess, at least half of them the mage don't use a regular spell (if rest is not abused or infinite spells strategies used, an average run of an average player).
With the cantrips you give some thousand free spells to each mage, MM will be one used, for spell disruption at no cost. And this alone is an advantage that the mages don't need.
But You even think to mod Chromatic Orb to give blind 1 round, stun 1 round, panic 2 rounds, etc.
I guess that the logic thing to do is to use those spells, you can not make the ST ridiculously too bad even if you nerf them. Given the thousand free castings they will hit a lot in the long run.
Having an enemy or more disabled for a couple of rounds is a real advantage, on top you put the free infinite spell disruption as a cherry.
I am talking of the most logical tactic of a player who don't want to abuse but use the new feature, cast a cantrip if a better spell is not needed. As the damage of them has been severely limited the damaging ones will be not the chosen. Thousend of charm, sleep, grease, spook is the result.
If you want the cheesy abuses I have also them, but I am talking of the normal use trying to think which is the normal for you, according to your tastes, and it seems to me that you have not still got all the consequences that the changes that you want to introduce will have.
I really only want to be helpful, believe me.
Let's assume that an average (experienced) party clear a dungeon with one rest and use the second day to fight the boss. How many slots has a mage? How many are left unused at the end of the day?
In how many rounds he was involved clearing that dungeon? The battles are fast, but not so fast, there are not enough spells to cast them every round, a day is long and they are precious. A less experienced party (or player) uses in a less efficient way the regular spells, but also needs more rounds to win each battle. He need 2 or 3 rests to clear the dungeon but the number of rounds in each day is probably the same of the one of the experienced player. You can test it yourself, I can only play a couple of savegames and notice when my mages spend a round without casting, given the number of kills that my parties have at the end of SoA I find that is reasonable to think that the amount of time a mage don't cast is more in the thousand than in the hundred range of rounds.
SoA is long, so the whole thing is diluted in a long time, but a thousand or more castings of disabling spells seem to me a good present for the mages. And GM and Doom will become even more powerful, often the only spells needed to win a battle. The rest is free.
If is fine for you is fine also for me, at least we will have a reason to dual from mages and not into mages. But I told that I don't even want to go into the cheesy part, that is not about kiting, I have better ideas, so I'll better stop.
I just repeat for the third time that the 1d4 DPR is NOT the point, unless when is used for spell disruption, imo only a weak player would chose the damaging cantrips against the disabling ones, I also explained that I calculate only the rounds where a regular spell is not cast anyway, you also will be casting those Chaos and Symbol: Stun and ADHW, on top of that many charm, fear, blind, grease. And the fact that this works for the AI as well, so SCS will be able to spam infinite disablers at you affects the balance between the party and the enemies, but I was clear about how the balance is altered in favor of the mage class when I was talking of an unneeded gift for the mages.
You answer to me using as motivation that 1d4 DPR is a little damage, ignoring that I wrote before that is not the thing that break the balance, then that the enemy will use much better spells, when I never told of replace completely the party spell casting using only cantrips, but always assumed that they are on top of the normal spells. Then you conclude saying that also the enemies will have the cantrips (and if the AI can use them properly is great) ignoring that I had told that the problem of balance is between the mages and the other classes. If you continue to answer with reasons that I already explained why are not relevant to my points I doubt we can find a common agreement. The testers will find the truth.
Can you make a level 1 spell that keeps refreshing itself (I guess alphabetically it will be called "aaaa cantrip" then if you use the wondrous recall thing?). Then hide all the cantrips in that spell? Then you don't need to change the other level 1 spells.
I played around with unlimited innates in the past and all you need to do is add the effect that adds the same spell back to the innate bar.
No need to start with immediately three missiles. Start with one missile for higher damage a piece and gain per level. Cantrip doing at some point two missiles is actually good, must be done while two missiles is similar damage as the powered up one.
Replacing spells... The AI rarely uses the ones you suggest so i don't know how effective it will become. Would they use your spell at all?
And some new thoughts.
You opened the topic with "Floating an idea that I've been tinkering with in my BG-modding garage: making all 1st-level spells castable at-will. " and now we know that the AI will not be modified updating the combat scripts of the enemy but instead a very basic trick will be used for at least make the enemy use some of the new spells, without any attention to the fact that now are free spells.
It seems to me quite far from the perfection of a mod like SR that operates big changes in the spell system, changes well used by the AI and that perfectly integrate with mods like SCS.
I started participating this topic with a neutral but positively neutral and interested position.
At now I have more doubts then at the beginning, mine is now a doubtful and concerned neutrality.
I still wait for the results from the beta testers, hoping that someone of them try, as I suggested, to cast a disabling cantrip (charm, blind and so on) each round his mage is not using a normal spell, using MM only for spell disruption.
I am guessing no...
Fom wikipwdia:
"In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[2] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion,[3] often for their own amusement."
Nothing of what I posted here was inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic, I only posted on-topic arguments and defended them with examples and explanation, being polite and avoiding any personal attack.
My intent was never to provoke into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion, I always focused on the new cantrips and how they will affect the balance and the playability of the game, that is the topic matter.
On my last post I exposed how my thoughts had changed as the topic was evolving, and only to answer to your question that I quoted, is answering a question enough to become a troll?
I am quite offended by your insinuation, trolling is a completely different thing from what I am doing here. I remind you also that this is not YOUR personal topic, but a public poll about the opinions of the readers on a proposed mod, this topic is about the opinions, no matter if you or me like them, everyone here is free to expose them, in a polite way. The question was "So: what do you think? Worth putting in the time? Would something like this interest you? Do you have any/better ideas for how to balance low-level spells that are infinitely spammable?" and all that I told here is related to those questions, polite and with motivations.
I bring data, like the number of memorizations that a mage has (lev5 7 spellslots, lev 10 15 spellslots, lev 15 28 spellslots to see how many rounds he will have to use the cantrips outside the 7-15-28 rounds when he will cast regular spells in a day. But you don't analyze my data, it would be immediately apparent that a lev5 mage's day is way longer than 7 rounds. You just "don't think so" without bringing anything outside your opinion as motivation. And you assume that I am promoting ultra cheesy tactics when I am talking of casting the best cantrips in the rounds when a spellcaster don't cast a regular spell, casting a charm or fear instead of a nerfed MM is not cheese, is just be not too stupid.
Same for the use by high level mages, you admit that is more then one year that you are not playing ToB and you don't have a real idea of how much cantrips can be spammed using RoV and IA, you maybe should give it a try and then be thankful of the constructive feedback instead of accusing other forum users of trolling.
I am just asking as I know very little about scripts.
I agree and wait the test results. As I told I can not contribute to the testing as EE refuses to work on my gaming notebook.
Anyway I was just speaking about me being or not being a troll and the argument about how the AI will deal with the mod (if using the same trick of SR is working also here or not) is not only an issue of mine and it seems to me that at least on this further argument can be productive.
About this I can only guess and ask... And is what I am doing.