Limited Wish, why it has been nerfed?
gorgonzola
Member Posts: 3,864
In my first, experimental vanilla run of the EE game I just noticed that the Limited Wish has been nerfed.
The repeatable wish "I wish to summon a horde to overrun my enemies" before used to summon a horde, even if a bunny one. That spell used to bypass the 5 summons limit that normal summons had. Limit that in the beginning was not implemented, but at some point, if I remember correctly with the creation of the ToB expansion, was introduced. And the bunny summon overriding the limit imo was intended by the developers, with good reasons.
A wish is supposed to be something special, even a limited one, and the rabbits are friendly but not controllable, you can not use them to attack, you can not move them at will. And a horde is a horde, only a very solipsistic person can see 5 individuals as such.
I see that now only 5 rabbits are summoned, and I don't appreciate this.
That repeatable choice, that cost a valuable lev7 slot, is not used by the most of the players, but I, and may be also some other player, use it.
I use it in two situations.
The first is very tactical, to have 20 rabbits in a small passage can sometimes give to the party time, time to heal, rebuff, flee.
The second is the famous bunny nuke, when you use limited wish one or more times to summon 20-40-60 rabbits, then use wish hoping for a ADHW on anybody, obtaining 20-40-60 + number of the party members in mlee range and enemies ADHWs. Obviously the party members have to be protected...
I use it mostly for fun, and then reload and fight in an other way. But I have fun in doing it. and is a completely optional tactic, not so easy to implement, and available only with arcane caster/casters of very high level, level that allow more reliable ones, that don't overkill, but kill pretty well.
So, even if game balance is important for someone*, in a completely optional thing, I think that the tactical use is fair and sometimes useful, and the nuke use is not game breaking and legit, as uses a clever combination of spells as they are implemented, or better like they where.
Now the horde choice is no more useful at all, and if the idea of a chance of summoning a horde, but of rabbits, was pure genius**, now is just a very lame implementation, that has no sense at all. I would prefer to have the whole choice removed instead of implemented as now.
But I would definitely prefer to switch back to the not EE implementation.
*for me is absolutely a not issue, I like unbalanced mods, exploiting but creative tactics, crazy things. And I think that there are still a couple hundred tactics and items that can break the balance and make the game trivial anyway, if a player wants to do so. I am a firm believer of player's freedom and self restrain, opposed to the thesis that developers or modders have to babysit the players.
** the repeatable spells choices are WIS related, with WIS 16+ is given the choice "I wish for my spells to be restored, that I might cast them again!" (1 spell restored in lev1-4 for all party members), with WIS 15- is given "I wish for my spells to be restored!" (all spell memorization erased), and so on.
Similar but different choices, opposite outcomes.
The choice for the horde is not WIS dependent, you always get the choice, but is WIS related, as you get what you wish for, but which horde is not stated...
The repeatable wish "I wish to summon a horde to overrun my enemies" before used to summon a horde, even if a bunny one. That spell used to bypass the 5 summons limit that normal summons had. Limit that in the beginning was not implemented, but at some point, if I remember correctly with the creation of the ToB expansion, was introduced. And the bunny summon overriding the limit imo was intended by the developers, with good reasons.
A wish is supposed to be something special, even a limited one, and the rabbits are friendly but not controllable, you can not use them to attack, you can not move them at will. And a horde is a horde, only a very solipsistic person can see 5 individuals as such.
I see that now only 5 rabbits are summoned, and I don't appreciate this.
That repeatable choice, that cost a valuable lev7 slot, is not used by the most of the players, but I, and may be also some other player, use it.
I use it in two situations.
The first is very tactical, to have 20 rabbits in a small passage can sometimes give to the party time, time to heal, rebuff, flee.
The second is the famous bunny nuke, when you use limited wish one or more times to summon 20-40-60 rabbits, then use wish hoping for a ADHW on anybody, obtaining 20-40-60 + number of the party members in mlee range and enemies ADHWs. Obviously the party members have to be protected...
I use it mostly for fun, and then reload and fight in an other way. But I have fun in doing it. and is a completely optional tactic, not so easy to implement, and available only with arcane caster/casters of very high level, level that allow more reliable ones, that don't overkill, but kill pretty well.
So, even if game balance is important for someone*, in a completely optional thing, I think that the tactical use is fair and sometimes useful, and the nuke use is not game breaking and legit, as uses a clever combination of spells as they are implemented, or better like they where.
Now the horde choice is no more useful at all, and if the idea of a chance of summoning a horde, but of rabbits, was pure genius**, now is just a very lame implementation, that has no sense at all. I would prefer to have the whole choice removed instead of implemented as now.
But I would definitely prefer to switch back to the not EE implementation.
*for me is absolutely a not issue, I like unbalanced mods, exploiting but creative tactics, crazy things. And I think that there are still a couple hundred tactics and items that can break the balance and make the game trivial anyway, if a player wants to do so. I am a firm believer of player's freedom and self restrain, opposed to the thesis that developers or modders have to babysit the players.
** the repeatable spells choices are WIS related, with WIS 16+ is given the choice "I wish for my spells to be restored, that I might cast them again!" (1 spell restored in lev1-4 for all party members), with WIS 15- is given "I wish for my spells to be restored!" (all spell memorization erased), and so on.
Similar but different choices, opposite outcomes.
The choice for the horde is not WIS dependent, you always get the choice, but is WIS related, as you get what you wish for, but which horde is not stated...
2
Comments
BG2EE changed the control type from "green circle, but uncontrollable" to "fully controllable" which causes the game to check each summoned rabbit against the summoning cap. Unfortunately you can't even summon the genie afterwards, who is apparently also checked against the summoning cap. I don't know whether this change has been made deliberately by Beamdog or is just an unintended side effect.
You can easily fix it manually with Near Infinity or EE Keeper by setting the Allegiance field of the "RABBITSU.CRE" resource from "Controlled" back to "GoodCutOff".
@argent77 this can explain everything, I will give it a try, but as I have to leave home for some days I will report the results next week.
Imo the genie checked against the limit of summons can or can not be a bug, in not EE I was never able to get more than 5 genies (wish spell, never tested the limit with the limited wish) and that can be fine.
But if the genies of both spells are subjected to the limit is impossible to cast successfully both the spells if 5 other summons are present in the game. As the genies are not supposed to fight for you (even if I did managed to have them doing it, but is an exploit) it should not happen.
After the testing, on both spells for the genie problem, I will report in redmine.
If someone has some other opinion or information feel free to continue the tread, I will answer as soon as I will get back home (no mobile connection) or maybe using some friend's computer, but with no game installed.
I want only the actual summons to count towards the limit, not creatures that are used as mechanisms for implementing complex spell choices.