have the Deaf and Silence effects been updated in EE?
Calgacus
Member Posts: 273
I was looking a the wiki articles on the Silence and Deaf effects and wondered if they have been updated in the EE version.
Can Deaf creatures still succeed at Listen checks for instance? Can silenced creatures still hear others talk?
Are there other inconsistencies with these effects?
I was also wondering about the Silent Spell meta magic feat - does casting a spell normally cause monsters etc to take notice of you if they haven't already spotted you? Would casting a Silent spell avoid that? If I cast a spell in a room full of sleeping enemies would that wake them up and would casting a silent spell avoid waking them?
I'll try to test this stuff in a test mod later today but if anyone has any insight please share - including efficient ways to test it out.
Can Deaf creatures still succeed at Listen checks for instance? Can silenced creatures still hear others talk?
Are there other inconsistencies with these effects?
I was also wondering about the Silent Spell meta magic feat - does casting a spell normally cause monsters etc to take notice of you if they haven't already spotted you? Would casting a Silent spell avoid that? If I cast a spell in a room full of sleeping enemies would that wake them up and would casting a silent spell avoid waking them?
I'll try to test this stuff in a test mod later today but if anyone has any insight please share - including efficient ways to test it out.
Post edited by Calgacus on
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For a custom rule set to avoid those inconsistencies I might want to change the silence spell to just make it give a big bonus to Move Silently and change the deaf effect to just give a big penalty to Listen and skip the whole "zone of silence" and spell failure thing.
But that would render the Silent Spell feat useless. Does anyone pick that feat in single player games anyway? or even in multi-player? Always seemed lame to me.
Silence the Spell (and the Silent and Auto Silence line of Feats) are quite powerful. A Cleric can, by targeting himself or companion, essentially muzzle any caster. And then the Cleric can do whatever he or she wants....
Can silenced or deafened creatures can still hear others and engage in conversations?
Can Deafened creatures still pass Listen checks?
Does the Deafness spell failure chance effect still apply to Silenced spells but still not apply to Stilled spells?
These inconsistencies just bug me. I'd rather do without those effects in the game until they are fixed.
But then without the 2nd level Silence spell effect in the game is there any reason for the Silent Spell feats to exist?
If Silent Spell also allowed wizards to cast silenced spells without breaking invisibility or Stealth mode that would be something that would make it worthwhile in itself.
Or if in general casting a spell with a verbal component in combat was really drew the attack of opportunity (because it calls attention to the caster, while a funny hand gesture does not stand out so much in combat nor does it take as long) but casting a silenced spell avoided the AoO that too would be something (a non-epic improved combat casting).
Or as a bigger change maybe there could be a higher number of spells in the game with no verbal component - Silent spells by default. Then the Silent Spell feats would add a verbal component to those spells to add a bit of power to them - maybe more damage or longer duration and a higher DC, etc. Maybe 10% more damage (or +20% more duration for non-damaging spells) and a +2 DC.
Also, does casting a silenced spell affect the DC to counterspell it? I think it should.
It breaks stealth mode because you are still doing the necessary movements (gestures, etc) to cast, effectively breaking stealth.
You would need to do a stilled, silent spell imo to remain stealthed. Unfortunately, NWN does not allow for multiple meta-magic effects.
Would be nice (and allowing for meta-magic effects above 9th level).
I don't see how making any meta-magical changes to casting a spell would change how one counterspells it. Perhaps it should make it harder to identify it with Spellcraft - that would be more appropriate I think. Harder to identify which spell it is, but after that, yeah, normal counterspell.
Of course, if one cannot ID the spell, counterspelling should be more difficult to do imo.
Because that would make the feat worthwhile.
I wonder how many players actually take the Silent Spell feat now? Or often use Counterspelling mode? I don't think I ever have.
the type of damage done by some spells is altered - so the Magic Missile spell for instance can be made to deal Cold damage or fire damage. Each spell script will have to be altered. Would need to add in a casting component requirement - each caster could have a spell component container - the spell script searches that container to look for an appropriate component which is used to determine the type of damage the spell will cause and maybe the appropriate vfx.
Technically NWN does allow this since any caster who meets the requirements may have both Auto Still and Auto Silent and use them both turned on simultaneously.
2 (which still doesn't work as it should) and duration of the Stunning Fist. Nothing else if I don't count regressions or unintentional changes that they decided they will stay as is.
If you want this type of content you are supposed to look at vault. There are at least 3 projects updating the NWN mechanics. EMS, NWN Enhanced and Community Patch. I can't talk for the former two, but regarding Community Patch it does change several things regarding to silence and deafness.
- it imposes the deafness and silence spellcasting failures on bard song, curse song and musical instruments, also PDK Inspire Courage and Rallying Cry.
- it also imposes both rules to "howl" monster abilities and spells with "sound/sonic" component (Wail of Banshee, Horizikal Boom, Great Thunderclap, War Cry - silenced/deafness creature is not affected by those
It does not allow casting with invisibility turned on. I thought about it, but even if it would be right by the rules, Bioware decided they don't want true invisibility as it is not fun to play against it. If they wanted they would granted that effect to us because that effect exists in NWN. I even tested it and there are some graphical issues when the visual effects are flying from random direction instead of the position of the caster.
In a perfect world you should see cast spell visuals too and detect his position that way, but you don't if the caster is invisible.
Not much more you can do in vanilla, but for example Community Patch enabled spells to support maximized, empower and extend at the same time. While there is no feature that would allow player to cast it at once, it allows builder to create such feature, for example Automatic Maximize Spell, if someone wanted to. I believe PRC did the same thing.
I just don't understand why peoples like @Calgacus completely ignore the fact that what they want has been done by the community for several years already and expect this to be handled in core game from Beamdog. While I am not against that, the ignorance of the fan made stuff is really offending me.
I'm guessing the first two of those could be handled with scripting which I can do myself but the third? The Deafness effect is a hard coded effect. Maybe I could replace it and then add some spell hooking and roll my own Deafness effect as it pertains to casting Silenced and Stilled spells.
Anyway this thread just started with me musing about some minor nit-picky issues, it's not a huge deal and if you read my posts in this thread you'll see I didn't ask Beamdog or anyone else to handle anything. Besides, we are allowed and welcome to discuss these things on these forums.
Okay maybe you are the exception, maybe you are the one who actually put time into searching for what he wants on vault, maybe you asked on discord whether are you ideas doable via NWScript. Maybe you did all of that and I am mistreating you by putting you to the same bag with guys who demans from Beamdog to update spells to 3.5 ruleset or convert game to 5th edition DnD or who want colorized icons.
Still, with what are you asking for I totally understand why is Beamdog not touching any of this.
Surely you think this is very good for gameplay, but what about those players who don't find fun to not being able to speak with other players and npcs when they get deafened? This is of course speculation, but I would bet 99% players would dislike it. Hell even if 70% players liked this idea, it will annoy 30% customers and those might put bad reviews on Steam/reddit and start hating Beamdog. Why would they risk this?
Also I think you are mistakenly expecting Beamdog to know about those issues. But again maybe I am mistreating you and you reported all of this to Beamdog on their bug tracker(s) with detailed description.
And yes all three are hardcoded and the 2 and 3 are definitely a bugs in my opinion.