How hard is the mod sword coast stratagems?

Sloty1984

How hard is the mod sword coast stratagems?
Can I change its difficulty ingame?
I would like my game to be a little more challenging, but the tactics mod is too hard for me.
Does the mod cheat or are the enemies just smarter in using their abilities?
I would like to play it with a full party of six and the game just to be a little more challenging but still fair. Will I have that experience wit that mod?

DinoDin

The mod is extremely customizable, but that customizing takes place on install. You can choose to add components like smarter enemies, more abilities given to enemies and even larger enemies to face. As well as all kinds of changes to your own spells and gear options. You can always run the install again to include or exclude elements, but you can't really do that in game. That being said, the difficulty slider in game does indeed alter the game, post mod, in more ways than it did in the base game.

The mod doesn't allow enemies to cheat really, but like I said, it can give them more abilities. Mainly in the form of having a number of protection spells ready at the start of combat. This already happens a little in the un-modded game, but enemies will cast even more in SCS.

My experience with the mod is that it definitely pushes the player into pre-buffing much more themselves before a fight. And relying more heavily on summoned monsters. And obviously it pushes you into having more mage-breaking spells. Adopting many of the mod's changes adds a great deal of instant deal abilities to various enemies, especially as you progress towards ToB.

Sloty1984

okay thanks.
If I change something of the mod components do I need to start a new game or does it work with my savegames?

jmerry

Regarding difficulty level with SCS, that's customizable by the difficulty slider and an additional "fine-tune difficulty" button (which then uses a dialogue interface to set your preferences individually for various aspects of the game). This customization affects things like which spells enemies are willing to use; the SCS AI at high difficulties genuinely plays "smarter" with the abilities it has than the same AI at low difficulties.

Base game difficulty does not work like this. It's all global modifiers. Which are still in place with SCS, so be careful with the lowest difficulty ("Easy"/"Basic", which grants +6 luck to the party) or when playing without the setting that disables damage multipliers from difficulty.

In almost all cases, installing or uninstalling mods in the middle of a run (which includes uninstalling and reinstalling parts of a mod to make different choices) is a bad idea. Some of the game's files are incorporated into the save as you play and then drawn from there instead of grabbing clean copies, so playing from a save after a midstream mod change leads to a patchwork of changed and unchanged stuff. Things break, in ways that are hard to predict. Just don't do it.

atcDave

I think SCS is an excellent mod for adding a little difficulty to the game without cheating. Like you, I was frustrated with another mod that to me, was cheating. It gave opponents a range of *new* powers and abilities. That to me, weren't even AD&D anymore (to some of us, that matters!). And it spammed all pre-buffs. It left me hesitant for a long time to try SCS. But I finally gave it a try and I was mostly pleased. I think I was happiest with "Improved" difficulty. It plays smarter without enemies having a ton of short-term buffs up, or new powers. I may step up another level yet.
But as others mentioned, there are layers to its enhancements. My own preference is smarter (using items and potions well), but not cheating (pre-buffing things in a way that breaks immersion. Again, to me that means short term buffs up as soon as you see them. Or adding new abilities). To some extent you can set the mod to enhance itself in some ways but not others. It offers a lot of customization.