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How does spell disruption work?

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  • BongrizBongriz Member Posts: 6
    edited December 2018

    Spell interruption has not changed. I'm not sure where this idea came from.

    Well, probably from a misinterpretation of mine :smile:

    So, just to make sure I got it right:

    Every spell will be interrupted if any hit to the caster results in the “took damage/flinch” animation. There’s no clear understanding of what causes this animation in favour of the “small blood” animation, which is far less likely and does not interrupt spell casting. A hit causing 0 damage cannot result in the “took damage/flinch” animation. Mages may be more prone to interruption than other casters, but this is inconclusive (and seems unlikely IMO). The probabability of interruption may be related to the direction that the caster is facing, but this is inconclusive (and seems unlikely IMO). Spells cast from items and some “hard coded” spells are uninterruptible.

    Did I miss or misunderstand anything?
  • kjeronkjeron Member Posts: 2,367
    edited December 2018
    Bongriz said:

    Did I miss or misunderstand anything?

    The requirement to avoid interruption is having 100 or more resistance to the type of damage being dealt.

    Dealing '0' or even negative damage will still interrupt if they have less than 100 resistance. If you want a spell to interrupt even if the target is immune to the damage, or if the spell doesn't deal damage in the first place and you just want it to interrupt spellcasting, you can add a non-lethal or untyped 0-damage effect to trigger it.

    The "flinch" animation is an effect, not cause, of the interruption - you can force this animation with opcode 138 without interrupting spell-casting.
    Post edited by kjeron on
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0
    edited December 2018
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
    ThacoBellBongrizsemiticgoddess
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305

    Priests can be interrupted while casting, druids can be interrupted when shapechanging, Charname can be interrupted when using Bhaal powers, fighters can be interrupted when triggering HLAs... arcane/divine/innate, it doesn't matter, they are all interrupted every time upon taking any damage.

    @subtledoctor that may be the intention, but it's not the reality in the game. You've mentioned forced spell casting, which certainly explains some instances where spells are not interrupted, but not all.

    It's easy to see that there's something else going on as it's not uncommon for spells cast by the PC to not be interrupted by damage. I couldn't be bothered to do an extended test, but spending a few minutes in Candlekeep with a summoned kobold suggested that something like a quarter of attempted spells were not being interrupted by damage - see this example.

    That number might be wrong, but I don't believe that anyone could play the unmodded game much without coming across this situation regularly. I can certainly accept that the intended mechanic is for 100% interruption and it's just a bug that prevents that happening - perhaps being hit at a particular frame or segment of the round for instance. However, whatever the reason the game is not currently providing 100% interruption.
    BongrizThacoBellsemiticgoddess
  • BongrizBongriz Member Posts: 6
    Grond0 said:


    It's easy to see that there's something else going on as it's not uncommon for spells cast by the PC to not be interrupted by damage. I couldn't be bothered to do an extended test, but spending a few minutes in Candlekeep with a summoned kobold suggested that something like a quarter of attempted spells were not being interrupted by damage - see this example.


    Musigny said:

    A screenshot with no ambiguity, taken while play-testing Tactics - The Yuan-Ti mage casts chaos with a simple Spell() action via a custom script:

    image


    It’s screenshots like this that leave me somewhat confused about how the mechanisms work in practise.
  • kjeronkjeron Member Posts: 2,367
    Grond0 said:

    It's easy to see that there's something else going on as it's not uncommon for spells cast by the PC to not be interrupted by damage. I couldn't be bothered to do an extended test, but spending a few minutes in Candlekeep with a summoned kobold suggested that something like a quarter of attempted spells were not being interrupted by damage - see this example.

    It appears to be "Target Point" spells that can bypass disruption, quite consistently.

    I gave a Cleric/Mage the MinHP1 item and set a 5APR ogre on him, he could cast Bless and Haste almost every time, but he was always interrupted on the first hit when casting Armor and CLW.
    ThacoBell
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0
    edited December 2018
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
    Post edited by [Deleted User] on
    ThacoBellBongriz
  • kjeronkjeron Member Posts: 2,367

    Fascinating. But "almost every time" is not every time. I would expect consistency.

    I wouldn't, it would be far more well documented if it were.
    Went back and tested on an old BGEE v1.3, same behavior.
    BongrizGrond0ThacoBell
  • BongrizBongriz Member Posts: 6
    Bubb said:

    Turns out that point-targeted spells, for some reason, have a condition which states that the spell can ONLY be interrupted by damage if the spell-point is within a certain view arc of the character casting it.

    This arc follows the rotation of the character. So, if you cast a spell slightly off-center from a character's rotation, it is simply impossible for it to be interrupted.

    No idea how you managed to find this out, but that’s super wierd and super interesting!
    ThacoBell
  • SirBatinceSirBatince Member Posts: 882
    edited December 2018
    Call Lightning has always been the only spell in my entire career that reasonably could resist disrupt on the player side. even then only when it felt like it.

    As for enemy disruption, I've found it's completely random around each battle instance. Sometimes they'll never disrupt then I quickload and try the same fight again and then they'll decide to 100% disrupt every time. (very dumb if you ask me)

    oh i see it's being debunked, nice
  • kjeronkjeron Member Posts: 2,367
    @Bubb I'm not sure about "impossible", unless the angle shifts around during the various casting animations.

    Once the first hit connected, and failed to interrupt, I was still able to get an interrupt by spamming "Ctrl+Y" on the character before they finished casting. It took literal spamming though, as the extra 3-4 hits from the ogre and just a couple of "Ctrl+Y"'s was rarely enough to interrupt if the first hit didn't interrupt it. Did not pause while doing this.

    From your screenshot, it looks like the angle of disruption is +/-15° of the orientation of the creature, is that correct?
    BongrizGrond0
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    How would you make use of this bug? It's probably too precise for general use, but I can see it having some niche uses if the player knew the angles.
    CrevsDaak
  • kjeronkjeron Member Posts: 2,367
    @Bubb So the angle is literally shifting when you take damage.

    if the player knew the angles.

    It's not too hard, just need to cast in one of these 8 directions:
    The actual bug, it seems, is that the damage animation causes the SSW, SWW, NWW, NNW, NNE, ENE, ESE, and SSE rotations to momentarily shift to one of the others.

    Or, prevent enemy spellcasters from casting in one of those 8 directions.

    For Fireball-type aoe's, the game now even gives you a decent reference.
    For the WNW/ENE/WSW/ESE directions, just line up your character with one of the side's diagonal lines of the AoE indicator as such:

    For the NNW/NNE/SSW/SSE directions, you need to be just inside the upper/lower diagonal lines, to anywhere not directly up or down.

    semiticgoddessGrond0CrevsDaak
  • GalactygonGalactygon Member, Developer Posts: 412
    @Bubb @kjeron

    If you two manage to create a repro case that would be much appreciated. We will file an internal ticket if you provide us a save with repro steps that trigger the interruption bug at a reasonable frequency.
    BubbBongrizJuliusBorisovCrevsDaak
  • BubbBubb Member Posts: 998
    edited December 2018
    @kjeron: Looks good! One additional thing to note: actor-targeted spells will also never fail if the caster is in one of these rotations when hit.

    Self-targeted spells, whether it be spells that only target the caster, or actor-targeted spells that are targeted at the caster, will always fail on hit, no matter the direction.
    CrevsDaak
  • MaxigliderMaxiglider Member Posts: 1
    Hello,

    Does anyone know if there is a way to be immune to spell disruption, a cheat or something ?
    I've found the option "Uninterruptible" on EE keeper but it doesn't work.
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    @Maxiglider: The only ways to avoid spell disruption are to either avoid the damage, use the highly precise bug mentioned earlier in this thread (which sounds interesting but very difficult to execute), or to cast spells strictly via script (specifically, the ForceSpell and ReallyForceSpell commands).

    You could also give a large casting speed bonus to a character (say, a -10 bonus to casting time, like the -1 bonus from the Amulet of Power or -4 from the Robe of Vecna) to reduce casting time to zero. In that case, the spellcasting animation will only last a single frame, in which case the window for disruption would be 1/30 of a second, enough to almost completely remove the chance of disruption. This has the side effect of speeding up spellcasting, however, which would grant other in-combat advantages.

    For spell failure like from Miscast Magic, you can get true immunity to that by using the Immunity to Effect opcode, opcode 101, and setting the right parameter to the Miscast Magic opcode (I'm not referring to the Uninterruptible flag; this is a special opcode applied to a character). You can apply that via a custom item or spell or directly give it to a character using EEKeeper. But that won't prevent spell disruption from damage.

    Individual spells can also be flagged to ignore spell failure or dead magic zone-related spell failure, but that will only apply to those specific spells, and that will also fail to prevent spell disruption from damage.
    BubbGrond0
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