Skip to content

Impervious Sanctity of Mind and SCS problem

One of the properties of this priest spell is that, "...the caster's concentration is enhanced, so that he has no chance of spell casting failure." But, I was fighting a Balor in the Underdark with Anomen and it walked right up and interrupted him with slashing damage. Can anyone help to why this happened?
Brecher

Comments

  • lollerslollers Member Posts: 190
    Spell failure is a status effect inflicted by specific hostile magic attacks, and in certain places known as dead magic zones. It happens a lot in watchers keep, but not so much elsewhere. It has nothing to do with taking damage
  • gorgonzolagorgonzola Member Posts: 3,864
    @lollers
    So to loose a spell for spell failure and for being disrupted while your are casting it are 2 different things and the latter happened to the OP, that was protected against the first one?

    About the specific hostile magic attacks that cause spell failure an example can be being under the effect of an insect spell, while receiving a spell or attack that deals elemental damage causes disruption and not failure?
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305
    The SCS readme specifically states that this optional component only protects against the spell failure effect and not disruption by damage.
  • KorbenDallasKorbenDallas Member Posts: 29
    edited November 2020
    Thank you for the replies. This proves to be frustrating as the in-game spell description clearly reads, "no chance of spell casting failure." The logic is either/or: either the caster has no chance of spell casting failure, or he has a chance of spell casting failure. "No chance" means 0% chance of failure, yet that is not the case at all.

    I have consulted the readme now and I see the actual implementation makes the caster susceptible to spell casting failure from damage--which is about 99.9% of the way a caster has spell casting failures. When I tried to use this spell Anomen took slashing damage from the Balor, the game log had an entry that Anomen lost his focus, then the next entry "spell casting failure." So obviously if a caster takes damage to get interrupted it results in the status of spell casting failure. According to the SCS readme this is accurate for this spell, but according to the in-game description it is 99.9% inaccurate since most of the time spell casting failure results from taking damage in the game! (As someone said above there are only a handful of places in the game that can produce a spell casting failure without damage being the causation.) Very frustrating, inaccurate in-game spell descriptions is something I thought SCS wouldn't do. I'm seeing in the readme they renamed Shield of Lathander to Divine Protection, so they have the ability to alter in-game spell names and descriptions but this one, Impervious Sanctity of Mind, is completely inaccurate and does not protect the caster from spell casting failure in 99.9% of occurrences in the game.

    But for what SCS does well the benefits outweigh the problems such as this. Other problems I've had is the litch in the Crooked Crane did not have Mislead show in the game log, which took me a few HOURS of reloads to figure out that the litch opened with mislead but it did not show up in the game log. With the Balor, it opened with stoneskin but it was not in the game log, yet this time I already knew bosses and/or high level enemies with SCS might have more buffs that don't show in the game log when starting the fight. With the Balor, I figured this out much quicker. So I do have some grievances with SCS and I'll add inaccurate in-game spell descriptions to the list, but for what SCS does well it transforms the game and makes it more enjoyable.
  • KorbenDallasKorbenDallas Member Posts: 29
    As a follow-up to the Balor fight, what I ended up doing with Anomen was casting Divine Protection to make him immune to damage for 3 rounds and he was able to cast his spells without interruption while the spell is active. I had three of them memorized and re-cast Divine Protection so he could continue casting throughout the fight.
  • lollerslollers Member Posts: 190
    Yes, SCS does have its blemishes. It's trying to make it so that clerics aren't free kills, and I think there are going to be more updates if I understand the readme.
  • lollerslollers Member Posts: 190
    gorgonzola wrote: »
    @lollers
    So to loose a spell for spell failure and for being disrupted while your are casting it are 2 different things and the latter happened to the OP, that was protected against the first one?

    About the specific hostile magic attacks that cause spell failure an example can be being under the effect of an insect spell, while receiving a spell or attack that deals elemental damage causes disruption and not failure?

    Insect plague (and the others) have a saving roll for interruption. I'm sure I remember other instances of casting despite taking damage too.
    gorgonzola
  • DavidWDavidW Member Posts: 823
    Replying belatedly: I am inclined to agree with this criticism. The spell description is technically accurate but I can see how it would be misleading. (Incidentally, I'd let the spell actually block spell failure from damage if I could, but as far as I can see that's not possible in the engine.)
    KorbenDallasJuliusBorisov
Sign In or Register to comment.