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Limit of just 1 summoned Planetar per party

fewerlawsfewerlaws Member Posts: 23
in Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition
I'm playing Legacy of Bhaal difficulty, and being able to summon a Planetar (or Dark Planetar) is a huge help, especially for ultra hard battles in areas such as level 3 of Watcher's keep. However, even though I have 2 mages in my party of 6, the game engine only allows me to summon 1 Planetar for my entire party at any given time. Why is there this limitation? I should at least be able to summon 1 planetar per mage.

I can understand how limiting the number of summoned creatures per character makes sense -- you can only control so many Fire Elementals, etc. However, limiting the number of summons per party seems to be an artificial restriction left over from the year 1998 when computers were much slower and didn't have the CPU horsepower to process the interactions and AI of so many creatures at once. But times have changed, and now everyone is running BG2 EE on modern computers that have enough CPU resources to easily process probably 100 creatures at once in a massive battle.

Can the development team please remove this artificial restriction on the number of sumonable Planetars per party so that Legacy of Bhaal players can have more fun? It takes a lot of time and careful thought to get mages to survive at low levels, but we are supposed to be rewarded at high levels with awesome spells like Summon Planetar, but being denied that privilege is disappointing and very anti-climactic. BTW I play with characters that all have the lowest possible starting attribute rolls (just 75 points), for increased challenge.

Thanks!

Comments

  • jmerryjmerry Member Posts: 3,829
    If you want to change the summon limits, they're in the SUMMLIMT.2da file. Very easy to edit, set to Normal: 5 and Celestial: 1 by default.

    A per-character summon limit is not something the engine knows how to do.
  • fewerlawsfewerlaws Member Posts: 23
    Very good. Thank you for this explanation about per-character summon limit and for letting me know where I can apply a tweak.
  • jsavingjsaving Member Posts: 1,083
    edited April 2021
    fewerlaws wrote: »
    However, limiting the number of summons per party seems to be an artificial restriction left over from the year 1998 when computers were much slower and didn't have the CPU horsepower to process the interactions and AI of so many creatures at once. But times have changed, and now everyone is running BG2 EE on modern computers that have enough CPU resources to easily process probably 100 creatures at once in a massive battle.
    I think you are proceeding from a mistaken premise. A per-party limit of 1 planetar is in place for the exact reason you mentioned earlier in your post, that they are a "huge help" and make the game much easier than intended, especially in "ultra hard battles" that are supposed to be tough when playing Legacy of Bhaal mode. If power-ups make the game more fun for you then great, but you should make sure you're doing it because you want to be stronger rather than the belief that you're somehow correcting an engine error.
    Post edited by jsaving on
  • DragonwizardDragonwizard Member Posts: 22
    There are also 2 components in the "The Tweaks Anthology" mod which disable the summoning limit for normal creatures and Planetars/Devas respectively.
    https://gibberlings3.github.io/Documentation/readmes/readme-cdtweaks.html
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