A few questions regarding saving throws and dual class benefits retention.
Incarnate
Member Posts: 7
Hello everyone.
The first question is regarding dual class benefit retention, is specific to when dual classing from a specialist mage to a cleric - does a dual class Specialist Mage/Cleric retain the saving bonus throw vs. specialist school and the benefit: Targets suffer a -2 penalty when making Saving Throws against spells from the [Specialist] school. ?
The second question is regarding how to get saving throw details to output to the combat log, and not just a feedback the final save value when a save occurs? I need at least the roll and the various saving throw modifiers involved in the roll, both for analytical purposes but also to confirm when saving throw modifiers are affecting the outcome in whatever way.
Thank you.
// Inc.
The first question is regarding dual class benefit retention, is specific to when dual classing from a specialist mage to a cleric - does a dual class Specialist Mage/Cleric retain the saving bonus throw vs. specialist school and the benefit: Targets suffer a -2 penalty when making Saving Throws against spells from the [Specialist] school. ?
The second question is regarding how to get saving throw details to output to the combat log, and not just a feedback the final save value when a save occurs? I need at least the roll and the various saving throw modifiers involved in the roll, both for analytical purposes but also to confirm when saving throw modifiers are affecting the outcome in whatever way.
Thank you.
// Inc.
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Comments
Well, at least that's the way it is in the Baldur's Gate (EE) series. Icewind Dale might be different, depending on how much code the developers just copied over; I'm pretty sure the specialist mage hardcoding is inherited from original BG1 in which those were the only kits. You might have to run some experiments yourself.
I don't know about the latter question, though. When I've done analysis, it's just been with the basic display information and statistics.
There is no specific option to see more saving throw information, you don't even get to see every successful save.
Feedback is only shown if the save was successful and would have still been successful without any bonuses.
The only way to know what modifier is being applied is to determine the range of successful values against a creature with a known save score, while applying a penalty to the effect at least equal/greater than any potential bonus they receive, as the net modifier needs to be zero or negative to display the full range.
So if the value only will be shown if the save was successful and only would've been successful even without bonuses, then if the saving throw base value is outputted during the feedback, that would tell us that nothing was applied.
I did some testing with a Necromancer/Cleric against another player character, a cleric with a saving throw against spells at 11, and during the test it had no active benefits to saving throws, not as far as know of that is - I will verify this later. The N/C cast cause wounds spells against the cleric and at several times during the test, it's base saving throw value came up as feedback. So to me that indicates that the bonuses from the kit wasn't being applied, or have I misunderstood something?
If the Cleric saves displaying it's base score (11), then it rolled that value + 2 (13).
The displayed value includes all conditional modifiers to the saving throw, including the penalty from the casting Specialist.
If you cast it enough, you would see the Cleric saving with displayed values 11 - 18, representing rolls 13-20.
I see, so it's the final value after modifiers have been added that you get. Good to know.
Though, I wonder if one potentially would be gimping the character unnecessarily, as there are spells that does exactly that, lower saving throws. I assume that the benefit from the kit and those spells would stack, because if that's the case, it would just be that much stronger.
The spells I'm thinking of here are Doom and Greater Malison, though I'm unsure if I can even get Greater Malison when starting directly from HoW.
For optimization purposes, the only thing you really have to watch out for is losing out on Greater Malison (enchantment). You're not planning to be an invoker, so you should be good.
As for getting GM ... if you start directly from HoW, what level do you start at? Mages start with spells of all levels that they can cast in their spellbooks, so if you start with the ability to cast level 4 spells, you can put GM in your initial spellbook (if it's not in your opposed school). Dual-classing temporarily removes your ability to memorize spells from your original class, but it doesn't remove any known spells.
Good to know most affect the sheet value rather than the roll. Obviously, some affect the roll instead.
Apparently, Necromancers in IWD:EE are barred from Illusion, Enchantment/Charm, so it's that simple, it's already a loss with regards to GM. Which means optimization-wise I can get the saving throw penalty benefit from the kit, Doom and..? A generalist/cleric could achieve the same with Doom, GM and...? The main drawback of the latter is that it requires casting each time to get the benefit, and will take up spell slots.
In HoW you start with 500k XP, I believe for Mage that's the equivalent of level 11.