"Linear warriors, quadratic mages?"
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But back to the topic at hand. Easiest way for nerfing the spell schools would simply to reduce all damage output and durations by ~50%. Which means editing every single arcane spell. This alone would modify Baldur's Gate enough to call it a game of the Sword & Suckery subgenre.
- change saving throws for individual spells or just give enemies something like the LoB bonus to them.
- reduce the number of spells you can cast per day.
- definitely reduce the number of wands/charges/damage to make them rare and special.
- restrict the amount of resting possible (potentially linked to real time), to give more of an incentive to save spells for when they're really needed.
- reduce the strength of summons (say to 60% to fit in with the treatment of simulacra).
- not allow sequencers (or at least make them more difficult to use, e.g. by requiring them to take a round to cast and allowing the cast to be interrupted).
During the Time of Trouble and the Spellplague the use of magic had some limits. The spellcaster had to be within some distance of some source for his magic (could be a person, object, artifact or whatever.) Let's say the protagonist has some crystal or lens that is required to bundle the energy of the Weave to cast a spell. Only a spellcaster in some distance to the PC can cast spells and only if the PC has the item and is !StateCheck(Player1,CD_STATE_NOTVALID) and the (optional) daily loads of the item are not used yet.
Brainstorming II
Harry Potter, spellcasters need a magic wand to cast. Only if the item is equipped in the weapon slot they can cast. The item only has basic quarterstaff combat abilities. Or they need to wear Elminster-like hats that reduce their movement rate while worn.
Brainstorming III
Again Spellplague - reduced resources.
Each spell has a higher failure possibility. The probability to miscast and waste spells increases with the level of the spell. Spell scrolls cannot be bought anymore, you can only find them on defeated enemies. Enemies have only scrolls up to the level they use against you, i.e. you need to defeat a guy casting level 5 spells at you in the hope to find a level 1-5 scroll on him that you can learn.
A combination of the above:
Option I applies to clerics - the item required is some symbol of their deity
Option III applies to mages
Every spell and ability can be used at-will, but fails if the user is fatigued, while fatigue is recovered at a rate of 1 per round.
Every spell(or similar innate) increases fatigue by (Level + 1). Innates without an equivalent spells are based on their effect and rate of acquisition.
Any innate that can be is converted into a modal ability which either stops or reverses fatigue recovery while active depending on how strong it is: Poison Weapon, Frozen Fists, Flaming Fists, Offensive/Defensive Spin, Defensive Stance, Shapeshifts, along with several 3E inspired modal abilities.
Spell slots are shared among all spell levels but heavily reduced in number (done through the UI, max of 12 slots for full casters). Resting still required to change spells.
Luck penalties for Fatigue are left in place.
Miscellaneous balance changes here and there.
A spell-caster can maintain casting an average of 10 spell-levels worth of spells per turn(10 rounds) at level 1 and level 50.
Enemy AI simply cannot function with at-will spellcasting and/or functions better without it, so these changes are entirely party-only.
"If you care to step this way, goodsir, I can show you our range of gem bags."
"How many 'ave ya got?"
"Ooh we stock more than twenty in assorted colours and fabrics. Here, notice the fine stitching on thi-"
(Through gritted teeth) "I'll take every. Single. One. Oh, and a tower shield to hide behind while my friends take out some xvart villages and plunder their belongings. Can't do much until I find me some Lynx Eyes."
One thing I would love to see implemented is Universal Surging. Per the FR Wiki,
To my knowledge, only Arcane magic can surge, not Divine.
minor sequencer - usable by all mages
sequencer - all mages can put 2 spells in one. The third has to be the specialist spell category of a mage.
trigger - only specialist spells can be used.
You could also delete or nerf the chain contingency spell - given that's pretty much always used not to deal with contingencies, but for cheese (the standard contingency spell seems fine to me).
1) limited rest. No rest in dungeons and only one rest every 24 hours. Did this in a IWD run and things became much more interesting.
2) give wizards a grimoire that may be destroyed by area damage.
Say hello to my little friend.
For as long as you leave this as it is, you cannot really nerf the no.of spells allowed. Furthermore, whatever table you use - SCS will use. So by nerfing number of available spells per level, you'll be making the game easier - enemy non-caster thugs are generally nothing more than XP bonuses. PC fighters have better equpiment, are buffed, and are led in combat by more or less IQ-driven personel.
Level-dependent timers can be automated. I assume you know that timers are really just variables, yes? You can do something like
REPLACE_EVALUATE ~SetGlobalTimer("\([^"]+\)","[Ll][Oo][Cc][Aa][Ll][Ss]",6)~ BEGIN SET $timer_list("%MATCH1%") = 1 // assemble a list of timer names while we're at it, may want TO_LOWER it too END ~SetGlobalTimer("\1","locals",6) ApplySpellRES("spltimer",Myself)~Not sure it's gonna compile right away, but you get the idea.The spltimer.spl adjusts the timers in timer_list array with 309 opcode, parameter1 scaling with caster level. Pretty sure you can use negatives, if not then replace timer in script with lower value. One second equals to either 15 or 30, but should be easy enough to determine with a few tests, or just check in a savegame.
Since some scripts may not have any timers at all, read it block by block:
OUTER_SPRINT space ~\([%LNL%%MNL%%WNL%%TAB% ]+\)~ REPLACE_EVALUATE ~IF\(\(%space%[.]*$\)+\)THEN\(\(%space%[.]*$\)+\)END~ BEGIN SPRINT trigger ~%MATCH1%~ SPRINT response ~%MATCH3%~ PATCH_IF ~%trigger%~ STRING_CONTAINS ~HaveSpell([.]+)~ && ~%response%~ STRING_CONTAINS ~^%space%\(Really\)?\(Force\)?Spell([.]+)~ BEGIN no_timer=1 INNER_PATCH_SAVE response ~%response%~ BEGIN REPLACE_EVALUATE ~SetGlobalTimer("\([^"]+\)","[Ll][Oo][Cc][Aa][Ll][Ss]",6)~ BEGIN SET $timer_list("%MATCH1%") = 1 no_timer=0 END ~SetGlobalTimer("\1","locals",6) ApplySpellRES("spltimer",Myself)~ PATCH_IF no_timer BEGIN REPLACE_EVALUATE ~\(^%space%\(Really\)?\(Force\)?Spell([.]+)\)~ BEGIN END ~SetGlobalTimer("spltimer","locals",6) ApplySpellRES("spltimer",Myself) \1~ END END PATCH_IF no_timer BEGIN SPRINT trigger ~!GlobalTimerNotExpired("spltimer","locals") %trigger%~ END END END ~IF %trigger% THEN %response% END~It has even less a chance to compile, but again, you should get the general idea.Vampiric wolves and ghasts come to mind as creatures you can run into early on that will be nearly impossible to deal with unless you've got some low level magic items...
Or will they be hittable by masterwork items instead?