Done: Magic Upgrade

One spell change for balance purposes today.

tempest's shielding wind
old duration: 1 minute/level
new duration: 1 round/level

Reasoning: It's a 1st level spell and far outclassed a similar spell of the same level, entropic shield.

entropic shield: 20% miss chance for ranged attacks against the protected person, 1 minute/level
tempest's shielding wind: 66% miss chance for ranged attacks against the protected person, plus a +1 deflection bonus to AC

The newer reduced duration balances them out better.

Updates to the spell description in the aenea.tlk file (and hence, in-game) and website coming soon.



This morning I managed to rescript almost every armoring/protecting spell before my oldest kid got sick. Next on the list: damage shield spells like fire shield and mestil's acid sheath. There is progress being made!

What? No Emetic Shield?

eeriegeek wrote:What? No Emetic Shield?

I wish.

Next spell change coming soon: quillin's arrow burst

Old:
1d6 per caster level piercing damage (max 10d6), reflex save for 1/2

New:
1d6 per caster level piercing damage (max 10d6) + slow effect for 2 rounds, reflex save negates both (aka, getting stuck full of arrows slows the target for a short time, while avoiding the arrows means not being affected)

I just wanted something to make it different than just a piercing damage version of fireball. Sure, a successful reflex save means no damage at all, but the added possible slow effect is nice and there's no "automatic 1/2 damage" with improved evasion, actually making it a little harder on lower level enemies that should be suffering from a 3rd level spell.

I'm also going to try to come up with a better arrow-filled "explosion" visual effect in the near future for this spell.

Next spell changes coming soon:
summon creature I
summon creature II
summon creature III
summon creature IV
summon creature V
summon creature VI
summon creature VII
summon creature VIII
summon creature IX

These spells will soon allow for multiple summons (like with the animating dead type of spells). The duration will be 1 hour per caster level (max of 24 hours even if Extended).

The creature summoned with each level of spell will soon have a bit of variety. By default, the type will be randomly picked, but a caster can preselect the desired creature(s) for each spell based on the level of the spell with a new VC command, ;;sum x x. See the online VC Guide for details.

Upcoming changes: area effect healing spells

Between scripting updates and the next hak/tlk update, I will be making some changes to area effect healing spells.

First, the spells healing circle and mass heal will get some name and function changes.

healing circle
new name: circle of light healing
spell level: 5
function: this is already an area effect version of cure light wounds that affects only non-vampiric/undead non-hostiles

mass heal
new name: circle of great healing
spell level: 9 (formerly 8th)
function: this will become a 9th level spell, open to all clerics and druids, working just like the 6th level heal spell on non-vamp/undead non-hostiles

Second, I'll be adding a few new spells for clerics and druids to round out the theme of area healing spells that are 4 levels higher than their single-target counterparts:
circle of moderate healing (spell level: 6)
- area effect version of cure moderate wounds
- bards will also get this one, since they get 6th level spells and have access to both cure moderate wounds and circle of light healing already
circle of serious healing (spell level: 7)
- area effect version of cure serious wounds
circle of critical healing (spell level: 8th)
- area effect version of cure critical wounds

Note: the area healing spells will be subject to use of the "widen" metamagic staff.

Good stuff

Neat; will the new healing spells be available for spontaneous casting?

Ra Cha Chongo wrote:Neat; will the new healing spells be available for spontaneous casting?

No, those will have to be prepared ahead of time of time, just like with healing circle and mass heal currently.

Giving feedback on the updated summon spells... I've only used level one so far. I've had the dire badger, black bear, wolf, and leopard.

The wolf is not right, it's only level 2, compared to the others at level 3. It looks like the default wolf, which has worse stats than everything else...

Also, the dire badger that was the default summon has 25 HP, and everything else has less. Even the bear only has 19.

Addon to the above:

The elemental summoning spells.... my personal opinion, is that the old system of setting your chosen type with the VC command and being guaranteed to get that type is the way the spell should work, and if I recall correctly is how it works in tabletop... and I don't see a reason to randomize it (what use is the option command at that point) other than to frustrate a PC by giving them an elemental type they dont want and/or is not useful for their current situation.

You can still select your desired elemental type, it's just on a per spell level basis rather than a general "all the same" basis as it was before.

So, you want all fire elementals? Maybe fighting some mummies?
;;sum 7 3
;;sum 8 3
;;sum 9 3

Want all earth elementals? Going skeleton smashing?
;;sum 7 2
;;sum 8 2
;;sum 9 2

It is a little more typing than the previous version (3 commands to handle the upper level spells instead of 1), but it means the elementals fit right into the scripting used for the other 6 summon creature spells. I also made sure to put at least the elemental ones in alphabetical order, with the other spells having the original creature in position 1.

For those that missed it in the post higher up, here's the link for the VC Command list...summoning choices are part of the ;;sum branch under Magic-Related Commands.

Well, thats a relief of sorts. More typing, but better than lack of control.

daveyeisley wrote:Well, thats a relief of sorts. More typing, but better than lack of control.

I added back in the capability to use the old ;;option elemental xxxx command to set all three upper level ones to the same elemental type.

Cool, TY

Upcoming changes to existing spells:

melf's acid arrow
- ranged touch attack (previously an auto-hit spell)
- no longer subject to spell resistance (the acid is non-magical after it's conjured)

sphere of denial
- ranged touch attack
- no longer subject to spell resistance (the sphere just hits with brute force, it doesn't really interact with the target any more than a solid ball)
- duration change: 1 round + 1 round/10 levels knockdown (old: 1.5 rounds of knockdown)
- DC for target's opposed Str check increased by 1

keen edge
- will be functional again (nobody reported that I'd messed up this spell?!)

Forgot to comment, these last few are cool.... but I think Sphere of Denial should still allow SR because it is an evocation... it is magical force created from nothing, that is contacting the target directly..... if it was a physical object conjured from another location, then I could see it ignoring SR because the object that contacts the target is real... but by the current school assignment and spell description it really does seem like the magic is directly contacting the target, and SR should apply.

sphere of denial
- ranged touch attack
- no longer subject to spell resistance (the sphere just hits with brute force, it doesn't really interact with the target any more than a solid ball)
- duration change: 1 round + 1 round/10 levels knockdown (old: 1.5 rounds of knockdown)
- DC for target's opposed Str check increased by 1

This spell summons a large raging and surging sphere of water called directly from the river that flows to heaven westward. The target is denied all actions till the waters and thusly the spell ceases.

*chuckle*

I'd like to add an opinion about spell consistency too.... harm and cleave health. I can't think of many spells offhand that have both a touch attack AND a save. And given that harm doesn't do the full total HP kill (except for one diety)... it kinda stinks. The regular DnD rendition of cleave (avasculate) has a touch attack and a save, but the save is to negate the stun, not the HP drain.

MannyJabrielle wrote:I'd like to add an opinion about spell consistency too.... harm and cleave health. I can't think of many spells offhand that have both a touch attack AND a save. And given that harm doesn't do the full total HP kill (except for one diety)... it kinda stinks. The regular DnD rendition of cleave (avasculate) has a touch attack and a save, but the save is to negate the stun, not the HP drain.

I look at disintegrate as a baseline for "arcane spell that is rare or impossible to be immune to", it has ranged touch attack and save. Ranged touch is definitely better than melee in most cases, but clerics are better in melee (this is based on better AB progression and better armor prof) and tend to benefit more from str, so they do pretty well with the melee touch, so I dont see a significant difference there.... and disintegrate does pretty much diddly if the save is made, whereas harm still messes the target up pretty good if they make it.... so on the arcane vs. divine balance, I think Harm is pretty good where it is currently, as arcane spells should retain a leg up on their divine counterparts where offense is concerned... and if anything Harm is nastier than disintegrate when the save is made, but disintegrate is nastier when it is failed.

Is there more you are looking at than I am?

The AB dif is negligable at 5 point difference assuming pure-class pre-epic progression.

The strength point is moot as well because there is no logical basis to assume that clerics will have more strength than arcane casters. Strength is not a casting stat for either divine or arcane casters. Either is free to detract points from their respective casting stat to strength, or any other stat for that matter.

And yes, there is more that I am seeing. Disintigrate simply is not a good comparison. One does damage to living targets only. The other kills targets outright, and can be used against non-living targets as well as physical world obstacles.

33% total HP damage is simply not comparable to death. Even cleave health outdoes harm (50%/25% vs 33%/16.5%).

And arcane casters DO outdo divine casters. Arcane casters have simply far more spells, and far greater ranges of damage.

Off the top of my head 7 save or die spells vs 3 save or die for divine casters (and of those, on aenea, 2 are restricted to a single diety out of 20).

Damager non-save or die, arcane casters still far out-do divine casters in both number of spells and damage ranges with said spells. Dice damagers, divine caps at 20d6. Arcane has a number of spells that exceed that. There is NO worry about divine casters suddenly outdoing arcane for damage.

What I am asking for is harm and cleave health to be made more in-line with PnP. They are in line in terms of damage capability, but not in terms of the touch attach+save components. PnP harm does not have both, and the PnP version of cleave (avasculate) has a save, but only for negating a stun (not present in Aenea's version), not for half damage.

And before this gets muddled in absolute nonsense, I would like to point out that my initial post is not "clerics should outdo arcane casters", as

1) I did not suggest that only harm have just either a touch attack or save, I said both harm and cleave health, which is not pro or con wizard, nor pro or con cleric. It was a point about spell consistency for both types of casters.

2) I made no mention of changing the damage ranges, so the arcane damage vs divine damage is completely completely irrelevant and simply a point brought in to absolutely confuse the issue given that the arcane spell already does more damage than the divine.

Thanks.

Thanks for the clarifications. Sounded like original post was looking to have harm changed to be more like cleave, and it didnt sound like the idea was to make any changes to cleave... so that left changing damage ranges for harm as the probable solution being proposed, which I agree is not needed.

So to sum up your comment, it sounds like you want the save removed for both spells?

See initial post.

I dunno, maybe I am blind, or maybe I am not comprehending the words you posted... but I am more inclined to think that you didn't state what you think the solution should be. You dont seem to actually want to discuss it, so... my opinion is that neither spell should be changed.

Eh, I could be wrong since I doesnt know how the spells work on Aenea seeing as I got neither a cleric or a wizard character, but as I understand Mannys posts he request both Cleave and Harm to be made more in line with their PnP versions. To have a touch attack a save to both spells.

PnP versions of the Harm and Avasculate spell

The save for the Cleave spell is for whether the target is stunned after taking damage or not.

daveyeisley wrote:I dunno, maybe I am blind, or maybe I am not comprehending the words you posted... but I am more inclined to think that you didn't state what you think the solution should be. You dont seem to actually want to discuss it, so... my opinion is that neither spell should be changed.

No, sorry I'm not inclined to "discuss". The arcane vs divine damage thing was completely unrelated, my post is clear enough, and I simply have no desire to get dragged into yet another pointless, contrary debate for the sake of pointless contrary debates. Thank you.

Just for clarification, cleave health is not a copy of avasculate. It's a spell I made up back in my PnP days and just brought into NWN.

The harm spell (and the inflict spells, and pretty much all of the healing spells) have been altered based on input from players that wanted the healing spells to scale up and be useful at higher levels (with further changes based on Aenea-specific flavor).

Recoded today and ready to be added to the module:

lesser dispelling (should fix AoE VFX dispelling)

dispel magic (should fix AoE VFX dispelling)

greater dispelling (should fix AoE VFX dispelling)

mordenkainen's disjunction (should fix AoE VFX dispelling)

lesser spell breach

greater spell breach

polymorph self (gone: conversation - in: VC command ;;option poly4 xxx and new form (minotaur))

shapechange (gone: conversation and death slaad form - in: VC command ;;option poly9 xxx and new forms (frost giant, stone golem, mindflayer))

crag's stone form

heart of the beast

And yes, all of these have been condensed down into 2 scripts (one for dispelling, one for self-polymorphing).

The list of "codes" for polymorph self will be available in-game (;;info poly4), as will the ones for shapechange (;;info poly9). These two VC commands will show up in the ;;option help menu in the descriptions for the ;;option polyx commands.

Awesome!

Just tested the shapechange, works great!

Question about the commands though. Instead of a separate command for each, why not go with just 1 "poly" command, without the numbers, as shapechange includes the polymoprh shapes. The popup already separates the shapes by spell level.

MannyJabrielle wrote:Question about the commands though. Instead of a separate command for each, why not go with just 1 "poly" command, without the numbers, as shapechange includes the polymoprh shapes. The popup already separates the shapes by spell level.

The different commands for the two spells is so that I don't have to have extra cumbersome code to make sure that someone casting polymorph self can't get any of the more powerful forms from shapechange. It just makes for simpler and more compact code less vulnerable to me causing bugs if I decide to expand on the lists in the future.

Progress Report:

Still making progress...just not as fast as I'd like. With the wife-dragon still hurting from the trampoline incident, there's been a lot more to limit my computer time to a few minutes at a time.

In the last few days I have managed to carve out time (typically after midnight) to recode teleportation spells, some skill-boosting spells, bestow curse (making space in the same script for future "curse spells" ), undead animation spells , charm spells, domination/control spells, and hold spells.

Spell Change: teleportation barrier
old duration: 1 minute/level
new duration: 1 round/level
new visual: will create a magical visual effect that will remain for the spell duration
balance reason: a spell that's a level lower than teleport shouldn't be able to block all teleportation for such a long time, and the visual will act as a hint that you shouldn't bother using any teleportation magic while in that area until it vanishes

The Amethyst Dragon wrote:
Spell Change: teleportation barrier
old duration: 1 minute/level
new duration: 1 round/level
new visual: will create a magical visual effect that will remain for the spell duration
balance reason: a spell that's a level lower than teleport shouldn't be able to block all teleportation for such a long time, and the visual will act as a hint that you shouldn't bother using any teleportation magic while in that area until it vanishes

Will the visual apply in area's that are "naturally teleport blocked" ... I suppose I should wait to see what this visual actually is first, it may not be able to be applied to that application.... but if it's a visual on each character in the area (something like a purple/orange freedom circle, or a small glyph of warding style circle, then it's possible that it could apply on entry) .... as long as it's easily identifiable from the myriad of other self-buff/debuff visual effects ... or is it to be a floating static orby-type thing at the spell center.... ?..

It'll be a yellow-green (yes, a color scheme used for practically all teleportation magic in Aenea) starburst thing that appears at the location where the spellcaster was standing at the time of casting, rather than on individual creatures. It'll be stationary once cast, and appear only when the spell itself is used.

Areas that are permanently teleport-blocked already give a message to magically-attuned PCs right when they enter such an area.

Okay .. Cool....

Just recoded light and continual flame. After I update the server and there's a reset, you'll be able to pick your light color (;;option light xxx ... blue, green, orange, purple, red, white, yellow, or random), and the higher level spell should be noticeably brighter than the lower level one (reduced brightness slightly for light).

:-D Was just thinking about that particular suggestion the other day actually. W00t... colortastic lighting!

Just got in some more coding time.

Several spells (in addition to bestow curse) will be classified as "curse magic", and their effects can be removed with remove curse (in addition to dispel magic and similar spells):
bane
blindness/deafness
doom

In addition, remove curse will be slightly changed so that with each casting it will remove:
1 "unbonded" cursed item (as it is now)
OR
1 curse effect/curse spell per 8 caster levels (minimum 1, maximum 5).

The Amethyst Dragon wrote:
In addition, remove curse will be slightly changed so that with each casting it will remove:
1 "unbonded" cursed item (as it is now)
OR
1 curse effect/curse spell per 8 caster levels (minimum 1, maximum 5).

Thought: if the script checks for unbonded cursed items first, I could see casters getting frustrated trying to remove curse effect/spells during combat and it only removing items they recently looted. May want to have it check for the curse spell/effects first, so the combat usefulness wont be impacted.

Light: The VC command works.... the spell... doesn't

MannyJabrielle wrote:Light: The VC command works.... the spell... doesn't

*sigh* Another one I forgot to replace "int nDuration;" (from my spell script template) with "int nDuration = nCasterLvl;". It should work after next server update. Thanks for letting me know about it.

daveyeisley wrote:Thought: if the script checks for unbonded cursed items first, I could see casters getting frustrated trying to remove curse effect/spells during combat and it only removing items they recently looted. May want to have it check for the curse spell/effects first, so the combat usefulness wont be impacted.

Good thought. I'll see about rearranging some code.

The Amethyst Dragon wrote:
- staff of steps I: when held, 0-8th level spells cast are considered 1 level higher for purposes of save DCs and passing spell resistance.
- staff of steps III: when held, spells cast are considered 3 levels higher for purposes of save DCs and passing spell resistance (max. 9th level).

Question to clarify since other players have asked me about this...

The step staves will modify both spell levels for the purpose of DCs AND caster levels for the purpose of bypassing SR? IE, A 40th level caster has an unmodified 9th level spell DC of 30.... when he holds a staff of steps III staff, his DC for a 9th level spell will be 33, and his caster level will be 43 for bypassing SR?

MannyJabrielle wrote:

The Amethyst Dragon wrote:
- staff of steps I: when held, 0-8th level spells cast are considered 1 level higher for purposes of save DCs and passing spell resistance.
- staff of steps III: when held, spells cast are considered 3 levels higher for purposes of save DCs and passing spell resistance (max. 9th level).

Question to clarify since other players have asked me about this...

The step staves will modify both spell levels for the purpose of DCs AND caster levels for the purpose of bypassing SR? IE, A 40th level caster has an unmodified 9th level spell DC of 30.... when he holds a staff of steps III staff, his DC for a 9th level spell will be 33, and his caster level will be 43 for bypassing SR?

Due to engine limitations preventing me from coding an efficient alternative spell resistance check, the spell level modifications for it won't work as intended in that original post (meaning caster level will still be 40 for bypassing SR without any of the Spell Penetration feats). However, the staves will make spells cast while holding them harder to make saves against (raising save DC).



For example, a 40th level wizard (assuming the minimum: 19 Int with no magical gear or Spell Focus feats) holding a staff of steps III, the DC for that 9th level spell (unmodified DC: 23) will remain 23.

That same wizard using the same staff for a 6th level spell (unmodified DC: 20) would get it raised to the equivalent of a 9th level spell (modified DC: 23). 9th level is the highest level of spells there are (besides epic spells, which don't really have a spell level), so none of those staves will affect a spell that's already 9th level (and none will raise the equivalent level beyond 9th).

Off to edit the original post that mentions those staves to remove the mention of spell resistance.

Minor spell change: sleep

old: affects 2d4 HD of creatures, starting with lowest HD
new: affects 2d4 HD of creatures, starting with closest to center of area of effect

reason: reading the script and realized that finding the lowest HD of all possible targets (multiple times per casting) is a lot of loops and checks for a 1st level spell

MannyJabrielle wrote:..pokes in quick suggestion for "Slumber", higher level, higher HD affecting version of sleep

That's funny. It was already on my list of possible spell additions.

Spell changes for next module update:

lesser healing ray - will cure as much as cure light wounds now does (1/caster level or 5% of target's max hitpoints - double for Asis clerics)

healing ray - will cure as much as cure serious wounds now does (1/caster level or 15% of target's max hitpoints - double for Asis clerics)

greater healing ray - will cure as much as cure critical wounds now does (1/caster level or 20% of target's max hitpoints - double for Asis clerics)

Minor Bug - I think.

My druid went on a scroll making tear, and when she tried to make some scrolls of Heal she got the "wrong deity message"
If that function is intended only for clerics of Asis, I can understand that.

uriel1996 wrote:Minor Bug - I think.

My druid went on a scroll making tear, and when she tried to make some scrolls of Heal she got the "wrong deity message"
If that function is intended only for clerics of Asis, I can understand that.

I haven't done any updating of the enchantment system yet (waiting until I've gotten all the spells recoded), so the old restrictions are still in place.