Epic Spells + Sequencers

Something which I have noticed is that, the first time you trigger a sequencer item's magic first time after a reset it removes any/all defensive epic spells you may have cast on yourself prior to activating it.

It can be really annoying at times since you'd need to recast those epic spells all over...but other than that, it's only really an issue if you activate it in combat, like if you're surrounded by a horde of marilith dervishes, balors, reavers, etc. XD

For my part, I have not experienced this issue. Crideas uses his sequencer regularly, and I have never seen it dispel epic magic from him.

Not to say you aren't experiencing that, just clarifying that it may not affect all PCs.

Sequencers do act funny for me.  I haven't noticed the epic magic dispelling, but the durations are wonky and somewhat unpredictable.

Example, on my one PC I have a sequencer loaded with mass haste off a scroll.  It's duration I think is 7 rounds? (base duration, same as what you'd get off a scroll of the spell).

One use, the duration will be as expected.  The next use, the haste effect will wear off as soon as a round later (one round haste, yay).  The next use, it will last well longer than it should, almost as if cast by an actual level 20 caster with extend spell or a staff of persistence.  There's no set pattern, it all appears to be just random.

Mass haste is a 6th level spell, so it requires a minimum caster level of 11, which means base duration should be 11 rounds.

Ah, correct... and more to the point that I rarely get 11 rounds duration out of it.  I tend to get either less or I get an odd duration that seems to go on forever and a day

Possibly related, my epic buffs can be pretty random, too. Sometimes I get the full duration, sometimes they run out after a few minutes - no sequencers involved.

So I was just hanging out waiting for Crid's rest timer to reach zero. I had used his bedroll and got the feedback that he needed to wait at least 2 hours before resting again.

I used the ;;t command and verified it said 2 hours to go. I moused over my compass, and it showed hour 23, so I knew when the compass showed hour 1, I would be good to go.

It seemed like it was taking an extra long period for the clock to reach hour 0, but I dismissed it as my impatience. Then when I checked the ;;t command, it showed that I only needed to wait 1 hour to rest, even though the compass still said hour 23.

Then a minute or so later, things got strange. The compass switched to hour 0 finally.... and the ;;t command still showed 1 hour to go. I started monitoring more actively, and I saw something that I think may well explain why durations on just about everything under the sun sometimes expire *waaaay* before they should.

My compass jumped from hour 0 to hour 2. It totally skipped a full hour.... but I am willing to bet for the purpose of calculating durations of effects, that 'jump' of an hour would still have counted against duration remaining.... and very likely ending most mid to short term effects. Depending on how often this happens, if there is a pattern, etc.... it could explain a lot.

Nah.. its just the after effects of all those timestops catching up to Crid... you know what they say.. time flies when you're having fun... .... ...

I've seen that effect happen in SP modules as well.  FP's Almraiven has several quests which can only be advanced at certain times of day, and I found that at times the clock on the compass would act goofy like the above.  In Almraiven though, the player could use a bed to advance the clock 'manually' by resting/waiting until dawn/midnight/ect, or even just advance the clock an hour, which would seem to fix the wonky time issue.

Not sure if it's just a general NWN engine oddity, or if something scriptwise is mucking about with timing though.

It's the NWN engine. The clock hour, as a counted variable, is given very low priority as compared to other scripting needs. When it falls behind, it can then be "leaped" forward by the engine to try to make up for the lag. It's quite unreliable in my experience.

Heck, my PW had a script specifically designed to try to keep the clock as accurate as possible, exactly because of this type of problem.

Aenea is a glorious world, rich with scripting, but that all comes at a price, and that price is paid by a script engine that wasn't designed to be as awesome as is trying to make it.