perking up the kits for mages....making them more

[Userunfriendly]

i was posting a reply in the game banshee forum in reply to how sucky the diviner kit was, and i realized, hey, all the mage kits in bg except sorc suck badly...

why?? sorcs rule magic wise, and mage kits only offer one spell per level extra, and the only reason to have a kit mage is dual class later to fighter, or cleric....or the pure challenge

but if the kits offered perks, like the boon of lathander for clerics, whoo hoo...

people might play them more!!!

like diviner kit, gives you true sight as innate, like the cleric of helm kit, say one true sight per 4 levels....casts at speed 1

necromancer, gets  immune to level drain, and hold undead once per 4 levels,

conjuror gets summon planetar, once per 10 levels, for 10 rounds,

see, nothing seriously over balancing, just adds value and desirability to the standard kits, makes them more than just a way to get one stinky extra spell per level, not worth losing a whole school...

would be great in ease of use mod....  :rolleyes:                    

[raven]

I also think maybe could make a specialized mage casting spells from specialized school doing more damage, like adding a couple or more extra dice for damage, or a -2 penalty to save? Or something?                    

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well what would a standard mage get? Already the specialist get one extra spell cast per day/per level (and unlike pnp it can be any).  True they don't get access to all spells, except wild mages which have another drawback, but they can use any scroll which is also a limitation waved from pnp.                    

[klaussner]

Talking of wild mages, if you don't use spell50 mod, are at level above 20 and cast a spell with the level raised by 5, will the spell be cast at level 25 or capped to 20?                    

[weimer]

I believe (untested) that it will be cast at level 25.                    

[reiella]

Fairly certain it casts it at the capped level 20 level.

The 'disadvantage' (and one of the 'minor' advantages, the main advantage being Nahal's Reckless Dweomer) of being a Wild Mage is really lost once you get past 20th level because of that.                    

[weimer]

Why are you "fairly certain"?

There is no actual "level 20" cap in the game, they just happened to stop making spell effect headers for most spells beyond level 20. There are noted in-game exceptions, like Melf's Acid Arrow and the Bhaalspawn powers.

Everything I learned making the spell-50 mod leads me to believe that the +X level for wild mages is not capped at twenty. They would have to have gone out of their way (e.g., added extra code) to make that happen.

We could, of course, just test it. But do you know something special about the game, or is this just a "gut feeling"?                    

[reiella]

Compared against a test dummy save.

Spellcaster level 31, +1 Modifier, Casting Improved Haste, Time: 227239
Spellcaster level 31, -2 Modifier, Casting Improved Haste, Time: 227233
Spellcaster level 31, -1 Modifier, Casting Improved Haste, Time: 227225
Spellcaster level 31, -5 Modifier, Casting Improved Haste, Time: 227223
Spellcaster level 31, +3 Modifier, Casting Improved Haste, Time: 227235

Attemptign to figure out timestamps for round length. (Done later in game after the first wave, didn't prepare more than oen Imp Haste, oops).
Cast Improved Haste (31, -2) with Time : 335624
Ctrl-R Protag to clear buff
Wait for recast + Cast Improved Haste (31, +1) with Time : 335721


Despite human error the 100 is possibly more lengthy.  Maybe some tests with Blur?  (where the level factor is 2 rnds/lvl).

Blur (31,-3) = 337777
Blur (31,+2) = 337777
Blur (31,+4) = 337790
Blur (31,+1) = 337794
Blur (31,-2) = 337778

- Test, 16 hours of rest
Blur (31,+4) = 409867
Ctrl-R+Recast (31,-2) = 409965

Now I'm going to be kinda embarassed if the timer fields for spells work differently from the rest of the timer fields in the game .  Or if 8 rounds are really shorter than the time it takes to recast a spell .  Also wishing I bothered to check at 20 first, might do that in a bit.

Damage wise, it'd be alot harder to test (unless you added strings for it to echo spell caster level).  Was fairly certain the Wild Mage effect just padded the caster level before it was passed to spell for effects, and from an object point of view a wild mage at 20 casting with a +5 modifier the same as a 25th spellcaster.                    

[weimer]

Hmm?

I'm afraid that I cannot understand your testing methodology.

Here is what I would do:

Create a spell that has two ability headers.
(1) Has a minimum caster level of 1 and a single effect that displays the string "one" on the caster.
(2) Has a minimum caster level of 21 and a single effect that displays the string "two" on teh caster.

Make a 20th level Wild Mage. Cast this special spell over and over again. If you never ever see "two" in, say, 50 tries, then your hypothesis is correct. If you ever see "two" then you know that the Wild-Mage modification is taking your caster level above 20.                    

[reiella]

Think you missed one point [ or I did ], without spell50 most of the spells (including the two I tested durations against) don't have a spell header for 21+ caster level.

My testing method was basing it off two spells (Imp Haste and Blur since those were two I found first) that had a caster level modified duration, since damage would be near impossible to track (Except making not of 'caps').

Set to level 31 (while 25 would just be as effective, 31 was where xp got set in), rested.

Created a Dummy save.
Cast Imp Haste, note level modifier, pause, quicksave.  Check the time variable on the spell affect.

With blur, rested twice after doing the imp haste tests, then made a putz save, and bleh blah.

Making a new spell wouldn't help much at all, the spell headers as they currently exist usually don't have traits for Post-20.  It may -pass- a level above it, but the same way that a 25th level wizard casting Abi-Dahlzim's Horrid Wilting still only does 20d8 points of damage.                    



[!--EDIT|reiella|Sep 25 2002, 09:10 AM--]

[serjeLeBlade]

(Wouldn't it be easier to test with Minute Meteors anyway?)                    

[reiella]

Yep, it would.  See I read Melf's Acid Arrow as Minute Meteor (which is why I didnt' start that) oops.  My mistake,  although Minute Meteor maintains the 20 level cap.  

With same test dummy character.
Melf Minute Meteors (31,-3) = 20
(31,+2) = 20
(31,+2) = 20
(31,+5) = 20
(31,+4) = 20
(31,+1) = 20
(31,+2) = 20
(31,+5) = 20 [ hmm ]
(31,-2) = 20 [hah, a negative finally]
(31,-5) = 20
(31,+2) = 20

Course, now I think it was just a misunderstanding somewhere between what I meant to say, and what I ended up saying .

With spell 50 installed however .
(31,-3) = 31 (hmm)
(31,+5) = 35
(31,+4) = 28
(31,+5) = 29
(31,-4) = 29
(31,nc) = 26
(31,nc) = 33
(31,+2) = 30

Okie this is nice and weird...  The level modifiers being reported by the engine may be wrong.  haven't changed lvlmodwm.2da ...  Hmmm...  Going to create a level 20 test mage w/o spell50...
                   

[reiella]

Yep, the returning echo is wrong.  New fun test. (w/o spell50)

(19,-5) = 17
(19,+5) = 20
(19,-2) = 15
(19,+2) = 20
(19,+1) = 20
(19,-2) = 20
(19,+1) = 15
(19,+4) = 20
(19,-2) = 18
(19,-2) = 19

[ Doh was one off 20, changedxp tables prolly heh, fixed ]
(20,-4) = 20
(20,nc) = 16
(20,+2) = 20

bleh will do more if people ask, but just looks like the lvlmodwm and the values that get echo'd aren't the same.                    

[Lord God Jinnai]

hmm well it looks like wild mages are capped at lvl20...is it possible then to mod it so that wild mage spells can reach lvl 25 and only wm?                    

[reiella]

Hmm, think it'd be a bit hard, since at least from what I can tell of the Spell50 enabled tests, the Wild Mage code passes your Level +/- 5 to the spell parser.  And it's in the spell itself that the 'level cap' comes from.  So even at Caster level 31, it'd be passing 31+/-5 to the spell, which would also always be above the CL 25 'Wild Mage cap', and not even sure how you'd restrict a spell header to a kit (or if you can).  On a somewhat related note, I have no clue how Nahal's level adjustment to Wild Surges works relative to level.                    

[raven]

Well what would a standard mage get? Already the specialist get one extra spell cast per day/per level (and unlike pnp it can be any).  True they don't get access to all spells, except wild mages which have another drawback, but they can use any scroll which is also a limitation waved from pnp.

                   Well, a standard mage get all those spells ofcourse. Standard mage is able to cast every single spells, and specialized mage gets only 1 extra slot per level. It may be nice in lower levels, but in the high levels in BG2 it's relatively useless, sacrificing whole schools of magic just for a single extra slots per level when you can get 5 slots per level anyway.

And it'd be better in role-playing sense, I mean you are supposed to be specialized in one school of magic, but the currecnt situation seems like you are rather specialized in *not getting one to two schools of magic* (and I think they are not able to use scrolls from opposing schools)

Maybe something like those spell focus feats in 3rd D&D, making the spells in the specialized school cast with a -4 penalty to save, and damaging spells do 20% extra damage? In the case of BG2, I'd rather not to take the extra spell slots but the advantage in the saving throws and damage. I'd love to see such a mod                    

[Lord God Jinnai]

Actually you'd be surprised when that 6th spell could save your ass.  And there are schools that are more powerful than others.

Don't forget you still have the scroll use. And while they may only cast at 10th level, some spells don't change per level and its still an extra spell you can cast that you otherwise couldn't.

IMO if they got any bonus, it would be to learn 1 additional spell/lvl, if it was from there school plus learning bonus for spells from there school (with a guaranteed 67% min). That wouldn't be too unbalancing.                    

[FlatulentOne]

If I recall, 2e D&D had some kits made for wizards instead of just specialists. Personally, I dont' find specialization worthwhile, whereas a plain cleric with no kit is almost a liability. Even bards get  kits, and they are basically a bastard class! Wild mage, while fun, is likely to make the early game ALOT more dangerous (it did for me) then can be amazingly cheese later. Chaos shields and Nahal's in a sequencer with a chrom. orb can be lethal. Maybe a like defensive wizard kit with some of the decent cleric buffs, or an offensive kit with inherent save penalties to offensive spells.                    

[raven]

As far as I know, Specialist mage cannot use scrolls from opposing schools...