29 replies to this topic

[Wisp]

So, due to Death Tyrant's being roughly 2 % undead and 98 % beholder, there will also be an upcoming "PnP Beholders" component. Makes sense, right?

Anyway, here's how it'll work:

Your average 5.5-feet-in-diameter beholder has 10 eyestalks:

• Charm Person
  
• Charm Monster
  
• Sleep
  
• Telekinesis
  
• Flesh to Stone
  
• Disintegrate
  
• Fear
  
• Slow
  
• Cause Serious Wounds
  
• Death

Additionally he has his central anti-magic-shooting eye.

Each round the beholder is able to use a randomly selected subset (roughly 5-6) of these eyestalks.

Most of the rays function like the corresponding spells, except they all only affect a single target. This includes the anti-magic ray, which will dispel all spells affecting the target and prevent any other magic from affecting him or her (including the beholder's own rays). Beholders will use their disintegrating eye by default, but if perma-death isn't your cup of tea you'll have the option of turning it off (i.e the reverse of SCSII's turn-disintegration-on scheme).

The beholder can take 50 points of damage before dying. However, the central eye and the eyestalks have their own HP and you have a (random) chance of hitting these instead. Disabled eyes still count as one of the 11 eyes, so if the beholder's unlucky one or more of the eyes he can use that round will be disabled and useless.

[Demivrgvs]

This includes the anti-magic ray, which will dispel all spells affecting the target and prevent any other magic from affecting him or her (including the beholder's own rays).

This is something I tried to suggest for SCS a couple of times. A "must-have" if you ask me, because vanilla's Anti-magic ray (which is not an anti-magic effect, but a dispel + spell failure ray) is really abusable and overpowered if correctly used by an intelligent AI like SCS.

The beholder can take 50 points of damage before dying. However, the central eye and the eyestalks have their own HP and you have a (random) chance of hitting these instead. Disabled eyes still count as one of the 11 eyes, so if the beholder's unlucky one or more of the eyes he can use that round will be disabled and useless.

More or less as per Quest Pack's beholders I guess. Not crucial in terms of gameplay (because if you managed to hit a beholder 3-4 times it's brobably already dead) but quite cool.

[Wisp]

This is something I tried to suggest for SCS a couple of times. A "must-have" if you ask me, because vanilla's Anti-magic ray (which is not an anti-magic effect, but a dispel + spell failure ray) is really abusable and overpowered if correctly used by an intelligent AI like SCS.

Yeah, that combination of anti-magic ray to strip you of your defences and a barrage of other rays right after is really unbalanced. No wonder they put the Shield of Balduran in the game

More or less as per Quest Pack's beholders I guess. Not crucial in terms of gameplay (because if you managed to hit a beholder 3-4 times it's brobably already dead) but quite cool.

Not quite like QP/SCSII. If one of those beholders are hit for 10 damage, and an eyestalk is destroyed, the beholder is down 10 HP plus 1 eyestalk. If you hit an aTweaks beholder for 10 damage and destroy an eyestalk, the beholder will be down an eyestalk but still have full health.
But the balance between amount of HP and chance of destroying eyestalks may need some tweaking from PnP values, or it might play out as you say, with the beholder dying before losing more than 1 eyestalk (if that).

[Dakk]

This includes the anti-magic ray, which will dispel all spells affecting the target and prevent any other magic from affecting him or her (including the beholder's own rays).

For how long are you immune to magic.. that round only?

Not quite like QP/SCSII. If one of those beholders are hit for 10 damage, and an eyestalk is destroyed, the beholder is down 10 HP plus 1 eyestalk. If you hit an aTweaks beholder for 10 damage and destroy an eyestalk, the beholder will be down an eyestalk but still have full health.

I understand it so that no damage applied to the eyes will "overflow" to the actual beholder? Therefore, if you on average would hit the eyes say 33% of the time you would go from Demi's 3-4 hits-before-death to 5-6 hits. Cool.

Edited by Dakk, 01 November 2010 - 04:32 AM.

[Wisp]

This includes the anti-magic ray, which will dispel all spells affecting the target and prevent any other magic from affecting him or her (including the beholder's own rays).

For how long are you immune to magic.. that round only?

The vanilla anti-magic rays lasts 20 seconds. I haven't seen any reason to change that.

Not quite like QP/SCSII. If one of those beholders are hit for 10 damage, and an eyestalk is destroyed, the beholder is down 10 HP plus 1 eyestalk. If you hit an aTweaks beholder for 10 damage and destroy an eyestalk, the beholder will be down an eyestalk but still have full health.

I understand it so that no damage applied to the eyes will "overflow" to the actual beholder? Therefore, if you on average would hit the eyes say 33% of the time you would go from Demi's 3-4 hits-before-death to 5-6 hits. Cool.

No, damage would overflow. I don't think there's anything I can do about that. The actual implementation is that when an eyestalk is destroyed the beholder is healed by however many HP the eyestalk is supposed to have (10 in the case of regular beholders). I can make it a bit more accurate, to within 5 HP, say. E.g. if you hit the beholder for 23 points of damage and hit an eyestalk, the beholder is healed by 20 points, but if you hit it for 11 the beholder is healed by 10 HP. At least that way the spill-over would be small.

[Dakk]

Very nice. A small overflow would actually just be a good thing, as one can imagine cutting off eyes would hurt the main body somewhat...

From a technical standpoint, what would happen if you hit and caused 15 points of damage to an eyestalk of a beholder with 11 HP remaining? Would the healing occur before the damage, or would it keel over?

[Wisp]

From a technical standpoint, what would happen if you hit and caused 15 points of damage to an eyestalk of a beholder with 11 HP remaining? Would the healing occur before the damage, or would it keel over?

That beholder would die there and then.

[Dakk]

Thanks for the replies =)
Looking forward to your tweaked Evil Eyes!

[GeN1e]

This includes the anti-magic ray, which will dispel all spells affecting the target and prevent any other magic from affecting him or her (including the beholder's own rays).

Conceptually that's a correct thing to do, but I fear the balance will be ruined, because you'll be able to take them on easily.
SCS seems to check for exact values of DS's WIZARD_SPELL_TRAP stat, so I think there should be no clash. Hive mothers look for greater than 0 values, but then again SCS2 and aTweaks beholders will likely be incompatible.


Eyestalks. Well, do as you wish, but if I load a triple Fireball into sequencer and fire it at 50 HP beh, it most likely will die before scripted routine kicks in. Shoot it thrice normally, and it will lose eyestalks and be alive. Also, now that I've mentioned such a spell, AoE magic should really go for the main body regardless of how many eyestalks it managed to bring down along.

[Wisp]

Conceptually that's a correct thing to do, but I fear the balance will be ruined, because you'll be able to take them on easily.

I aim to have them use reasonably intelligent targeting; they won't zap you just because they can.

but then again SCS2 and aTweaks beholders will likely be incompatible.

Yeah, the categorically incompatibility with SCSII is something I fret about.

Eyestalks. Well, do as you wish, but if I load a triple Fireball into sequencer and fire it at 50 HP beh, it most likely will die before scripted routine kicks in. Shoot it thrice normally, and it will lose eyestalks and be alive. Also, now that I've mentioned such a spell, AoE magic should really go for the main body regardless of how many eyestalks it managed to bring down along.

Assuming it is straightforwardly scriptable I've been thinking about only having melee weapons damage eyestalks. Spells and ranged weapons would hit the body only.

[Shaitan]

Would you make aTweaks skip PNP Beholders if SCSII Beholders is installed?

Cheers

[Wisp]

Would you make aTweaks skip PNP Beholders if SCSII Beholders is installed?

If you want SCSII Beholders you would install that and simply not install the aTweaks "PnP Beholders" component.

[Shaitan]

That's a way to do it

[DavidWallace]

This includes the anti-magic ray, which will dispel all spells affecting the target and prevent any other magic from affecting him or her (including the beholder's own rays).

This is something I tried to suggest for SCS a couple of times. A "must-have" if you ask me, because vanilla's Anti-magic ray (which is not an anti-magic effect, but a dispel + spell failure ray) is really abusable and overpowered if correctly used by an intelligent AI like SCS.

Different design philosophies. SCS's baseline has (almost) always been the demonstrated in-game abilities, not the PnP creatures, whereas obviously aTweaks has a different goal. I do occasionally modify things when they genuinely make things boringly skewed or impossible, but I've never been persuaded that was the case here. (I won't pretend SCSII beholders aren't pretty difficult, or that fights with them are anything other than bloody, but they can be taken - it's mostly about using potions and scrolls, trying to draw fire onto the right characters, and - most importantly - doing lots of damage very quickly, since beholders have few immunities.

I imagine fighting aTweaks beholders will have quite a different flavour. That's a good thing - variety is the spice of life.

but then again SCS2 and aTweaks beholders will likely be incompatible.

Yeah, the categorically incompatibility with SCSII is something I fret about.

Do you need to fret? Fairly obviously, your component is trying to do the same thing as mine (provide intelligent beholders) but with a different flavour. They're bound to be incompatible (plausibly we should do mutual ignore-this-component flags, in fact). The only thing that might be a bit awkward is elder orbs, since in SCS they're hybrids, drawing partly on Smarter Beholders, partly on Smarter Mages.

Edited by DavidWallace, 02 November 2010 - 05:07 AM.

[Wisp]

Do you need to fret?

Heh, it's what I do. But the issue with Elder Orbs et al. is probably the only one of any real concern.

On a more amusing note, elemental and other small-amounts-of-trailing-damage weapons apparently interfere with DamageTaken checks, so I'll need to redesign the eyestalk script from scratch (which probably means it'll be more QP-like). Or maybe I'll leave it as it is.

Edited by Wisp, 02 November 2010 - 12:27 PM.

[yarpen]

What about PnP Gauts? They were far more interesting there!

auth

When a gauth moves into combat, it begins to glow, much as if it were the object of a faerie fire spell, to attract the attention of its foes. A creature that meets the gaze of the central eye must roll a successful saving throw vs. spell, with a -2 penalty, or be affected as if the victim of a feeblemind spell.
Nota: w BG2 Gauth to biedniejsza wersja zwyczajnego Obserwatora, gdy wedle podręczników to niezwykle niebezpieczna bestia. Ta umiejętność to poza normalnymi mocami jego oczu jedno z zagrożeń, ale nie główne...

1. Cause serious wounds (as spell, 30-foot range).

2. Repulsion (as spell, 10-foot wide path, 40-foot range)

3. Cone of cold (as spell, inflicts 3d4 points of damage and has an area of effect 5 feet wide at the start, 50 feet long, and 20 feet wide at the base; this eye can be used only three times per day)

4. Lightning bolt (as spell, inflicts 4d4 damage with 80' range; this power can be used up to four times per day)

5. Paralyzation (as wand, 40-foot range, single target; only a dispel magic or the beholder's death can free the victim)

6. Dweomer drain (see below)
Notka: tutaj mamy wykaz możliwości oczu Gautha, które nie są równie silne co te Obserwatora, zwróćmy jednak uwagę na punkt 6.

Perhaps the most feared of the gauth's powers, its dweomer drain, permits the gauth to drain charges from magical items. It has a 40-foot range and can be targeted on one individual per round. In addition to preventing one object from functioning for the duration of that round, this power drains one charge from one charged object. Permanent objects, such as magical swords, are rendered powerless for one round by this ability. Artifacts are not affected by the dweomer drain. The eye has no effect on spells that have been memorized (but not yet cast) and it will not break the concentration of a wizard. It does neutralize any spell cast by its target that round, however.

A dispel magic spell cast on any of the gauth's eye stalks prevents its use for 1d4 rounds. The central eye, any fully retracted eye stalks, the body's ability to glow, and the gauth's natural levitation are not subject to injury by such a spell.
Notka: możliwość wysysania ładunków wszelkiego rodzaju różdżek może poważnie utrudnić życie graczom lubującym się w korzystaniu z tych urządzeń. Do tego doliczyć rozproszenie magii bez rzutu o skuteczność i viola, witaj zmoro.

If a gauth is slain, its magical energy dissipates. Usually, this is a harmless event, but there is a 2% chance that it is catastrophic, inflicting 4d4 points of damage to all creatures within 10 feet (no saving throw). Gauth are immune to their own powers and to those of other gauth. They have an unusual physiology that enables them to regenerate 1 hit point every two turns.

[Wisp]

Yeah, there will be PnP Gauths as well. They're all getting a make-over.

Edited by Wisp, 04 November 2010 - 06:54 AM.

[yarpen]

That sounds just great, mr. Wisp! Well, it's interesting to hear that you're a guy who's currently maintaining Avenger's mod and also you know a lot about SCS scripting style. Do you have any plans for revising Rogue Rebalancing scripting? (I just remember problems between many changes in spells in Spell Revision conflicting with conservative scripting of RR. And 'dispeling bugs' with a help of Potion. Maybe things like those could be fixed).

[Demivrgvs]

Do you have any plans for revising Rogue Rebalancing scripting? (I just remember problems between many changes in spells in Spell Revision conflicting with conservative scripting of RR. And 'dispeling bugs' with a help of Potion. Maybe things like those could be fixed).

Care to explain? The only issue we ever discussed with aVENGER was SR's Glitterdust, and we fixed that ages ago (I made the spell set a local variable which aVENGER kindly took into account). I don't know any other problem.

[yarpen]

Hmm, maybe you're right about Spell Revision (didn't know about solution for Glitterdust, thought that this spell is deprecated when RR is present). But still I remember discussions about Potions and Avenger saying that he don't want to alter his scripting routine for fighting against any sort of Plague of Insects because his scripts aren't done via SSL but manually crafted. And you know well, Demi, that dispelling insects via drinking potion sounds silly. That's why in current shape of Spell Revision those can be "dispelled" via Fireshield or Fireball. I'd even add more to the list, but as current solution that's ok.