23 replies to this topic

[Zyraen]

Just wondering, am I the only one who thinks that Cure Light Wounds all the way to Cure Critical Wounds, and to an extent, even the level 6 Heal, are essentially Combat-Worthless? They take forever-and-a-day to cast (except from Aerie with Robe of Vecna and Amulet of Power) and require the healer to move next to target to start casting.
Paladin Lay-On-Hands >>>> any of the BG2 Cleric Cure Spells

Druid spells are far far more useful than Cleric ones (Entangle, Insect Swarm, Iron Skins, Summon Fire Elemental, Creeping Doom, Nature's Beauty), but Druids themselves are generally less useful, except Cernd whose personality I can't stand (even with the Tweak to Werewolf transformation) , so yeah.

For Reference
- Cure Light/Medium Wounds has Casting Time 5, respectively level 1 and 3
- Cure Critical Wounds has Casting Time 8, level 5 spell
- Heal takes 1 round to cast (effectively CT 10), level 6 spell

PS : Anyone used Rod of Resurrection as an instant, long distance, in-battle Heal before?

They are also the primary reason why I next-to-never use Cleric abilities significantly in battle, only as pre-buff, and post-heal (casting Heal after a tough fight has ENDED)

Just for thoughts, how would you want to see the Spells more useful in BG2? A quick selection of following options.

1) Leave Them As They Are - they're good enough for RP purposes. game balance wise, the developers didn't want you healing again-and-again-and-again in battles. (except from potions...)

2) Minor Adjustment - Increase Range to 3-4 (1.5 to 2 times more than a spear or quarterstaff reach), and casting time reduced to 2 for Light/Medium / reduced to 4 for Critical / reduced to 8 for Heal

3) Major Adjustment - Increase Range to 10 or In-Sight-Range, Casting time reduced to 0 for Light/Medium / reduced to 2 for Critical / reduced to 6 for Heal

4) Leave Them as They Are - they are anyway worthless spells for their spell level, why use them over handier Cleric Spells? Plus there are POTIONS you dolt!

5) Silly Zyraen, you have been living in a well. There are already Mod(s) that Do what you Suggest to varying degrees. Please see (link)

6) Other : (Your Recommendation)

In a nutshell, due to the stupidity of Healing Spells, I usually use Cleric more for Turn Undead and support attacks, except Anomen of course charges into the fray. The only spells above that I use regularly are Heal (so I don't have to rest), and the rest are left to Ring of Regeneration. In un-tactical BG2 on Core/Hard, I hardly ever use Potions, to the tune of like maybe 10 potions to the end of ToB (not counting Antidotes / Elixirs to get rid of Poison). If I XP farm in the Duergar tunnels in Sendai's lair, then maybe an extra 3-10 potions.

Quick Edit : Heal increased to 8 and 6, up from 7 and 4, because of Robe of Vecna

Sidenote : in case you're wondering, I'm thinking of installing and playing with SCSII. So I thought something like that might be useful, if not absolutely mandatory to have a slightly better (read 0.0001% chance) of surviving

Edited by Zyraen, 13 April 2011 - 06:41 PM.

[RavenSW]

Hmm, I would say a cross between 2 and 3. The range should be increased because magic is normally a range ability, except for hand spells, which the healing spells don't really come off with that vibe in their intent. Many RPG use a ranged heal ability, simply because your healers are not typically battle types, you want to keep them in the back out of harms way. That said, i find little use for clerics as a whole. A paladin, a druid and a ranger all have varying degrees of clerical magic, and I prefer keeping Jaheira rather then use the slot for a cleric. Minsc and Anomen can Tank and throw the occasional heal and is more useful in that regard. Though I still say Anomen should be a Paladin not a dual-class cleric, and if he is going to be a cleric I still think he should have dual classed to the fighter if they were going to do it that way. So I say up the distance a lot and lower the time to cast a little, magic should take some time to do right

[Daulmakan]

/-------------------------------------------------
--- CURE SPELL REVISIONS ---
\-------------------------------------------------

This component revises cure spells to scale with caster level.

Cure Light Wounds (Lv1)
Lv1: 8 HP
Lv8: 16 HP
Lv16: 24 HP

Good Berries (Lv2)
Lv1: 1 handful of berries
Lv8: 2 handful of berries
Lv16: 3 handful of berries
*Each handful of berries heals 12 HP

Cure Medium Wounds (Lv3)
Lv1: 16 HP
Lv8: 24 HP
Lv16: 32 HP

Cure Serious Wounds (Lv4)
Lv1: 24 HP
Lv8: 32 HP
Lv16: 40 HP

Cure Critical Wounds (Lv5)
Lv1: 32 HP
Lv8: 40 HP
Lv16: 48 HP

Morrow Gate

[Demivrgvs]

Spell Revisions
Within Spell Revisions I've tried doing something about it, but we are going to discuss this again for V4, especially because the following system may be good for healing spells (though low lvl cure spells tend to become too much obsolete later on for my tastes) but it's still far from appealing for the Cause Wound serie of spells (the dmg dealt compared to spells of the same lvl is ridiculous, and it even requires a hit roll!).

Cure Light Wound: Lv1, heal 1d8 +1/lvl hp up to 1d8+5, casting time 1

Cure Moderate Wound: Lv2, heal 2d8 +1/lvl hp up to 2d8+10, casting time 2

Cure Serious Wound: Lv3, heal 1d8 +1/lvl hp up to 3d8+15, casting time 3

Cure Critical Wound: Lv4, heal 1d8 +1/lvl hp up to 4d8+20, casting time 4

Mass Healing: Lv5, heal 2d8 +1/lvl hp up to 2d8+20, casting time 5

Heal: Lv6, heal 100% hp, casting time 9

Note that I've moved Moderate, Serious and Critical versions down of 1 lvl compared to vanilla game.

[Zyraen]

Did either SR or MorrowGate change the casting Range of the Spell ? more in line with other games (can't deny it, WoW actually makes somewhat more sense here in the treatment of the Spell...)

Edited by Zyraen, 14 April 2011 - 12:00 AM.

[Demivrgvs]

Did either SR or MorrowGate change the casting Range of the Spell ? more in line with other games (can't deny it, WoW actually makes somewhat more sense here in the treatment of the Spell...)

No, I've drastically reduced the casting time to make them usable within combat (Light and Moderate in particular can be cast in melee without much problems unless many opponents target the priest), but they still are touch-like spells. Perhaps I'm too tied to PnP, but for some reason I cannot see them as ranged spells.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Spell Revisions
Cure Light Wound: Lv1, heal 1d8 +1/lvl hp up to 1d8+5, casting time 1
Cure Moderate Wound: Lv2, heal 2d8 +1/lvl hp up to 2d8+10, casting time 2
Cure Serious Wound: Lv3, heal 1d8 +1/lvl hp up to 3d8+15, casting time 3
Cure Critical Wound: Lv4, heal 1d8 +1/lvl hp up to 4d8+20, casting time 4

It's clear that you have not played a BG1 games much, as the 1d8 +1/lvl for Cure Light Wounds is intolerable, the reason being that Cleric can only cast a few spells on level 1 and that's it's only real advantage, if you then get a +1 HP from a cure spell, you'll reload for sure.
So it's better to keep the spells as they are, than revamp them into horrible "Did I get it, did I get it, did I get it, ahh"-> reload -> "Did I get it, did I get..." fests.
The MorrowGate has a good concept... but it needs a refinement to be a bit smaller amount and smaller steps...
Cure Light Wounds (Lv1)
Lv1: 6 HP
Lv3: 7 HP
Lv5: 8 HP
Lv7: 9 HP
Lv9: 10 HP
Lv11: 11HP
Lv13: 12HP, and then it would stay the same.
Would be good.

What comes to the range, well I can see a high level priest being able to have greater length of the target for his lesser cure spells, see the mass heal, so for example the level 1 cleric could have the Cure light wounds to be a touch-like spell, while the level 7-8 should have the spell cast-able from 10 feet away, and 15-16th level cleric from 20 feet away, but only for the Cure Light Wounds, the Heal spell needs to definitely be a touch-like, every time.

The casting time doesn't actually matter that much, at low levels, cause the damage is done and you should cure some amount of it, not add a few and waste resources in hurry. Cause the Aid spells etc can do that, so for the cure spells, the times can be set to 5 in every spell, as you can only cast 1 spell per turn anyway.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 14 April 2011 - 12:51 AM.

[Demivrgvs]

Spell Revisions
Cure Light Wound: Lv1, heal 1d8 +1/lvl hp up to 1d8+5, casting time 1
Cure Moderate Wound: Lv2, heal 2d8 +1/lvl hp up to 2d8+10, casting time 2
Cure Serious Wound: Lv3, heal 1d8 +1/lvl hp up to 3d8+15, casting time 3
Cure Critical Wound: Lv4, heal 1d8 +1/lvl hp up to 4d8+20, casting time 4

It's clear that you have not played a BG1 games much, as the 1d8 +1/lvl for Cure Light Wounds is intolerable, the reason being that Cleric can only cast a few spells on level 1 and that's it's only real advantage, if you then get a +1 HP from a cure spell, you'll reload for sure.

Actually BG1 players suggested that, and I kinda agreed because such solution makes it a true Cure Light Wounds, instead of a Heal spell for low lvl characters. At 1st lvl non-warriors have something like 6-10 hit points, thus vanilla's CLW (8 hp) pratically is a Heal spell at 1st lvl, and then it quickly becomes completely useless. Even 1d8+1 means 5.5 hp on average, and even in the worst scenario 1+1 it should heal 20-25% of most L1 characters. Anyway, your point is indeed valid for extremely low lvl characters (aka L1 or L2), though you have to be terribly unlucky, and I'm not persuaded by the "oh noo! it didn't work at maximum potential! I have to reload!" complain, because that would be true for pratically all D&D spells. A L1 mage's Magic Missile deals 1d4+1, do you reload if it deals 2 points of dmg?!? Fireball has a min dmg of 5hp when cast by a L5 mage but it's fine, because it simulates a critical failure. Just like a fighter doesn't always hit, and doesn't always deal max dmg, spells aren't always cast at max potential.

That being said, I don't feel compelled so much to neither 2E nor 3E, and fixed values have some merit on CW spells, in fact I and Ardanis do discussed solutions involving fixed values for V4. We simply stopped the brainstorming because we were busy with other things.

What comes to the range, well I can see a high level priest being able to have greater length of the target for his lesser cure spells, see the mass heal, so for example the level 1 cleric could have the Cure light wounds to be a touch-like spell, while the level 7-8 should have the spell cast-able from 10 feet away, and 15-16th level cleric from 20 feet away, but only for the Cure Light Wounds, the Heal spell needs to definitely be a touch-like, every time.

I'll think about it, and see what other SR players think (I tend to be democratic).

The casting time doesn't actually matter that much, at low levels, cause the damage is done and you should cure some amount of it, not add a few and waste resources in hurry. Cause the Aid spells etc can do that, so for the cure spells, the times can be set to 5 in every spell, as you can only cast 1 spell per turn anyway.

Casting time does matter, A LOT! Almost instantly cure a critically wounded character (allowing him/her to endure a little more, or retreat without dying) is an unvaluable feat. Casting time 5 means that such character have a much higher chance of being hit another time before you're able to cure him, and those 3 seconds may actually be fatal (especially at low lvls!). Not to mention SR's CLW and CMW uber fast casting time means the priest can 'cast and attack' without almost spending any time on the "cast" part and very little chance of being disrupted. I really cannot say all of this "doesn't matter".

[Jarno Mikkola]

A L1 mage's Magic Missile deals 1d4+1, do you reload if it deals 2 points of dmg?!?

Well, in Friendly Arm inn, when you enter, you save the game, you enter the inns courtyard and you are approached by a mage, you have at most 4 party members, all at level 1, Imoen, your character and two evil characters... if you are a mage and don't actually intend to keep the two evil chars but intend to have Jaheira and Khalid from inside the inn... you pretty much need the only magic missile you have to hit the hostile mage, thus preventing it's casting of the horror spell it has, as your party would be as good as dead would it hit you. Now, because the MM will always hit the mage, he cannot finish his first spell and your other party members can damage him... to defeat him. That's why the Magic Missile is important in BG1.
Now, if you cast the MM too late or something... you can still try to recover the situation, by a good saves or just good luck, although the SCSI kills your chances of having 'good luck'. If you end up killing the hostile, and don't get killed, you can go on, but if you don't, you reload the game...

Now then if you get to enter the inn with a few scratches and browses, you get Jaheira that can heal those. Now if her spell has the potency of curing your fighter that has taken 6 hit points out of 11, I doubt that you'll not continue from the just saved game before the healing spell if in the current game the char was not fully healed.
This is partially the reason why the BG2 has a few special rules, like if you put the difficulty to easy, the characters that gain levels, gain the maximum Hit Points they can on the level up... and why the games healing spells have a set hit points, unlike the D&D. The BG games are a computer adapted Advanced Dungeon & Dragons game, as the game master is the computer system, not a live person. Thus NOT a D&D game with a live dungeon master.
The direct damage spells have more than one use in the game, first of all, it's to interrupt the opponent, then lower the hitpoints so the opponent has about the same amount of hitpoints your fighters have and then you can kill the opponent with better AC/Thac0 relation... it's not actually kill every one of the gibberlings in the single map with one fireball.

Casting time 5 means that such character have a much higher chance of being hit another time before you're able to cure him, and those 3 seconds may actually be fatal (especially at low lvls!).

Yes, if you start with not fully healed up character...
Why so? Because the enemy usually has damage output that's less than your maximum hitpoint... persecond. Quite much in fact.

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 14 April 2011 - 06:25 AM.

[pacek]

...

As a serial restarter and hence expert low level player , I certainly don't reload every time I get a bad roll with Demi's Cure light wounds. In fact, I don't think I ever have. I tend to play the game and take what bad luck may come my way, including perma-death of NPCs. It is an RPG after all! In fact SR's cure spells are more similar to vanilla's description of them to the actual ingame implementation, so I consider them almost a bug fix.

[Jarno Mikkola]

As a serial restarter and hence expert low level player

At what level do you start the game at, low level means to me the level 1 and only level one spells.
I have started the game about 50 times at level 1... With BG1, with BGT, a time with EasyTutu, and again a more than a few with BGT-WeiDU, and also a few with Classic Adventures, IwDinBG2...
I'll say that the 1d8 dice is far too large to count the randomization factor, a 1d4+2... 1d4+4 would be far more forgiving in this account.

[RavenSW]

As a serial restarter and hence expert low level player

At what level do you start the game at, low level means to me the level 1 and only level one spells.
I have started the game about 50 times at level 1... With BG1, with BGT, a time with EasyTutu, and again a more than a few with BGT-WeiDU, and also a few with Classic Adventures, IwDinBG2...
I'll say that the 1d8 dice is far too large to count the randomization factor, a 1d4+2... 1d4+4 would be far more forgiving in this account.

a 1d4+4? Hmm, that would probably make more sense as your level goes up, a +4 would make the spell more powerful for a level one spell, maybe a 1d4 and add a +1 every 3 levels would show improvement for the caster as they progress. I do agree that low level spells have a tendency to become impractical on later levels and that shouldnt really be the case. They should be the spells that you have used so many times that you develop a mastery of it, add to its effectiveness and to the range. This would strike me as being more "realistic", but these are just the thoughts of a relative noob, (noob to BG2 speicifaclly, but years of game time in D&D/RPG in general)

[GeN1e]

That being said, I don't feel compelled so much to neither 2E nor 3E, and fixed values have some merit on CW spells, in fact I and Ardanis do discussed solutions involving fixed values for V4. We simply stopped the brainstorming because we were busy with other things.

IIRC my last working theory was to use the formula X + 1dX / 2lvl, where X is 2 for Light, 4 - Moderate, 6 - Serious, 8 - Critical.

Edited by GeN1e, 15 April 2011 - 12:51 PM.

[Jarno Mikkola]

a 1d4+4? Hmm, that would probably make more sense as your level goes up, a +4 would make the spell more powerful for a level one spell, maybe a 1d4 and add a +1 every 3 levels would show improvement for the caster as they progress.

Did you actually check the original spell ? It's a +8, and then nothing... That's what's wrong with the 1d8 +x systems, they make the chance have way too large proportion of the healed damage count, which can force players to reload, at least in low levels.
The "X + 1dX / 2lvl, where X is 2 for Light, 4 - Moderate, 6 - Serious, 8 - Critical." is even worse in this aspect,
Light:
lv1:2+2d1=4-4
lv2:2+2d2=4-6
lv4:2+2d3=4-8
lv6:2+2d4=4-10
...
Moderate:
lv3:4+4d1=8
lv4:4+4d2=8-12
lv6:4+4d3=8-16
lv8:4+4d4=8-20

I think this needs to be something like:
Light: 4 + 1d4 + 1/3*(levels -1), up to (1-4)+8; at level 12
Moderate: 8 + 1d4 + 1/2*(levels -3), up to (1-4)+15; at level 18
Serious: 16 + 1d6 + 1/(level -5), up to (1-6)+30; at level 20
Critical: 32 + 1d8 + 2/(level -7), up to (1-8 )+60; at level 21

Edited by Jarno Mikkola, 15 April 2011 - 11:44 PM.

[GeN1e]

The "X + 1dX / 2lvl, where X is 2 for Light, 4 - Moderate, 6 - Serious, 8 - Critical." is even worse in this aspect,

You confuse it with "X + Xd(lvl/2)".

CLW:
1) 2 + 0d2 = 2
2) 2 + 1d2 = 3.5
5) 2 + 2d2 = 5
10) 2 + 5d2 = 9.5
20) 2 + 10d2 = 17

CMW:
3) 4 + 1d4 = 6.5
5) 4 + 2d4 = 9
10) 4 + 5d4 = 16.5
20) 4 + 10d4 = 29

[Jarno Mikkola]

You confuse

Yes... cause:

20) 4 + 10d4 = 29

This is extremely bad, cause the dice is way way too random: as the healed damage is 8-44. It's not 29...

[RavenSW]

You confuse

Yes... cause:

20) 4 + 10d4 = 29

This is extremely bad, cause the dice is way way too random: as the healed damage is 8-44. It's not 29...

The 29 is the average role, or what you can generally expect to receive. The chance of rolling 4 10's is not very likely. The dice ARE random, remember, this is ALL based on a Pen and Paper game, every facet of that game is dictated by dice. You can't just nerf the dice because the randomness is what makes D&D, well D&D.

[RavenSW]

The "X + 1dX / 2lvl, where X is 2 for Light, 4 - Moderate, 6 - Serious, 8 - Critical." is even worse in this aspect,

You confuse it with "X + Xd(lvl/2)".

CLW:
1) 2 + 0d2 = 2
2) 2 + 1d2 = 3.5
5) 2 + 2d2 = 5
10) 2 + 5d2 = 9.5
20) 2 + 10d2 = 17

CMW:
3) 4 + 1d4 = 6.5
5) 4 + 2d4 = 9
10) 4 + 5d4 = 16.5
20) 4 + 10d4 = 29

I have to say GeN1e that is absolutely brilliant, you allow the spell to grow with the caster and keep the spells relevant while showing the natural mastery of using the low level spells repeatedly. Thats solves all the problems of the spells and keeps in the spirit of the game.

[GeN1e]

This is extremely bad, cause the dice is way way too random: as the healed damage is 8-44. It's not 29...

Is not. Why so - start from here http://en.wikipedia....ice#Probability

[Jarno Mikkola]

This is extremely bad, cause the dice is way way too random: as the healed damage is 8-44. It's not 29...

Is not. Why so - start from here http://en.wikipedia....ice#Probability

Yeah, the 8-44 is indeed not 29. That's what I have tried to say to you two... now if you two could just start using the "4 + 10d4 ~ 29" expression, I would condone it...