This is a bug of the vanilla game which is already fixed in IA v4.3. It's not just mages; many monsters including umberhulks, Myconid,...et al, have this problem in the vanilla game (Umberhulks fire their confusion even when unconscious). The bug was discovered and fixed a while ago.

The three posts about this bug are moved to the right thread (= bugs of vanilla game).

@Stu
None of the enemies in the vanilla game or in IA have or use scrolls of Protection from Magic.

The player has access to them from the adventurers mart (iirc). Prot. from Magic makes the target immune to the effects of all spells and is supposed to make them unable to cast any spells. It can be cast on enemies making them unable to cast spells (as per the scrolls description). However they can still launch their contingencies when under the effects of the scroll (so my tactic/cheese of getting Daystar early fell right through as soon as he launched his Chain Lightening/Abi Dalzims contingencies on my low level pc)

I can tweak those scrolls so that the character who has scroll can only use them on himself (not on other creatures). In this way you can't cast them on enemies.

Just checked the scroll again and saw nowehere in its description that it will disable contingencies and triggers; nonetheless, casting them on enemies is cheesy for sure and it's not a bad idea to apply the tweak I mentioned above.

Could you do something about the apprentices.Role playingly in the original
game when playing good charecter I always told them to not forge the
robe or staff of power as it kills them.

In IA the robe is a must for forging the memory of the apprenti.Perheps
something can be done to protect them,maybe going on a quest to get them
a defensive equipment or upgrading the lab so they will have better chances
to survive or maybe the protagonist could stay for a few days and actually
guide them.

It can even start new quests in the sphere.

Emphasis added by me: I always thought it was cheesy to use the scroll offensively, but it is a favorite tactic of some people. They didn't like me calling that use cheesy. Of course, using the scroll offensively is the easiest way to kill the acid kensai in the normal game if you get Celestial Fury at level 8, and the acid kensai comes looking for it.

Edit: I no longer install the acid kensai. In my opinion, it is cheese and counter cheese (although there are good ways to win other than the scrolls of prot vs magic). And if I'm not going to use the katana, why bother.

I'm not sure this is a bug, but anyway: after turning the pages in the book in the Spellhold maze and killing all the monsters I left the area, but when I came back the book started spawning them all again, and at the end it only created a few items, like I rested inbetween (which I didn't).

Edit: it happened again after I quicksaved, this time I didn't even leave. Weird.

This is how it's supposed to work:

When you start clicking on the tome for the first time, you will have 2 hours (in-game time) to finish all battles and take the tome's treasure. If you waste more time than 2 hours, you won't receive full treasure, no matter if you have actually rested or have spent the time in any other way. Let me know if there is any problem or if it doean't work exactly in the way I just described.

I'm not entirely sure if this is a bug or what, but I noticed that often when I cast "friends" on my half-elf blade to try and get a store discount, the spell registers (and I get the icon on my portrait) but on my character screen there is no listed Charisma increase. I only get the actual charisma increase maybe 1/4 times casting the spell. My guess is maybe this has to do with half-elf's innate resistance to charm type spells, so I guess it is debatable whether this is an actual bug or not. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Are you, per chance, using the G3 BG2 Fixpack? I encountered the same problem but somehow the fixpackers were unable to reproduce it locally. Since I was using a clean BG2 + fixpack v3 install at that time, I figured that it must be related to specific system setups i.e. AMD vs Intel or WindowsXP vs Vista, though this was just a guess. However, without the G3 BG2 fixpack the Friends spell always worked properly for me.



I can assure you that this is not the case, and I should know since I wrote that fix.

HAve you tried removing (create a back up though) the Friends spell from your override and try it again? Maybe the spl file is bugged or something. This is one of the tests I usually do when something goes awry.

It's SPWI107.SPL

I've commented out the code which deals with the Friends spell from the fixpack .tp2 right after I've first noticed the bug so it's not an issue for me anymore, but yeah, nataben1314 should probably just delete the spell file from his override folder first.

I'm almost sure that nataben is not currently using the G3's BG2 Fixpack (because he knows that I have strongly warned players against using that fixpack); however, it's possible that he had once installed that fixpack and some files have remained in his override folder after uninstalling it. In that case, the only way to solve the problem is doing a clean installation of the game plus TOB official patch plus Baldurdash TOB fixpack v1.12 plus other mods plus IA.

Don't delete the spell's file from your override folder. Baldurdash Fixpack also puts it in your override folder and if you delete it, you will return to the game without Baldurdash in which the spell's charisma bonus stacks with itself.

The general advice is not to delete any file from your override folder unless you are completely certain that you have already uninstalled all and every mod which modifies that specific file. For example, if you delete a file from your override which is modified by Improved Anvil you will create bugs in your game.

Edited for typos.

That is true for files which are not already contained within the game's BIFs (i.e. any new files which are introduced by mods).

OTOH, deleting the Friends spell from the override folder would merely restore the spell to its default, unmodded version since it already existed in the original game. Anyhow, you could also just overwrite it with the Baldurdash version.

Maybe the original poster prefers it when it stacks charisma

Yes, if nataben is careful not to abuse the spell's bug in the vanilla game (which stacks charisma bonus), he can delete it from the override. However, my general advice against deleting files from override folder still stands. If, for example, it was not the "Friends" spell, but was "Iron Skins" spell, then deleting it from the override folder would create serious bugs, because IA patches that spell. If you delete a spell which is patched by IA, you will cause IA's scripts to break. It's true that the spell is in the game's BIFs, but by deleting it from the override folder you will undo my changes and modifications to the spell and will return to the status the spell had in the vanilla game. At least ask me about any particular file before touching it.

Very true. You are completely correct.

So did the anomaly disappear when you've commented it out from the G3 Fixpack code?


FYI, this is absolutely impossible, especially the assumption about processors. As for the operating system, I doubt the control logic of BG2 uses some "special" system calls (apart from the usual stuff, of course; such as accessing files etc.).

Yes. BTW, this also applies to fixpack v4 since the Friends code block is the same there.



Well, I just thought that there might be an issue that causes a WeiDU to compile the same code differently on an AMD CPU or something. As I've said, it's just a wild guess, since two other people were strangely unable to reproduce the bug on their systems yet, at the same time, 3 other (different) people including myself were repeatedly able to do so. I really have no idea how that could happen.

WeiDU doesn't actually compile the TP2. It interprets it (it's not the same). Anyway just wanted to assure you that CPUs can't influence these things.

I did have an old installation of the fixpack on my game that I uninstalled, so I guess that's probably the issue. So exactly what file ought I delete from the overrides folder? Abusing stacking friends wont be a problem with me because one casting gets me high enough charisma for my purposes. Plus I hate cheese!

I just noticed that Holy Smite turns summons hostile.

Does it turn all summons hostile or just evil summons? If its the latter than its not a bug, just a side affect of holy smite.

Nope, I mean summons that shouldn't be affected, like Devas and Planetars.

It's SPWI107.spl; but I have an alternate suggestion: If you want I can attach the file from my own override folder to a PM and send it to you so that you can paste it into your override folder and overwrite the corrupted file with a healthy one.

EDIT: I actually just sent the PM.

As for Holy Smite, it seems that we have a dilemma to choose the less worse situation. In the vanilla game, Holy Smite was not flagged as "Hostile Spell" and didn't have the problem you mentioned, but it had other problems. You could cast it without breaking your invisibility and you could cast it on "blue circled" evil creatures without turning them hostile. thetruth suggested to fix it and I changed it to a "Hostile Spell" (see the readme). As a result, those previous problems are solved, but now that I read your report, I see that we have this new problem. My vote is still to keep the change and have it as a hostile spell (as the previous bugs seem more serious to me than the one your reported). Any ideas?

I think it would be better to revert it to non hostile: not breaking invisibility and not making evil neutral creatures hostile aren't really exploitable holes, since tough monsters have invisible detection by script and with MR and all even unleashing all the party's Holy Smites before a battle wouldn't make any difference, but turning your summons hostile in the middle of a fight (or being barred from using one of the few good party-friendly AoE spells) can really turn the tide of a confrontation, especially with things like Mordenkainen's Swords, Skeleton Warriors, Devas and Planetars.

EDIT: maybe it would be possible to tweak summons so they don't turn hostile even when damaged?

The non-evil summons don't actually take any damage. I guess I found the best way to fix the problem. Don't worry. I will ask one of the testers to test it and will let you know the result.

I'm late to the talks over PI but I'm wondering at why these solutions wouldn't be better than replacing the spell.

How about people make the Pimage spell last 1/2 or 1/4 as long, while increasing the time it requires to cast, as well as making it so that it can't be re-cast until a certan time trigger?

The Perfect Camouflage spell is stated to be a benefit because it reduces the time it takes to cast by 1 round/spell. Instead of removing PI, why shouldn't PI just be made to be harder to cast given its benefits? A lot of the scroll usage and what not takes time. A lot of the summoning more than 5 stuff takes time as well. Which leaves only the improved alacrity and time stop, but in point of fact time stop doesn't stop the projected image's duration from running out. Haste might have an additional effect there, not sure. If the PI spell can be coded to end somewhere around the first time stop or second time stop duration, it can nerf both the endless summoning, the endless spells, and the endless scroll usage. The player would have to choose within a limited time, what he wants to do, since he has to have cast multiple level 7 spells to do all three. The less powerful Simulacrum has a wait sequence that could be a good base template, although the 7th level one should have a shorter cooldown time.

In short, I'm looking at a PI that only lasts around 4-8 rounds, ever. With a cooldown time between 4-8 rounds before it could be cast again. When the PI casts Time Stop, a script could be activated to destroy the P image within 5-8 rounds. Perhaps shorter with improved alacrity. From uscript's rar file, I know that you can change the mislead/simu/PI spells to be able to use custom scripts other than the creature/default ones. What I don't know is whether the scripting language can adequately code for a "kill myself as image" scenario when a specific spell has been cast by the image.

There's also no reason why you can't shift it to a 8th or 9th level spell, given the rather lack of useful 9th level spells from the vanilla game. Other than Black Blade for F/Ms and time stop, most people only use the new ToB spells, comet, dragon, improved alacrity. I really would like to see some changes to the vanilla level 9 spells, such as Energy Drain, Meteor Swarm, and Absolute Immunity just because I never use them.

As another alternative, you can script enemy mages to cast PI, requiring the party members to dispel it or true sight it. This goes along with enemy mages casting true sight and remove magic. One is easy to defend against, in time, but both will destroy the PI.

Sendai's casting of PI along with immunity diviation, mislead, improved invisibility, essentially makes it into a magic duel. At higher levels, this can make PI a tactically challenging tool for both sides; it just would require increasing the difficulty and more scripts.

I'm not going to enter an argument about PI but there are a couple of things you might like to know:



In 4.3 PI is replaced with a different (anti-golem) spell, not Perfect Camouflage as had originally been planned.



Absolute Immunity is already more useful and powerful in IA, not because the spell has been tweaked, but because weapons of +6 enchantment have been altered to only strike as a +5 weapon (while retaining the THAC0 and damage bonus of +6). Hence Absolute Immunity does actually grant immunity to all weapons.

EDIT: Actually, thinking about it, ignore what I said about Absolute Immunity being more 'useful' since the change in +6 weapons actually only helps enemies...

Sikret, is it possible to change the summoned Efreet and Djinn so they can make more than one magic missile per casting? It just seems a bit silly that considering they can cast more powerful spells (lightning bolt/fireball etc.) the number of missiles is not higher (4 or 5 maybe).

They are not scripted to cast magic missile at all. I just removed magic missile from the list of their memorized spells. Thanks for the report.

This isn't really important, but still: I always felt, that it was strange that the Portal Key in the starting dungeon couldn't be moved. Can this be fixed eventually?

Regards

The immunity to charm from Valygar's initial armour isn't display with an icon on the side-picture.

Regards

I recently started my first IA (v4.2) game, and one weird bug showed up again. I cast a mage spell on purpose to get the Cowled wizards to attack me (didn't want to pay 5000gp, might get some scrolls from the corpses, and wanted to see if they were harder with IA). It was just the second group that had attacked me and they went down, but someone was still invisible, casting spells at me without becoming even partially visible, and I was unable to dispel the invisibility or to damage him with area effect spells.

I reloaded a dozen times or so, and managed to get the same bug again, but can't duplicate it reliably. I think it happened when a Cowled cast Simulacrum (triggered?) and died instantly. Anyway, Inquisitor's True Sight or Dispel Magic wouldn't work, though Dispel reported hitting a 'Cowled Enforcer', and there was a swirling piece of something (part of the dead mage's corpse?) floating in the air at the spot.

It shouldn't be caused by any mods. It's been quite a while since I've played an un-modded BG2 game, but I recall the same thing happening back then in Brynnlaw, when I killed the Cowled to get the wardstone.

P.S. Nice job with the mod! I'm not very far yet, so haven't fought any of the BIG enemies, but there's been several surprises with the easier places already. Suna Seni ambush was nasty, but I had already been to Trademeet and had some exp. Then at Seven Vales, after fighting with the party upstairs, I had to raise three members in a temple (in a desperate move, I released my familiar to help finish the remaining mage after the melee fighters went down, and both the enemy mage and my F/M were very low on spells).

Welcome to BWL, jebu!



Yes, it's not caused by any mod. Enemy mages actually never cast the Simulacrum spell in the game. The way it works in the vanilla game is that they just pretend to cast the spell and then a new creature, which is supposedly their clone, appears in the area. During the game, it looks as if they have cast the simulacrum spell. There are very few instances of this incident in the entire (vanilla) game all of which have been removed from the scripts and fixed by IA v4.3. (The main simulacrum spell is also replaced with a new spell; so you will never see the spell being cast in the entire game, neither by enemies nor by your own characters).



Thank you. Just keep practicing with 4.2 and start a new game once v4.3 is released.

Cheers

Any new info on Holy Smite? I realized the change when I turned Sime hostile after arriving to Brynnlaw, smited the vampires ambushing my party and Sime was close enough to be hit also. I've always liked Holy Smite in the earlier parts of BG2, when mages don't yet have even Chain Lightning, and can only dream about Horrid Wilting. Fighting near neutral NPC's isn't common, but I'm more concerned about turning my summons hostile.

Is it possible to have Holy Smite grant temporary magic resistance to any non-evil targets in its area of effect? It can already check the target's alignment, and somehow makes non-evil targets automatically make a saving throw and receive no damage. Can this be changed a bit, so when a target is not evil, the effects would be "set magic resistance to 100% >> hit target with spell normally >> remove the temporary magic resistance buff"?

Sahuagin city has some duplicate items:
- Treasury key: can be pickpocketed from the mad king, then looted from the king's corpse when allying with the rebel prince. After killing the king, the prince will give you the key again (dialog says he gives it from the king's corpse but I already looted the corpse during the fight).
- Magical rope: can be pickpocketed from king, you also get it from treasury, and when allying with prince he gives you the rope (again, dialog says from the king's corpse).
- [Edited] Rebel orb: seems I ended up with 3x Rebel orb also, guess they're all from pickpocketing the priestess who gave it, then the prince's companion, and probably one of them again after coming back to kill king. Not that the orbs have any effect after you first talked to prince, but the game just seems to reload them back to their inventory too many times.

The rope in treasury is redundant and could be removed totally. The king's rope should be made non-stealable. No matter which one you ally with, you get the rope from the king or his corpse. I don't mind the key being stealable, but you end up with the key anyway, so it might as well be non-stealable if it's easier to prevent one duplicate that way. Preventing the duplicate rope + key (looting the king's corpse + getting them from the prince) might require that the prince's dialog be modified. The prince can say you're free to loot the items from the dead king, instead of him giving the items.

The Rod of Lordly Might (from treasury) has some problems:
- When it's changed into a weapon, the effect that changes it back to rod has just one charge. If you change it into a weapon another time and try to change it back to rod, you get 'Item drained' message. I don't see why it couldn't have unlimited charges, so it could be changed back and forth to different types of weapons.
- You can only see the special abilities of each weapon when it's a rod. When it's changed into a weapon, the weapon's description doesn't have its special ability listed.
- The spear is named 'Spear', it should be 'Spear +3' judging from the other weapons.
- The rod's description says 'Flaming long sword +1' but the sword is actually named 'Long sword +1', and true enough, its special ability has nothing to do with flames.
- Not a bug, but I can't recall ever actually using the rod in any of the weapon forms. The best enchant is the +3 spear, but you get Impaler (+3 enchant, +10 piercing damage) from the king's corpse. How about lowering the saving throw bonuses the rod's special abilities give to the target? Raising all the weapons to +3?

A couple more things now that I got started:
- Prismatic spray's description says "Any creature that is caught within the area of effect will be touched by one or two of the rays." However, the spell is party-friendly, which is not mentioned.
- If you have both the fake illithium alloy and the real illithium, there should be a dialogue option to give the fake one to Sir Sarles. Currently he just takes the real one. I bet Cromwell is not fooled by the fake one, though it might be interesting to see how the Mace of Disruption upgrade turns out to be in that case. ("Weird, I smashed Kangaxx with it and the head just fell off. No, not Kangaxx's head, the mace's...")

Yes, it's fixed.

This is an odd one related Yoshimo. Apparently his sword grants a "shield bonus" of 1, that doesn't stack with the shield bonus provided by a buckler.

I found it odd that when I gave Yoshi a buckler, his AC didn't change. I noted that there was an AC improvement for other characters with that same buckler. When I unequipped Yoshi's sword and then equipped the buckler, their was indeed a bonus to his AC. Perhaps this one has been around for a while, but I just noticed it, and thought it was worth passing along.

Does Yoshi have proficiency in One-handed weapon style? It grants bonus to AC.

Characters who specialize in this style gain a special AC bonus of +1 while fighting with a one-handed weapon and no shield or off-hand weapon. By spending an additional proficiency slot, the character can increase his AC bonus to +2, but that's the maximum benefit for style specialization. This style increases the chance of a critical hit.

According to vanilla bg2, Yoshimo does have a proficiency point with single weapon style. Though, i'm a little confused why you simply didn't check his character record sheet yourself =P

Well golly. I sure feel like a n00b all of the sudden. No need to spend countless hours tracking this one down Sikret.

Haha i'm just joking. No worries, I think being able to survive IA excuses you from the noob group!

Posts related to Yoshimo are moved from IA v5 bug thread to this topic as it had nothing to do with IA (it wasn't even a vanilla game's bug but where else could I move the posts?).

I got this strange bug: When fighting the "shadow Lover" at the CC sewers Keldorn threw a dispel magic, and in the pool next to the four pipes a blue-circled man named "Glowing Pool" became visible...

It's the invisible creature which has dialogue with you when you approach the pipes for the first time. His invisibility should not be dispellable, but it is. It's vanilla game minor issue. I can fix it.

Since the bug was not related to IA (but rather a vanilla game issue), I moved the posts to the appropriate thread.

The Guardians in Firkraag's lair keep casting their spells (Fireball, Mirror Image, Stoneskin) even when unconscious.

Yes, this is a general issue in the vanilla game which re-appears every now and then. I have fixed it for many creatures. Will fix it for those guardians too. Thanks.

I have an issue with the Sir Sarles quest. It goes as follows.

1. I go to the Temple of Helm to receive the quest.
2. I go to Jystev Estate to talk to Sir Sarles and he says I need to get the Illithium Ore.
3. I go to Jerlia to buy the Ore.
4a. I talk to Unger who points me to Neb. I kill Neb.
4b. I talk to Jerlia to get the Alloy as well.
5. I go to Sir Sarles and I decide to give him the Alloy. He becomes mad and leaves
6. I go to the Temple of Helm and noone responds. Apparently the quest remains unfinished.

Normally I should be receiving the quest reward with the note that the Alloy looks better than normal Illithium and that the Temple will fashion their own statue from it. Also, normally there are 2 priests in the Temple, but this time there was only the questgiver (not sure what the other priests name is).


Could this be related to my installation? Maybe I overlooked an incompatibility. Regardless, I have no reason to believe that any of the mods installed change the Cleric quests other than IA (but that only improves Borinall).... maybe the multiple strongholds puts something odd in my path?

Is it possible to CLUA in the other priest?