Spell-50 mod!

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What do you think about this one? It allows most spells to be more powerful after lvl20, they are normally capped at lvl20, but with this, spell damage, duration, save penalty (if aplicable) will be hugely powerful!

ie:Abi Dalzim will do 50d8 damage when casted by a level 50 mage, and Blur castd by a lvl50 mage will last for 150 rounds and spook casted by a level 50 mage will have a -16 to save? These look powerful but MAY heavily unbalance the game and I am afraid of it!

What do you think? Have you ever used it? I love using magic users so will this make my games easier or harder? (it applies to enemy casters as well. What levels are tough casters like lichs, JonBon, Improved Sendai etc. )

 

PnP spells are all naturally capped (some at tenth, all at twentieth or below, IIRC), so IMHO this mod is powergaming .

 

OK the fact that it allows lowly crappy spells like fireball who is naturally capped at lvl10 (which is said in spell description) to do 50d6 damage is powergaming, but big bad spells like Abi Dalzim does not have a level limit mentioned in the spell description! So they can do more than 20hitdice damage?

I know it is powergaming, but I have no trouble with that. Key point is, will it be fun or frustrating? (When those liches cast something I will be much more terrified now! This must be good methinks. Do you agree?) (BTW:I like it hard! )

 

Well, normally everything is hard-capped at lvl 20, so that Abi-Dalzim's could never do more than 20d8 (!) damage. Sometimes, though, spells are capped at lower levels either through design (e.g. Fireball - max 10d6 damage) or bugs (Armour of Faith is capped at lvl 19, possibly due to the good ol' n-1 bug). But yes, spell-50 horribly unbalances things towards spellcasters on both sides.

 

Actually, anything that specifically says is capped in its description (such as Fireball) is NOT extended to level 50. Only things that do not mention a cap (sich as Horrid Wilting) are extended.

I once played with it, and frankly couldn't see that much of a difference. Mages gain levels slowly anyway, and while you could theoretically reach level 50, let's face it, no one has the patience to accumulate enough experience (15 million) to do that.

Besides, liches and mages in ToB usually have higher levels, and these like to use high-level spells a lot, so it doesn't give you an edge over them, really.

Magpie, none of the spell caps that I know of are hard-coded. They're all in the spell file. Simply, the effect for every level above 20 is exactly identical to the level 20 effect (in the case of Fireball it's level 12, but you get the idea). Change that, and you've removed the cap. This is what the mod does, and it seemed to work when I tried it.

 

I know that too: O.K., I should have said capped by default; happy?

Some spells (pre-Baldurdash) are capped too low, though; I can't remember the exact list, though. And the mod (according to its documentation) does extend the cap for Fireball, Lightning et al; it's only spells that do fixed damage (e.g. Delayed Blast Fireball always does 15d6) that are left untouched.

 

Despite any argument I think this mod should be made. People should try it and see if they like it or not, it's great to have options and new mods with different ideas.

 

This mod is the stuff of legend! I give it two thumbs up!

Unbalanced? HA! Sorcerers in the default game are broken anyway...might as well make it more fun!

 

@ hux

It *is* already made visit www.weidu.org to download it.

 

So I will give it a try! I am sure it will make little difference in SoA but in ToB, casters will be horribly powerful as they should be. (see my point below)

After all, mages tend to develop in power soo slowly after lvl 20s, according to BG2 spell tables it takes too much time and levels to gain more high level spells, to the point of mages virtually stopping improvement after lvl 22 or so. Sorcerers are way too unbalanced, they gain 6 lvl9 spells far too quickly! (But who cares, I use true AD&D spell tables and they rock!) Add the fact that mage HLAs are one time take and forget type, (well I have mage alchemy and scroll scribing from a mod. Come on, if a half-orc 'thief' with '2 int' can do these, so can my '20 int' 'mage'!) , so I think bigger levels give mages too little in normal game. Fighters on the other hand, continues to powerup as they stack more and more very useful HLAs. This mod will surely make those uber levels more worthwhile for mages! What do you think?

 

In Icewind Dale there is no level20 cap. Most spells improve until level30 and it doesn't feel unbalanced.

The level20 spell cap in ToB just shifts the balance in favor of multiclass spellcasters.

I never used any fighter HLA in my game. Most last very short and the time it takes to activate them is better spent getting some hits in. So fighters don't improve more than mages imho.

By the way, in the old Pools of Darkness there also wasn't a spell cap, so you could throw level 40 fireballs at your enemies.

Unbalancing in BG2 is that you gain levels too fast later, the XP difference between level 39 and 40 should be higher than between level 11 and 12.

They should have changed the XP table.
AD&D just wasn't designed with crpgs or level40 characters in mind.

 

^I do not agree that fighter HLAs are useless, why, they don't take much time (any at all) to activate and they are pretty powerful! One can stack hardiness and become immune to weapons, or 10 attacks/round with GWW is just overkill IMHO. A fighter with 10 hardiness and 10 GWW is both tough and destructive! Mages do not get this benefit from highest levels. They gain lvl10 spells and a few bonus spells but that is all, they are done for.

 

My bad. My memory's playing tricks on me lately.