A Land Far Away

Before I take a level of Wizard with my Fighter I wanted to ask how ALFA's spell system works

If I cast mage armor, or any long term effect, without wearing armor or a shield, and then equip armor or a shield, does the spell then fail?

Nope.

Only take a chance of failure for casting spells while armor is equipped.

Casting, then readying armor has no penalty.

Just remember to rp the putting on taking off of a full suit of armor to avoid the wrath of the DMs.

Aelred wrote:Just remember to rp the putting on taking off of a full suit of armor to avoid the wrath of the DMs.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/arm ... OutOfArmor

On a related note, I mentioned this to Aadius... currently Mage Armor and standard actual armor seem to stack, at least with breastplate it does. While it makes very nice AC possible for cheap temporarily with a ftr/mage type (which my current toon is), it's not correct and should be fixed if we're going to be faithful to pnp rules on this one.

Discussing this with AL, it may not be a difficult fix if you simply disable the spell when armor is equipped, BUT, what if someone wanted to cast mage armor, then don say a stud leather armor as a fallback just in case they found the spell wearing off at a bad time? Stud leather is +3 ac, mage armor +4; if it's completely disabled then this is not a satisfactory fix as he should be getting +4 while wearing the stud leather and having mage armor on (as opposed to +7 which he gets currently, or +3 if the spell is completely disabled while wearing armor). Also, would not robes and tunics, etc count as armor as far as scripting is concerned (ie onequiparmor)? Is there a function that specifies onequiparmor to check to check the amount of ac granted by the armor (+4 or greater, might get a bit complicated with enchanted armor, say a stud leather +1 as base armor bonus and enhancement armor bonus are handled separately) before disabling the spell? If that's an option, then a similar but separate fix would need to be implemented for Imp Mage armor, checking vs +6 ac rather than +4.

Also, just confirmed that Shield spell still stacks with actual shield being equipped; again not correct per pnp...

Good finds Ithildur, thanks.

Just curious if there are solutions for the above being looked into.

I'd recommend when these are fixed that players be notified, so that arcane casters aren't shocked that these bread and butter tactics that work in vanilla NWN2 (casting Mage armor on a fighter in full plate etc) won't work with ALFA.

A suggestion that I've seen work in the past is..

Rather than have +4 armour given by mage armour, why not divide it up so that it gives +1 armour, +1 shield, +1 dodge and +1 natural? By doing this, we basically ensure that when you have other items that provide the above bonuses, they do not stack and eventually make mage armour useless for a person with enough magical bling.

Example, a fighter in full plate. Lets say he has bracers of armour and a +1 natural amulet. From that, the system deduces that he has these bonuses already and pulls down +2 from Mage armour. He still gets some benefit, but the benefit is effectively halved for well geared individuals.

Shield stacking isn't so much of a problem because it's a far shorter duration spell...it's turn based and that makes it a per-fight spell. It won't last much longer than a few encounters at best.

For improved mage armour, we could just have the bonuses spread out something like +1 shield, +1 armour, +2 dodge and +2 natural, so there will be some improvement over mage armour if you stack it, but not that great.

While sticking to PnP on some things is great, there are systems in a PW that utterly suck for PnP rules. There will be times we need to employ an interpretation and house rules because PnP is too inflexible.. I believe this would be one of those times.

thoughts?

Coaan wrote:Rather than have +4 armour given by mage armour, why not divide it up so that it gives +1 armour, +1 shield, +1 dodge and +1 natural?

I vote no Canon FTW.

I'd also say definitely no. Besides that'd be going backwards to the hack job mage armor implemented by bioware in vanilla NWN1.

I'm not against making the spell pnp'like, But I'm also not against other solutions if they are easier to code in.

Brought back in vogue by the Bladesinger, looks like it's time to bump this. Far as unbalancing "features" of NWN2 go, this is quite high in there indeed.

Please fix (improved) mage armor.

Also worth a look is Mirror Image:
http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Mirror_Image
See "gameplay notes" for how it actually gives +2 to +7 AC for the caster. The script should be fixed to somewhere even near what the spell says it does. I.e. a concealment change that decreases as images are popped.

Y'know, the actual Players Handbook (not the d20 or other online resources), doesn't prevent Mage Armor from working with armor. Why not leave it alone? It's not like a DM can't find a way to kill a PC if their armor class is a little higher.

-Bill