Spell Visual Effects

[Keryn]

Hello folks, every time I enter a session this happens and I decided to touch base with the community regarding it.

I've played in some PWs where most of the spells were stripped of visual effects, and this not only helped the my machine when some PCs start to buff or cast at the same time in a battle but also somehow seemed to help immersion.

When I see a mage walking around like a radioactive meteor something doesn't feel right.

Any thoughts regarding this? I think we could get rid of a bunch of effects that don't seem that useful or needed and only cause lag and our machines to have a hard time with graphics overload.

[Mick]

I thought we already had a lot of these disabled.

[Keryn]

If we have I must say that when the folks start to buff up... it still looks like the 4th of July...

[kid]

stuff that can be seen should be seen.
dont think it says anywhere in spell desc that Protection from Evil
looks the way it looks ect.
So we can check and match to PnP as far as im concerened.

[Swift]

In some cases, you don't want to lose the effects as they vital to the spell eg circle of invisibility or any other group protection spell which shows it's range.

Another important factor to look at is that many people likely use those visuals to know when a protective spell has dropped off. A very obvious example would be stone/barkskin. When you are in the middle of combat with your eyes on the action, it's alot easier to notice a specific spell effect is missing than it is to hover over the icons next to your portrait to see what has dropped off.

Taking away too many of those visual clues will lead to confusion for spellcasters as they begin to wonder whether their spells actually cast or not, which is especially important when buffing up before a big fight.

[Rotku]

I always liked mages shining and glowing. Made them look magical.

[Ithildur]

Most nwn1 RP servers I've played on eventually went the way of getting rid of most visuals, both to match pnp spell descriptions and because of performance improvement (as well as aesthetics).

I thought I read somewhere that ALFA specificly got rid of barkskin and stoneskin visuals, with the explanation of 'spell description states skin becomes as hard as bark, not actually becomes bark or looks like bark, etc.' or some such?

[Rotku]

I seem to recall in NWN1 we had a little tool we could toggle to remove the spell vFXs from our PCs.

[Swift]

I seem to recall in NWN1 we had a little tool we could toggle to remove the spell vFXs from our PCs.

I could go for this.

I would not want to personally lose the visual feedback that most spell effects provide. It also takes away a little satisfaction. Physical fighters get good feedback, be it the animations that occur when they strike with a sword, arrows stuck in the shields/bodies of enemies or the shadowed appearance of stealth, along with non-combat things like sword sheaths, quivers and the like. All of it is visual feedback to show that what they are attempting is happening. Spellcasters are...well...all about the spells. Men and women who stand there and make something from nothing, so that visual feedback of "Im a god damned wizard" is important IMO.

I thought I read somewhere that ALFA specificly got rid of barkskin and stoneskin visuals, with the explanation of 'spell description states skin becomes as hard as bark, not actually becomes bark or looks like bark, etc.' or some such?

Which I would still find silly, as the appearance of the stone/bark over the PC is simply the easiest way of seeing if the buff is still up or not. Having to go over each individual buff icon to find "Damage Reduction" is slow, tedious and simply not possible in a combat situation. Most similar effects are just there to give a visual representation of the spell being in effect. Most non-combat magic is very subtle, so it needs some kind of feedback to say "Hi, im still here".

[Zelknolf]

Well, this is why you should trust the release notes; only a couple of us are actually paying attention to everything that's going on in there.

There is indeed a commit on the repository of the removal of VFXes from Stoneskin and Barkskin; both were rolled back a week later and were never released.


And the tool from NWN1 allowed you to remove all dismissable spells. It didn't just yank the VFXes; it yanked the spells. Which would be fine; they're supposed to be dismissable. Just gotta bake some delicious cookies and lure someone into writing it; doubt that anyone would jump up and say "No, you may not have that perfectly-reasonable tool!"

[Ronan]

We did keep the barkskin removal, since the VFX isn't canon and DMs can see it at a glance by checking the PC's AC (which they should be doing anyhow). If barkskin is dispelled or wears off you'll see the normal bubble-bursting-VFX-thing like with protection from alignment, mage armor, etc.

[Zelknolf]

And may that be a lesson to me to check my dang notes more carefully. Yeah, we brought barkskin down to floating icons in 1.81. >.>

[ElCadaver]

I think casters should have the name of the spells active stacked above their heads in coloured text which disappears when the spell has gone. Lets get back to some good ole text based RP. Plus.. text will not induce lag.

kthanksbai

[Ithildur]

There's also stuff like this in pnp:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/arcaneSight.htm

Being able to tell that a pc/npc has barkskin, stoneskin, etc is not supposed to be automatic in pnp. I played with a DM who would hand out 'cheater's necklaces' (an actual tacky looking necklace that the player would have to wear for the rest of the day) to players that would metagame such knowledge, with the player getting a -1 to every roll for the rest of that session. For what it's worth, I tend to agree with this.

[Keryn]

The thing is that it becomes a meta issue since everyone that looks at a mage immediately knows what buffs he has and if he has them up or not... Plus having the screen looking like the 4th of July to me is not imersive much the opposite but thats me.

Mages while casting still do the movements with hands and all and still make the sounds, I do not think it would be silly to be get rid these, I think it is silly that we have them, I understand that NwN2 OC would want these for the fluff and to impress some gamers, but here in ALFA is just causes troubles IMO...