ACR Release Notes v1.87
From ALFA
As a note to builders: there is a new release of NWScriptCompiler. Builders should pick it up for use in their building.
As a note to players of Warlocks: there are many changes to invocations in this update. However, this list should be taken as mostly-complete, and Warlock players can expect their class' mechanics to be much more stable going forward. However, the class is not in a high-enough-quality state to allow new characters to take the class, as some portions of its core mechanics remain fundamentally flawed and nearly unfixable.
General Fixes
- The ACR will no longer allow characters with trailing spaces on their names to be created.
- The templates provided with automated crafting now distinguish between arcane and divine
- Crafting prototypes should no longer appear in duplicate in the craft store.
- The DMFI renaming tool allows 48 character strings, instead of 32
- Svirfneblin should have less mysterious trouble swimming
- Another instance of "Rick" claiming to be a kind of clicking has been removed from the load screens.
- The "phat lewt" random loot system will now break the weak and fragile items, instead of the heavy and sturdy ones, when bashed.
- Kuo Toa are closer to their canonical size (about 5' tall)
- Putting containers in pChests should no longer result in duplicate items.
- pChests are now less vulnerable to "sticking" open.
- Automatically-closing doors now look for PCs on both sides of the area transition to see if they're ready to close.
- NPCs are less prone to dropping excessively-valuable items when slain.
- A missing music file imported from Icewind Dale is corrected.
- Stores which are opened with the default NWN2 scripts no longer exibit any of the appraise-related misbehaviors.
- Killing-related ACR quests will more frequently credit quest advancement if a party member kills the quest creature.
- Adjusting the appearance of items no longer logs the adjustments as acquiring the item.
- Changing appearance to a default player appearance no longer sets movement rate to "Slow." However, this does not prevent movement from being broken when changing appearance away from a standard character model-- only between them.
- If a player logs in with a character with non-default movement, the ACR will automatically correct the movement. However, nwn2server will not recalculate the actual walk speed until the login following. A message explaining as much will be provided when this happens.
- Weapons will no longer have -5 damage permanently stick on them after disabling subdual damage mode, and previously-bugged weapons can be corrected by equipping them and toggling subdual mode on and off.
- Subdual Damage turns itself off when a player dies, and bugs of a rapid infinite loop of nonlethal damage fists being created and stripped no longer happen.
- The subdual damage item property no longer changes the price of the item it's applied to.
- Precise Strike and Insightful Strike now help subdual damage.
- Favored enemy bonuses now apply in subdual combat
- Bardic Inspirations are now treated more-consistently as songs, and now use a daily use of bardic music to activate and are mutually-exclusive with stealth.
- Young dragons now occupy space and provide a selection GUI more appropriate to their actual size.
- The ACR Spawn system now works with instanced areas.
- Instanced areas assume that they need to clean themselves up after a minute of inactivity if no cooldown is specified.
- Only player characters will count as party members when calculating XP.
- Reports of the current date won't count the 10th day of a tenday as "day 0" it will correctly report as "day 10."
- Quarantined characters no longer save to the central vault.
- Swim actually applies double ACP, as it claims.
- Swim triggers are better at picking the creature leaving on that event, and are thus less likely to prompt unexplained swim checks on people elsewhere on the server.
- Many skill descriptions that had invalid text in them are corrected.
- Darkvision may now be used successfully as an item property.
- Combat Expertise and Improved Combat Expertise have taken many changes:
- The armor class bonus provided by (Improved) Combat Expertise may no longer exceed the user's base attack bonus.
- (Improved) Combat Expertise now provides Dodge AC, instead of Untyped, and thus offers no benefit when flat-footed.
- (Improved) Combat Expertise is now disabled when casting spells or using spell-casting items.
- (Improved) Combat Expertise now has a server-side-enforced cooldown of 6 seconds.
- These changes should cover our standing enforcement issues with Combat Expertise and Improved Combat Expertise. Old orders about how the feats may be used and the penalties for their misuse are thus rendered null.
- VFX provided by PC tools are now purged during casting of Wildshape, and associated crashes should no longer occur.
- Forge Ring, Craft Rod, Craft Staff, and Craft Construct have their advertized caster level prerequisites.
- There is no experience point reward for fighting a creature whose CR is less than your character level by more than 8
- Wizards automatically learn the new cantrips as part of converting to the new ACR.
- Sorcerers now gain cantrips on every odd-numbered level to a maximum of 9, instead of 6.
- The additional availability of orisons may cause higher-level Favored Souls to acquire a couple orisons unexpectedly (there were previously 7 available, but the class was configured to allow up to 9).
Class Changes
- Rangers now receive Endure Elements as a level 1 spell.
- Favored Souls no longer receive Haste 3/day at level 17.
- Though Song of Regeneration and Curse Song were banned long ago, they are removed from feat lists this release.
- Clerics no longer get access to Control Undead
- Cleric Domain spells are moved to align with the SRD / Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting / Player's Guide to Faerun where possible. Many of these spells are redundant compared to the typical spell list-- due to NWN2's generally-lax implementation of the domain spell slot, these spells are thus not very visible to clerics who use them.
Spell Changes
- Word of Faith is split into Holy Word, Blasphemy, Dictum, and Word of Chaos, selecting the appropriate spell based on the caster's alignment when casting. Unlike Word of Faith, these spells are not party friendly, and they may not effect any target with more hit dice than the caster's caster level. Effects applied to targets now must satisfy a caster level requirement (HD <= CL - 10 for death; HD <= CL - 5 for severe effect; HD <= CL -1 for minor effect; HD <= CL for trivial effect). Duration for all effects is random, uneffected by caster level, and shorter for the more-minor effects, on the same pattern as the SRD implementation.
- See Invisibility now lasts 10 minutes / caster level, instead of 1.
- Devour Magic is now touch range and single-target only (previously targeted identical to Dispel Magic).
- Beshadowed Blast now only applies blindness penalties once, and can be appropriately resisted by abilities like Blindsight (previously stacked direct penalties with the blindness effect, making it impossible to resist and doubling penalties on those who weren't protected).
- The damage over time on Brimstone Blast is now dispellable, and does not stack with itself.
- The damage over time on Vitriolic Blast is now dispellable, and does not stack with itself.
- Dark One's Own Luck now only provides a bonus to the lowest saving throw of the caster (though it may be cast multiple times to cycle through the different saving throws), and its bonus is capped by caster level (previously +cha to all saves, no CL cap).
- The Dead Walk now lasts 1 minute/ level (previously hour/level)
- Chilling Tentacles no longer applies paralysis. It applies a combination of physical and cold damage, and attempts to grapple targets in the area of effect (previously all magical damage).
- Entropic Warding's benefits against tracking no longer manifests as a bonus to stealth (previously +4 hide/ms).
- Flee the Scene is now a short-range dimension door, operating by line of sight (previously 1 hour of haste).
- Hellrime Blast now lasts 10 minutes, and does not stack with itself (previously 3 rounds).
- Retributive Invisibility only stuns for 1 round on success (previously 3).
- Tenacious Plague now creates actual swarms, which occupy space, do not move, and do not stack on top of themselves. Characters caught in a plague's swarm must make a fort save to resist nausea each round they remain; tenacious plague is not party friendly, but the swarms' placement will initially be based on the location of enemy targets (previously, it was a terribly-ineffective damage over time effect).
- Utterdark Blast's negative levels now last one hour (not permanent).
- Wall of Perilous Flame now does 2d6 + caster level damage when entered (previously 2d6 + charisma modifier) and 2d4 damage per round (previously 2d6 + charisma modifier)
New Spells
- Waterbreathing (clr 3, drd 3, sorc/wiz 3, water 3)
- Alarm (RP only)
- Analyze Portal (RP only)
- Animal Messenger (RP only)
- Arcane Mark (RP only)
- Arcane Sight (RP only)
- Augury (RP only)
- Calm Animals (RP only)
- Commune with Nature (RP only)
- Contact Other Plane (RP only)
- Control Weather (RP only)
- Create Food and Water (RP only)
- Create Water (RP only)
- Dancing Lights (RP only)
- Delay Poison (RP only)
- Detect Animals or Plants (RP only)
- Detect Poison (RP only)
- Detect Scrying (RP only)
- Detect Snares and Pits (RP only)
- Detect Thoughts (RP only)
- Dimensional Anchor (RP only)
- Discern Location (RP only)
- Disguise Self (RP only)
- Divination (RP only)
- Feather Fall (RP only)
- Force Cage (RP only)
- Gate Seal (RP only)
- Geas (RP only)
- Ghost Sound (RP only)
- Glibness (RP only)
- Greater Scrying (RP only)
- Greater Teleport (RP only)
- Hide from Animals (RP only)
- Jump (RP only)
- Know Direction (RP only)
- Lesser Geas (RP only)
- Locate Creature (RP only)
- Locate Object (RP only)
- Longstrider (RP only)
- Lullaby (RP only)
- Mage Hand (RP only)
- Magic Aura (RP only)
- Mending (RP only)
- Message (RP only)
- Miracle (RP only)
- Mislead (RP only)
- Mount (RP only)
- Nondetection (RP only)
- Open/Close (RP only)
- Pass without Trace (RP only)
- Permanency (RP only)
- Prestidigitation (RP only)
- Purify Food and Drink (RP only)
- Reincarnate (RP only)
- Scrying (RP only)
- Sending (RP only)
- Speak with Animals (RP only)
- Speak with Dead (RP only)
- Speak with Plants (RP only)
- Stone Tell (RP only)
- Summon Instrument (RP only)
- Telepathic Bond (RP only)
- Teleport (RP only)
- Tongues (RP only)
- Tree Shape (RP only)
- Tree Stride (RP only)
- Undetectable Alignment (RP only)
- Wall of Force (RP only)
- Wind Wall (RP only)
- Wish (RP only)
- Word of Recall (RP only)
- Zone of Truth (RP only)
New Controls and Settings
- The ACR now includes an ACR_HEALTHMONITOR_GAMEOBJECTUPDATE_BACKOFF variable, which can be used to slow game object updates to slower than 600ms, should a server need to improve performance beyond the limits normally provided by the health monitor.
New Building Tools and Options
- Spike Growth may now be tooled as a spell cast property
- Shield may now be tooled as a spell cast property
- There is an available include, acr_notifications_i, which allows builders to send a short message to a GUI off to the right of the screen, combined with a standard icon that reflects our typical depictions of warning / error / FYI / pointer. When clicked, these provide a more-verbose message box of variety that may be selected by the builder.
- The recommended use for this is in things which are important enough to prompt player acknowledgement, but should not steal focus to do so. For example, spotting tracks as part of a static quest would be an appropriate use of this, as the server window might be too cluttered to notice the message, and if a fight is afoot, a modal form would be hazardous to the players receiving it.
- There is now an ACR_AddObjectToSpawnPoint function available to explicity add something which was not created by the spawn system to a spawn point, so that it behaves as though it were spawned by the point (including despawning).
- Vampire is now available as a subrace, to be used to assist in targeting vampire-specific abilities and effects.
New Features
- DMs may now throw their voices through the typical chat interface. To do so:
- First, select the creature who you wish to throw your voice to.
- Enter # followed by a single-digit number 0-9 (for example, #1, #5). The NPC is then "anchored," and you will receive all the conversation it hears if you are out of range to hear it.
- You may throw your voice to the NPC by using # followed by the number as a preface to send chat to the NPC (for example, #1 Hello world!)
- PCs may not be anchored in this way.
- Wizards may throw their voice to their familiars in the same way.
- DM teams may specify other NPCs as valid to receive voice throwing from a player by specifying the local variable HENCHMAN_LEADER and giving it the value of the player's player ID (and this may be updated dynamically, if for example a player is helping characterize well-known NPCs during an event).
- Players using a new GSID will be prompted to link their GSIDs to their forum accounts when logging in. The interface is simple, requiring just a click and a log in, and needs to be done only once per GSID.
- Cross-server communication now allows messages to be sent to the IRC bot on behalf of a player in game.
New Models
- Models for wings which are compatible with the various non-human-female character models are now available via the toolset.
- Duodrones are now available as a creature appearance.
- Hydras are now available as a creature appearance
New Loading Screens
- Moradin now has a loading screen, which is visible to players of characters with either 10 intelligence or at least 1 rank in knowledge (religion).
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