Dasaria II - A NWN2 Roleplay and Story-driven Persistent World

Can you have entire areas void of magic being casted/used? Say, like a temple...if a caster tried to cast it would hit a trigger to show a msg that its not an option.

It was doable in NWN1, at least in one of the expansions, that is. Not only did it have it so spells did nothing, but magical effects on items and persons could also be suppressed. A completely dead magic zone. I'm sure it could be done in NWN2.

Have you done the Shai quest?

Yes, you could do pretty much anything you can think of along those lines, for example having an evil temple where no good magic works. On Dasaria, for instance, if you're not Lawful Good, anything you attempt to cast out of the Paladin spellbook will fail, no matter where you are.

This is not a place in the chain of things where I'd want to add a lot of code though, it'd be best to segregate such things out so they'd not running every time someone on the server casts a spell.

I'm actually working (lower priority than Lendose though) on an area where specific types of elemental magic and resistance don't work and a 'wild magic' area. In D&D this sort of thing is usually associated with certain planes though.

the planes are very exciting and amazing..especially the wild plane..(with lower priority than lendose)...but i never see any other plane rather than the material planes...is there any chance we will be having these planes in Dasaria?..and hope lendose opened soon

one more thing..about the d% in the wild planes..is it a dice from 1-100 where the spells effect are based on the roll?

No I don't think we'll see a lot of other Planes on Dasaria, though there are a few places with this plane touches others already, focus is on completing and rounding out the loop we're forming on the campaign map. But you never know.

For SRD its' d100 (See the link I posted on the Planes, it has a chart). If I proceed with this wild magic area it'll be something similar to that, at least in spirit. The only other systems I happen to have seen had the caster taking magic damage on a failed roll or something similar.

the planes description is very long still it shows that the future of dasaria is very big...there is no constraint...i am very glad to know that the development is not stuck and can be expanded..thanks a lot Wired..

Upon entering an area, PC steps on a trigger that gives them 100% spell failure. Leaving the area removes the effect. This would probably require the locked-door conversation scheme, though.

From what I'm gathering it sounds like you you want is an Anti-magic zone. The problem with this, that I know of, is that there's no way to suppress item bonuses and such down such things as potions for buffs. The 100% spell failure is only part of what an anti-magic area is, though it would do nothing to buffs already cast, nor would it prevent items from being used inside the area or suppress item bonuses.

Looked it up briefly, it was Chapter 2 of HotU which had a large dead magic zone. It looks like entering it gave 100% spell failure, saved your item's properties and stripped everything of any and all magical effects (Some items were unaffected by design) and lastly dispelled all magical effects. Leaving the area restored effected equipment and removed spell failure, however, buffs that should have still been active could not be restored. (A minor point, since you spent a lot of time in that area and they would likely have all worn, anyway.)

As cool as that is, I frankly wouldn't trust it on the server. If the zone strips the equipment of it's property's when it's entered, what happens if the server crashes or something messes up with it? There's a distinct possibility of loosing all a characters magic items like that with the slightest of bugs. To be honest trying to spin that like issues that occasionally happen with the bank vault losing items (IE use at your own risk) is also asking for trouble. I know that I would be royally pissed off if I lost all the enchantments on my equipment due to anything, especially to something like this which folks know ahead of time carries risks. Better to not risk it.

It would probably be better to just slap on the 100% spell failure and perhaps a buff stripping effect (maybe force a rest?), though to be honest I'm not particularly fond of areas that basically shut down entire character classes. If you want to do a dungeon that limits the power of spellcasters, it's better to simply make it so there's limited resting so they have to conserve their spells.

Also, if you're designing a dungeon around being an anti-magic area, you have to ensure proper zone balance. I know Dasaria typically builds dungeons with the idea of having the four main archetypes represented: Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Mage. In such a dungeon you're effectively rendering fully half a party ineffective, which inherently increases the difficulty. To give you some idea of the difficulty jump, you're talking about a dungeon that would likely normally be balanced for a level 10 party having to be done by level 15s, simply due to the lack of healing and AOE/massive damage effects. Surely certain AC oriented builds would be able to solo the place, as well as HiPS oriented characters due to the lack of enemy magic, but for the average party of PCs, with normal builds and normal equipment you're talking very deadly area.

Now, if it's just suppose to be one area, for instance a boss fight room, that can be balanced normally for a party with a "twist" ending, similar to how fighting a lich is a more complex ending. The big trick to ensure that the mages can't stay back and blast into the zone is to make sure there's a transition jump into the area affected by the spell failure. Otherwise the mages will stand just outside the zone and throw magic into it, which not only doesn't fit the feel of an anti-magic area, completely defeats the purpose (not that I would blame them in the slightest for doing so either).

And just to make sure we're keeping perspective here, keep in mind that any encounters in an anti-magic area are effectively the same as making an encounter where every creature has DR 100/-.

Peregrinus wrote:If the zone strips the equipment of it's property's when it's entered, what happens if the server crashes or something messes up with it?

If the server happens to crash while you are in the dead magic zone, you go back to the zone and exit it again and your items are back to normal. It seems here is a script for NWN2.

I know some NWN1 versions would also restore properties upon login so you never had to trot back and re-leave the area if the server crashed while you were in, etc. And I'm pretty sure those versions also didn't burn up all your potions like his does too, so the script could probably be improved. This one should be pretty good, but I don't know anything about script compatibility between NWN1 and 2.

Again, while I'm sure the scripts are good and all, is it a gamble worth taking? All the times it needs to go wrong is once, and you're gonna have some very angry players. I know that if it happened to me, I'd want my items restored and in a timely manner as well. While I might be willing to wait, I know others wouldn't.

In short this scripting, if it goes wrong even once, has the potential to lose players. Are the benefits of having a proper anti-magic zone offset by this potential? I don't think it is, but that's just my opinion.

It worked well enough for the devs of NWN1 to use, that speaks for itself. Adding interesting things can make the server attractive for new players to stay. Old players are going to leave no matter what you do.

Seems what RL wanted could be accomplished with 100% spell failure and a forced rest when entering the map. All that other stuff you're talking about is something else.