I have been trying out several components of the Tactics mod, and I noticed a nifty side-benefit of the smarter mages--when you recruit Nalia in the CC, she has already cast stoneskin, armor, and MMM, all without using up any of her spell slots (she doesn't even have MMM in spellbook).

These bonus spells come in handy for doing the CC backrooms. What I want to know is why isn't Jan "smarter"? I haven't gotten to Edwin yet so I don't know if he has been changed by the mod or not.

Has anyone else noticed this difference between Nalia and Jan, or is there something wrong with my tactics installation?

I bet Jan isn't too smart at all, judging from his dialogues during the game ;) Just kidding :D I don't exactly know why there's a difference or if the difference is normal, but I reckon it is normal. Can't imagine it isn't..

<font color="gold">Perhaps because Jan is an Illusionist, and not a pure Mage? Who knows. [img]smile.gif[/img] </font>

Its a bit weird to enter an area and see some certain mages cast all kinds of protection spells FOR FREE! Isn't it cheating?

Another thing: they are casting buffs with no delay. Seems to be a contingency of sorts.Or trigger. The one that can hold 5-7 spells, and the one avail. for free, cuz not many mages in SoA can cast lvl9 spells :(

I think thats not fair, to say the least. Mages were meant to become SMARTER, not CHEATIER [img]smile.gif[/img]
(spelling? [img]smile.gif[/img] )

1-they have Contignesyes(sp)
2-they Prebuff,they are smarter....they do not want anything bad happebs to them so they prebuff

Its supposed to represent the mages emplying common sense. I know if I was a mage living in athkatla, stoneskins would be going on first thing in the morning, and MMM would also be a routine casting.

But the game dosent have a mechanism to pre-cast spells like that, hence the current soloution. Crude, but effective. Does anyone know whether the mages are actualy cheating, or whether these pre-buff spells are in fact accounted for in the spellbooks?

As I mentioned in my first post, the buff spells they cast when the party enters the area are given to them for free. You can check by recruiting Nalia; she has cast stoneskin, MMM, and a couple other spells, but check her spellbook and there are no used slots.

I've also seen it when charming the mage in the upstairs of the Den of Seven Vales. He has the same spell set as he had before the mod was added, despite having buffed with stoneskin and MMM.

-edit: one thing that shows the mages are actually SMARTER is that they will immediately go hostile when you cast a charm spell at them. No more try, try again to charm blue circled folks.


Now, having a free MMM is not really cheating because those things last indefinitely, so you can just assume the mage in question had them left over from yesterday. The stoneskin is a bit more questionable though. You can cast stoneskin just before resting, and it will last a few hours into the next day, but not the whole day.

The ones that are really cheating are the short-lived protection spells, if a mage had enough mirror image spells to last the whole day, he wouldn't have any other level two slots left for offensive spells.

[ 04-29-2003, 01:01 PM: Message edited by: Olorin ]