Blade's Offensive Spin Revisited

Sojourner · Post by **Sojourner** » Mon Aug 20, 2001 2:44 am

Well, the blade is one of my favorite kits to play, along with assassin, cavalier, and undead hunter. So, naturally, I was a bit irritated to discover that offensive spin causes the blade to lose his off-hand attack. I've tested this multiple times now, with weapons that do different types of elemental damage - every time offensive spin is activated, the game no longer reports an off-hand swing. As well, while offensive spin is active, there is no graphic (elemental damage) showing the off-hand hitting, so I know it's not a case of the game failing to report it.

Well, after downloading the Boots of Speed patch from [url="http://members.home.net/mrkevvy/"]Baldurdash[/url] and seeing that it fixed both the dual-wielding and backstabbing bugs associated with it, I was inspired to fix the offensive spin ability, so that the blade gets the off-hand attack back. I also re-added the THACO bonus fix that was in the patch on the Baldurdash site.

Doltan · Post by **Doltan** » Mon Aug 20, 2001 7:06 am

So does that mean that you've fixed the offensive spin problem Sojourner? I enjoy playing with Haer'Dalis and it would be nice to see this ability work how it should.

Sargon · Post by **Sargon** » Mon Aug 20, 2001 7:19 am

Ok, so how did you fix it? Remove the haste spell reference and make it a straight addional attacks/round and movement rate modifier?

I've been poking around with a few tools the past few days getting a feel for things. This was on my list of things to brea...er...fix first

Sojourner · Post by **Sojourner** » Mon Aug 20, 2001 7:43 am

Originally posted by Sargon the Blade:
<STRONG>Ok, so how did you fix it? Remove the haste spell reference and make it a straight addional attacks/round and movement rate modifier?</STRONG>

I tried that, but when I tested it, I just got a little message saying offensive spin was already active and the attacks per round didn't change. So I took the original Haste reference and modified the parameter from normal haste to improved haste. Yea, I know, this ends up doubling the blade's attacks, but right now I'm just happy to get the off-hand attack back. In retrospect, the order in which the effects occur could be important, but the Infinity Engine Editor doesn't seem to allow you to insert a new effect between existing ones. Looks like I'll be breaking out my old hex editor (this reminds me of my item-editing days from BGI

).

If anyone is interested in this, I can e-mail it (I don't have a webpage). BTW, I also fixed the Grandmaster's Armor +6.

[ 08-20-2001: Message edited by: Sojourner ]

Sargon · Post by **Sargon** » Mon Aug 20, 2001 2:13 pm

I *think* I've got it.

3 attacks/round
2 primary, 1 offhand
100% movement rate increase
+2 THACO
+2 Damage
Max damage every hit
Cannot be Hasted or Improved Hasted.
Cannot "stack" with another Offensive Spin or with a Defensive Spin.

The only thing it doesn't do is speed up the character animation while swinging, not a big loss. I'll toss the spl file up on my web page in a few. Going to try to break the spell Haste so that it doesn't stop offhand attacks...which is harder than it looks

[url="http://members.attcanada.ca/~rebel_hq/spin.zip"]Fixed Offensive Spin file[/url] - All 400 bytes worth. Rename the existing SPCL521.SPL in the override directory to SPCL521.OLD, copy this one in, and give it a try.

Need to figure out how to make the Spin negate Haste/Imp Haste spells when it kicks in, but that's a minor issue and I'm not sure if the original offensive spins blocked/negated haste...

[ 08-20-2001: Message edited by: Sargon the Blade ]

Xyx · Post by **Xyx** » Mon Aug 20, 2001 5:15 pm

Originally posted by Sargon the Blade:
<STRONG>100% movement rate increase</STRONG>

Offensive Spin doubles movement?

Sargon · Post by **Sargon** » Mon Aug 20, 2001 6:09 pm

Well, I'm *pretty* sure before ToB, when in an Offensive Spin, you'd move at twice the normal movement rate since the ability referenced the haste spell (which includes the movement rate change, which was a 100% increase, yes?).

Its not clear if the ability was *supposed* to give the extra movement rate, or if it was just a side effect from refering to the haste effect within the Engine itself.

My goal was to remove the offhand swing bug while maintaining the way the Spin worked, which is pretty much what I *think* I've done.

Sojourner · Post by **Sojourner** » Mon Aug 20, 2001 9:47 pm

Sargon, I justed tested your offensive spin, and it works. I took a look at what you did, and saw that you replaced the haste effect with only the attacks per 2 round effect. I was surprised to see that it alone causes a movement rate increase.

Sargon · Post by **Sargon** » Tue Aug 21, 2001 6:38 am

Actually, there is a movement modifier effect in there as well. Using the TeamBG IEEP vsomething.sometime (latest and greatest build), the bulk of the abilities were put into extended headers, but some of the other things (Movement Modifier, Immunity to Haste/Imp.Haste, the non-working "remove haste/imp. haste" effect as well) were set as default effects.

I was slighly surprised on how easy it was to alter/create these things. Time to continue trying to fix normal haste and to begin on revamping the Bard ToB high-level abilities...

Sojourner · Post by **Sojourner** » Tue Aug 21, 2001 8:30 am

Ah, I didn't notice that you had put entries into the "other effects" list box. Out of curiosity, why did you put them there, rather than into the extended headers? I've done item-editing before (ended up creating over-powered items for BGI, but it was fun

), but this is my first foray into spell-editing.

Sargon · Post by **Sargon** » Tue Aug 21, 2001 9:55 am

It seems that the extended headers have a limitation of 10 entries. Every time I added an 11th effect, be it movement rate, charisma bonus, or whatever, it would not take effect. Seeing as the modified/working Spin needed about 14 entries, I had no real choice.

From what I understand now, the "other effects" should be used as universal effects - meaning level doesn't matter, while the extended headers are used to create level differing effects. For example spells use the extended headers to provide the extended duration or damage.

I'm not sure if there is a limit to these level-independant type effects for spells, and I suppose the offensive spin should be all "other" effects instead of extended headers.

But it works, and if it ain't borked, don't foox it

Part of what inspired this was the idea that Blades and Jesters should NOT get the Enhanced Bard Song. I'm working on a replacement for the Blade and Jester right now. The Blade's "new" ability is an improved spin mixing the two along with some other advantages (and penalties) as they are more of a melee-bard than a singing-bard. The Jester's Song will be a more offense-oriented one as opposed to the "enhanced" version that makes them an Insta-Skald.

I'm pondering even changing the Skald's "Enhanced Bard Song" to one that gets even better as they level up. It is something that I got working for the new spin for Blades, the spin gets more powerful as they level up, but not without its drawbacks.

Sojourner · Post by **Sojourner** » Tue Aug 21, 2001 11:48 am

I saw that the ToB patch added stun and slow abilities to the Jester's song at the 20th level, which I think is cool. I would like to see at least one of these abilities appear sooner. Also, I would like to see the saving throw bonus against it reduced at higher levels, because in ToB, many enemies have very low saving throws. If the Jester's song were improved like this, I would never want to replace it with the Enhanced Song from the bard's high-level ability pool.

General · Post by **General** » Tue Aug 21, 2001 2:37 pm

I skipped all the other posts, but one quick question... does this patch happen to work iToB?

Sojourner · Post by **Sojourner** » Tue Aug 21, 2001 3:26 pm

The Boots of Speed fix, Sargon's Offensive Spin fix, and my Offensive Spin fix all work in ToB.