Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

About to hit 30 on a STR monk-ish build. Before this post, I hadn't used Stunning Fist even once, and to be honest, that's perfectly fine. I did a test run on the character following reading this post, and Stunning Fist was surprisingly consistent on enemies even though I didn't build for high WIS. As far as I see it, it serves two purposes:

1: If you want to use it with a decent success rate, you may want to go for a WIS monk build. Considering optimal damage for a WIS monk would be from Blazing Aura, which is on a cooldown, it's not as consistent as I would prefer for my playstyle. Much like how the free Improved Knockdown benefits STR monks, the free Stunning Fist benefits WIS monks. Going WIS over STR you get more AC and Stunning Fist CC, going STR over WIS you get more consistent damage and Knockdown CC. You can benefit from either, and both are freely available. As far as I know, DEX monks shine with a HiPSing dual-kamas P2WF builds, so in that respect they have their own niche.

2: Extra feat tax for Fighters who may want to get Ki Step. From personal experience, Ki Step is good. Really, really good. Gap closer, escape mechanism, utility for mobility, and the ability to juke spellcasts. That's doesn't even go into the RP potential the feat provides - unlike the D&D 'Abundant Step', which is a supernatural (Su) ability that mimics 'Dimension Door', Ki Step on the server is described as "To observers you are quicker than the wind and faster than the eye can see." Arguably, it can be seen as an extraordinary (Ex) ability, meaning your character can escape from the same situations where a Dimensional Lock or Dimensional Anchor would trap a spellcaster (reinforced by the fact that you don't need to make the same Teleport roll that wizards do on using Dimension Door).

That being said, it would be neat if Stunning Fist could bypass mind-affecting immunity, but for that to be possible (if it even is possible) I imagine a completely new debuff needs to be scripted to replace the one the feat currently uses. However, outside of bosses and certain creature types, mind-affecting immunity isn't all that prevalent from my experience. Complaints to counter that would fall into the same category as griping that SA/Crit builds are useless against elementals - if you rely on Stunning Fist, just don't fight creatures that are immune to Stunning Fist.

Disclaimer: I'm not that experienced at coding and scripting things.

I -believe- the way it works is 'Immunity to Mind-Effecting Spells' simply makes you immune to the effect 'stun', no matter where it comes from. And Stunning fist itself is hard-coded so it can't be altered.

Another, possibly easier, way to try to fix things is to just change the spells that give 'Immunity to Mind-Effecting Spells', to specific immunity to a list of (mind-effecting) spells. That is what the code, in the link, in my last post, is suggesting.

Re-scripting stunning fist would allow for more opportunities to make feats that modify it (like interesting monk kits). You would of course at least have to also re-script epic stunning feats, and extra stunning fists, and modify ki step and ki dodge. You couldn't make it work the same way either. It would end up being an instant cast ability that applies a weapon property for some short duration. The weapon property wouldn't be the effect 'stun' but a customized debuff that would have a similar effect.

I have no idea how long it would take another to do. There is far less I could do to help. Fixing the spells on the other hand seems like we might be able to do it ourselves. I -think- all we need is a firm list of all the mind-effecting spells and we could submit a snip-it of script to save the staff time, rather then ask for their charitable work.

Replacing that one portion of those spells is quick and when I think about it.. Prot from XXX is way to powerful a spell isn't it? I don't think the mind-effecting immunity form the spell even checks for alignment, is that right? Did they fix that on this server?

I think there is a warlock invocation that bypasses immunity to mind-effecting spells with a confusion effect on BGTSCC. I'm not sure how that was done. Does anyone know?