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

Here's the thing. RP of mage armor is that it's an invisible effect. And I want to make a greater use of mage armor wands just on general daily basis, but don't want to walk around all sparkly. I just really wish I could cast my wand and forget about it for the day or till it runs out, without it ruining the character vibe I'm trying for with its sparkles.

I've talked to some people, and I don't seem to be the only one thinking this way. Opinions?

Where is the "I don't care one way or the other" option for your poll?

Edit: I hope my response didn't come off as rude or hostile, I just mean that players who are indifferent to that being changed or staying the same need the proper way of voting as well.

Voted no for 2 reasons.

A) Sparkles.

B) On a more serious note,


(improved) Mage Armour is on the Breach List.

Unlike Dispel Magic, Breach does not tell you what got removed.

Considering how vital 4/6 points of armor can be, I rather be notified in the fastest way with as many redundancies to notice its loss as possible.

to add on to that point, shades (self) is shield, protection from spells and premonition and if you get hit by breach and lose two of the three the shades affect does not drop, tho you can usually figure out what you lost next time you get hit

not having visual ques with lose of spells is very bad, even dispel sucks because you still have to go back and figure it out and if you are in the middle of a fight you wont be able to do that unless you just run because you are gonna die anyway

agree with the above posters

we need to know what wards are stripped from our person, and visual loss of sparkles is a good indicator you've lost said ward

I want it changed to something like this



Semi translucent armor that looks the part. That is to say one part magic, one part armor.



It's not that way in pnp no. I really don't care though because if it did this and we could pick the color it would be cool

I've voted yes, and I would vote yes if the same question were asked about Protection from Alignment et al.

chambordini wrote:*Mid IC conversation* "Hold on guys, I need to rebuff."

chambordini wrote:Otherwise we promote that gameplay of being buffed 24/7 and it's just terrible gameplay. These buffs already last way too long.

Not sure I agree with that in its entirety. Hour/level or 24 hour spells are supposed to be cast far in advance, and in fact PnP spellcasters can use the 5th level Permanency spell (at the cost of XP) to increase a variety of min/level and some round/level spells so that they can be buffed 24/7 or until they are dispelled.

Arguably, though, the levels reached by characters in PnP is far less than that acquired on BGTSCC so there is a thought of 'balance'. I personally do not cast my min/level spells until I actually expect to need them. All my hour/level spells I have on every rest pretty much.

This has been brought up many times in the past. It didnt go through though, mainly because VFX are a good indicator to see what spells are on and like chambo said, it was never intended to promote 24/7 wards. I dont think anything has changed since the last time.

if you think wards look bad now, you should have seen the stock ones. talk about being lit up like a xmas tree. it was beyond obnoxious. it's much better now visually, though not quite as easy to keep up with what wards are lost

I think spells should have a visual effect if the effects of the spell are visual; that is, if what the spell does is something that can be seen by the naked eye then there should be some representation of it. If they are not, then I do not think the spells should have a visual effect.

For Mage Armor the word "invisible" is right there in the spell description, but for the sake of argument let's say it should be visible. The current VFX is a poor representation of what the spell does, as there's no indication anywhere whatsoever that it should make you sparkle. The vanilla VFX is perhaps worse, so let's say the current VFX is preferable to that.

That doesn't mean the current VFX is ideal, but is there something better that could be implemented without too much trouble? What Laughingman suggested seems to be a possiblity but I want to say this is also not representative, as the Mage Armor is both invisible and surrounds the subject. Making it appear like an actual armor is also unnecessary.

The VFX of Shield seems more appropriate for Mage Armor if it really must have one ("more" being key because an accurate representation is not visible). But then there's the question of what VFX Shield should have cause that's also poorly represented. And Mirror Images is a nightmare.

Voted no, because VFX provides a simple way to see if the effect is still on. (icons next to portrait show only 12 effects or so, and something like death ward can easily saturate the list).

And yeah, stock VFX was much more sparkly.

Laughingman wrote:I want it changed to something like this



Semi translucent armor that looks the part. That is to say one part magic, one part armor.



It's not that way in pnp no. I really don't care though because if it did this and we could pick the color it would be cool

me too. it would maybe be complicated to do so, but probably not. just a front a backplate would look cool, with different colors for ma and ima.

mrm3ntalist wrote:This has been brought up many times in the past. It didnt go through though, mainly because VFX are a good indicator to see what spells are on and like chambo said, it was never intended to promote 24/7 wards. I dont think anything has changed since the last time.

Even though I'd rather eliminate all VFX that aren't supposed to exist, that is actually a good argument to keep them. However, there has been a recent tendency to go back to Obsidian-style glaringly obtruding spell VFX, and I think life on BGtSCC would be better with more discreet VFX, if they must remain at all. Those gaudy white circles are really annoying, especially in groups.