CommunityPatch - AntiCheese

[Elric Galad]

1 hour ago, Chaospread said:

But wait, doesn't Auranic have "Endless Assault," which grants her Brilliant permanently?

Only when Near Death

1 hour ago, Chaospread said:

Apart from this I think Potion of Enlightenment is a good think particularly in SOLO for those classes that can't have Brilliant "easily".

Oh yeah, basically it gives a bit of relief to classes without infinite ressources (even if they are still very limited in this context).

[MaxQuest]

Ehh, I have just wrote a really long reply here. And it vanished after submission. I have a feeling this forum doesn't work well with 10+ quotes)

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On 3/3/2025 at 10:57 PM, thelee said:

I seemed to recall that Elric had a fix for it, but didn't see it mentioned in your post (I could have missed it, sorry if I did) so wanted to bring it up. 

Personally - eh... I haven't played with Elric's fix, but in my gut going from 2 to 1 damage doesn't seem like a significant enough change. an Unbending-like change might be quite good though.

No, you haven't missed it) 

I have forgot to add Combusting Wounds to the initial list) And when I've noticed, I decided to wait first if someone will mention that spell)

Elric's approach brings it's effective damage closer to that mentioned in it's description, and decreases by x3 that 0s mini-burst when ticks get re-applied.

Meanwhile Unbending-like change removes that 0s mini-burst altogether; but there won't be DoT duration increase from INT/PL.

In my book both approaches are good here

 

On 3/4/2025 at 12:24 AM, Kaylon said:

Frankly, I wouldn't change any. BDD is unbalanced only in hard long fights if you can keep it forever, but if you can't prolong it for the entire encounter it will make little difference in the end.

With Brilliant and Blood Sacrifice you can reapply BDD over and over, no?

I think BDD shines most in the following situations:

• you can keep using Blood Sacrifice over and over
• you can ignore disengagement attacks, and abuse Riposte / Offensive Parry
• you can use a Grave Calling bomb and just stand in 8+ stacks of Chill Fog and other AoEs
• completely dump AR/deflection

While with BDD acting as a damage-shield, it is still crazy good (hardly any creature encounter deals over 300 dmg in 12s), and often even better since the hp doesn't go down to 1 while the shield holds. But it makes harder to use the above scenarios.

Meanwhile there is still Potion of the Final Stand that retains the immunity to getting knocked unconscious. It's limited to once-per-encounter but 18s duration kinda compensates for that.

-----

That said, I am also ok if BDD keeps the vanilla behaviour, but would need to make Blood Sacrifice, Ripose and Offensive Parry only usable while above 25% hp.

 

On 3/4/2025 at 12:24 AM, Kaylon said:

Dawnstar's Blessing I really don't understand why you want to change it, I don't see how it breaks the game. ...
As for Unbending, it's comparable to BDD - it's good but if it can be used only for limited time it won't make a big difference in the end.

With +30% Healing (from 20 MIG), 50% Healing from Dawnstar's Blessing, +10% Healing from Bone Setter's Torc, +10% Healing from Healer's Touch belt, you get +100% Healing.

That's without +15% from Practiced Healer and +50% from Mercy and Kindness, since those are class restricted.

 

Now let's take Unbending:

Vanilla Unbending Trunk has duration of 15s and the following effect: Self: 33% of Damage Taken converted into Healing over 5s
At 10 INT and with:

• +0% Healing: that is 20% at 3s, 13% at 5s, and an extra 0s for 20%. Total: 53% of damage taken being healed back (sans damage from DoTs)
• +30-45% Healing: 68.9-76.8%
• +100% Healing: 106%

And because everytime a new Unbending HoT is applied -> all current Unbending HoTs will make a healing tick, it becomes even more.

And that healing is done by an ability whose description mentiones 33%

The only thing that keeps Unbending somewhat in check is that it doesn't heal the damage taken from DoTs.

---

With the change that I have proposed:

INT and PL will no longer increase the duration of individual Unbending HoTs
there will be on 0s tick; and no tick spam when a new instance is applied
I have increased the healing to 3 * 15%, so that will be 45%; or 90% if you have +100% Healing; but that's less than 118.8% mentioned above; and way less if you fight multiple enemies

 

On 3/4/2025 at 12:24 AM, Kaylon said:

Avenging Storm isn't that common and I think there are other abilities/spells at least as good.

Imho the main issue with Avenging Storm is how it could proc from stuff that didn't deal damage (that's already in CP.Basic).

The second issue is that it can heavily contribute to effects loop, since it deals it's damage via attack component and not via damage status effect. Making it procs unable to crit would decrease it's contribution to chain crit of Heartbeat Drumming and Swift Flurry that could potentially go to infinite.

 

On 3/4/2025 at 12:24 AM, Kaylon said:

If I remember well it was due to other "melee" effects looping and triggering the proc from Boltcatchers.

Yes, Boltcatchers proc is AttackMeleeGameData. It could crit; and being originated from a weapon attack, could contribute to effect looping

 

On 3/4/2025 at 12:24 AM, Kaylon said:

The problem with the procs from accessories/armors is their penetration at end game, especially on PotD.

That's an excellent point

Boltcatchers' proc has penetration of 7; and now that you mentioned it I totally agree: it's better to increase it instead

 

On 3/4/2025 at 12:24 AM, Kaylon said:

I think there are some interactions that make the game interesting and it bothers me that in an attempt to make the game "fair", sometimes we forget the fun.

And that's the reason I have started this thread. To not get overzealous) and sync on opinions

 

On 3/4/2025 at 12:24 AM, Kaylon said:

Here's an example - the trick with Grave Calling looks great on paper but in practice it's very hard to use effectively - using a berserker makes the Chillfogs damage your party too, you can't control very well the number of procs and the game crashes/freezes all the time. If you don't use a berserker then you have to kill every skelly by yourself which in the long run becomes rather tedious and counter productive; in other words it hardly makes a difference in the big picture and personally I consider it very difficult to abuse - but if some people want to put the time and effort to make it work I would say let them enjoy it. Hehe...

It's enough to kill 1 skelly; and if Chill Fog kills another skelly it will trigger Chill Fog

The thing is: you can get that legendary sabre relatively early; and a Bers/Beckoner of only level 7 can already cause 9-18 Chill Fogs in the first 10s of combat.

And it's hard to compete with 180+ dmg per 3s.

A Berserker/Rogue (with deathblows) would go even higher with a Beckoner support summoning the skeletons

While a Berserker/Cipher would get max focus in few seconds.

Gif example (dummies have 625 hp; skeletons have 25 hp and die from 1 hit):

Spoiler

I think it's great when unusual interactions exist; and it's fun from build building perspective; but it can become repetitive and boring when actually played, yet switching is like gimping yourself (at least at those levels)

Anyway. I will likely create a poll. And if majority will vote to leave it as is - it will be left as is

 

On 3/4/2025 at 12:24 AM, Kaylon said:

On the other hand, weapons that proc melee hits with spells is obviously not intended and it should probably be fixed, however for some people it can be fun and maybe it can be treated like a feature - just remove the loops and make the procs break stealth/invisibility.

Agreed

Regarding procs: it would be too tedious to check them all; do you have some specific offenders in mind?

Edited 15 hours ago by MaxQuest

[MaxQuest]

11 hours ago, Chaospread said:

Ok, it doesn't work with me because I'm using a beckoner/ghost heart Thanks.

It can work with beckoner/ghost heart too. Just more difficult to start the chain reaction

• you need to kill beckoner skeletons with Grave Calling weapon attacks, or procced Chill Fogs; before they despawn
• they have 25 hp
• after 2 of them die - the chain reaction starts; since 2 Chill Fog ticks can kill other skellies

 

11 hours ago, Chaospread said:

Maybe I don't understand correctly, but in my opinion no spell, abilities, consumables, items/weapons/armor enchantments which have a duration should keep running at the end of combat. 

Aaa you were referring to effects that are not cleared at the end of combat..

Got it

11 hours ago, Chaospread said:

They should be reset to ZERO when the fight is over. If it were not so, you can extend any effect with SoT (and maybe the other armor/weapon with a similar effect) and I think it is not intended.

It's also possible to make Strand of Favor to provide an instant effect of -9.09% to effect duration. That's what Elric did in BPM)

You equip SoF:

• and get: indefinite +10% beneficial duration
• a one off: -9.09% beneficial duration (to compensate)

Sure, due to double inversions and stacking different percents of beneficial duration buffs/maluses it's still theoretically possible to extend the buffs to long durations; but that's now like 1000 harder to do.

Additionally SoF can be made to have it's effects only in combat.

 

11 hours ago, Chaospread said:

My idea: no cast outside of combat OR limit one cast (or anyhow a limit stack) out of combat OR limit one cast (or anyhow a limit stack) out of combat only for 9th ( or 8th and 9th ) level priest spells (if implementable).

Hmm, I think a limit of 1 cast outside of combat, and no limit while in combat, can be done via a kw workaround. But it's tedious, so maybe only for a select few spells..; but in that case it would be inconsistent

Setting them to be castable only in combat is an easier solution for sure

Edited Tuesday at 08:46 PM by MaxQuest

[Elric Galad]

12 hours ago, MaxQuest said:

That's an excellent point

Boltcatchers' proc has penetration of 7; and now that you mentioned it I totally agree: it's better to increase it instead

Just a minor reaction.

Basically all passive attck abilities from non-weapon item don't scale (from weapons, it scales with quality). Complete analysis here : [MECHANICS] The weird aspects of scaling - Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Characters Builds, Strategies & the Unity Engine (Spoiler Warning!) - Obsidian Forum Community

 

That means their accuracy is kind of low, their damages not so great and, as you just say, their Penetration s**ks (which is a an oxymoron when you think about it, but that's another story )

 

That's why BPM did this :

Item Passive Abilities Scaling:
<Version 2.0> Attacks from Passive abilities from items does not receive any Power Level or Character Level scaling, which means they have subpar Accuracy, damages, and Penetration. Balance Polishing Mod now adds following bonuses according to Character Level, which means they scale approximatively as a normal ability :
- +0.25 Penetration per 2 Levels (up to +2.5)
- +1 Accuracy per 2 Levels (up to +10)
- +5% additive damages per 2 Levels (up to +50%)

It was impossible to scale it with Power Level (and classless Power Level is a weird beast used only for Monastic unarmed training and active abilities from items), so I went for this approximation.

+2 PEN at level 20 (the +0.5 doesn't matter) isn't great, but is still something, and the reste of progression also helps to prevent all these abilities to become obsolete.

As you can read, Boltcatchers is indeed in the list of modded items.

Edited yesterday at 08:44 AM by Elric Galad

[Chaospread]

14 hours ago, MaxQuest said:

It can work with beckoner/ghost heart too. Just more difficult to start the chain reaction

• you need to kill beckoner skeletons with Grave Calling weapon attacks, or procced Chill Fogs; before they despawn
• they have 25 hp
• after 2 of them die - the chain reaction starts; since 2 Chill Fog ticks can kill other skellies

Last time I have tries Chilling Grave didn't trigger but maybe I killed skellies from Many Lives Pass By, Each Leaving Footprints and not from Ancient Brittle Bones, or maybe Dorudugan killed my skellies before me However witha Berserker the process is less tedious
Perhaps I need to double check that, with weaker foes .

14 hours ago, MaxQuest said:

It's also possible to make Strand of Favor to provide an instant effect of -9.09% to effect duration. That's what Elric did in BPM)

You equip SoF:

• and get: indefinite +10% beneficial duration
• a one off: -9.09% beneficial duration (to compensate)

Sure, due to double inversions and stacking different percents of beneficial duration buffs/maluses it's still theoretically possible to extend the buffs to long durations; but that's now like 1000 harder to do.

I agree 100%.

14 hours ago, MaxQuest said:

Additionally SoF can be made to have it's effects only in combat.

This one I think is a great "fix"

14 hours ago, MaxQuest said:

Hmm, I think a limit of 1 cast outside of combat, and no limit while in combat, can be done via a kw workaround. But it's tedious, so maybe only for a select few spells..; but in that case it would be inconsistent

Setting them to be castable only in combat is an easier solution for sure

Indeed, as a programmer I believe the best solutions are the simpler solutions

[Elric Galad]

Strand of favor only in combat is detrimental to drugs and potions.

On the other hand :

and get: indefinite +10% beneficial duration
a one off: -9.09%* beneficial duration (to compensate)**

*you can even add more decimals so it's 1 000 000 more difficult to use instead of 1000 more difficult. This might not be perfect but I think it is more perfect than barring drugs and potion to benefit from this equipment.

** In BPM, this effect isn't displayed, cause it would be more confusing than useful.

Seriously, if someone really want to go this route after the "almost perfect compensation" is implemented, they may simply refuse to install the anti-cheese package altogether.

Of course, I'm pleading for my own content but by using the BPM content you save yourself some time (design, dev, testing, documenting) to do something else  

Edited 23 hours ago by Elric Galad

[Chaospread]

The actual behavior should be: wear SoF, add 10% duration on current effects, put a tag on effects which are extended, unwear SoF, re-wear: if a effect has the tag then NO extension time, WHEN the tagged effect ends then remove the tag.
But i suppose it is hardly implementable.

[Elric Galad]

3 hours ago, Chaospread said:

The actual behavior should be: wear SoF, add 10% duration on current effects, put a tag on effects which are extended, unwear SoF, re-wear: if a effect has the tag then NO extension time, WHEN the tagged effect ends then remove the tag.
But i suppose it is hardly implementable.

Indeed it would be !

[MaxQuest]

10 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Just a minor reaction.

Basically all passive attck abilities from non-weapon item don't scale (from weapons, it scales with quality). Complete analysis here : [MECHANICS] The weird aspects of scaling - Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Characters Builds, Strategies & the Unity Engine (Spoiler Warning!) - Obsidian Forum Community

Spoiler

That means their accuracy is kind of low, their damages not so great and, as you just say, their Penetration s**ks (which is a an oxymoron when you think about it, but that's another story )

 

That's why BPM did this :

Item Passive Abilities Scaling:
<Version 2.0> Attacks from Passive abilities from items does not receive any Power Level or Character Level scaling, which means they have subpar Accuracy, damages, and Penetration. Balance Polishing Mod now adds following bonuses according to Character Level, which means they scale approximatively as a normal ability :
- +0.25 Penetration per 2 Levels (up to +2.5)
- +1 Accuracy per 2 Levels (up to +10)
- +5% additive damages per 2 Levels (up to +50%)

It was impossible to scale it with Power Level (and classless Power Level is a weird beast used only for Monastic unarmed training and active abilities from items), so I went for this approximation.

+2 PEN at level 20 (the +0.5 doesn't matter) isn't great, but is still something, and the reste of progression also helps to prevent all these abilities to become obsolete.

As you can read, Boltcatchers is indeed in the list of modded items.

Then I'll just add that to CP.Extra  

But what's your opinion on setting canCrit to false for Boltcatchers? 

 

6 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Strand of favor only in combat is detrimental to drugs and potions.

On the other hand :

and get: indefinite +10% beneficial duration
a one off: -9.09%* beneficial duration (to compensate)**

*you can even add more decimals so it's 1 000 000 more difficult to use instead of 1000 more difficult. This might not be perfect but I think it is more perfect than barring drugs and potion to benefit from this equipment.

** In BPM, this effect isn't displayed, cause it would be more confusing than useful.

Seriously, if someone really want to go this route after the "almost perfect compensation" is implemented, they may simply refuse to install the anti-cheese package altogether.

That's an argument)

 

6 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Of course, I'm pleading for my own content but by using the BPM content you save yourself some time (design, dev, testing, documenting) to do something else  

And that is much appreciated 

Spoiler

 

5 hours ago, Chaospread said:

The actual behavior should be: wear SoF, add 10% duration on current effects, put a tag on effects which are extended, unwear SoF, re-wear: if a effect has the tag then NO extension time, WHEN the tagged effect ends then remove the tag.
But i suppose it is hardly implementable.

Yeah, I don't imagine how to implement that)

But it's actual behaviour could be even simpler: only give +10% to effects that were applied after it

[Boeroer]

Strand of Favor etc.:

The easiest solution would be to just give those items +2 INT but -4 Will and -12% AoE size instead of +10% to benefical effect duration. Same effect as before basically but no cheese. Maybe the description doesn't even need to change. It's still accurate, even if the way it's achieved is obscure.  Edit: I just realized that would only work for benefical effects you apply yourself. Hm. Then maybe make the bonus a bit bigger to compansate. 

Same with items such as Outworn Buckler (aura) and Cabalist's Gambeson: bonus RES (aura) but -Will and -Deflection would result in the same effect but no cheese. Only "problem" would be the attribute cap of 35 then.

Edited 16 hours ago by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

7 minutes ago, MaxQuest said:

But it's actual behaviour could be even simpler: only give +10% to effects that were applied after it

Yeah well - if that's easy to do then that's even better.  

[MaxQuest]

On 3/4/2025 at 2:57 PM, Elric Galad said:

Frankly, I don't see the point. It is hard to get and hardly make you OP by using it.

If there is a way to prolong the buff durations... Soul Blade can stack thousands of it, and one shot any enemy with Soul Annihilation.

And as a bonus having thousands of Concentration makes you basically immune to Interrupt.

Here's a video by Victor Creed: 

Spoiler

 

 

 

On 3/4/2025 at 2:57 PM, Elric Galad said:

I would strongly advise against a big nerf to unbending as it could be described as THE selling feature of Fighters a whole. 33% damages reduction for 2 Discipline for 15s base isn't enough IMHO.

Unbeding benefits from Healing Done/Taken right?

With my change Unbending Trunk would heal 3 times for 15% of damage taken.

• usually a fighter will have around +30-45% Healing. So that's 58-65% of damage taken being healed back (sans damage from DoTs)
• with Dawnstar Blessing or Merci and Kindness he can reach +100% Healing, and that would be 90%. 

 

In Vanilla, Unbending Trunk at 10 INT description writes that it's duration is 15s, and each incoming damage will heal for 33% over 5s (UseDurationTime)

• at +0% Healing: that is 20% at 3s, 13% at 5s, and an extra 0s for 20%. Total: 53% of damage taken being healed back (sans damage from DoTs)
• at +30-45% Healing: 68.9-76.8%
• at +100% Healing: 106%

And even more because of 0s ticks from existing HoT instances is triggered when a new HoT instance is applied

---

You have set the HoT Instance to 75% over 12s (fixed) ticking in 1s intervals; instead of vanilla 33% over 5s (unfixed) ticking in 3s intervals

But it still benefits from Healing Done/Taken, no?

  

34 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Yeah well - if that's easy to do then that's even better.  

Nooo. It's easy as concept)

I don't think we can mod such behaviour. At the very least it would require patchwork changes

But Obsidian devs could probably take this into account.. for their next games

Edited 15 hours ago by MaxQuest

[Elric Galad]

2 hours ago, MaxQuest said:

If there is a way to prolong the buff durations... Soul Blade can stack thousands of it, and one shot any enemy with Soul Annihilation.

And as a bonus having thousands of Concentration makes you basically immune to Interrupt.

Here's a video by Victor Creed: 

  Hide contents

 

 

Ok, it makes sense then.

2 hours ago, MaxQuest said:

Unbeding benefits from Healing Done/Taken right?

With my change Unbending Trunk would heal 3 times for 15% of damage taken.

• usually a fighter will have around +30-45% Healing. So that's 58-65% of damage taken being healed back (sans damage from DoTs)
• with Dawnstar Blessing or Merci and Kindness he can reach +100% Healing, and that would be 90%. 

 

In Vanilla, Unbending Trunk at 10 INT description writes that it's duration is 15s, and each incoming damage will heal for 33% over 5s (UseDurationTime)

• at +0% Healing: that is 20% at 3s, 13% at 5s, and an extra 0s for 20%. Total: 53% of damage taken being healed back (sans damage from DoTs)
• at +30-45% Healing: 68.9-76.8%
• at +100% Healing: 106%

And even more because of 0s ticks from existing HoT instances is triggered when a new HoT instance is applied

---

You have set the HoT Instance to 75% over 12s (fixed) ticking in 1s intervals; instead of vanilla 33% over 5s (unfixed) ticking in 3s intervals

But it still benefits from Healing Done/Taken, no?

 

Unbending does benefit from healing received but not from healing done. BPM 50% is about as much as 33% would have been if Mercy & Kindness worked (BPM nerfed Mercy & Kindness to +30% by the way)

[RyanL]

Just wanted to chime in here with not much to say but thank you MaxQuest. After playing through Avowed and looking to come back to Deadfire, this anti-cheese patch solutions so far look incredibly good.

In particular, as someone who feels pulled to look at 'optimal' solutions, and who likes to build tanky characters, the allure of a rather boring routine of Barring Death's Door, Brilliant, and/or buff-time extension was quite overwhelming.

[Chaospread]

14 hours ago, MaxQuest said:

 

14 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Yeah well - if that's easy to do then that's even better.  

Nooo. It's easy as concept)

I don't think we can mod such behaviour. At the very least it would require patchwork changes

But Obsidian devs could probably take this into account.. for their next games

But intended beahavior shuold be extend current effects also... but for an anti cheese patch we can change the intended behavior indeed