Practised Spellcaster exploit/bug

[Rhifox]

The description says it applies to all... yet another wonderful Obsidian oversight, then. <.<

[Dave Fritz]

It's not clear yet whether the ruling is "no more than 4 extra caster levels" or "no more caster levels than hit dice".

Tery is at the stage right now where at his next level (depending on the choice between two classes) he could gain more than 4 caster levels from the feat due to the bug without exceeding hit dice. He's fine now (CL=HD, 4 extra levels).

I would like to know if I have a choice or not on next leveling.

[thaelis]

Tery is at the stage right now where at his next level (depending on the choice between two classes) he could gain more than 4 caster levels from the feat due to the bug without exceeding hit dice. He's fine now (CL=HD, 4 extra levels).

I would like to know if I have a choice or not on next leveling.

I don't think it can give you more then 4 caster levels mate. The bug is that your caster level can exceed your actual level.

[Dave Fritz]

So I take a level now in a non-caster class, I still only get +4. That clears things up. Thanks, thaelis

[Chiangtao]

Doubtful - do you have any guidance on how not to accidentally come across this bug? Does it occur when you take more than one non-caster base class? Or when you couple it with a casting PRC and it doubles up with that PRC's progression? I know you don't want to spell it out publicly, but it might help so people don't abuse it accidentally. Any advice on things to avoid would be appreciated.

PS - Adeo cheats.

[Cornuto]

Its caused when you take a PrC with spell progression. You get caster level both from both the PrC and from practiced spell caster.

[Gamling]

I only cheat when I know I won't get caught bro.

[Fezzik]

For RDD's (who are supposed to have spell progression for 8 of 10 levels according to srd20 or whatever it's called), we'd have to take 2 levels of a non-casting class besides the RDD for example (assuming the first 5 were bard or sorc to have this feat. (if we got the 8 levels.

The same would hold true for Triadic Knights (they loose 2 levels of spell casting out of the 5), so they'd have to take two levels of a non-casting class for the feat to be used.

Clear as mud everyone?

ps. It would be nice if the 3 rdd's could have their full casting abilities!... I think there are 3 of us; that's enough to do major reworks, right???
* ducks and covers, runs away *

[Farmboy2003]

Have at least 4 non-caster classes before taking practiced spellcaster? Sounds fairly straight forward. Thanks for the headsup. I don't even consider the feat unless I have four or more. Its a multiclass love feat!

[Kitsunestume]

Perhaps a duplicate feat with a lower CL could be implimented for those of us making up for caster levels lacking in progression. I can't quite find it, but I'm pretty sure that it's checked in the methods [GetTotalLevel()] [GetCreatureTalentBest()]or [GetCasterLevel()], although I can't actually find them at the moment. If someone could locate them, it would probably be a matter of adding in a few more If-Else statements and connecting feats.

[Edit: And my research apparently shows that they are buried somewhere in the engine itself. Go figure. Yay Obsidian]

[Thief Of Navarre]

What if you have higher effective caster level untill it peaks out and normalises again? Surely anything below 17th level is moot?

[Snowmane]

This could be fixed using function wrapping, though it would be a little work. But once fixed, it would never be an issue again which would be one less thing players and DMs would have to worry about.

Step 1 - extract all the base game haks, the mod and the hakpaks used by the sundren mod into a single folder structure, with newer ones overwriting older ones in the same order that the engine would load these assets.

Step 2 - search for all the files containing calls to GetCasterLevel. They should all be .nss (script source) files.

Step 3 - copy all these files to their own directory, retaining any directory structures they may have been stored in originally.

Step 4 - do a "replace in files" and replace GetCasterLevel with GetCasterLevelEx

Step 5 - write a new script that implements GetCasterLevelEx.

int GetCasterLevelEx(object oCreature)
{
    int nCasterLevel = GetCasterLevel(oCreature);
    int nCharacterLevel = GetHitDice(oCreature);

    // Add code here to handle the Red Wizard exception
    // I'll just put a little pseudo code for it here though this is probably not exactly right
    if(hasRedWizardLevels())
    {
        nCharacterLevel += redWizardLevels / 2; // rounding will make this +1 every two levels to account for the Spell Power feat
    }

    if(nCasterLevel > nCharacterLevel)
        return nCharacterLevel;

    return nCasterLevel;
}

Step 6 - This is a doozy, but you need to #include the file containing GetCasterLevelEx in all these files. There may be an easy way to do it with macros, but if not then each one has to be opened and have the include added.

Step 7 - put all these scripts into a new hak. I am not sure if they have to be compiled to .ncs files (compiled scripts) first or not, if so then there are third party compilers on the vault that could be used to compile and add the compiled scripts to the HAK as well.

Step 8 - add the hak to the module, making sure it is loaded last so that its scripts override their previous implementations. If you did not put compiled scripts in the HAK, then you should be able to generate them by compiling all scripts. I believe this will creeate the .ncs files in the module, but I am not sure. If it doesn't, then you would have to go back to step 7 and use an external compiler to create and add the ncs files into the hak.

Now you should be able to properly cap the caster level and handle any special/future cases via manipulating the GetCasterLevelEx method.

[Cornuto]

Alright smart-guy, now fix the transition-while-polymorphed crash. I think GBX mentioned a while back that its related to the order things are applied during transitions or something and is fixable.

[Seheren]

I like where this is going.

[Farmboy2003]

Could someone please give that (snow)man(e) some work!?