My DUMB F/M/T could not scribe scrolls!

Remove all ads!

Well, my F/M/T only had 9 INT. He is not quite a genius, but very strong, agile, somewhat durable and evilly cute at the same time! (18/29 in STR, 18 in DEX, 15 CON and 16 CHA) Oh BTW found a robe which gives +2 STR DEX and CON. He now has 20 DEX, 17 CON, and 18/49 str. Damn, if it was one point higher, he would enjoy better bonus!

Anyway, I tried to make him scribe Chaos and Dominate scrolls found in the battle area with Terikan.

But he could not wirte the scrolls. Heck, even 'Write Magic' option did not come when right-clicking the scroll!?

WTH?

I thought it had to do something with his lowly int. I can not remember now, but I guess pure AD&D rules dictate that a person with 9 INT can nonly learn up to level 4 spells? This rule was never implemented in BG2, so I thought it was absent here too.

So I made him gulp a 'red potion', which raises INT to 25. He was able to scribe the scrolls normally then.

I found this weird, so IWD uses true AD&D rules for spell-casting? So a mage needs 18 int to scribe 9th level spells eh? Hmm..

But he had scribed an Animate Dead spell before. It is level 5 too! So what?

Unless it is that, since Animate Dead is also a level three clerical spell, game engine thinks it is still 3rd level for purposes of the INT-learning check?

What do you say?

BTW. I found a scroll of Some STR enhancing spell, it is from AB I think. In highest levels it can set the recipient's STR to 23. So I decided to teach it to my spiffy little bard, since bards do level up faster. He has 18 INT, and IIRC the spell was level 4 or 5.

I tried and failed. Reloaded, tried and failed. Reloaded for about 20 times and failed, failed, failed. With %85 chance! Why? Is the scroll buggy so that it can never be written? In this case I will use some editor to put this spell to my bard's spell book, it is a very valuable spell, mind you!

Please help me!
Cheers!

 

You need in fact 18 int in order to scribe level9 spells but you don't need high int to cast them.

The reason why your 9 int F/M/T couldn't scribe the level4 scroll is probably that a mage can only scribe a certain INT-dependent amount of spells per level.
My 18 INT mage also couldn't scribe more than 18 level 2 spells, he had to drink a potion to learn all 20.

About your unscribeable AB spell:
You'd better try setting the difficulty down to easy before scribing instead of messing up your game using editors.

 

Oh, I forgot about the easy setting. Does it also enable automatic scribing like in BG2?

I understand now. You claim that the reason was my dumb F/M/T had reached his spell per level limit eh? But...he only had one spell in 5th page of his book, that was Animate Dead. So he has not reached the limit yet. But the option 'write magic' did not appear still. So I guess my theory is correct then?

Well...at least thank you for trying to shed some light into this mystery!