For a while now I've wanted to spruce up the divine spell set in the Baldur's Gate games to better suit my tastes. The buffing spells are varied and conceptually solid, but they are of such short duration that one is either forced into a tedious, repetitive cast-combat-rest cycle in order to make consistent use of them, or (and I suspect this is what happens most often in reality) one simply uses metagaming knowledge to know which encounters are "buff-worthy." The lower spell tiers are also replete with lousy choices for which one is hard pressed to imagine any sort of use.

My consequent ambivalence about clerics (at the low and mid levels, anyway) led me to avoid playing one in Neverwinter Nights for quite some time. When I finally did, I was very pleasantly surprised. There seemed to be fewer dud spells, and the buffs were long enough lasting that you could cast them after resting and have them available in every encounter. The combined effect of all the buffs taken together was to make the cleric a formidable fighter indeed. Because of their heavy reliance on this buff repertoire, NWN clerics are extremely vulnerable to a Dispel Magic - which adds the much needed tension of an Achille's Heel - but aside from that, they are both powerful and enjoyable to play.

Divine Intervention tries to bring some of that NWN divine spell flavor to the Baldur's Gate games. For starters, you'll find that the combat protection spells are now consistently long lasting. Whether it's protection from fire, cold, lighting, mind-affecting spells, level drain, or whatever else, now you can cast the spell and enjoy the protection without resorting to save/load mechanics or already knowing what's coming.

On the other hand, spells which are clearly designed for use in combat (instead of being cast ahead of time) have largely retained their original durations, but now have appropriately short casting times. Offensive buffs such as Draw Upon Holy Might, Holy Power and the like have been handled in this way as well. This preserves their "limited use" nature while still allowing you to deploy them as needed in the heat of the moment. The notable exception to this quick-casting trend are spells which directly attack others (either direct damage or disablers such as the hold line), because spells such as these should have a casting length which allows time to react and counter.

Finally, I've done my best to address some of the duds in the divine spell lineup in two ways. For the purists, I've provided alternate implementations of the original spells which improve upon them enough to give them a second look, without changing their original flavor. For the more progressive crowd, I've provided total replacements for some of these spells as optional components. My own tastes tend toward using these replacements, but they are optional - you can pick and choose which of them you'd like to use in an a la carte fashion.

My overall goal with these changes has been to reduce tedium, promote fun, and improve some of the anemic spells enough to give you a second thought about just what's worth memorizing. I've found these goals to have been realized in my own playtesting (when was the last time you had trouble choosing between all the attractive picks at the second divine spell tier?), and I hope you find it to be so as well.

This mod assumes use of the BG2 fixpack (for BG2 - with EasyTutu you're all set already). I don't know (or care) how well it will install with un-fixed vanilla spells. In terms of cross-compatibility, you can safely assume that any mod which changes divine spells (aside from the aforementioned fixpack) is not compatible. The one exception to this is Ding0's Enhanced Goodberries spell - it already provides an enhanced implementation of a weak divine spell, so I left that one alone.

Use the links below to review the various spell tiers in order to see what's changed. I've listed their updated descriptions along with some commentary detailing why changes were made.

One   Two    Three   Four    Five   Six    Seven   Innate    Optional

Download

Download the self-extracting package and extract it to your Tutu or Baldur's Gate 2 folder. The setup program will run automatically. Run the Setup-DivineIntervention.exe installer (WeiDU, of course) to uninstall it.

DivineIntervention-v1.exe (last updated 13 Jan 2013)