Why id my Mage suddenly start casting the "Stoneskin" spell automatically whenever the party rests or transports to another area of the map?
I checked the settings but I cannot find any trigger to this action.
Thanks, Muzzien

The default AI script for a mage will cast Stoneskin (and a few other spells, if memorized) immediately after resting. You can either click the lantern icon in the bottom right to completely disable party AI, or change an individual character's script by going to your character record screen and clicking Customize.

This is something they added for the EE version. Beamdog felt that it was too difficult for their customers to control their characters. So they set up default scripts to make sure their fans don't have to do much micromanaging when playing a game like Baldur's Gate. Basically they assume their fans are dumb.

No, they do not assume that.

The Advanced AI scripts for party members are optional features which can turned on and off any time, as well as they're highly configurable. If you don't want your character to cast spells, just turn that option off. These scripts may automate many things most players do, such as casting long duration protection spells after resting. It can also easily be configured to do minimal things, such as always keeping your thief looking for traps.

It helps new (completely new to BG) players who may not even be aware of those spells.

It helps old players who keep forgetting to cast long duration protective spells or think it's boring to have to manually recast them when your party rests or the spell wears off.

If you're an experienced player who prefers to control all actions of your party you can turn the advanced AI off.

While there're people who don't like these scripts, there're also those who use them, the feedback can be seen in https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/50956/advanced-ai.

Beambog will never call their fans "dumb", because they are too politically correct to do so. Therefore, they use instead terms like "less experienced people" and such, but in the immortal words of James Tiberius Kirk "that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet".

Yes they do. There's no other reason to default these "for dummies" scripts.

You can turn it off AFTER you have started the game. Which means Imoen in BG2 will waste a stoneskin spell right after the main cutscene. After that you can stop it from happening.

How does scripted combat help new players in BG? The spell useage is moronic. Why waste a stoneskin spell when all you are facing is a single goblin? You risk that spell running out before you make it to the really tough fight further ahead.

Old players forget to cast defensive spells? How on earth did they play the game in the past then? And why do you just assume the old and new players want Beamdog to hold their hand while playing the game? By having characters cast spells and the like by themselves, you are messing up their gameplay and playstyle. Inexperienced players will, if the game is too hard, lower the difficulty. You guys have even added a mode that makes the characters immortal. What is the point of devensive spells being cast for the player when the character's can't even die to begin with?

It is a roleplaying game. In an RPG the player is in the driver's seat. Golden rule. What you guys did was to place the player in the passenger's seat instead, by taking control of the characters. You added a default option so that the game will be played the way you want the players to play it.

Feedback from the Beamdog forums = some sort of evidence? You guys kicked and banned people who disagreed with the mess you made of SoD a year ago. Even transgendered players got banned when they pointed out the rotten writing. They had no problem calling their fans "gamergaters", bigots, and transphobic when they didn't like the railroaded, plot-hole filled, mess SoD was, though.

The CEO threw the fans under the buss right off the bat and blamed all criticism on bigotry. Even the people who just complained about the bugs got labeled the same way.

I personally love those AI function in EEs. It is one of the few things EEs do better than the classics for me. It made my life much easier for things like auto attacking, auto hiding or auto searching for traps.

I find it kinda annoying, but then I've been playing the BG series since before the EEs came out so I prefer "the old ways". Different strokes for different folks.

I still prefer the EEs to the classical versions since they work out of the box on Windows 10, and I don't need to muck around with mods to get a decent resolution.

I hate when people give credit to Beambog for things like this.

They didn't invent AI scripting. AI scripts are also present in the original games, they just aren't active by default and must be selected by the player. They have added some additional scripts and improved a bit the original ones. but that has been done (arguably in a better way) by several modders for the original games too.

What's next ? Beambog invented the fire and the wheel too ?

I never said Beamdog invented AI scripting. The scripts on the classic versions drove me crazy, in 15 years I probably tried 100 ways to make them work but they did not. EEs do that much better than classic versions "for me". I installed BG2 on over I say 20, you say 50 different machines in that period.

This is exactly the type of behavior that I find it annoying. Because invariably these "improvements" cause confusion both among old and new players alike. Rather then force them on you customer, a normal way would be to make them aware of the script by adding a note in a game, either in the tutorial or in the prologue.

I got the scripting in the classics to work fine in 5 minutes. What on earth did you do?
Or just include it in the lower difficulties, or better yet. Add a toggle for it in the settings.

Like a checkbox that says Dumb Player. Check it if you want the scripting to be on.

Just turn the A.I. off I guess. I still can't figure out why you think Beamdog holds everyone in contempt. The very feature itself says the opposite. As someone who is coming in to the franchise fresh I guess i might be missing the negatives of these features. I certainly have them customized and turned on. But if they hurt the game, one can just turn them off. They've clearly assumed your intelligent enough to do that. Beamdog isn't releasing these games to torment people lol.

I would consider that a reasonable approach, but I would suggest giving the option a nicer label.

(By the way, is there any AI setting that will make the character constantly sing? Sometimes in IE games, that's all I want a character to do.)

Not even the enhanced edition of Planescape: Torment?

(Note: Originally, "Not" was "Note" when I first typed this; I fixed the typo before pressing "Post my message", but felt like documenting it anyway.)