Main component

[Demivrgvs]

Actually vanilla Barkskin grants AC 6 at low levels, and slowly improves up to AC 1 at 20th caster level, thus heavy armors are better at any stage of the game.

Good heavy armor is usually (a) expensive or (b) hard to find. Barkskin is free from day 0, hour 0. Also, kensai has very little to balance his bonus thac0 and damage, because the gap between his AC and that of a fighter in heavy armor is not very large, especially when you consider that he can always wear rings/amulets of protection, since he never wears enchanted armor.

Even a common chain mail grants more protection than Barkskin at low levels, and I don't think it can be considered rare or expensive. Furthermore Barkskin is a 2nd level druid spell (erroneously granted to clerics in BG), thus you probably end up having a medium armor before being able to cast it.

 

Regarding rings/amulets of protections IR allows a character to wear one of them even with an enchanted armor as per PnP.

 

Anyway, don't forget that magical armors also have additional features (extremely good ones in some cases), and not being able to wear armors doesn't affect only the AC.

 

I can't understand if you're joking or what...

Me...? Joke? Naw...

 

(Seriously though, I only take shots at mods I really like... If I didn't like your work, I wouldn't have so much to say.)

I couldn't understand what you were saying...did you mean that you ignore the existance of Spell Revisions, that you don't like it, or that you don't want to consider that possibility?

 

Even if I do try to make my mods as balanced as possible in any imaginable configuration, it's obvious that some are better than others. In this particular case for example Spell Revisions Barkskin is not only more effective, but also more "fair" imo (Kensai wouldn't be advantaged more than armor wearing characters).

[jon-eli]

Even a common chain mail grants more protection than Barkskin at low levels, and I don't think it can be considered rare or expensive.

I'll confess, I haven't really thought *that* much about it... You may very well be right. There's just a nagging feeling in my gut that kensais are too easy to buff up, even in the vanilla game.

 

Furthermore Barkskin is a 2nd level druid spell (erroneously granted to clerics in BG)

Really? I can't believe I never noticed this... This is surely fixed by the fixpack.

 

Regarding rings/amulets of protections IR allows a character to wear one of them even with an enchanted armor as per PnP.

Oh... I misread the readme. I thought it said you could wear multiple rings/amulets of protection, but not with enchanted armor. I really shouldn't skim-read.

 

[...] did you mean that you ignore the existance of Spell Revisions, that you don't like it, or that you don't want to consider that possibility?

Well sometimes I just find it useful to consider a mod in isolation, rather than as part of a grand cosmos of mods.

[Demivrgvs]

Furthermore Barkskin is a 2nd level druid spell (erroneously granted to clerics in BG)

Really? I can't believe I never noticed this... This is surely fixed by the fixpack.

It's not fixed in FixPack because it's not a bug, designers simply didn't implemented AD&D sphere system, and thus both cleric and druid spellbook weren't top notch in terms of implementation imo. Divine Remix should "fix" this, and in a lesser extent Spell Revisions too.

 

[...] did you mean that you ignore the existance of Spell Revisions, that you don't like it, or that you don't want to consider that possibility?

Well sometimes I just find it useful to consider a mod in isolation, rather than as part of a grand cosmos of mods.

In fact I have taken on the entire discussion using vanilla's Barkskin if you noticed. I mentioned SR just because its version of Barkskin completely removes the issue we were discussing, but I hope I've been able to demostrate that IR's tweak is balanced on its own, with or without SR.

[jon-eli]

It's not fixed in FixPack because it's not a bug, designers simply didn't implemented AD&D sphere system

I'm having trouble believing you... I'll go check this, and I'll feel very stupid if you're right.

 

Edit: Okay, that's just dumb. I think I'll send Kevin Martens some hate mail.

 

In fact I have taken on the entire discussion using vanilla's Barkskin if you noticed.

Oh I noticed... And I appreciate that you haven't tried to shift the terms of debate. You've played very fairly.

 

[...] I hope I've been able to demostrate that IR's tweak is balanced on its own, with or without SR.

You have... It's been a lot of food for thought, so thankyou.

[DrAzTiK]

Let's look at the classes you've mentioned as "more powerful with the tweak":

 

I mean this classes are more powerfull in comparaison to power of "vanilla fighters" witch mean they will be in general more powerfull : not in heavy armor but in light armor. As you said and you have convinced me on this point, only cheated/power fighters are affected by dexterity penality (but Minsc too ) and I admit it's a nice way to penalized them. ( but I'am afraid they will rox as well and maybe better in light armors )

 

Some thinks disturb me about dexterity penality :

- as you have said one time :tables dexterity are inconsistent. So it seems difficult/impossible to make tweaks consistent and fair on it. ( I hope for you a mod will not intend to affect tables )

- many items increase STR in game while only one increasing dexterity. (but yes it's another problem.)

 

At last, and for my part, I am afraid always thinking that heavy armors should be significantly more appealing that lights armors especially for AC bonus ( while deserve some sort of nerfs and a bit more that just a movement penality) .Only +3AC (previous eg who appears 90% of time ) is nothing and compensate by slow and sometimes thac0 penality for ranged weapons. So hidden bonus remain more or less the only real advantage. (and some lights armor like Studded Leather get decent hidden bonus)

 

 

PS : if you find dexterity penality so interessing, why have you not apply them for large shield instead of the fair -2 thac0 penality ?

[Demivrgvs]

As you said and you have convinced me on this point, only cheated/power fighters are affected by dexterity penality (but Minsc too ) and I admit it's a nice way to penalized them. ( but I'am afraid they will rox as well and maybe better in light armors )

Minsc is a good candidate to wear any type of armors instead. Light armor to stealth (though I generally change him to barbarian to better fit the Rashemen lore), medium armor for combat (he would still get +1 AC in chain mail), and heavy armor in case you give him a fex dexterity increasing items.

 

Regarding them rocks more than before in light armors, once again, it's simply not possible.

 

Some thinks disturb me about dexterity penality :

- as you have said one time :tables dexterity are inconsistent. So it seems difficult/impossible to make tweaks consistent and fair on it. ( I hope for you a mod will not intend to affect tables )

- many items increase STR in game while only one increasing dexterity. (but yes it's another problem.)

- Yeah, I'd prefer more scalable tables than the current ones, but changing them would affect too much the game imo, as every in-game creature would be affected in "unknown" ways.

- this is because you're not using the main component

 

At last, and for my part, I am afraid always thinking that heavy armors should be significantly more appealing that lights armors especially for AC bonus ( while deserve some sort of nerfs and a bit more that just a movement penality) .Only +3AC (previous eg who appears 90% of time ) is nothing and compensate by slow and sometimes thac0 penality for ranged weapons. So hidden bonus remain more or less the only real advantage. (and some lights armor like Studded Leather get decent hidden bonus)

Once again, the system is much more balanced this way, heavy armors grants much better protection (+3 AC, which you still consider a little advantage but it's quite huge instead as it's pratically a +3 enhancement bonus!) and light armors offer better agility (no dexterity penalties).

 

Regarding the "+3 AC" being compensated by movement rate and THAC0 penalty on ranged weapons, it really depends on how you intend to develop the character. A first line melee tank very rarely need to run everywhere or use ranged weapons, thus making these penalties almost non existant for him/her.

 

PS : if you find dexterity penality so interessing, why have you not apply them for large shield instead of the fair -2 thac0 penality?

Because it's how 3rd edition PnP handle armors and shields, because it makes sense imo (heavy armors affects the ability to dodge attacks with quick movements, while large shields still offer great protection but makes attack movements more difficult), and because it ends up working better on the whole (having both affect the same thing would either cause massive dexterity loss, or incredible THAC0 loss).

[DrAzTiK]

A first line melee tank very rarely need to run everywhere or use ranged weapons, thus making these penalties almost non existant for him/her.

 

I personnaly find the slow effect like a -1 or -2 enhancement (especially for full plate). But yes, it's surely very subjective, difficult to estimate and vary in accordance to player playstyle, period of the game (BG1, II or TOB) etc...

 

Same for melee fighters using ranged weapons.

 

Does dexterity penality of 3rd edition PnP make more or less same result?? (coz dexterity tables are different)

 

ty;)

[Demivrgvs]

Does dexterity penality of 3rd edition PnP make more or less same result?? (coz dexterity tables are different)

I couldn't implement it just like PnP.

 

In PnP there's no dexterity penalty, but the dexterity of the wearer is capped depending on the armor encumberance. For example let's take your beloved full plate:

 

- in PnP the cap is at +1 bonus (DEX 12 in 3rd edition, but it would be DEX 15 in BG). This means that no matter how much dexterity your character has on his own or gets with buffs/enhancements, the character in full plate can't have more than DEX 12 while wearing the armor. Removing the armor obviously allow the character to fully benefits again from his/her dexterity.

 

- with IR a full plate reduce wearer DEX by 15%. The disadvantage over PnP is that the character must have a very good DEX score before being able to partially benefit from it. The advantage is that with IR a character with base DEX 19 (which is reduced to 16) performs better than one with DEX 18 (which is reduced to 15) even in full plate, one with DEX 20 performs even better, and so on.

 

Obviously the whole system would work better with a more scalable DEX table (AD&D one is really bad imo), but as I said I'm not inclined to change it.

[JediMindTrix]

To be perfectly honest, the main reason I did not install this mod on my most recent playthrough was because of the lack of modularity. For me, it's gone on the "Next Time" list.

[Demivrgvs]

To be perfectly honest, the main reason I did not install this mod on my most recent playthrough was because of the lack of modularity. For me, it's gone on the "Next Time" list.

Can you tell us what aspect of the main component really have to be optional for you?