Six's random blatherings.

[kthxbye]

Bard's spellcasting in light armor

Well, the elven chains will be anyway used by all kind of mage multiclasses, from my experience they are a lot more than bards, both as NPCs and as main character choice. Anyway, the hit elven mails would take if bards were to cast in light armor without problems is to be taken into consideration for sure, along with the probable balance issue in BG1.

 

Boots of stealth

I think the traps both in cloakwood and in the area north of the Mutamin's one can be detected and disarmed. I am sure you can detect and disarm the ones in cloakwood, not sure about the other area - but I think the other area has only one. Problem is, usually the spawns are near enough to the traps to see your thief while the traps are being disarmed, so it's not that easy - invisibility gets broken on disarm trap I think?

 

EDIT: Use Any Item HLA

I've noticed a lot of "use eff files to prevent UAI to grant those abilities if item's equipped", but if we really do this for every item which could have a reason to not be used by any other class than the one it was restricted for in the first place, no one will ever use UAI. Wondrous Gloves should work for bards only, Carsormyr (by sense) for paladins only, Staff of the Magi (by sense) for mages/sorcerers only, and so on - leaving UAI to be effective only with base items like armors (everyone with UAI won't anyway wear an armor he wasn't able to put on before, since it would hinder spellcasting/thieving abilities) and weapons in which the character can't have proficient points. If that's the direction I think an easier solution would be to just cut off UAI, instead of making a lot of work to achieve basically the same thing.

[kthxbye]

Sorry for the double post.

 

Bard's spellcasting in light armor

What if, using eff files, we give bards half of the armor's usual spellcasting hindrance? If the armor says it has 20% casting failure, or +2 casting time, a bard would have 10% casting failure (or +1 casting time). That way I think they shouldn't be too powerful for BG1, and elven chainmails and spellcasting armors in general would anyway prove useful.

Always speaking only for armors up to the chainmail (and bucklers?).

 

UAI HLA

I've re-read what I wrote and noticed it could be taken as a critic or as sarcasm. It wasn't either of them, but just a plain thought I had.

I personally would leave alone the UAI HLA and wouldn't care about items being exploited using UAI, since I get that the aim of the mod isn't to cut off every exploit hardcore gamers could use.

Anyway, I think UAI should either work for each and every item or not work at all: it should mimic the 3rd edition ability thieves have to "mimic" requirements they don't have to use items, so a UAI character here would mimic the requirement of being a bard for Wondrous Gloves as well as for every other item. If IR don't want this, I personally I'm ok with cutting out the UAI HLA. Cutting it out for certain items, but maintaining it for other ones makes little sense to me though.. I'd suggest to either go for a full cut out, or don't touch it at all.

[Shaitan]

IIRC it is not possible for a thief to detect and those traps in Spider Wood. Am I wrong?

 

Speaking for tutu games: yes you are wrong

[Salk]

IIRC it is not possible for a thief to detect and those traps in Spider Wood. Am I wrong?

 

Speaking for tutu games: yes you are wrong

 

Good to know.

 

I never managed to detect any traps there but I guess I didn't give my thief time enough.

[SixOfSpades]

Boots of Steath

Yes, all traps in BG1 (including Web traps in the areas mentioned) can be Detected and Disarmed, except for one in Durlag's Tower and about 7 in the Final Battle. Disarming a Trap doesn't instantly make you visible, it merely causes you to break Steath--the time between caming out of Stealth and becoming visible depends on your Stealth score. And simply turning on your Detect Traps causes you to break Stealth as well, so if you want to Detect/Disarm while remaining hidden, you need high scores in both skills, which is somewhat unlikely for a Level 4/5 party. But with the Spider's Boots of Stealth, you don't even need to bother with putting points in Traps, you can just prance gaily through the forest.

 

Bards' spellcasting in light armor

I confess that I have an ulterior motive in objecting to it: It'll bork one of the Advantages of one of the kits I'll be releasing shortly. The Goliard is essentially a Cleric/Bard, and so like a Cleric he has full casting abilities in any armor he can currently wear (up to Chain during SoA, and he has access to UAI). If all Bards can perform this feat (at least in armor up to Chain), the Goliard will lose some relative appeal, as well as a good deal of the Cleric flavor. So that's one of my reasons for arguing against the rulechange. The other is that the various Elven Chains in the game have been doing just fine for Bards so far, and now that they can be combined with items of Protection they should do even better.

 

(Also, note to Demi: Please adjust all armors so that the "Arcane Spell Failure" effect is delivered through a .spl or .eff, to which the Goliard can be immune.)

 

UAI HLA

You'll notice that in all the "Use EFF files to circumvent UAI" suggestions I've made, I only lock out part of an item's enchantments--those specific enchantments that could be stacked with others, to achieve unbalanced results. Monks cannot use Roranach's Horn, the Jansen AdventureWear or the Defender of Easthaven, so the +20% Physical Resistances I suggested for the Bands of Focus is quite all right for them. But a Fighter/Thief could stack all of those with Hardiness and get 105% Resistances for 1 turn, which is nearly an entire battle. Locking out the Resistances for all but the item's intended recipients helps keep the game fair--and Thieves & Bards would still get the benefits of all the Bands' other enchantments.

Preventing certain classes/kits from selecting specific HLAs can also be done, but I'm sure that'll come up in Kit Revisions. For what it's worth, my Kitpack prevents Kensai->Thieves and Wizard Slayer->Thieves from choosing UAI.

[kthxbye]

Bard's spellcasting in light armor

Well, I wouldn't allow bards to cast in light armor, as I think they're fine as they are, so I'm against too. Anyway I think, if that will be implemented, going with an half hindrance instead of a complete immunity is better.

 

UAI HLA

I still think that an "all or nothing" approach would be better. Taking out part of the enchantment makes little sense to me, apart from an hardcore gamer point of view - and I prefer the game to have sense before being exploit-free. If you take out part of an item's enhancement only for combos' sake, you'll most likely have RP related holes. If you stick with the RP description of the items, you should prevent a lot of powers to work, and like I said it would make the UAI HLA almost useless.

In the end, I hope that approach won't be used and the items will work in the same way for everyone, UAI or not. If someone's want to exploit the UAI HLA it's his own choice - and I think that even with UAI, item combination won't grant that much power in an install with tactical mods.

[Ilyich]

Nevermind, didn't see a solution in the ReadMe. I must learn to read more thoroughly. Edited out my suggestion.

[Shaitan]

Demi/Mike allready pointed out in the readme how you can comment out single items.

[DrAzTiK]

Considering web remain a very good spell (even with SR) , I am not very fond with Boots of Stealth adding immunity to Web.

As someone suggested, an immunity to Web for Dark Elven Chain seems interressing...

[Jarno Mikkola]

...IRC it is not possible for a thief to detect and those traps in Spider Wood. Am I wrong?

It is. And, yes.

UAI HLA.

Don't touch it at all.

[Demivrgvs]

Bards' spellcasting in light armor

First, I have to smack myself for not thinking of the Bard-specific EFF files myself. Now that that's done, again I ask: If Bards suffer no kind of Spellcasting Failure for any kind of armor up to Chain, who's going to care about Elven Chain any more? Just people like Thief/Mages and Fighter/Mages?

First of all, I've said myself that I'm not sure about this tweak thus as of now I'm only playing the devil's advocate. I've never said bards should be able to cast spells in medium armors, and chain mails are medium armor, thus elven chain would still be a better solution for bards. Then I'd like to point out that the "just F/M - T/M characters", and all their multi-dual variants, are actually 99% of the characters normally using elven chains, thus I such a tweak wouldn't "really hit" elven chains at all, it would only improve bards effectiveness in battle (a lot).

 

 

Use Any Item HLA

I think UAI should either work for each and every item or not work at all: it should mimic the 3rd edition ability thieves have to "mimic" requirements they don't have to use items...

Yeah, but this ability in PnP allow thieves to use scrolls and wands, not to equip forbidden weapons such as a Holy Avenger, or worse allowing a Kensai/Thief to wear armors!

 

Use Any Item will only be available to Bards within Kit Revisions, and thieves will get Use Scrolls instead (as per Refinements mod). Incidentally bards are also

 

 

* * *

 

Boots of Stealth

Yes, all traps in BG1 (including Web traps in the areas mentioned) can be Detected and Disarmed, except for one in Durlag's Tower and about 7 in the Final Battle. Disarming a Trap doesn't instantly make you visible, it merely causes you to break Steath--the time between caming out of Stealth and becoming visible depends on your Stealth score.

 

But with the Spider's Boots of Stealth, you don't even need to bother with putting points in Traps, you can just prance gaily through the forest.

Since when those web traps are only reason to have a good find trap skill?! There are gazillion of traps in BG. Furthermore, being able to disarm those web traps makes the boots even less "overpowered" to my eyes, not to mention that disarming them gives xp, passing over them with these boots doesn't.

 

If you ask me, after thinking again about them so much I still don't find a single pair of Spider's Boots of Stealth overpowered, not even for BG1. The real issue is that it seems you can hace 2-3 pairs of them, but this is something I'd like to prevent even if we opt to revert the boots to their vanilla's version. I'll think how the huge background I've given them can be affected by the loss of its main feature, and see if I can adjust it.

 

 

Gloves of Pick Pocketing / the Burglar

There's not really much point in precisely duplicating Jan's gloves, if you ask me. Better to remove the Lockpicking bonus, and give the Gloves a 2x/day ability (duration 1 turn, perhaps?) that raises Pickpocketing by an additional 15%, and grants Luck--I forget the specifics, but Luck might prevent the permanent 1% chance of rolling a "Critical Fail." They'd be balanced for BG1 too.

Sorry, the online description was'nt correct, these gloves also grants +5% chance to score critical hits. That being said, Jansen Techno-gloves are indeed too similar, and that's their notes currently say "unchanged, though I don't like them to be identical to the Gloves of the Rogue."

 

P.S X/day bonus to pickpocketing is the best way to make sure players won't equip this item ever. Why should I keep the gloves equipped after using the ability?

 

Gloves of Missile Snaring

Wait--so the intent is to be a permanent Protection from Missiles, available only to Monks and those using Single Weapon? The effect would be too strong, even if you could perfect the implementation--which might not be feasible.

I don't understand...there's a shield which reflects missiles back to the source (much like a permanent 6th lvl spell, Physical Mirror), and this item only blocks them, while (theoretically) forbidding to equip anything in the off-hand. If I can make it work as intended it's surely not too strong at all. I have a solution in mind to make sure shields cannot be used, but I'm almost sure for off hands weapons the -20 to thac0 is the only solution.

 

Better to go back to the AC vs. Missiles (however banal it might be) and simply set all Weapon Styles except Single Weapon at 0 stars while equipped.

There's no way to lower a proficiency.

 

Gauntlets of Parrying

Decent, but I think it's wrong to remove the Gauntlets of Weapon Skill, which many players might prefer. If Gauntlets of Parrying & Power Attack are to appear in-game, they should do so as alternatives, not direct replacements. Which doesn't really fall into IR's job description.

The goal here is pretty simple, instead of having a lesser-normal-greater version of the very same item I've tried to make the three gauntlets of weapon skill a little different: a defensive oriented one, a power oriented one and a speed oriented one. This way none of them will become completely obsolete when a more powerful one is found.

 

Gauntlets of Power Attack

How far is the victim knocked back? I for one don't see the appeal of moving my opponent out of my melee range (at least, as an HLA, I have the option of choosing when to shove the bad guy out of my face), especially if it's at the cost of softening all my other hits.

Smite's knockback is ridiculous yes, this version (and the one I'll implement with KR) knock back the target of only few feets, and with a two handed weapon you probably have to make only one step or two to hit the target in melee again.

 

Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization

About the 1/2 ApR bonus: I heard that there was an issue in trying to stack effects adding 1/2 ApR--it caused strangeness. What kind of strangeness? Can you describe the ruckus, sir?

Two effects of this type when used together may cause apr rate to goes up to 5 regardless of the base value.

 

Gauntlets of Crushing

Instead of anti-Golem stuff, they should also grant a -2 AC bonus and 10% Physical Resistances. Why? Well, with Item Revisions, regular Warriors get Large and Medium shields that grant significantly larger AC bonuses, the ability to wear Full Plate+5 in conjunction with items of Protection, and every magical Helmet grants an AC bonus now. Monks need to be able to compete.

I've played a Monk only once, but I found this class incredibly powerful later on (alreay good AC, tons of attacks, great saves, good thac0, almost complete immunity to magic), and even with Ascension installed it performed really well in ToB. The real issue with them imo is that they probably are quite weak at low levels.

 

That being said, what you suggests is almost the same I did for another pair ac bracers, and you should know by now how I feel about lesser/greater versions of the same item.

 

Bracers of Blinding Strike

I don't like making all but a single pair of Bracers of Defense obsolete at one stroke.

This is like saying you don't like a unique Leather Armor +2 making a plain Leather Armor +1 obsolete.

 

I would lose the AC setting, and replace it with each melee hit having a 5% chance to Haste the user for 1 round (no Fatigue modifier).

The 'on hit' haste-like effect is interesting, I'd probably vote for something like this, but the AC stays.

 

Blessed Bracers

Good, but the Resurrection still looks misplaced on it. I'd replace it with either Champion's Strength (cast simultaneously with Righteous Magic?) or a weaker version of Holy Word.

Misplaced? Why? Champion's Strength or Divine Power surely make sense yes, but resurrection too imo.

 

Wondrous Gloves

I see the Gloves being used by Mage/Thieves to supplement the Robe of Larloch and the Metaspell Influence. Guess it's time for another EFF file to circumvent UAI: Only Bards get the faster casting time--and extra spellslots in Levels 5 & 6, too.

Mmm...yeah, I could do it via EFF files to make sure that even with UAI mage/thieves cannot benefit from it...but if I start doing something like than it may become difficult to "draw a line". Another player may then suggest to make Carsomyr's Holy and Dispel ability not usable by non-paladins via UAI, and so on. Personally I think UAI is inevitably overpowered (except when used by bards imo) and badly implemented (really too many exploits), and fighting against it within IR may not be the right choice.

 

Bands of Focus

That's good for the Kensai, but absolutely useless for the Monk. I would do something like this: -3 bonus to AC, +20% Physical Resistances, +15 max. hp, and -2 THAC0 and +2 Damage when attacking with fists. Only usable by Monks and Kensai . . . although the Physical Resistances should be locked behind an EFF file.

It seems too powerful to me...does monk's innate AC count as 'base AC'? I always thought they implemented it via 'inc/dec' AC bonuses, and in that case a base AC 3 is a really good one.

[Ardanis]

does monk's innate AC count as 'base AC'?

It does Whether it's hardcoded or clab I know not.

 

UAI

I too think it's better to be left alone. If anything, lets make it a separate component for those who want to wear normally restricted items while at the same time not receiving all of their bonuses. But I doubt it really would be that much demanded.

 

Bracers of Blinding Strike

The 'on hit' haste-like effect is interesting

Yes.

 

Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization

W#hy not to give them full +1 apr? You get those not somewhere, but at the very end of Watcher's keep, all too close to the end of game.

[kthxbye]

UAI HLA

Demi, actually the ability in the 3rd ed allows the use of any magical item, given the character wins the check. In the ability's description, it makes an example with a dwarven throwing hammer used by an halfling: if the halfling wins the check, the hammer will grant her all the abilities that it would've granted to a dwarven character. (Source: page 57 of the Player's Manual, edition 3.0, italian)

Apart from that, the suggestion to make it an optional component is a good one. I still don't see any RP reason not to use an "all or nothing" approach here, as the suggested approach breaks immersion in a way I don't like (you can't use that ability because it's too powerful with UAI paired with that other item). If you want to do it, I'd vote to make it optional.

EDIT: Actually changing UAI to Use Any Scroll/Wand is fine for me (makes a lot more sense than UAI imho), but I understand it's for Kit Revisions, not for IR.

Also, an armor-wearing kensai->thief with UAI is a plain exploit of the system in my eyes. A player doing that obviously doesn't care about roleplay, and as such I expect him to also exploit other things inside the game. From a RP point of view, such a character doesn't make any sense. Instead, a lot of "combos" (a wizard/thief using Wondrous Gloves, for example) aren't that overpowered and makes sense: from that example in particular, it would mean that a caster character uses his thieving abilities to use a casting enhancer item.

Mmhh.. I really like the idea to turn UAI into UAW/S.. So, you talking about this KR..?

 

EDIT 2: Bard's casting in light armor

Actually I think the "up to chainmails" is my fault, as I wrongly remembered them as light armors. My bad, sorry.

[SixOfSpades]

Gloves of Pick Pocketing / the Burglar

There's not really much point in precisely duplicating Jan's gloves, if you ask me. Better to remove the Lockpicking bonus, and give the Gloves a 2x/day ability (duration 1 turn, perhaps?) that raises Pickpocketing by an additional 15%, and grants Luck--I forget the specifics, but Luck might prevent the permanent 1% chance of rolling a "Critical Fail." They'd be balanced for BG1 too.

Sorry, the online description was'nt correct, these gloves also grants +5% chance to score critical hits. That being said, Jansen Techno-gloves are indeed too similar, and that's their notes currently say "unchanged, though I don't like them to be identical to the Gloves of the Rogue."

These two sentences alone make me want to step away from this entire thread. You think that all unique items deserve unique enchantments, that's good, so do I--but when you insist on giving perfectly good items enchantments that they didn't need and frankly have nothing to do with the original idea behind the item (WTF would a pickpocket care about scoring Critical Hits?), that's going a bit too far. Then, when you stand on your trumped-up item, look back, judge that it's too similar to a vanilla item, and then imply that the similarity is the vanilla item's fault, that's just beyond the pale.

[Demivrgvs]

Monk's AC

does monk's innate AC count as 'base AC'?

It does Whether it's hardcoded or clab I know not.

Too bad...it means things like Spirit Armor and Bracers of Armor don't work well on them at all, and it doesn't make much sense to me. But this means it's not my fault if Band of Focus aren't great for monks, as the very Bracers of Armor serie is not good for them.

 

 

Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization

Why not to give them full +1 apr? You get those not somewhere, but at the very end of Watcher's keep, all too close to the end of game.

Mmm...it seems a little too much to me, isn't it?

 

 

UAI HLA

Demi, actually the ability in the 3rd ed allows the use of any magical item, given the character wins the check. In the ability's description, it makes an example with a dwarven throwing hammer used by an halfling: if the halfling wins the check, the hammer will grant her all the abilities that it would've granted to a dwarven character.

I'm looking at it right now, and yeah, you're right...though doing it still requires skill checks and any sane DM wouldn't allow exploits such as allowing a Wizard Slayer/Thief to wear any magical equipment.

 

Actually changing UAI to Use Any Scroll/Wand is fine for me (makes a lot more sense than UAI imho), but I understand it's for Kit Revisions, not for IR.

...

Mmhh.. I really like the idea to turn UAI into UAW/S.. So, you talking about this KR..?

Yeah, as I said I think I'll do something like that for KR, while bards can keep Use Any Item because in their hands it works pretty well imo, and it makes them a little more unique. The Bard should be the "jack of all trades" after all.

 

 

Gloves of Pick Pocketing / the Burglar

Sorry, the online description wasn't correct, these gloves also grants +5% chance to score critical hits. That being said, Jansen Techno-gloves are indeed too similar, and that's why their notes currently say "unchanged, though I don't like them to be identical to the Gloves of the Rogue."

These two sentences alone make me want to step away from this entire thread. You think that all unique items deserve unique enchantments, that's good, so do I--but when you insist on giving perfectly good items enchantments that they didn't need and frankly have nothing to do with the original idea behind the item (WTF would a pickpocket care about scoring Critical Hits?), that's going a bit too far. Then, when you stand on your trumped-up item, look back, judge that it's too similar to a vanilla item, and then imply that the similarity is the vanilla item's fault, that's just beyond the pale.

Well, I think you're judging my (our) work really too quickly. This is how these items ended up looking like this:

a) Gloves of Pickpocketing surely wasn't a "perfectly good item" because there was absolutely no reason at all to keep it equipped. Any player could simply equip it few instants to pickpocket a character/store, and then equip something else which could effectively be useful more than 0,01% of game time. When we discussed this we all agreed to this.

b) I had to find a way to make them appealing enough to remain equipped, thus I come up with the current solution. Again, we discussed it, as I almost never do something without consensus.

c) NPC's custom items was amongst the very last things I/we worked on, and only since V2. That being said when I say "I don't like them to be identical to the Gloves of the Rogue" I don't imply that the latter has more rights to be what it currently is...simply that as of now the two items are like that and I'm not super happy about it.

d) "WTF would a pickpocket care about scoring Critical Hits?" Actually the concept is almost unchanged imo: the gloves grants improved swiftness and precision of hand, is it so strange?