About kit usabilities

[SixOfSpades]

The "tutorial-ish" stuff is material that most of you already know, I just wanted to be sure all bases were covered.

 

 

In order to get some real control over item restrictions on new kits & adjustments to existing kits, here's one possible setup of what we could do:

1) Flag all Large Shields and Full Plate as being unusable by Blades, Skalds, and Jesters.

2) Flag all Large & Medium Shields, and Plate & Full Plate as being unusable by Skalds & Jesters.

3) Flag all Large, Medium & Small Shields, and all Full Plate, Plate, and Splint as being unusable by Jesters.

4) Flag all Elven Chain as being usable by Archers, but unusable by Totemic Druids.

5) Optional: Flag all Hide armors as being unusable by Priests of Talos.

6) Flag all of the lesser Mage Robes as being wearable by pretty much anybody (including Shapeshifters).

 

The changes to the Bard kits are "invisible": Bards can't use these items anyway, so it doesn't matter, and after they get UAI it still won't matter.

The change to the Elven Chains is almost invisible: The only way to see it is with a Totemic Druid->Fighter, and none of the Elven Chains in the game are suited for Fighter/Druids anyway.

The changes of "Archers can wear Elven Chain" and "Universal Mage Robes" are easily visible, and have been suggested (and implemented) for/by other mods.

The change to the Priest of Talos is easily visible, and is closely related for the plans for Kit Revisions. True, the suggestion was for the Stormlord of Talos to be able to wear anything up to and including Hide, but I needed a kit that could be flagged against Hide, and it was either Talos or the Berserker--and it would make no sense at all for the Berserker to be unable to wear Hide when he can wear everything else.

 

Anyway! With this setup in place, we (and other modders as well) could dictate armor restrictions very precisely.

Want a kit to be able to wear Splint, but not Plate? Add the Skald flag to your existing ones.

Want everything up to Hide Armor, but not Elven Chain or heavier? Add the Archer and Totemic Druid flags.

Want access to nothing heavier than Robes, and to be able to use Small (but not Medium) Shields? Add the Shapeshifter & Skald flags.

Want to be able to wear no armor at all? Stick an undroppable item called "Clothing" in your Armor slot.

 

Long story short, this system would be a way to enable setting a kit's armor restrictions at ANY level, between Full Plate, Plate, Splint, Chain, Elven Chain, Hide, Studded Leather, Leather, Mage Robes, and no armor at all. Shields too, although they're somewhat awkwardly tied to the levels of armor. None of the kits involved have any weapon restrictions, so weapon usability will be completely unaffected by the outline above. For dictating what types of weapons you'd like the kit to be unable to use, forget about usability flags--it's much easier & more precise to simply not allow that kit to put any proficiency points in those weapons. The non-proficiency penalty will, in almost all cases, be enough to discourage the player from equipping them. And of course, no kit can use item types that its parent class cannot: If an item is forbidden to a character's class OR kit (or Race, or Alignment), the character cannot use it.

[yarpen]

For dictating what types of weapons you'd like the kit to be unable to use, forget about usability flags--it's much easier & more precise to simply not allow that kit to put any proficiency points in those weapons.

I hate this solution. It's good only when someone don't need to create kits similiar to these in-game.

[SixOfSpades]

I don't understand. Can you give an example of what you think the system can't do? Or are you unsatisfied with merely "discouraging" the use of certain weapon types, and you wish to actually prevent certain kits from using them?

[Ardanis]

Duh, I honestly think it might be less messy to 180 every armor, especially since there aren't too many of them. What to do with dualclassing, however, may become trickier, as 180 overwrites everything.

[yarpen]

Or are you unsatisfied with merely "discouraging" the use of certain weapon types, and you wish to actually prevent certain kits from using them?

I am unsatisfied with using non-existant in vanilla game methods of discouraging the use of weapons. When I was creating kits I was always thinking about making them familiar in term of powers and abilities to these original ones (with the little exception of Armiger). That's just the difference in philosophy of modding - personally I've wanted to create something which could be installed on game, and when person who has never seen BG2 tries it he cannot discover any part added from mod. Your solution breaks the wall.

[SixOfSpades]

I honestly think it might be less messy to 180 every armor, especially since there aren't too many of them. What to do with dualclassing, however, may become trickier, as 180 overwrites everything.

Okay, what the heck is 180?

 

I am unsatisfied with using non-existant in vanilla game methods of discouraging the use of weapons.

. . . personally I've wanted to create something which could be installed on game, and when person who has never seen BG2 tries it he cannot discover any part added from mod. Your solution breaks the wall.

Influencing weapon selection by controlling the maximum number of proficiency points has plenty of precent in vanilla BG2: Consider the Archer, who can Grandmaster in bows but can only acquire Proficiency in melee weapons. The only "wall-breaking" would be if the player sees a Fighter kit that says "essentially cannot use Two-Handed Swords" and then once in the game he discovers that he can in fact equip a Two-Handed Sword, but he takes rather prohibitive THAC0/Damage/ApR penalties for doing so.

 

 

The only way to get fine control of actual usability on weapons is to do something so drastic and radical that I seriously doubt it will ever be done: Divorce all kit flags from their respective kits. The flags no longer mean "Beastmaster," "Cavalier," "Invoker," and Wizard Slayer," they mean "made of metal," "ranged weapon," "from the Enchantment school," and "has pro-magic enchantments." There are 51 kit flags to use--subtract 1 for each of the 9 levels of armor, 1 for each of the 21 types of weapons, 1 for each of the 4 levels of Shields, and that leaves 17 flags for miscellaneous attributes like those described above. So the Kensai kit would no longer be barred from items that have an "Unusable by Kensai" flag, it would be barred from items that have a "heavier than Robes," "ranged weapon," "is Helmet," "is Gloves," or "is any type of Shield" flag.

While nice in theory, this method will almost certainly never be implemented: Along with the huge workload of performing massive edits to literally every item in the game (although a good portion of that could be automated), it would mean complete incompatibility with just about every other mod in existence.

[Jarno Mikkola]

I honestly think it might be less messy to 180 every armor, especially since there aren't too many of them. What to do with dualclassing, however, may become trickier, as 180 overwrites everything.

Okay, what the heck is 180?

#180: Item: Can't Use Item [180]... would be my guess.

 

By the way, did I ever say that I really hate all the class restrictions the game has? As spiritually it might be success, but if we take a grand loook of the results, it fails BIG.

Example; We take the mages weapon and armor restrictions, 'K, they are really bad compared to a 2nd level Fighter Dualed to a Mage, especially as the character can then get the excess Strength score(1-100), better armors (elven chain anyone?), more proficiency points etc.

All this cause the original mage can't for the life of it use a Long Bow, that a dualed equal can(ok, it's 2500 xp less, but on level 40, it doesn't really matter), even if it had lived it's whole life in the woods as an elf.

[yarpen]

Jarno - I think that what you're looking for is AoE mod at Pocketplane - it removes class restriction but rises attribute restrictions. But I'm pretty sure that you already know it.

 

The only "wall-breaking" would be if the player sees a Fighter kit that says "essentially cannot use Two-Handed Swords" and then once in the game he discovers that he can in fact equip a Two-Handed Sword, but he takes rather prohibitive THAC0/Damage/ApR penalties for doing so.

But still, that's inconsistency. And I was talking about exactly this thing. Maybe for you it's only cosmetic - but a lot of people will agree with me that it's just bad solution.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Jarno -

Well, I was more thinking that I would use the UAI and this table set to have 5 in every slot.

 

But still, that's inconsistency. And I was talking about exactly this thing. Maybe for you it's only cosmetic - but a lot of people will agree with me that it's just bad solution.

Especially for mages, as it will give them far greater Thac0 penalty than a fighter.

[Demivrgvs]

Sorry for not having said a word on this topic before...

 

Usability flags: KR is not going to add new custom kits (except perhaps few cleric kits based on different deities), thus I don't think this mod would be a good place for a complete overhaul of the flag system.

 

By the way, did I ever say that I really hate all the class restrictions the game has? As spiritually it might be success, but if we take a grand loook of the results, it fails BIG.

Example; We take the mages weapon and armor restrictions, 'K, they are really bad compared to a 2nd level Fighter Dualed to a Mage, especially as the character can then get the excess Strength score(1-100), better armors (elven chain anyone?), more proficiency points etc.

All this cause the original mage can't for the life of it use a Long Bow, that a dualed equal can(ok, it's 2500 xp less, but on level 40, it doesn't really matter), even if it had lived it's whole life in the woods as an elf.

I agree with you, but if you ask me the real problem is that "dual-class" system is really a broken system, which leads to nonsense things such as the one you just mentioned.

 

Multi-class system instead is fine imo, and we can even make the concept shine a lot more via custom HLAs.

 

Example :

 

Fighter/Mage (multi) vs Fighter-Mage (dual) - (but the same can be said about other combinations of classes)

 

1) A multiclass F/M is not as good as a single class fighter at fighting, and is not as powerful as a single class mage.

 

2) A dual F-M is not as good as a single class fighter at fighting, but can be as powerful as a single class mage.

 

 

1) and 2) are more than enough to understand how much the dual-system is broken (playing a fighter dualed to mage is always better than playing a single class mage), but then we can add few things too:

 

3) multiclassed fighters can't get grandmastery, dualed fighters can. Anyway, this can easily be fixed by letting both reach it.

 

4) dualed characters can use a kit, multiclassed characters can't. This is a HUGE advantage, and it leads to uber effective combinations (such as Kensai-Mage, Berserker-Cleric) and overpowered/broken combinations (such as Kensai-Thief, Wizard Slayer-Thief with UAI).

 

5) multiclassed characters have a custom HLA table. Another quite important thing as it means multi-classes can be customized (both to balance them and to make them unique) while dualed character can't.