SubtleMods: NPC_EE - in-game customization for NPCs

[Hypaspist]

And here's the Haer'dalis kit idea (F/M/T), a mix between an Agent and a Hexblade with some twists. He'd still be a Bard, but with more flavour, fitting his Doomguard background:

Doomguard Agent: Members of the Doomguard, often nicknamed "Sinkers", believe that the Multiverse is slowly falling apart, and they delight in its inevitable destruction. Doomguard Agents often take upon the role of actors, musicians, court members or traveling bards in order to gain access to broad and influential audiences. In their travels throughtout all the corners of the Multiverse, they have acquired voluminous knowledge of culture, history and art, which they use to entice any who would listen to give in to the Entropy. As they operate indpendently and often in alien, hostile worlds, they have, in addition to magical powers, acquired the skills of a thief; in emergencies, they can also brawl their way out of trouble.

Abilities:
– Lore increased by 5 points per level.
– May use Emanation: Malison, an aura which causes all enemies in an area of effect to suffer a -1 penalty to Luck and saving throws.
– From 6th level, may use Hex Aura, which causes all enemies within 3 feet suffer a 1-point penalty to Luck and saving throws. In addition, each time the bard strikes an enemy (up to once per round), the enemy must save vs. spells or this penalty is increased by one more point, for three rounds. (This aura disables the bard's spellcasting.)
– Automatically gains knowledge of the following spells: Disintegrate, Finger of Death, Death Fog, Greater Malison, Emotion: Hopelessness and Ray of Enfeeblement.
– While bards memorize spells like a wizard, they can cast them spontaneously, like a sorcerer.
– Once per day per 6 levels of experience, may use the Touch of Entropy ability.

TOUCH OF ENTROPY: The Doomguard Agent's hand briefly becomes a conduit of the Negative Energy Plane. When the Agent makes a successful melee attack against a creature, that creature receives a +3 penalty to all their rolls, including THAC0 and Saving Throws and must make a Saving Throw vs. Death or be be transformed into dust. There is also a good chance that this will destroy some if not all of the items that the creature is carrying.

Restrictions:
– May cast spells one level later than a wizard.
– May not learn spells from the Abjuration, Conjuration, or Necromancy schools of magic.
– May not learn 8th- or 9th-level spells.
– Backstab damage limited to a 2x multiplier.
– Permanent -4 penalty to saves vs. Death.
– May not learn any other Bard Song effects.

----

Comments:

- I think that the Death save penalty fits very well with the theme of the kit.

- The schools of magic the Agents are barred from were chosen with the theme in mind as well - Abjuration (protection), Conjuration (creation) and Necromancy (disturbs the entropy).

- I'm not sure if it's possible to bar the kit from using a spell school altogether, but still give them access to some spells from it (as proposed).

- Since most Bard Songs are focused on improving the party, they don't fit very well (Death Ward, Courage, Luck etc.) hence the restriction. This also serves to better balance the inclusion of Touch of Entropy.

- Touch of Entropy and Emanation: Malison/Hex Aura should ideally stack their effects.

Edited December 29, 2019 by Hypaspist

[Hypaspist]

Seeing your latest kit - The Elegist made me think of how to improve the Doomguard kit further, with unique spell school access. Necromancy would seem to fit, but it also has spells that don't fit the "embrace the enthropy" theme.

[Cahir]

Hey Doc, a question. How exactly does component 2000: NPC kit choices work? Does it mean that I can literally choose any kit from the ones I have installed (i.e from Bardic Wonders or I Hate Undead kit packs) for any NPC (including modded NPC's)? Because that would be freaking cool.

[Jarno Mikkola]

14 minutes ago, Cahir said:

Hey Doc, a question. How exactly does component 2000: NPC kit choices work? Does it mean that I can literally choose any kit from the ones I have installed (i.e from Bardic Wonders or I Hate Undead kit packs) for any NPC (including modded NPC's)? Because that would be freaking cool.

You could run the install and find out... But the very first post says... so nope, you cannot choose, you have a few options. But you can use the Level 1 NPCs... if it works.

On 8/27/2015 at 5:28 PM, subtledoctor said:

There are only a few such options, because there are only so many class changes that work - for lore reasons, I'm not changing Jaheira from druid, or Quayle from cleric/mage, or Kagain from fighter, etc. Side benefit: less work for me!

[Cahir]

Jarno... in the next paragraph Subtledoctor wrote:

Then, in-game, the magic happens: the mod generates a script on the fly that will detect any kits in your game, including mod kits. Every single joinable NPC in the game will get an innate ability to add a kit, or to switch to a new kit, and they will have options for every kit that their class (or multiclass!) allows.

So, unless I misanderstood, this means I can choose any kit for any NPC via innate ability. 

Edited April 13, 2020 by Cahir

[Jarno Mikkola]

15 minutes ago, Cahir said:

this means I can choose any kit for any NPC via innate ability. 

Nope. You can put a priest kit to a cleric, via a dialog that the ability starts... but not a Paladin one. That's what the sum means. And if you just read that, then why not :?

Quote

You could run the install and find out..

 

[Cahir]

Ok I re-read this paragraph and it seems you might be right. It still looks bloody awesome. There are plenty of mod-added kits to choose something more fitting to a NPC than vanilla class/kit. 

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, Cahir said:

Hey Doc, a question. How exactly does component 2000: NPC kit choices work? Does it mean that I can literally choose any kit from the ones I have installed (i.e from Bardic Wonders or I Hate Undead kit packs) for any NPC (including modded NPC's)? Because that would be freaking cool.

Yes - within the confines of what the NPC's class allows.  I'll give you an example.  In my current game I made Yoshimo into a multi fighter/thief (I allow humans to multiclass and demihumans to dual-class).  He still starts with the Bounty Hunter kit. (My mods change the name to "Hunter.")

Spoiler

When he uses the "choose a kit" ability, it gives him the option to take any single-class thief kit, or any multiclass fighter/thief kit:

Spoiler

This accounts for any mod kits that are installed before NPC_EE is installed.  It is fairly promiscuous; it simply looks for any kit in kitlist.2da with class = 4 (T) or class = 9 (F/T).  So it includes the Slinger kit, even though that it supposed to be halfling-only.  It also includes various kits that might be system-only or otherwise not for general use.  In this example, note that the "Herald" kit appears twice.  (I'm actually not sure why.)  You just have to be a bit careful to make sure you don't choose something inappropriate.  Generally this should be obvious, but sometimes it is not; note that this gives the ability for Yoshimo the fighter/thief to take the "Psionicist" kit.  But that is a single-class thief kit which is scripted to transform into a cleric/thief; that script may break if you take the kit with a fighter/thief. 

Also note that, if you take a single-class kit with a multiclass character, things won't be perfect; your HLAs and possibly weapon proficiencies may be determined as a kitless multiclass, rather than according to the chosen kit.  You're generally better off giving true multiclass kits to multiclass characters - generally.  Multiclass kits appear at the bottom of the list - in this example, the Sniper and everything above are single-class kits, while the Herald and everything below are multiclass kits.

Of course, for single-class characters this is a lot simpler, you can just choose any single-class kit allowed by your class.

EDIT - and yes, any party-joinable NPC that is installed before NPC_EE gets this ability.

EDIT 2 - also, please note that the kit-choice ability will zero out the NPC's proficiencies and let them choose new ones, unless you disable that before installation.  I've been slowly working on making that an in-game option, but it is complicated and I don't have free time right now.

Edited April 13, 2020 by subtledoctor

[Jarno Mikkola]

11 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

In my current game I made Yoshimo into a multi fighter/thief (I allow humans to multiclass and demihumans to dual-class).  He still starts with the Bounty Hunter kit.

Erhm, did you EEKeeper that class ? As in, the reason for allowing multiclass, doesn't explain why a vanilla non-multi get's an multi... which is a bad side of the explaining a current in game event, but I can see a point in doing so.

[subtledoctor]

10 minutes ago, Jarno Mikkola said:

Erhm, did you EEKeeper that class ? As in, the reason for allowing multiclass, doesn't explain why a vanilla non-multi get's an multi... which is a bad side of the explaining a current in game event, but I can see a point in doing so.

I changed him to F/T with the class-change component of this mod.  It only changes the class of the .CRE (and drops it to 1st level), it doesn't change the kit... on the assumption that you will then do that part in-game.

[subtledoctor]

Here's another example: Adrian, a mod NPC you meet in Irenicus' Dungeon.  In my game he is a cleric/mage (I think that was an option I chose in the Adrian mod).  With Faiths & Powers v0.79.9 and Tome & Blood v0.8.48 installed, a cleric/mage has substantially more kit options. 

Spoiler

 

As I said above, this is mindlessly promiscuous - so the list includes both single-class and multiclass versions of every deity that has both.  Obviously, in this case as a cleric/mage you would want, e.g., the "Mage/Morninglord of Lathander" kit instead of the single-class "Morninglord of Lathander."

Edited April 13, 2020 by subtledoctor

[Cahir]

That's really helpful, Doc! Now I just need to establish install order for all those mods I'm planning to install and I'm good to go

[Cahir]

Out of curiosity, do you know how does SCS component Improved NPC customisation and management work? Based on its description it allows to change NPC's class or kit to whatever you like. 

[subtledoctor]

I don’t know. I’ve never noticed that before, even though I guess it’s been around for decades. I think it really lets you build an NPC from the ground up - stats, class, profs, maybe kit, more. 

This mod could get there eventually, but all of those changes involve a lot of side-effects that can screw things up. I prefer to keep things simple... I would guess there is most variation among players (and for the same player, among successive playthroughs) over which kits to use in your party. That, and which proficiencies to use for each party member. I doubt you’ll see as many varying views about what Minsc’s CON score should be, or what class Coran should have. So I give some limited choices at install-time for NPCs’ classes, and fairly unlimited choices in-game for kit and proficiencies. If you want to change other stuff, there is always EEKeeper or Near Infinity (or Level1NPCs or SCS). 

I gather the current version of SCS NPC Customization is buggy for some players, so that’s worth considering. 

[Cahir]

14 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

I don’t know. I’ve never noticed that before, even though I guess it’s been around for decades. I think it really lets you build an NPC from the ground up - stats, class, profs, maybe kit, more. 

This mod could get there eventually, but all of those changes involve a lot of side-effects that can screw things up. I prefer to keep things simple... I would guess there is most variation among players (and for the same player, among successive playthroughs) over which kits to use in your party. That, and which proficiencies to use for each party member. I doubt you’ll see as many varying views about what Minsc’s CON score should be, or what class Coran should have. So I give some limited choices at install-time for NPCs’ classes, and fairly unlimited choices in-game for kit and proficiencies. If you want to change other stuff, there is always EEKeeper or Near Infinity (or Level1NPCs or SCS). 

I gather the current version of SCS NPC Customization is buggy for some players, so that’s worth considering. 

Yeah, I don't really want to mess with stats and proficiencies, just want to change kit mostly for flavour (i.e I'd really picture Minsc as Barbarian Ranger or Valygar as Mage Hunter). So, I'll probably stick with NPC_EE.