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Unearthed Arcana presents Might & Guile: tweaks and kits for warriors and rogues


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4 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

One of the things I'm considering is consolidating some of the fighting style feats. Currently there are three "tactics" abilities, which benefit your allies and only one of the three can be used at a time; as well as five "postures" which benefit yourself, only one of them can be used at a time but they can be combined with tactics; as well as several individual abilities like Swashbuckling and Dirty Fighting which can be combined with both postures and tactics. These are separate for historical reasons - the warrior and rogue feats used to be completely separate systems. But maybe they should all be combined? I feel like Swashbuckling and Fighting Dirty (and maybe some new ones) should be part of the suite of fighting postures along with aggressive/disarming/parrying. Group tactics are more questionable... maybe they should remain separate and stackable.

And, maybe choosing a unified Parrying feat should give you access to all three parrying postures? You could still only use one at a time, but you wouldn't have to burn three feats for them.

Also, Swashbuckling needs to be buffed. Given that it applies a penalty to thac0 and damage, maybe a 1/2 APR bonus would be okay? A move back toward the vanilla Offensive Spin ability, without being quite so cheesy.

I think the defensive Postures are hard to feel worthwhile when you could get just straight +1 AC with a feat. Obviously, there are limited number of times you can pick that but once you see it you can't unsee it.

I haven't really used the offensive postures because I don't want the knockback. I could probably edit it out myself, but I don't like knockback because it can cause extra "pulls" and it can occasionally knock an enemy through some bad geometry.

As for the tactics, one thing I've found annoying is that if I only have 1, I can't tell if it's on or not. Obviously, I distribute the tactics across my different fighters, but sometimes I literally can't remember which I took or not. Just a minor UI limitation.

 

4 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

This is all working correctly. The small delay after you wake up involves an invisible creature running a script on the bard... it relies on the HaveSpell trigger, which cannot be replicated with spell effects. So this is one of the rare times that I will tolerate the 'invisible creature+script' technique. 99% of the time you wake up, it will be in an inn or some other uneventful circumstance, so this 1-second delay should generally have no consequence on real gameplay.  (I highly doubt it could be interrupted, unless you sleep was interrupted by a monster attack or something like that, and the monsters had craaazy scripts that take up your computer's entire processing power for a few seconds.  Very unlikely... and even then, with sleep being interrupted you should not get your spells anyway.)

While I was messing around, I had one, maybe two, instances where SCS's Ease-of-use AI script caused my Bladesinger to immediately cast Armor upon resting. And then afterwards, I ended up with 0 casts remaining, when presumably I should have ended up with 1. I could NOT reproduce this consistently: when I tried, most of my attempts had my character just standing there not casting Armor, and it didn't work when I cast Armor manually. Sorry that's not much to go on in terms of a bug report.

FWIW, I think some of the solutions you use to try and make these designs work in a pretty limited engine are pretty incredible. Obviously, I don't understand the full systems, but when I've dug into them, I'm pretty astounded at how intricate it all is.

 

4 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

A possible new method would look like this: you never have to  do anything at night.  Instead, every morning, your spellcasting will be disabled and you will get access to your spellbook. You can change out spells, or not. When your choices are ready, you would use an innate ability to enable spellcasting and remove access to your spellbook. Pro: you don't have to remember to prepare spells before resting. Con: you have to do something (clicking an ability) every time you wake up. Whereas right now, if you don't want to swap spells then you don't have to interact with the system at all.

I definitely think this way is better. Having to do something each time you rest would be massively aggravating. Also if you get ambushed or some other sort of script interrupts your sleep with combat, you'd just have no spells at all.

I don't think this way is bad. It's essentially the same as for Wizards: if you want to change your spells for the next day, you have to remember to do it before you rest. Even if that's not the better way to do it generally, the fact that Wizards (and Clerics and Druids) already work like that is a good reason for spontaneous Bard casting to follow suit for consistency.

Edited by hippofant
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19 hours ago, hippofant said:

I think the defensive Postures are hard to feel worthwhile when you could get just straight +1 AC with a feat. Obviously, there are limited number of times you can pick that but once you see it you can't unsee it.

I think the Parrying postures are a 3- or 4-point bonus against a particular damage type. It's supposed to be attractive, if you know what you're facing. A 4-point bonus against blunt when facing ogres, or a 4-point bonus against piercing when facing an army of gnolls, could be a serious advantage.  Getting all three postures for one feat and being able to use them interchangeably could be worth a Dodge feat that gives you a blanket 1-point bonus all the time... maybe? Or maybe changing them is too finicky.

Maybe parrying should be more like a small-scale aura that applies a -1 or -0.5 penalty to APR to a nearby enemy (subject to a save). Could set it up to work like the SoB Shield Bash, so it only affects one enemy each round. Hmmm...

(EDIT -  man, a MnG/SoB fighter with a parrying aura and the Dodge feat and defensive tactics and toughness and armor-based DR and specialized in shield-fighting would be suuuuuuper tanky. Might have to try that with... Mazzy? Auren? Hmm...)

19 hours ago, hippofant said:

While I was messing around, I had one, maybe two, instances where SCS's Ease-of-use AI script caused my Bladesinger to immediately cast Armor upon resting. And then afterwards, I ended up with 0 casts remaining, when presumably I should have ended up with 1.

Ah, I see: the script cast the spell, and then it was no longer memorized, and since it was not memorized then the MnG semi-spontaneous script (firing later for whatever rare reason) did not give you the spell.

The semi-spontaneous system disables the casting button when you decide to swap spells, but I didn't contemplate scripted casts. I can try to bolster it in two ways:

1) actually apply an opcode 145 "Disable Spellcasting" effect in addition to the opcode 144 "Disable Button" effect... I usually try to steer clear of op145 since it can mess with quickspells, but these semi-spontaneous casters cannot use quickspells anyway, so it should be fine. OTOH I'm not sure this will work, because such effects seem to be briefly canceled when you rest or move to a new area, and then quickly reapplied a moment later. Why, I don't know. But the SCS script might inadvertently exploit this to cast a spell in that small window of time. But,

2) I can apply a "Wish Rest" to restore all your memorized spells the instant before the script is applied. This way even if you somehow manage to cast something, it will still be available for spontaneous casting after the script is applied. There will still be a problem, to wit, a free casting of Armor. But in my experience getting an extra spell is far more forgivable than not getting a spell you should get.  :D

No E.T.A. for any of this stuff - time is not something I have a lot of right now. But this is all good feedback and helps me eventually make the system more robust and fun.

Edited by subtledoctor
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2 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

I think the Parrying postures are a 3- or 4-point bonus against a particular damage type. It's supposed to be attractive, if you know what you're facing. A 4-point bonus against blunt when facing ogres, or a 4-point bonus against piercing when facing an army of gnolls, could be a serious advantage.  Getting all three postures for one feat and being able to use them interchangeably could be worth a Dodge feat that gives you a blanket 1-point bonus all the time... maybe? Or maybe changing them is too finicky.

Maybe parrying should be more like a small-scale aura that applies a -1 or -0.5 penalty to APR to a nearby enemy (subject to a save). Could set it up to work like the SoB Shield Bash, so it only affects one enemy each round. Hmmm...

(EDIT -  man, a MnG/SoB fighter with a parrying aura and the Dodge feat and defensive tactics and toughness and armor-based DR and specialized in shield-fighting would be suuuuuuper tanky. Might have to try that with... Mazzy? Auren? Hmm...)

Oh right, it goes up to +4 at level 12. And since it's a specific modifier, it would stack over the max AC limit.

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On 1/27/2021 at 5:11 PM, Hypaspist said:

I can confirm that Bladesinger is missing a Weapon Focus option at level 9. Is there a way to temporarily fix that via adding a proper ability via NearInfinity? If so, which one of these would work properly?

obraz.png.4a0648542c1ae106e009598819d9c677.png

It would seem to me the easiest way to fix that would be to just cancel out of the feat selection, then use EEKeeper to manually increase the proficiency you were going to focus in.

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On 1/27/2021 at 6:11 PM, Hypaspist said:

I can confirm that Bladesinger is missing a Weapon Focus option at level 9. Is there a way to temporarily fix that via adding a proper ability via NearInfinity? If so, which one of these would work properly?

obraz.png.4a0648542c1ae106e009598819d9c677.png

Unfortunately it's not that simple. Well, it actually is simple - the correct ability is "D5FTPROF.SPL." However, I'm just now realizing that that spell has an eight-letter filename, which means if you give it to yourself you will never lose it, and will be able to cast it every day instead of just once ever.

So the best workaround would be to cast D5FTPROF on yourself, without actually giving yourself the ability. Unfortunately I think the EE console doesn't make that easy - you have use ActionOverride, and get the formatting just right.

Possibly easier would be just editing your save to increase your proficiency - but don't use EEKeeper!  Use Near Infinity instead.

I've added this to my fix list for the next version, and mostly done the work already. As relating specifically to the Bladesinger, I wonder whether people think you should have to select Weapon of Focus as a feat? Or should it just be a free thing at 9th level, allowing you to choose a different bardic feat in addition?

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6 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Possibly easier would be just editing your save to increase your proficiency - but don't use EEKeeper!  Use Near Infinity instead.

Why do you advise not using EEKeeper? I have noticed it borks on the ExtraProficiency1 you use for Clubs/Maces, but otherwise I think it's been okay when I've used it?

 

Actually, I should add, I do have an actual bug report to make: there are some permanent character effects that you apply - either in this or Scales of Balance not sure - that are reapplied every time the character is removed and added back to the party. In particular, D5_WF11N, D5_WF12N, D5_WF13N, D5_WF21N, D5_WF22N, D5_WF23N, D5_WF24N, and D5_WF25N seem to fire every time and apply their corresponding effects repeatedly. Also the D5??NUSE spell applies a lot of 180 opcodes each time a party member joins. I've had to give each of my characters permanent protection from D5??NUSE spells, or their character files just get insanely bloated with effects and starts really lagging NearInfinity when I try to make edits to their character files.

I haven't been able to figure out how/where the D5??NUSE spells are fired, but it seems like this could be fixed by just making sure they apply protection from themselves so the effects don't duplicate.

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23 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Unfortunately it's not that simple. Well, it actually is simple - the correct ability is "D5FTPROF.SPL." However, I'm just now realizing that that spell has an eight-letter filename, which means if you give it to yourself you will never lose it, and will be able to cast it every day instead of just once ever.

So the best workaround would be to cast D5FTPROF on yourself, without actually giving yourself the ability. Unfortunately I think the EE console doesn't make that easy - you have use ActionOverride, and get the formatting just right.

Possibly easier would be just editing your save to increase your proficiency - but don't use EEKeeper!  Use Near Infinity instead.

I've added this to my fix list for the next version, and mostly done the work already. As relating specifically to the Bladesinger, I wonder whether people think you should have to select Weapon of Focus as a feat? Or should it just be a free thing at 9th level, allowing you to choose a different bardic feat in addition?

Thanks! I'll do that, though I'd be missing the one more attack every two rounds (as per kit description), is there a way to fix that as well? Also, if you have Scales of Balance installed as well, does Bladesinger's Mastery mean 4 pips or 3?

As for your question - I'd keep it as a feat, but I'd consider adding addtional Bladesinging variants as feat choices as well (from here😞

 

When novices began their tutelage under experienced bladesingers, they could maintain their bladesong for about a minute's time, two times every day.Throughout the course of their training they developed great concentration that helped prevent their magic from being halted in any manner.

Over time they learned how to further modify the magic of their bladesong in order to better suit their needs. These songs were often presented in pairs that shared some close association with one another.

A song of defense a bladesinger could actually negate harm inflicted upon them, while song of victory allowed them to attack with greater power.

When performing a song of celerity a bladesinger was empowered to cast a spell with great quickness, while the song of fury allowed them to make a swift, "arcane strike" against their foe. With the choir of swords a bladesinger could strike out against every opponent near them, with similar blinding speed.

 

But the player would only be able to pick one or the other - either making their Bladesinger a better fencer, or a better spellcaster. Making hard choices is always interesting!

Edited by Hypaspist
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19 hours ago, hippofant said:

Why do you advise not using EEKeeper? I have noticed it borks on the ExtraProficiency1 you use for Clubs/Maces, but otherwise I think it's been okay when I've used it?

I've heard reports from some people that it can mess up your spellcasting slots. That might no longer be the case now, with recent improvements... or it might still be the case. I can't say. (EEKeeper doesn't work on MacOS so I can't test  it anyway.) I don't know  what EEKeeper does when you save the file... in fact nobody seems to know what EEKeeper does when you save a file. But it does something to your savegame without telling you. Maybe a Ctrl-R, maybe a wish-rest, nobody seems to know. But it can mess up or remove some applied spells, and the way the semi-spontaneous system tracks your casting slots is by applying spells that bump the values of various proficiency bits up and down.  (Gaining casting slots upon level-up involves bumping the bits' value up permanently; casting spells bumps them down; nd when you rest a spell is applied that cancels the spells that bumped them down. EEKeeper can, maybe, interfere with this system.)

I don't use Extraproficiency1 for clubs/maces; that is actually the vanilla club proficiency. SoB combines maces into the same one, but it is still a vanilla stat.

 

19 hours ago, hippofant said:

Actually, I should add, I do have an actual bug report to make: there are some permanent character effects that you apply - either in this or Scales of Balance not sure - that are reapplied every time the character is removed and added back to the party. In particular, D5_WF11N, D5_WF12N, D5_WF13N, D5_WF21N, D5_WF22N, D5_WF23N, D5_WF24N, and D5_WF25N seem to fire every time and apply their corresponding effects repeatedly.

Those are the group tactics and fighting posture feats; I assume this is with a fighter?  I suppose they could use a 321 effect in them so each instance replaces itself rather than compounding.

 

19 hours ago, hippofant said:

Also the D5??NUSE spell applies a lot of 180 opcodes each time a party member joins. I've had to give each of my characters permanent protection from D5??NUSE spells, or their character files just get insanely bloated with effects and starts really lagging NearInfinity when I try to make edits to their character files.

I haven't been able to figure out how/where the D5??NUSE spells are fired, but it seems like this could be fixed by just making sure they apply protection from themselves so the effects don't duplicate.

That sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't find it any where in my code or my current (massive) modded game.  It's likely a similar solution - just add a self-referencing op321 effect to the spell.  But I don't know what needs fixing.  Can you give me more info?  What do the "??" represent? What mods do you have installed? Which character classes are  having this spell applied?

(Incidentally, how many times do you kick people out and have them re-join?? I find myself letting past members back in once, max, aas I am slowly advancing through the game.)

 

11 hours ago, Hypaspist said:

Thanks! I'll do that, though I'd be missing the one more attack every two rounds (as per kit description), is there a way to fix that as well? Also, if you have Scales of Balance installed as well, does Bladesinger's Mastery mean 4 pips or 3?

If you are using the SoB proficiency system then you don't need to worry about it, because that extra pip will actually give you the extra 1/2 APR. (It occurs to me that there is a bit of a conflict here, since with SoB a Bladesinger's focus weapon will give you +1 APR instead of just +1/2. I need to add compatibility code to remove the extra +1/2 when SoB is installed.

Choosing a focus weapon will advance that weapon's proficiency by 1. You can choose a weapon in which you have no proficiency at all, or you can choose a weapon in which you have maxed out your proficiency. I highly recommend that you do the latter! Since it will allow you to exceed your normal proficiency limit.

 

11 hours ago, Hypaspist said:

 I'd consider adding addtional Bladesinging variants as feat choices

A song of defense a bladesinger could actually negate harm inflicted upon them, while song of victory allowed them to attack with greater power.

When performing a song of celerity a bladesinger was empowered to cast a spell with great quickness, while the song of fury allowed them to make a swift, "arcane strike" against their foe. With the choir of swords a bladesinger could strike out against every opponent near them, with similar blinding speed.

Well the Bladesong is a bard song, albeit a special one, and you can only have one bard song active at any time. (Though the SoD Bard's Hat and the IR Blade of Roses can sort of simulate having a second one active.) The defensive thing is not possible since, "damage threshold"-style effects are not possible in this engine.  Changing it to an AC bonus sort of steps on the toes of MnG Swashbuckling (which Bladesingers can already do) and the Blur Aura (which Bladesingers already get). A song that hastes you sort of steps on the APR bonus from your focus weapon.

I am thinking about adding a new bard aura, similar to a "bladesong" that I used earlier for a very short time. Call it something like a "harmonic strike" aura, which will add extra sonic damage to every melee attack. (There is no sonic damage in this engine, so I used blunt damage to represent "force damage." That makes sense to me, since I figure sonic damage should work against hard/brittle materials similar to blunt force, and it is especially useful in this engine since blunt damage works well against lots of enemies. E.g. this would allow a Blade with dual daggers to go up against a clay golem, etc.)

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2 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

I've heard reports from some people that it can mess up your spellcasting slots. That might no longer be the case now, with recent improvements... or it might still be the case. I can't say. (EEKeeper doesn't work on MacOS so I can't test  it anyway.) I don't know  what EEKeeper does when you save the file... in fact nobody seems to know what EEKeeper does when you save a file. But it does something to your savegame without telling you. Maybe a Ctrl-R, maybe a wish-rest, nobody seems to know. But it can mess up or remove some applied spells, and the way the semi-spontaneous system tracks your casting slots is by applying spells that bump the values of various proficiency bits up and down.  (Gaining casting slots upon level-up involves bumping the bits' value up permanently; casting spells bumps them down; nd when you rest a spell is applied that cancels the spells that bumped them down. EEKeeper can, maybe, interfere with this system.)

Ah. By default, EEKeeper does refresh spells. I disable that option myself because it has caused me problems in the past.

 

2 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

That sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't find it any where in my code or my current (massive) modded game.  It's likely a similar solution - just add a self-referencing op321 effect to the spell.  But I don't know what needs fixing.  Can you give me more info?  What do the "??" represent? What mods do you have installed? Which character classes are  having this spell applied?

(Incidentally, how many times do you kick people out and have them re-join?? I find myself letting past members back in once, max, aas I am slowly advancing through the game.)

So, for example, Fighter/Mages get effects from d5fmnuse.spl, that apply a 180 can't use item code to a whole buncha items. Mage/Thieves get d5mtnuse.spl. Clerics of Mystra get d5_u89.spl. I know how Clerics of Mystra get it applied, it's in their kitlist file (d5clmys.2da). I'm less certain where the multiclasses get it from, but you end up with something like this:

image.thumb.png.3df3c9d585409da1893f057ac512f1fb.png

And it goes on for a very long time.

I do swap NPCs in and out fairly often. Since I'm playing with mods, I like to look at the new NPCs (and possibly steal their gear) and sometimes do their quests. Right now, I'm playing an EET run too, so Imoen necessarily leaves the party and rejoins it thrice (SoD, start of BG2, Spellhold). There are some other NPCs that will happen to too, like Jaheira in her BG2 romance.

Edited by hippofant
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Ah, I found it, it’s part of the revised bards. It is what allows me to preserve item usability differences between traditional M/T’s and the new M/T bards. There... might be a way to fudge it with kit flags, but I’m not sure. Meantime, if you are handy with NI you can add a 321 effect at the beginning of those two spells (d5fmnuse and d5mtnuse) with target=self, timing=1, resource=itself. The next time someone leaves and rejoins, it will be reduced to a single application of each op180 effect. 

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2 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Ah, I found it, it’s part of the revised bards. It is what allows me to preserve item usability differences between traditional M/T’s and the new M/T bards. There... might be a way to fudge it with kit flags, but I’m not sure. Meantime, if you are handy with NI you can add a 321 effect at the beginning of those two spells (d5fmnuse and d5mtnuse) with target=self, timing=1, resource=itself. The next time someone leaves and rejoins, it will be reduced to a single application of each op180 effect. 

That's what I've done, but there's also a d5ctnuse and a d5bnuse by the way. They're not impacting me, but they seem to be similar spells.

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14 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

If you are using the SoB proficiency system then you don't need to worry about it, because that extra pip will actually give you the extra 1/2 APR. (It occurs to me that there is a bit of a conflict here, since with SoB a Bladesinger's focus weapon will give you +1 APR instead of just +1/2. I need to add compatibility code to remove the extra +1/2 when SoB is installed.

Choosing a focus weapon will advance that weapon's proficiency by 1. You can choose a weapon in which you have no proficiency at all, or you can choose a weapon in which you have maxed out your proficiency. I highly recommend that you do the latter! Since it will allow you to exceed your normal proficiency limit.

(...)

Well the Bladesong is a bard song, albeit a special one, and you can only have one bard song active at any time. (Though the SoD Bard's Hat and the IR Blade of Roses can sort of simulate having a second one active.) The defensive thing is not possible since, "damage threshold"-style effects are not possible in this engine.  Changing it to an AC bonus sort of steps on the toes of MnG Swashbuckling (which Bladesingers can already do) and the Blur Aura (which Bladesingers already get). A song that hastes you sort of steps on the APR bonus from your focus weapon.

I am thinking about adding a new bard aura, similar to a "bladesong" that I used earlier for a very short time. Call it something like a "harmonic strike" aura, which will add extra sonic damage to every melee attack. (There is no sonic damage in this engine, so I used blunt damage to represent "force damage." That makes sense to me, since I figure sonic damage should work against hard/brittle materials similar to blunt force, and it is especially useful in this engine since blunt damage works well against lots of enemies. E.g. this would allow a Blade with dual daggers to go up against a clay golem, etc.)

Thanks, I just gave Xan 4 pips in the longswords, that does the trick in Scales!

As for the song suggestions - yes, I knew that Bladesong is a bard song, but what I was suggesting is that the player could either:

1. Pick up Weapon Focus, allowing him/her to attain 4 pips in a chosen weapon (as per Scales of Balance);

2. Pick up a feat that would enhance Bladesong in some way. It doesn't have to be those songs I've posted about. Although what you're proposing sounds a bit like Song of Fury. The new, enhanced Bladesong could, for example:

- Decrease the AC by 1 or 2 points;

- Add Protection from Missles Effect;

- Add Protection from Normal Weapons.

I think that could be potentially an interesting choice to make. Do you want to go more offensive or defensive?

Although in that case it might be a good idea to further enhance Weapon Focus, perhaps by adding a further increase in critical chance?

3. On top of that, if you were planning to work on the kits further, I'd also consider trying to gradually give each kit similar choices at higher levels. But I hope you work on the Beast Lord before that ;)

Edited by Hypaspist
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Confirmed that the failure to memorize Command does not affect any other spells. Basically Command was listed as index #0 in the array of special bard spells, and then when processing them for the semi-spontaneous system the code begins with index #1. So I only needed to change a single digit - probably the easiest fix I've ever done.

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