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

[Mistercurious]

On 9/22/2023 at 3:01 PM, subtledoctor said:

It is extremely painstaking. When I added that, I was told by other players and/or found in guides which interactions in IWD have special responses for bards. Then I had to apply somewhat delicate patches to the .DLG files for those interactions. it cannot be done programmatically, each adjustment must be carefully curated. The code looks like this. It is certainly possible I missed some; I'm not sure how to be completely thorough in this way, I cannot read every branch of every dialogue file in the game.

Coming back to the bard quests, there are only two more in the entirety of IWD (apart from the Elisia dialogue) that yield actual rewards. One is the option to sing to a commoner in Easthaven earning a gem, the other is the XP reward for convincing Flozem to become an artist. Everything else seems to be extra dialogue options for bards...

There is also a thread on Beamdog Forums that lists a lot of these special interactions, which is where i am quoting from.

I'd like to use one of the kits in a future playthrough and I'd be disappointed to miss out on those rewards that  a "real" bard could get.

If those two above could be integrated with the M&G bard kits in a future update, I'd be entirely grateful.

If I can contribute in any way to that being achieved, I'd be happy to... (I am just not a professinal modder.)

[Shadow Ranger]

Do you have any plans for more kits in the future?

[subtledoctor]

5 hours ago, Shadow Ranger said:

Do you have any plans for more kits in the future?

Was actually just thinking yesterday about adding a Barbarian/thief. But it’s a but tough to balance, given almost all of the Barbarian kit’s disadvantages are meaningless in a fighter/thief. I suppose could say, no Open Locks and no Pick Pockets? And no Set Traps? (Restricting Set Traps is quite annoying, but can be done.)

Edited January 11 by subtledoctor

[GawainBS]

I'm always pro-options, but isn't a Thief without Open Locks a bit useless? Granted, I've only ever pulled of one succesful backstab in 25 years of Infinity Engine games, so my opinion is coloured.

[mickabouille]

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

And no Set Traps? (

I'd think set traps would be the most barbarian-like skill of the lot

[Shadow Ranger]

2 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Was actually just thinking yesterday about adding a Barbarian/thief. But it’s a but tough to balance, given almost all of the Barbarian kit’s disadvantages are meaningless in a fighter/thief. I suppose could say, no Open Locks and no Pick Pockets? And no Set Traps? (Restricting Set Traps is quite annoying, but can be done.)

Sounds like the original Conan How about calling it Brigand (or Pillager, Raider, Reaver etc.) and making it focus on survivalism - damage resistance, saving throws. Traps would make sense actually. Rage could changed into "Survival Instinct" instead, which boosts their durability. I'd also consider making them both bow and melee users to further boost their versatility (and it goes well with with the whole survivalism schtick). But no Open Locks and Pickpocketing.

Maybe also add some herbalism knowledge (free healing herbs and/or ones that have other beneficial effects), they could gather these in designated forest/outside areas.

Edited January 11 by Shadow Ranger

[subtledoctor]

Was actually thinking of Fafhrd from Fritz Lieber’s books. At some point in the 80s or 90s Lankmar was made into a TSR campaign world, and my faint recollection is that Fafhrd was specced as a barbarian/thief. 

I don’t want to tread on a ranger’s toes, so the concept is something like, you have the barbarian fighter kit but you add stealth and keen powers of detection (find snares/see through illusions). But you would not mess with mechanical stuff like locks and traps. And you would not pick pockets, you would just knock them out and rifle through their stuff when they are unconscious. 

[moggadeet]

There's always the classic barbarian open locks, ie, rage and rip it open bare-handed. Falls off eventually though, sadly. Is there some way to increase the efficacy of bashing? Though barb/thief could also be a fast-moving fighter who opens with a backstab, I can imagine it being a lot of fun to play.

[Frenzgyn]

Hello, Doc.

I can't really call them "bugs", but it appears that the MEISTERSINGER kit has some "unpolished" parts active that maybe you intended to be hidden or still wip:

1) The Kit description is a bit off, it seems the summon rats part was intended to be comment out;
2) Conjure rabbit has "Animal Summoning I" in spell description but a different custom icon in action bar;
3) The description says that the creature is summoned in a location of caster's choosing, while it is near the caster;
4) By "medium-sized rodent" you mean a rabbit or is it a leftover of the spell to summon 1d6 rats? I am nitpicking, but I am confused cause rabbits are not rodents, they're lagomorphs (and I know this thanks to some punchlines in "Sam and Max hit the Road" ).
5) Not sure it is intended or not, but per description they should last 5 rounds, but they last a lot more than 30 seconds, maybe it is 5 turns? Also, is there a limit to how many you could summoned or are they limitless?
6) The summoned rabbits are called "Mmmmm... grog...".

By the way, it was fun .

Edited January 23 by Frenzgyn

[subtledoctor]

On 1/11/2024 at 6:33 PM, moggadeet said:

There's always the classic barbarian open locks, ie, rage and rip it open bare-handed.

This is precisely my thought. A barbarian/thief in the big city would not use lockpicks, they would just smash the lock to smithereens. 

1 hour ago, Frenzgyn said:

can't really call them "bugs", but it appears that the MEISTERSINGER kit has some "unpolished" parts

Is this the proper pure bard kit? Or the mage/thief multiclass kit? Looks like the former to me, but just want to confirm. 

The pure bard kits are all a bit rough - I haven’t played with proper bards in 5+ years, instead using my 1E-style multiclass bards. So I don’t give the bard kits much attention. TBH the only reason I made those kits was because in 2014 it looked like Song & Silence would never be updated. But now it seems Cam is actively maintaining S&S  so I have half a mind to just scrap these kits. Compare my Jongleur, Meistersinger, and Loresinger to S&S’s Acrobat, Luring Piper, and Chorister. Maybe I’ll just have a small tweak adding “Summon Forest Animals” to the S&S Luring Piper kit…

1 hour ago, Frenzgyn said:

By "medium-sized rodent" you mean a rabbit or is it a leftover of the spell to summon 1d6 rats?

I think someone once told me that rabbits are within the “rodent” classification, like capybaras, and I uncritically accepted the assertion. In any event I’m pretty sure this is intended to summon rabbits, using clones of the Wish Swarm rabbit creatures to bypass the summoning limit. I’ll double-check and clean up the spell, when I get the chance.

[Frenzgyn]

1 minute ago, subtledoctor said:

Is this the proper pure bard kit? Or the mage/thief multiclass kit? Looks like the former to me, but just want to confirm. 

The pure bard kits are all a bit rough - I haven’t played with proper bards in 5+ years, instead using my 1E-style multiclass bards. So I don’t give the bard kits much attention. TBH the only reason I made those kits was because in 2014 it looked like Song & Silence would never be updated. But now it seems Cam is actively maintaining S&S  so I have half a mind to just scrap these kits. Compare my Jongleur, Meistersinger, and Loresinger to S&S’s Acrobat, Luring Piper, and Chorister. Maybe I’ll just have a small tweak adding “Summon Forest Animals” to the S&S Luring Piper kit…

I think someone once told me that rabbits are within the “rodent” classification, like capybaras, and I uncritically accepted the assertion. In any event I’m pretty sure this is intended to summon rabbits, using clones of the Wish Swarm rabbit creatures to bypass the summoning limit. I’ll double-check and clean up the spell, when I get the chance.

Yep, pure bard kits.

Well, maybe in the Forgotten Realm they're rodents, who know, it's magic!

[subtledoctor]

After bringing Breagar into my party and discussing his kit in my playthrough thread, I’ve been inspired to create a new kit, the Ironsmith, for him. It will start with the basics of Ascalon’s kit: bonus Lore, some Fire Resistance, GM only with hammers/axes (I’m actually inclined to say only hammers?) and no weapon styles other than SWS.

But I’ll spice it up a bit. I’m thinking:

— GM with hammers, Mastery (+++) with everything else. Maybe even more restricted (+) with ranged weapons - these guys spend time in the smithy, not the archery range.

— No proficiency with 2-handed weapons?? These guys swing a hammer all day with their dominant arm, imagine the 1960s American factory worker with one huge arm and one baby arm. Thoughts?

— 8 Lore per level. Nobody apart from proper bards are more knowledgeable about the magical artifacts and knick-knacks that litter Faerun. 

— 20% bonus to fire resistance, period, end of story. No need to go to the effort of increasing 1% each level. A 20% bonus is fine. 

— Spiritual Hammer 1x per day per 3 levels. It’s… fine I guess? It’s in Ascalon’s kit. I don’t love it but I do like the idea of getting SR’s “hit-from-across-the-room” Spiritual Hammer if you install SR. Would be this kit’s primary ranged attack. 

— “Resounding Strike” 1x per day per 3 levels. The next strike does 4d4 force damage and has a 50% chance to deafen any enemies within 5 feet of the target. Like SR’s Sound Burst spell, applied via war hammer. 

— Ironsmiths spend so much time around hammers striking anvils that their hearing isn’t great. This means they are resistant to Command and Power Word spells. This could be an extra saving throw or something like a 50% chance to avoid the effect. Thoughts?

— Starting at level… 10? (Thoughts?) Ironsmiths can imbue weapons or armor with transient bonus effects, which last for 8 hours. (Permanent magic item crafting requires more time and expensive ingredients and an established smithy.) Like the Enchahted Weapon spell, but with bonus effects. **

** Actually I’m not sure this can be done. I’m not about to make clones of every weapon in the game. A possible milquetoast alternative would be, a permanent passive self-only application of the EE Enchanted Weapon effect - due to better handling and treatment of their weapons, an Ironsmith always strikes as if with a magical weapon. This is of extremely limited utility - early BG1, and the Spellhold maze if you use SCS’ Remove Items In Spellhold component. Meh?

I want like one more fun thing for this kit to do. Thoughts?

Edited January 30 by subtledoctor

[Connelly]

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

** Actually I’m not sure this can be done. I’m not about to make clones of every weapon in the game. A possible milquetoast alternative would be, a permanent passive self-only application of the EE Enchanted Weapon effect - due to better handling and treatment of their weapons, an Ironsmith always strikes as if with a magical weapon. This is of extremely limited utility - early BG1, and the Spellhold maze if you use SCS’ Remove Items In Spellhold component. Meh?

The intention sounds similar to Aura's Infusion, although that's for weapons. Maybe you could look it up?

[Frenzgyn]

4 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

— No proficiency with 2-handed weapons?? These guys swing a hammer all day with their dominant arm, imagine the 1960s American factory worker with one huge arm and one baby arm. Thoughts?

Meh. Not thrilled about this and, in real traditional blacksmithing (before power hammers) it's not really accurate: often, especially for forged  medium to big blades or with multi layered steel, the blacksmith and his apprencites would hammer down the metal with big two handed hammers. You can see an example here or in many video about traditional forging of katanas and similar.

— Starting at level… 10? (Thoughts?) Ironsmiths can imbue weapons or armor with transient bonus effects, which last for 8 hours. (Permanent magic item crafting requires more time and expensive ingredients and an established smithy.) Like the Enchahted Weapon spell, but with bonus effects. **

If technically possible, this would be fun. Something like resharpen/reprofile/rebalance weapons that adds slashing/piercing or crushing damage to a weapon based on it's type plus some bonus to hitting would be nice. Similar thing for plate/splint/chain mails.  I would prefer no "real" magic involved, but whatever, the idea is cool.

I want like one more fun thing for this kit to do. Thoughts?

The ability to create expendable (item with limited charges?) picklocks or master keys to boost for a limited time Open Locks skill?

 

 

Edited January 31 by Frenzgyn

[mickabouille]

Maybe somerhing related to armor instead of weapons? Like a permanent or at-will "know opponent"' (maybe a bit reduced version)?

Or opposent weapon disassembly?

Don’t even know what is or is not feasible...

Edited January 31 by mickabouille