My new "Made in Heaven" mods

[polytope]

Well, 8hp/turn (10 rounds) regen will be barely noticeable even in BG1, zombies have poor AC so your fighters should be hitting them at least once on most rounds.

It might be an idea to give zombies 15hp/sec regen but a negative resistance to physical damage and fire (they're kind of decayed after all...) this would allow characters using weapons with smaller damage die like staves and shortswords at least the possibility of 1-hitting the zombie, or incinerating it with low level spells like Aganazzar's Scorcher or Burning Hands.

As for skeletons I just remembered they were not fooled by invisibility in early editions (most relevant for characters trying to hide in shadows at low levels), that would maybe be more interesting than giving them 18 dex which just makes them hard for low level characters to hit besides hitting more frequently with their own missiles. The SANCTUARY stat can be checked separately from invisibility, if you'd prefer the skellies to respect that.

[subtledoctor]

I like the idea of making zombies resistant to crushing & piercing attacks, and only fully vulnerable to slashing. Should be done to more enemies - the superiority of blunt damage is really a bit silly in these games…

[polytope]

Not only are blunt weapons the least resisted in general, but have the best hit probability against all armor types except splint mail, hide and leather (the last two having such a poor base AC that it matters little). The only recommendation for swords is their slightly higher base damage die (which is proportionately muted when you gain damage bonuses from magic weapons, strength improvements and kits like the kensai) and some swords having special abilities (but really none are better than the Flail of Ages, which is pretty easy to acquire in early BG2 even with a maximal install of SCS).

It is indeed a situation that needs to be remedied, and making zombies slash vulnerable is only a small step because they're not a great threat even in BG1.

I'd think that huge creatures (Dragons, Ettins, Fire Giants) should resist crushing damage, it's very difficult to bludgeon something much larger than yourself. For instance a mouse or a little hermit crab can hurt a human by biting/snipping their fingers, but wouldn't inflict noticeable harm by jumping on them.

There's also the PnP option of swords/spear having an increased damage die vs large creatures, (edit, I should say for the original engine only, EE allows the die size to genuinely vary per target, as Angel did) by race specific 177 so that a longsword does an extra 1d5-1 to creatures greater than man size (PnP 1d12), the problem was that this is not multiplied by crits/backstabs and is disproportionately effective against creatures with high physical resistance (since the game never rounds damage below 1 unless you're 100% immune). I coded this a while ago for my own use but the TP2 checks weapons by name rather than type i.e. doesn't catch mod-added or cloned variants (and it may not be a good idea to fiddle with mod-added weapons which were presumably balanced to the mod author's satisfaction).

Edited August 4, 2022 by polytope

[Mordekaie]

@polytope How does you mod Purist Demiliches synergise (or even is compatible) with the component "Revised Liches" from mih_eq ?

I haven't yet tested your mod but i will definitely give a look.

 

[Angel]

27 minutes ago, Mordekaie said:

@polytope How does you mod Purist Demiliches synergise (or even is compatible) with the component "Revised Liches" from mih_eq ?

I haven't yet tested your mod but i will definitely give a look.

It looks like we do the same thing but in different ways when it comes to demi-liches, so likely they will conflict in some way.

I too restore the demi-lich curse but with different effects (a heavy penalty to thac0, AC and saves), and I alter their damage resistances to make them 90% resistant to all types of damage.  I also add a save penalty to the demi-lich howl.  The mechanic of their soul trapping is currently unchanged by me.  I also don't change their battle script, the curse is controlled by a new script and only fires once at the start of battle.  I currently do not make demi-liches vulnerable to any spells, although that is on my to-do list.  Note that the two demi-liches in Black Pits 2 *are* vulnerable to certain spells, I will likely extend that same vulnerability to all demi-liches but I haven't gotten around to doing that yet.

[polytope]

28 minutes ago, Angel said:

I too restore the demi-lich curse but with different effects (a heavy penalty to thac0, AC and saves), and I alter their damage resistances to make them 90% resistant to all types of damage.

Not to derail your thread but in that case polylich (purist demiliches) needs to be installed after MIH. My mod sets all physical resistances to zero but applies +90% crushing/piercing/missile and +85% slashing resistance as equipped effects of the A^DLICH.itm (their immunity item).

The reason for doing it this way was to make them immune to special abilities that lower physical damage resistance to zero (I'm aware of some kit mods that do this, but I thought demiliches should be exempt).

If installed before any mod that changes demilich resistances you could end up with >100% resistant skulls, hence unwinnable...

[Mordekaie]

1 hour ago, polytope said:

Not to derail your thread but in that case polylich (purist demiliches) needs to be installed after MIH. My mod sets all physical resistances to zero but applies +90% crushing/piercing/missile and +85% slashing resistance as equipped effects of the A^DLICH.itm (their immunity item).

The reason for doing it this way was to make them immune to special abilities that lower physical damage resistance to zero (I'm aware of some kit mods that do this, but I thought demiliches should be exempt).

If installed before any mod that changes demilich resistances you could end up with >100% resistant skulls, hence unwinnable...

Both components patch the Liches. So i guess the revisions are mainly cumulative or/and the last installed option takes the lead ?

If Polylich is installed after Revised Liches (so it would be SCS or not / Revised Liches / Polylich)  we get :

Revised liches gives :

• They gain 50% resist. slashing, piercing and missile damage,       → All set to zero with Polylich installed
• Made resistant to low-level spells (default up to 3rd, can be changed in the ini file).
• They gain a +4 bonus to hit, and deal cold damage rather than piercing damage.

Polylich :

•   +90% crushing/piercing/missile and +85% slashing resistance

Sorry to focus on the subject. I come from the P&P AD&D2 and running away from a Lich is usually the most clever choice. I probably want to have this feeling again.

 

Edited August 4, 2022 by Mordekaie

[polytope]

8 minutes ago, Mordekaie said:

Both components patch the Liches. So i guess the revisions are mainly cumulative or/and the last installed option takes the lead ?

If Polylich is installed after Revised Liches (so it would be SCS or not / Revised Liches / Polylich)  we get :

Revised liches gives :

• They gain 50% resist. slashing, piercing and missile damage,       → All set to zero with Polylich installed

Actually my mod only alters the 2 demiliches in BG2, both abilites and AI. I left regular liches untouched because they seemed to work fine with SCS. My main motive for making "purist demiliches" was that the demiliches were bugged for a while in one of the SCS releases while the mod author DavidW was away.

 Also I made polylich mostly for my own use and tested it on the original BG2 ToB engine, but if there's interest in my mod now, I guess I should install EE and playtest it to make certain that there aren't any unexpected bugs.

Edited August 4, 2022 by polytope

[Guest Noober]

Item pack changes Greywolf to drop Mirthal instead of Varscona. Can Varscona still be obtained elsewhere?

[Graion Dilach]

Yes, in the Bandit Camp.

[Quester]

I think the xvart village could use some more help. Even with your Improved Xvart Village installed it's still pretty much a walk in the park.

I was thinking, kobolds get both commandos, guards, chieftains and shamans (are all those from SCS?), why not add some equivalents for the poor xvarts?

[subtledoctor]

35 minutes ago, Quester said:

I think the xvart village could use some more help. Even with your Improved Xvart Village installed it's still pretty much a walk in the park.

I was thinking, kobolds get both commandos, guards, chieftains and shamans (are all those from SCS?), why not add some equivalents for the poor xvarts?

Give them all slings. And double their numbers. Have like 60+ xvarts hurling rocks at your head at the same time.

[Angel]

5 hours ago, Quester said:

I think the xvart village could use some more help. Even with your Improved Xvart Village installed it's still pretty much a walk in the park.

I was thinking, kobolds get both commandos, guards, chieftains and shamans (are all those from SCS?), why not add some equivalents for the poor xvarts?

Yes, that's SCS, although I think it in turn borrowed it from Dark Side of the Sword Coast.

5 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Give them all slings. And double their numbers. Have like 60+ xvarts hurling rocks at your head at the same time.

Heh, I don't want to make it too crazy since you'll typically do this battle at level 1-3.  Currently I make the xvarts around the village 2 HD (xvart2.cre is no stronger than xvart.cre, but is worth 35 xp instead of 15, almost a bug fix this), make Nixlit a 4th level fighter with a magical short sword, and add a bunch more xvarts around the village.

I did hunt down a 2e source on xvarts (Fiend Folio) and it says that they favor horde tactics, sometimes use nets to hinder foes, and some of them are shamans or adepts with 1st and 2nd level spells, so I suppose I could do something with that.

[subtledoctor]

54 minutes ago, Angel said:

they favor horde tactics

I once suggested gibberlings get an aura that applies a combat bonus for every other one within 20'. Could work for any otherwise-weak enemy that  favors horde tactics.

[Quester]

Definitely a few spellcaster xvarts. I also don't think it's unreasonable to give some of the regular xvarts slings in addition to short swords. Like, maybe 1/5th of them? And make those favor ranged attacks as far as possible. If it's possible to somehow simulate some of them using nets to hinder enemies, that's cool as well (no net animation unfortunately).

The xvart village is actually quite far away, so I doubt anyone reaches it at lvl 1...I know I don't. It would be a very deliberate destination in that case.

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2022/06/dd-monster-spotlight-who-xvartd.html

Good read there.

Maybe give some of them maces or flails instead of short swords?