Some Individuals (mod for SoA/Tutu or possibly only for EE)

[temnix]

Updated most definitively

This module randomizes the appearance of several kinds of creatures, mostly encountered in Baldur's Gate 1, although you might encounter them elsewhere or see the changes when you summon them with spells. These creatures are: bandits; Flaming Fist mercenaries; Flaming Fist enforcers; Amnian soldiers; Watchers of Candlekeep; ogres; ogre berserkers; hobgoblin elite; Blacktalon elite;  gibberlings; and courtesans, the only civilian type. Each particular creature that appears will look different within a common stylistic range. Very rarely will they look completely the same. Some sensible random variations on alignment and stats are also included, a few possible points or hit points in either direction. Alignments stay in the vicinity of the main alignment on the whole, but although Flaming Fist will still be largely Lawful Neutral, there will be noticeable numbers of LG and LE, some neutrals and even rare chaotics. Even ogres are not universally CE. This is decided individually for every creature, just like appearance. (If alignment of those you kill matters to you, use Detect Evil.)

Some NPC found in the first BG also received a makeover to stand out more: Scar, Ardenor Crush and some others.

The mod should be compatible with everything other than the original BG engine. The screenshots show the range of variations possible for the different creature types.

Let's begin with Amnian soldiers. Before the "modern age" most armies didn't have any kind of uniform, and if they did, it was limited to some one identifying article - a badge, a tabard, feathers, a musqueteer's cloak. Everything else was up to the soldier to provide, complement, improve and maintain, so an army was always a more or less motley sight. An unusual helmet or a sword of a different metal were not only allowed but expected in a soldier. Plus, colors of fabric on living bodies tended to darken with sweat, of course, and fade away. What a soldier looked like and how well he was equipped depended first and foremost on his means. It was not until the state went about wrapping its robots in free-of-charge, drab synthetics from head to toe that the modern idea of "military uniform" came about.

Keeping that in mind, Amnians soldiers serve a powerful state across the mountains and are better equipped than many, and their chain shirts and tunics tend to be quite alike. The helmets are mostly standard, flat casques, and the overall look is fairly boring, dark and long-suffering. However, Amnians have a sharp, suppressed stylishness that flares up unexpectedly in bright, vivid shirts on some of the people on this screenshot. Quite a few of the soldiers have modified or replaced their headgear. Yellow metal abounds, but it doesn't look like gold, more like brass, an altogether strange element in northerners' eyes.

Some of the random rolls for soldiers result in what I call sargents - characters with a noticeably different look who receive modest fighting bonuses. Amnian sargents wear white tunics, but there are none here.

 

Proceeding to Flaming Fist mercenaries, their getup is simple and pleasant to look at, with white, red and orange being the main colors. They remind me of enthusiastic cockerels. All-red helmets are not uncommon, sometimes with small additions of green metal. The round shields are commonsense and dark-paneled, expressing that they still mean business, despite the cheerful appearance, but my point about never complete uniformity applies: one on the bottom has a bright-paneled shield and some gilding to his armor, perhaps because he can afford it. The tones of armor everywhere are cold like a clear morning. On the left you also see a different body type - a smaller man. Not everyone on the force is an enormous brute.

Fist sargents wear plumes of a different color.

 

Most players never encounter enforcers of the Flaming Fist, but here they are, a tightly knit unit, much more like each other than patrolmen, and resoundingly grim in black and shocking white.

 

The last type of guardsman is the Candlekeep Watcher. Their armor reflects antiquity of the place: it is patinated, possibly handed down from generation to generation, and they wear crested helmets not known to anyone else. Their painted gold-and-purple staves, wound with white ribbon, are batons that convey authority more than anything else. Even among them, though, a traitorous red shirt will sometimes make an appearance.

 

You goody-goodies make me sick. Enter the Black Talons. In the Realms sourcebook whence they came to BG they are not evil, only very well-paid Lawful Neutral sellswords, and so is their leader Taurgosz Tenhammer (so called because he once slew ten men with one blow of his hammer. I don't know how, but he is one of the NPC brought out in style in this mod). Their alignment has been set back to LN now. To my mind, Black Talons are well-greased, cool, maybe a little lazy, foreign to the Sword Coast and its concerns, natives of Iriaebor that they are. They wear a detached combination of azure and imperial purple with plenty of metal, not too gleaming but warning, and flat soldierly pauldrons. The blades of their swords are often of quality, expensive, blue steel. And they tend to be blond.

 

Hobgoblins of the Chill are clever, successful and mean. That they are also foreign to the Coast shows in frequent appearance of bronze in their dress. For example, the middle hobgoblin wears it all over. Many also feature dark greenish metal, hinting at their use of poison, or carry green blades. Their swords are not envenomed, only their arrows, but it's in their idiom. The color of pride for them, though, around which the rest rotates, is gray, in several pitiless shades of it.

 

The next showing should be on town streets. Courtesans are changed by their animation type, which means that if there are prostitutes in Baldur's Gate 2, they will follow after the fashions of the North: striking hair, gilded or bronze breast cups and sandals, dark and demure colors for the skirt. This is all to attract customers, of course. Quenash in the Undercity was not changed, so there will be no confusion while looking for her, but her old-style drabness is mystifying in such a bowery.

 

On this screenshot you can notice, especially if you only glance over it lightly, variations of the hides of gibberlings.

 

My ogres wear skins, human and demihuman skins. Some appear shirtless below their armor and others seem to be naked or just about. Normal ogres usually only sport a little humanity, but berserkers on the right are decked out in it, except where they have aggressively colored armor. They look flushed and tend to have better weapons, tipped with dire copper for effect.

 

And finally the bandits. They are the most sophisticated creature type as far as design is concerned, and it would be easy to fill several screens with instances without exhausting their variety. The only thing they have in common is that they have nothing in common but each is out for himself and wears just what he has been able to steal and lift off corpses or buy with extorted money. These are not pathetic miscreants hiding in gulleys - they have been ruling the roads for weeks or months, and they boast of their spoils.  Bandits' leather armor can be of all sorts, dim and cheap on some, posh and elegant on others. Custom leather colors - crimson, green - are frequent. Many bandits have excellent blue-blade, gold-hilt weapons from their victims. Because they have flocked to Tazok from all over, their build, color of their skin and hair range widely. Some flaunt vitriolic hair dyes. If die rolls collude, truly outstanding specimens may pop up. The underworld is also more or less an equal opportunity employer, thus there is a scattering of women and dehihumans among them. In fact, there is a hobbit slinging it on the bottom of this screenshot.

For clarity, all these beautiful colors are only for the bandits. Regrettably, killing the fellows in those gorgeous golden or russet suits won't give you leather of this color. When you pick it up and try it on, it will be the same standard-issue outfit that is sold everywhere, with none of the beauty.

There must be deep meaning to that. 

Update

All animals and some other monsters that can't be properly colored (spiders, beetles, slimes, carrion crawlers etc.) have received some tinting this way and that a few shades. It is nothing to write home about, but it makes wolves and bears a little more diverse.

 

 

Skeletons have darkened, greenish or otherwise discolored bones, their weapons are antediluvian and made of copper and dark iron, and although the panels of their shields show merry colors from life, they have been dimmed and muted by time and fungi. Skeleton sargents are those who have died not so long ago and boast bright steel swords and bows. There aren't any on the screenshot.

 

I don't know how ogrillons have managed to become less civilized than either the ogres or the orcs who were their parents, but they stroll in the wild wearing only a ponytail, usually of some green color, and the pump. Everything else is left hanging with them. They come across like an international convention of Chaotic Evil bodybuilders/nudists/Tarzans, and many like a case of bronzing gone bad, ja.

 

 

Flesh golems. That says it all. Update: because they are such rare stakes, blood spurts in buckets whenever they are hit or they hit themselves.

 

Xvarts wear earthy colors: reds, greens, browns, the better to blend in with the terrain where they live and hunt. They still use bronze weapons, although a few have managed to get poor-quality iron swords from humans. A few wear shoulder rings of bronze for decoration, but on the whole they are poor. Xvarts run with a certain busy gait - you have to see them in motion to understand. Those who drag their feet, have light skin and hair of such a bright shade of yellow that it's almost white are the xvart old men. Being old among xvarts conveys no prestige or wealth, and so the old men wear no decorations, nor do they have better weapons. In fact xvarts put their elders out of the village on lean winters, or so I say. They take them back in the spring, the ones who survived. Xvart sargents are fierce berserkers who cover their whole body in metallic paints. There is one in the middle here.

A bonus for those who play Enhanced Editions: xvarts will camouflage themselves when encountered in the wild, blending with terrain and almost invisible. When they spot the approaching party, they will throw off the covers and charge.

 

Final update

Without touching the colors worn by commoner men and women, nobility, children, prostitutes and all humans without a script name or dialogue, I tinted their skin and hair for each of the three "game lines": Icewind Dales in the far north, BG1 and Siege of Dragonspear on the Sword Coast and Shadows of Amn with its sequel south of there. The same model has agreed to put on a burlap sack so as not to distract the viewer from the racial tinting on the screens from the three games.

Although not everyone in Icewind Dale is blond, many are, and skin is generally light as well. I think the NPC here were fair for the most part to begin with, but they certainly are now. Still, dusky and dark-skinned individuals creep in even here. This is what not having a good wall does to a community.

 

The inhabitants of the Sword Coast are not nearly as light, with many chestnut, russet and auburn heads of hair. Their skin is generally of some shade of pink, and darker types are not unheard of.

South of the border, down the Cloudpeaks way, hair is mostly black, skin is almost always dark. The posing generated here flashes some exceptions with blond and auburn hair, but this is not representative of the general population. Also if you squint very hard and especially if your own hair is light and long, you will notice the beautiful hazel eyes I have given every single figure.

 

Now, if you install this mod for one of the Icewind Dale games, the Aryans will settle all over it automatically, but if you are playing either a stand-alone version of the first Baldur's Gate, or the second, or a trilogy (tetralogy, counting SoD), you will need to do some manual installing. Neither I nor Weidu can determine on which side of the mountains someone with a commoner's animation and the name "Commoner" resides. You have to tell us and the immigration service. Well, tell Weidu, anyway. When you first install this version of the mod, you will be asked which racial tinting to apply. If you are adventuring in the north, install the northern-tinting option. If you are already in Amn, or when you move there, install the one for the south. Clothing carries over, but the body changes. This is a screenshot of southern courtesans, though taken against a BG1 background. Dark Lady-type beauties, they are. I was unable to increase their hip width one bit, however.

 

The penultimate creature recolor concerns half-ogres. They have always been the unnoticed underdogs of the world of big-fisted savagery. They were rare, for one thing, and misnamed. This update rewards their long struggle with a rightful hyphen, so they are now spelled "Half-ogre" instead of the clearly demeaning "Half Ogre" (modders who use CRE names to patch should take account of this). They were also added to Monster Summoning I. As for style, they are the fantasy stock men of black leather and horned helmets, great at rushing in and flopping on their backs when circle-kicked by a hero, one of their many skills. As low-level extras, there is a degree of uniformity in their look - they can neither afford nor dare to stand out. Still, their horns and belts show some encroachments on brass and bronze, and their armor is not just black but revolves around dark grays, dark greens and so on. Taken together, they come across as an army. Half-ogre sargents, or maybe lieutenants, answer to higher masters and look magnificent in gilded armor and yellow silks. They tend to appear apart from others, whom they command, and if you install for an EE game, they have larger personal space - a longer reach. On the screenshot below two lieutenants direct the charge on the party.

Finally, the gnolls. Here there are several varieties. Let's start with flinds. I didn't do much with them, they were very good already, only broadened their color range for variety. I think they look more dangerous as a result. I don't know how a canine could naturally have dark blue or black skin and bright yellow hair, though. Maybe magic had a hand in flinds' origins.

 

Proper gnolls are much more realistic. Rank-and-file have absorbed all the mangy curs of my remembrance. I bet there are some dogs like this outside right now, napping with their heads on their paws. The gnolls are young, unremarkable, weak and poor, with hardly any decorations. Their weapons are adequate, though, and only a few carry bronze halberds. For those who perceive nothing but numbers in this world - they have also received a speed boost.

 

Gnoll veterans are the same gnolls but older and with more gold about them to show for it. They have at least average-quality halberds. There is one with a golden piece here. Age shows in their darker fur, and they walk at the old speed.

 

Why are these ambushers so white? Because slashers are - ta-da-da! - albinos. They are a separate caste, consecrated to the gnoll god. It is bad luck for other gnolls to kill an albino, or they would have been slain at birth. Their equipment is standard gnoll, a couple on the right have poor iron or cast iron halberds, but, being young, they are sprightly runners.

 

A slasher who has lived long enough and fought long enough joins gnoll elite. These older albinos, although darkened by age and not quite as agile, are much better equipped, which shows obviously on the following picture. They also know a special tack when swinging their halberds - when they score a hit, they will slash all enemies around in a small radius. Gnoll elite summoned with spells also have this ability.

 
 

The ultimate update

I'm not going to surpass what I did with gnolls. Still, I took the last two creatures that could be recolored: kobolds and ogre mages.

Kobolds, who have come to conquer Candlekeep in this picture, have few recolorable parts, and the only piece of clothing they wear is a vest with a little loinloth below it. It was difficult to make them diverse, but I thought information in the "Monstrous Manual" that they dress in shades of orange was interesting. This is how it is now with them, oranges and reds, sometimes phosphorescent, plus bracers - sometimes of bright bronze and sometimes of good iron, like the ones on the arms of the rearing kobold in the bottom right. The kobolds don't lack iron, and nearly all of their weapons are also good, bright solid ferrous metal.

Kobold commandos are a different deal altogether - dressed in basic blacks, some with weapons of high-quality blue steel.

 

Featuring also the rarely seen kobold captains.

Ogre mage models are marvellously detailed, with many parts that can be recolored. I think I conveyed rather successfully the sumptuous vividness and contrasts of samurai armor and dress - with the poor tools here, but maybe the scantity of means actually helped. Kahrk of the jar has received a few individual touches, but every ogre mage is different, rolled up from a universe of possibilities, just like any of us. It would be vulgar to show too many examples.

Download

You should also apply this fix for some rare incidents, made by @eyre.

77474302_SomeIndividuals-Fixes.zip

Edited February 27, 2022 by temnix

[4udr4n]

Love it, installing now.

[4udr4n]

Or not, can't download yet. Any chance of an alternative share?

[Salk]

I like the idea of adding some variation to the most common type of NPCs.

Good job.

The antivirus is blocking the download for me (using Kaspersky). It would be nice to have an alternate download site.

Edited May 12, 2020 by Salk

[AL|EN]

@temnix Bad news for you, mod will disappear after 30 days. Every file sharing service has similar problem.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Well, in that case... until later, all credits go to termix:

EDIT: File deleted... one can PM me to get the file, but it will always be the very first one there was, so...

Edited May 15, 2020 by Jarno Mikkola

[Raduziel]

Another awesome work, mate.

[temnix]

My mods are normally hosted on MediaFire, where storage is unlimited. I'm having a problem there at the moment, hence Uploaded.

[temnix]

Updated - see the head post. This is the final version. My Medifire now works, so @Jarno Mikkola , please delete your link.

[subtledoctor]

This seems nice.

[Goddard]

Cool, I like the idea.

[Jarno Mikkola]

Done and dusted. Also @temnix, you could request to get your own mod room at G3 if you wanted to, so you could get file space to keep the files at here at G3. To do so, you just need to PM CamDawg and talk to him about it, or someone else.

[temnix]

I felt like doing some more recoloring. This will really be final. The head message was updated.

[temnix]

Hah, the other time the end wasn't definitive at all. Now I reimagined two more creatures and this is it. I'm finished with them.

[Endarire]

Where should this be put in the install order?