Everybody Is Just So Scary (mod)

[temnix]

Across all of the games there are all these guards, soldiers, thugs, cutthroats and other small-time, low-level hooligans who walk up to the party and announce: "Well, I'm a mean son of a bitch, and I'm gonna give you a world of hurt" (spoken in BG1). After this somebody hacks at them, once, and they bite the dust. I'm tired of the sort of life where the party goes through the world ignoring nearly all threats in a sort of unsatisfied longing because it can mop the floor with everything but complete assassin squads or central-piece pre-scripted NPC. This mod puts the danger back into small folk. And the smaller they are, the meaner they  get. In inverse proportion to their level humanoids (other than innocents) receive stacked bonuses to their ability to hit, damage, defense and saving throws. They may also randomly receive other abilities not advertised anywhere, but there to surprise you: complete immunity to an energy damage type, poison or the power to break through plus-weapon defenses. These may not come in until you try to hit them with spells of that type or let them get close in full confidence that Mantle will protect you from everything. Hah-hah, it may not.

For an example of the sort of fighter who gets the boost, here is the Amnian Legionary from BG2. This is supposed to be a step up from Amnian Soldier, and for some reason an 8th level creature, so only gets a moderate boost from this mod. The rest of the statistics are: XP value 15, hit points 16, THAC0 15, Armor Class 5. And it is an enemy - someone the party will have to encounter and fight. Why and what for? Now these personages may get a poke through. And players get a plausible reason to try to role-play situations and pick peaceful options when, sometimes, those are available.

Bonuses taper off and disappear to middle levels. Starting level humanoids are enormously stronger, but monsters and undead (say, skeletons and zombies) are also rather tougher, though not so much. Animals are not touched at all, they are dangerous enough to beginning characters as they are and rarely encountered afterwards. The most wicked type of encounter beginner parties can look out for now is swarms of weak creatures. They can be right deadly.

Compatibility: should be compatible with all engine versions.

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Edited July 1, 2021 by temnix

[temnix]

I uploaded a slightly toned down version of the mod. The first one was suicidally difficult.