Welcome to the Bardic Appraisal Mod

[CamDawg]

A nice, simple weekend project based on another good idea from @Cahir.

The Bardic Appraisal mod is a small WeiDU mod that adds an ability to bards (including all kits) that allows them to appraise any identified item in the party. The mod will work on any game, save PsT or PsTEE.

• Download
• Project Page
• Readme

Bardic Appraisal has one component. It adds a single, at-will ability for any bard, kitted or unkitted. The ability will prompt a dialogue which will allow you to appraise any identified item in the party's possession. Note that the prices reported by the skill will likely not reflect the actual value you can sell an item for due to the following factors:

• Merchants have a fixed markup, e.g. most will only offer to purchase the item starting at 60% of its value.
• Merchants will also adjust prices up or down depending on your charisma and reputation.
• For charged items, merchants will pro-rate prices based on the remaining charges, e.g. you will only be able to sell a half-charged wand for half of the price of a fully-charged wand. This also means that merchants generally only offer 1 gold for an item that is fully discharged, including X-per-day items that have already been used.
• Merchants will also start to depreciate items after they have a certain amount of them, e.g. after a merchant has five short swords in stock, they will start offering you lower purchase prices for additional short swords.
• Items that are flagged as plot-critical, generally, cannot be sold except in a handful of stores (the BG series has no stores that will take them). When appraised, you'll get feedback indicating that the item is special and that you may not be able to sell it.

In terms of installation order, Bardic Appraisal should be installed after any mods that add items. The mod will scan all items at install time in order to build its appraisal routine, so any items which are added after this mod will not be included.

At present there is one minor issue: many books in the game are actually classified as 'miscellaneous' items so it's possible they will not show up under the 'book' category when appraising items.

There are a few notes for older platforms, specifically the original Baldur's Gate or original Icewind Dale:

• The mod will add skills to bards via AI scripting, so you'll need to turn on Party AI (even if momentarily) to get this new ability
• Unlike more modern engines, all categories of items will be displayed when you use the ability, not just categories in which you currently possess an item.
• For the same reason, you must go back to the top-level menu (with the categories) after appraising an item.
• You can (accurately, and by their identified name) appraise unidentified items, as there's no specific trigger to check for this

Newer versions of the engine (original Baldur's Gate II, Icewind Dale II, or any of the Enhanced Editions) will not have these issues.

[Raduziel]

How does it works with mod-added bard kits? Any sort of crossmodding needs to be done?

[CamDawg]

It should work with mod bard kits as long as Bardic Appraisal is installed after them. Basically, it checks the game's list of kits (kitlist.2da) and adds the appraisal ability to any bard kit it finds. Cahir tested it with Lava's Ina NPC on IWDEE (Ina uses a custom bard kit) and the ability worked as intended.

edit: clarified order

Edited September 1, 2021 by CamDawg

[Cahir]

2 hours ago, CamDawg said:

It should work with mod bard kits as long as it's installed after them. Basically, it checks the game's list of kits (kitlist.2da) and adds the appraisal ability to any bard kit it finds. Cahir tested it with Lava's Ina NPC on IWDEE (Ina uses a custom bard kit) and the ability worked as intended.

I confirm, it works like a charm with Ina NPC. 

[Raduziel]

On 9/1/2021 at 8:54 AM, CamDawg said:

It should work with mod bard kits as long as Bardic Appraisal is installed after them. Basically, it checks the game's list of kits (kitlist.2da) and adds the appraisal ability to any bard kit it finds. Cahir tested it with Lava's Ina NPC on IWDEE (Ina uses a custom bard kit) and the ability worked as intended.

edit: clarified order

Thanks.

[temnix]

The dialogue of this mod should replace appraised items with copies with higher value.

[jastey]

5 hours ago, temnix said:

The dialogue of this mod should replace appraised items with copies with higher value.

That's a bad idea for compatibility if other mods check for game items. I heard there are some mods doing that. Also - what for?

By the way, is this mod EET compatible?

[Endarire]

@jastey
Wow!  You're asking one of my favorite Infinity Engine modding questions as of late!

CamDawg will likely answer that it is, but I give him the final verdict.

[jastey]

@Endarire I was thinking about your questions when posting this. It was a tongue in cheek question and I apologize. But I guess having EET compatibility spelled out explicitely is never a bad thing.

[Endarire]

According to this file, %eet% (EET) is listed as a compatible game mode.

[CamDawg]

I mean, you already asked this and got an answer of yes two weeks ago.

[temnix]

On 9/8/2021 at 8:16 AM, jastey said:

That's a bad idea for compatibility if other mods check for game items. I heard there are some mods doing that. Also - what for?

By the way, is this mod EET compatible?

The point of appraising items, if there is to be a practical purpose at all, is to increase their value. In principle, appraisal should sometimes leave the value as it was or discover flaws and lower it, but in any event the goal is to take the item to a store. Plot items should be excluded, and then there will be no problem for any checks. It is also not too difficult to patch dialogues and scripts with an OR(2) condition admitting the differently-priced items and add duplicate take-item lines for them. Overall, this should not cause much trouble. But it is even easier to do none of that and leave this mod in the "theoretical meh" category.

[The Artisan]

3 hours ago, temnix said:

The point of appraising items, if there is to be a practical purpose at all, is to increase their value. In principle, appraisal should sometimes leave the value as it was or discover flaws and lower it, but in any event the goal is to take the item to a store. Plot items should be excluded, and then there will be no problem for any checks. It is also not too difficult to patch dialogues and scripts with an OR(2) condition admitting the differently-priced items and add duplicate take-item lines for them. Overall, this should not cause much trouble. But it is even easier to do none of that and leave this mod in the "theoretical meh" category.

This is actually the most garbage proposition I’ve seen in a long time. But then again, what do I expect from the genius who thinks prefixes are a mere formality.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Artemius I

[temnix]

Prefixes are an interesting side topic, actually. If whoever had that idea originally had wanted to avoid interference of file names, he should have gone with personal suffixes. Prefixes make all files of a modder appear in the same place in the tree of Near Infinity. This is convenient to avoid looking all over for them, but it has the same problem as keeping one large drawer for all of one's things: finding something there is a hassle. When hundreds of files begin with the same two letters, the eye struggles to get past them to those that have meaning. On the other hand, with a suffix I can begin a file name just as I want it and I see what that file is, at the price of two characters in the end. In effect, suffixes allow free file naming, only shorter. I'm not surprised this "community" has stuck with an inferior solution through the years, though. As far as this mod goes, I said what I wanted to say. I gave a good idea, CamDawg can make use of it or not.

[DavidW]

3 hours ago, temnix said:

When hundreds of files begin with the same two letters, the eye struggles to get past them to those that have meaning.

My method is normally to look at the third and subsequent letters.