Skills and Abilities Mod

[morpheus562]

It is with great pleasure and excitement that @Grammarsalad and I are moving our Skills and Abilities mod into ALPHA release state.

Introduction

This mod is a collection of class, skill, proficiency, and stat updates. This is an alpha release with the intention of adding more class, skill, and stat updates in the near future while further refining the new proficiencies that are being added. Yes, these are actual, functional, useable, proficiencies that can be assinged on the character creation and level up screens. Yes, eekeeper can recognize and adjust these proficiencies for characters. Yes, I am intimately familiar with the limited resources in the game, and no detectable spells were harmed in the making of this mod.

Some components require EEex to work, and those are identified with (EEex Required).

Compatibility

This mod has components (outlined above) requiring EEex created by Bubb to work. If you install these components, you will need to launch your game with InfinityLoader.exe instead of the standard Baldur.exe file.

Windows is required if you are using EEex specific components; otherwise, it will work with Linux and Mac.

I recommend to install after SCS due to how many changes are involved with proficiencies.

Links

You can download the latest version of the mod here.

You can view the readme for the mod here.

Edited August 23, 2023 by morpheus562

[Zutroy]

{blank space}

 

Edited October 18, 2023 by Zutroy

[ahungry]

Looks nice - EEex only, boo (well, more boo to Windows )

[morpheus562]

2 minutes ago, ahungry said:

Looks nice - EEex only, boo (well, more boo to Windows )

It's not EEex only. Majority of the content is actually non-EEex.

[ahungry]

Nice, I had thought so based on the initial description, but then when reading this section, was confused by the second paragraph:

Quote

Compatibility

This mod has components (outlined above) requiring EEex created by Bubb to work. If you install these components, you will need to launch your game with InfinityLoader.exe instead of the standard Baldur.exe file.

Being this requires EEex to run, Windows is required at this time.

I recommend to install after SCS due to how many changes are involved with proficiencies.

 

[morpheus562]

38 minutes ago, ahungry said:

Nice, I had thought so based on the initial description, but then when reading this section, was confused by the second paragraph:

 

Yes, it has SOME. If you download those components, then you'll need EEex.

[subtledoctor]

You can more or less simulate Detect Illusions without resorting to EEex - I do it with my multiclass shamans. It's been a while, but I think I basically created an effect to dispel nearby illusions/illusionary creatures, and then apply it once per round via repeating .eff when you toggle the ability on. It has a chance of success ranging from some minimum # up to 100, increasing by x % each level, via added spell headers. It works a bit differently from vanilla shaman/thieves - rather than automatically canceling DI if you cast or attack, my version disables spellcasting and APR, and you must manually toggle DI off in order to cast or attack. (You can automate that to some extent if you wanted, via 321 effects added to spells and as on-hit effects on weapons, but... meh.)

Actually, just out of curiosity, when you resort to EEex to use the 'real' DI skill, what is gained? I don't have the best grasp of how the skill works; if Inquisitors are doing it with 100% success rate, isn't that basically the same as giving them unlimited-use Oracle, or something like that? What's the difference between giving them an unlimited-use spell vs. giving them the real thief skill?

Edited January 28, 2022 by subtledoctor

[morpheus562]

10 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

You can more or less simulate Detect Illusions without resorting to EEex - I do it with my multiclass shamans. It's been a while, but I think I basically created an effect to dispel nearby illusions/illusionary creatures, and then apply it once per round via repeating .eff when you toggle the ability on. It has a chance of success ranging from some minimum # up to 100, increasing by x % each level, via added spell headers. It works a bit differently from vanilla shaman/thieves - rather than automatically canceling DI if you cast or attack, my version disables spellcasting and APR, and you must manually toggle DI off in order to cast or attack. (You can automate that to some extent if you wanted, via 321 effects added to spells and as on-hit effects on weapons, but... meh.)

Actually, just out of curiosity, when you resort to EEex to use the 'real' DI skill, what is gained? I don't have the best grasp of how the skill works; if Inquisitors are doing it with 100% success rate, isn't that basically the same as giving them unlimited-use Oracle, or something like that? What's the difference between giving them an unlimited-use spell vs. giving them the real thief skill?

EEex is not needed so much to get the skill, but to update the action bar to allow the player to toggle it's use. I already use many repeating effects to allow the new proficiencies to work, and I'd rather avoid adding more if the skill itself will work.

The real Detect Illusion skill will avoid Spell Immunity: Divination (which I've found many high level enemies in SCS using in conjunction with Improved Invisibility/Mislead/other similar spells). Oracle and True Seeing will both, in theory, be blocked by SI: Divination, and the Detect Illusion skill is the only resource to get around it. Giving the passive to Inquisitors makes sense from a Lore perspective too within the game. Specifically, Keldorn is able to detect the illusions of a particular Raksasha, so it goes with the kit to provide the skill.

Edited January 28, 2022 by morpheus562

[subtledoctor]

23 minutes ago, morpheus562 said:

The real Detect Illusion skill will avoid Spell Immunity: Divination (which I've found many high level enemies in SCS using in conjunction with Improved Invisibility/Mislead/other similar spells). Oracle and True Seeing will both, in theory, be blocked by SI: Divination, and the Detect Illusion skill is the only resource to get around it.

Yes but it's easy to make an innate ability that destroys illusions but is coded as school-less and does not have the DIVINATIONATTACK sectype, which would therefore penetrate all divination protections (and has power=0, and allow it to be cast when silenced, and ignore dead/wild magic, etc. etc.). Is that the main difference?

In other words I'm trying to better understand the skill itself. If it is set to 100, does that mean it will automatically be successful as soon as you toggle it? Or is it a bit more like stealth or pick-pocketing, where "100 is not really 100%" (so to speak) and so it still may take a couple rounds before it works?

[morpheus562]

@subtledoctorI'm pulling from the wiki on this, but here is the description:
 

Quote

When active, it allows a creature to both Find Traps and detect illusions up to 15 feet away, based on the creature's score in each skill. This modal skill will trigger once per round, twice under a Haste effect. Skill points in Detect Illusion represent the percentage chance to remove them, so there is no need to raise it above 100.

So every round (twice under haste/ih), creatures with 100 points in this skill will detect all illusions in 15'. When it ticks in the round is whatever the game decides.

Edited January 28, 2022 by morpheus562

[Endarire]

@morpheus562
How does your proficiency system work with Scales of Balance or OlvynTweaks?  I like the new proficiencies for arcane & divine casting, but I also like some of the tweaks from these other mods.

[subtledoctor]

14 minutes ago, Endarire said:

@morpheus562
How does your proficiency system work with Scales of Balance or OlvynTweaks?  I like the new proficiencies for arcane & divine casting, but I also like some of the tweaks from these other mods.

Definitely looks like a "you need to choose one or the other" kind of thing. At a glance (and only at a glance), I would guess that you can use SoB proficiencies with Skills & Abilities weapons styles, or Skills & Abilities proficiencies with SoB weapon styles. But not both proficiency components or both weapon styles components.

(incidentally I've been thinking for a long time of using the extra proficiencies in SoB for other stuff, like here. I would probably do it a bit differently, but it's a very nice idea to make use of the profs freed up when you combine weapon categories.)

[morpheus562]

I honestly have no idea what Olvyn does with proficiencies. I'm guessing since it is mostly a v2.5 mod, from my understanding, that it will be incompatible. SoB Weapon Category Combination is NOT compatible. For the weapon styles, choose either mine or SoB. Really this one comes down to personal preference.

[Endarire]

@morpheus562
I like the new proficiencies for arcane & divine casting, as well as armor proficiencies.  How to get only those from your mod but use weapon styles from another mod?

[morpheus562]

2 minutes ago, subtledoctor said:

Definitely looks like a "you need to choose one or the other" kind of thing. At a glance (and only at a glance), I would guess that you can use SoB proficiencies with Skills & Abilities weapons styles, or Skills & Abilities proficiencies with SoB weapon styles. But not both proficiency components or both weapon styles components.

(incidentally I've been thinking for a long time of using the extra proficiencies in SoB for other stuff, like here. I would probably do it a bit differently, but it's a very nice idea to make use of the profs freed up when you combine weapon categories.)

Exactly my takeaway too with compatibility. I think there is definitely a lot of room to explore with the freed up proficiencies with many different opportunity paths, all exciting, that can be taken.