Improved NPC customisation and management and Favored Enemies

[Thels]

I like how the Improved NPC customisation works! It's quite user friendly. However, I noticed one small issue.

When you change a character's class to Ranger, that character doesn't get a Favored Enemy.

Would it be possible to have them select a Favored Enemy like how thieves select their additional skillpoints?

[DavidW]

Hmmm, good point. I'll look at it.

[Thels]

Cool!

 

Some other things I noticed:

When leveling up a thief to level 1, and then use the innate abilities to assign the skillpoints, if you use them really fast after each other, they overlap, instead of stacking (meaning you only get the bonus once). This is most notable when auto-pause on spell cast is enabled, as it causes the character to pause twice.

I recruited Neera, leveled her up to 2, and then dual-classed her into a thief. After choosing her initial thief abilities, it allowed me to continue leveling her up to level 3. All seemed well, but she does have 3 innate abilities to increase her thief points. Since dual-classing her allowed me to assign her full set of 40 skill points at the first thief level, those extra thief points seem in error.

In the Wolf module, Wolves seem to remain passive even when surrounded by characters, and even when those characters are attacking and damaging them. Also, you get travel ambushes with wild dogs, who aren't hostile.

Edited June 24, 2022 by Thels

[Guest Mike]

First time using SCS, and I'm not sure what happened but I think it might have been this improved level-up process. Anyway, Neera did not get any of her wild-mage specific spells. Not the reckless dweomer or either of the two chaos shields. (I opened her up in eekeeper and added them manually to her spell list, so that's a workaround).

[Guest dropOfGoldenSun]

Baeloth doesn't seem to get his 3 extra spells in each of levels 1,2,3

Edwin might suffer from a similar problem? needs 1 extra spell per level

Coran might not be permitted to get 3 points in longbow if levelled up manually

[jmerry]

Baeloth gets additional spells known in the standard game, ostensibly from his ring but in practice as part of his CRE file. Naturally, the customization component wipes them out. My read ... these should go away if you customize him to any other class but he should have them if you make him a sorcerer or sorcerer kit. Which means he should get a one-time effect to learn more spells ... might be tricky to implement.

Edwin gets additional arcane spell slots from his amulet. One per spell level in BG1, two per spell level in BG2. NPC customization shouldn't affect this. If they aren't showing up, it's because the amulet isn't equipped properly. And obviously, if you customize him to a class that can't cast arcane spells, that amulet is dead weight.

Coran is an illegal build. Of course he can't take those three dots in longbow if you level him up manually as a fighter/thief in the standard rules. Same for Korgan's five dots in axe at level 8 in BG2.

[DavidW]

Belatedly looking at these:

• Unless I'm missing something, it's impossible to let rangers select a favored enemy: there's no way to set the favored enemy variable in game, whether through scripting or through opcodes. I've added a message warning players of this.
• The new version will handle thief skill points entirely through the main levelling screen, so that issues connected with those special abilities should be moot.
• Neera (and any other wild mage) should get their spells normally once you save and reload (another odd engine limitation). There is supposed to be a message played to warn you of this but it seems to be broken - will fix.
• Implementing Baeloth's extra spells is awkward enough that I've just banned him from the converter.
• Yes, you can't get illegal builds if you level up manually. That's a feature rather than a bug, if anything.