Mod Order/Feedback request

[Oloriniel]

Day 5
Beregost, Coast Way, Trade Way North, Trade Way South
Charname, Haiass, Imoen, Grey, Jaheria, Khalid, Brandock, Moidre, Kagain

Cleared:
Slime Quest, Dudley Family's Necklace, near-brawl at Feldpost's, book for Firebead, Raughner's Ruffian Roughnecks, A Fine Pair of Boots, Mirianne's Husband, Roomokum

opponents:  Assassin at the Red Sheaf, Hobgoblins, ghouls, ghasts, giant spiders, dire wolves, kobolds, xvarts, dire wolves

2 more of Camryn's books found; wand of lightning looted from Travenhurst Manor

New quests:
Gurke's Cloak, Amber Flower, Beetles Dreams & and Old Man, Bartus the Romantic, Bartleby the Longwalker, Entar's Son, The Quest for Jumper, Breagar is looking for Iron

XP:  1392/class (2/1/2)
Body Count: 156
Gold: 971

Kagain's "to hit" is too low.  2nd level, THACO base 19.  +3 to hit for 3 pips in axe, -1 for shield penalty should be 17.  But it looks like he has a 2 point penalty for being a dwarf?

[subtledoctor]

2 hours ago, Oloriniel said:

Kagain's "to hit" is too low.  2nd level, THACO base 19.  +3 to hit for 3 pips in axe, -1 for shield penalty should be 17.  But it looks like he has a 2 point penalty for being a dwarf?

You can't really trust what you see in the inventory page. Sometimes there are modifiers that the EE UI doesn't really know what to do with, and it'll say something like "War Hammer: +7" even though that modifier has nothing to do with war hammers. Maybe it's something like that?

Or maybe some mod you installed includes, like, a. penalty for shorties to hit Large/Huge creatures? Doesn't MiH have special handling for large creatures? It could show up as a penalty to your baseline to-hit chance, but you might have a hidden bonus to compensate, which would go into action when fighting Small/Medium creatures. Kind of like how modifiers to hit or to AC against certain damage types are buried in the record screen and don't show up in the main UI display? Maybe? I'm just throwing out possibilities, I really have no idea. But in general, don't assume the UI is reporting values for thac0 or AC that are precisely correct.

[Oloriniel]

 

1 hour ago, subtledoctor said:

Or maybe some mod you installed includes, like, a. penalty for shorties to hit Large/Huge creatures? Doesn't MiH have special handling for large creatures? It could show up as a penalty to your baseline to-hit chance, but you might have a hidden bonus to compensate, which would go into action when fighting Small/Medium creatures. Kind of like how modifiers to hit or to AC against certain damage types are buried in the record screen and don't show up in the main UI display? Maybe? I'm just throwing out possibilities, I really have no idea. But in general, don't assume the UI is reporting values for thac0 or AC that are precisely correct.

MiH does, and I do have that installed.  I think it just uses alternate damage dice for certain weapons against Large creatures (which was a feature in 1st and prob. 2nd edition).  It doesn't say anything about penalties for dwarves. My recollection is that they had an AC bonus when Giants et al attacked them, and a bonus of +1 when attacking orcs.

I figured the display showed 'fixed' variables, that applied all the time, and 'conditional' variables (like a +2 weapon that does +3 against specific opponents) wouldn't display.

Also, Moidre doesn't have the same issue.  Her THACO is 19, which is her base, +3 for STR/proficiency, and -3 for her shield.

 

At the circus, Aerie just asked me to save Bentha from Zordral.  Who, as soon as hostilities began, triggered a Chain Contingency giving him Improved Mantle and 2 Summon Efreeti.  On top of his previously cast Stoneskin, Mirror Image, and Shield.

Charname is 2/1/2; Jaheira and Khalid are 3rd, Moidre, Flara, Valerie and Brandock are 2nd.  Having cast an 8th and 9th level spell, this guy must be at least 18th.

 

Dropped difficulty from Hardcore to Tactical.  Same buffs.

Dropped difficulty from Tactical to Improved.  Now it's Contingency giving him Spell Deflection, plus a previously cast Stoneskin.  At this difficulty level, I was able to kill him.

 

[Oloriniel]

Day 8
Nashkel, Carnival, Nashkel Mines
Replaced Kagain with Valerie, Imoen with Flara.  Then replaced Valerie with Xan

Cleared:
Kylee's Dagger, into the Womanhood, finished Chapter 2

New Quests:
Joseph's Wife, Winter Wolf Pelts, Stronghold and its Shadows, Ice and Ore, Carnival and the Missing Brother, the Melting Man, Babysitting in Nashkel, Nashkel Monster, the Serpents of Abbathor

Found:  2 more of Camryn's books (6 total), ankheg plate, ore for Breagar, a rabbit for Ugh

XP: 3755/class (3/2/3)
Body Count: 256
Gold:  3301

Okay, so I wound up staying on "Improved" Difficulty; forgot to move it back up after Zordral.

The Nashkel mines were a trip with fewer kobolds.  The hobgoblins and gnolls made sense; it was a bit puzzling to see black bears, lynxes, and cheetahs.  The ooze and lightning mephits were interesting.  And the 12th level Sahuagin Baronial Guards were tough, doing 20+ hp missile damage and one-shotting my sorcerers!  Keeping them alive was a pain, but Flara and Valerie both disappear if you don't recruit them in Chapter 2.  I don't think Valerie has any more quests, so when I needed a slot for Xan, I let her go.  I haven't played Flara before, so I've no idea where or when her quests are; hopefully I can safely leave her someplace and pick her up again later.  Liking her, and Moidre so far; gonna be a shame to rotate them out (for other NPC's I'll then be reluctant to part with...!)

Also, wights and their level drain when you've barely got 2nd level cleric spells are no joke (and, naturally, it was Jaheira who got drained...)

I got more XP out of this stage than I expected (expecially with the mod-added 25% nerf, which really hurts in the early game with a triple-class character!)  Twice I was interrupted while resting by a single orc...who messed up my party in a big, big way.  On death, he awarded 9000 xp.  Not sure what his creature code is, I didn't know there were any generic orcs that tough!

I made a point of not installing Scale of Balance' armor system this time; for me personally, I thought it nerfed DEX too much, as well as reducing AC in exchange for DR.   I much prefer having to use pips for armor proficiency, thanks to Skills and Abilities (a shield proficiency, to remove that THAC0 reduction, would be nice!).  But I must have installed something similar; for example, ankheg plate is reduced to AC 2 (but I only lose 5% of DEX, not 5 points, for a lower DR %).   Shouldn't Jaheira be able to wear that?  It's not metal....

[subtledoctor]

42 minutes ago, Oloriniel said:

made a point of not installing Scale of Balance' armor system this time; for me personally, I thought it nerfed DEX too much, as well as reducing AC in exchange for DR. 

You know that stuff is completely configurable, right? 

42 minutes ago, Oloriniel said:

But I must have installed something similar; for example, ankheg plate is reduced to AC 2 (but I only lose 5% of DEX, not 5 points, for a lower DR %)

Sounds like Item Revisions…

[Oloriniel]

I didn't see an option to adjust it, and my knowledge to modify things 'under the hood' is rather limited.

Case in point, Breagar.  I just recruited him, and he only had 1k XP, no catch-up bump.  That, I could fix.  But for some reason he can't wear any armor.  I'm guessing there's something amiss with his kit, but I'm not sure where to look, or how to fix it.

Also, I was expecting my sorcerer to have a 'choose spells' menu at leveling up, but no, just the "level up' button (and, once, choosing a proficiency.  Now Flara is 5th level but still only has her first 3 spells.  Am I a complete noob, or what

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, Oloriniel said:

I didn't see an option to adjust it, and my knowledge to modify things 'under the hood' is rather limited.

You have complete control over the base AC of each armor category, whether to block  arcane casting, damage resistance, casting speed penalty, casting failure chance, weapon speed penalty, movement speed penalty, DEX penalty, and thief skill penalties. All in a hopefully easy-to-handle settings file in the mod's "ini" folder. You have to change the file (d5_YARAS_default.ini) before you install, of course. But, you also don't have to use it! I'm just letting you know.

1 hour ago, Oloriniel said:

Also, I was expecting my sorcerer to have a 'choose spells' menu at leveling up, but no, just the "level up' button (and, once, choosing a proficiency.  Now Flara is 5th level but still only has her first 3 spells.

Should have an item ability, under the backpack icon. Might be purple? It should let you choose spells, you use it kind of like loading a sequencer - use the ability, choose one spell, use the ability again, choose another spell. It will tell you how many spells you have left to choose in each spell level. Use this each time you level up, and after any time you use the "change known spell" innate ability.

[Oloriniel]

9 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

You have complete control over the base AC of each armor category, whether to block  arcane casting, damage resistance, casting speed penalty, casting failure chance, weapon speed penalty, movement speed penalty, DEX penalty, and thief skill penalties. All in a hopefully easy-to-handle settings file in the mod's "ini" folder. You have to change the file (d5_YARAS_default.ini) before you install, of course. But, you also don't have to use it! I'm just letting you know.

Thanks for the tips!  I'll keep them in mind for future reinstalls.  I suppose I really should read the readmes more thoroughly
 

9 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Should have an item ability, under the backpack icon. Might be purple? It should let you choose spells, you use it kind of like loading a sequencer - use the ability, choose one spell, use the ability again, choose another spell. It will tell you how many spells you have left to choose in each spell level. Use this each time you level up, and after any time you use the "change known spell" innate ability.

I wound up giving her the additional spells she should have gotten via EEKeeper, and I'm guessing that's why the button isn't there now.  But she should hit 6th level before long, and I'll see what happens then.  Thanks, again!

Having an issue with my pseudo-dragon familiar; when he goes into my bag, there's a rabbit familiar in my inventory.  When I release the rabbit, no familiar appears.
I looked it up, the item for the pseudodragon is "FAMPSD_, and when I add that to my inventory via console it's there and it returns to the world normally.

[Graion Dilach]

EET has it's own familiar system which might not be compatible with other mods. I never play with familiars to know their state.

[Oloriniel]

Day 20
Valley of the Tombs, Gibberling Mountains, Nashkel Mines Exterior, Nashkel Carnival, Nashkel, Lonely Peaks, Trade Way North, Trade Way South, Beregost, Coast Way, Friendly Arm Inn

Cleared: New Suit of Armor, Offer from Taerom, Confronting Tranzig, Investigating the Nashkel Mines, Joseph's Wife, Landrin's Possessions, Ogre Hunting, Oublek the Bounty Officer, Prism the Sculptor, Samuel and Lena, Winter Wolf Pelts, Shadows Below the Friendly Arm Inn, Amber Flower, Carnival and the Missing Brother, the Echoed Cry, the Melting Man, the Messenger, Nashkel Monster, Drunk Near Beregost Temple, New Best Friend for Ugh, Breagar's Accident in the Thunderhammer Smithy

New:  Vai's Bounty upon Bandits, Vial of Mysterious Liquid, THE NOTICE, Dragon Trade

Companions:  
Farewell for now to Jaheira and Khalid.  I'll pick them up again before heading into the Cloakwood.
Moidre remains interesting.  Not sure where or when her quests are or even if she has any, so she's on the short list to rotate out.
Flara--I've met Sigurd at Feldposts and know Flara really is a dragon.  They'll meet me at Sorcerous Sundries, so I may be able to let Flara go until some time in Chapter 5.
Xan--Up to LT16.  21 is the last before Candlekeep, so it won't be long before his spot is open.  But I haven't done his quest yet.
Breagar--His quests haven't started yet.
Branwen---having killed Tranzig, and not romancing her, I think I can let her go whenever I'm ready to pick up a new cleric.  Hmm.  Drake's got "kill Bassilus'" and then nothing until Baldur's Gate; Helga I think just has the Ogres near the Gnoll Fortress; I don't know what Gavin or Finch have in the way of quests, and I don't think Tiax or Quayle have anything I want to do; Viconia I don't think has much in BG1 if you're not romancing her, Yeslick won't be available until the Cloakwood Mine.  I need to leave Dave 'til I'm done with the Kozah idol?  I suppose I could go pick up Tenya?  I feel like I'm forgetting someone.

Brandock:  Firebead will help, but we need a potion of regeneration and octopus ink.
Isra wouldn't join us after we helped her with Prism/Greywolf, because we'd already cleared the mines.  She doesn't, I don't think, have any BG1 quests though, so between Moidre, Flara and Valerie *needing* to be recruited beforehand, and wanting to take Jaheira and Khalid for continuity reasons, I just couldn't squeeze her in.  Sirene I don't think has any quests either, but if I want a paladin before I'm ready to pick up Ajantis, she's available.

Gameplay:  Can't put scalps in bag of holding.  I didn't have the button to choose a new spell for Flara when she leveled; I did have a button that would have let me discard one or more of her spells, choosing that spell option in a text window.  So I EEKeepered her Melf's Minute Meteors at 6th level.

When Breagar leveled up, he lost the armor and helmet I EEKeepered in for him.  Still no idea why he can't wear armor but at least I've identified a workaround (and have less incentive to keep him longer than it takes his quests to pop.  But doesn't he have to be in the party at the end of BG1 to appear in SoD, and at the end of SoD to appear in BG2?

It's been a while since I've resurrected Haiass.  It takes a lot of management to keep him alive, not many hp and poor AC, and unlike Grey there's not really a way to mitigate.  Plus he frequently prevents CHARNAME from being able to move.

XP: 11136/class (4/4/4)
Body Count: 524
Gold: 10174

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, Oloriniel said:

Plus [haiass] frequently prevents CHARNAME from being able to move.

In an old BGT game once this actually created a game-stopping situation. It is indeed hard to manage him. Why I’m not into pets anymore. 

1 hour ago, Oloriniel said:

didn't have the button to choose a new spell for Flara when she leveled

What is - who is - Flara? What class is she? I’ll take a look at your weidu.log, it sounds like something is conflicting with TnB sorcerers. If you can look at your save file, check the character and see if they have something in their Ammo3 slot. (Notwithstanding the label, that is the 4th, invisible, ammo slot.)

For that matter, who the heck is Moidre?

[Oloriniel]

Moidre and Flara are both part of the Glam Pack NPC's, along with Vynd, Dave, and someone else.  I've never played with any of them before; I gather Vynd is the most popular and was also released as a stand-alone, but these two are both interesting and well-written.

[jmerry]

On the familiar stuff - here's the mechanics. At least, before any mods.

When you summon the initial familiar, the game creates the appropriate creature. Exact mechanics differ by game; BGEE refers to FAMILIAR.2DA while BG2EE puts that info in BALDUR.GAM.

Familiars have shared dialogue files; one for the good familiars, one for the neutral familiars, one for the evil familiars. When you talk to a familiar and ask it to go in your pack, that creates an item for the familiar that matches the good/evil alignment of the familiar you spoke to and the law/chaos alignment of the protagonist. The creature gets sent away to nowhere but is still in the save so it can be recalled, much like a party NPC after an EscapeArea() action.

When you release a familiar from your pack, the game calls back the creature that matches the item, if such a creature exists. It does not create a new creature if that creature doesn't exist. And of course, the item goes poof.

This is prone to breaking in odd ways if alignment changes get involved. For example, suppose a lawful evil character summons an imp and then puts on the helm of opposite alignment. Talk to the imp, get a quasit in the pack because you're now chaotic (good). And if you release that quasit, there's no familiar to call back. You now have the HP boost, but no item taking up space in your pack and no familiar out there where it can act. Also, since you still have a familiar even though it's off in the void, you can't summon a new one.

Pseudodragon to rabbit? That sounds like a wrong dialogue file being assigned; the pseudodragon had the neutral dialogue file instead of the good one. Or maybe you had a mod that shuffled familiars around but didn't get the details right.

[Graion Dilach]

EET replaces the familiar system though to properly handle the scenario that you have different familiars for BG1, BG2 and ToB.

In the base EET system, Find Familiar is replaced with a spell which summons an invisible creature (K#FAMSUM), whose scripting ensures that you get the correct familiar in the game via chapter and alignment checks. This invisible creature grants you the correct familiar and the related actions (like setting AddFamiliar), sets the K#FAMSUM global to 1 and dies. It does nothing if the global is 0.

To ensure that this works properly, all the familiars receive an op232 with param2 set on 16, to apply a K#FAMKIL spell on familiar death, which applies the constitution loss, the maxhp loss, etc and sets the global to 0.

There's even a check here that if the familiar death variables are all marked as such, then the K#FAMID local (which is supposed to store the familiar's type) will be reset during a familiar summon. Note that the different levelled familiars share the death variables and this still doesn't ignore K#FAMSUM's value, so this is how switching alignments are handled (the old familiar needs to die and one can summon the new one thenafter).

Obviously, if a mod touches familiars without knowing the EET familiar mindset and just does things assuming a vanilla system, then this will break, but taht is IMO the other mod's problem.

There's also a K#FAMREM script to unsummon the familiar from an external source, used by Najim in the Black Pits.

Edited July 24, 2022 by Graion Dilach

[Oloriniel]

@Graion Dilach @jmerry Thanks for the familiar details.

So, it sounds like the issue is my choice of a pseudo-dragon instead of a rabbit (default choice for true neutral alignment). 

In prior games, I think I've summoned my familiar, put it my bag, and never used/thought about it again.  In this case, the familiar can collect loot for you, sort your scrolls for you, you only get the benefits of having it (extra hp etc) while it's out of its pack, it can fight, you can tell it to hop in your bag if it gets hurt (you can also tell it to get back out once the fight' over, but that's not working for me, probably again because of the alignment mismatch).

So, when I release the rabbit, nothing appears, because that doesn't tell the pseudo-dragon to appear.  When I try to summon a new familiar (the icon stays in my abilities toolbar), I can't, because my current familiar still exists.  So, any time it goes into my bag, I'll have to use the console command to get it back.  A minor inconvenience not game-breaking.