Let's put the Black Pits 1 into BGEE!

[Graion Dilach]

I'd scale the rooms for the party instead of taking away equipment tbh. I also like the idea of Baeloth running the Pits instead of being recruitable.

[Endarire]

Graion may know better how to transfer the party's gear into a Bag of Holding.

[Graion Dilach]

I'm not sure about that. Honestly, I haven't played the Beamdog Black Pits, but if I think about the Black Pits Mark Meer DMed last week on Idle Champions, there he allowed adventurers to participate with their full gear to ensure the battles can be as flashy while also as challenging as possible, to entertain the crowd.

TBH, I think his Idle Champion promotional campaigns portrayal can also be incorporated into this somehow. During the Trials of Mount Tiamat and the Court of the Raven Queen campaigns, Mark portrayed Baeloth as a massive opportunist, ready to contract anyone as an attraction for the Pits, so pulling the party in as such very much falls in line.

[Endarire]

Doc, if the party beats the Black Pits in BG1, what happens to Baeloth in SoD?  How does that affect Black Pits II in BGII/EET?  (Note that Neera's quest in BG2EE ToB side includes being warped to the BPII arena but for only part of BPII.)

[jmerry]

It's not just implied that Devlin's an archer. It's in his creature file - class Ranger, kit FERALAN, 4 dots longbow, 2 instances of Called Shot, has a longbow and arrows equipped.

You couldn't just use that creature file unmodified for an NPC mod; starting at level 8 with 1 million XP and maximum possible HP isn't a good idea. But most of it's good already, including that he's using 233 effects for his proficiencies.

[subtledoctor]

1 hour ago, Endarire said:

Doc, if the party beats the Black Pits in BG1, what happens to Baeloth in SoD?  How does that affect Black Pits II in BGII/EET?  (Note that Neera's quest in BG2EE ToB side includes being warped to the BPII arena but for only part of BPII.)

Haven’t thought about it. Baeloth in SoD is in character after having been killed in BP, but of course his dialogue does not reflect that Charname did it. 

Easiest solution is to deactivate him; alternatively, he could have amnesia or something (dying violently and being resurrected must scramble your brains a bit) but his dialogue would need to be changed to reflect it. Which would be more work. Which means don’t hold your breath.

As for BP2: Baeloth has nothing to do with it. It is run by different people, it happens in a different place, etc. Just seems completely unrelated, thus no conflict. It seems utterly irrelevant. 

[Endarire]

Maybe he had some deals with demons to revive him which caused the level drain.  Maybe he's no longer mad about his defeat regarding CHARNAME.

Also remember that if Baeloth dies, the Goblin Shaman M'Khiin Grubdoubler becomes unavailable due to their intertwined quest lines.

Edited July 24, 2022 by Endarire

[TotalMilk90]

9 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

This doesn't take any equipment away (yet). Thinking about it, this isn't like Spellhold or Chateau Irenicus, where the villain has access to your unconscious bodies. In this case you get teleported directly into the first fighting pit. So it actually makes sense that you should keep your gear.

I agree with this. I think when playing Black Pits 1 as a standalone game it makes sense to start with no gear, but not really needed in this instance of it. Thinking more about it, how would Baeloth benefit from taking your gear, except to sell it? If money is his motivation for doing this, then why does he give you such a large reward after each fight? Also, if he wants you to fight with no armor or weak starter weapons, then why would he make those shops available with powerful items?  I think it makes the standalone game more fun by slowly upgrading your gear after each fight and to keep the fights balanced. But I think going there during BG1 kind of makes it an entirely different game.

Either way I really like this idea so thanks for what you are doing. I'll be looking forward to going through it on my next playthrough.

[jmerry]

On the relation between BP1 and BP2:

- BP2 features "Stannel Eibor", a character with drow colors, a mage sprite, highly alliterative dialogue, and a suspiciously familiar voice. Baeloth may not be running the place, but ...

- Some of the merchants are the same - Bellowgulp and the illithid.

- Various dialogue in BP2, and especially the prologue, imply that the party you're playing as there is the same one that escaped in BP1. Which is irrelevant from the perspective of the main campaign.

- Neera's visit to the Thayan arena does not include Stannel or any reference to the BP party.

Putting BP2 into BG2? That's a different can of worms, and considerably worse about causing story conflicts than BP1 in BG1.

[DavidW]

Still on gear:

- on the conceptual side: the reason BP sells you so much equipment is clearly because it’s a self-contained campaign and there’s no other route to loot. That doesn’t apply in this context. However, you can’t eliminate it entirely, because (a) it would probably be a bit dull not to have some item rewards through such a long quest sequence, and (b) more importantly, without loot the various NPCs in BP have no reason to be there. The downside of not making the party buy back their items is that you might end up with rather too much loot. You could probably at least tone down the loot, e.g. make the missike person sell only ammo, make Magda a temple. But it would require a fair amount of design work.

- on the technical side, if you did want to take some of the party’s loot (I lean towards this being a bad idea) the simplest way would be to have a handwritten list of items from the unmodded game that are individually removed and added to the stores. 

[subtledoctor]

12 hours ago, jmerry said:

On the relation between BP1 and BP2

Right, so it seems like there is nothing to do here. BP2 acts like the group is the same one that finished BP1, and that will be true whether you play BP1 alone and export that party, or play BP-in-BG and export your BG party. 

14 hours ago, Endarire said:

Also remember that if Baeloth dies, the Goblin Shaman M'Khiin Grubdoubler becomes unavailable due to their intertwined quest lines.

This seems like it might be troublesome. I haven’t played with either character in SoD do I don’t know what this “intertwined quest line” is. Do you just mean the initial bit where M’Khiin is trapped and you can free her? 

If that’s all, then I’m thinking that Baeloth should be present in SoD (it is canonically where he ends up after the end of BP1); and you should be able to liberate and recruit M’Khiin; but Baeloth’s dialogue should be altered to reflect either 1) he recognizes Charname but does not attack because he realizes he will lose or 2) he has some amnesia and does not recognize Charname. In either case, letting him join the party would probably necessitate still further dialogue adjustments, possibly substantial ones. So in the beginning at least, my inclination is to disable his joining the party. 

8 hours ago, DavidW said:

Still on gear:

Agree on all points. The tension here is, if the party has good gear already the merchants are pretty useless; and we don’t want the merchants to be useless. 

Some of the merchants are in fact pretty boring already. Part of it is my ad-hoc test install, which changes +2 weapons and armor to +1, and changes +1 stuff to ‘mastercraft.’ So the fletcher and armorers were mostly just selling a bunch of “mastercraft chain mail” and “mastercraft long bow” etc. I had no reason to give that stuff a second look. Even if the high-end stuff remains as +2 items… that’s still pretty boring. 

I think probably best to let the party keep their gear, and rebalance some fights accordingly. Let the merchants continue to sell boring stuff, because most merchants sell boring stuff next to cool stuff and that’s okay. Remove some unique items that would be duplicative in the BGEE campaign. And add some bespoke new items - one or two in each category. This way the player has the opportunity to trade some of their gear for new stuff they could not otherwise obtain. If gold rewards are tuned well, the player won’t be able to just hoard everything, but they will be able to make some interesting choices. 

Edited July 24, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Endarire]

By intertwined, I meant that Goblin Shaman Girl requires Baeloth to be alive for her quest to be available and her to be recruitable.

I'm for letting the party persuade Baeloth in SoD to let him join if he wants because he's already witnessed their spectacular sensation of slaughter!  He's a smart one with 19 INT and 12 WIS and enough business savvy - after not being able to impress enough people with his 'animal pits' fighting arena - that, "If you can't entrap them and kill them for the sake of profitable underground entertainment, join them, exploit them and use them for that purpose."  That sort of change of mind probably doesn't have voiced dialog but it can be expressed via text.

[ahungry]

First off - this sounds great.

 

Second - It'd be a really cool implementation to do similar to the old Final Fantasy 3 coliseum - wager an item to enter into a battle in a pit - if you win, you get a new item (based on what you wagered) - if you lose, you lose your item.  Could add a lot of replayability if this concept was somehow incorporated into it (find/discover new gear by wagering old gear).

 

Also - I really really dislike any parts of mods (SCS on Improved Spellhold for one, among others) that tries to remove gear and allow restoration later - as soon as you mix in other mods and aren't on a pure vanilla install, it no longer becomes a lossless transition, and certain gear (from various mods) gets permanently lost - whether it was in a custom bag the mod didn't know how to handle, or just coded in a way it didn't appear visible to the snapshotting scripts.

 

 

[subtledoctor]

I’ve been going through IWDEE looking for moderately-powered BG1-level stuff that has been overlooked by other IWD-centric mods, and in fact there is a ton of good candidates. I’ve got one of every weapon type, several amulets/rings/boots/belts, even some bardic instruments. My plan is to let the party keep all their gear; seriously tone down gold rewards for fights; remove most of the existing unique gear from the shops; and introduce a bunch of new unique gear that might entice a party to spend money on it and maybe even trade in some of their existing gear to get it. 

So it could be a bit of an item mod too - but you’ll have to fight through the Black Pits to get the items, and you’ll only be able to get a couple in a given playthrough. (EDIT - having done some work toward this, it looks like I'm removing 30 items from the existing stores, and adding ~55 new  items.)

(It even kind of makes sense given the lore: consider that some group 100 years earlier might have sold off some gear from the Vale of Shadows, Dragon’s Eye, and the Severed Hand to a particular drow merchant. And then that drow, some time later, might sell stuff to Baeloth who is looking to maximize the savagery of his fights.)

I’m also seeing a bunch of great high-level stuff in IWDEE… I might follow this up with a BG2 mod that replaces Joluv’s IWD-themed items, with actual IWD items. 

Edited July 26, 2022 by subtledoctor

[Endarire]

What stuff did you intend to remove from default BP1?

(Pweath keep the Boots of Speed!)