2 suggestions for new content

[Mistercurious]

I'd like to suggest two more things:

Could the new HLAs be made available for IWDEE? Lefreut's UI and the Skills and Abilities Mod by morpheus562 both support HLAs for Icewind Dale. Would be cool if that was possible...

Second on my wish list: F/C/T and F/D/T multiclass options, I don't know if that's at all possible, but I would LOVE to see these.

Thanks for any response.

[DavidW]

(Moving this to its own thread since it's off-topic for the thread it was written in.)

HLAs in IWDEE: I don't think there's any technical bar, but I normally have a principle of not writing a mod component I wouldn't be likely to use myself. In normal play you don't get past 2.5M XP or so in IWD, so a system that gives you powerful new abilities at 3M XP wouldn't really see much use, and would be imbalanced against opponents if it did. So I wouldn't use this myself.

F/C/T and F/D/T: here the problems are technical, and I think insuperable. You can't really introduce new classes in the Infinity Engine: ToF's 'new' classes are kits for old classes, disguised by some UI trickery. So a 'new' triple-class character would need to be a rekitted F/M/C or F/M/T, since those are the only triple-classed characters in the game. However, you can't really fake either divine spellcasting or thief skills on a different class, so F/C/T would have to be a genuine cleric (or druid) and a genuine thief. And there's no triple-class in the unmodded game that is both. You could I suppose get a mage to fake being a cleric, but it would be a horrible fragile mess, whereas I hope ToF's fakes are fairly robust. Sorry!

[Lava]

9 hours ago, DavidW said:

HLAs in IWDEE: I don't think there's any technical bar, but I normally have a principle of not writing a mod component I wouldn't be likely to use myself. In normal play you don't get past 2.5M XP or so in IWD, so a system that gives you powerful new abilities at 3M XP wouldn't really see much use, and would be imbalanced against opponents if it did. So I wouldn't use this myself.

Actually I am unsure, but what if you do not play with a complete party? Plus, apart from that, I now I released my 7th quest mod for IWDEE. That means more and more players will be able to get more XP. Some of the quest are low level stuff, but some trigger later in game.

It was mentioned that Skills and Abilities have such component, but I think it required some other mod? But I may be wrong.

[Delior]

39 minutes ago, Lava said:

It was mentioned that Skills and Abilities have such component, but I think it required some other mod? But I may be wrong.

It requires Lefruet's enhanced UI for IWDEE.  

[DavidW]

4 hours ago, Lava said:

Actually I am unsure, but what if you do not play with a complete party? Plus, apart from that, I now I released my 7th quest mod for IWDEE. That means more and more players will be able to get more XP. Some of the quest are low level stuff, but some trigger later in game.

That's probably right, but my concern isn't that people physically won't be able to get to 3M XP, it's that the game is not balanced for play at those levels, especially with HLAs.

[Lava]

Well, it can make playing solo or the party of just 2 heroes/heroines a bit more interesting + there is still Heart of Fury and difficulty mods. I can imagine, that some may want to give solo+HoF+HLA run and see how it's going to work I mean, it's cool to give some alternative options of gameplay, especially for games that really need some more love.

But that's just my two cents.

[RoyalProtector]

In my opinion adding HLAs is not a problem. If they don't reach the level required, then it does no harm because it'll never apply. If they do, then they are already very powerful anyway, and probably have extra difficulty or quest mods increasing challenge and XP rewards. Or, perhaps they'll only get to pick one or two abilities anyway.

But in my opinion I would be fine providing this and letting the user decide for themselves whether it's appropriate for their playthrough or mod configuration.

[DavidW]

11 minutes ago, RoyalProtector said:

But in my opinion I would be fine providing this and letting the user decide for themselves whether it's appropriate for their playthrough or mod configuration.

I'm not ruling this out, but it would be against my normal approach to quality assurance. Generally I only provide mod components that I would actually play myself, because (a) if I can't use 'I think this would be good' as a measure of how to design things, I don't have a good metric, and (b) I want users to feel confident that if they install the whole mod they're at least choosing something that the designer thinks is a good idea. I'm not keen on 'I don't like this myself, but here it is anyway' - that's why I took "Improved Irenicus" out of SCS many years ago.

[Mistercurious]

I think with HOF Mode and / or fewer than 6 characters the player is likely to see more than 3 million Xp per character and there is also Olwyn Churu's Better HOF Mode mod that makes IWD even harder. So...

I don't like to play on normal diffciulty anyways - on my solo run my F/M/T got about 18 million towards the end of the base game and LOTS of HLAs...

I think it should be left to the player if they want to make use of this feature.

If it's not implemented in the mod, I would be willing to copy the files manually to update the tables.

I don't know if it's possible, but I'd be thankful if someone could line out you do that, which files to copy and so on...

[DavidW]

19 minutes ago, Mistercurious said:

I think it should be left to the player if they want to make use of this feature.

It's obviously up to the player what they make use of. But we're not talking about whether to use an existing feature; we're talking about whether I should spend time and effort coding that feature. I'm explaining why at the moment I'm inclined not to (while, as I say, not ruling it out).

Of course anyone else who wants to make an IWD HLA mod is welcome to: I'm not preventing them.

[Guest morpheus562]

I'm not sure how you add HLAs into BG as I haven't checked, but IWDEE already has the prerequisite lu_xxx.2da tables present. I haven't checked, but all that may need to be done is change the prerequisite GAME_IS to include iwdee as all that's needed to add HLAs into IWDEE is a ui that allows for it (Lefreut) and then adding the below:
 

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Import                                                                //
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
COPY ~skills-and-abilities/2da/lunumab.2da~ ~override~ // HLA Progression

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//  Show HLA Names                                                       //
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
COPY_EXISTING ~SPCL904.SPL~ ~override~ // Resist Magic
  SAY NAME1 @8037
  SAY NAME2 @8037

COPY_EXISTING ~SPCL908.SPL~ ~override~ // Warcry
  SAY NAME1 @8038
  SAY NAME2 @8038

I think what @Mistercurious is getting at, is if you update the hla tables for IWDEE with the new ToF HLAs, then a mod like mine can flip the switch (per se) and then allow players to use them.

Edited January 8, 2024 by morpheus562

[RoyalProtector]

3 hours ago, DavidW said:

Generally I only provide mod components that I would actually play myself

Fair enough!

[DavidW]

5 minutes ago, morpheus562 said:

I think what @Mistercurious is getting at, is if you update the hla tables for IWDEE with the new ToF HLAs, then a mod like mine can flip the switch (per se) and then allow players to use them.

I can see that... I'm a little torn here. I appreciate that I would have to do this my side or else HLA tables from ToF won't install. And ultimately it's a pretty easy tweak on my side (I already build a UI for HLAs in IWDEE because I need it for feats, after all, and I think I autobuild missing LUA tables anyway).

I'm coming round to this, though I'll consider further.

[Mistercurious]

I would be super-grateful if we get that option as a cross-mod feature between Skills and Abilities and Talents of Faerun.

Surely there are some IWD fans out there who would appreciate the possibility.

[DavidW]

I think I'm just going to make that component IWDEE-friendly (slightly against my better judgement), provided there aren't too many missing-resource issues to deal with.