Sarge945 Posted January 9 Share Posted January 9 (edited) Infinity Engine Rebalance v0.2 A mod by Sarge945 About AD&D (and by extension the Infinity Engine games) is in my opinion a good ruleset, and seems to be very well designed around resource management - healing potions are mildly rare (at least in the early game), spells can only be cast in limited quantities before resting, etc. This is very good in many respects, and forces players to adapt and conserve their more powerful spells, rather than having an endlessly-refilling mana bar. I feel like this design heightens the survival/preparation aspect of the game and increases the feeling of adventure, and prevents the game from becoming grindy. The way the rules are actually designed and implemented in the infinity engine games, however, leaves a lot to be desired. There are various mechanics (resting, etc) which work reasonably well in a pen-and-paper context with a DM to prevent degenerate abuse of the rules, but in a videogame there's nothing stopping players from endlessly abusing certain mechanics over and over again. This is a mod for the Enhanced edition games, and is largely focused around gameplay systems and undermining cheesy or degenerate gameplay. In the future I also intend to balance certain things, add more meaning to underutilised mechanics, and generally improve the game experience. Some content may be added here and there but the goal of this mod is not to add new content, it's mainly to improve the existing content by balancing it and polishing it to be as fun as it can be. Some users here might remember that I posted an ancient version of this a long time ago in another thread, titled simply "rest overhaul". This is the continuation of that work. Features Disable Free Saving. One of the biggest issues in my opinion in these games is the ability to easily quicksave and quickload. This is especially important given how RNG driven a lot of things are. With this feature enabled, saving via the menu and through quicksaves will be disabled completely. The only way to save will be autosaves and by resting. Being able to redo any fight because our Warrior took 5 extra hits due to bad play disincentivises playing through mistakes, and instead encourages constant reloading, which also undermines the difficulty of the game. I found that by using this, mods like SCS were far less necessary, and even playing on Core Rules is a lot more strategic because mistakes cost a lot more. This feature is fully compatible with the Interval Saves feature from Tweaks Anthology, which I highly recommend using alongside this mod. I personally use the 30 minute version, but the 15 minute version is probably a lot more balanced. This module is best used alongside the resting overhaul. Resting Overhaul. Resting is a very important mechanic, and was completely botched in my opinion. Resting repeatedly in an easy area for free healing and spell recovery is a complete no-brainer, as even if you get ambushed most enemies won't pose a threat at all. In some harder areas resting can be almost suicide, and it's purely up to chance. In the worst case, resting can degenerate down to mashing the quickload button and the rest button until you get a "free" no-ambush rest, or you can walk to the nearest town and rest in an inn to completely refresh everything for ~5 gold, which is ridiculously cheap and makes temple healing (which is significantly more expensive) completely worthless unless you don't have any clerics in your party. With this module, resting is no longer a free action. Instead, camping supplies must be purchased (for about 200 gold each) from any shopkeeper. They also weigh 10 pounds each, so while you can stock up relatively easily, it will still make you think twice before resting. You also can no longer be ambushed while resting - it costs resources, but won't put you in danger, taking the chance element out of it completely. Resting at an inn doesn't require camping supplies but is also significantly more expensive than it was in vanilla (most inn prices have been multiplied by 40 or so), and while it's still cheaper than using camping supplies, it's also non-portable. Now, if you just want a little bit of healing, the temple is your best bet. This module is best used alongside the saving module. Reduce Gold Found. The economy in Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale are rather exploitable, and part of this is down to how much gold you can find very easily by killing enemies. This module is very simple, all it does is reduce the amount of gold found by some multiplier. Remove IWD:EE Extra Kits (IWD:EE Only). The Enhanced Edition added a number of additional kits to Icewind Dale, mostly ported from BG2. While this provides more consistency, some of these kits are considerably more powerful than what the game was designed for, resulting in a noticeable decrease in difficulty. Josh Sawyer has mentioned numerous times on stream his distaste for the balance of the added kits in IWD:EE. This module allows you to remove some or all of these kits, on a class-by-class basis, as well as the Shaman and the Monk classes. I personally remove the Paladin, Fighter, Ranger, Thief and Bard alternate kits, because I find them to be too powerful, but I leave the wild mage and Shaman. Add Icewind Dale Bard Songs (BG:EE/BG2:EE only). The bard song in Baldurs Gate is, in my opinion, pretty crappy. Worst of all, it's boring. I was very disappointed playing a bard in BG after playing one in IWD. This module adds the 5 bard songs from Icewind Dale to the Baldur's Gate bard, which should integrate as seamlessly as possible Installation Installation is standard weidu fare. You know the drill. Download the file from here (it's too large for me to attach) Do not use this with the original versions, it's only compatible with EE. Please use the latest (post 2.0) EE versions. Please note this is a beta, there is likely to be bugs. Future Plans/Ideas I had some things that I wanted to consider implementing or changing, and I am very open to discussion/opinions on these topics: Make fatigue and morale more meaningful in IWD. Both mechanics exist in the game already, but are barely used at all. I think I have seen one character ever get fatigued, and have never seen morale affect anything. Make Alignment mean something in IWD. Currently, whether you have a good or evil or mixed party doesn't matter at all. Some kits are supposed to be restricted to certain alignments, and there are some kits built around this mechanic (Blackguard), but it doesn't affect anything at all. I don't know if anything can be done to help with this, since it would likely require adding more story content or changing the plot, which I'm not prepared to do. I am very open to options regarding this. Better Familiars. Currently familiars don't seem to be worth the risk to me, so I just leave them in my pack for the free HP. I feel like the permanent Constitution loss is too strong, and would probably prefer a temporary constitution loss until the familiar is re-summonned. Change the healing amount of the different inn rooms. Currently, there's no real reason to ever get anything other than the peasant room. I'm not sure this is actually possible to fix. Edited January 12 by Sarge945 Clarity Quote Link to comment
DavidW Posted January 9 Share Posted January 9 1 hour ago, Sarge945 said: Change the healing amount of the different inn rooms. Currently, there's no real reason to ever get anything other than the peasant room. I'm not sure this is actually possible to fix. It is, but it requires a UI edit. I do this in SCS v35. Quote Link to comment
Sarge945 Posted January 10 Author Share Posted January 10 (edited) Damn I just looked at the gameplay changes for SCS and a lot of what's there is exactly what I was looking to do, but better. I hadn't really looked into SCS much before because I significantly prefer iwd over bg for gameplay, but it looks like a great mod. I guess mine still works for IWD:EE and is more focused, but I feel like maybe I have reinvented the wheel a bit here... Edited January 10 by Sarge945 Quote Link to comment
Sarge945 Posted January 17 Author Share Posted January 17 I have updated this to 0.2 The biggest change is that the resting mechanic stuff is now handled by the UI via tokens, rather than setting the area flag for disabling resting. This should mean that uninstalling the mod mid-playthrough won't break area flags and should be more robust overall. Quote Link to comment
Trouveur80 Posted January 18 Share Posted January 18 On 1/10/2024 at 2:33 AM, Sarge945 said: Damn I just looked at the gameplay changes for SCS and a lot of what's there is exactly what I was looking to do, but better. I hadn't really looked into SCS much before because I significantly prefer iwd over bg for gameplay, but it looks like a great mod. I guess mine still works for IWD:EE and is more focused, but I feel like maybe I have reinvented the wheel a bit here... Latest SCS version can also be used for IWDEE. Something I would like (I know someone worked on this but don't remember his surname unfortunately) is a limit to one uninterrupted rest by 24 hours. Quote Link to comment
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