SCI - Dualadins

[AvA]

Dear all,

I am proud to release my first mod to this fine community: Dualadins - Paladins which can dual-class to Cleric!

It is my first attempt at WEIDU, and to my own surprise it turned out cleaner than I thought was possible. I am still rather ineffective at the coding part so I start with just a single component. I will extent it over the cause of the month to include all kits, give them my preferred weapon selection and add some spice into the mix. If this finds enough interest I will see to extend the SCI series, which intends to fill in some gaps in my mega mods which were constantly nudging me.

In this context I would also like to express my deepest thanks to everyone who has been part in this endeavor to make Baldur's Gate even more fabulous!

Download @ Nexus

Source code @ GitHub

Cheers,

AvA

[AvA]

Current roadmap:

1. All kits can dual-class
2. Clerics can use all single handed weapons
3. Allow dual-class Paladins use of holy avengers
4. Give kits more style and incentive to dual-class
5. Enable NPC Paladins to achieve stats to dual-class

I hope this will open up the appeal for a normal playthrough.

But any thoughts and comments on this are welcome

[subtledoctor]

Fascinating. Glancing at the code... you turn the paladin into a ranger kit? Since rangers can dual-class to clerics. Makes sense!

I wonder how you handle getting them divine spells instead of druid spells. Oh wait, is that effected by V1IAPDC.spl?

Nice! Congrats on the release!

[AvA]

I am honored, thanks

Indeed, the ranger was a natural fit, mainly as they share the same XP progression. This makes the shift into a ranger kit indistinguishable at first glance. Expectable, it caused some quirks, which V1IAPDC.spl is patching. I will not claim that I understand what is going on under the hood of the functions. But my testing showed that ChangeClass is a rather neutral action at time of execution. I run another test and the ranger spells will only leak in should you level up as the ranger kit. It was AddKit that caused me some problems to set up all skills to properly deactivate and reactivate with the dual-class progression. With fully freezing your initial kit dual-classing is just perfect to hide all those mechanics behind

There are still some minor artifacts, like showing an empty racial enemy line or expecting you to have 2 pips in two weapon fighting even if you don't. But being able to use the standard interface and have the engine handle the dual-class process by the rules more than makes up for me.

[AvA]

To whom it may concern:

All kits are ready to dual-class and keen to use your favored holy avenger - be it Carsomyr, Purifier, Ir'revrykal or the elusive Cera Sumat!

However, at this point undesirable interaction with the Ranger and Cleric shows up:

- Item usability is governed by the Ranger/Cleric class-combo. So they can use Holy Avengers too, if being lawful good

- Because I am concerned about balance and would like to make dual-classing a trade-off rather than a no-brainier, I implemented the option to restrict the use of two-handed weapons (the Cleric always was a single handed with shield type of guy to me)

- But proficiency gain is controlled by the single classes. Either you can't add any more points into swords after dualing or single and dual (not multi) class clerics get to put a point into something they can't use, and even worse, if you can't use two-handed weapons you should not be able to put points into it but then the Cleric can't be proficient with his quarterstaff...

The Cleric weapon selection certainly leaves something to be desired and plenty of mods address this. One more wouldn't hurt, but achieving consistency goes far beyond the scope of this mod. So I wounder if anyone can think of a smart solution or if people are happy to control themselves knowing that their Ranger/Cleric could suddenly grab a holy sword. I will ponder about this while I am on a trip next week.

Before the release on version 2 only the NPCs need a bit more wisdom to make this mod relevant if you are not playing a Paladin <charname>.