Customise NPC kits manually

[Isewein]

I am hesitant to use the "Improved NPC Customisation and Management" component, as it seems like a bit of a sledgehammer method. Is there any way to have it apply only to selected NPCs (as used to be possible with Level 1 NPCs) or to manually assign one of the multiclass kits from this mod to a particular NPC? From the warning in the readme, I gather that using Shadowkeeper / NearInfinity won't do the trick or would likely lead to issues.

Edit: Some experimenting by adding appropriate kits to NPCs with Near Infinity seems to yield no adverse effects. I'd be very glad to hear of any such known, though!

Edited November 20 by Isewein

[Guest Marius]

6 hours ago, Isewein said:

manually assign one of the multiclass kits from this mod to a particular NPC?

  

On 1/6/2024 at 3:54 PM, DavidW said:

You define an ini file that looks something like this:

[npc_kit]
DUSKY=DW_MASK_THIEF

[npc_subrace]
L#TVI=GNOME_DEEP

[kit:L#TVI]
spheres=+earth,-good
bonus_spells=CLERIC_BEAST_CLAW,WIZARD_FLESH_TO_STONE

[spheres]
CLERIC_SUMMON_WEASELS=animal
CLERIC_WEASELPAWS=animal
CLERIC_POWER_OF_THE_WEASEL_GOD=animal

• You give it a guaranteed-unique name (I suggest the same name as your mod folder)
• When you install that mod, you drop it into the folder 'weidu_external/data/dw_shared/dw_talents_3p'. 

When ToF is installed, it will find that file and apply your changes.

This is supposed to be how to instruct ToF to assign kits to specific NPCs, but it seems to be broken atm according to this post:

On 10/27/2024 at 12:42 PM, Guest testerman987 said:

I tried including the sample INI from the first post into `weidu_external/data/dw_shared/dw_talents_3p/` in a fresh install, installed the Dusky and T'viy NPC mods and then installed ToF, and the Dusky NPC didn't change his kit as expected to `DW_MASK_THIEF` in a new game.

 

[Palanthis]

Just to comment ont the "Improved NPC Customisation and Management" component, i tried it a few times since it was first introduced in SCS, and tried it again in this new version. I must admit i'm still not convinced : it's still a bit buggy (i reported my experience in another thread). Also, i prefer to keep playing the NPC the way they were intended - I really like the fact that the NPC you recruit have fixed proficiencies that reflect their past experience. But this is a subjective matter.
 

On 11/20/2024 at 3:58 AM, Isewein said:

manually assign one of the multiclass kits from this mod to a particular NPC? From the warning in the readme, I gather that using Shadowkeeper / NearInfinity won't do the trick or would likely lead to issues.

Edit: Some experimenting by adding appropriate kits to NPCs with Near Infinity seems to yield no adverse effects. I'd be very glad to hear of any such known, though!

In BG2EE, i tested this by trying to change Imoen at the start of the game with EEKeeper, giving her a simple "illusionist" kit. It doesn't work properly with ToF and SCS installed. She becomes a Thief / Illusionist all right, but her number of spells memorized didn't change, and she didn't get the automatic specialty spells from the "Speciality Mages Automatically Get One Speciality Spell at Each Level" component of ToF for he previous mage levels (in that case, that's logical i think).
So it doesn't really work with ShadowKeeper or EEKeeper, though you still can edit further the character to get it right, of course (which is probably the way i'll do it, because i really don't like the "Improved NPC Customisation and Management" component, but then again it's a really subjective thing).
Overall, i think i prefer to have control myself on XP and classes with EEKeeper, and i'm ok with some NPC having different XP values : the "Improved NPC Customisation and Management" component balances all your party's XP constantly (at least in 35.20) and I personally don't like it.

Edited November 21 by Palanthis

[Isewein]

Ah, that's a shame. Did you try the EE keeper functionality to specifically apply kit effects as appropriate for the level? If so, I guess specialty mages extra spells aren't coded as kit effects...

[Palanthis]

19 minutes ago, Isewein said:

Ah, that's a shame. Did you try the EE keeper functionality to specifically apply kit effects as appropriate for the level? If so, I guess specialty mages extra spells aren't coded as kit effects...

Yes. It didn't work.
So you can do it, but you'll have to manually adjust in EEKeeper the bonus spells for each wizard's level (in the effects tab), and then also add manually each of the the specialty spells she's supposed to get as an illusionist (or any other specialty of your choosing), if you use that component.

Edited November 21 by Palanthis

[Thom Merrilin]

On 11/19/2024 at 9:58 PM, Isewein said:

Is there any way to have it apply only to selected NPCs (as used to be possible with Level 1 NPCs) or to manually assign one of the multiclass kits from this mod to a particular NPC?

Use the NPC EE mod, it will absolutely let you do this easily and effectively, and allow you to decide for each NPC as they join whether or not you want to adjust stats, class, kit, etc.  If you want to leave them as is, you have that option as well.  I've been using it for awhile and the execution in flawless.

Note this is not compatible with the improved NPC customization component from SCS.

As part of your install, if you want to change class/kits from dual class NPCs (Imoen, Nalia, etc.), or have more multiclass customizable options available to your NPCs, you should select those components from Tweaks Anthology as well to work together with NPC EE.

[Isewein]

Thanks for the recommendation, I hadn't realised NPC EE allowed you to just leave them as they are. Have you tried it with ToF, though? The fact that ToF offers its own NPC customisation component leads me to suspect they might not be compatible...

[subtledoctor]

NPC_EE is a bit more rudimentary than the SCS/ToF system; it is activated each time by the player, nothing runs automatically. As far as compatibility, it chooses any kit from Kitlist.2da and just runs an AddKit() script action. That adds the kit and applies anything relevant from the kit ability (CLAB) tables. If AddKit() is sufficient for adopting ToF kits, then the mods should be compatible. If ToF uses some special sauce in addition to the normal kit ability systems, then that sauce is not visible (yet?) to other mods.