Northlander's War Axe

[EiriktheScald]

It's something that you'll be adding to dialog.tlk, so anything you want.

 

Bear in mind that if you attach it to an item, then it'll have its chance of popping up whenever anyone uses that item (so if Shar-Teel stabs Eirik and robs his ax, it'll look odd if she occassionally pipes up with "Shar-Teel - Eirikr heiti ek!" or whatnot).

 

Translation please? That gives me an idea though... sprinkling some non-common tongue phrases here and there in his dialog. Especially when talking to Branwen. It happens all the time in RL when two people of the same origin meet in a foreign place. I doubt if anyone has actually developed an Illuskan language, but mixing scandinavian with english would give the effect. Interestingly, the actor who played king Hrothgar in 'Beowulf & Grendal' said he could understand some of the old language; some words were close enough to his (I forget which country he was from). I'm not a linguist, so I'd need someone to help with translation...

 

Opcode 139 is the one you want, parameter 1 you should set to -1 for now (you'll use SAY at install time to actually add the new string - you can't tell the game what string to look for yet, because the string doesn't yet exist and you don't know what number it's going to have).

 

The actual text would go where? Setup file? .D file?

 

Okaaayyy... leaving that thought...

Unless you're planning on writing the Saga of Eirik and Branwen-the-gushing-arterial-blood-from-the-stump-that-once-was-her-fair-hand, that's probably for the best, thanks

 

Hah! Good one.

[Nythrun]

Translation please? That gives me an idea though... sprinkling some non-common tongue phrases here and there in his dialog. Especially when talking to Branwen. It happens all the time in RL. I'm not a linguist, so I'd need someone to do it for me...

 

"I'm called Eirik." My Old Norse is quite abysmal, so I can't help much with translating.

 

The actual text would go where? Setup file? .D file?

 

Ideally it'll go in the .tra file. You don't strictly need one;

 

COPY ~mymod/items/eirikaxe.itm~ ~override~
 SAY "some_offset" ~Your phrase~

 

Will work, it just only works in English.

COPY ~mymod/items/eirikaxe.itm~ ~override~
 SAY "some_offset" @1

 

will work when you have .tra files, one of those will be English and contain

@1 = ~Your phrase~

and one of them could be German and have

@1 = ~Deine Phrase~

and so forth.

 

I like to .tra everything as I go, but take it one step at a time

[EiriktheScald]

In this case, I do prefer the idea that the sheild is not removed from the character (because as pointed out elsewhere, NPCs don't pick things up), but perhaps removed for a short period (placed in inventory, then returned to slot), if possible.

I'm trying to think of a case where this would matter? Eirik's obvious goal is to slay his attacker.

[berelinde]

It's a question of fairness. I suppose it isn't any worse then vampires draining levels, but it seems unbalancing to have a successful attack partially disable the opponent.

 

In all honesty, though, how many of the opponents in BG1 have sheilds? Mulahey, Bassilus, maybe a handful of others.

[Miloch]

It's a question of fairness. I suppose it isn't any worse then vampires draining levels, but it seems unbalancing to have a successful attack partially disable the opponent.

Why? Happens all the time in the game. It's nowhere near as bad as level drain, or even hold person, sleep, paralyse or the whole gamut of such spells and effects. For that matter, any successful attack 'partially disables' an opponent insofar as it subtracts HP.

In all honesty, though, how many of the opponents in BG1 have sheilds? Mulahey, Bassilus, maybe a handful of others.

Quite a few more than that, including some non-humanoids (skeletons). In reality though, you wouldn't have to even remove the shield. You could just apply a AC penalty to the victim equivalent to the shield loss for a short period, then use the text idea above to 'say' the shield was hooked (or the ankle or whatever, if there is no shield).

 

@Eirik - read an interesting bit in a book I have (The Archaeology of Weapons by R.E. Oakeshott):

[T]hese Viking axes... are enormous and terrible weapons whose edges are often as much as 12 in. long. These were indeed battle-axes; we cannot confuse them... with domestic axes. The had their poetic names, too: the Fiend of the Shield, Battle-Witch, the Wound's Wolf - but "Fiend" and "Witch" were applied to them almost exclusively...

So maybe 'Shield-Fiend' would be a good name?

[Nythrun]

Oakeshott's referring to the Dane Axe, there, isn't he? It's more like a halberd

[Miloch]

Oakeshott's referring to the Dane Axe, there, isn't he? It's more like a halberd

No I don't think so. These are battle-axes, larger than hand-axes but certainly smaller than the Dane Axes or halberds. There's a drawing of a Viking axe head found in the Thames now at the London Museum to illustrate what he's talking about. It looks something like this. Interesting article btw.

[T]he name Eric Bloodaxe conjures up an immediate image of the archetypal Viking warrior; huge, hairy and heroic, and the proud owner of a large axe.

Heh.

[Rabain]

I think the point is that the player has a number of options in any scenario, even to the point of retreating in the face of several mindflayer attacks. An npc does not have this option.

 

If you are disarmed of a shield you can simply pick it up or equip another shield even from another party-members inventory. An npc cannot do this, once disarmed they are disarmed. They have no options but to continue on as their script dictates.

 

The Northlanders Axe gives a distinct advantage in this scenario.

[Miloch]

But not if, as I said, you don't actually remove the shield and "just apply a AC penalty to the victim equivalent to the shield loss for a short period, then use the text idea above to 'say' the shield was hooked..." If you wanted to get fancy, you could even force a higher chance of morale failure, so the NPC would run until the effect wears off.

[BigRob]

It's a question of fairness. I suppose it isn't any worse then vampires draining levels, but it seems unbalancing to have a successful attack partially disable the opponent.

Why? Happens all the time in the game. It's nowhere near as bad as level drain, or even hold person, sleep, paralyse or the whole gamut of such spells and effects. For that matter, any successful attack 'partially disables' an opponent insofar as it subtracts HP. :groucho

 

The difference, I would say, is that opponents can have a way around things like Level Drain, Hold Person and so on. A well scripted enemy mage/preist can cast a buffing or removal spell to remove those effects. They don't often do it, but they can.

 

As far as I know, once the sheild is dropped, the NPC can't pick it up again and the player can easily pick it up themselves and sling it in place, which is a touch dodgy.

[EiriktheScald]

My thoughts on this (right or wrong) were to level the playing field. A Skald is not on par with an actual fighter class -- His THAC0 isn't as good, his Damage modifiers aren't as good, etc. Being able to reduce his opponent's AC (-1/-2) would be a step in that direction. And a 5% chance isn't all that fearsome. If the creature is dispatched, who cares if it dropped it's shield. If not, it's a small sacrifice to loose one's shield for making the kill.

[EiriktheScald]

@Eirik - read an interesting bit in a book I have (The Archaeology of Weapons by R.E. Oakeshott):

[T]hese Viking axes... are enormous and terrible weapons whose edges are often as much as 12 in. long. These were indeed battle-axes; we cannot confuse them... with domestic axes. The had their poetic names, too: the Fiend of the Shield, Battle-Witch, the Wound's Wolf - but "Fiend" and "Witch" were applied to them almost exclusively...

So maybe 'Shield-Fiend' would be a good name?

That's a good one too!

[Miloch]

As far as I know, once the sheild is dropped, the NPC can't pick it up again and the player can easily pick it up themselves and sling it in place, which is a touch dodgy.

Well the effect I suggested (temporary AC penalty) would prevent all that. But... just to play devil's advocate... why should it? Ok, maybe to be fair, the NPC should have a chance to recover their shield (if it's still usable... I think this kind of effect should have a pretty good chance to break nonmagical shields - most are wooden). But they'd be leaving themselves open to further attack and penalties, as would the PC/NPC if he decided to go for a crappy shield in the midst of combat instead of attacking or defending. I don't want to think about the work involved with putting a 'shield recovery' script on every shield-bearing NPC just to account for this (if that were even possible), so the penalty/dialog option is probably better. As Eirik says, a 5% chance isn't all that much. You could even put a saving throw on top of it (or perhaps a dexterity check would be more appropriate but I dunno if that's feasible).

[Miloch]

And what if they don't have the item? Is the effect just ignored?

Dunno. Maybe Nythrun or devSin or some other scripting/IESDP whiz can answer that.

How many AI updates per round? How many rounds to get back on their feet again?

I think it's 15 updates per second. And if you really wanted to be smart, you could do an armour or dexterity check. Someone wearing leather with a 17 dex is going to get up a lot more quickly than someone in plate with a 10 dex. But that might be more detailed then you want to get here... 3-5 rounds sounds about right.

[EiriktheScald]

COPY ~mymod/items/eirikaxe.itm~ ~override~
 SAY "some_offset" @1

What is "some_offest" being used here? Would that be the parameter that the text goes into?