yakattack

Yep. You should be able to change those options with the "Fine Tune Difficulty" button in gameplay options. Or the difficulty slider will affect it more broadly. It's nice because you can change a lot more things post-install.

56 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

At some point in the distant past, I actually reverted the +stat items to be like the old "set to X"-style of the original games. Later, I looked at the strength table bonuses and realized that 2E-style stats are absolute pants - why are strength values between 8 and 15 functionally equivalent, and you get barely anything for 16-18, and then suddenly the second you get past 18 the bonuses become utterly ludicrous? Then I looked at dexterity and realized the same thing: between 6 and 14 are all the same, then between 15 and 18 you get an AC bonus for every single point. What in the world is going on with these terrible 2E-style stats? I eventually realized that 3E-style stats were superior for a number of reasons (most of all balance between enemies and players), and I realized that it seems like IR's stat bonuses seemed to be almost designed for that instead, and ended up reverting my reversion. I haven't looked back since - I'll never play with 2E statistics again. I can only recommend that other players do the same. However...I seriously doubt most players are using 3E-style stats like I am - perhaps it would be worth providing an optional settings.ini tweak to provide the reversion you seek.

@Cahir On the subject of EE-only items, it is difficult for me to revise EE items for a few reasons:

1. I do not play on the Enhanced Editions and thus it is difficult for me to fully grasp the consequences of revising said items to begin with.
2. Many (most?) EE-added items are absolute utter garbage designs that feel, look, and sound like they're borderline (or not even borderline) fan-added.
3. This has the added effect of making them even more difficult to revise, especially since many of them have *very* specific names and lores that do not lend to any natural/obvious revisions.
4. The ones that are overpowered I am loathe to nerf because I know how much people like their overpowered items and I literally don't even play the EEs and so again, I can't fully grasp what exactly I would be doing as a result - in terms of where items are located, for what character(s) they're specifically designed for, how soon you can realistically get them in the game, etc.
5. Even if I were playing on the EEs, the first thing I would do is wipe everything the EEs added to begin with. I can't understate how much I despise EE content - NPCs, items, spells, and quests alike.

While I did at least add all BG1:EE items at some point so they're at least included in a rough sense (with a few VERY obvious mild revisions for some of them), I looked at BG2:EE items and was even more frustrated with them. I don't really know what the heck to do with any of them - I am more than open to suggestions for any and all EE items, especially because any suggestions I implement literally won't affect me, and therefore I am significantly less inclined to protest any possible changes.

In regards to EE-style descriptions, I know we had a dialogue going months ago and you were trying to figure out how to best effect those changes optionally via a settings.ini switch. I personally dislike EE-style descriptions (big surprise!), so I cannot convert the item_descriptions.tra to it. I'm not sure how to resolve that situation either.

Yeah I agree 3E stats are a superior design, although the craziness of 2E stats does have some appeal to me  . If IR(R) is designed with those kind of stats in mind then the existing items make more sense.

As for EE content, I totally agree with you. I'm thinking of switching to non-EE myself. The only item that jumps out at me is the Big-Fisted Belt which is very powerful with +3 strength.

1 hour ago, Salk said:

I sympathize with the straight-up buffs to some items but I generally welcome the +STR items replacing the original ones. It is a good choice to avoid making unique and supposedly beneficial items be completely or almost completely useless.

I also don't think including Rasaad's quest belt can support your argument when talking about IR(R). It's an external item and IR cannot strike a balance with modifications that add new items. It must work on the original Bioware assets.

I'm also genuinely curious about how you managed to combine IR items to reach STR 25 on multiple characters (I assume multiple means at least 3 out of 6 party members) in BG2, let alone BG1.  

 

Well to be fair you can't get 25 on three characters unless you use barbarians and custom characters. However that's not an uncommon way to play. Restricting ourselves to one barbarian and custom characters you can do:

half orc (PC) barbarian 19+4(rage)+2(duhm) = 25

half orc berserker 19+3(gloves)+3(belt) = 25

human lathander->fighter 18+2(duhm)+2(other gloves)+1(tome) = 23

This is a very powergamey setup, but it's also within the rules of how most people play BGEE

Not sure if you have much interest in changing BG1 around, but I've been playing it recently with IR and I have a few thoughts...

At the moment IR increases the player's power in BG1 quite a lot. The main thing is the +strength items, of which there are three if you include the belt from Rasaad's quest (I would personally prefer that any EENPC items be relatively weak so I can happily remove them). You can get two characters to near-max strength, plus many items like varscona are straight-up buffed compared to vanilla. In fact, two of the strongest weapon classes (longswords and scimitars) receive considerable buffs, while many "bad" types like axes, flails, katanas, and halberds, remain bad. Missile weapons are a little bit nerfed, but you forget about that pretty quickly when you have a 25-strength level 5 fighter dual wielding varscona and the new and improved vampire's revenge. With so much strength available, dual-wielding is supreme. Generally I am not a fan of the conversion of strength-setting items to +strength items, even in BG2. It favours powergaming or custom parties, since if you have good stats already it makes you even better, and the items can often be combined to reach 25 strength on multiple characters, which is mostly impossible in vanilla. In vanilla these items are a great way to improve suboptimal bioware NPCs, while powergaming is somewhat limited since they can't be stacked.

With the weapon proficiency overhaul, is it correct that warriors no longer get APR at 7 and 13? Could be a good thing to add to the readme if so.

8 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

For a long while, I didn't understand why/how Gorion got the silly Robes of Acid Resistance to begin with...until I realized that IR was straight up overwriting an "unused" item's resource name (clck18.itm, if I'm recalling it off the top of my head correctly), which is not actually completely unused, but precisely what Gorion wears. Demi apparently never played BG1, so he probably didn't care when he did that...and it's introduced that quirk of Gorion having those Robes of Acid Resistance for BG1 players forever since. Since it's now been that way for so long, I'm a little loathe to change it, especially because the Robes of Acid Resistance do not otherwise appear in BG1...but since it is such an odd thing to introduce at the beginning of BG1, what I am going to do is add it as a settings.ini option for those who do not want it.

That sounds great, thank you!

Maybe this has been brought up somewhere before, but would you consider moving the Robe of Acid Resistance off Gorion? It totally messes up his look, and it gives the player 750g off the bat.

On 6/10/2021 at 7:45 AM, Guest TwiceTested said:

SD, I installed Scales along with a EET install and I think something minor broke along the way.  I'm not getting the extra .5 attacks per round for single-handed fighting.  Is there a file I could check or alter in my override folder instead of trying something drastic like doing a re-install?

I AM getting the full 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 attacks per round for **, ***, and **** proficiency, just not for having two stars in Single-handed fighting.

 

Also, for the idea of the attacks per round being determined by the fighting style, I like it!  I would think you'd have to improve the bonuses for getting mastery in the weapons themselves, since they don't have APR anymore, maybe adding the increased crit chance to the weapon proficiency, so 4 stars in katana gives you +4/+4 AND +4 crit range (15-20).  Granted, this is a lot stronger than base game, but it would give weight to both the weapons and their fighting styles.

It appears to me that the APR bonus for single-handed is activated by a script (presumably due to technical limitations). You won't see it immediately in the inventory screen when a weapon is equipped. But if you unpause for half a second and then go back to the character/inventory screen, it should show up.

I'm a bit confused about specialist mages and spontaneous casting. Testing with some basic characters, they're able to convert spells to specialist spells of the same level, but the readme says they should convert to spells of one level lower. On the other hand, the in-game description doesn't mention the one level lower part. Level 1 spells can't be converted at all, which is consistent with the readme. This is on BGEE 2.5 with just SR and TnB installed.

4 hours ago, subtledoctor said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does this refer to what mages do after they've run out of spells? Because if so, I still maintain that 1) I don't think I've ever seen an enemy mage run out of spells;* and 2) if an enemy mage runs out of spells you can give them the most amazing script in the world, they are still a dead man walking. So who cares how fast or in what direction they walk?

* EDIT - although now I think about it, I use a mod that gives all wizards unlimited 1st level spells, so they can pelt you forever with Magic Missile or Larloch's Minor Drain etc. Upon reflection, this seems to be a much better solution than scripting them to charge my heavily armored fighter with a dagger...

They do a bit of other stuff. When working correctly they will attack between spells (potentially with MMM which can be significant), and move around a bit. Not sure how they decide where to move, but it can make them harder to target. Being immobile can also make them ineffective if they're on the opposite side of the fight to the party. Even more so if the player indulges in a little kiting.

BG2, Morrowind and Dota 2 are perhaps my three favourite games 

But I don't think it's the best comparison. Dota 2 is a competitive and addictive multiplayer game with huge prize money. It's to be expected that it will have more mainstream staying power than Morrowind or IE games. Despite that I think games like Morrowind and BG2 are doing fine. The modding scenes are alive, and at least in BG2's case there are modern clones popping up all the time, although none have really done it for me so far. I believe some of them even have some decent mods. Dota 2 also has a decent "modding" scene with custom maps, although Valve could do more to encourage it.

I seem to have found an incompatibility between "Improved NPC customisation and management" and a couple of components of Tweaks Anthology: the XP cap remover and "APR on spec". When installing these three together, warriors don't get their bonus APR at levels 7 and 13. This is on BG2EE 2.5, using the newest SCS and Tweaks from github. I'm running linux with BG on a case-folded partition, however everything else works fine in a big modded install. I can reproduce the problem with the following minimal install:

// Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version]
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2090 // Change Experience Point Cap -> Remove Experience Cap: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2440 // Everyone Gets Bonus APR from Specialization: v9
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4100 // Improved NPC customisation and management: 33.7

I test it by loading in Abdel to the start of ToB - with these components installed he has only 1 base APR, but if I remove any of the three it's the correct 2 APR. I also tested with a ranger, and leveling a character "naturally" from level 1 by granting XP. They also didn't receive the APR. I have also applied (and un-applied) the fix to standard_mage.ssl described earlier in the thread, and it doesn't have any effect on the issue.