subtledoctor

Yes - point 1 is that the BP mechanism is designed for BP itself, and it operates at last in part by character and area scripts. Those character scripts are problematic outside the context of BP. My mod adjusts the mechanism to rely less on those scripts, since the intent is for BG characters with no such scripts to venture into and back out of BP. So the technique in the mod is a step toward generalizing the proposed “no real death unless TPK” mechanic. Point 2: even with my mod though, the BP behavior still relies on other scripts, e.g. any party members who pseudo-died are “resurrected” via an area script when they return to the waiting area between fights. This would have to be generalized, as I say probably into BALDUR.bcs. But that would be touchy. Point 3: if you get that right, there is still the question of how to protect everyone and make then subject to the pseudo-death mechanism. BP does this via undroppable rings, and my mod expands on their use for this purpose. But that fits the lore of being captured and sent to the fighting pits. You can’t use an equipment slot for this in a non-BP game. Very theoretically you could apply a permanent effect to all joinable NPCs’ .cre files, and to Charname via script in certain select starting areas. This, again, would be touchy. And the consequences of it going awry would be severe, as dying is one of the most fundamental game mechanics. So, there is a path to get there from here. And what I’ve done might serve as a shortcut for one step on that path. But it would still be a major undertaking, for which I have neither time nor enthusiasm. (I really disliked the “take a knee” mechanic in NWN2 for example.)

Huh. Must have been BGT thing, maybe? At any rate I decided to pick up someone who can use longswords. Littlun's been pretty quiet so I dropped her and picked up Ajantis for some classic sword/shield tanking. He was hunting bandits; I was hunting bandits. Perfect. We went searching for the Tazok, clearing most of the Spider Forest, Basilisk Town, Larswood, and Peldvale. Then we tried to infiltrate the Bandit Camp but failed? Which is weird because earlier in this same game, with the other set of saves, I did so successfully. Maybe the presence of a paladin makes them attack me? At any rate that's fine because getting jumped by all the bandits at once when I have no time to prep is the most fun way to do this map. It got a little hairy but I prevailed. Then went back to Beregost. For weeks now I've been waiting for Brandock to join up with Fireface Elvenfart to fix his book. I know this is supposed to happen, I've seen it before in an abandoned EET run. But something seemed wrong. Only by chance I looked at my journal - not in the 'Quests' section but the actual 'Journal' section - and it says I should talk to Brandock about it. So I manually talked to him and, voilà - the dialogue triggered and he made a plan with Firehair. Weird. TBH I don't love this. It comes across as a ham-fisted way to force the player to get into PIDs with an NPC. But I'm sorry, I'm never going to do PIDs with an NPC, any time an NPC mods asks me to install PIDs I decline to do so. It's just not something that interests me - but it seemingly almost caused me to short-circuit Brandock's whole character arc. This earns a solid "meh." Job done with regard to the bandits, I dropped Ajantis and he was like "Aw, I thought we were a team!" - giving big Anomen energy. Good riddance. I picked up Sirene instead, changing her sword from a greatsword into a bastard sword (sorry not sorry) and speccing her for sword-and-board. Into the Cloakwood! I sided with Aldeth Sashenstar because, even though I am a druid, those druids there are dicks. Safana, sensing I am on more of a quest than a gallivant and increasing danger, hiked back to civilization, and I picked up Coran instead. I made Coran a fighter/thief with the Rake kit for single-class thieves... specialization with bows and longswords and single-weapon style, some ranks in the Dodge feat, and... holy cow, this guy smokes! 2+ APR, thac0 well into the single digits, AC -5 or something... he's a monster, and he's not even on my front line! Of course, the question I will soon face is, do I take on Eldoth? I would have to lose someone from the party, which probably means Coran. Which I would prefer not to do,, at least until I get back to Beregost, because Eldoth is a wanker... but I need Eldoth in order to get Skie, and I need Skie in the party for at least some time in order for SoD to make any sense at all. Here's a mod that would be cool: Set a variable when Skie joins the party in BG1. Then in SoD, whether imported or continued via a unified BGEE/SoD game or EET, check the variable in the opening dungeon and if the variable is not >0, remove Skie entirely from all of SoD. Just snip that whole plot and every cut-scene and leave them on the editing room floor. Rewrite the entire last chapter to make Charname's perception as a villain more sensible. I would suggest, maybe, causing one or many important people from the BG coalition to be stranded in Avernus. Maybe when you go into the room, instead of having the door shut, leave the door open so your allied soldiers can witness Charname, however unwillingly, open the portal to hell. And have, like, everyone that whole floor of the castle get pulled in. And instead of the first scene in Avernus when you see about five soldiers being killed by fiends, make it more like 20 or 30. This way even if Charname later establishes his goodness at the trial, people will still fear and hate him just for what his Bhaalspawn essence can do. Just a thought.

Probably? I basically apply something like this in my Black Pits-in-Baldur’s Gate mod. (Or else it was already there and I had to manipulate it in some way. I forget.) Basically apply min1hp to all party members, and when one of them reaches 1hp apply an irresistable Sleep effect and increase a variable value. Have BALDUR.bcs check the variable and if it hits six, blammo, kill the party. Then apply something when combat ends which dispels the Sleep/variable spell and adds 1 hit point. So if anyone survives, everyone wakes up with 2 hp and goes on their way. Something like that. Doable, but probably a bit kludgy in execution.

Sorry, fixed now

Yeah that person isn’t there! It’s just Alvanhendar and two “halfling men.” No innkeeper cleric!

Isn’t there supposed to be an inn in Gullykin? I distinctly recall someone in Alvanhendar’s place who would let us sleep there. But in this game I have to sleep outdoors in the middle of the village. Am I misremembering?

Wow that's great troubleshooting @Connelly ! I didn't even think of that when I read this. Yeah, that earlier component is my kludgy way of putting all the small individual tweaks into a GROUP, without actually using GROUP (because GROUP unfortunately mandates ASK_EVERY_COMPONENT, which can be murder on uninstall/reinstalls with a mod like this with dozens of components. It's one of the things I absolutely loathe about the structure of Tweaks Anthology.) On reflection, since all of the components in this pseudo-GROUP are at the end of the install sequence, I suppose it is really not needed - anyone can simply quit out of the installer if they don't want to install them. So maybe I'll just remove that dependency. I'm readying an update anyway, so... ...And, updated in v2.7.1. Cheers. @AL|EN I don't know if this is something you need to know for PI, but SD Spell Tweaks component #1 is gone and no longer required for the later components.

I mean, UI is better. But limited time turns the oerfect into the enemy of the good. It boils down to, my personal life does not permit time me to learn Lua, and without understanding thoroughly, I wouldn’t be able to do it well and ensure compatibility with other UI tweaks/overhauls. Whereas, with the Weidu I already know (mostly already written!), using dialogues I could probably whip up a complete overhaul of the Favored Enemy mechanic in under two hours, and it would be compatible with everything. And also allow on-the-spot decisions for party-joinable rangers. It’s not great from a game design perspective, just better bang for my buck by an order of magnitude or more. For something you interact with for 5-10 seconds in a hundred-hour game… it’s good enough for me.

Yeah, several other other mods also use nonexistent items as table entries to create the possibility that the creature will have nothing. So I don’t think it’s that. At any rate, I have cleaned up the RNDTRES table, and removed the repeating .EFFs from 13,000 CRE files (the .EFFs were having no effect in 98.5% of cases anyway), transferred everything over to the iPad, and I am moving on. I also disentangled the combination of druid shapeshifts, spirit animal summons, and Samurai ki abilities. It’s a bit if a mess, but only because I am developing the character in such a weird way, and I think it is fixed locally. At some point I will do a major revamp of the ki points system to cover edge cases like this. I’ve got Safana in the party while Imoen shelters with Firenose Elvenknees through this dangerous bandit-hunting stretch. Charname hit level 4 as a druid, and we are now going east, to Gullykin to find Thantyr’s bracers and to Adoy’s Enclave for Neera. Will stop by the Ulcaster and Firewine ruins as well. Then on to the Bandit Camp.

Huh. The only things off I see about RNDTRES.2da are: some rows don't have enough columns - seems like the default version in IWDEE has 20 columns, but my copy in EET has 40 columns. Mot sure if this actually harms anything, but it's an easy fix if so. Some entries look like: "dw#ptn52*2" ...I assume that means the creature gets two potions, but I don't see anything about that notation in the IESDP. Again, not sure if it causes any problems, but easy fix if so. Some entries look like: "DW#BLANK" ...and there is no DW#BLANK.itm in the game. Not sure if this is a placeholder entry for SCS that is supposed to be scrubbed or replaced, or what. It doesn't seem like a great thing to have in the table. Unless pointers to nonexistent files are intentional and are designed to represent a creature that has no item in that slot? Which is fine and fits with the design intent. Even if this was problematic, I'm not sure why it would only cause problems when the creature dies. In fact the more I think about it, maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree. What I'm seeing is: middle of a fight, a creature dies, the game freezes I reload to just before the fight: I try again, maybe the game freezes again I reload to just before the fight: this time I get through the fight, all the enemies die, but the game does not freeze If the problem had to do with RNDTRES.2da, why would reloading make any difference? I loaded a game in the same area, the creatures were already loaded into my savegame, the RNDTRES substitutions should have already happened and reloading the save should make no difference. Hmm. I'll fix those three things in the 2da table, but maybe it's time to look at the area and creature scripts.

Ah, that could be. I’ve seen these guys use potions, even though the .cre file has no potions in the inventory. I thought the randomized item replacement was occurring upon their death and was causing he crash; but from this I infer that the random item replacement occurs earlier, maybe when the .cre is loaded? Which, on reflection, is a good way to diversify the capabilities and behavior of otherwise identical creatures! So kudos for that. And maybe the issue is, an item is being placed that shouldn’t be, maybe with a broken .bam or something, and so causes the crash when it is dropped. Or something. Or maybe a relevant row of the table is missing, and the dummy items drop, and they cause a crash. So maybe a fix looks like: install SCS on vanilla BG2EE, and look at the differences between the random tables there and in my install. It’s been a while since I looked at them… I think this system refers to RNDTRES.2da. Or, if recreating a working table is too onerous after the fact, maybe those dummy items should simply be marked as undroppable. If they don’t drop when a creature dies, they shouldn't cause problems. (Unless the replacement item inherits the undroppable flag, which presumably would be undesirable.)

I’m getting crashes when enemies die, and it is SUPER annoying. And quite random, very hard to reproduce. I have to restart the app, which, with an override folder of 130,000 files on an underpowered iPad, takes a long time. Just happened twice with “charmed pirates” on the nereid coast Someone a few months ago ( @jmerry?) raised the idea that it might be due to repeating .EFFs, but the only repeated effects on charmed pirates are the ones added by my own mod, which I’ve been playing with for years and I never had this before. The only other thing I noticed about the charmed pirates is they possess three items: DW#RND06.itm, DW#RND12.itm, and DW#RND22.itm. The items are empty files which are presumably replaced with random loot by… script? This must come from SCS but I don’t know how it is supposed to work. Even when the game does not crash, I am not finding any random loot. So something is misfiring, and… maybe it should be safe to simply remove all of those .itm files from all creatures? One possibility: maybe SCS is trying to use the IWD random loot mechanism (otherwise unused in BGEE and BG2EE)? And one of my mods replaces the default IWD random table for use in the IWD campaign added by tipun’s mod (and tipun’s mod itself probably replaces the table before my mod). Knowing that SCS is hyper-sensitive to preexisting .2da table format… this is my current hypothesis. Question is whether it’s worth fixing, or better to simply rip it out and move on.

Okay, as promised, here is version 5.8. This adds two new kits. First, the Ironsmith is a pure fighter kit, very similar to the 'Dwarven Fighter' in Ascalon's Breagar mod, but with a few extra bells and whistles for fun. There is also a component to optionally apply this kit to Breagar himself if you have that NPC mod installed. Second, the Barbarian/Thief is pretty much with it says on the tin, a fighter/thief kit with the characteristics of a Barbarian. The thief side is a bit limited, with no access to Pick Pockets or Open Locks (rage out and bash 'em). And it is limited to armors no heavier than studded leather, same as Stalkers. The French translation is updated, and the kitlist.2da table-fixing problem should be fixed now.

I know I said I was going with the "less is more" approach here, trying to hew to Aquadrizzt's original vision for the mod. But I am adding a component: component 95, 'Multiclass Specialists,' will make the specialist wizard kits available in all of the appropriate kit menus for fighter/mages, cleric/mages, and mage/thieves. Please note that, in an otherwise-unmodded game, this will only affect elves and half-elves. If you install mods that expand racial options to classes and kits, component 95 should be installed after such tweaks. (You can install this one component later than the rest of the mod.) Get version 1.1 here. Also worth noting: version 1.1 adds a French translation thanks to @mickabouille! Thank you!

Wanna know what's crazy, in all this time I never even knew you could play Wheels without Ascension. I always thought it was one of those Acension add-on mods. I guess now I've stopped using Ascension, I'll have to finally give Wheels a spin (ha ha) in my next install!

Yes, that component would stay and continue to be supported and updated.

I only mean the pure-class bard kits. Right now Might & Guile adds: — Jongleur, Meistersinger, Loresinger, Gallant …while Song & Silence adds: — Acrobat, Luring Piper, Chorister The overlap is kind of ridiculous. The only differences are minor matters of naming/implementation, and that S&S lacks the equivalent of a Gallant kit. But for the most part they all hew pretty close to the original Complete Bards source material. If the Gallant moved to S&S, you could still get effectively the same four kits, from one place and requiring less upkeep.

Heh, that sounds like something from the Dashing Swordsman prestige class “Thrust! Parry! Quip!” At any rate, I am not too interested in making more bard kits, as I have ripped that class out of my game and I give bardic abilities to other rogue classes. I have proposed to merge (some of) my bard kits with Song & Silence, to minimize overlap between mods. I’ll report on the status of that plan when I know more. Meantime, I have been focused on beefing up the availability of fighter kits — on which, more info soon.

The only point of it is to prevent the malformed .2da file from tripping up mods that need to read the file and use COUNT_2DA_COLS for column count (will return ten columns) and then iterate over rows in the file, leading to odd behavior or outright install failures because they try to read entries in rows where entries are missing. For an example, look at how some recent bets of SCS/ToF have been tripping over other misshapen 2da tables. Kitlist is in incredibly important 2da table - it contains and connects a LOT of data important to various kit and rule tweaks. So I figure it is particularly important to clean up this file. I didn't realize my fix wasn't keeping up with the numbering. That's not ideal; I'll take a look at the code by my inclination is to set the missing entries to " * " (the table default) or, maybe, something like 0x00004000 (a meaningless "no kit" value). In either case it will not have any effect on the kits themselves - if they could function with no value there, then they can function with an arbitrary value there. (And TBH the way it is now may be completely harmless - I'm not sure. But I would like to avoid doubled entries, to stay on the safe side.) Good catch, thanks for mentioning this! And good timing too, as I am currently prepping an update!

I gather there is no appetite for improving his kit... so based on this post, would it be okay to make an altogether new kit in a different mod, and add a component to that mod asking: Give the Ironsmith kit to Breagar? Sounds like it would not be a problem, I just want to confirm before stepping on the toes of another modder.

Really, 1) at the time my tweak was created the only extant version of Faerie Fire was the one from SR; and 2) I don’t know what SCS’ Faerie Fire looks like from a structural perspective, and patches designed for the SR spell likely would not work on the SCS version. EDIT - crap, I didn’t realize this was off-topic in someone else’s thread. Sorry.

Yeah but that’s the issue, right? The hard-coded ranger mechanic is limited to the ‘race’ field. Why I say, rip it out root and stem. @moog I talked myself into liking this idea, enough that I’d be happy to collaborate. I’ve got Weidu code that could be pretty easily adapted to turn a 2da table into various kit-specific dialogues; then you could do the creative work of 1) what are the categories, 2) which kit gets which categories as options, and 3) making the .SPL files to apply the bonuses. (The SPL files are probably best created in Weidu, given there will be many similar ones that differ slightly.)

Progress: So I went back to level 4, stayed on as a fighter up to level 6. Thanks to my modified XP tables, that was quick, at 22,000 xp instead of 32,000 xp. Getting to level 7 as a druid will take longer with my tables, though - 50,000 instead of 35,000. God, the vanilla XP tables are so weird. A 10th or 11th or 12th level ranger needs four times the xp of a druid at the same level. A ranger with the same xp as the druid would be three full levels behind. That is utterly bonkers! Somehow the AD&D 2E writers took the wacky 1E xp progression and... decided to make it even weirder? Huh? Anyhoo. So Jaheira and Khalid came and went, Minsc and Dynaheir came and went, and I am back to a variant of the former party: Charname is currently a 3rd-level druid, Imoen is a 6/6 M/T Jinxer; Littlun is a 6th-level Stalker specializing in crossbows and short swords; Breagar is on melee duty with axes and hammers; Brandock is a C/M Seeker of Oghma, on identification duty and casting a huge swath of spells; and we just picked up Neera who stays a wild mage. We're about to do the Black Hearts fights and then go to Larswood/Peldvale/Bandit Camp. (I never mind doing the Bandit Camp twice!) Also will pass through Firewine Ruins on the way to Adoy's Enclave, and I have tweaked things so that Wild Mages actually cast spells better in wild magic zones (I mean, better than other mages - she should have like a 40% chance to cast successfully) so that should be fun. Here's an even more annoying thing about Breagar: in order to enforce his lack of shield-fighting for plot reasons, the mod puts an invisible item in his shield slot. So you can equip anything there, which is fine and correct. BUT, the game is hard-coded to read that slot when applying fighting styles, so even though he put pips into single-weapon style, and he is fighting with a single weapon, the game thinks he has a shield and gives him no SWS benefits. Which are important benefits at this point: a thac0 bonus, and +APR! Indignity upon indignity! This won't stand, I think I am going to modify that and just be on the honor system to not equip a shield. EDIT - on the bright side though, I gave Breagar a 'Resounding Strike' ability to spiffy up his kit a little bit, as well as a 50% chance to evade the effects of Chant, Command, and Power Word spells.

The revised Ironskin spell here will not work on oBG2, it requires EE opcodes. I’ll look into the other thing, thanks for mentioning it.

Yes Conjurers get screwed by this, a bit, and there is a thread about how to address that. There are still several options available to Conjurers: Oracle cast by someone else should make someone visible (but it’s possible Nondetection blocks that, in which case you need to bring down the Nondetection with Spell Thrust..?) Glitterdust can make someone visible and can be cast by Conjurers, and Faerie Fire can as well. My ‘SubtleD’s Spell Tweaks’ mod has components that beef up those two spells in this context. It also has an invisibility overhaul that generally improves this. It also has a component that lets specialists use low-level spells from opposition schools, which would allow Edwin to cast See Invisible (which is allowed per the actual AD&D rules). Of course Glitterdust and Faerie Fire don’t work on liches, or someone with spell protections. I don’t think Oracle works on liches, notwithstanding your recollection. Liches are supposed to be very dangerous, even to high-level wizards like Edwin! Someone like Edwin challenging a lich should 1) be very high level, and 2) chuck pit fiends at the lich and drop Death Fogs and Acid Clouds and Firestorms and Meteor Swarms in the lich's general area. If you install IR as well as SR (they are designed to complement each other) then Edwin can use Potions of Sight to very easily target invisible enemies. He can also use Wands of Spell Piercing since wands can target invisible enemies. And summons distract enemies, wasting enemy spells and attacks and gaining you a resource advantage. They are extraordinarily useful. So while the situation is not perfect, there are still options here.