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Updated Here there are two new abilities. Only Book Casting will be installed unless there is some kind of Enhanced Edition. Discard Armor I have always been very annoyed by the need to choose whether to put on armor or take it off before every fight when playing fighter/mages, mages/thieves, bards, rangers with their sneaking and so on. It has been one of the main arguments against playing them. So I made it possible to strip off armor even during combat. All armor will now have that special ability. After clicking on the button the character will become uncontrollable and spend the next round ripping it off. He will lose the Armor Class bonus right away, along with Dexterity pluses, if any, the saving throws will be at -4, and vision will be curtailed very nearly. To keep things interesting, every time there is a 1% chance the suit will end up junked. I owe thanks to @Ardanisfor the macro used here and the explanation about how to use it. Book Casting An ability that works somewhat more smoothly under an Enhanced Edition. It is for all and only wizards from the 1st level on. Unlike powers in my other mods, this one is not given directly and can't be taught by characters to each other, it was simply added to the class ability tables. Therefore, level up to get it. Wizards will now be able to cast spells directly from their grimoires, without memorizing them. The casting time is RATHER prolonged, so this is not practical for fights, but it is useful when the character needs to cast Armor or something like that and there is no opportunity to rest. The wizard will take on a few points of fatigue every time and begin to kvetch and moan incessantly, which, I feel, balances this out enough. Masochists are welcome to exploit this power, though, to set up a googol of Skull Traps. Download

To my grandmother Table of contents: 1. Summary 2. Compatibility and limitations 3. Sweeping creature changes and revamps of old items 4. The inn selection 5. Other 6. Money for me 1. Summary Here I introduce a number of new and, for the most part, original items for the Infinity Engine games - the Baldur's Gate line and the Icewind Dales. The emphasis is on role-playing and finding occupations for characters and players other than to go from point A to point B in search of the next power-up. Some have fighting applications, others help eke out experience for the party or move neutral NPC where it is convenient to have them. There are apples to juggle, torches to light, oil to make people slip, disguises, snapshot-taking gliders, wigs, soot, glowing but illegal shields and a game of dice to play with NPC and strip them of their treasures instead of killing them - if you manage to win. Yes, and wine! With the exception of dice, where the rules are explained in detail in the item's description, I made a conscious decision not to reveal the exact mechanics for the items. The reason is simple: it is better that way. Once upon a time equipment in games came with short or even no descriptions, and it was a difficult but very, very enjoyable business to try to figure out what some cryptic tinderbox or padlock key did, if anything. In those days players had to draw area maps by hand, too, which gave a real sense of accomplishment. Over the years for the sake of "ease" and mass appeal all of that was streamlined away and resulted in - a lack of things to do, really. Here I go back to the old way. The items in this mod invite you to figure them out. The descriptions tell you no numbers, but they are not filler. Read them carefully, because every important feature or side effect is touched upon. If an item's function is not obvious at once, experiment with it. Think what it might do, try it on, see if any statistics change or abilities appear. Most of this equipment is inexpensive and you will not Lose Out On Advantages if you squander a few cans of soot. 2. Compatibility and limitations At the moment the module has only been tested for the Enhanced Edition. It may cause problems or crash your game completely on a "classic" (BG2-era) installation. I plan to get around to testing it for the old versions in a few days. That intention aside, I always make modules for Beamdog's Enhanced Edition engine, because it has functions the "classic" engine, meaning Shadows of Amn, Throne of Bhaal, Icewind Dale 1 and 2 as they were, does not. The items here have been well-tested for the Enhanced Editions, though problems may still crop up. Carry them over to this thread if they do. As for the "classics," I don't know how much of the functionality from here will work there even when I do test there. Here is what will be definitely missing from the items in "classic" installations, even if they basically do the job: - my helpful custom portrait icons and text for when the items are used and worn are not supported by the old engine, so you will see instead standard and nonsensical icons such as Dire Charm or Hold Person for states that are completely different. I can try to choose something more palatable there from the fixed list if people request it; - the whole-creature glow effect, used to underscore some on-off events, is not supported. Alternatives exist, but they are not so good. With the old engine you will just have to do without this feedback; - after oil is used to make a slick, coal is used to set a fire or an innocent uses flares that you present, you will not be able to save the game while in the area. Lead the whole party to an adjacent area, a room, a house, a cave, something like that, and you will be able to save there. This is reiterated in the items' descriptions. 3. Sweeping creature changes and revamps of old items Although this mod focuses on new items, the world had to be prepped for them a little. The statistics and alignments of innocents, those levelless bystanders - commoners, noblemen and noblewomen, courtesans, boys and girls, beggars - and also Flaming Fist mercenaries, Amnian soldiers and Candlekeep Watchers have been randomized somewhat. The innocents are no longer 9-9-9-9-9-9 True Neutral no-inventory stand-ins, although they are generally still in the middle range of things. But some will be smarter than others, some stupider, and alignment plays a role when dicing. They also have a few items on them now, mostly small stuff, but on occassion decent treasure. This is so that they can participate in a game of dice when you suggest it, and it gives your pickpockets something to do. Commoners with clothing size under XXXL (men and women, boys and girls) will all have clothes on them that you cannot steal, but can pick up from their lifeless bodies if you are playing nasty and an inn is too far away. Too many people wander in the wilderness for their own good. Children wear small-size clothes usable by dwarves, gnomes and halflings. Clothes are a component of disguise (in combination with either soot and oil or a wig to change the hair). As for the old items, three pieces of magical gear in the first Baldur's Gate game have been revised: - the ring of invisibility sold at the Ulgoth's Beard inn can now be activated any number of times, making it well worth its somewhat reduced price; - the harp for sale in the same place now changes the bard song of the character to apply a weak mind-controlling effect to everyone around; - the cloak of the wolf (a found treasure) gives sanctuary if used outside of combat, which makes it useful for reconnoitering an area, but you should stay away from strangers, or you will become noticed. Two other items in the first BG are different: the glittering beljuril gemstone and the bottle of sparkling wine that you obtain in the first underground level of Durlag's Tower. These items can now be consumed rather than used for the quest. The stone can be sold for a heap of gold and the wine can be drunk with astounding benefits. This will, of course, preclude you from exploring the dungeon below. 4. The inn selection Every inn now has a store, offering a limited quantity of the following items. The Candlekeep inn in the first Baldur's Gate, both times that you get to visit it, is a little different. It has a small selection and trades in a different and devastating variety of apple. In the second Baldur's Gate the drow inn sells nothing and the svirfneblin inn offers only some unique wigs. The inns of Icewind Dale games are few and I may increase their stock over the usual, if I get around to it. Most of the items have a number of properties. Here I give a rundown. 1) Prybar A handy door and chest opener. 2) Wine Makes characters tougher, dumber, uglier, fearless, with worse luck and better morale, unable to start a conversation - and rowdy. Keep an eye on a drunken party. One half-orc NPC in particular has trouble holding his liquor. Here it helps to remember that alcohol is poison... The severity and duration of the bad side effects are less pronounced for experienced drinkers. Wine is also a common random drop item, especially from some barbaric races who have it tough in this life. 3) Live chicken The chicken can be released to roam or cooked in a fortifying stew (if you also have coal). You can also steal chickens from the streets if you are fast enough. In the first Baldur's Gate, which is the game I'm really interested in, some of the more rustic areas and even a few places in the city have had a few hens put in, so you may notice some on your way. You can also dominate a chicken and command it into the pack! 4) Apple Apples can be thrown at people or juggled in an entertaining way, if agility suffices. This can earn you a little money and get neutral NPC to approach, which might help clear the way for your sneaks, move guards out of sight and so on. Also a common drop. 5) Buffor apple Only the Candlekeep inn sells these. Not for juggling, but they make deadly missiles for a strong throwing arm. 6) Oil Has a variety of uses: rub it into the skin to get into tighter corners and receive an armor bonus, into gear and weapons to make them somewhat resistant to the iron plague (in the first BG) and always a little faster. Does have the side effect of making one flammable. You can also pour oil on the ground to render it slippery. 7) Coal A coal pit burns for a while, singeing anyone who walks over it, warming those nearby and providing illumination. Light from a coal pit, or really any light, helps against the unnatural monsters and wild things... the light from a coal pit is strong enough to keep away the weaker monsters and all animals. 8 ) Soot Also has several applications, some of them in combination with oil. (Here is a good place to say that for technical reasons you should split stacks of oil, soot etc. before using them, or you might lose the entire stack. If you plan to mix soot with some oil, equip a can of soot, set aside a bottle of oil in the backpack, then use the soot.) Soot and oil can help with sneaking, a little for the hair is a component of disguise and makes you look stylish, plus you can use soot by itself to leave a mark on the ground. 9) Common dress, medium and small size Nondescript clothes are a component of disguise - for the body; you also need something for the hair, either soot with oil or a wig. From the picture you can tell that the disguise is not complete, because the characters have their former hair color. Medium-size dress is for humans, elves, half-elves and half-orcs, the small size fits dwarves, gnomes and halflings. As I already mentioned, you can slaughter innocents and pull the clothes off their dead backs, in addition to buying at inns. When the body component and the hair component of the disguise are in place, an icon will appear on the character's portrait. Disguise is for getting past those who would pick you in the crowd, but it does not work automatically. It is best not to hang near people for long, or you might be discovered. The more witnesses are looking and the closer they are, the greater the danger. Characters' ability to succeed in getting around disguised is tied to their intelligence. Minsc is not good at it... While disguised you cannot attack or use abilities, and it puts you at a temporary disadvantage if you are discovered and a fight does break out. 10) Torches Torches do a little fire damage but are a very clumsy and inconvenient weapon. Their light makes one stronger against unnatural abominations and natural predators, just like with the glow of coal. If you have some oil and a basic club, you can fashion a torch yourself. On the downside, stealth and invisibility are impossible with a torch in hand. And yes, they use the mace animation. 11) Flares Flares can be shot into unexplored parts of a map a considerable distance away. They will eliminate the fog of war where they burst so that you can, for example, attach a rope to places you have not yet visited. Their blaze will also singe certain enemies, and the entire map is sure to become interested who made this much commotion. Flare use is limited to the outdoors and the Undercity in BG1, where the ceilings are immensely high. You can also present a pack of these dangerous toys to someone stupid enough to accept and play around with them. The results vary, but nobody will blame the party for an accident. 12) Rope A shortcut to places, up walls and over streams. It can be attached to any explored point, even in the gray. A nimble character can then climb/swing on a rope (depending on how you turn your head in this two-dimensional world) to the destination and raise/pull others to him or lower them/send them across. This is for the party only, no minions. Characters are vulnerable while on the rope or holding it. In principle, the rope even lets you flit through walls in a cave, but here you have to decide not to exploit the mechanics and ruin the game for yourself. 13) Parascopic glider set The glider is an automated contraption with a viewfinder and an image transmitter. It can be sent to soar around the map in the Exploration Cruising mode or the Strafe for Dirt mode. In Exploration Cruising it will zoom in on groups of creatures it encounters, which shows some of the terrain and is instructive for the party directly. When it strafes for dirt, it will snap up incriminating pictures. These are not transmitted but will be delivered once the glider is back in the pack. The dirt can be sold on the black market. To get a glider down from either flying mode, hook it: stand in the way of its shadow (you can't see it here, but they cast a shadow) with a dongle in hand. Dongles are telescopic poles, one is included in the glider set. It will appear in the backpack when the glider is launched. Snatching a glider is not so easy and may take a number of tries, but nothing prevents you from leaving it to fly in an area. Away from inns glider sets are a rare creature drop. 14) Dongle You may want to buy a few more dongles to involve the party in catching gliders. 15) Dice They may come across as a humble accessory after some of the other stuff, but dice are the most interesting, involved and potentially important item I made. Dicing is a complete minigame whose rules are explained in the item description, with a number of twists and surprises. You can play for the droppable items of anybody who has any items (except undead and children), so long as you put up something as a wager yourself, and you can have party members dice with each other, too, for roleplaying, to decide who gets the loot and whatnot. 5. Other Three items are not sold at the inns. 16) Phosphoric shield This screenshot doesn't do it justice, but the phosphoric shield creates a halo when activated. Its light brings the same advantages as a torch, otherwise it is a standard round shield. In the first Baldur's Gate all Flaming Fist mercenaries now carry these shields and will switch them on in the dark hours. Phosphoric shields are only issued to Fist members, so you can only get one by killing a mercenary (and be prepared to lose reputation - I made sure there are no Fist members who "don't count" anymore for your convenience) or on the black market. Either way do not wear these in sight of Fist mercs. There is no Flaming Fist in the other games, so this shield does not appear. 17) Wig Both sexes sport wigs in Faerun. They are rare random creature drops in all of the games, and in BG1 I planted some in a few places you may come across. Early on in that game you will get an opportunity to get a wig (and, if you procure basic dress, put together a disguise, which may get you past some unpleasant initial encounters). There are many different styles and colors, but all of the wigs radically change the wearer's face, expression, and, it seems, his character itself. The third item is the svirfneblin wig. I will let people discover those on their own. 6. Money for me Modding that goes beyond making arrows +1 into arrows +2 is not easy. If you think this module deserves a few dollars into my hat, send me a note. Download

I once worked a mod called "The Demon and the Dragon" about the shadow dragon under Umar Hills and the demon lord in Ust Natha. This is the part of that aborted mod that works completely, and it deals only with the dragon. It is now possible to negotiate with him, and there are different approaches depending on the strength of the party (which means how soon the player comes on this quest): weaker than the dragon, more or less the same and stronger. Being or appearing weaker is not unintelligent here and may let the party skip the fight, which, by the way, is more difficult than before and includes a few surprises and improved effects. There is a new merchant in the Bridge district of Athkatla, a gnome, who will sell the party something that helps take off the edge. If the party is stronger than the dragon, he will try to bribe them with a new and useful magic item, one that can also be picked up from his body. Plus the dragon no longer detects the characters everywhere in the area, and it is now possible to bypass him even without the wardstone by staying near the wall and heading downstairs for the Shade Lord. Something to remember about shadow dragons, however, is that they are Chaotic Evil with Genius Intelligence and don't stick up for failed masters. The Enhanced Edition is required. Download

Fixed This mod introduces the outlandish concept of property to the Forgotten Realms. It would not be possible without @Luke, and it is compatible with all game versions. @Salk gave some sound advice. @eyre noticed a problem. With this mod items in all indoor areas that are not dungeons begin to belong to someone. When the player takes these valuables that were just "lying around" from chests and other containers and tries to sell them, he will discover that, strangely enough, they are considered stolen. (Were they stolen before they were removed? To this I reply, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to see it, does it make a sound?) Examples of areas where property reigns: ordinary houses, the duchal palace, cabins, Spellhold's main floor and basement (the teleporting rooms are dungeon). In the first game the tents of the bandit camp are an exception; the status of loot taken from robbers would be too questionable legally, for simplicity, you can sell away. The Iron Throne, on the other hand, is a legitimate organization, on the surface, anyhow. The Cloakwood mine is dungeon, but the office building is a property zone. In the second game, everything in the Underdark, Ust'Natha and the sahuagin city can be pawned off there or later, but almost all other civilized places will have property. This includes the De'Arnise hold, which, full of valuables though it is, is not there for your looting, and all crypts and tombs that are known and visited. Stolen items, of which there will now be many, can be sold only to fences, of course, and there are few of those. In the first Baldur's Gate there is Black Lily in the city, along with Silence and another character, probably known to long-time players, who I won't call by name. A new fence has appeared in Nashkel. Stop by the Belching Dragon tavern (where Volo is). In the sequel one can sell stolen goods to the Shadow Thieves, of course. Besides this, one in every ten stores in any game will be willing to buy stolen goods. This is determined randomly for every installation of this modification. If you want a new arrangement for a new game, reinstall the mod. Any store may turn out to do business on the shady side, even, in principle, temples, although they don't usually buy items. All fences will buy from the party, however. Try selling something to a temple. If they take it, someone there is turning a profit and you can haul in more stuff. Inns with a store have the same chance of accepting stolen goods. If my "Adventurer's Miscellany" is installed, every inn will have a shop, and so there will be that many more chances of coming across one that does. Felderpost's in Beregost is not a guaranteed fence any more, but it has the same chance of being one as any other inn. After one of my test installations Candlekeep's own inn turned out to be a criminal outfit; who knew? That would make a lot of difference, if I were playing that time, considering how little starting money characters receive. You can tell a fencer's den by low, low selling prices. Nearly all fences, random or preset, share a few characteristics: Will both buy and sell, though don't necessarily have anything in stock; Buy items of all standard categories - even familiars, if you want to trade them in for some quick cash, only make sure to buy them back; Selling prices very attractive, but buying prices atrocious; Ignore reputation; No depreciation, they will keep taking anything you bring; Their selection, if any, also all stolen; No five-fingered discounts. In addition to the change to areas, items carried by innocents and lawmen (Flaming Fist, Amnian soldiers, Watchers, Cowled Wizards), plus the Dukes of Baldur's Gate, are all declared provisionally stolen, whether the party will have fished them out of the owners' pockets or simply hacked those owners up. "Illegally obtained" may be a more accurate, broader sense here. The characters may feel like they are defunding the police when they slaughter whole packs of government magicians, but even selling the helmet of a dead patrolman or a dropped gem requires dealing with the black market. There are no guards who can be killed without reputation consequences as well - no more stooges you are allowed to whack for free plate mail or because it is a shortcut from a quest. On the whole, although the player may sometimes get to shop for a great bargain, fences buy at such a discount that the gold glut problem will get a good knock on the nose. Most free finds will have to be used up, not sold, and if the player is determined to profit off them or some killed lawmen, he will have to find his fences and stop by them on a regular basis. Slinging a gunny sack. P. S. The Icewind Dale series will benefit from the general mechanics, but I could use someone who has them installed and can suggest where to plant a definite, guaranteed fence. Download

Slightly improved and fixed 1. Summary 2. Compatibility 3. The golds and how they work 4. The new system: handouts in a pecking order 5. The budget review 6. Buying at stores 7. Getting others' gold 8. What they spend it on 9. What Charname can spend it on 10. Platinum and locked caskets: sold and bought everywhere 1. Summary. In Baldur's Gate 2 why do the companions of Charname allow him to scoop up all of the 15,000 gold pieces they all earned in dangerous adventuring and spend on a personal cause - either vengeance or rescuing a friend, where the money does not even bring the friend back but only buys transportation to the place the friend may be? Don't they have their own ideas for that plunder? Even Harper do-gooders like Jaheira could probably buy a number of people from slavery with that kind of money, or do something else with it. Yet they all obediently play Charname's little game and pour out their purses into a common pot from where he - really, the player, out of character - reaches with an exclusive ladle? Is this a role-playing game or a 5 year socialist plan? With this mod private property sets its iron heel in Faerun. Party characters will now split any gold found, awarded or obtained from buying items to fill their separate purses, with no privileges whatever for Charname. They are not necessarily selfish now, but they have purposes apart, and if Charname or another character wants someone else's money for a special purchase, he needs to persuade or intimidate the other character into agreement. This is not a hopeless proposition, but it is difficult. In conversations the speaking character only has his own purse, light or heavy, to set against any requirement to pay, and in the case of sailing to Byzantium, I mean to the asylum, someone in the party needs to have 15,000 gold of his own, or the journey will not happen. This character will, in effect, be bankrolling the expedition. What is more, the collector needs to hurry up with the gathering, or private purses will be emptied to buy improvements for their owners. Charname or indeed whichever party member wants to pay the Shadow Thieves so much should not be lazy or slow, otherwise the party may end up scouring Amn, looting the dungeons, doing the quests, and all of this wealth will be happily spent by the others, each on his own articles of interest. The BG2 premise is only an example, though. Whichever game the module is installed for, these interactions around money are going to happen often enough, especially when one of the characters feels he must absolutely bang together enough money for something expensive that is being sold, like a robe of an archmagi et cetera. They can be role-played in many ways. I made this mod because one of the main attractions of real, tabletop fantasy play is the winning of treasure. There are some games that do treasure more vividly and attractively than Dungeons&Dragons, like Stormbringer, but in D&D, too, coin is important, if rather abstract, and when money is won, it is split. Much of the satisfaction of victory comes from this, and contention also. What to do about a gemstone too expensive for local buyers? Who ought to carry it and for how long? And so on. This module goes some way towards recreating this interaction and making characters, in effect, act independently instead of being marionettes in a bland overhead-view wargame. This is not my dream system. Some features I hoped for were impossible, others had to be made very differently. For example, the Infinity Engine turned out to be incapable of simple division, so the original idea to distribute plunder in equal shares had to go. I resorted to a "pecking order" distribution, based on proximity to the party leader, but this turned out to be fun in its own right. 2. Compatibility. This module is only for the Enhanced Editions. I should also mention that because the class title on the character record sheet is the only place in the interface where additional information can be shown (by replacing the class name), other mods' custom class titles, given with the one and only available opcode, are going to be overriden. @DavidW provided some important code and gets my thanks. 3. The golds and how they work. First, a few words about the composition of the gold system in the Infinity Engine. In all these games there are actually three golds. First, there is the gold piece item, the one most often found on corpses, sometimes in chests. It is an item whose description pic, I bet, is rarely seen and whose drop-down sound has never been heard, because as soon as it is clicked, it disappears and a corresponding amount of units is added to the the party purse. Second, there are private purses of all creatures. These are usually empty, but companions come into the party with some chump change in them, and as soon as they join, they drop their quarters into the same party purse, which is very nice of them. When they leave or are ejected, they depart without claiming any portion of the budget, which is very nice of them also. A creature with gold in the private purse will drop all of it in the form of gold pieces upon dying. Finally there is the great and all-powerful purse of the party. This idealized pool can hold any amount of wealth without encumbrance or taking up any space in the inventory. This is the only "gold" that is considered by shopkeepers, and money for sold items increases the party purse. Quest rewards usually also flow into the party purse directly. 4. The new system: handouts in a pecking order. The new system changes the role, if not the functioning, of all three golds. The gold piece, in any amount, is now called Plunder. It represents discovered cash of all sorts pending for distribution in the party. As before, it will fill the common purse when clicked, but the six or fewer private purses are its ultimate destination. Private purses represent the money a character owns completely and can spend without restrictions. They are used to pay in conversations and to buy improvements. As for the party purse, it is now only a junction, the low table on which plunder and money gotten from anywhere is spread before it is sorted out to the characters. Whenever the size of the party purse reaches 100, distribution begins automatically, just not in a fight. Gold is handed out in 100-point installments: the party purse shrinks by 100 and the private purse of a character swells by the same amount. The party leader, who is not necessarily Charname, always gets the dibs. If there are more than 100 units in the party purse still, the next, second, character receives another hundred, then the third and so on down the line, restarting from the leader again when the tailing character in the party has received his share. This continues until nearly all of the party purse has been distributed. Money under 100 gold pieces remains there, to be added for distribution the next time. Because money always comes from the top, it clearly pays to roost up there. Not only is the party leader always privileged, but there is intentionally a slight delay in distribution for lower-rank (rather, lower-file) characters. When money is plentiful, the party's winnings number in the thousands and handout rounds flicker past, everyone gets a good share to enjoy, yet the top characters' is still somewhat better, and the characters in the end of the party fall behind considerably. This should create some interesting party mechanics, as everyone will "want" to be in the front positions at least when the roar of battle stops. Partly the trickle-down is deserved, because front positions tend to be more dangerous. This is no voodoo economics, though: when there is little money to go around, moving up may be the only way to snatch a hundred. Example: a party of six has sold a few swords and had picked up a little Plunder before and now unties the strings on 1350 gold in the party purse. This is enough for two complete distribution rounds, after which everyone would enjoy 200 gold for the private purse, if life were fair. But reality bites, not bidens, and the playing table is more likely to be skewed in favor of those on top. The leader will claim the final hundred as well. 50 gold will remain in the party purse until the next time. Had there been only two-three hundred to distribute, the underdogs would have had to climb up to get anything, and they will need to indeed if the party never earns big or makes only small and slow sales. All characters are entitled to a share except those who are dead or panicking at the time of the distribution. Even incapacitated, confused or held characters will still have the money set aside for them, but not cowards or corpses. Another way to exclude someone from participation is to seal him off in a bubble of Otiluke, where he can watch despairingly and bang on the force wall as outside yellow metal dances into others' palms. This can even be done to the leader, but, of course, requires involvement of a wizard. Distribution is generally fast, yet, for techical reasons, faster for a fuller party than a smaller one. With all this irregularity and jostling it is important to know just how much money everyone has ended up having. For this characters receive a special ability called Review Budget. If someone in the party does not have this ability, make another party member use it, and the first one will learn. 5. The budget review. This button will display the current size of private purses. The roll call also proceeds in the top-down order. On this screenshot it is displaying results that correspond more or less exactly to characters' position in the party. Xzar is higher and richer than Imoen, and Imoen is ahead of Ajantis. The party leader has already responded that he has got 1200 gold stashed. You should get a replacement font, too. The standard font is just ugly. The purse size is also shown on the character record screen. Don't be surprised that the sum is different, this is from another saved game. On the upper left is an unfortunate artifact of using the title for info display - the class name is replaced there also. Can you live with that? The inventory page likewise shows the purse size on top: Below you see a couple of other things: Plunder, the undistributed money on the right, and Gold - a special and separate item, to be discussed in a moment. The tokens on all these pages are not updated dynamically. You need to use the Review Budget ability to refresh information there. The messages will also be emptied on game load, use RB to fill the tokens in again. 6. Buying at stores. While the private purse is what counts for quests and dialogues, shopkeepers still look into the party purse. As soon as the party acquires any money, however, it will be spread out to personal use. How, then, is anyone to buy anything from a store? Here you need to give up on the notion of the player controlling everything that happens to this group of travelers from above the clouds, an "omnipresent authority figure" that thinks it has the right to pool everyone's resource and dispense them at whim. The characters are alive and real. Or they ought to be alive and real. They have their own plans and purposes, and likewise they don't have others'. You must give up on the idea of absolute necessity "for the group," because there is rarily such a thing, and think of necessity for each character. What does this character want to buy, for whom, why and how much does he need? Then proceed to direct this character to gather that much money out of his own private purse, which he can always do, and from the private purses of others, which is difficult. Money appearing in the party purse on the overhead map will be gone in a flash. This does not happen while the store screen is open. Therefore, you need to sell something of value without exiting the screen, enough for the needed amount to materialize in the party purse, draw on this resource for the purchases and leave. Gather things that store value: gems, wands, other expensive articles. Keep them on hand until it is trading time. The content of private purses can be entrusted to a character, just for the purpose of making important deals, ones that will benefit the whole party, in the form of conditioned money. Gold (the item above) is that conditioned money. It is only there to exchange for store credit, you are not allowed to use it for anything else, like making a payment in a conversation, nor can you stuff your own purse with it. To get store credit, get Gold and sell Gold. Yes, Gold can be sold. I will explain shortly how a private purse can be converted to Gold. Any store that buys anything will buy items in the "gold pieces" category. This includes Gold and Platinum. The normal price of 1 item of Gold is 2 gp, so in theory you get more than your money's worth, but in practice stores buy items at half price at best, hence 1 gp per 1 unit of Gold. Selling 1000 Gold will increase the party purse size by 1000. Still, there may be special stores and friendly merchants who will give a better price, and you can try to get more credit for your Gold there. Gold has no weight, but it does take up inventory space. One slot can hold up to 1000 pieces. 7. Getting others' gold. As already said, the Gold item represents money from a private purse given for the purpose of shopping. Naturally, it can be simply sold without buying anything, and then, exiting the screen, distribution will pick up and stuff the proceeds around the private rat holes. This is possible but isn't likely to benefit the character, unless he is very clever about party position and who will get how many hundreds. But how does a private purse's units become Gold? For this all characters receive a second special ability - Fundraiser. Fundraiser, another ability that characters can teach each other if need be, is on the left, Review Budget on the right. Used on oneself, Fundraiser always converts the character's private purse into Gold, but it is a matter of chance and persuasion with the others in the party. Good-aligned characters are the most willing to surrender their wealth but resist strongly requests from evil companions. Charisma helps to win them over. Neutral characters mildly resist everyone. The applicant's Charisma is also helpful. Evil characters strongly resist everyone and very strongly - good characters. Both Charisma and Strength can play a role, however. If a request is refused, this character will not countenance any more pleas for the next 12 hours (using the "long," 360-second hour measure). Fundraising becomes something of a minigame, as it may be better to involve another party member, with a different alignment and more influential statistics, in the asking to lower the risk. It may also become a race against the clock. Can money be squeezed out of the character before he spends it all? The most radical and sure way of getting the entirety of a character's private purse is to kill him. He will drop the contents on death - but only as Plunder, and the gold will be distributed among the remaining party members. Somebody will have to do the killing, of course, and that someone could be killed too to send his purse into lotto as well, and so on, with the remaining members' shares growing all the time, together with paranoia. "Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest" or the Joker coming out of the bank robbery by himself, take your pick for allusions. What will not help to get the money is to kick the character out and have him rejoin. Private purses of characters are now emptied permanently when leaving the party. This could and should lead to situations when a troublesome or useless companion is retained only for the sake of the greenback-stuffed mattress he sleeps on, and the others look for ways to part the two. 8. What they spend it on. Adventurers don't simply stuff the world's value into private purses as bottomless as a bag of holding. They are not offshore capitalists. They do better: they spend their earnings on self-improvement. As soon as a character other than Charname gathers enough gold, personal upgrades become available. Characters are not in a rush to spend, and there is randomness in this, but if money is available, they will usually buy something in a matter of hours. What they can buy depends on their class. The following improvements are bought one at a time in the order that is written. The first improvement the character can afford and qualifies for will be bought. Arcane shortcuts: -1 to casting time. Wizard, sorcerer, bard. 5000. Rites of undertaking: +3 to turn undead level. Cleric. 4000. Acupunctual stabber: +1 backstab damage multiplier, up to x5. Thief. 5000. Street academy T: +10% to all thieving skills. Thief. 4000. Street academy B: +30% to Pick Pockets and +20 to Lore. Bard. 4000. Steadier hand: -1 to THAC0. 4000. Fighter, paladin, ranger. Hidden plating: -1 to AC. 3000. All classes. Multi-class and dual-class characters will pick abilities for all of their classes in the same top-down order. Thus, a fighter/mage/thief with 4000 gold in the purse will buy Street academy during this check but nothing when the next opportunity flutters by, unless he replenishes his private purse before. Because the Armor Class improvement is the cheapest and available to all, party members will almost always improve their AC when they have some money to their name. This is fine by them. But if they decide to gather money for a bigger improvement, fundraising will be in order. Money spent on improvements is permanently gone from the game world. A cleric buys Rites of undertaking: 9. What Charname can spend it on. Everywhere in this mod Charname is in exactly the same position as the other party members, with no special rights, except with regard to improvements. This is a little different between games. In Icewind Dale there is no protagonist, so all of the characters will make purchases at will - an original completely player-independent party. I don't think there is a mechanic quite like that in any game. In Baldur's Gate there is a protagonist who will instead receive the option to buy them from the Special Abilities bar. When money is available and the chance to improve comes about a message will be shown and buttons will appear on the bar. Clicking one will dismiss the others until the next time. Here are all of the improvements available for selection, an illustration. In reality no character is eligible for all of them at once, nor can there be two uses of an option (the screenshot is somewhat bugged). 10. Platinum and locked caskets: sold and bought everywhere. In addition to gems and other expensive items a strategically thinking character may want to keep for exchange ("We must get a better price for this necklace, a better price!") value can be stored as Platinum. These coins are worth 20 gold pieces each so that the party is guaranteed to get 10 gp at an ordinary store when selling. Many stores carry some number of these, and all stores that buy anything will buy them. Although one still loses money by investing in Platinum, these coins are not legal tender, like gold represented by Plunder, and can be kept in the inventory until they are needed without companions crying that they must get a share now. Locked caskets will also be found at many stores. These small boxes, which one must open first, contain random treasure, often platinum, and sometimes nothing. They are a lottery of sorts, but unopened they cost a fair bit for their light weight. They may be better suited for keeping around for when one needs something to get store credit, buy gear on the same screen and avoid the egalitarianism of Plunder distribution. Download

1. Summary 2. Compatibility 3. Detect Magic 4. Intimidation 1. Summary. Like the anfisbene or Dogcat, this mod is two things in one body. Detect Magic brings a spell of the same name to wizards and priests, one that will find magical items on creatures, whether they always had them or obtained them by lucky rolls of random treasure. It will give a separate indication if the items are powerful (expensive), and when cast by a priest alert to cursed items. Intimidation is a character ability for most warriors and all half-orcs. Meant mostly to be used on neutrals, outside of combat, it can shoo them away to where convenient and interrupt all those greeters walking forward eager to announce something to the party, such as that they are about to kill the characters off. 2. Compatibility. Detect Magic should work on all games and versions, but Intimidation uses advanced effects. Its files will not be installed on a "classic" game. 3. Detect Magic. This is a 1st level Divination spell. All wizards of various combinations (and sorcerers) receive it for free automatically at the beginning of their career - or as soon as you install the mod. Bards, characters who switch to wizards later and others can avail themselves of Detect Magic scrolls, sold at all of the main magic stores in the games. Priests also have it, and in line with the AD&D tradition their version is somewhat different and superior. Unlike the wizards', theirs will detect cursed items. There is no saving throw against the spell, but magic resistance stops it. When a creature has something to detect, it will glow. Cast by a priest, this is the order of findings: 1) cursed items, worn and not, including cursed scrolls and the Murky Potion - the target will pulse orange quickly; 2) magic items worth at least 5000 gp or scrolls worth at least 1800 gp (5th level spells and above, see below on scroll prices) - flash a bright violet; 3) lesser magic items or ongoing enchantments, obvious and not - flash red. More important readings obscure those below. For example, somebody with a cursed scroll in the inventory will pulse orange even though the creature may have a vorpal sword in the backpack. The spell does not tell directly which items are cursed, but you can be smart with your own inventory and figure it out. Now, item prices in the games are wildly scattered and irrational. A sword +3 is worth less than a wand of lightning. I can't know what price-adjusting modules you may have installed on your computer, my chosen threshold of 5000 gp is at the level of the weakest wands. As for scrolls, vanilla-game prices are ridiculous - ridiculously uneven and ridiculously low. A scroll of Cone of Cold is worth 500 gp, while Confusion costs 1200 gp. No high-level scroll approaches the price of Wish, which could perhaps make sense in a tabletop game, but not here, where Wish is so lame. And so on. This mod puts scroll prices on a system: Level Price 1 100 2 300 3 700 4 1200 5 1800 (appears as a powerful item to Detect Magic) 6 2500 7 3200 8 4000 9 5000 Note that, given store mark-ups, this will make scrolls far more prohibitive to buy. No longer will you be able to empty High Hedge's selection with a couple of thousand but will have to devote considerably more of your earnings to stocking the mages. Given the gold glut in the games, this is probably a good thing, although later on, with most spells learned, you may begin to sell scrolls to stuff the purse. While money is short, though, who gets the gold is a good trigger for role-playing. Detect Magic works in a shallow, broad cone. On this screenshot Edwin's amulet responds. I had a different screenshot, one that showed an ogre assassin, Larze, walking up to the party and glowing under the spell. He might have rolled up something magical in random treasure, but more likely this was due to his basic undroppable ogre's morningstar, which, like all undroppable weapons, is flagged "magical" in the vanilla game, even without any special properties. I recommend using my "Monsters Beat Enchantment" mod, which unmagics all those, because otherwise you are going to get a lot of false positives. Even animals may glow, because their claws might have that unfortunate property. Finding an item or a curse on a creature earns some experience for the party, one time for every target, only not from your own party members. Yes, and Boo is also non-magical now. (Sorry, Boo.) 3. Intimidation. This special ability is given to all warriors (fighters, paladins and rangers) of the human, elf, half-elf and dwarf races (no gnomes or halflings). Half-orcs also receive it, regardless of class. Among NPC and monsters ogres, giants and other big brutish types possess it, so if you need to scare somebody in a pinch, you can try to procure an ogre. As with all abilities that I make, if a character for some reason does not have it, e.g. a former party member was outside when this mod was first run, invite the character into the party and have someone else use the ability. The newbie will learn. Intimidation works in a rather short range and forces a saving throw vs. spell on the target, initially with a +2 bonus, when used on a neutral. Every 4 levels the roll improves until -2 at the 17th level, and the number of creatures than can be intimidated at once also increases, until 3 at that final stage. In a fight hostile characters are already attacking the party, there is already plenty of intimidation in the air, so the ability is much less effective against red-circle creatures: the bonus starts at +8 here. Either way having Strength of 18+ improves the roll by a point, and Charisma of 16+ by another. Here I want to note that the games don't always show successful saving throws, there may be no bottom-window message for a save. You will see "Browbeat" there if you succeeded, if not, you did not. So what, finally, does Intimidation do? If it works, it will stop the target in its tracks and send it scampering away a short distance. You can use this to shoo away potential witnesses, hearers of shouts, guards and so on. What is more, the creature will lose the desire to speak with the party. Grok the half-orc-shaman-with-Intimidation and eretre the halfling-fighter-without brush off an unpleasant encounter. All in all, it will be with the creature as if the conversation has already taken place. The dialogue of the target will be advanced to the next state, if there is one. If you talk to the neutral now, after he stops his mad run, and he has something else to say, it will be as if you are addressing him a second time. (The first thing I did was intimidate Winthrop at the Candlekeep Inn to get past that unbearable "10000 gp entry fee" conversation.) Note that you may spoil things for yourself if you do enter a conversation at this juncture, it may create confusion with quest givers. The change is only temporary, though: if you have left the creature alone, it will return to the initial dialogue state in an hour. (If you did talk to it, you don't get to reset the relationship.) The desire to bring the word to you will also return. You can keep 'em down with more rudeness in the meantime, though. I must say, yelling at people with impunity can become an addiction. Abdel the fighter hollers at random townsfolk in Saradush. As a final note, while you can intimidate animals, in combat and out, they are not so smart and may as easily as not fly into a rage and attack you or whoever is nearest. Perhaps you might find a use for this, too. Download

I'm trying to make some anime themed mod, so I would like to be able to make items be usable by only one character (in the vein of Yoshimo's Katana or the Cordotha Family Armor) but I've tried and tried and can't seem to figure it out. Any help, please?