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Fixed With this mod fighting becomes a little more entertaining and lively as every scoring strike with a weapon or fist leads to a quick finisher, a little feint or maneuver. Shots from ranged weapons that hit also evoke a little cheering from the shooter every now and then. A melee weapon's connection may also lead to a swapping of places, when both parties end up on the ground and then up again and facing each other. Plus I slightly increased daggers' range. Spears, staves and halberds will show more strike variations, with thrusting and thwacking. All blunt weapons, spears and halberds, and slings, or rather shots from slings, will also knock the hit creature back unless he saves vs. death. Installing on an Enhanced Edition game, there will be another element: weapons' ability to control ground. Every weapon except fists will increase the character's personal space, in these categories progressively: daggers and darts; short swords, hammers, maces, clubs; long swords, scimitars, morningstars, axes, flails, bows, slings and crossbows; staves, spears, two-handed swords and halberds. The change represents both the amount of free space a weapon requires to be used effectively and its "danger range," ability to keep away attackers or anybody who comes near. There is no breaching a character's personal space while the weapon is drawn. The only way to get past the character is to kill him. The big weapons are effective at blocking corridors and doorways, including when you want to enter a tavern and the door is not wide enough. Put them away then. As for usefulness in a fight, this screenshot was taken on an open plain, but it shows ground-controlling power of two weapons: Notice the distance between the xvarts. This is close to how near they can come to each other and fight with their short swords. Minsc, for his part, is unapproachable any closer than that with his greatsword. He is still attackable at this range by anybody, the mechanics don't allow actually preventing xvarts' attacks on account of too-short blades, but if he were standing in a corridor in, say, the Firewine ruin, he could hold them all back. There would probably be no elbow room for another party member to stand next to him with a large weapon, though. Special provisions were made for ogres with their huge morningstars and gnolls, so that they only partially obstruct each other on the stairs of the Gnoll stronghold. While you can switch a party member to a smaller weapon or the fist any time and get past or around a control zone, the AI can't and his minions with large weapons would be hopelessly stuck behind each other. Often the party may be able to use this to its advantage, but you have to keep in mind personal space of your characters as well, even outside of combat, for such things as pathfinding. Characters don't know to switch to fists to slip between each other and may go half a way around the map if you don't watch them. Also NPC sometimes strike conversations with party members as if they were near instead of walking up to them - tolerable but ineradicable weirdness. Fixes for the EE-only component In this update I made some fixes to weapons, in particular spears had been overlooked before completely. Now they also have a personal space and their damage type is either piercing or crushing, whichever is better against the enemy's armor, given that they sometimes use a thrashing animation now. This should give spears a bit of a boost as a weapon choice. Enemies' ability to "deflate" sometimes and sneak between others' personal space, which I thought was a good idea, turned out to make them stick on terrain, and was eliminated. On the whole, the play with personal spaces is a little ornery, so it is now an optional component. Without it only finishes and falls will be installed. This picture shows the final weapon reaches. The tasloi, armed with spears, cannot approach each other or Halen in blue with a staff any closer than this. Imoen with a bow could actually move a little closer to the tasloi on the left, but when personal spaces touch, it is melee range with ranged-weapon penalties. Viconia will have to put away the mace (switch to the fist) to go between Imoen and the tasloi below Edwin. You must tell her to do this - if you simply click below without relieving her of the largish weapon, she will walk all the way around the tangle. The unarmed Edwin's own space is very small, as is Xzar's on the right - even smaller than shown, in fact. Two bare-handed characters can almost walk through each other. All weapons now also have a hidden property to unhitch stuck creatures. If a character becomes stuck on terrain for any reason (hopefully not on account of this mod), you can switch to any weapon or fist, and he will be off the hook. Download

Final version 1. Summary 2. Compatibility 3. Table 4. Types of "magical" weapons 5. Protection from Magical Weapons and Normal 6. For clarity: what does what 7. Special ranged attacks 8. In the plans 1. Summary This small but consequential mod implements a mechanic from the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide which anwers the question "how all these weapon-immune monsters fight each other." One has to wonder about that. Would a lich and a vampire only pointlessly catfight with each other? Couldn't a dragon with his huge teeth, claws and tail do something to a golem? On the other hand, a dragon probably should not be able to harm a ghost for all his weaponry; but then, what could harm a ghost? Questions like that have to be decided by the Dungeon Master on a case-by-case basis, or maybe he will design an approach, but that isn't something that can be done in computer adaptations. Here I applied the DMG principle that more Hit Dice (or levels, for non-playable races who can have levels) allow monsters to break through + defenses, but changed the table to suit the abundance of high-level creatures in these games. The mod patches all creatures in any game where it is installed, except the playable races, whether in the party or among NPC. The creatures are given an "innate enchantment bonus" (similar to weapon pluses, but with an important technical difference) in proportion to their power so that they can overcome weapon immunities of wizards and engage each other. This includes summoned minions, who become more useful. 2. Compatibility Only the Enhanced Editions. 3. Table This is the table this mod applies: Hit Dice/levels Overcomes Fewer than 5 Nothing 5-7 +1 8-10 +2 11-13 +3 14-16 +4 More than 17 +5 To get an idea what this can mean in practice, remember, for example, that flesh golems can only be hit with +1 or better weapons and that ogres, whom you can summon, only have 4 Hit Dice, but ogre berserkers, who can be summoned with a more powerful spell, have 5, and so do sword spiders from Spider Spawn. 4. Types of "magical" weapons The "magical weapon" mechanic in the Infinity Engine is not so straightforward, though, as it should be. It should be that weapons with pluses count as magical and ones without as not. Instead there is a muddled double system in place, which non-modders may not be aware of. Here is how it works. Monsters' natural attacks in these games are considered weapons just like swords and clubs, only they aren't dropped on death or shown on the screen. Often weapons monsters use are swords and clubs - a duplicate of what they drop. Ogres, for example, carry one morningstar with which they hit PC and which perishes with them and another, standard one PC pick up from their corpses. Although all "weapons" are lumped in one category, Bioware must have found it convenient to introduce a special item check mark, "Magical." It was probably meant for actual arms and special items - this property makes items indestructible by a script action or two, but the check mark began to be put in all kinds of monster "weapons." Parellel to this exists the numerical enchantment bonus of the weapon. This means that for the purposes of weapon immunity a weapon can be either checkmarked "Magical" or have some enchantment bonus - either one will go through Protection from Non-Magical Weapons. The problem is with Protection from Magical Weapons. Because the "Magical" checkmark is on for natural weapons of some powerful monsters, like all of the golems, you can keep them at bay completely with this spell, which makes no sense. On top of the checkmark, golems' attacks have enchantment bonuses from +3 upwards. My mod removes all enchantment bonuses from weapons that are invisible and undroppable, along with the "Magical" checkmark. All these bonuses are excessive, hard to judge exactly and at any rate the system is wrong-headed and leads nowhere. The ability to penetrate weapon defenses should be tied to the creature's power. It's the only idea that makes a little bit of sense. Instead of bonuses that were built into the weapons, golems (to go with this example) will penetrate as much as can be expected for their Hit Dice. Flesh golems are level 9, now they can punch through defenses of up to +2 instead of +3. Adamantine golems are level 18 and can beat anything - they used to go as far as +4. When and if a creature switches to a better-enchanted weapon than its innate enchantment, the weapon's enchantment will take precedence. 5. Protection from Magical Weapons and Normal This part will be interesting mostly to modders. There was a technical problem with giving creatures these "innate enchantment bonuses." It's easy to see that if a monster is made weapon-like with the same effect that can turn a basic club magical (opcode 345), the whole creature is going to be powerless against someone under Protection from Magical Weapons. Unlike Mantle, PMW doesn't shield from particular enchantment bonus degrees but from all three kinds of "magic": weapons checkmarked "Magical," weapons with a number in the "Enchantment" field and weapons with opcode 345 - or the whole creature under that effect. Patching creatures by their power with 345 would make a wizard under PMW invulnerable to the attacks of every monster with 5 Hit Dice and more. Instead I used the neighbouring opcode, 344, to give a universal bonus, in the right amount, vs. all creatures (ANYONE). It works the same way in practice but bypasses PMW. The result (players, read this) is that PMW now protects not from any monsters but from actual armaments: in those three categories - the checkmark, the field and 345. It will protect from swords and arrows +1, +5 or any other level of enchantment, even +20 if you have those in your game, from Melf's Minute Meteors, from monks' fists when they get pluses and so on, but don't expect it to do anything against golems, elementals or good old Karoug. I think this balances the spell out quite nicely, too. Protection from Non-Magical Weapons is not quite symmetrical: it will protect from real weapons without pluses and from attacks of monsters too weak to qualify for a power bonus, i.e. with 4 or fewer Hit Dice or levels, unless somebody has been selling enchanted spears to the tasloi. (Basically this spell is now a super-weak Mantle; opcode 120, protection from Magical, was converted to protection from Enchanted at enchantment level 0, which corresponds to non-magical weapons. I applied this to all items like golem rings, to creature properties and spells.) And don't forget, player races get no bonuses from levels. It is the quality of the weapon taken up that determines penetration. 6. For clarity: what does what Protection from Normal Weapons: good against weak monsters and 20th level fighters with basic swords. Protection from Magical Weapons: against fighters of any level with enchanted swords and against special ranged monster attacks (see below). Protection from Normal Missiles: defends against specific projectiles, not changed. Mantle: against weapons up to +2 and monsters with up to 10 Hit Dice (it's very nice, but remember, basic conjured elementals have 12 Hit Dice). Natural defense against non-magical: as Protection from Normal. Immunity to all but cold iron or all but silver: not changed. 7. Special ranged attacks Some monsters have special attacks, special weapons, really, which I thought it would be nice to have in a separate category, neither enchanted nor unenchanted. For example, ankheg acid spit or the blobs thrown by slimes. I don't see why these should be stopped by either Mantle or Protection from Normal Weapons. There are energy attacks, acid, fire, icicles, webs... If these are stopped by the weapon defenses, why not dragon breath? And it would be no improvement to defuse monsters completely. Unfortunately, there is no third option, so I made undroppable, invisible weapons with a single Ranged-type ability (rather than Launcher) supremely enchanted, enough to go through everything except Protection from Magical Weapons (which is absolute). This combination should narrow the list down to the natural ranged attacks of monsters who have them. The power-up is an equipped ability - the "enchantment" bonus only lasts while the creature uses the ranged weapon. If the ankheg switches from the spit to the bite, it will again drop down to no bonus. Beware of monsters' spitting et cetera, because not even Improved Mantle will protect against it! 8. In the plans It still remains to update some of the specific monster weapons that PC get to use while polymorphed: the iron golem's fist, maybe others, fix the flind's halberd separately and more. After patching most of these will be plusless by themselves, the enchantment is on the monster who wields them. PC would lose out when using Shape Change and the rest of the spells. There will be a separate mod that will nullify these and revise the polymorph spells. Download

Greetings. I gave gemrb (v0.8.1 and the git version as it is now) another try and i would like to ask some questions. 1) ToBEx has a feature "universal four weapon slots" that shows all four weapon slots in the inventory display and permits equipping all of them regardless of the class. Does gemrb support this feature ? Forgive me if this is already answered but i searched the wiki and forum and although i found the "concordance of features" and other threads, i couldn't find what ToBEx features are supported. 2) When i save a game in gemrb, i cannot open it either from bgmain.exe (with wine + linux if it matters) or from shadowkeeper (invalid cre signature). I haven't changed the SaveAsOriginal variable so shouldn't the saves be compatible with the original game ? 3) Using the stealth button on a thief results in immediate hiding in shadows in the original game while in gemrb it takes a round before the thief hides. Is this normal ? Thank you for your time.