What's Coming Up?

[Zyraen]

Some Stuff that I have planned up for this would be...

Conductor Kit
Bard with a Direct Damage song and Appropriate HLAs. I've done some testing here and there, you can look at the pic (if my bandwidth holds out) here.

Level 15 plus (doing 10 Fire and Lightning per hit) 
http://www.geocities.com/arkevaul/conduc2.jpg - Crowd Control
http://www.geocities.com/zyraen/conduc2.jpg - Crowd Control

with HLAs (doing 15 Fire and Lightning per hit)
http://www.geocities.com/arkevaul/conduc4.jpg - First Strike
http://www.geocities.com/zyraen/conduc4.jpg - First Strike

Reaver Kit
This is a Fighter Mage Thief that advances at the rate of a single-class Thief, although he doesn't have as many proficiency points as a standard Fighter. This is an Uber-Kit that isn't balanced Just created for the fun of it, it should be relaxing to play as well.

Class Morphing Script
A little script that allows you to morph any character to any class/kit. I also intend to do a little side-script so that a morphed Thief (who starts with 0 in all thief skills) will be able to gain up have, autodistributed, 100 or so in an area, according to his level, with the player being able to select the top 3 "areas" of thieving skill to be given priority. Handy since the game is so limited in some classes...

There's a few more I have lurking around elsewhere, some almost forgotten ones called...

- SpellNerf, for challenge, that causes the Casting of Certain spell to reduce the MaxHitPoints of the person who cast it by 20% or so, per casting, cumulative, and kills instantly (after the spell appears) if the caster casts the spell at 20 Life or less. This loss of Max Life is temporary until the Character rests. It is meant to make spells like Time Stop, Improved Alacrity, etc, less abusive, and naturally will NOT be applied to enemies If anyone is interested in me finishing up this bit, feel free to post here or anywhere, is cool.

Maybe one for removing / nerfing HLAs, not sure about that yet, no work done there yet either.

Suggestions for others are also welcome Now if only school would let up the pressure a bit... lol

[jester]

@ Reaver Kit---> triple class levels like a thief

Just don't come near the guy who complained that HLAs are spoiling everything, 'cause powagamerz suck so much.

[Borsook]

- SpellNerf, for challenge, that causes the Casting of Certain spell to reduce the MaxHitPoints of the person who cast it by 20% or so, per casting, cumulative, and kills instantly (after the spell appears) if the caster casts the spell at 20 Life or less. This loss of Max Life is temporary until the Character rests. It is meant to make spells like Time Stop, Improved Alacrity, etc, less abusive, and naturally will NOT be applied to enemies If anyone is interested in me finishing up this bit, feel free to post here or anywhere, is cool.

That sounds very promising, maybe it could be taken further? Like adding HP cost for all the spells, in case of not-so-powerful-spells it could be 1hp/spell level of normal curable wounds. If you're thinking of challange adding components then 2 ideas:
- Increased costs of resurrection/raise dead.
- Reducing number of places where you can rest safely, reducing the chance for uninterrupted rest in others.

BTW maybe it'd be less confusing should you devide all your stuff into 2 mods:
1. Increasing difficulty
2. Overpowering things.
Just a thought

[jester]

I think the HP loss for spell casting would be better, if a mana system was implemented that charges you for your spells on that level. I refuse to let my already HP hurting mages be killed by one of their own spells. That is just outright silly. Fatigued yes, component casting neat idea, but loosing HP, because you used your arcane powers to summon a weasel

[Zyraen]

Heh sorry, the SpellNerf is meant to apply only for Certain Spells like IA, TS and others. The idea is that supremely powerful spells require a sacrifice of some sort to be able to "bring forth", that's the basic idea behind it. I'd really like a Mana system, but unfortunately... well you get the idea. So that being said, think I should try to pick up SpellNerf again? Or try to think of another way of doing it?

The Reaver actually started with an intention to see how an FTM would function in a party IF it weren't so crippled by its uberly slow rate of advancement, and then.. well let's just say it turned into something else Currently its still in the works because I'm trying to give it some Turn Undead Abilities, lol. Since it's uber let's just go overboard, it's up to the player what he/she wishes to use or otherwise. Oh yeah, the Reaver is also meant to be a self contained party, so that you don't have to worry about balancing your Party Composition anymore - with a Reaver, you should be able to support odd parties like Reaver (PC), Nalia, Imoen, Aerie, Tashia, Kelsey.

And you're right Most of the Mods can be divided into making the game harder and others into making the game easier, lol. I call it as "some for the Roleplayer, some for the Gamer", lol. Excuses excuses, I know, but we all need a break here and there, ne?

[fallen demon]

It will still get confusing when installing if some components make the game harder while others are incredibly overpowerd.  I like Borsook's idea to divide the mod  into two, one for components that are either balanced or make the game harder, and one for stuff like the reaver kit

[Bester]

Suggestions for others are also welcome Now if only school would let up the pressure a bit... lol

Similar to something in another thread.  Sometimes five slots just doesn't seem like enough room banter wise.  Particularly for those who don't have time to replay that often.  (Or those who play LAN games with people who can't stand the thought of kicking certain characters out (Minsc/Imoen) leaving very little room to play around) 

Is there any way to add an option that makes standard bioware characters be seen as familiars to expand the party by at least one slot .  Alternately is there any way to make items that allow them to "talk" remotely.  (IE, conversable items like a certain sword that instead fires off the desired NPC dialog))

[Zyraen]

I've been thinking about that myself for a while now. Combined with Solo with a Party, it *might* just possible to simply have a gang all in Green not regularly dying on you. If that were the case, XP wouldn't really be a problem, though outfitting them might be. With the use of some scripts swapping in and out of slots shouldn't be difficult though.

The main issue is probably to look up how InParty() check processes things, some experiments should do the trick, though if InParty checks fail, probably a patch will need to be applied to change all the InParty checks to other checks.

The other main issue is how to get ALL the NPCs to follow you to a new area... again scripts using MakeGlobal and certain AIs should make it possible.

[Borsook]

You might do the NPCs work like a pernament summon, with things like equipment done via "talking". Though I don't think they'd be included by InParty then.

PS. As for spell HP cost - is it possible to do something like non-leathal damage? Technically that's what trolls have...

[Zyraen]

Hmm not really. Though it would be fairly easy to nerf all the HLAs MAGICFIRE damage to simply FIRE damage and stuff like that. I suppose you want something that does damage but doesn't actually kill the enemy? Or do you mean making the damage of SpellNerf do non-lethal damage to the mage? If so, I'm not really interested in effects that just do damage as a result of using spells like Time-Stop - too easy to work around. Just Heal / Regen / Drink Potion and what not...

I also looked up briefly the Balthazar bit in Ascension, it seems they just checked for him being alive to show that he is about. That means InParty probably wouldn't work. InMyArea checks should work fine, though you may experience occasional oddities of NPCs interjecting across impossible distances.

The summoning idea isn't with that much merit, since most conversations are triggered by Banters which run in the background, hence have to be addressed That being said though, the summoning should be achievable by using a single script to summon other NPCs along to Follow the PC. I doubt they'll actually be IN the party, but it should be doable.

[Borsook]

I meant non-leathal in e.g. ToEE interpretation, if you get enough such damage you become unconcious (again like trolls in bg2 just without the regeneration) and can do nothing (so potions are out). Of course such a person can be revived by magical means, but it'd take at least 3 turns, not to mention using up a spell.

[Zyraen]

So let's see what's on the To-Do List

Reaver
Conductor
Class Morphing / Thief AutoIncrement
SpellNerf - with knock-out SPL, probably, instead of the "die" after casting a spell SPL.
Transportation Mod - no more FedEx within a certain given area for SoA
NPC-Tag-Along - probably limited to Bioware NPCs since they're the ones that can be easily patched for

[Silk]

NPC-Tag-Along? More NPC's in the group?  That can never hurt and I, for one, would be all for it if you can do it.

[Nastian]

When mod will be available with TRA files?

[Zyraen]

As soon as someone is willing to translate and Traify it, I guess

[jester]

Tag along??? does that mean you can finally break the 5 NPC limit? Not that I would want more than two companions anyway, but it sounds interesting.

[AnnabelleRose]

The "spell nerf" is an interesting idea. As a kit (yes I know about the who mage kit thing, but it HAS been worked around, see the mod The Art of Weaving if you disbelieve me) it would appeal to me even more. It sounds alot like the "Channeler" kit from AD&D 2nd Ed (or the re-worked Wu-Jen I found in a copy of dragon magazine). They use HP to cast spells. Perhaps this could be expanded into a kit? During the install you could have the option of having this kit overwrite one of the specialty mages?

[Zyraen]

Did some coding and SPL playing around and stuff, had some interesting results.

Apparently SpellNerf seems to react rather unpredictably, and so far the results are confusing, to say the least. I might need to I export my character, check his Hitpoints, and maybe, just maybe, I will see the reason for it.

Meantime, Reaver's obscene "Repulse Undead" ability has been set up, just needs testing.
Class Morphing Script's Thief Ability Assignment Script has been done. Fairly Random, needs testing.

[Zyraen]

Thanks to the following topic at CoM
http://chosenofmystra.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1695

I think I'm finished to making an "automatic sale" script for BG2 yay (well maybe I'm the only one who can't stand clicking on all the items etc on my character to sell my stuff)

The installation takes a while though, since it basically parses through ALL the non-cursed, droppable, and sellable items ITMs in BG2, so that the script can cover all the items that are in the game

Basically what the script does is that when you place the script on a party member and press S, it will destroy all the items on the character one by one and award gold equivalent to the price value on the itm as it does so

How does that sound like?

[Kulyok]

How does that sound like?

How, how... AT LAST!!!

Cool.

[lowercasea]

Hi, I'm new to ppg and I have already got about 3 mods, but I want this one mostly for the underdark "skip".
Any chance of a mac version?

[Zyraen]

Don't have a Mac so can't do that. You might want to ask around though, I know at least one friend who plays my mods on a Mac and he gets it working fine. He does stuff to the mod first though, so it can install.

[Miloch]

From what I reckon, all you really need to do is switch the Win version of setup-yourmod.exe with the OSX version (though if you've got .tis or .ogg files, you need to convert the .bat files to .sh and such too).

[Sergio1992]

Was the conductor kit released or...?