Auto-leveling characters?

[fluent]

Hello!

 

Not sure if I accidentally messed up a setting in EET Tweaks or what, but I noticed that the last 3 characters I added to my party - Finch (mod), Valerie and Rasaad, did not auto-level to the character's level like the characters before them did. Xan, automatically leveled up to level 3 or 4 when I recruited him, these characters did not.

 

Is that a bug, a feature, or something I'm missing?

 

Question 2 - Is it okay to add a hard cap of 89,000 for BG1 + SoD, and then the unlimited cap for BG2, while also halving XP gain from monsters and quests by 50%? I'm a little finicky when it comes to not wanting to be overleveled for any content at the start of BG2:EE.

 

Thanks!

[Roxanne]

Hello!

 

Not sure if I accidentally messed up a setting in EET Tweaks or what, but I noticed that the last 3 characters I added to my party - Finch (mod), Valerie and Rasaad, did not auto-level to the character's level like the characters before them did. Xan, automatically leveled up to level 3 or 4 when I recruited him, these characters did not.

 

Is that a bug, a feature, or something I'm missing?

 

Question 2 - Is it okay to add a hard cap of 89,000 for BG1 + SoD, and then the unlimited cap for BG2, while also halving XP gain from monsters and quests by 50%? I'm a little finicky when it comes to not wanting to be overleveled for any content at the start of BG2:EE.

 

Thanks!

Valerie and Finch are mod added NPCs, i.e. they behave as the respective modder has designed them to work. Many mods (my own included9 set the level of their NPCs to what is justified by their background story and not by what level your protagonist has gained. About Rasaad I am not sure how the new EE NPCs behave, it may be they re not captured by the level up function.

 

Question 2 - this is totally up to you. Just from my (highly modded game), my protagonist single class fighter is at level 9 by BG1 end/SoD transition. I expect her to gain another level or maybe 2 during SoD. For me this feels fine for SoA entry with SCS + core level difficulty. But choices are different. For info: I use no level cap at all but a 50% reduction in all EET-Tweak settings.

[fluent]

 

Hello!

 

Not sure if I accidentally messed up a setting in EET Tweaks or what, but I noticed that the last 3 characters I added to my party - Finch (mod), Valerie and Rasaad, did not auto-level to the character's level like the characters before them did. Xan, automatically leveled up to level 3 or 4 when I recruited him, these characters did not.

 

Is that a bug, a feature, or something I'm missing?

 

Question 2 - Is it okay to add a hard cap of 89,000 for BG1 + SoD, and then the unlimited cap for BG2, while also halving XP gain from monsters and quests by 50%? I'm a little finicky when it comes to not wanting to be overleveled for any content at the start of BG2:EE.

 

Thanks!

Valerie and Finch are mod added NPCs, i.e. they behave as the respective modder has designed them to work. Many mods (my own included9 set the level of their NPCs to what is justified by their background story and not by what level your protagonist has gained. About Rasaad I am not sure how the new EE NPCs behave, it may be they re not captured by the level up function.

 

Question 2 - this is totally up to you. Just from my (highly modded game), my protagonist single class fighter is at level 9 by BG1 end/SoD transition. I expect her to gain another level or maybe 2 during SoD. For me this feels fine for SoA entry with SCS + core level difficulty. But choices are different. For info: I use no level cap at all but a 50% reduction in all EET-Tweak settings.

 

 

Thanks Roxanne, that all makes sense and is useful information.

 

I was curious, is there any mod out there that adds the BG2 "party members can fight each other" aspect to BG1? It would be a cool addition to my current game if it exists, but it might also not be able to be added now, either. By the way, I did add the rest of the modded NPCs, including yours (I think Chloe was yours?) The hardest part of the game is picking the right companions to travel with. So many choices!

[Roxanne]

 

 

Hello!

 

Not sure if I accidentally messed up a setting in EET Tweaks or what, but I noticed that the last 3 characters I added to my party - Finch (mod), Valerie and Rasaad, did not auto-level to the character's level like the characters before them did. Xan, automatically leveled up to level 3 or 4 when I recruited him, these characters did not.

 

Is that a bug, a feature, or something I'm missing?

 

Question 2 - Is it okay to add a hard cap of 89,000 for BG1 + SoD, and then the unlimited cap for BG2, while also halving XP gain from monsters and quests by 50%? I'm a little finicky when it comes to not wanting to be overleveled for any content at the start of BG2:EE.

 

Thanks!

Valerie and Finch are mod added NPCs, i.e. they behave as the respective modder has designed them to work. Many mods (my own included9 set the level of their NPCs to what is justified by their background story and not by what level your protagonist has gained. About Rasaad I am not sure how the new EE NPCs behave, it may be they re not captured by the level up function.

 

Question 2 - this is totally up to you. Just from my (highly modded game), my protagonist single class fighter is at level 9 by BG1 end/SoD transition. I expect her to gain another level or maybe 2 during SoD. For me this feels fine for SoA entry with SCS + core level difficulty. But choices are different. For info: I use no level cap at all but a 50% reduction in all EET-Tweak settings.

 

 

Thanks Roxanne, that all makes sense and is useful information.

 

I was curious, is there any mod out there that adds the BG2 "party members can fight each other" aspect to BG1? It would be a cool addition to my current game if it exists, but it might also not be able to be added now, either. By the way, I did add the rest of the modded NPCs, including yours (I think Chloe was yours?) The hardest part of the game is picking the right companions to travel with. So many choices!

 

"party members can fight each other" ? Not sure what you mean. There are mods that contain something like Romance Conflicts that may end in fight. There is also a mod component that does the opposite "party members never fight each other". Otherwise I jave no idea.

 

Chloe is an *adopted mod*, I only made it compatible with EE, made her BG2 quest more open, improved her weapon handling and kit to new standard - and I wrote and added the ToB content. The original concept and large parts of BG2 contents are done by the original author. She has also reviewed my additional stuff and helped me improve it.

[fluent]

 

 

 

Hello!

 

Not sure if I accidentally messed up a setting in EET Tweaks or what, but I noticed that the last 3 characters I added to my party - Finch (mod), Valerie and Rasaad, did not auto-level to the character's level like the characters before them did. Xan, automatically leveled up to level 3 or 4 when I recruited him, these characters did not.

 

Is that a bug, a feature, or something I'm missing?

 

Question 2 - Is it okay to add a hard cap of 89,000 for BG1 + SoD, and then the unlimited cap for BG2, while also halving XP gain from monsters and quests by 50%? I'm a little finicky when it comes to not wanting to be overleveled for any content at the start of BG2:EE.

 

Thanks!

Valerie and Finch are mod added NPCs, i.e. they behave as the respective modder has designed them to work. Many mods (my own included9 set the level of their NPCs to what is justified by their background story and not by what level your protagonist has gained. About Rasaad I am not sure how the new EE NPCs behave, it may be they re not captured by the level up function.

 

Question 2 - this is totally up to you. Just from my (highly modded game), my protagonist single class fighter is at level 9 by BG1 end/SoD transition. I expect her to gain another level or maybe 2 during SoD. For me this feels fine for SoA entry with SCS + core level difficulty. But choices are different. For info: I use no level cap at all but a 50% reduction in all EET-Tweak settings.

 

 

Thanks Roxanne, that all makes sense and is useful information.

 

I was curious, is there any mod out there that adds the BG2 "party members can fight each other" aspect to BG1? It would be a cool addition to my current game if it exists, but it might also not be able to be added now, either. By the way, I did add the rest of the modded NPCs, including yours (I think Chloe was yours?) The hardest part of the game is picking the right companions to travel with. So many choices!

 

"party members can fight each other" ? Not sure what you mean. There are mods that contain something like Romance Conflicts that may end in fight. There is also a mod component that does the opposite "party members never fight each other". Otherwise I jave no idea.

 

Chloe is an *adopted mod*, I only made it compatible with EE, made her BG2 quest more open, improved her weapon handling and kit to new standard - and I wrote and added the ToB content. The original concept and large parts of BG2 contents are done by the original author. She has also reviewed my additional stuff and helped me improve it.

 

 

Huh. Maybe I'm mis-remembering, but I thought in BG2 that evil vs. good companion fights could happen in the group. Did I just dream that?!

[Roxanne]

 

 

Huh. Maybe I'm mis-remembering, but I thought in BG2 that evil vs. good companion fights could happen in the group. Did I just dream that?!

 

 

Unless it is my error, this is only for some specific individual NPCs that can have problems with each other. In this case those are scripted events for them but I never saw a general good companions fight evil ones.

I normally play with a very mixed group, e.g. the evil githyanki thief side by side with the paladin of Helm. They exchange *pleasantries* but do not kill each other.

[fluent]

 

 

Huh. Maybe I'm mis-remembering, but I thought in BG2 that evil vs. good companion fights could happen in the group. Did I just dream that?!

 

 

Unless it is my error, this is only for some specific individual NPCs that can have problems with each other. In this case those are scripted events for them but I never saw a general good companions fight evil ones.

I normally play with a very mixed group, e.g. the evil githyanki thief side by side with the paladin of Helm. They exchange *pleasantries* but do not kill each other.

 

 

Hmm, it must have been scripted then. I only played 50 hours of BG2 ever (started a playthrough a few years back but never finished), and I remember a fight or two breaking out. Can't recall if it was romantically charged, but they fought to the death after an argument. At the time I thought that was a feature of BG2.

 

I play a mixed group too and was hoping it *was* a real thing, haha. I like dropping characters in/out a lot in a roleplaying type way, and I thought it would be cool if a real fight could break out and force my hand. Or characters could leave based on your own alignment choices, like in Tactics Ogre (another great RPG) where certain characters would leave based on your choices or alignment shifts, yet it would open up others to join.

 

Thanks again Roxanne. By the way, I noticed your avatar picture as a portrait option in the Ice Blink engine game, Hearkenworld, on Android. Is that a famous character from BG or something?

Edited January 4, 2018 by fluent

[Roxanne]

Thanks again Roxanne. By the way, I noticed your avatar picture as a portrait option in the Ice Blink engine game, Hearkenworld, on Android. Is that a famous character from BG or something?

 

I never heard of that game nor ever played it? I have this portrait since about 15 years already and always used it for my female protagonists in BGT. When I started to develop my Sandrah mod, it became her default portrait. When I released the mod, I kept the portrait for her since somehow I got used to it. I gave her an alternative portrait as well, but this one is how I see her. As such she is now rather an (in)famous character in BG resp. EET per my mod.

[subtledoctor]

Is there a way for mod NPCs to hook into the auto-leveling system and behave as vanilla NPCs do? I find the difference a bit jarring, it would be nice to mod something to bring them all in line...

[Jarno Mikkola]

Is there a way for mod NPCs to hook into the auto-leveling system and behave as vanilla NPCs do?

The term auto-leveling is misleading. What the game actually does is to check the Player characters level and the npclevel.2da and summons the .cre from that row that the player char is on, when the NPC's JoinParty() action happens..., so say PC is a level 9 fighter, it summons imoen10.cre in vanilla BG2EE. It could be a 30th level char with 8000000xp if so wanted, via .cre edit. Hook up that s...

What typically sought is -the character starts from level 1, and gains enought XP to be around the charnames level- and mods like Level1NPC for example do this via scripting that give them the XP. The reason for this is that the player gets to deside where the proficiencies go instead of where the mod idiotmaker made them to be Long Swords for everyone, as that is the most common 1 handed weapon.

 

... then again, you would know this if you actually had made a single NPC mod.

Edited January 4, 2018 by Jarno Mikkola

[subtledoctor]

You're wrong. The vanilla NPCs, in the current EE games, always use the lowest-level version of the .CRE, and then gain enough XP to come close to the PC's level. I don't particularly care about the first half of that, I'm interested in replicating the second part.

 

If I was making a mod NPC I would want to know how to do that. So, great job discouraging people from getting the skills to make more mods, jackass

Edited January 4, 2018 by subtledoctor

[argent77]

There is no global auto-leveling system involved. It's just a bunch of script blocks that each joinable NPC can execute the first time they join the party.

 

Example from KELDORN.BCS (or found in every other NPC script):

 

 

IF
  Global("BD_JOINXP","LOCALS",0)
  InParty(Myself)
  XPGT(Player1,1249999)
  XPLT(Myself,1250000)
THEN
  RESPONSE #100
    SetInterrupt(FALSE)
    SetGlobal("BD_JOINXP","LOCALS",1)
    ChangeStat(Myself,XP,1250000,SET)
    SetInterrupt(TRUE)
END

IF
  Global("BD_JOINXP","LOCALS",0)
  InParty(Myself)
  XPGT(Player1,999999)
  XPLT(Myself,1000000)
THEN
  RESPONSE #100
    SetInterrupt(FALSE)
    SetGlobal("BD_JOINXP","LOCALS",1)
    ChangeStat(Myself,XP,1000000,SET)
    SetInterrupt(TRUE)
END

IF
  Global("BD_JOINXP","LOCALS",0)
  InParty(Myself)
  XPGT(Player1,749999)
  XPLT(Myself,750000)
THEN
  RESPONSE #100
    SetInterrupt(FALSE)
    SetGlobal("BD_JOINXP","LOCALS",1)
    ChangeStat(Myself,XP,750000,SET)
    SetInterrupt(TRUE)
END

IF
  Global("BD_JOINXP","LOCALS",0)
  InParty(Myself)
  XPGT(Player1,499999)
  XPLT(Myself,500000)
THEN
  RESPONSE #100
    SetInterrupt(FALSE)
    SetGlobal("BD_JOINXP","LOCALS",1)
    ChangeStat(Myself,XP,500000,SET)
    SetInterrupt(TRUE)
END

IF
  Global("BD_JOINXP","LOCALS",0)
  InParty(Myself)
  XPGT(Player1,249999)
  XPLT(Myself,250000)
THEN
  RESPONSE #100
    SetInterrupt(FALSE)
    SetGlobal("BD_JOINXP","LOCALS",1)
    ChangeStat(Myself,XP,250000,SET)
    SetInterrupt(TRUE)
END

IF
  Global("BD_JOINXP","LOCALS",0)
  InParty(Myself)
  XPGT(Player1,124999)
  XPLT(Myself,125000)
THEN
  RESPONSE #100
    SetInterrupt(FALSE)
    SetGlobal("BD_JOINXP","LOCALS",1)
    ChangeStat(Myself,XP,125000,SET)
    SetInterrupt(TRUE)
END

IF
  Global("BD_JOINXP","LOCALS",0)
  InParty(Myself)
  XPLT(Player1,89001)
THEN
  RESPONSE #100
    SetInterrupt(FALSE)
    SetGlobal("BD_JOINXP","LOCALS",1)
    SetInterrupt(TRUE)
END

 

Edited January 4, 2018 by argent77

[Jarno Mikkola]

You're wrong. The vanilla NPCs

Seems that this has changed at some EE game update... as the VANILLA BG1 is still what I said, as is BG2. It's probable that this was changed to make it easier for who... I don't know.

PS, in SoDs, the npclevel.2da only features one .cre per NPC in the said table... but not so in the vanilla BG2, like you can see from here.

 

Also, EET probably needs to accumulate between the two and provide a level 1 npc .cre and a level 7 npc .cre to at least to Imoen.

 

What comes to my comment... there's fairly multiple NPC making tutorials that feature the said table, so go assjack yourself, thanks.

 

@argent77, you knew that a little too well.

[Roxanne]

Is there a way for mod NPCs to hook into the auto-leveling system and behave as vanilla NPCs do? I find the difference a bit jarring, it would be nice to mod something to bring them all in line...

If a modder wants his NPC to behave like this, there is sufficient code to do that. Either you evaluate the PC xp or level and create a version of the NPC to match. - or you add the respective amount of xp to the NPC so that the player can control the level up process.

There are enough NPC mods that do it one way or other - but there are also mods that do not use this on purpose. *Bring them all in line* is one way to mod an NPC but not everyone's intention.

 

I have a specifically created a number of NPCs who can be recruited in late parts of the game when the PC and maybe some old companions are high level while the young newcomers are kind of apprentices. Instead of making the game harder and harder, here the way to add difficulty is that the stronger part of the party takes care of the weaker ones and let them gain their merits. From a plot/story point of view it would break the mod if the young sorcerer just boosts to level 25 because the protagonist fighter/thief is? Why? How did he suddenly learn all these spells and abilities? Is there any justification for this?

 

All I say is, let the NPC modders decide how they want their NPCs to appear - leave them out of your party if you do not like it.

[fluent]

 

Is there a way for mod NPCs to hook into the auto-leveling system and behave as vanilla NPCs do? I find the difference a bit jarring, it would be nice to mod something to bring them all in line...

If a modder wants his NPC to behave like this, there is sufficient code to do that. Either you evaluate the PC xp or level and create a version of the NPC to match. - or you add the respective amount of xp to the NPC so that the player can control the level up process.

There are enough NPC mods that do it one way or other - but there are also mods that do not use this on purpose. *Bring them all in line* is one way to mod an NPC but not everyone's intention.

 

I have a specifically created a number of NPCs who can be recruited in late parts of the game when the PC and maybe some old companions are high level while the young newcomers are kind of apprentices. Instead of making the game harder and harder, here the way to add difficulty is that the stronger part of the party takes care of the weaker ones and let them gain their merits. From a plot/story point of view it would break the mod if the young sorcerer just boosts to level 25 because the protagonist fighter/thief is? Why? How did he suddenly learn all these spells and abilities? Is there any justification for this?

 

All I say is, let the NPC modders decide how they want their NPCs to appear - leave them out of your party if you do not like it.

 

 

I agree! I actually like how characters can have differences in level. It makes it feel more "non-formulaic" and interesting.

 

I actually wish there was the occasional higher level character you could find. Maybe Baeloth is (I think he was a level or 2 higher than my party when found.) I always liked in RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics how you could stumble upon a significantly more powerful character or two throughout the game, yet the game didn't get easy because the game was still balanced around having said powerful character. It was just that the character stood out a bit as being strong.

 

Good stuff.