Unearthed Arcana presents Scales of Balance: a post-hac tweak pack

[subtledoctor]

Re: Imoen, that's correct. In BG1 it makes her a mage/thief multiclass, with the Spellfilcher kit; in BG2 she stays a thief->mage dual class, with the Spellfilcher kit applied to her thief levels. (Anyway this component is going to disappear from the mod soon... more on that later.)

 

With the wizard tweaks, Armor becomes an Abjuration spell. (I never understood it as a conjuration... unless it actually conjured a real suit of armor - which of course a wizard can't wear ). Maybe the description patch didn't work right. (Anyway this component is going to disappear from the mod soon... more on that later.)

 

Re: Wizard Slayer, yeah that's odd, I'll take a look at it. Thanks for the report! This component will NOT disappear from the mod anytime soon, so I really need to fix it!

Edited August 24, 2015 by subtledoctor

[critto]

OK, cheers. A huge update coming soon? Is it better to wait? I play slow, so if the new one is going to be improved, I'd rather hold on. Considering that I want to take the same protagonist into BG2EE later on.

[subtledoctor]

I'm not even sure you can take a character with a mod kit from BGEE to BG2EE without re-rolling... I'm working on a solution to that problem.

 

As for Scales of Balance, yes some big changes.

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/669911/#Comment_669911

 

The Wizard Tweaks are going to become part of Tome & Blood (which will become compatible with the pre-EE engine). The component may or may not be removed from SoB.

 

The NPC changes are being spun off into their own mod:

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/665298/#Comment_665298

 

The cleric/paladin/druid tweaks and all the cleric and druid kits are being spun off into their own mod, complete with about 30 kits, a sphere system, and changes to weapon usability. It will be a spiritual successor to Divine Remix.

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/43174/prayer-and-power-gods-of-the-realms-kitpack-and-divine-caster-spell-tweaks

 

Scales of Balance will then be focused on a core tweak pack and a kit pack for warriors and rogues. It should look like this:

 

............TWEAKS:

- stat tweaks

- hit point tweaks

- spell table tweaks

- STO - Saving Throw Overhaul

- IWO - Item & Weapon Overhaul

- WPO - Weapon Proficiency Overhaul

- MRO - Magic Resistance Overhaul

- revised berserk/barb Rage

- revised movement bonuses (Quickstride)

- revised monk fists

- revised Wizard Slayer

- revised Kensai

- revised Stalker

- revised Blade (fair warning, it's a nerf... but at least it's no longer "kill the Blade!")

 

...............KITS:

- Marksman

- Elven Archer & Halfling Slinger

- Corsair

- Mage Hunter

- Barbarian Ranger

- Scout (& revised Swashbuckler)

- Sniper

- Jongleur

- Loremaster

- Gallant

- Meistersinger

- multiclass kits

Edited August 24, 2015 by subtledoctor

[Jarno Mikkola]

... Armor .... never understood it as a conjuration... unless it actually conjured a real suit of armor - which of course a wizard can't wear

It's not exaclty a real suit of armor or it would likely have AC modifies for different types of weapons. It's a semi-protective conjuration that floats in the air before the summoner, like a shield that's held up by nothing just above the skin. It's not entirely corporeal.

See power ranger armor. -Don't nag, I didn't wake up this morning knowing I would say that and get nagged about it.

[subtledoctor]

It's a semi-protective ______ that floats in the air before the summoner, like a shield that's held up by nothing just above the skin. It's not entirely corporeal.

Right... I don't understand how that floating field of magical force ever got into the "conjuration/summoning" school, which is for spells that conjure things and summon things. What you described sounds more like an Abjuration or invocation spell, or even maybe an illusion (I'm leaning toward making the Bigby's Hand spells into illusions.)

 

But whatever, this stuff is totally arbitrary.

[critto]

 

 

I'm not even sure you can take a character with a mod kit from BGEE to BG2EE without re-rolling... I'm working on a solution to that problem.

How come? Isn't it a simple export & import issue?

 

Any ETA on all that stuff?

[subtledoctor]

Well, BG2 EE has 3 more kits in kitlist.2ds and kit.ids than BGEE. So, best case scenario, you start with a jongleur and import as a sniper, and you can use Shadowkeeper to fix it.

 

In that case, a simple mod adding 3 blank kits to BGEE would fix things... but you would need to install it before ANY mod kits go into BGEE... so it wouldn't work for any games in progress.

 

Siege of Dragonspear might cause issues though, depending on what happens with the 1.4 patch.

 

Worst case scenario, BG2EE just doesn't allow any importing of any non-vanilla kits. I don't know how or why that could happen, but I'm not ruling it out until I do some testing.

 

Mind, I haven't tried this myself. I've just heard here and there that people have problems importing mod-kitted characters.

 

Time-frame: the NPC mod should be released for BG1 in a matter of days. A bug-fixed SoB update in a week or three. The new Tome and Blood with the SoB wizard tweaks, in a few weeks. Power & Prayer in a month or two.

Edited August 25, 2015 by subtledoctor

[critto]

My protagonist is an invoker mage. No special SoB kits. And I don't plan to take that character into Siege of Dragonspear. Only into BG2EE.

 

 

 

Time-frame: the NPC mod should be released for BG1 in a matter of days. A bug-fixed SoB update in a week or three. The new Tome and Blood with the SoB wizard tweaks, in a few weeks.

The SoB update will already be lightweight, without the wizard tweaks and npc changes?

 

By the way, the mod is compatible with BGT? Can you pick a class in the beginning and go all the way through to the endgame?

Edited August 25, 2015 by critto

[critto]

A couple more oddities:

 

Joined Neera, she's a wild mage. I got to select two cantrips for her. Is it normal?

When my invoker got second level, agganazar's scorcher and glitterdust appeared in spell book. The second spell is Illusion, not Evocation.

[subtledoctor]

I believe Glitterdust was moved to the school of Invocation. Maybe it moved back to Illusion and I forgot to remove it from the invoker's CLAB...? In any event the spell school/free spells stuff is pretty minor, and will be ironed out when that component goes into Aquadrizzt's Tome & Blood mod.

 

SoB is compatible with BGT already (I code stuff to be EE-compatible but I play BGT myself). Tone & Blood is currently EE-only, but the next update with my wizard tweaks in it should be compatible with BGT/TobEx.

 

In other news, I've released the first version of my NPC re-kitting mod, meant for players who can't install Level 1 NPCs. It is named, appropriately, NPC_EE.

http://gibberlings3.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=27526

 

Now I'll work on fixing the bugs in Scales of Balance. This next bug-fix release, v3.3, should be the last update for SoB, ever. Once Power & Prayer comes out and Tome & Blood is updated, I'll restructure what's left of SoB, which will be mostly about the warrior and rogue classes, and release it as a new mod, tentatively called "Might & Guile."

 

Hopefully by this winter, the triumvirate of Tome & Blood (for wizards and sorcerers), Power & Prayer (for priests and paladins) and Might & Guile (for fighters and rogues), should have all classes covered by interesting tweaks and new kits (a total of about 80 kits among the 3 mods).

 

You can think of them as similar in role to the old Sword & Fist, Divine Remix, and Song & Silence mods. (That sounds like a very a immodest claim, but it is an aspirational one. And, those older three mods should be kargely compatible with these newer ones.)

Edited August 27, 2015 by subtledoctor

[critto]

 

 

SoB is compatible with BGT already (I code stuff to be EE-compatible but I play BGT myself). Tone & Blood is currently EE-only, but the next update with my wizard tweaks in it should be compatible with BGT/TobEx.

So the continuity issue is resolved by default in BGT?

 

What will happen to my game if I wait for you to fix all bugs from SoB, uninstall the current version, and install the new one along with the NPC kit mod?

[Jarno Mikkola]

So the continuity issue is resolved by default in BGT?

Well, the Enhanced Edition's Trilogy(or actually quadtrilogy) is the EET mod, soon will shall have BGQTE's ... , not BGT-weidu... if we look it from the BGSoB parpective. Of course the EE patches could just set the kits to be those of SoB after the patch is applied at least in the tables, so there wouldn't be any need to deal with the kit continuity.

[subtledoctor]

So the continuity issue is resolved by default in BGT?

Wait - there is no continuity issue in BGT. Let's clarify terms a bit:

 

BGT brings BG1 content into the old vanilla TOB game. It is one single game encompassing Charname's whole career; there is only one game folder and one kitlist.2da, etc. So sny modding you do in BGT works uniformly across the whole BG1 + SoA + TOB experience. Scales of Bslance works great in the environment (notwithstanding about 8 small-to-medium bugs that I'm aware of).

 

The EEs, for now, are two separate games with different engines, different game folders and different resources included (spells/items/animations/etc.) SoB works great on each one (except for those bugs), but I've heard that exporting a character with a mod kit from BGEE to BG2EE doesn't quite work. This makes sense because the same kit is going to have a different IDS entry in each game, and your Weidu mod list is probably going to differ, and the strings in dialog.tlk will definitely differ.

 

In this case, if you export a character who is, say, a Mage Hunter from BGEE, I *think* the solution is to import him into BG2EE, save your game after the intro sequence, and use EEKeeper to edit the broken imported character back to being a Mage Hunter. Then play normally, and everything else *should* work fine.

 

If the differing kit.ids entries is the only issue in exporting/importing, then like I say, I'll make s mod that will make kit.ids match up equally in each game so that importing works better. However this is untested, plus there is stuff like NPC mods that only work on one game or the other, which may install invisible kits. I can't account for those, so my proposed solution might be a bad one.

 

Once EET comes along (that's the EE version of BGT) this will all be solved, the way it currently is on BGT.

 

What will happen to my game if I wait for you to fix all bugs from SoB, uninstall the current version, and install the new one along with the NPC kit mod?

That's very hard to say! It depends on a lot of things, including what other mods you have installed. If you installed SCS after SoB, I would not uninstall/reinstall anything. I'll issue a list of bug-fixes with the next SoB release, and I'll wager most of them could be more easily fixed with NI of ShadowKeeper or a hotfix, than a reinstall. In general, when you're mid-game, I advise against changing your mod setup at all.

 

On the other hand: please note that you can install the new NPC_EE mod over any NPC components from SoB (or L1NPCs, or NPCKits, etc.), without uninstalling anything first. So if you already have "Faldorn=Purifier" from SoB installed, you can run NPC_EE and install "Faldorn=Lost Druid" and the later one will control. (But it won't change anything if you've already met Faldorn, since then her .cre file is in your savegame, and the Weidu NPC_EE mod does not affect savegames.)

Edited August 27, 2015 by subtledoctor

[Jarno Mikkola]

In this case, if you export a character who is, say, a Mage Hunter from BGEE, I *think* the solution is to import him into BG2EE, save your game after the intro sequence, and use EEKeeper to edit the broken imported character back to being a Mage Hunter....

Or you could just fill the BG1EE game with a few psuedo kits so that the BG1EE's and BG2EE's kit.ids files match perfectly. Also if I remember it correctly, the weidu.exe was made to not set the custom kits to the variables the EE kits were set to, so you probably will be OK even if you just use the same kit install list, as the kits will be added to use the kit ids'es that start at 0x4000+y, y being the number the kit was installed as of, for this very reason.

[subtledoctor]

Or you could just fill the BG1EE game with a few psuedo kits so that the BG1EE's and BG2EE's kit.ids files match perfectly.

That's precisely what I had in mind. BUT 1) the kit.ids files in BGEE and BG2EE are going to change in the upcoming patch, as they get updated with SoD content and (hopefully) IWDEE content. And, 2) what if the player installs NPCs on one game or the other, and those NPC mods install kits without telling the player they're doing so? (A number of popular NPC mods do this.)

 

In fact my own brand new NPC_EE mod does just that, you could add the Lost Druid kit for Faldorn in BG1 but it won't change anything in BG2, so now there's a mismatch. Unless you can set the kit.ids entries manually, and allow for gaps (which I suspect is not possible and/or a Very Bad Idea), then trying to make the files match is a fool's errand.

Edited August 27, 2015 by subtledoctor