A little preview: the Taunt spell for BGEE

[temnix]

Taunt spell for BGEE
(Re-uploaded)

Version 1
Thanks to: The Imp, Mike1072, Ardanis, Roxanne, subtledoctor and everyone else who helped me learn the ropes

This small mod is a demonstration of some of the design principles I argued for on the Beamdog forums. The Taunt spell is a small but official AD&D 1st Edition enchantment spell from a 1983 issue of the Dragon Magazine. It is by no means a game-changer, and its effect is similar to a spell from Torment. It even uses the same BAM file. But mine is an area effect spell, albeit tiny, and the environment of Baldur's Gate is different enough to matter. Used smartly, it is a short but real step towards more flexible and intelligent tactics that my other spells will do more to promote.

Taunt will make enemies chase the caster, ignoring the rest of the world, for three rounds. The spell is finished, tested and ready to be copied to a spellbook. Try casting it a few times - as a man, as a woman, a midget man, a midget woman.

Bonus! Charm Person:

I included a new, different version of Charm Person in the package - the first of my revamped charms. It is not complete, but you can play around with it, cast it on different enemies and see what happens. It will not overwrite your Charm Person. For convenience this demo spell works automatically, without a saving throw. Press Ctrl + Space to bring up the console and type: C:CreateItem("charmp_#"), then press Enter. Read the description in the scroll.

Installation: Unpack the archive to the main game directory and run setup-Taunt.exe. The installer adds lines to your Specific.ids (636 and 637), Missile.ids (636 and 637) and Projectl.ids (635 and 636), so make sure you do not have any other custom entries in those files at those positions. If there are no files with these names in the override folder, it means that you do not. A clash is very unlikely even if you have many other spells and effects installed.

Play: Find Qeebie in the Inner Grounds of Candlekeep. Start a new game or type C:MoveToArea("AR2600") in the console, then use Ctrl + J to teleport inside the walls. The dialogue works better for a new character who is short on cash after buying equipment, as Qeebie will demand 100 gold for the two scrolls he is offering. The dusty scroll will give you Taunt, the other one is useless. You can buy only one for 50 gold, but it's luck of the draw. If you would rather get the Taunt scroll directly, type C:CreateItem("taunsc_#") in the console.

Sorcerers: The demo shows how I intend to handle giving select new spells to sorcerers - in an ad hoc way, through quests, special encounters and situations, in this case from an item. Get both scrolls or just the dusty scroll from Qeebie, then have a sorcerer examine it. You will also see the price sorcerers will have to pay for new power.

Charm inside dialogue: I have suggested that instead of replacing a creature's conversation entirely Charm should give special dialogue options. Charm Qeebie with either the new or the old Charm Person and see what you can tell him now.

Undermine expectations: The steep cost of the scrolls is intentional - it is a test of how eager a wizard or a sorcerer is for new power. Taunt scrolls will be available for copying later in the game, but the dusty scroll is the only opportunity for a sorcerer. Generally magic should be neither easy nor straightforward in acquiring. It should not be something to shop for. Unscrupulous characters might find it easier to stab Qeebie or steal from him.

Spells by monsters: I hope to make most of my spells usable by monsters against the party, not just give them to adventurers as another tool. To see what Taunt does to the group, type C:CreateCreature("-hostile") - no underscore or hash. Try it a couple of times for a complete experience.

Download:

http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/1151-taunt-spell-for-bgee/

[Bill Bisco]

Please upload this to Github!

[temnix]

Emm... Does it make a difference where it is?

[Jarno Mikkola]

There are several benefits... one can make direct code improvement suggestions in Github/bitbucket, the download location can be used by a script drone. Megafileupload is unlikely to allow that. Branching. ++things I have no idea.

[lynx]

Mostly the fact that pure-upload site links tend to break and can be dodgy to download from.

 

For a topic purportedly about the Taunt spell, a detailed description of it is quite odd.

[kreso]

For a topic purportedly about the Taunt spell, a detailed description of it is quite odd.

+1....

[temnix]

Mostly the fact that pure-upload site links tend to break and can be dodgy to download from.

 

For a topic purportedly about the Taunt spell, a detailed description of it is quite odd.

 

You must mean lack of description... Does it make you feel annoyed? Aggravated? Furious? Look in the face of the pharaoh.

 

There should be mystery about magic. It's just a 1st-level spell that taunts people and forces them to run after you. And sorcerers can learn it too.

 

I'll upload it to github, if people want to look at it... I don't intend to change the code much, though. The spell works. It's not the slickest thing in the world, I was learning on the go, but it doesn't have to be.

 

What I would appreciate is for those of you who install the mod and gather the money for Qeebie is to tell me whether the first journal entry gets erased properly? The quest-received entry. I had some problems with the journal.

 

Edit: GitHub is too complicated. I have better things to do than sort through settings for software developers. Sorry.

[AL|EN]

@temnix Yuo don't have to use github but ... give players a way to download you mod via constant link, which won't show ads and will work with wget tool. Just review BWS link requirements. You can upload it to SHS if it is below 5MB.

[temnix]

There is nothing wrong with a regular link. Forget tools, just move the mouse and click on "Download."

[Salk]

I am actually more interested at the idea of having a [CHARM] dialogue option available.

 

It always felt clunky and counter intuitive to need to charm an NPC to just get the charmed dialogue bit. Really, who does go around charming every NPC they meet to see if there might be some "hidden" dialogue? Not to mention that before Ascension64 gave us the possibility, charmed NPCs would just turn hostile when the spell ends.

[K4thos]

edit: nevermind. I was thinking about implementing the idea proposed by Salk but on the second though the way I've imagined it would be quite complicated to do automatically due to NumTimesTalkedTo trigger used in dialogues. So I'm not going to attempt it.

 

temnix, nice mod.

[AL|EN]

There is nothing wrong with a regular link. Forget tools, just move the mouse and click on "Download."

1. There are ads on this site. No big deal but you can avoid this.

2. You link will be removed after 21 days:

 

 

FAQ: Free/non accounts files are kept in the cloud for 21 days and then deleted.

are you gonna ignore this?

[temnix]

I'll just set up a new link. Or make a page with links to my mods, this one and others I'll make.

 

What was that about Ascension64?

 

About Charm and dialogues - replacing dialogue for charmed creatures, as BG does it, is not such a terrible way of doing it. I would actually be one of those people who would go around charming NPC to get different messages from them, if I were new to the games. There is a surprising number of these alternate responses in vanilla, and a few are actually useful - Mulahey, Tranzig... Maybe more. But most aren't, and they prevent you from making use of the creature's main talk lines - stores, quests, all of that is blocked out. And when the spell expires, as it does it 5 rounds in BGEE, the creature goes hostile.

 

There are some pros and cons to changing Charm so that it changes the AI instead of using STATE_CHARMED. And I haven't produced a working mechanism for factoring the caster's Charisma into it yet, though I have an idea. But on the whole I want to make Charm a long-lasting option that is more useful for role-playing than for fighting and won't force you to kill an NPC or reload. And it might be possible to do more with blue creatures with other mods and spells. What, I think, should be done with most vanilla dialogues that use STATE_CHARMED is that they should react to both that state, for players who don't use the new charm, and to the CHARMED value in Specifics. That's how I did it with Qeebie. That way the systems can coexist. I don't fancy the idea of rewriting old NPC more thoroughly, at least not yet.

 

That's all in the future. For now I'd like people to just go around trying my version of Charm Person on enemies. See if they are effective when they come to your aid, see if there are any problems.

[subtledoctor]

And when the spell expires, as it does it 5 rounds in BGEE, the creature goes hostile.

It's SUPER simple to patch the spell such that it doesn't count as a "hostile" action. That way blue-circle NPCs should go back to blue, but red-circle NPCs should go back to being hostile.

 

There are some pros and cons to changing Charm so that it changes the AI instead of using STATE_CHARMED.

And one big con is that it is undispellable, so if you charm an enemy in battle, the effect is effectively permanent. That's like Imprisonment + a summon together, in a first-level spell (except it happens to offer a saving throw). But it is *not* effectively permanent for party members. That seems way, way too biased in favor of the player to my eyes.

 

I haven't produced a working mechanism for factoring the caster's Charisma into it yet,

Why not make multiple versions of the spell for different CHA scores?

 

But on the whole I want to make Charm a long-lasting option that is more useful for role-playing than for fighting

Then maybe apply the non-combat flag, so it can only be used for role-playing, not fighting. Or run it through a filter so that it only affects blue-circle NPCs, so you can use it in combat to bring bystanders to your aid, but not for destroying the AI with a 1st-level spell...

[temnix]

All of these suggestions, subtledoctor, are probably well-meant but they err on the side of caution, when there is no space for caution. It takes daring, intelligent daring to actually create and change something, and I do want to challenge the status quo in this game and put different accents on what works and how. The reason player characters and monsters should get different charm versions is that the role of the player and of the "environment" are fundamentally different, and an author of a change, like a good director of a stage play, must understand that the rules are not symmetrical for what happens on the different sides of the curtain. The same long-lasting, unpredictable charm that can add diversity and refresh the experience for players would only be a bore and a reason for reload if cast by monsters...

 

There are other nuances, for example that a charmed creature may experience a change of mind about things from the time it spent being friendly, so it should not simply always go back to its former hostility. Likewise, it isn't important that a blue charm is undispellable, because that very rarely comes up and has no reason to for a short duration. In fact, a charm should last to make an impression. I take these role-playing and dramatic considerations and put them in the proverbial nutshell with a new mechanic. But people who are stuck in the "tweak" approach can't be expected to understand this.

 

The new charm system is done. I worked on it yesterday and now only need to copy it across the spells, make the icons and finish the mod. But I'll publish something else first.

 

This is the description of the new, complete Charm Person.

 

Charm Person
(Enchantment/Charm)

Level: 1
Range: 30 feet
Duration: 24 hours
Casting Time: 1
Area of Effect: 1 person
Saving Throw: Neg.

This spell affects any single person it is cast upon. The term "person" includes any bipedal human, demihuman, or humanoid of man-size or smaller, such as brownies, dryads, dwarves, elves, gnolls, gnomes, goblins, half-elves, halflings, half-orcs, hobgoblins, humans, kobolds, lizard men, nixies, orcs, pixies, sprites, troglodytes, and others. Thus, a 10th-level fighter could be charmed, but an ogre could not. The person is allowed a saving throw vs. spell to resist the effect.

If the spell's recipient fails to save, he regards the caster as a trusted friend and ally to be heeded and protected. The caster may not order him around or use his spells and items, but the charmed person will fight on the side of the caster. Suggestions that would be rejected in a normal state of mind may be made in dialogue.

If the caster harms or attempts to harm the charmed person by some overt action, the Charm spell is broken. If two or more Charms simultaneously affect a person, the most recent Charm takes precedence, and the person's allegiance changes accordingly. Note that you cannot have a charmed person leave the area where he was charmed.

The subject has full memory of the events that took place while he was charmed. The spell will expire in 24 hours, and the subject's reaction, hurt or lenient, will depend on the approach and manner of the caster, i.e. his Charisma as it was at the time of the casting. The person may be left neutral or hostile to the caster. The chance that the subject will turn hostile is 5% per point of Charisma but never less than 5% or more than 95%. A mage may increase his Charisma by other means before charming someone for a better chance of getting away with it. Unless the spell was cast by an enchanter, people who become hostile may be so dead-set against the caster as to resist all future attempts to charm them.

 

Other spells for the revised charm pack will include Charm Monster (PHB), the lore-friendly Dire Charm, Mass Charm (PHB), the priestly Charm Person or Mammal and rangers' Charm Animal.