Siebenfinger

Nice. If it is BWS compatible, I'll just throw it in there, no reason not to. Thank you very much =)

Well, I'm looking forward to hearing from you again, then And yes, I too try to come by with as little reloads as possible, usually only do when the main character dies or the fight is somehow buggy to not make sense to have gone that way. That sometimes is a love-hate situation with the game, but hey, as long as the story in my mind fits, I'm fine^^

Heidiho So I finished a new SoA run by now with TotSC beforehand. And I toyed with different familiars while doing that. This is not a totally structured list, but I guess it’s easier to read like that. Anyway, here’s my thoughts in Detail, just dig in when you have the time =) Pro: Absolutely no problem with having my familiar out during the first part of the saga. Like all the time. In times of danger, escape always possible, sometimes difficult but hey Really liked the feeling of having a furry pal by my side or sometimes a scaly one The thieves were able to pick some locks and find some traps, but not all as a dedicated thief (N)PC would The speed of the hasted ones makes nice scouting But Don’t ever let them fight. Ever Seriously, it’s not worth it They’re melee with the damage of about three Magic Missiles per round, which is not too bad (this one is actually a pro^^) Except they don’t hit anything *note: noone is hitting anything until about level 5, which is actually where my loathing for Kiter’s Gate: Kites of the Kite Coast comes from **notenote: sure, it would be awesome to make a winterwolf hunt more dangerous and also more rewarding as a means of de-trivialize monsters but then again, this is a game where you will end up as a half-god eventually Oh, and if they get crit, you’re having fun for three whole days... Yes, they’re supposed to not be a full character, but considering game mechanics and AI there is one word pulling all the fun out of a harrassing and annoying little familiar with its hit-and-run combat tactics: micromanagement You simply can’t risk a Gnoll that’s consistently critting for 16 take a liking to your Fairy Dragon After that, Gnolls die to a Fireball or a Raging Rashemen Ranger in a split second and the nastier things you’ll have to run from again Their perceived usefulness is Thief>>>Mage>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Fighter The familiars ordered by alignment are still basically like that I don’t like Imoen Red Scout Yellow Scout (Lich tank later on) I want a Pickpocket I don’t have enough ‘Web’ casts per day I want to skip True Seeing Bad Red Scout Bad Brown Scout Bad Green Scout With the thieves’ abilities being the only upgrade to vanilla familiars in my eyes, that’s very nice to okay for TotSC and let’s say for Chapter one and a half in SoA. No later than that everyone but the rabbit and sometimes the Fairy Dragon is 99% useless, but with a huge tradeoff. And even the rabbit is actually too fragile to be running around with it when everything is out to kill you. I really wanted it to work. I refrained from sending it 'to its room' as long as I could. To have the little guy frolicking around for as long as possible. But in the end I again had to place the familiar in a solitary corner far from the group far too often to not get ravaged by Illithids, Demons or some other dudes who needed a whacking when the familiar didn’t feel like going back in. And their self-sustain is sadly that bad that it makes absolutely no sense to run across half the map for two turns instead of just taking a nap in the backpack. And their 'not yet'-timer linked to dmg only is a lot less useful as hoped. In BG1, you have two means of CC: Hold Person and Wand of Paralyzation. Plus almost nothing see through Invisibility. In Shadows of Amn there is much much more going on and their saving throws are actually really bad too. So, in conclusion, I had several brainstorm ideas How easy would it be to only make this mod work in BG1 and revert to the old style later on? The Fighter familiars desperately need love! Like a helmet and better AC (one of them was at 6 I think :/) How would you feel about a distribution where every alignment has access to one thief, one mage, one fighter familiar? How easy would it be to enable say a ‘share spells feat’ to copy eg stoneskin to the familiar? How would you feel to reverse the psychology and get rid of the nagging and instead grant a bonus spell or a bonus dexterity point as long as the familiar is active? Last but not least: If I can be of any help with something that isn’t coding, let me know ;-) Hope this wasn't too detailly =)

Hey sorry for not being around for the last week, I was needed outside of Faerûn ;-) Anyhow, I just finished a little playtesting on the WTPFamiliars1_7 this second. Not too much, and no mods apart from this one. Actually I killed only Ilasera (the first encounter in ToB). Like 25 times. Here is what I found out: I wasn't able to reproduce nagging in battle even if resting until the familiar sometimes climbed out itself (awesome!) With the almost non-existent burst damage of the otherwise unmodded game I finally observed in awe how the little dude's HPs dropped to 25% and it then climbed into the backpack by itself The familiar still doesn't care if a Project Image hits it in the face with Magic Missiles etc. I engaged Ilasera, personally Magic Missiled my familiar in the face, killed her -> no leave (side-effect, it seems, not that important, who would single-target the familiar anyways) I both sunfired and skulltrapped a Rabbit and sunfired a Fairy Dragon to near death whilst a) The familiar was attacking Ilasera b) We both were invisible through Invisibility and Mislead while she was attacking a summoned Skeleton Warrior and c) We both were invisible through Invisibility and Mislead and I just killed her without any combat reaction from herself and the familiar didn't leave afterwards (note: it did also not matter who got hit first or last due to positioning) (bam! nice!) Now for the little twist to our story: The Imp, the Quasit and the Dust Mephit, although completely immune to the aoe damage from Sunfire, Fireball (and Ice Storm for the former two), fought until Ilasera was dead and then left. The same, if caught out of combat If almost killed by a Skulltrap, which they are not immune to, however, they would fight on and stay with the party afterwards Only the Fairy Dragon with its 96% resistance to magic didn't care about getting hit by just about anything (out of combat) except Sunfire which seems to bypass magic resistance and to only care about fire resistance. And Acid Fog for some reason though this one didn't even need to do damage to trigger leaving So, in conclusion, there seems to be something wrong with their immunities, otherwise everything according to plan! If this is fixable, 1000 virtual Bro-fists, man. (Side note: This may mean your previous combat check might have worked as intended, because back then I only played with a Dust Mephit) Oh, and I'm excited to see how the scaling to the backpack trigger will hold up in my next run. My instinct would want to see it possible at any lost health or a way heavier AC scaling in ToB to not get hit twice in a row as easily, but maybe I'm a little overprotective here^^ LIKE IT!

Well, thanks to you too, mate, for all your work. I very much appreciate a better implementation of a wizard's only true love - his familiar ;-)

Well, I made my install about three weeks ago with the Big World Setup so I have been assuming, it was the latest version. But I have to admit, I deleted the install a few days before my post so I'm not 100% sure. Yes, I am always playing with SCS, Ascension and some other minor tactic mods. Only the 'green ones' in the BWS though, nothing spectacularly challenging. Also, I'm sticking to the core rules. And yes, you're absolutely right, in BG1, everything went according to plan. The problems arose when every second opponent had True Seeing in his Sequencer or could just regularly see through invisibility. And yes, SCS introduces a lot of those. In SoA that is. I did realize it took a couple of hours to be able to get it to climb back in again, but not that it was a whole eight. Noted. Also, I have never seen it hop in by itself. On the other hand I cannot recall a case where it dropped to somewhat near death and didn't die a split second afterwards due to the heavy burst damage because generally I had round about five eyes on him the whole time. Or maybe I talked to it always just in the time it would've. I'm afraid, I can't say more here. Sadly, I'm much more fond of the sequel than of BG1, so this might be the reason to our kind of different approach to the whole scenario ;-) Concerning combat nagging, since you say it is not intended: I'm a 100% sure it happened from time to time because later on I shifted to always cast Project Image first when possible and the spell Interruption didn't happen anymore even if the dialogue triggered. So it seems it actively uses an F1 on Charname so to speak. Also mentionable is that the familiar doesn't care about friendly fire from the Project Image I think (there I'm not totally sure), but it was definitely leaving on every Charname Fireball hit, even if it was immune to the damage. Oh, and yes, I'm almost always only two-manning the game so my frontline ist more or less non-existent. Maybe one has to accept that and skip this particular mod with that in mind. At least not in BG2. Edit: Well, thinking about it, it could be that the spell interruption happened just with Mislead up when the enemies don't see Charname yet and somehow the familiar script thinks I'm not in combat, hmmm For now that's all I can contribute I think, if I recall anything else, I'll let you know. Or maybe I will give it another shot next time.

Concerning their early fighting capabilities my main point was directed at the possibility of like a -4 AC Rabbit with 24 Hitpoints at level 1 being pretty much ridiculous. So that was an improvement for sure. Otherwise, maybe a solution might be to at least give the scariest things something like a "familiar fear aura" that overrides their dialogue, because the point to really make me drop everything was when I (given: somewhat casually) walked into the Baatezu room in the Watcher's Keep's Maze Level, somehow managed to dispel the immediate Power Word: Stun on the Mephit and get the defenses going for everyone to not get torn to pieces, then walked over to my familiar to save him and he's like 'Sorry, Boss, my wings haven't recovered from last time, yet. Gonna play with the nice demons here for a while. Maybe they like Monopoly' :/ I don't know how your nagging timer works but might it not be enough to just add more and more ruckus the longer it stays in while only completely resetting the timer after a few hours of being out? Dunno, maybe it could 're-order' your backpack or even throw things out / break potions and the like. One might even consider adding some dialogue variations like 'Hey Boss, I found your scroll of Protection from Fire. Turns out, it was not REALLY protected from fire itself. Sorry...' if you leave him in there for too long. And if that happens to happen during a fight and interrupt your spellcast, so be it. Quite fitting for a little rascal like a Mephit, I'd say. That would be an incentive to get him out asap and would otherwise make sure, it is not immediately killed. However, you still need to talk to it to get it in and stuff like Dragon Fear still puts it at risk since you have to dispel it first before talking. Maybe worsen the risk a little by scripting it to usually stay a little astray? Because if he's just as plain retarded as to chill next to Pit Fiends... I don't know... In the end, it's your mod of course, it's just how I feel about it having it installed for the first time now. I think the penalty for having it out in the open is far too great if there always are the two conditions of a) the familar quite surely dying every other fight and b) the familiar not wanting to go back in for hours after being taken out

Hey Salk, I don't know if this is the right place to give you a review, but I've been running WTPFamiliars in the current Version in my last BGT run and wanted to share my thoughts with you. I almost always Tag-Team the whole game with a Sorcerer and a Thief NPC, so some of my experience may be biased because of that, but anyway, here it is. First, the positive stuff ;-) - I like very much how the familiars behave more with PnP standards - I'm very fond of the choosing feature and not be stuck with a cat only when I'm chaotic neutral for example - Also, its somewhat deeper personality is a fun addition as I'm not having too much banter otherwise in my group (that is, if I don't pick up Jan^^) - It makes the game a lot better if your familiar isn't able to solo tank almost all of BG1 because of its natural armor class, so thanks for that - And most of all: The voice of the Dust Mephit might just be the most awesome creature sound in the whole game SCOOBADOOBEGOOOOO! But: - SoA is waaaaay more about group combat than running around and I'd say around the time of the Planar Sphere I realized that the little feller is definitely not going to fight anymore. Seeing it getting two-shotted by every second enemy in Watcher's Keep (although I was way deep into HLAs then) I chose to have it sit in my backpack just to have his dialogue trigger always interrupt my clutch spellcast in an ambush as I want to cheese as little as possible by overly preparing ahead of time. So lastly the best solution to me was to pick up Otiluke's just to babysit it as too many of the dangerous enemies see through invisibility later game or just immediately cast True Seeing... - This time, I especially picked up the Dust Mephit due to its voice and because of its innate fire immunity to go with my evil fire-centered Sorcerer. But, as its friendly fire leaving does trigger on zero damage, it was sadly not even able to reliantly scout for fireball positioning anymore :/ So in the end the familiar ended up as only being useful to invisibility-cheese Golems in narrow doorways and boosting me out of Power Word: Stun range just as all the time before while trading a little PnP flavor for majorly getting trolled by it when both me and the mean Lich I'm facing are trying to cast Timestop. I like the idea and the changes very much, but for gameplay reasons I think I will never install it again and just pretend that my familiar climbs out of my backpack and scurries through my robe and so. So much for my two cents Greetings Phil