Just an FYI, but I was reading through the Cleric Remix over at Gibberlings Three: http://forums.camagn...p?showtopic=465 and saw that they had added FIREWALKER OF KOSSUTH cleric kit.

I was just curious as to what if any overlap this would have with the tenative Fire Guardian kit.

(isn't this a sneaky way to ask what the ideas for the Fire Guardian kit are?)    

After that I wondered if there would be any compatability issues with Cleric Remix & Refinements in terms of HLAs.

Sounds good!

In these dark times I thought that I would try to post a little bit of brightness.

Last night I finally go around to testing the changes to Monks.

I?ve got to say that I?ve always liked the idea of Monks. Though woefully out of practice myself I?ve studied several real life martial arts and the thought of playing the BG equivalent sounded appealing. During my first BGII game I always assumed that I would play a Monk in one of my next few games.

Then I played ToB & saw Balthzar. I can?t tell you how much it ticked me off that no PC Monk I made could ever be that cool. Right then and there that fight killed my desire to play a BG Monk.

Well last night changed my opinion. The new Monk HLAs are fantastic. Yes stances and such would be nice, but already what you guys have done is a huge improvement from the original!

Last night I created Diaz, a female monk & then gave her 4 mil XP. She went through unimproved Illasera without breaking a sweat or really taking any damage. It was the Revenge fight that was a treat though. I set her script to aggressive and just sat back and watched as she tore through the lesser monsters here. Then Sarevok, Bodhi, & Balthazar opened their can of whop-tail.

Well the bottom line is that Diaz got her butt beat, with no protection from level draining Bodhi was a killer & Sarevok?s massive damage didn?t help, but I did have fun using her new special abilities.

I want to note that I especially like how Faster Than the Eye avoids the Dimension Door problems by not letting the Monk pass through closed doors and the like. Great job!

The Regeneration & Arrow Catching were fantastic as well.

Congrats on a job well done here!

Rathwellin, you shouldn't have said that : I bet than Maestro will say the monks are overpowered and he will lower their abilities for version 2.

I'm not worried. In addition to what was posted the most changed thing is the HLA table for monks. Diaz didn't have to use those to kick tail ... and they didn't help her all that much to survive a vampire.

That's *good* news indeed!

B)

The Gibberlings Three NPC Kit Pack has an Imoen component that doesn't look to be compatable with SwashImoen.

I don't know any technical details but I would be careful about SwashImoen and the very latest version of Imoen Romance, though I imagine that earlier versions would be OK.

The Oversight mod has a Monk HLA table so you would have issues similar to the Cleric Remix in that you get whatever HLA you install last.

Any mod that installs kits will probably not fit as nicely with Refinements as one might wish from a players perspective due to possible HLA stuff.

And, of course, I doubt that you will want to install both Wes' Shapeshifter Rebalancing and the Shapeshifter component of Refinements at one time.

That's off the top of my head.

Schatten, just don?t install every mod in creation every time you play a game.  There are *very* few mods that I feel like installing every time I play.  Ascension was the only one until recently.

What I generally do is decide what kind of BG experience I want to have ahead of time and then I install mods that can make it happen.  I generally research the mods I?m thinking about and check for compatibility ahead of time.

For instance, before I started testing refinements in a clean install I played a heavily modded game.  I decided that I wanted to try out the Druidic Sorcerer mod.  My PC would obviously be this new kit.  That decision shaped my following ones.  Since the Druidic Sorcerer is more powerful than many kits I decided that I needed to make the game harder, so Tactics was in.  Given Tactics & Druidic Sorcerer, I decided to also add Item Upgrade, both to make party members in general more powerful and equal to my PC and to better take advantage of some of the stuff in Tactics.  Since I was already installing two Wiemer mods I decided to test out some of Ease of Use too.  

I also wanted additional content in my game in addition to rules tweaks so I decided to try out the Imoen romance.  I knew ahead of time that this mod has a really powerful item in it, so my guess was that it would fit right in with the rest of what I had & would make Imoen and my PC a good match on many levels.

At the last minute, while installing mods, I came across CamDawq?s tweak pack & the Planar Sphere Return/Teleport mod & installed them without the same careful consideration that I had given the rest.

I had tried out Item Upgrade once before, but had never played with any of these other mods.

I pretty much got exactly the experience I expected and the only compatibility issue I ran into was with a single component of CamDawq?s tweak mod and the Imoen Romance, which didn?t totally surprise me since I hadn?t checked the tweaks out as closely as the others, but I was able to find a workaround so all was good.

And just for the record, since I?m posting this dissertation anyway,

I found that I liked the Druidic Sorcerer kit, though it was more powerful than any default kits or classes, however I would never play it without a tougher game like I did.  

I?ve decided that I like between about 1/3 and 1/2 of Tactics and will probably keep using some of these components in the future.

Item Upgrade seems overpowered.  Individually most of the items are fine but collectively they are too much even with Tactics.  So, not without some regret, I?ll be avoiding this one.

Likewise most of the Ease of Use changes were not to my liking with respect to balance.  The main things that I will be keeping are the infinite stacking & bags of holding since I hate inventory management so much.

The Imoen Romance was interesting, I?ll give the ToB portion a try when it comes out, but I doubt that I?ll play it regularly.  It was just too complicated to be fun IMO.  Much of the content was excellent but I strongly disliked a very few parts.

I didn?t like the Planar Sphere Return mod (it lets you teleport back to the sphere kind of like you can do in ToB to the Pocket Plane).  SoA just isn?t built to let you teleport back there during chapter 4 while stuck in Spellhold for instance.

CamDawq?s Tweak Pack ended up being my favorite of all the mods I tested.  The changes it made to force dialogue were fantastic and I?ll probably never play without this mod again.

I'm not worried. In addition to what was posted the most changed thing is the HLA table for monks. Diaz didn't have to use those to kick tail ... and they didn't help her all that much to survive a vampire.

What ?! I have played Maestro's HLA table in Kiara MOD, and she was able to smash Balthazar alone ! Why your high-level monk could not survive even a vampire (which, in TOB, I could say they are only for practicing your fighting skills).

It was a fresh ToB game so she had no items to protect from level drain.

She actually did kill Bodhi, but was weakened enough by that time that she didn't have enough left to finish off Sarevok & Jon even after 2 healing potions. Sarevok actually delivered the killing blow.

In reality, had I wanted, I probably could have used her speed to avoid melee until she had regenerated enough damage to head back in, but Jon was steadly lowering her resistance & I figured that it was only a matter of time before he nailed her with a spell so I tried to take them out first.

If I had cheated in an item or two I'm sure I would have won on that first try.

OK, with refinements nearly here, what are your plans? What kind of PC are you planning on playing first? What mods are you going to install and why?

_______

My plan is as follows:

I?ll be playing a NG Sorcerer that I?m taking through a TuTu game right now & I?ll have the following mods
-Ascension
-Kelsey
-Unfinished Business
-Bioware NPC Flirt Packs
-Banter Packs
-Improved Oasis II
-G3 / CamDawq?s BG2 Tweak Pack
-Ashes of Embers
-Tactics (partial)
-Ease of Use (2-3 components only)
-Throne of Bhaal Refinements

There is also a reasonable chance that I will try Dungeon-Be-Gone.

I?m considering Rogue Rebalancing and Virtue as well but only because of hype by Littiz and TGM in their documentation and here.

If I can find another good NPC mod there is a faint chance that I?ll toss that in the mix too.

My goal is to have lots of extra role-playing content while getting to have fun with the new stuff from Refinements.

No kits from Ashes. Just universal weapons ... maybe.

On a completely differnt tact I did some cross mod testing tonight. I went ahead and installed refinements over an install that I did a while back containing a few of the mods from Sorcerer's Pace.

Specifically I tried the one with loads of new kits. For the most part it looked like things were working fine. The Arcane Fist used the Monk HLA table and with refinements that was just sick. Similarly the Archer of Sylvanus Druid kit got just vanilla druid HLAs. I didn't see anything obviously broken in the interaction between the kits & refinements.

There were some issues with item useablility, but I was able to confirm that Refinements wasn't the cause. ONe of the item mods I installed did some odd stuff.

About Magic Flute. True there is some mess, so that one will have to be fixed, alas.. I'll add the tooltip text feedback, but that still requires to click with the right button.

Can you tell me how do they work for you?
Do they affect only enemies? Large radius or small?
Things seem to be somewhat inconsistent with the item's specifications...

I'm very sorry! Somehow I managed to miss this post entirely.

Anyway Magic Flue seems to have a *very* small radius. Only affects enemies. Seems to target the nearest foe.

I figgured that this was the case & that's why I included the HLA quote. It seems to imply that *all* spell damage is protected against. I suspected the the language could be 'refined' a bit in the readme.

It 's called magical damage and gets even its entry in the resistances' list.
No need to correct. There are worse ambiguities throughout the game.

I strongly suspected that this was the case as well based on the general readme ... but again it's not really spelled out. I just *know* that folks are going to install the mod and ask about this very thing.

I know that people will attempt to do the most illogical things (and crazy mess) when using a game or a mod. This doesn't mean I have to sit down and attempt to list them all, and provide countermeasures for everything.
After all it's my free time, and it's even running short. Users are invited to use their brain, and things will work fine (it's also common knowledge that using an old savegame and new content from a mod is not a guaranteed_to_work combo).
That said, I might add a little note that it's better to start a new game somewhere, but I hate to alter the docs since this require proofreading every single time.
Still, it'd seem like a wasted effort... I think we already have one of the most detailed set of documentation included in a mod, and people will hardly read it, I'm sure.

It's late in the game, but maybe for version 2 I could send you some suggestions for re-wording a few things. I would offer to do so now but I fear the backlash should you actually accept and this deay v1.

You do have a *great* set of docs. Better than most mods, you are correct. Like everything else the quality of your guys work shows.

At the rate they are going I'll bet that the fill them up soon!  They alter the 3 existing kits & add what ... something like 5 new ones.

Got my hot little copy about an hour ago!

Congrats!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's not just about raw damage or who can kill bosses the fastest.

Among other things monks have a much higher movement rate which can be used tactically to great effect.

Monks aren't dependent on items for attacks.

And frankly monks are cooler with the new HLAs.

I don't think that monks need +5 fists, though an HLA to temporarily make them +6 might be interesting.

Let me throw something else out there. I assumed that one of the reasons that Balthazar has some of his unique stances would be due to the style he used. The fire attack seems quite in character for a mystical style developed in the desert.

IMO it?s quite likely that the PC would have learned a different style at Candlekeep and might have vastly different stances for HLAs.

It would be a load of work but it would be really cool if, at Refinements install time you got to pick a default ?school? for PC monks. Each school could have different stance HLAs. One option would be the ?fire? school or some such like Balthy knows. This would go a long way towards both evening out monks coolness wise with Balthy *and* give them the opportunity to be unique. In Ascension you could have a PC monk and Balthy with vastly different special HLAs ... and that just reeks of kung-fu coolness to me!

Just IMO,

1. It?s trivially easy to turn pause on spell cast off and on in game & works regardless of hardware unlike resolution.

2. The fact that the Sorcerer no longer has Dragons Breath, Comet, and IA coming out of his 9th level spells per day lets him cast a *lot* of timestops which is functionally nearly equivalent to TS + IA.

3. If you don?t like this HLA or it doesn?t fit your playstyle, there are plenty of other ones to choose from.

Ding0 I think where folks are coming from on the ?development process? thing is that many of the very things you mention have been brought up. More than once in several cases. Folks had plenty of shots since this forum has been up to bring up red flags.

I shared nearly identical concerns about the Sorcerer prior to actually using the changes in beta-testing.

On page 3 of the HLA table discussion thread I started bitching about some of this very stuff. I felt like the changes unduly ?nerfed? sorcerers. I also felt like BGII had presented Sorcerers as something close to a kit of a pure mage & I brought up the very argument that if Sorcerers could ?innately? just know how to cast level 1-9 spells then why not level 10 spells like other BG mages?

What it boiled down to is that this mods creators didn?t see sorcerers as being a ?mage kit? and tried to build a HLA table to reflect this. Over time as I used the mod I really began to like the changes & started to agree with them that sorcerers *should* be treated differently than mages.

Making the Sorcerer HLAs innates has some interesting effects as well. They can be used while shapeshifted and in other circumstances when spells cannot normally be cast ... as I found out in testing when I used Energy Storm while in Slayer form. In fact last night I tested with the final release version as an Iron Golem and a Greater Wolfwere. Loads of fun!

Loosing out on Dragons Breath & Comet weren?t small hits, but they weren?t end of the world either. It just encourages Sorcerers to use stuff like Meteor Swarm and Delayed Blast Fireball that they might have skipped over in the past when they could count on DB&C as HLAs for damage.

The biggest thing making 10th level spells innates for Sorcerers does is that it frees them to really *use* the 9th level spells they pick. I don?t know about you, but once my Sorcerer had IA, Timestop, Wish & DB those were just about the only 9/10th level spells I used. Now, by these changes, I feel a *lot* freer to pick different 9th level spells & I can actually use them.


I also bitched a lot about the side effects. In some cases I am still of the opinion that they are not warranted, but in others I really don?t mind. ToB is crazy powerful out of the box. A lot of what Refinements does is tone things down. That?s part of what this mod is about. In the end I?ll live with the side effects just for all the other fantastic goodness of this mod.


As for the animations, most are awesome. The lack of a clear ?edge? to the damaging effects is a bit tough, but I personally don?t mind it that much.

And just for the record Ding0, I knew who you were & about your mods. It *would* help if you had registered though.

Since this thread is so long & much of it has to do with the beta you guys might want to consider unpinning this one & creating a new bugs thread for the released version.

Like my uncle Reid always said, ?You can tell a lot about a poster by how much he like Jan Jansen.?  Well, in my case, I like Jan less than the Calimite Itch and a bit more than having a young child scream shrilly at the top of his lungs in my face.  You can ignore the itch for a while which is more than can be said for the other two.

Anyway, my cousin Dave, always gets tired of meandering around, so let me get right to the point.  

Too many bad turnips can spoil the whole batch.

What?

Oh, OK, I?ll elaborate.

It?s all about the Mirrored Clones.  One Jan is bad enough, but three is just asking for more trouble than a pack of drunk monkeys.  I know.  I?ve seen a pack of drunk monkeys.  They had eaten a whole load of fermented fruit and the resulting rampage nearly put my aunt Ina out of business for good!

In any case once Jan learned how to create Mirrored Clones the entire structure of civilization trembled.  Now one invisible Jan can backstab, while another supports him with Burster Mates and spells, and a third gives poor Minsc a wedgie.  It?s frightening.  It?s calamitous.  And worst of all it?s just plain too much for any honest turnip salesman to bear!

How can an honest Illusionist turned salesman compete with that unhinged multiclassed Thief?  It?s just not possible I tell you!  Upon learning this wizardry Jan has gone from being just bad to way way too bad!

Aiiiii!  Here he comes now!  Run for your lives!

And given the fact that you only get *one* shift to Greater Werewolf form in Refinements makes Shapeshifters more reliant on the lesser form through the whole game ... so I wouldnt' want to make it any weaker.

Just noticed that Aerie started with 900,000 exp as well. Minsc, Jaheira, and Yoshi were normal. I checked the Virtue and Refinements readme's again, but did not find any mention of that. Is this because of how the game is recognizing the PC's level, and attempting to match it?

Almost certainly. The game attempts to match the level of the NPC to the PC. So if the PC is a Thief, Bard, or Druid the NPCs will start with insanely high XP.

Drizzy doesn't seem to last too well vs. Tactics version of Improved Bodhi.

Anomen does not need his head bigger than it is after all. Especially with a female PC. She may turn into a WW and eat him.

Heh he he. Have you ever gotten that bug when Anomen accidentaly gets assigned the huge head portrait? His head is so big that you can only see a portion of it in the box. It's easily fixed with SK but is sooo funny!