Gay Lord

Rhialto by default appears the first time the party rests outdoors.  The "haughty-pansy mode" component places Rhialto outside Candlekeep, so it is actually "easier" than the default behavior (since you can choose when you encounter him).  I believe the better solution for Rhialto is to patch the mods that break his scripts so the original author's intent can be seen.  I recently patched SCS to skip Rhialto when changing mage AI -- untested so far.

I maintain my vote to move him to tactical, but I'll do a manual install of the mod from now on and remove him for my games.

Highlight the NPC and press CTRL+M and your dialogue window will display some info including the resource file (ABCDEF.cre), making it easier to identify which mod added it.

EEKeeper IDs him as DSARCHDR.cre (easier for me than digging up the old save)

Tome and Blood was marked Expert until a few days ago.  When I incorporated subtledoctor's hotfixes into the Fixpack, I neglected to change its pre-selection settings, so it's available but not selected by default.  Just an oversight.

FYI, 0.7 TAB was just released:

Download

Beamdog forum post
chrome browser readme

I created a forum thread a while ago to explore this question.  Perhaps you could revive it?  www.shsforums.net/topic/58417-why-are-these-mods-expert-mods

I'll look and see what I can do, so long as the Athkatla watch doesn't come after me for threadomancy.  Might need a few skulls from Thalantyr first.

Though it may go without saying, I'm sure it is never said enough.  Thank you guys for all the work you do, all the time and effort you give to BWS so the rest of us can continue to love this game and the work of all the modders, and the help you give to us posters.  We may be simple forum folk, but we know heroes when we see 'em.

1) Recommend Wild Mage Additions component 4 (Rhialto) be changed from Maximal to Tactical.  He's a L30 mage who is scripted to die (as opposed to defeating normally), in order to pass on his stuff (which is OP for a L1 party).  Having an opponent that you are supposed to defeat through scripting (which has failed before because of SCS and other mods), or through metaknowledge is a tactical combat, not a normal one.

2) There's an opponent called "The Arch Druid" who appeared at the beginning of the final map of Cloakwood, don't know which mod he's from.  IMO this guy is also OP, being tougher and giving more xp than Davaeorn himself.  He appears to be L13 which, while do-able, is still too much.  If he's so tough, why hasn't he stormed the mines already?  Having a surprise opponent that's harder than the miniboss is imbalanced.  I recommend he also be moved to Tactical installation.

3) I've been looking at some of the mods from subtledoctor, and wondering why they aren't part of the Maximal install.  I see Might and Guile is, but Scales of Balance and Tome and Blood aren't.  SOB has no comments underneath, while TAB says EET is preferred. Since I play with the original BG and not EE, I'm wondering if TAB is being ignored for EET, and then EET is not included for original, so TAB just never gets selected.

4) This leads to another question, is there a way to find out WHY mods are marked expert?  Sometimes I can look on bitbucket and see a reason why something is marked, but not always.  It would be helpful for those willing to playtest a mod to know what we're looking for.  For example, if a mod was marked expert because of old reports of a bug, we could install and see if the bug is still there, or if it was marked expert because of a conflict with another mod, we can see if the conflict still happens.  I've currently installed the bigg's 3E stats which were marked expert, but I dont' know why.

So after playing, I find that even -1 rep loss is too much.  If you fail enough against someone they will stop speaking to you completely, which means you can no longer do quests, get rewards, or do anything else with them. Thus, losing dialog options with an NPC seems more than punishment enough, and any rep loss is overkill.  I've modified the relevant file to eliminate rep loss, provided here.  Anyone wanting to use it, just replace the mod file BEFORE installing.  And of course, I cast my vote to Wisp to make this change in the mod proper.

Another aspect of PNP DND is that priests would only rez members of their own faith.  Getting them to rez other people was usually impossible, but one could say the hefty 5000gp price tag was the "donation" needed to convince them otherwise. When rezzing people, they might sometimes require a quest as well.

You could have it so that when you rez a dead JPC, they are removed from the game for a time.  This would not only reflect their bedrest period as they recover, but also time spent doing whatever the church needed, something done off-camera.  Thus, you would rez someone, they'd disappear from your party and the game, and then reappear much later, say two weeks.  Since they've been doing a mission for the church, you could apply an auto-level up feature so that their xp matched the party's when you reclaim them.   In this way, you're still losing them for a while, but they're not falling behind everybody.

For myself, I think it's more meaningful if death is a real consequence, which is why I play with a permadeath rule.  There are two dozen JPCs in BG1, and even more with mods, so it's not as if you'll ever run out.  I've read some of Syvishtar's journal, and the constant swapping and replacing was a bit silly IMO.  I understand and agree with agb1 that permanently losing JPCs isn't fun for most, but it is more fun for me, as it makes their lives (and deaths) mean more.

Suggestions for making the import/export capability more obvious would be welcome.

Maybe boxing the features and/or coloring them?  I didn't notice the options at all my first time using BWS (like I didn't notice other things, such as being able to change subcomponents.)  Maybe something like this:

Spoiler

 box bws.png   69.54K   302 downloads

EDIT

Or perhaps a readme?  I looked around and didn't really find a good readme of BWS.  But perhaps that's just another thing I didn't notice.