Mahng

I guess Jarno is roleplaying his chaotic character. Thanks for coming Jarno.

Thanks SConrad (and Azkyroth)! Yes, this is very informative and does answer my question. It looks to me like it will work but I will have to try it out. To get my feet wet in this modding scene, all I'm trying to do now is to make a rebalanced Shapeshifter that isn't unbalanced in the other direction (too powerful). Seemed like just a matter of adjusting innate spells and items. Basically the problems that Bioware, and that the current Shapeshifter Rebalanced mod creator had are that Magical Weapons (the claws) can always be dispelled, and if you use a real weapon, you have to settle for permitting infinite shapeshifting. In trying to resolve this, I see there is also a bug where if you "create an item in slot", a weapon in the equipped slots, it doesn't show up (it is invisible, though functional if you use a hotkey to equip melee weapon). Otherwise you have to go to the Inventory screen and physically click the weapon and set it back down. Unless perhaps someone knows how to use the "unknown" effect of "Item: (Equip Weapon)[113]"??

Other problems I want to handle include: You cannot have a casting time or cool effects when transitioning back to human (weapon switching just immediately switches you to human, which nags at my role-playing consciousness), and also the mod permits unlimited spell casting while shapeshifted. I think this is wrong (and unbalanced) - a Druid trains all his life to control the shapeshifting, mastering speaking should be a whole other matter (whereas Gnoll mages were born as Gnolls and naturally develop Gnoll linguistic skills). I know the latter can be handled by adjusting the weapon item with miscast magic or some such but I'm going for having everything the way I think it should be. I've also added effects such as a damage animation and falling down after reverting to human, confused for the 1st 3 secs of becoming a werewolf, etc.). But after a lot of messing around and adjusting, I think that I can't get exactly what I want to trigger and untrigger the werewolf form without some scripting. Probably, I will go for a script that detects the presence of the werewolf form (created by an unmovable armor item created in the armor slot when the ability is used) and the lack of presence of the werewolf paws, and if this is true (which means the paw was dispelled), than the script immediately re-casts the magical werewolf paws.

Any other views?

I chose Quality of banters ... . Ultimately the most important thing to me is an interesting and believable character that adds more depth to the story which would include forming a relationship with PC and NPCs. Either a funny character OR funny circumstances is a definite plus.

Seemless with other NPCs is not superimportant - for example, Tashia's text remarks after sleeping are cool, and more than the usual 1-3 response options is totally ok. Fade is my best example of an ideal NPC.

That being said, character class and power (WITHOUT cheating, superstats & superweapons) IS important as in keeping with role-playing, there has to be something about the NPC that commands your respect to want him to join. It was very difficult to take Keto along in my party though I enjoyed her dialogue and story (I eventually had to train her to be effective with a bow as a fighter/thief/mage in order to keep her). Personally I think the Bard class stinks. Who stands back and sings while their friends are fighting for their lives? Or sings while I'm trying to sneak through a dungeon? Sorry, I digress. No tomatoes from the bard lovers pls.

Thanks Solar, Dannilo & Dirt Squirrel. I have Fade's eyes as crimson red but is that what they were supposed to be ... not sure ... Haha, nice one Roman! I could see that working for Fade. I haven't gotten into using real life pics for portraits, but Jade's look is pretty good - expression is just too bored for Fade though. Come on, there must be more out there ...

@Mahng:

Have you got a copy of WeiDU.exe? If not, just make a copy of Setup-Fade.exe and rename it WeiDU. Put it in your BG2 directory. Then run MS-DOS prompt, and in DOS, go to your BG2 directory and type: weidu ARAN.dlg. This will create a file called ARAN.d in your BG2 directory. Just send me the ARAN.d file.

Thanks - ok I have the Aran.d file but not sure how I can send it to you ... oh here it is!