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aigleborgne

Member Since 24 Jan 2005
Offline Last Active Jun 02 2025 02:58 AM

Topics I've Started

Call Woodland Beeings

05 May 2025 - 11:10 AM

Hi,

 

I'm currently reviewing Call Woodland Beeings spell.

Spell Revisions and aTweaks are focused on Hamadryads but they won't respond to this spell, it is clearly stated in books. There are other minor creatures, but regarding feys, it is limited to dryads:

 

2d8 brownies 30% 20% 10% 1d4 centaurs 5% 30% 5% 1d4 dryads 1% 25% 15% 1d8 pixies 10% 20% 10% 1d4 satyrs 1% 30% 10% 1d6 sprites 0% 5% 25% 1 treant — 5% 25% 1 unicorn — 15% 20%

 

Dryads might be strong in BG1, but will quickly become weak in BG2.

 

I have currently implemented the following:

Call Woodland Beings
Duration: 1 turn
Casting Time: 9
 
By means of this spell, the caster is able to summon certain woodland creatures to his location. Naturally, this spell works only outdoors, but not necessarily only in wooded areas.

7th: 1 Young Treant
13th: 1 Middle-aged Treant
20th+: 1 Elder Treant

The summoned creatures aid the caster by whatever means they possess, staying until they are slain or the spell duration expires.

Young Treant (7 Hit Dice):
STR 20, DEX 8, CON 20, INT 12, WIS 16, CHA 12
HP 91, AC 0, THAC0 13, -25% fire resistance
2 Attacks Per Round, 2d8 crushing (5 feet range)

Treant (9 Hit Dice):
STR 21, DEX 8, CON 20, INT 12, WIS 16, CHA 12
HP 117, AC 0, THAC0 11, -25% fire resistance
2 Attacks Per Round, 3d6 crushing (5 feet range)

Young Treant (11 Hit Dice):
STR 23, DEX 8, CON 21, INT 12, WIS 16, CHA 12
HP 142, AC 0, THAC0 9, -25% fire resistance
2 Attacks Per Round, 4d6 crushing (5 feet range)
 
Treant has plant traits:
- Infravision.
- Immunity to all mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects).
- Immunity to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, polymorph, and stunning.
- Not subject to critical hits and backstab.
 
I have not implemented their ability to animate trees as it would be overpowered.
Since Treants are powerful, I have reduced duration to 1 turn (instead of 3). I have added Outdoor checking as RAW.
I was thinking to add a limit one call at a time (similarly to Planetar and Deva), so you can't cast the spell 3 times to get 3 creatures.
 
Now, I still think that a young treant would be OP in BG1. Strength and Constitution stats are RAW for Elder Treant. I have lowered them for weaker versions, but I can lower them a bit more, maybe 19/19 for young and 20/20 to treant.

 

Another option would be to use Unicorns, but there is no animation. Closest is a horse!

 

I could also put 1D4 dryads at level 7 (using probability). 1 Young Treant or Treant at level 13, and a stronger one at level 20.

 

Any suggestion ? :)


aTweaks for EE

29 April 2025 - 12:56 AM

Hi,
 
A few years ago, I started a project to make aTweaks fully compatible with EE. It was a huge task and I finally gave up. A few months ago, I had this crazy idea to merge aTweaks with my old project Enhanced Creatures (20 years ago).
 
Building aTweaks from scratch (or almost) with EE in mind. Some players might still play older engines but targetting only one engine make modding easier and less subject to bugs. Today, I can't see any reason to not play EE, it's arguably the best engine we have. Also, it will be made and tested for BG1 and BG2 since I don't play other EE games.
 
I have started to work on PnP monsters and patching a high number of CRE was a challenge. I really like how aVENGER did it but it was still quite some work to maintain, not to mention adding more monsters.
20 years ago, I have worked on Enhanced Creatures and I had to leave for RL. Then, David W. created SCS which covered half of my project. Other half was to make all monsters closer to PnP, something aTweaks was already partly covering.
 
So why not merging the 2 by adding all uncovered monsters in aTweaks?
Since I needed to patch many creatures, I wanted a robust system. Additionally, having a huge number of items, spells, and effects can lead to bugs, since they are usually forgotten after testing phases. Checking each of those files takes time and is not optimal.
 
I have created a generator system which cover everything: WEIDU scripts and BAF scripting. This generator is strongly typed to make it easy to configure creatures.
 
It contains everything needed. It will generate this files:
 
Notice the former file create weapons and spells. Any fix or improvement will update everything. My goal is to generate almost everything (that make sense). Some creatures will probably require dedicated code (thinking about fiends summoning and scripting).
 
I have currently finished these monsters:
- Ankheg
- Basilisk
- Bear
- Carrion Crawler
- Greater Cats
- Dogs
- Helmed Horror
- Battle Horror
- Doom Guard
- Wolves
- Golems
- Ogres
- Hellcat
- Displacer Beast
- Spectral Hound
 
aVENGER has made an interesting system for immunities but it was hard to maintain. I have kept his idea but it is now generated from this file:
 
I am currently working on converting existing aTweaks monsters, which will take several weeks.
I have started with BG1 to have a smaller scope, but I will extend it with BG2 later on.
I might also generate documentation from creature files.
 
First releases might not be as good as current material, but it will a huge potential with upcoming iterations.