10 replies to this topic

[Rathwellin the Bard]

Just for reference I'm still stuck without my main PC.  AMD has shiped me a new processor but it's still a few days out.  In the two weeks that I've ben without a PC at home for the most part ... I'm sitting on the floor typing on my 4 year old son's machine right now ... among other things I've been planning out my next game of BGII after I get done with my current one.  One decision I made was to include Nallia in my party.  

In a lot of ways she is an underused NPC.  Her thieving skills frankly suck though with potions it is possible to use her as a primary thief, but Jan and Imoen are so much easier to use that folks typically pick them, make a thief PC, or go without.

Mage wise Nallia looses out to Edwin (and Kelsey/Tashia if you go the mod route), breaks even with Imoen, and edges out Jan, though players tend to pick all of these others over her.

All of this is too bad IMO.  I find her to be an interesting NPC and if you are a fighter type PC then it's good to have her in the party for the stronghold stuff.

Quite separately from Nallia I was thinking about Refinements and how much I would like to really test some of the specialist mage HLAs when it finally hit me.  Imoen had been improved in Refinements (making her much better than Nallia overall) so why not do the same for Nallia?  I could make Nallia a specialist mage and then have both her and Immy in the same party without worrying about overlap at all.

With this in mind I gave the matter some more consideration.

1.  I didn't want to duplicate existing NPCs so the Conjurer and Illusionist speciality types were out.

2.  I didn't want to cheat too much beyond giving her a kit on her second class thus I didn't want to give her a kit for which she did not meet the stat requirements for so Abjurer, Diviner, Enchanter, and Necromancer were out.

That left Invoker and Transmuter to decided between.

Invoker made a lot of sense for Nallia in my mind.  As the daughter of a fighter it seems likely that she could easily have focused on 'battle magic.'  Also the opposed schools rang true to my feelings about Nallia's character.  Conjuration seems a bit close to slavery for someone like Nallia to use, though I can see some counter arguments here, and Illusion seems to be a bit misleading for someone like Nallia who wants folks to see the 'truth' (at least as she percieves it).

Transmuter also seemed very fitting to me.  In the 'real world' transmutation was traditionally associated with wealthy nobles.  It also just seems like a 'right' choice for someone interested in changing the world like Nallia seems to want.  The loss of Abjuration (helping / defending others) was a bit of a blow, but didn't offset much how well the speciality seems to me to fit her.

From a meta-game perspective Transmuters don't seem like a very popular choice and, while more likely to be chosen as a PC kit, a lot of gamers tend to avoid the Invoker kit due to it being the only one with two opposed schools, both of which are big hits.

I'm curious to hear everyone else's thoughts here.  Does one school or the other seem 'more appropriate' to you?  Is this something that would make a good Refinements optional component?

Oh, and for the record, I left Wild Magic out deliberately.  It just didn't seem to fit her well and I don't care for it much in play either.

[T.G.Maestro]

I see much logic in your reasoning, and to tell the truth, I like some of your ideas (especially the Transmuter version).
Still, I think this would be a better component for the already existing NPC Kit Pack over at G3. Changing Nalia's secondary kit to Transmuter wouldn't be a great deal for them and would fit into the goals of that project too. Sure, they tend to add new (non-BG2) kits to NPCs as well, but in this case they could simply add the modifications requested by you.

Anyway, I'd like to hear the opinion of Littiz as well.

[the bigg]

NPC kit contains all mage schools (except Wild Mage) and a special Adventurer kit (+20 to pick locks and find traps, no backstab) for both Nalia and Immy.

[T.G.Maestro]

NPC kit contains all mage schools (except Wild Mage) and a special Adventurer kit

Which HLA tables do these kits use? The classical thief table?

[Idobek]

Which HLA tables do these kits use? The classical thief table?

The adventurer uses its own table (standard thief with Assassination removed). The mage kits use the standard tables.

[Rathwellin the Bard]

Somehow I had missed that about the NPC Kit mod. I had read about the Adventurer kit but had missed this possiblity for Nallia. I'll take a look at this once I get my PC running again.

Oh, and TGM I agree that Transmuter sounded like an interesting choice for her. I was leaning in that direction myself though I am still being tempted by those Invoker HLAs.

[T.G.Maestro]

The adventurer uses its own table (standard thief with Assassination removed

Oh, very bad news.
This means it still has all the flaws of the original thief tables, including UAI, right? I guess we couldn't propose to use one of the Refinements tables, the pure thief table, or at least adding an alternative option to use the unaltered thief HLa table (this way one could install the kit and still use the Refinements thief table)?

[Idobek]

If you want to change it in the Refinements install go ahead. I'll simply state that Refinements should be installed afterwards.

[T.G.Maestro]

[Idobek]

Gah! I don't know what I'm thinking. The adventurer kit is only available to Imoen & Nalia, as they are dual-classed they never get access to its HLA table.

LoI will contain a PC version (possibly with its own HLA table).

[T.G.Maestro]

OK, thanks for the clarification.