23 replies to this topic

[aVENGER]

Essentially, I'd like to gather a bit more feedback on Rogue Rebalancing before moving the mod forward to the next major revision. So, if you disliked a certain aspect of the mod, or if you thought that a feature was particularly well done or if you simply want to share your review of the mod with other people feel free to post here.


Some basic guidelines

• Generic comments like "Your mod sucks!" or "Your mod rocks!" are not very helpful to me because I need to know more details if you expect me to do something about it in a future revision.
  
• Therefore, please try to formulate your comments in a meaningful manner. For example: "I don't think that [FEATURE X] is such a good idea because [INSERT REASON] so I'd like to see it changed." and "I really appreciated [FEATURE Y] so I'd like to see it expanded in this way [INSERT SUGGESTION]." are both fine.
  
• If you are going to write a review please specify which version of the mod you have played since features often change between different mod revisions.

Edited by aVENGER, 12 August 2007 - 02:45 PM.

[SirLancelot]

I would really appreciate if you could make the thief roleplaying more realistic. In BG2, you can't be an ordinary thief, or in general terms, a man/woman who steal goods, without feeling the guilt of a cheater. You have access to incredibly powerful items with little or no restrictions. Furthermore, you can borrow them easily even with a poor skilled pc/npc thanks to the Potion of Master Thievery and/or the Potion of Perception.

What i propose is, firstly, making almost every single shop unstealable or much difficult to steal from. Secondly, removing the potions mentioned above. Thirdly, marking some items as unstealable.

And.. i would set the "Buys at" percent for fences (for the smugglers who accept and buy stolen mercancies) to a minimal degree. That way, the "steal/sell, steal/sell" infamous cheat couldn't be an horrible temptation anymore.

[aVENGER]

SirLancelot, on Sep 8 2007, 01:54 PM, said:

I would really appreciate if you could make the thief roleplaying more realistic. In BG2, you can't be an ordinary thief, or in general terms, a man/woman who steal goods, without feeling the guilt of a cheater. You have access to incredibly powerful items with little or no restrictions.

I know what you mean. Unfortunately, due to the hardcoded limitations of the IE, it's impossible to make stealing a Full Plate Mail harder than stealing a Dagger for example.

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Furthermore, you can borrow them easily even with a poor skilled pc/npc thanks to the Potion of Master Thievery and/or the Potion of Perception.

I'll prevent these potions from stacking in RR v3.8 as a part of the "Revised thievery" component (formerly known as Revised fences). For example, you will no longer be able to drink two Potions of Master Thievery in order to get the double Pick Pocket bonus. However, different potions will still stack, so drinking a Potion of Perception and a Potion of Master Thievery together will grant you a 60% bonus to the Pick Pockets skill.

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What i propose is, firstly, making almost every single shop unstealable or much difficult to steal from. Secondly, removing the potions mentioned above. Thirdly, marking some items as unstealable. And.. i would set the "Buys at" percent for fences (for the smugglers who accept and buy stolen mercancies) to a minimal degree. That way, the "steal/sell, steal/sell" infamous cheat couldn't be an horrible temptation anymore.

The "Revised fences" component of Rogue Rebalancing prevents the player from robbing characters who buy stolen goods, thus effectively closing the "infinite money exploit". However, I'm against preventing stealing from shops altogether since stealing is the designated profession of a Thief after all. BTW, the next revision of BG2 Tweaks will have a new component which does just that. As for the potions, I don't want to remove them as they actually exist in PnP AD&D, albeit in a slightly different form which is not 100% applicable to the IE. I think that making them non-stackable will be a good middle ground solution.

[SirLancelot]

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I'll prevent these potions from stacking in RR v3.8 as a part of the "Revised thievery" component (formerly known as Revised fences). For example, you will no longer be able to drink two Potions of Master Thievery in order to get the double Pick Pocket bonus. However, different potions will still stack, so drinking a Potion of Perception and a Potion of Master Thievery together will grant you a 60% bonus to the Pick Pockets skill.

Great, but keep in mind that +60% bonus is still a great boost. I think you could consider the idea of remove the aforementioned potions from certain locations (boxes, chests, dead bodies, and so on) Not a casual treasure anymore. Shopkeepers, or at least, regular shopkeepers, should not sell them, anyway. An ordinary merchant that sells items which can potentially ruin him/her is an amusing idea, but BG is not a Monthy Python film.

And as an additional rebalancing or as an another optional component, why not nerf potion benefits?

+40 -> +30 or +40 -> +20
+20 -> +10 or +20 -> +15

Or even create different versions of each one.

My two cents.

Edited by SirLancelot, 26 December 2007 - 03:26 PM.

[SirLancelot]

I have edited my previous message. I think it gave the false impression of not recognize your points and efforts, and maybe it was a little confusing.

[aVENGER]

I won't make the potions any rarer than they already are since, in PnP, they are supposed to be fairly common in cities and larger towns (i.e. Atkhatla and Trademeet). However, I may have found a way to make them almost completely match the PnP potions, though it still needs to be thoroughly tested. For reference, here are the PnP descriptions of the potions from the Complete Thief's Handbook:

Potion of Master Thievery: This potion gives the thief a temporary increase in levels if he has fewer than 13 levels of experience. The number of levels gained depend on the thief's level, as shown below.

										 
Level of	  Levels		  Added		  Increase
Imbiber	  bestowed		hit dice	 in each skill
1st-3rd		 5			  5d6			 +20%
4th-6th		 4			  4d6+1		   +16%
7th-9th		 3			  3d6+2		   +12%
10th-12th	   2			  2d6+3 		  +8%

The thief acts as if he were at the experience level bestowed by the magic of the potion. Damage sustained is taken first from magically gained temporary extra hit points. So far as thieving skills are concerned, the potion affects these all equally by the increase shown. The effects of this potion last for 5d6 rounds.

Potion of Perception: This enhances the senses of the imbiber to a great degree, with numerous effects:
(i) A thief gains a 10% bonus to his open locks and remove traps skills.
(ii) A thief gains a 20% bonus to his find traps and hear noise skills.
(iii) A character's chance for being surprised is halved (usually this means a +1 or +2 on the die).
(iv) A character's chance for detecting secret or concealed doors is doubled. This may also be applied to detecting hidden or concealed objects if the DM wishes to use an Intelligence check for this; a bonus of +4 applies to such an ability check. A corresponding bonus of -4 applies to any observation proficiency check.
(v) A character has a 25% chance of automatically detecting invisible or detecting illusions (from spells or spell-like effects below 5th level) as such. However, this enhancement also makes the imbiber vulnerable to gaze attacks and weapons and also sound-based attacks (such as a shout spell or the roaring of an androsphinx) and all saving throws made against such attacks are at -2. The effects of the potion last for 1d4+4 turns.

[aVENGER]

Thanks for the kind words, MTS.

BTW, when I get around to implementing the PnP potions I'll add them as an optional subcomponent of "Revised Thievery". This means that you'll be free to select whether you want the regular BG2 version of the potions (with their effects made non-stackable) or the proper PnP AD&D potions (also with non-stackable effects).

[SirLancelot]

An interesting approach. Thank you , i will play with a thief again.

[GeN1e]

Thoughts onto the ST component, v4.02, finished just now.


Readme states you'd have to be at least 750k XP to do it. It was quite correct for the older version (pre 2007), and due to not checking the 'version changes' I came there at ~900k, with the party of PC F9/W11, Korgan 11, Yoshimo 14, Viconia 12 (she had only few ks remaining to hit the level 12, so I've spent twenty minutes running around looking for some weaklings to kill before entering the STG), Edwin 12, Haerdalis F9/W10/T11 (as I could find no other candidate to do thieving after Yoshi will vanish).

Well, it was a slaughter rather than a fight.

Daedral and his pals were stupid if annoying. After seeing them mobbing Viconia and ignoring stoneskinned PC, Haer and Edwin I realoaded and protected her with the Sanctuary spell (it must have been a premonition to memorize one). This time those idiots tried to swarm Korgan (rather successfully, but that's another matter). The picture was - Korgan running in circles around idle Edwin and sanctuaried Vicky and PC shooting at them with a xbow. Yoshi iirc has cornered himself somewhere safe and Haer was running after idiot, swinging once or twice when he could catch up with them.
Resolution - were they smarter a tiny bit, they'd give a quick hack to PC and Haer, reducing their SSs to nothing quickly enough.

Haz - nothing interesting, after catching his Sequencer two times I set a couple of traps nearby and he run right into them, dying on the spot.

Aran - I was expecting him to be tough, and spent five rounds buffing my party, setting traps to get newcomers, summoning things, but... I could simply walk in and be just as fine. As soon as the door was opened I threw two Chaos spells in and all of them started whacking each other. I let summons in, disarmed the trap just after the doorway, let fighting people in as well and shooted them all the way to death.


All in all, I think that either the readme is outdated a bit, or STG's difficulty might be enhanced a little to make it worthy waiting for 11+ level to take it on.

Also - the top floor of the guild (where Renal used to reside) has it's coffins full, allowing for the second looting raid. Not that much important, but still weird a bit.


Cheers

[aVENGER]

GeN1e, on Jan 14 2009, 02:01 AM, said:

Thoughts onto the ST component, v4.02, finished just now.


Readme states you'd have to be at least 750k XP to do it. It was quite correct for the older version (pre 2007), and due to not checking the 'version changes' I came there at ~900k, with the party of PC F9/W11, Korgan 11, Yoshimo 14, Viconia 12 (she had only few ks remaining to hit the level 12, so I've spent twenty minutes running around looking for some weaklings to kill before entering the STG), Edwin 12, Haerdalis F9/W10/T11 (as I could find no other candidate to do thieving after Yoshi will vanish).

Well, it's mainly a general reccomendation for average parties, but of course, experienced players such as yourself should be able to handle the guild even at lower levels.

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Daedral and his pals were stupid if annoying. After seeing them mobbing Viconia and ignoring stoneskinned PC, Haer and Edwin I realoaded and protected her with the Sanctuary spell (it must have been a premonition to memorize one). This time those idiots tried to swarm Korgan (rather successfully, but that's another matter). The picture was - Korgan running in circles around idle Edwin and sanctuaried Vicky and PC shooting at them with a xbow. Yoshi iirc has cornered himself somewhere safe and Haer was running after idiot, swinging once or twice when he could catch up with them.
Resolution - were they smarter a tiny bit, they'd give a quick hack to PC and Haer, reducing their SSs to nothing quickly enough.

Pretty much expected behavior. They are supposed to go for the least protected target but the prioritizing can get messed up a bit as it's not possible to detect who's wielding a ranged weapon via scripting. I'll see if I can readjust their targeting routine in some future release but it's not a high priority for now.

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Haz - nothing interesting, after catching his Sequencer two times I set a couple of traps nearby and he run right into them, dying on the spot.

That's expected as well. In general, I'm strictly against giving humanoid characters inexplicable resistances, immunities and exceptionally high attribute scores. So, being just a regular human mage, Haz dies pretty easily to traps.

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Aran - I was expecting him to be tough, and spent five rounds buffing my party, setting traps to get newcomers, summoning things, but... I could simply walk in and be just as fine. As soon as the door was opened I threw two Chaos spells in and all of them started whacking each other. I let summons in, disarmed the trap just after the doorway, let fighting people in as well and shooted them all the way to death.

Yes, that's a very effective tactic and is even recommended in the readme. Since they are relatively low lever characters the thieves have modest saving throws and are fairly easy to take out using Chaos, Web, Hold Monster and similar spells. Aran does drink a Potion of Clarity beforehand and the Kara-Tur mercenaries drink potions of Invulnerability but if you dispel that, they're pretty much toast.

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All in all, I think that either the readme is outdated a bit, or STG's difficulty might be enhanced a little to make it worthy waiting for 11+ level to take it on.

Heh, I'm actually glad that the STI encounters turned out to be easier than you expected rather than being an exceptionally difficult battle. Since it's a plot critical event (if you side with Bodhi) I deliberately didn't want to make it too hard, especially after all the difficulty based criticism which that component received in the past versions. Anyway, remember that the perceived difficulty varies according to the player's skill, so while an experienced tactician isn't going to have much trouble here, regular players might find it quite challenging.

Edited by aVENGER, 13 January 2009 - 11:51 PM.

[aVENGER]

Guest, on Jan 14 2009, 07:45 PM, said:

Very short feedback on the CoC encounter and Arledrian quest:

they are so damn good and offer so many opportunities for roleplaying a la Fallout/Arcanum that it makes BG2 Vanilla pales in comparison.

Heh, that's probably because Fallout (the first one), Planescape Torment and Arcanum are some of my favorite cRPGs of all time.

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I implore you to add some other encounters/quests like that. Pretty please?

While, I'd like to add more non-linear quests with multiple endings, meaningful (non-cosmetic) dialogue choices and appropriate consequences to the game, fact is, designing them require a lot of time and effort, as well as exceptionally thorough playtesting. Unfortunately, I can't devote that much time to BG2 modding right now, and I don't think that will change in the foreseeable future. For the moment, I'm afraid I'm limited to simple maintenance updates as far as Rogue Rebalancing is concerned. OTOH, since aTweaks components are far easier to code and test, the chance of getting that mod updated are a bit better.

[aVENGER]

Guest, on Feb 5 2009, 11:04 AM, said:

I admit to not trying your kits in part because I'm not sure if they work for Mac versions of BG2.

Admittedly, I haven't personally tested Rogue Rebalancing and aTweaks on a Mac, but I seem to recal that a few mac players have tried the mods. You might have better luck asking devSin and erik on the G3 forums.

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BG2 has an error that deviates from the pen and paper D&D that it was based on. Half-elves are not allowed to become Druid/Mages or Fighter/Druid/Mages. I believe the 2nd edition D&D player's handbook states that the druid class can be used interchanged with the cleric class when used to create a multi-classs half-elf.

I'm fairly certain that's hardcoded.

[GeN1e]

Finally killed the six. The last time I did it my party was a bit overpowered, so now it was almost a fair fight. Almost - because not only they have HP at possible maximum (which is forgivable) while I hadn't (actually it's been the main reason for me to edited my party for hp close to max), but also that erroneous extra hit die that PC gets at the start.
My only real problem and a source of frustration was that bitch Selina had a great time PWKilling both my wizards.

Edwin had to spend both my Timestop scrolls on them, after all it's only fair since they have PWKs and an active Chain Cont. So, both Grok and Bodak were standing blind, then all of them got ADHW in the middle and just a moment later, once TS had ended - the second ADHW. Another TS kicked in and only Grok, Zaeron and Vend remained. Zaeron quickly enough died, Vend backstabbed Viconia for death, Korgan put Stoneskin on (from Item Revision's Ring of Earth Control) and guess what? The picture with Dedral had begun to repeat itself. Grok and Vend were running around, doing nearly nothing, as everyone was protected with SS. I've managed to catch Grok, but Vend was immune to divination and made no attempt to reveal his whereabouts. Had I not have Remove Magic at my disposal, it'd be very weird situation - he sits somewhere invisible and I can do nothing with it, as the only way to make him visible would to get rid of SS. Sure, none is that much of an idiot.

In fewer words - they consider SS char to be invincible, which is far from truth. Grok even has electrical damage on his axe.

PS Unbelievable amount of typos... That's what happens when you type too fast.

Edited by GeN1e, 15 February 2009 - 06:58 PM.

[aVENGER]

GeN1e, on Feb 16 2009, 01:28 AM, said:

Finally killed the six. The last time I did it my party was a bit overpowered, so now it was almost a fair fight. Almost - because not only they have HP at possible maximum (which is forgivable) while I hadn't (actually it's been the main reason for me to edited my party for hp close to max), but also that erroneous extra hit die that PC gets at the start.

Whoops, I completely forgot about that. It must have happened because I originally created the CoC party as regular PCs and then converted their CHRs into CREs. The extra hit die is unintentional and will be removed in some future release. OTOH, the maximum (legitimate) hit point roll is intentional.

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My only real problem and a source of frustration was that bitch Selina had a great time PWKilling both my wizards.

Yeah, that can be quite nasty, but it should be noted that Selina only uses her Power Word: Kill scrolls on the "Core Rules" difficulty setting and higher. On lower difficulty levels her offensive spell selection is greatly reduced.

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In fewer words - they consider SS char to be invincible, which is far from truth. Grok even has electrical damage on his axe.

Nah, they just deprioritize stoneskined targets a lot, especially in Venduris' case. As with STI, this is largely indented behavior, but I understand that it may appear a bit excessive in some situations. I'll try to introduce a little bit more randomness into the targeting routine in some future release.

Cheers, and thanks for the comments!

[kthxbye]

Wow d00d ur m0d r0xx!1!!1one!eleven

Ok, jokes 'bout opening advices aside (but it really rocks!) just a note on the Chosen of Cyric encounter.
First of all, I've played it some time ago, so I don't remember clearly who did what, please excuse me if my feedback isn't as detailed as it should be.. Anyway. I've read in the readme that the CoC encounter would fit for a fairly experienced 6 char party, so I decided to wait 'till the very end of the game (read: already done all the sidequests, main plot was the only thing left) to defeat Bodhi. Did that with my 6 char party: main pc (blade), Imoen, Aerie, Minsc, Keldorn, Jaheira. First thing, please note that the CoC encounter requires a 6 char party but if the pc is engaged in a romance, after defeating Bodhi the party's down to 5 (in my game, Aerie's the one who got vampirized). Leaving the graveyard district triggered the CoC encounter. The opening dialogue was just great. No other words could describe it. As already said, I too would love to see other encounters with such good dialogues and use of abilities - both of the main pc and of the party members.
I decided to go for the battle, and it was a great error. I don't remember the levels of my party, but all of them were terribly close to the SoA xp cap (and someone even broke it already, if I remember it well). I tried the encounter several times, but everytime the thief killed Imoen (if not invisible) or Minsc with only one succesfull backstab, disregarding Keldorn's True Sight (which fires once per round, so the thief had all the time to hide and backstab). Aside from that, and down to a 4 char party (Aerie out 'cause of main plot, one chunked), after a quick buff casting I found myself outnumbered and greatly overpowered. I think that the three main troubling foes were the female caster, the chosen and the thief (he hits hard).. In the end I couldn't win the fight once, playing both fair or cheesing.
Of course I know I didn't have the best party composition, as my only healer got kidnapped, and I think it could have cut in half my party's power, and I know too that it's quite a poor feedback of the encounter.
In the end, I found them to be too hard to hit and to be too hard hitters (backstabbing thief on top, killing 80hp characters in one hit).

Hope it will help. Obviously enough I have the CoC component installed on my current install too, so I will give more detailed feedback as soon as I'll fight them again.

Edited by kthxbye, 20 February 2009 - 02:33 AM.