7 replies to this topic

[Radagast-The-Brown]

Hello people. I'm trying atm to learn some .cre editing with NI and spend lots of hours on it and I'm trying to edit dragons/pit fiends/mariliths/balors etc for starters.
I'm trying to completely fix these's monster's immunities as well as their range on attacks etc and also their complete PnP abilities including but not limited to invisibility detection, full dragon/demon immunities, vorpal/poison/panic on attacks, immunity to critical hits cause of their size, regeneration as well as fixing their correct number of attacks, thac0, resistances, saving throws and mainly their HP and levels to reflect their POWER.
(Some mods like Longer Road and Kensai Ryu as well as Horred have already done great work with some of those beasts on many of their mods but I want to kinda do the same for mega installs.)
This mainly goes for mega mod installations such as TDD,SoS, TS, RoT and BP. I just noticed in the game that tons of these monsters in both BP, TDD and all those mega mods have severe issues of mistakes on all these areas or some times it's just small flaws.
( For example the dragon "dragtope.cre" from TDD is completely screwed up immunities missing as well as completely screwed up inventory with tons of helmets or rings.... rofl. Also many dragons miss their dragring.itm which is a classic dragon immunity ring item)
What I aim is to fix many of these creatures to provide a more realistic dnd environment per PnP ( 2nd edition since bg2 supports it) so that the player "really" respects these fearsome beasts when he encounters them. ( I would really like to do the same with scripting but thats almost impossible for a nonprogrammer.)

The only problem is that i'm not a "really" experienced programmer so I "will" need some kind of help in all this editing of stuff at times. In the future once I finish, I can upload the files I guess and the modders can decide if they want the improvements or not in their mods.

PS : A question for starters : When I add effects on a creature such as "Invisibility Detection" or "Immunity to backstab"
etc, What things should I be careful of : Example :

"Invisible Detection by script (193)"

Targettype : Unknown (0)
Must be 1 or 2 : 1
Duration : Instant/Permanent (1)
Probability 1 : 100

Are the above enough?? Or should I edit and change more properties like some unknown values in order for it to work?
If the above is enough is it ok to copy and paste an effect from one creature to another? Will it work? Or will the ability effect screw the creature, cause it will get different unknown values then it should?

Any help appreciated, Thanx.

Radagast

Edited by Radagast-The-Brown, 03 September 2007 - 06:38 PM.

[SConrad]

Moved to IE Modding Help.

[Hoppy]

Radagast, have you tried using DLTCEP at all? You may find it useful in doing the editing you like and seems to be a little easier to get what you want. Just my thoughts. I can try and help you with it if you give me some exact ideas of what you want changed.
One suggestion is giving dragons a lot more AC and HP to serve there etherealness. I haven't had the helmet problem with the Topaz dragon so that may be installation buginess.

[Radagast-The-Brown]

Radagast, have you tried using DLTCEP at all? You may find it useful in doing the editing you like and seems to be a little easier to get what you want. Just my thoughts. I can try and help you with it if you give me some exact ideas of what you want changed.
One suggestion is giving dragons a lot more AC and HP to serve there etherealness. I haven't had the helmet problem with the Topaz dragon so that may be installation buginess.

Not really I have no idea of how to use DLTCEP for editing creatures but I thought it messed up with dialogue.tlk all the time so I avoided it since it needed many setup options too. Ni on the other hand seemed quite easy for me...At least till now...

As for the topaz dragon Hoppy r u sure u checked it right? Sure in the TDD/cre folder he only appears to have 2 items droppable but where is his weapon? where is his helm to avoid criticals? How about the ring97 and the dragring to get his immunities? Where is his immunity to backstab, his movement rate bonus, his invisible detection script, his race/class attributes? On the other hand, in BP1.77/cre folder the creature gets some items, a weapon, some abilities and many helms...Still too many are missing though and the same goes for my final version of the file dragtope.cre after the megainstall...And that's just a small example tbh...

Dragons miss a lot... Most of them can use much better AC, Levels, Thac0, HP, stats, damage on attacks, and their att/round should be set to at least 4. Every dragon should get movement rate bonus, better intelligence scripting on spamming his breath attack on cooldown, invisibility detection, backstab/level drain/critical hit immunity, full dragon ring97.itm and dragring.itm immunities, much more resistance to weapon damage ( especially missile damage) and surely better saving throws. I'm not saying this goes for ALL dragons... It's just that many of them lose a lot of the above stuff, no wonder they r weak when confronted...
Finally I've never seen a dragon in a game have dragon fear "aura" like in p&p. The dragon fear was supposed to be a permanent constant aura, everyone should make saving throws to avoid running helplessly. I know I'm kinda crazy, meaning I ask too much, but hey making a game perfect is paranoid anyway to begin with.

That's all I could remember for now, and much stuff goes too for tanar'ri' and baatezu.

Edited by Radagast-The-Brown, 03 September 2007 - 06:33 PM.

[Hoppy]

As far as I know the DLTCEP won't rewrite the dialog tlk unless you are changing scripts or item descriptions. Same with NI. All you need really to get things rolling is to change the .cre for the dragons inserting what items you want and change the HP, AC to whatever. In DLTCEP, load and and click on the edit tab up top. Scroll to CRE and the panel will open. Click on LOAD EXTERNAL CREATURE on bottom and you can pick the creature to edit. Make sure you make a copy of the CRE file (original just in case). From there you can alter spells, items, AC, HP, etc. Is there a site where I can find the information on stats from original P&P and 2nd AD&D rules and I will try to implement the changes.
Is the dragtope.cre the first dragon where you get the blue scales? Maybe we are not talking about the same.
Laters

[Radagast-The-Brown]

As far as I know the DLTCEP won't rewrite the dialog tlk unless you are changing scripts or item descriptions. Same with NI. All you need really to get things rolling is to change the .cre for the dragons inserting what items you want and change the HP, AC to whatever. In DLTCEP, load and and click on the edit tab up top. Scroll to CRE and the panel will open. Click on LOAD EXTERNAL CREATURE on bottom and you can pick the creature to edit. Make sure you make a copy of the CRE file (original just in case). From there you can alter spells, items, AC, HP, etc.

Thnx for the tips I might try it, though I'm kinda used to NI atm and would better like to improve my skills there tbh.

Is there a site where I can find the information on stats from original P&P and 2nd AD&D rules and I will try to implement the changes.

2nd edition ad&d rules are pretty much obsolete these days we r talking about a 15-30year old pnp edition. Not likely to find a site. I have many books of 2nd edition in Hard Copy in my house naturally as I was a big fan (dm for a time)and still am tbh. (damn those sentimental feelings). The books u "might" want to look for, are the latest versions of 2nd edition ad&d Monstrous Manual and Player's Handbook book accessories. I might have them stored in another hard disk or cd ( I might look for them and sent them to u if u r interested so much), it's been quite a while since I needed them since I have them in hard copies.

Is the dragtope.cre the first dragon where you get the blue scales? Maybe we are not talking about the same.
Laters

It's the topaz dragon with the blue dragon scales and the topaz eye as droppable items. I think it's introduced from TDD and changed through BP.

[Hoppy]

It's the topaz dragon with the blue dragon scales and the topaz eye as droppable items. I think it's introduced from TDD and changed through BP.

I still didn't have the odd items. Just the scales and the eye and maybe something else(gems or gold) can't remember. Tapanasacar was his name and I found it to be a relatively tough battle but that is with the golem too.
Looking in DLTCEP right now at multiple dragxxx.cre files. Now for clarification, do you want a component that will make all of the dragons at least similar levels, HP, AC? Spell/magic resistances should vary IMHO, but if you want to make them all uber strong then we can do that and if people choose the component for tougher dragons et al, then they can install.
Dragtope.cre is Tapanasacar and is weak in HP compared to Firkraag or Grothgar but has a better AC. You can give them all detect illusion allowing for better invisibilty detection. Also, all of the dragons have different magic resistances such as Firkraag (100 to fire), Tapanasacar (100 to cold), etc. (haven't checked all) but if you want you can give them more. Pretty easy I think. Tapanasacar does have a helmet in my install and checking shows that it is not dropped (via DLTCEP) so we have different settings I think.
Radagast, give me some specific details as to the additions you want and I will try a few for you to test and tell you what I did.
Cheers (Good project by the way!)

Edited by Hoppy, 04 September 2007 - 12:55 PM.

[Radagast-The-Brown]

Looking in DLTCEP right now at multiple dragxxx.cre files. Now for clarification, do you want a component that will make all of the dragons at least similar levels, HP, AC? Spell/magic resistances should vary IMHO, but if you want to make them all uber strong then we can do that and if people choose the component for tougher dragons et al, then they can install.
Dragtope.cre is Tapanasacar and is weak in HP compared to Firkraag or Grothgar but has a better AC. Also, all of the dragons have different magic resistances such as Firkraag (100 to fire), Tapanasacar (100 to cold), etc. (haven't checked all) but if you want you can give them more. Pretty easy I think. Tapanasacar does have a helmet in my install and checking shows that it is not dropped (via DLTCEP) so we have different settings I think.
Radagast, give me some specific details as to the additions you want and I will try a few for you to test and tell you what I did.

KK ill give u a small idea of changes that must be made to many dragons. Every dragon should have at least:

STR, DEX, CON of 20-22 minimum or even more.
Number of attacks : 4
HP : minimum of 300. Up to 500 or more maximum.
Natural Ac : -10 or better.
Thac0 : -4 or better.
Damage/attack : 3d10+10 minimum or more, up to 5d10+15 depending perhaps on specific dragon age and species. ( u can get ideas through monstrous manual).
Saving throws : 2 or less (better) to all saving throws.( for all I care the dragon may be using a ring of prot +2 or equivalent item, besides the adventurer has loads of magical items in bgII why not the dragon too? better make it undroppable though)

Immunities : normal weapons,critical hits,backstab,level drain, perhaps many death effects too, hold/stun effects of any kind or spells that hinder movement, more immunities depending on species.
Movement rate should be increased for all creatures of dragon size. A dragon should be able to leap to any char in his lair in no time if he wished so.(boots of speed could do it, or movement rate bonus via a permanent effect ability)

Improved Casting time ( a robe of vecna should do the trick as far as I know): A dragon's supernatural ability is to cast spells as innate abilities without needing a spellbook or any components. This means that he is not subject to spell failure and that all spells should be cast in the "Fast" phase of ad&d which means almost instantly as fast as a magic missile or a stoneskin. ( casting time of 1 never more than that) This means that the dragon can easily cast spells once in a while while attacking.

Claw/Bite attack range of at least "3".
Missile resistance of at least 50, other weapon resistances 30 to 60 depending on species and/or age.
Magic resistance : 50 to 80 depending on dragon. Fire/Cold/Acid resistances differ per species. Certainly immunity to his breath attack element.
The hardest part to implement will be a change in the script to make the dragon " Spam " his breath weapon on each cooldown meaning every 3 rounds, never forgetting it and "never" cast it on summoned creatures but always between characters to be able "to damage" as many of them as possible.
Dragons should be considered of at least 25-35 level casters, as for how easy their spells can be dispelled.

I still didn't have the odd items. Just the scales and the eye and maybe something else(gems or gold) can't remember. Tapanasacar was his name and I found it to be a relatively tough battle but that is with the golem too.

Same here. Don't know why though, but after the installation of many mods (and after bp) the dragon ended up having "some" helms and rings for no reason. But anyway a dragon without the following is useless anywayz :

Invisibility Detection, full dragon immunities via "dragring.itm" and "ring97.itm", immunity to backstab, low saving throws ( 1 or 2 would do), an "actual" weapon to deal considerable dmg. This dragon and many more had neither of those.

You can give them all detect illusion allowing for better invisibilty detection.

Not sure if Detect Illusion does what u say. It probably just is the same as the thief skill which just works when looking for traps but never in combat. ( and is never not even close to true sight-just finds invisible doors mainly-we don't want a dispel illusions here but to make the dragons "Ignore" illusions and pretend they aren't present in all ways) that's why invisibility detection is mainly given as an ability through script on many creatures I've already seen modded-seen it through NI)

I hope I was clear enough, Hoppy.

PS : a great example of how dragons "should" be is "Abazigal" from the Ascension+Longer Road Mod.

Edited by Radagast-The-Brown, 06 September 2007 - 08:18 AM.