353 replies to this topic

[jube]

I don't know if Ao has any power or even interest outside Realmspace (the FR/Toril "solar system") where yes, he seems to have absolute power, more or less. So I don't think his involvement would be relevant to a confrontation between deities on the Astral or some other plane. On top of that, a lot of FR deities are "multispheric" meaning they have worshippers on several different worlds. So on Toril, Tyr might have to abide by Ao's rules, but in Earth lore, he abides by Odin's. There's a lot on this sort of thing on pages 4 and 14 of Faiths & Avatars.

There's an FR timeline here, and others if you do a web search. Also a list of FR gods and some idea of how they rank here, though several of those are "dead" so Faiths is the best guide.

Thanks for the links, vvvvv usefull am about to read faiths.

[jube]

Ok as promised this is my " official " pre/history of the multiverse ready for sound criticism.
Note though this was written before this discussion so will obviously evolve a bit once i absorb some data.

"The true history of the universe by Abdul Azzir Seer and Madman


In less time than it takes a parched dwarf to drink a pint of mead, most of the planes, all the universes, all the worlds, everything in this big old multiverse came into being.
Why and How?, well some have theories some have guesses, but none really know, yet.
Even as the planes were settling and the first suns sparked into life, things from outside were looking in with much interest, waiting, hungry.
Time became then passed for the infant mulitverse, eventually life emerged and spread and became more complex growing everywhere resplendent in mirriad forms till eventually primitive intelligence sprung almost inevitably into being.

Then the things from outside waited no more and came to feed.

Then life was no more.

Again time passed, again life grew, again they fed, again life was no more.
So this cycle went , for time impossible to count or comprehend, the butchering of a multiverse.
And it would be that way now were it not for an accident. By chance in one of the countless cycles, life sprang forth in a place somehow overlooked by the things from outside, why is again a mystery, but i conjecture that their remoteness, lack of magic and other factors ( some tales say they never ventured far from their planets or universes during their early times) had a part to play.
Anyway, life there survived through cycles and grew into mighty civilisations, now know as the first races or the "elder gods" to more religious types.

The Ballor grew in a pocket of what now is called Hades.
The Humans of the Mileu grew on the very edge of a galaxy in a secluded universe in an isolated part of the Prime Material plane.
The Travelers who were born of, and flourished in, the Astral.
The Terror Birds, born within the singularity that is the heart of the prime.
The Tanu and Firvrrlang grew very near to the Mileu, separated by a few short light years.

The majesty and power of their respective races is something that has never come close to being repeated to this very day, To them our Greater gods would be as children playing with straw.
Again as chance would have it, while the rest of the multiverse was quite sterile, each race met each other in an enlightened and friendly manner when curiosity finally drove them to look beyond their own planes\galaxy's.( especially surprising to me since the Ballor and Travelers were born warriors, every one of them! ).
Chance continued to smile on them since they had time to form technological and spiritual alliances which multiplied all their powers,time which all to quickly ran out when the outsiders came, hungry as always.
And so the outsiders fed, and were drawn to new sweet prey, who were now more than visible !
But the first races were not cave creatures, not cattle who would just bow their heads to the block. They faught!
They faught together as one for the survival of them selves, their loved ones, their races and indeed for all of us who have come after.
The battle was short, ended in stalemate and was very costly for the first races.
For all their might and majesty, you could imagine them as hornets buzzing round cattle.But taking that analogy a little further a hive of hornets can if lucky kill a cow, and even a heard would think twice if stung enough times.
And in that manner the outsiders were driven from their pastures.

All the Ballor perished save their greatest champion and general, Xian-Chin-Dee. Xian only spared because he was fighting alongside the Humans of the Milue as his people were taken.
Many of the Mileu Opperants survived, the "final matrix" led by Marcus5 had held to the end although some members ( nodes as he likes to call them ) bore horrible physical and psionic wounds ( Xian ,who's unique psionic talents were a kingpin of that great battle matrix, lost an eye but otherwise remained intact, he was lucky )

The travelers golden empire was torn assunder. Their mighty Plane ships destroyed and pieces scattered to all parts of the multiverse, their weapons and technology becoming artifacts of legend. ( so conventional wisdom has it, but i know better! The greatest of their ships survived, battered but intact, at the height of the conflict with their armada anihalated , the crew of the Dark Star fired their most secret and devastating weapon, the reality bomb. A projectile who's explosion tears at the fabric of the multiverse, disrupting EVERYTHING, it was this shot that fatally injured one of the outsiders. Unfortunately the shock wave blasted the Dark Star into realms unknown, as yet not returned )

The Terror birds, being timeless and multidimensional in nature, had no fear of death in the conventional manner. Still as a race they bore a scar from the battle, for during the conflict, in one savage m9oment, the entire race formed together into a single entity , a being of light and heat and joy and ultimate destruction ( It was the Pheonix who broke the second of the outsiders ). But when the dust had settled and the battles were over the Terror birds finally noticed their wounds, the Outsider had fed on their minds, they had lost their individuality to the beast, and so as a single creature they remain, a race trapped.

The Tanu and Firtherlang empires fared better mainly due to their sheer numbers, out of the millions of inhabited worlds, 125654 of the top House masters survived ( that includes Firtherlang worlds since the two races decided to lay down generation old feuds to deal with the small matter of survival ) A vanishingly small percentage, but a lot of people. After the war they left their home galaxies to explore. ( it is said that the human psionic trait comes from Tanu interbreeding, but i doubt this )

About 60,000 years after the end of the great battle recorded history starts as the the life growing throughout the multiverse is allowed to develop ( as opposed to becoming bovine food ). The "new" races are born and flourish, and soon after, like suns, the Gods spark into being.

{ to be written..... Gods history to present day }


And so the end of the tale, all is good i hear you say, monsters vanquished, hero returns for a kiss as the sun sets. No.
The outsiders are still there, still hungry, they watch their food as always, wary now, but no less hungry. There are no Elder races to face them anymore, but now Gods are are numerous, in fact there is such a density of divinity, that should they all fight together ( as might happen if say they had to face a threat to them all ) they would prove as least as thorny as the first races, for them it would be Christmas if the gods were removed."


Ok the outsiders are obviously the gods listed in the first Dieties and demigods ( removed from all subsequent editions ), Ao is a survivor from one of the first races, the " hand and eye " story posted earlier in this thread is a plot by one of the outsiders to get rid of the gods, for obvious reasons. Most even the gods are largely unaware of this history but the Oldest, most wise and most powerful hold the knowledge as one of the dark secrets gods keep ( and obviously the few survivors of the first races )

[Miloch]

Is the Tyr on Faerûn really the same one from the Norse pantheon?

Yep, right down to the missing hand (gnawed off by "Kezef the Chaos Hound" as known in the Realms - Fenris the Wolf or Fenrir in Norse myth). Same goes for Oghma (one of the Tuatha Dé Danann in Irish mythology), Loviatar and Mielikki (Finnish goddesses), Silvanus (a Romano-Gaulish forest god), most of the Mulhorandi pantheon (straight out of Egyptian mythology), the entire Untheric pantheon (straight out of Babylonian/Sumerian myth), Kozakuran "Shintoism" etc. - you can see how much lazier the FR creators get the further they get from Faerûn .

First what the hell is spelljamming

It's a set of PnP rules that lets you travel from one planet in a "sphere" (solar system) to another planet, travelling in an actual sailing ship that functions like a spaceship but is protected by a magical air-bubble. If you want an "oldie but goodie" game, see if you can dig up Spelljammer: Pirates of Realmspace in one of the gold box editions on amazon or something. It lets you assemble a crew, outfit and capture different ships, travel from Toril to some other Mercury-like planet in the same system where only halflings live and a bunch of other planets. Graphics are probably appalling by modern standards but it was pretty cool as I recall.

Still a lot of Julian May and who knows what else in that history, but well, it's written by a "madman" anyway, right? Who could possibly know the actual prehistory of the entire multiverse - probably not even the Great Old Elder Gods... certainly not some upstart lichling or Bhaalspawn god wanna-be .

[jube]

YEP Kind of covered myself with the madman thing
To tell truth am very relieved you didn't hate it, the history , ( am pretty well assuming if you did hate it you would say, please don't be sparing feelings).
I am never intending to reveal the entire history to the players verbatim, more like they put together tiny pieces through various adventures, till they begin to see a pattern.
Julian may, Traveler, C of C ( Lovecraft in general ), Still splashes of DBZ , and Obviously a bow to the standard model, but mainly in bed with string theory.

[jube]

V15 is finished will upload tonight. I think this is pretty well a release.

V15

IA code updated to beta 5
Demon stats\AI from P+P fiends ( now part of Atweaks )
More visuals
Custom songs
a proper readme
Some text screens, journal entries etc..


PS. Can someone remove the " full of bugs " warning from vecna on the BW list, vecna has been free of serious bugs and or CDTs since V13u1

[jube]

V15u1 is kind of on its way, was going to leave it at V15, but since there seems to be a steady stream of downloads i am encouraged to put the final few hours into the mod and make it sweet ( with all these downloads someone MUST be playing it )

[Chevalier]

( with all these downloads someone MUST be playing it )

I have it installed as part of a MegaMod I am playing, but have not yet played it. I am just back at Candlekeep and still have a long way to go before I get to your mod. When I play it I will let you know what I think. I think many others are doing the same thing and in 2 to 4 months you will start hearing a lot from people.

Please do keep working on it!!!!!

[Daulmakan]

Yeah, I have an older version in the backburner waiting to be finished, too.

[jube]

Fair enough! will finish V15u1, but probably wont post until IA gets to beta 6, cos thats another code revision and would be sensible to do it all at the same time. Defiantly will be up by the time you guys get to 16th ish lvl.

[Jarno Mikkola]

but probably wont post until IA gets to beta 6,

People please, be a little more specific... cause I don't see the Improved Anvil beta 6 having anything to do with this mod. Yes, let's stop that discussion right there, and just learn a thing from this... never to use the term "IA" again. Or, or I'll release the "Imps Additions" mod --> IA mod version beta 5, v5, beta 6, v6 etc, just for fun.

PS, I knew you meant the Infinity Animation...

[jube]

Hello Guys, Question: Can I install Atweaks PnP fiedns with Vecna installed too?
Thanks a lot for your atention

Simple answer is yes, vecna is very much self contained, and does not effect, and is not effected, by any other mods, The code of P+P fiends is being added to vecna so within the Vecna mod fiends behave as P+P, but unlike Atweaks this only applies to Vecna fiends.

[marty]

Hey Jube, excellent work on Vecna! I had a few questions regarding what you ended up deciding for the Level 50 / True Grandmastery ruleset:

1) The BWP Install Guide states that Vecna15 has the True Grandmastery rules included. So are these the updated values after Vecna has been installed?

# stars: hit/damage/APR/speed
-----------------------------
1 star: +0/+0/+0/-0
2 stars: +1/+2/+.5/-0
3 stars: +3/+3/+.5/-0
4 stars: +3/+4/+.5/-1
5 stars: +3/+5/+1.5/-3

2) Are the descriptions in the dialog.tlk file also updated to something similar to this?

3) Are you planning to make a separate component for just the Level 50 / True Grandmastery ruleset? Or is it possible to to modify the .tp2 to only install the ruleset component?

4) And finally, is the ruleset compatible with TDD/BP if Vecna is installed after those mods?

Thanks alot!

Edited by marty, 29 August 2010 - 01:55 PM.

[jube]

Hey Jube, excellent work on Vecna! I had a few questions regarding what you ended up deciding for the Level 50 / True Grandmastery ruleset:

1) The BWP Install Guide states that Vecna15 has the True Grandmastery rules included. So are these the updated values after Vecna has been installed?

# stars: hit/damage/APR/speed
-----------------------------
1 star: +0/+0/+0/-0
2 stars: +1/+2/+.5/-0
3 stars: +3/+3/+.5/-0
4 stars: +3/+4/+.5/-1
5 stars: +3/+5/+1.5/-3

2) Are the descriptions in the dialog.tlk file also updated to something similar to this?

3) Are you planning to make a separate component for just the Level 50 / True Grandmastery ruleset? Or is it possible to to modify the .tp2 to only install the ruleset component?

4) And finally, is the ruleset compatible with TDD/BP if Vecna is installed after those mods?

Thanks alot!

Hi mate, i have just got back to Vecna after an extended break, will have another update in a couple of weeks.

As is, Vecna does not yet implement the Lv50 ruleset ( with grand mastery patch included ), and when it does ( in this next update ) it will be as an optional component. From play experience the ruleset that i will be using does fit your table

# stars: hit/damage/APR/speed
-----------------------------
1 star: +0/+0/+0/-0
2 stars: +1/+2/+.5/-0
3 stars: +3/+3/+.5/-0
4 stars: +3/+4/+.5/-1
5 stars: +3/+5/+1.5/-3

and again from much BW play experience the ruleset i will be using is much superior to BP or TDD Lv50 rules in that they give dual-class spellcasters their appropriate spell above lv 25 ( which BP and TDD do not do very well ).
If you want to try for yourself copy the contents of the 2da folder in vecna to your overide.

As for the exact differences between the various lv25+ rules, im afraid i am no expert in 2da files ( in fact thats a bit of a weak spot ! ) but if you refer to the previous pages of this thread you should catch a discussion on this topic by some people who are far more knowledgeable, or ask Miloch, he knows everything

[Miloch]

As for the exact differences between the various lv25+ rules, im afraid i am no expert in 2da files ( in fact thats a bit of a weak spot ! ) but if you refer to the previous pages of this thread you should catch a discussion on this topic by some people who are far more knowledgeable, or ask Miloch, he knows everything

Heh, I think you've got the wrong orc . I myself am not sure what the "best" L50 ruleset is out there - I asked around here and on pocketplane.net since I think konalan or someone did an update to Weimer's L50 mod, but no one had a clear answer. I think whatever can follow the 2e supplements (such as "High-Level Campaigns" or something I forget which) in a relatively bug-free manner should work. Not terribly important for most mods, but most likely for yours.

As for grandmastery, that isn't detailed in 2e rules to any great extent (not like it is in the games). We had a discussion about it on gibberlings3.net or somewhere a while back and I think the "best" solution was a hybrid between BG1 rules (which were too powerful) and BG2 (which were too nerfed) but I'm not sure which mod (if any) has the best code for that.

Working with 2DA files isn't difficult - just look at Tweaks, DSotSC etc. for examples and IESDP for a list of the tables. There aren't too many things you can do with them - largely just COPY_EXISTING, SET_2DA_ENTRY and REPLACE_TEXTUALLY.

[marty]

As for grandmastery, that isn't detailed in 2e rules to any great extent (not like it is in the games). We had a discussion about it on gibberlings3.net or somewhere a while back and I think the "best" solution was a hybrid between BG1 rules (which were too powerful) and BG2 (which were too nerfed) but I'm not sure which mod (if any) has the best code for that.

Working with 2DA files isn't difficult - just look at Tweaks, DSotSC etc. for examples and IESDP for a list of the tables. There aren't too many things you can do with them - largely just COPY_EXISTING, SET_2DA_ENTRY and REPLACE_TEXTUALLY.

While we're on this subject, being somewhat of a 'PnP rules fanatic' myself, I thought I'd quote the exact rules from PLAYER'S OPTION: Combat and Tactics p.74-76: I've compiled this table that summarize the essential rules:

Proficiency (1 slot): weapon usage with no penalties; ability to activate special weapon abilities
Specialization (2 slots): +1 to Hit, +2 Damage and if Fighter, you get bonus attacks/round according to the following table:

Weapon Class        Lv1-6   Lv7-12  Lv13+
----------------------------------------   
Melee Weapons       3/2     2       5/2
*Bows               2       3       4
Repeating Crossbow  2       5/2     3
Light Crossbow      1       3/2     2
Heavy Crossbow      1/2     1       3/2
*Throwing Dagger    3       4       5 
*Thrown Dart        4       5       6
Sling               3/2     2       5/2

*Note: These weapons get +1 APR (instead of +1/2 APR) per fighter tier

Mastery (3 slots): +3 to Hit, +3 Damage
High Mastery (4 slots): Speed Factor increase by one category*; critical hit on 16 rather than 18**; ranged weapons max range is increased by 1/3 (but suffer -10 to hit at that range)

*Category   Speed Factor Range
-----------------------------
Fast       1-4
Average    5-7
Slow       8-14
Very Slow  15+

**In the Combat & Tactics rules you score critical hits on 18-20 provided you beat the opponent's AC by 5 or more

Grand Mastery (5 slots): +1 attack per round; weapon get next-higher damage dice (ie. d6->d8, d8->d10, 2d6->2d8, etc)

Non-proficiency/Familiarity (0 slots): one speed category slower; ranged weapons get halved attacks/round; penalty to hit according to the following table:

Class    Non-prof  Familiar* 
-----------------------------
Fighter  -2        -1
Wizard   -5        -3
Cleric   -3        -2
Thief    -3        -2

*Familiar means the character has proficiency in another weapon in the same weapon group (ie. the BG1 style weapon groups)

So as you can see, the table in my first post is a pretty good but not perfect translation. In particular, here are the changes I would make to make it more inline with pen and paper:

High Mastery should be changed to:
-3 speed factor and +2 critical range (the +33% range increase might be too complicated to implement)

Grand Mastery should be changed to: 
+1 APR, +1 damage for 1-handed weapons or +2 damage for 2-handed weapons

Optional tweaks to consider:
Make it so fighters using bows and missile weapons, get +1 APR at Level 7 and +2 APR at Level 13 (instead of the standard +1/2 APR and +1 APR)
Make it so no stars in a weapon gives -3 speed factor, and half APR for ranged weapons (the weapon familiarity rule might be too complicated to implement)

Regardless, I really appreciate all the work you're doing in implementing the Lv50 rules, jube.

Edited by marty, 01 September 2010 - 04:03 PM.

[Miloch]

I thought I'd quote the exact rules from PLAYER'S OPTION: Combat and Tactics p.74-76

Oh... yeah. Forgot about that one. Or maybe not last we discussed it... been a while though.

High Mastery should be changed to:
-3 speed factor and +2 critical range (the +33% range increase might be too complicated to implement)

Grand Mastery should be changed to:
+1 APR, +1 damage for 1-handed weapons or +2 damage for 2-handed weapons

Optional tweaks to consider:
Make it so fighters using bows and missile weapons, get +1 APR at Level 7 and +2 APR at Level 13 (instead of the standard +1/2 APR and +1 APR)
Make it so no stars in a weapon gives -3 speed factor, and half APR for ranged weapons (the weapon familiarity rule might be too complicated to implement)

Can't do a lot of that stuff - at least not the current way it's handled with .2da files. Maybe by hacking the .exe or something, possibly not even then. Look at the tables wspecial.2da and wspatck.2da with an editor (Near Infinity or DLTCEP or just a text editor if you haven't biffed them out of your override).

The only things you can tweak here are hit, damage, speed and APR (for fighters). Can't mess with individual weapon types. Maybe something like TobEx could externalise it to another 2da but it's already got enough going on. Can't mess with range. Even if you could, the maximum range the engine recognises, and generally as far as you can see, is 30, and most (pretty much all) ranged weapons are at or beyond that already. Can't mess with critical hit factor (though if you give a hit bonus aren't you increasing that already). You could, in theory, make it so 0 stars gives a penalty to speed. Anyhow, you could plug a 3 in wspecial.2da in the first row under SPEED instead of 0 and see what it does. It should work, since -3 gives a speed bonus to a grandmaster. So you might want to come up with a revision that suits the rules as best it can using only those 4 factors I bolded.

[jube]

Well original Rev2 rules had no feats etc at all, a fighter got 1.5 APR at 6th LV and 2 APR at 12th, irrespective of weapon type. All the later rule extensions were stated as OPTIONAL ( as indeed were psionics which although appeared in players and DM guides were always optional to a campaign world ). But since BG2 rules do apply most of the optional rules i would go for APR of 2.5 at grand mastery which is a deal more powerful then the original rules ( for a given level ) but seems to fit better into game balance where feats have boosted non MU abilities greatly.
As for the To Hit and Damage bonuses don't really think they matter an awful lot, as levels get past 6th magic bonuses due to lv, strength, weapons etc etc account for the vast majority of striking ability.
If we ever could apply different bonuses for weapons i would love to apply the original Weapon vs ACtype tables from Players guide, it always did annoy me that a fighter with a butter knife ( dagger ) could get a hit on Orc ,covered from head to toe in full plate, with anything other then a natural 20 !
So anyway I think i am happy with the Lv50 patch i have ( which is originally a team BG effort i think ) it SEEMS to work very well ( but only tested with Fighter/MU ) and will def do till a consensus appears about to GM or not to GM. And since its an optional component user can decide for themselves on install.

[Miloch]

As for the To Hit and Damage bonuses don't really think they matter an awful lot, as levels get past 6th magic bonuses due to lv, strength, weapons etc etc account for the vast majority of striking ability.

They do actually, especially for fighters, because you are already attacking multiple times per round and probably *fast*, so those bonuses become multipliers, in effect - they really stack up. But like the supplement marty quoted says (it is a valid 2e rulebook, rarely-used perhaps, but possibly the only supplement that covers advanced specialisation):

Unlike the previous levels of specialization, which can simply be selected as an advancement choice, high mastery and grand mastery should require a great deal of time and personal sacrifice on the part of the charactere. It's not unreasonable to require the candidate to locate someone who can teach her and spend several months of campaign time in training... While the higher levels of weapon mastery are a great goal for a character to set her eyes on, they can unbalance a game very quickly.

Of course, that's probably not saying much in a game with mods where you can get +10 Swords of Instant Dragonslaying and Immortality and who knows what else...

Edit: it also makes a *big* difference if you're playing a F/M with or without the BG2 Tweak that lets multiclass fighters "cheat" (i.e. get more than 2 stars, which by core rules they're not allowed).

Edited by Miloch, 02 September 2010 - 11:59 AM.