172 replies to this topic

[Salk]

Excellent idea, aVENGER!

[Shaitan]

[Andrea C.]

Excellent idea, aVENGER!

aVENGER idea!

[aVENGER]

Heh, glad you like it guys, but this is actually straight from the 2E AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, and not something I came up with.
See here for an in-deapth explanation of flight maneuverability classes. Here's the relevant bit:

Class A creatures have virtually total command over their movements in the air; it is their home. They can maneuver in the air with the same ease as a normal person on the ground, turning at will, stopping quickly, and hovering in place. For them, flying is the same as walking or running.

Class A creatures can face any given direction in a round, and are virtually impossible to outmaneuver in the air. Fighting in the air is no different from fighting on the ground for them, so they can attack every round. This class includes creatures from the elemental plane of Air and creatures able to fly magically, without wings.

Class B creatures are the most maneuverable of all winged creatures, although they lack the utter ease of movement of class A creatures. They are able to hover in place, and so are the only winged creatures that do not need to maintain forward movement in a battle.

The creatures can turn 180 degrees in a single round and can make one pass every round. this class includes pixies, sprites, sylphs, and most giant insects.

Creatures with flight maneuverability below class B cannot hover which makes the implementation fairly straightforward.

[Salk]

Could you more or less quantify in percentage how many of the BG flying monsters belong to the A or B class?

Edited by Salk, 01 February 2012 - 06:40 AM.

[aVENGER]

Could you more or less quantify in percentage how many of the BG flying monsters belong to the A or B class?

Let's see:

• Aerial Servant (A)
  
• Air Elemental (A)
  
• Air Mephit (A)
  
• Balor (B)
  
• Beholder (B)
  
• Deva (B)
  
• Dust Mephit (B)
  
• Ice Mephit (B)
  
• Imp (A)
  
• Invisible Stalker (A)
  
• Mist Mephit (B)
  
• Ooze Mephit (B)
  
• Planetar (B)
  
• Pseudodragon (B)
  
• Radiant Mephit (B)
  
• Salt Mephit (B)
  
• Smoke Mephit (B)
  
• Solar (B)
  
• Steam Mephit (B)

I may have missed a few creatures but you can check for yourself here.

[Pol]

Is Imix still going to be instantly killed by the Wave halberd? He was always an anti-climatic boss for that reason.

If you're interested, I've made a Wave as per PnP - it doesn't kill elementals, but provides a cube of force (immunity to breath weapons, clouds and missile weapons, detectable, last 5 rounds) 3/day, and a chance of dehydration (drains 50% of remaining hp, a sort of lesser vorpal effect) rather than inflicting cold damage.

[aVENGER]

Is Imix still going to be instantly killed by the Wave halberd? He was always an anti-climatic boss for that reason.

While I agree that having the Wave one-shot kill Imix and Zaaman Rul is lame, it's not something that can be changed within the scope of this component. They are both classified as Fire Elementals and the Wave's original description clearly states that it slays them.

OTOH, this could be rectified if aTweaks ever gets a "PnP Items" component.

[Andrea C.]

OTOH, this could be rectified if aTweaks ever gets a "PnP Items" component.

Can't... stop... drooling...

[aVENGER]

I like all of your mod including not only aTweaks but also the other mods such as Rogue rebalancing very much.

Thanks!

BTW, Do you consider the compatibility with Refinements mod? As you know, Refinements mod modified/added some features of elemental-related things. For example, Water elemental is added by Refinements though it only can summon using HLA spell.

Not sure, but I'll look into it.

Does it work well by installing aTweaks after installing Refinements?

That would be the required install order, yes.

[GeN1e]

For lesser and greater elementals I used [2405] Monstrous Compendium I (Dark Sun). Here are a two examples: Lesser Earth Elemental and Greater Earth Elemental. Regular elementals use the stats from the Monstrous Manual (core book).Elemental Princes are from [2635] Monstrous Compendium - Planescape Appendix III

Shouldn't that belong to Dark Sun and Planescape settings, but not to Faerun?

[aVENGER]

Shouldn't that belong to Dark Sun and Planescape settings, but not to Faerun?

Not necessarily.

In 2E AD&D, all planes are connected with each other i.e. you can travel from Athas (Dark Sun) through Sigil (Planescape) to Faerun (Forgotten Realms) in a single adventure. Furthermore, elementals are always summoned from the Inner Planes regardless of where the spell is being performed. For example, a Greater Fire Elemental will always be summoned from the Elemental Plane of Fire, whether the summoning is performed in Athkhatla or in Sigil.

[GeN1e]

I agree that's reasonable, but as far as game balance is concerned, I think 8/12/16 HD progression is less shaking - less/normal elemental summoning (arcane) is only one level difference.

However, as the princes only come into play in ToB, I have thought about rectifying this issue in an optional component by offering to restore their unmodded hit point values. For reference, Bioware simply doubled the PnP hit point amounts for all Elemental Princes in the unmodded game which put them slightly above 20 HD. Any thoughts on this?

That's a big yes. ToB battles remove HP in hundreds per round, making 100 HP characters mere foot soldiers (unless they're wizards, that is). The More Staying Power for X components in SCS2 are well justified.

OTOH, this could be rectified if aTweaks ever gets a "PnP Items" component.

Think of poor players, they'll have to tear themselves apart between this and Item Revisions!

Edited by GeN1e, 03 February 2012 - 09:53 AM.

[aVENGER]

I agree that's reasonable, but as far as game balance is concerned, I think 8/12/16 HD progression is less shaking - less/normal elemental summoning (arcane) is only one level difference.

This is a good point. In PnP, Conjure Lesser Elemental is a 3^rd level spell, Conjure Elemental is 5^th level and Conjure Greater Elemental is 7^th. Using TobEx, it is technically possible to move the BG2 Conjure Lesser Elemental spells to level 3, shift Conjure Elemental to level 5 and add three new Conjure Greater Elemental spells to level 7. However, doing so might create conflicts with AI mods and would greatly change the original flavor of the game while still not being 100% PnP accurate.

A compromise introducing a less radical change might be a better solution here. The lesser/regular/greater elementals could be given the 8/12/16 HD progression (hit points, saving throws, THAC0, XP value) respectively, while still retaining all the other unique traits that differentiate them from each other (damage dice, weapon immunities, special abilities etc). In other words, the HD progression would be based on the Monstrous Manual while the other stats would come from the Dark Sun Monstrous Compendium.

Edited by aVENGER, 03 February 2012 - 11:11 PM.

[Andrea C.]

^ Do I smell a PnP Spells component? LOL

[aVENGER]

^ Do I smell a PnP Spells component? LOL

While aTweaks does alter a few selected spells to more closely match their PnP counterparts, that was mainly done to even the field between the player's party and aTweaks' enhanced creatures which use the PnP versions of the spells.

Therefore, I'm not really considering a component that would bring all spells in the game closer to PnP, especially when there's already an excellent mod out there which does that - Galactygon's Spell Pack.

[aigleborgne]

I was wondering, PnP Elementals covers all creatures coming from elemental's plane ?
If so, I think there are missing monsters : Djinni, Dao, Efreeti, Marid (dunno if there are some ingame)

[aVENGER]

I was wondering, PnP Elementals covers all creatures coming from elemental's plane ?
If so, I think there are missing monsters : Djinni, Dao, Efreeti, Marid (dunno if there are some ingame)

PnP Elementals only handles creatures that are classified as Elementals and Elemental-kin in the 2E AD&D Monstrous Manual.

Djinn and Efreet don't fall into that classification and will be covered in a different component (PnP Genies).

[aVENGER]

I managed to do some coding over the weekend. Here's a sample:

Frost Salamander vs. party

As you can see, I've imported the proper Cold Aura graphics (and sounds) from Icewind Dale. It took quite a bit of VVC fiddling, but I hope I managed to nail down the original IWD feel. Also, as per PnP, Frost Salamanders are pretty single-minded in their attack patterns so their AI scripts are kept very simple. Of course, that's compared to other aTweaks creatures. The Frost Salamander AI is still better than it was in the unmodded game.

In other news, the readme has been updated (new version attached) but you now need a CSS file to view it properly, hence the zip archive. Also, in case anyone wants to perform some alpha testing, you can get the current build from aTweaks WIP branch on GitHub. Note: do not use this version unless you absolutely know what you are doing. It's in a very early development stage. Do not use it in a megamod install under any circumstances.