131 réponses à ce sujet

[M. Rieder]

... and where is the taint on an Oni, anyway?

[The Fred]

MasterChanger wrote...
Adding icons dynamically can be a bit tricky, I think, unless you pre-define them all and un-hide them and fill with textures as needed.

This was pretty much my intention, since you can't add stuff dynamically to a grid the way you can to a listbox, even though you can define prototypes in the same way.

MasterChanger wrote...
I had a thought about your visual taint-tracking. Could you use some sort of bar like the Spirit bar from MotB? It occurs to me that you may not be that familiar with this since you're only using the OC IIRC.

I had wondered about something like that, maybe an addition to the party bar, since I will probably want something to display each character's ki as well (at least, if they are of a class which uses it). I haven't played much of MotB, but I seem to remember seeing screenshots where the spirit meter is quite large - I would probably opt for something fairly small, but I haven't decided yet whether a whole sepsrate UI is best, or an addition to the party bar or character sheet.

M. Rieder wrote...

The Fred wrote...
The Shadow Warlock may add 1d6 resistance-ignoring taint damage per level to his or her Eldritch Blasts, but each such blast inflicts a point of Depravity on the Warlock ...

I would say that going for taint damage definitely qualifies you as depraved. Out of curiosity, would that be a touch-range attack?

I'm not sure how SoZ's Hellfire Blast works (can you use it with an Essence? Apparently in PnP you can, anyway), but my intention was just to deal 1-3d6 points of armour-ignoring negative energy damage whenever you deal blast damage to a foe. Hideous Blow is going to need some extra work but everything else seems to be working OK right now. You'll be able to use it with Shapes, but rather than take a point of Depravity per foe hit, you'll just take one (I was thinking maybe one per rank of invocation, i.e. 2 for lesser, 3 for greater, 4 for dark, but that's a whole bunch of other stuff to think about).

[The Fred]

It's never simple, is it? I sometimes get the feeling that this game is deliberately trying to get me.

Draconic Heritage feats are now up and running, but there's an issue if you multi-class to Sorcerer (Sorcs get a free Draconic Heritage feat, but those feats can only be gotten at first level. Still, it's fixable). They also need a bit more code, but Draconic Vigour (Dragon Magic, I think) is up and running, and soon Dragonfire Channeling will be, too. No more Cleric dips for Sorcerers. Now, Clerics will be taking 1-level Sorcerer dips!

[The Fred]

I should note that in a game called The Dragon Dynasty, dragons are going to get a little bit of attention. The D&D-style dragons have always been more up my street than Chinese dragons, say, but I want to differentiate mine from them a bit. Instead of having chromatic and metallic dragons, therefore, I've opted to base my dragons off the five elemental types. This fits Japanese mythology a bit better, and gives me some scope to do some interesting stuff with them.

Players will also be able to chose from an array of new heritage feats:

Draconic Heritage
Prereq: Level 1 or Sorcerer level 1
The blood of dragons runs in your veins. You gain a bonus dependant on the type of dragon from which you are descended.

The bonuses from this feat are going to be fairly middle-of-the-road (elemental resistance 5, +1 to saves or AC or skills, DR 1/adamantine etc). On the one hand, these feats are something of a down-payment to be able to get the more powerful lineage feats (and I'm going to change the Dragon Disciple prereqs to be based off these instead of sorcerer levels), so I don't want them to be too good, or everyone will be related to dragons. On the other hand, though, they can only be taken at 1st level, so non-human, non-Sorcerers will have to forgoe Luck of Heroes and Spellcasting Prodigy - both powerful options - for these.

Draconic Vigour (DM 17)
Prereq: Draconic Heritage, Sorcerer level 1
Whenever you cast a spell, you are healed an amount equal to that spell's level.

At the moment, I'm not differentiating between which spells you cast, making a L1-sorcerer dip an attractive choice for all casters. I'm not too worried about this, but I'm going to check for invocations, at least, since Warlocks could use this for unlimited heals.

Dragonfire Channeling (DM 17)
Prereq: Draconic Heritage (Fire, Coal or Storm), Turn Undead
You use up a Turn Undead usage to fire off a Burning Hands-like cone of fire or electricity which does 1d6 damage / 2 turning levels, half of which is divine.

This could prove to be a powerful choice for a Cleric, but requires an extra feat (and Fire, Coal and Storm aren't that exciting) or a Sorcerer level (though this would allow Draconic Vigour, as it stands at the moment).

Hopefully, these will add a little dragon flavour, and provide alternatives to Luck of Heroes and Spellcasting Prodigy. Letting people into the Dragon Disciple PrC without a dip could open the floodgates, but then they don't get LoH. I'm also going to overhaul the class a bit so that it's not a +8 Str powerhouse.

Modifié par The Fred, 02 juillet 2011 - 05:55 .

[kamal_]

The Fred wrote...

Draconic Vigour (DM 17)
Prereq: Draconic Heritage, Sorcerer level 1
Whenever you cast a spell, you are healed an amount equal to that spell's level.

At the moment, I'm not differentiating between which spells you cast, making a L1-sorcerer dip an attractive choice for all casters. I'm not too worried about this, but I'm going to check for invocations, at least, since Warlocks could use this for unlimited heals.

I'm not going to dip to be able to get a few hp healed for each sorc spell. Unless it affects any spell, so my level 5 cleric spells heal me 5hp.

[BartjeD]

Have you done these feats by spell hook by running a custom heartbeat function that checks if these spells are being cast? Neat feats - Vigour is really useful, does it scale per spell level how much it heals? (perhaps less / more if tainted?)

[Edit:] Oh Kamal asked this too! I should read better

Modifié par BartjeD, 02 juillet 2011 - 07:16 .

[The Fred]

At the moment, it is working for all spells. I don't think you can get the class used to cast a spell directly (in OnSpellCast scripts you can, but not for when you're casting the spell). I was thinking of just checking to see if the spell is on the Sorcerer list. This means a Cleric/Sorcerer, say, could be healed for Cleric spells, but only some of them. Only thing is that a Wizard/Sorcerer could get the full benefit (though I think the PnP version says "arcane spells" anyway). Given you could get a free Heritage feat and thus easy access to Dragonfire Channeling, it sounds like an attractive Cleric dip to me, though Warlock/Sorcerer is the one which would be really overpowered.

BartjeD wrote...
Have you done these feats by spell hook by running a custom heartbeat function that checks if these spells are being cast?

I'm just using spellhooking. Whenever a spell is cast, I check to see if the caster has the feat. If so, I get the spell's level and heal by that amount. This one was thankfully simple. Draconic Armour could be implemented the same way, it's the same but it provides DR/magic for a round instead of healing.

Modifié par The Fred, 02 juillet 2011 - 09:44 .

[The Fred]

The Dragon Disciple is getting a bit of a rework. You can now take the class without a Sorcerer dip (though it costs you a feat), gaining you back a point of BAB. However, the attribute bonuses are going to be changed. Instead of +8 Str, +2 Con, +2 Int, +2 Cha, I was thinking of +4 Str, +2 Con, +2 Wis, +4 Cha overall.

This means that you drop another two points of AB. I would say this is fairly balanced - a L10 DD not taking a Sorcerer dip would lose one feat and one point of net AB, but gain class features for a level (so 1/2 a feat back, for a Fighter) and more HP etc. The Cha bonus could also be handy if playing a charismatic character, either for conversation skills, RP, or Dark One's Own Luck / Divine Feats etc. BAB is generally also better than plain AB since you get your extra attacks earlier.

Overall it's looking as though it'll be slightly weaker, though more flexible (you can chose your dragon type), which is really what I want (since it's a bit overpowered as it is, IMO).

My issue is that I want to favour Sorcerers taking the class, so I was thinking of giving bonus magical or draconic feats every three levels. It's just a balance making it so that it's worthwhile for Sorcerers to take whilst not requiring a Sorcerer level, and yet not overpowered for melee types.

Random off-topic picture:
Tentacles!

Modifié par The Fred, 07 juillet 2011 - 09:11 .

[The Fred]

I figured I'd put up some info on the races and things on the project page. The races are all statted out, though it's possible they'll change, whereas the classes (at the moment) just have short little descriptions, but you can see what I'm working on. Those pages are annoying to edit but I figured it'd be better to have them over there than lose them in a thread like this.

[M. Rieder]

Did the character just cast evard's black tentacles, or did you use the speciall effect file to put writhing tentacles in the area. I've never thought of using that visual effect that way. That would be a great idea. You could probably even edit the size in the VFX editor and make them really huge it you wanted to. That could be neat.

[The Fred]

They are placed VFX tentacles. Some of them are Black Tentacles, others are Chilling Tentacles. I actually did this once before where I made immobile creatures with the VFX, which could attack you if you got to close, but this time I opted for a field of tentacles and a trigger, so they'll work mechanically like the spell (though these ones aren't actually going to be harmful, their just meant for creepy ambiance).

[Arkalezth]

What's the level scope? That's important for class balance.

[The Fred]

I was going to have it so you start at L1 (you will need to roll a new L1 character because of the changes to backgrounds and a lot of class features and suchlike anyway), but I'm leaning now towards starting, say, Nobles, Samurai and certain other backgrounds at L2 or 3 to reflect the fact that they're already meant to have some experience/training beyond what a peasant would get. The plan is to have enough non/low-combat quest available to said peasant characters early on that they can get a bit of XP without getting killed.

This does mean that a lot of PrCs won't come into play until late in the game, if ever, even, but if I can get the majority of the groundwork down and working, I can just build indefinately without worrying about having to make significant changes to the mechanics later on.

[kamal_]

I have no idea what it says, but there are links to tons of pics of japanese folklore critters.

www.nichibun.ac.jp/YoukaiGazou/index.html

[The Fred]

Cool. I think the headings read "sugata", "shigusa", "katachi", "mochimono" and "iro", respectively (my hirogana is a bit rusty, though). No idea what those translate to, though.

[The Fred]

Away for a bit, but I leave you in the knowledge that:

1) Cursed items are a go. They need a little work still to handle cases like when you try to swap out one cursed item with another, but there are less of these than there were in NWN1 (unequip-pause-drop-equip was a pain to fix) so it should be easy enough. Also need to add in a little stuff for different ways of handling cursed items (e.g. cursed use items vs cursed equip items, replacing an item with an identified cursed version when you equip it, etc). However I have the identification of cursed items when acquiring up and running nicely and the rest should fall into place soon.

2) Intelligent items are on the drawing board. Like so many things, these would be cool but aren't necessary, so I'm going to try not to prioritise them. However, I do have the skeleton of a new UI ready - I need to script it up and test it and stuff yet though.

3) Dont' know whether I mentioned this, but polymorph has undergone it's first redux. I've altered the options for Polymorph Self to reflect the setting (instead of Troll, Mind Flayer etc you have, IIRC, Giant Spider, Bear, Naga, Tree Spirit and Gargoyle though I may replace one with something else I wanted, I've just forgotten what). Each of these gives a distinct advantage over the others (poison, strength, taint immunity, spell resistance and DR, respectively). Spellcasting when polymorphed is also working. A druid with Natural Spell can cast whilst in animal forms. Anyone can cast whilst in humanoid forms. Presently there are no other options but things are set up so that, say, feats or spells allowing spellcasting in any form will be easy. I still need to add the fixes for spell slots and whatnot but I'm rethinking what item bonuses should be transfered.

Alas everything else is planned or just-started stuff. When I get chance to Toolset again I need to get on and do my languishing Project T piece, something not helped by the fact I decided to try and no-reload a Druid-based squad through Baldur's Gate AND try out GemRB...

Modifié par The Fred, 04 août 2011 - 01:18 .

[Eguintir Eligard]

I laughed cuz reider talked about a touch ranged taint attack and fred totally missed the joke and gave a full on explanation. Thats hard to do with Reider as he is none to subtle

[M. Rieder]

Glad someone caught that! It was too hard for me to pass up. I suspect that the "taint" dual-definition may have made it a little obscure.

[The Fred]

I chose to ignore it...

[M. Rieder]

Oh. Sorry if it was poor taste. Actually, it was definitely poor taste. Sorry.

[The Fred]

With some upcoming happening, I'm not sure how much free time I'm going to get to spend on this (or rather, how much time I can rationalise spending on this), and as I've mentioned I need to prioritise Project T since, though small, my contribution is somewhat languishing. One thing I have been/will be working on, though, is the monsters.

In my setting, there is no real reason for a lot of stock NWN2 monsters to exist. As such, I've turned to custom content and simply making up monsters to fill up my palette of choices. However, it's been a good opportunity to make monster interesting. I might not be making a completely non-combat-based module like Kamal, but I do want to get away from the fight-fight-fight sort of hack-and-slash common to games these days.

There are quite a options for this. The simplest is giving monsters unusual abilities or weaknesses and so forth. I heard that in 4th Ed PnP a common technique is to apply effects when a monster hits half health, which causes the pace of the battle to change, and is something I might do now and then. One thing I've been looking at which is related is priority targetting. Normally, it's smart either to go for the weakest monsters first, if they can be finished quickly, to get them out from under your feet and lower the enemy damage output quickly, or to tackle the toughest ones first and get them out of the way (it depends on how much damage each does or how much of a pain it is vs how quickly you can get rid of it). Obviously in NWN2 disabling the most offensive monsters then mopping up the weaker ones is a viable option. If there are healers (or buffers) about, it's normally a good idea to get them first.

One thing I've been thinking about is how to play with this. I read a while ago on Chaos Wielder's blog about his "Vampiric Hounds" which get tougher when other creatures die nearby (funnily enough, he's just posted a follow-up article). These are obviously prime targets for smart players. Another example is the Whisper Demon:



Using an idea blatantly stolen from the Cranium Rats featured in PS:T, these guys are weak but get more powerful in groups. This means that when in large numbers, you have to concentrate on taking a few of them down first.

A third idea is to have something happen when a creature dies (for example, a Balor creates an explosion on death). This means that, whilst the monster will ultimately have to be killed, it might be worth leaving it until after other threats have been neutralised. If anyone's ever played Guild Wars, I believe they had some monsters who created more when killed, which meant that if you failed to mop up the final stage ones, you could actually increase the threat by killing enemies.

These are just idle musings, but my intention is that by combining foes with different qualities like this, players will be forced to make important tactical decisions, which should make combat more involved.

[kamal_]

Make it like Shadow of the Colossus, where ALL monsters are boss monsters. Then every single encounter is memorable, and the number of different monsters needed goes down dramatically.

You can always have more humanoid monsters like different types of bandits with different fighting styles: Snake Clan bandits prefer short swords and flame arrows and openly rush at you, while Oni clan prefer clubs and throwing axes and sneak attack.

The above is how I'm dealing with possible combats. Most enemies are human but their classes and fighting varies, and almost all are tough enough to take you out one on one.

[MasterChanger]

 This is a challenge with which I have a more-than-passing familiarity. When I created several hundred creature blueprints for an LotR PW, I had a similar challenge: how to create varied creatures when many NWN2 creature models were inappropriate and overt "magic" was quite rare?

I certainly did try to be as creative as possible in taking some models and re-tinting and re-scaling them to create interesting creatures that looked close enough to what the lore said. I was limited to only stock NWN2 models plus RWS haks (I would have rather used other haks also but wasn't allowed that option) but managed to create some unexpected things. One of my favorites was taking the RWS ooze and making it flatter, narrower, and black and turning it into a leech!

In a setting where PCs weren't going to get much magic thrown at them, it was also even more important than usual for monsters to have unusual (perhaps mundane) abilities and fight in unexpected ways. My creatures had a lot of special abilities. I wanted to do more with OnDeath events but didn't have time to make them work well enough to release; for example, a troll damaging creatures in a cone in front of it when it died and "fell". I do think that scripting some custom AI for just a few creatures can help keep players on their toes. I wrote one script that made creatures flank and surround PCs to simulate pack hunting tactics.

All in all, I think using a custom setting in this way is both a blessing and a curse. You're certainly more limited, but I think you also have the potential for more interesting results in terms of what the players experience.

[The Fred]

Yeah, you really have to get creative with the models.

I like the idea of making every combat a boss fight or at least significant in some way, but I think the game is going to be slightly more open-ended, SoZ- or LoWPM-style (not really a sandbox, but the intention is for a little bit of freedom). As such I'm going to need wildlife and monsters to populate the more dangerous regions of the world and so forth. I don't want to use combat as a mere filler, but I'm not going to kid myself, random mod fights are going to get thrown in from time to time. However, interesting monsters should mean that even these are more than mundane hack-and-slash time-wasters.

Humans and humanoids are going to be big adversaries. I've cut a lot of the humanoid "monster" races - goblins, gnolls, kobolds, bugbears, orcs etc. I might bring one or two back in (goblins are common enough to pretty much every type of folklore, say) or reuse their models, but bandits and the like are going to fill out more of the adversarial roles, I think.