The Four!

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The mod is ready for public download.

Here is the link:

http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/dl.php?s=BG2&f=BG2/TheFour.rar

 

@Sikret,

I have some questions regarding the disadvantages inherent to the Cloak of Eloquence.

Does the immunity to all methods of healing (equipped disadvantage) include things like Vamp Touch, Larloch's Minor Drain, or Tenser's Transformation spells? How about HPs gained from Adjatha the Drinker or the Sword of Chaos? HPs gained due to a CON increase from a Draw upon Holy Might spell or the Girdle of Fortitude?

Does the immunity to regeneration include regeneration from a 20+ CON?

Thanks for your attention and for making this mod available.

Mike

 

You are welcome! I hope that you will like the new battles as well as the new items.

The robe (while equipped) makes the mage immune to the effect of any spell or item which increases the mage's current hp.

Spells or items which affect the mage's Max hp will still work. The reason is that increasing max hp is not considered as 'healing' (and in the case of the spells you mentioned, the effects are temporary-- healing is not temporary)

The robe also makes the mage permanently immune to Opcode[98] (= regeneration). I guess that it covers all forms of regeneration without exception. If you test it, please let me know the result as well. Thanks!

 

The bard ring seems overpowered. -40 lore is no big deal, but permanent improved haste is.

 

The ring's disadvantages are as follows:

The ring is only usable by Bards and it's not easy to defeat its guardians which means that the ring will not be collected too early in the game. In general, the items' disadvantages are not supposed to outweigh their advantages.

If the ring was not a powerful item, it wouldn't make sense to have it guarded by such formidable guardians.

The vast majority of items in the original game don't have any disadvatnages, which means that the fact that you need to do quests or to defeat some enemies to collect them is considered as an adequate compensation.

[ September 07, 2006, 11:58: Message edited by: Sikret ]

 

@ teh:

Yes, the ring is very powerful, but it is only usable by bards and turns them more into a melee warrior than the jack-of-all-trades that they usually are by disabling many of their abilities. The question you should be asking is not 'is Improved Haste too much?' but 'do I want my bard to start behaving like my fighters?'.

Ignoring the effect of buffing for the moment, a bard with the ring will still not stand up to a fighter with equivalent experience. By the time you get the ring you will most likely be able to cast Improved Haste anyway. If the disadvantages become too severe, then no-one will use the ring.

As Sikret just added in his edit, how many of the games original items had multiple disadvantages? Most of the time, you found an item and there was no reason not to use it.

 

@Sikret,

I just recently got to test the robe's effects on healing and regeneration (see my post earlier in the thread). I haven't tried the new battles yet - that comes next - I just SKed the robe onto an existing character.

This is true, but I note that the HPs granted by such spells are permanent as long as they don't exceed the mage's original max HP, in effect providing healing.

Regeneration due to a 20+ CON still functions, so the old DUHM and rest trick would still work.

One other thing I noticed - if a mage starts with a CON of 15+ then he can "heal" himself by simply going to the inventory screen and repeatedly equipping and unequipping the robe. Of course this is very cheesy. Perhaps in future versions this could be circumvented by removing the CON penalty and adding or strengthening some other disadvantage.

Anyway, thank you once again for providing this mod for the SP users. Now I'm off to hunt gem golems

 

Thank you very much for performing the tests.

Since the number of such spells a mage can memorize and cast in a day is limited, I don't think that this is a big deal. Let the mage have some means to heal himself during a battle if he wants to memorize those spells instead of other spells he might prefer in normal circumstances.

Thanks for the info; however, permanent 20+ CON is not easily attainable without cheating, is it? Draw upon holy might can temporary grant a high CON score but the mage needs to have a high original CON to have it go up to 20 after casting DUHM (which means that the player should have spent his valuable dice scrores on CON while creating the character)

I will do as you said. Do you have any specific suggestion for this part?

Let me know your opinion about the new battles as well. Thanks again.

 

Woo, at last, I will be able to try a mod of Sikret's doing! I checked the readme and I have VERY high expectations for those 'tough' battles!

But, now I am in ToB section of my current campaign, so it will have to wait for my next run. Sigh. Oh well...

 

The battles should be good fun for you Silverstar. I've tested them and found them to be fair, considering what they were aiming for. As you are used to Tactics-type encounters, they may seem slightly under-powered in comparison though.

The solution?

Attempt them as soon as possible. That should be a fair challenge.
That and no pre-buffing.

 

Actually, yes it is. A tome from BG1 before import, and then either the Machine of Lum the Mad or some Hell Trial bonus, and you've got 20 easily. Of course, this would generally only apply to F/Ms or F/M/Ts (or F/M/Cs, but those are rare), because without fighter CON bonuses, there's really no reason to start with 18 CON just to get some slow regen in late SoA or early ToB.

 

I am preparing an update for "The Four" mod based on the reports and suggestions I have received from different players and testers, and also based on my own thoughts and afterthoughts about the mod. The changes I intend to apply to the mod are as follows. If you have tried the mod and have any suggestions, please do not hesitate to share them.

1- I want to apply Decados and Felinoid's suggestions of making the fighter/mage non-hostile and provide him with dialogue so that the players do not need to avoid going to the west of the Druid Grove.

2- Based on Desuma Malevois's reports and my own afterthoughts, I intend to completely alter the robe's list of advantages and disadvantages. Permanent Aura cleasning will be replaced with the ability to cast "Improved Alacrity" once per day. Consequently, I will able to tone down the robe's disadvantages as well. Any suggestions in this respect will be welcome.

3- The new types of golems are a bit different from their original prototypes in Improved Anvil. This is because I had not directly copied the files from IA to this mod at that time. They will be replaced with accurate copies of those new golems as they exist in Improved Anvil.

4- Guardians of the Gloves and guardians of the Crown are adequately strong, but guardians of the other two items should perhaps be toned-up to be more of a challenge.

If anyone has other suggestions, I'll be thankful if they send them to me so that I can prepare a good update and revision for this small mod. Thanks.

 

I have only one real thought at this point in time, so prepare to be rather underwhelmed.

If the Robe's IA ability is changed to once per day, then the permanent disadvantage of non-healing could possibly be reviewed. I haven't thought this through (I'm rather tired), but IIRC the only other advantage to the Robe is the +1 spell per level. If the non-healing was an equipped effect only, and the Robe still cursed, then a player who wanted to heal would not only have to cast Remove Curse, but would lose any spells memorised in those bonus slots. This would make healing hard work, but possible if the player so desired.

Just an initial thought.

 

Does it even need to be cursed? The robe cannot be re-worn in the middle of a battle if the mage puts it off to heal himself/herself while the battle is in progress.

And the CON penalty should perhaps be replaced with DEX penalty for the point mentioned by Desuma Malevois.

I need to think more.

 

The cursed part is debatable. I'm personally slightly against it for the reason you said. However, I mentioned it as I wasn't sure how much you wanted to curb the disadvantages and having to devote a spell slot to Remove Curse every time you think you'll have to heal is certainly a disadvantage.

Desuma felt the Con penalty was a bad idea as you can continually re-equip for unlimited health, right?

To be honest, I don't feel this alone is reason enough- it is possible to do so with the Obsidion Ion Stone. If a player is doing this, they are effectively cheating and may as well be hitting Ctrl-R. If a player wishes to cheat, then I believe in leaving them to it.

Besides, a Con penalty is not only more of a disadvantage then a Dex penalty (mages tend to rely on magical protections than AC anyway), but fits the fiction wrote for the Robe more.

 

What about designing a new robe altogether from scratch? Perhaps even one use of Improved Alacrity is too much and really unbalancing? Mages will gain the HLA at high levels after all. Do we really want it at an earlier stages of the game?

 

Sorry, I have to laugh. This mod grew out of a player's request for a mod that grants IA, now we are talking about removing the ability all together!

To be honest, I'm not keen on the idea of allowing one IA per day at the expense of no healing with the Robe equipped.

The majority of people likely to play this will already know the game rather well and therefore be aware of when letting off your entire spellbook at once is going to help. Following this logic, they will use, for example, the Robe of the _____ Archmagi for most of their adventuring time and only equip the Robe before a major battle when they need IA. Afterwards, they can remove it again, heal and walk on with their usual robes.

I can immediately think of several places where IA would unbalance the fights, although this is slightly countered by the party having to be of sufficient experience to defeat the Guardian in the first place. As such, the decision is up to you- if you feel IA is a good idea then keep it in by all means. But if you think it is too much, then a new idea for the Robe must be implemented.

 

The Four v2.0 is available now.

What's new:

- Spanish translation available (thanks to saemon).

- Guardian of the gloves is not hostile by default and has dialogue. Hence, if you are not prepared for the battle you won't need to avoid the westside of the druid grove.

- Robe of Eloquence's penalty to constitution omitted.

- More tweaks added to the second component of the mod.

- Some minor refinements applied to the guardians' scripts.

- Guardians of the ring are more powerful now.

- The new golems are now identical with their original prototypes in Improved Anvil mod.

- One other new type of monster from Improved Anvil mod takes part in one of the battles in The Four mod.

Download the new version here.

 

The Four v3 is available now.

What's new:

- Compatibility issues with Improved Anvil are all resolved. The two mods are now fully compatible with each other. The Four actually requires Improved Anvil (v5) to work properly. The Four is the only mod which can/should be installed *after* IA.

- The Four has only one component now. The tweakpack is omitted, because all of the required tweaks already exist in IA.

- The location of Guardian of the Gloves is changed. He is (again) hostile by default though he still has his dialogue.

- Guardian of the Crown is completely Changed.

- The 4 items' descriptions are changed (items are nerfed).

Download the new version here.

Have fun!

 

Does that mean it can't be installed right now (since IA 5 is yet to be released)?