Bard avatars?

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Which avatars bards use in BG2? I remember that they used to have thief avatars and paperdolls, with the cool hoods in IWD.

Now do bards use cleric avatars in BG2? At least it is like that in my game. Is it due to my mods or is it the way it is done? Is there a difference between kits?

BUT, in IWD, bards still had the hoods in their avatars, even if they don'T wear any armor. Alas, in BG2, if a cleric, fighter, or thief does not wear armor, they look pretty much the same.

I find it aesthetically unpleasing.

Ofcourse I can shift a bard's avatar to thief one via my script, BUT it will still don'T have hood when unarmored. And considering the fact that bards will go without armor most of the time to make their 'art'. Heck, even if they wear bardic chains they still won't get the 'hood' which is cool.

Solutions:

1-I have one pixel productions mod, which uses BG1 avatars&paperdolls, was it same in BG1?

2-Those special bardic armors sold by Song&Silence mod shopkeeper. If I equip my bard with them, AND change his avatar to thief, he will get the hood and still cast spells right?

3-I remember there was a cheat to change the avatar armor class of the characters; like make it look like wearing heavier armors etc. If I change my bard's avatar to thief one, THEN even when he was wearing nothing, use the cheat to armor class level 1, will he have the hood? Will it be persistent and/or create bugs? Is this really 'cheating', I mean, does it give additional protection or just the looks? And, what was the cheat command?

Hope I didn't give you needless headaches with such minor things, but I am really curious. Thanks.

 

I'm sure there's a mod somewhere that alters all the unarmoured appearances (except mage) to use the thief leather armour avatar, but I can't remember what it's called. It's probably somewhere on PocketPlane's Mod List, though.

As for the cheats, I use the avatar-shifting one myself, and CTRL + 6 and CTRL + 7 cycle your avatar back and forth; nothing else (like AC) changes, so it's an O.K. "cheat" for purists. Further listings are on SP, here. I do find, though, that the avatar change isn't carried over when you load a game, and it can crash the game. But that last happened on my old PC that ran Windows Me, so the blame could lie elsewhere. I've had no trouble with my newer XP-based machine.

 

Yes, BG/IWD use different avatars sets for characters. In BG thieves had their little hood/bodysuit ensemble whether they were armoured or not, and bards used the thief avatars. In BG2 they use the cleric avatars by default and thieves only get hoods if they wear leather armour.

You can permanently change the basic animation set for a character using NI or Shadowkeeper. But you can't change it to the specific animations for a particular armour level within that set, because the graphics files are interpreted through an IDS file. And no, the cheat (ctrl+1 to cycle armour level animations) isn't persistant, your guy will reset to the appropriate animation every time you reload.

You could *maybe* mod the game somehow to create a new animation set within ANIMATE.IDS and direct it to whatever graphics you're after, but I don't know how. Or, you could export all the BAM files for leather armour clad thieves and rename them to those filenames used by unarmoured thieves - that'd be easier.

 

Oh I recently installed One Pixel Productions, it uses BG avatars so an unarmored thief/bard will have the hood?

If all fails I can use CTRL+1 for my character, it looks harmless enough, and hopefully it won'T get tedious.

The Magpie or others, if you can give me a link to a mod which will do the trick I would be eternally grateful...

 

Bards can't use helmets in BG2 can they? That means that without hoods they look ewww! Silver when you get that link post it here cause they look terrible!

 

^Well bards can use helmets and everything once they hit 3million XP(Use Any Item HLA), but I really like the hoods! Cool!

Hehe Underrepresented Items mod introduce Cornugan Hide Leather armor, which is low AC but offers pro from normal weapons, some regeneration AND allows arcane spell casting! This is what my bard looks for! I will get it ASAP, have cool hood, some AC, immunity to normal weapons (which is kewl in the first chapters), and some regeneration!