Requesting a good modder:

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Is it possible to have the Bard Song abilities from the Icewind Dale games imported into a Bard for the Baldur's Gate series?

This option would make Bards a whole lot more fun to play, and would also show a big difference between the kits (like the Blade whose song doesn't improve).

 

I don't know if it is even possible but I would like to try that mod if some one actually manages to do it.

 

I'll try and point Andyr this way; this sounds like a nice Song & Silence addition (assuming it can be done).

 

I once tried something like this but in a very crude manner, adding a new "Pure Bard" kit which granted Innate Special Abilities that mimicked IWD2 Bardsongs.

But I ran into limitations due to my own lack of knowledge that prevented it from being as good as I wanted.
1. Easy to add an all-party effect, but couldn't figure out an elegant way to exclude the deafened.
2. Easy to determine duration of song based on level, but could only prevent spellcasting for this duration, not other actions (some may not see this is a problem, because a bard should be able to sing and attack simultaneously in P&P, but it was inconsistent with BG2's approach to a modal effect).
3. I don't know of a way of scripting new songs to launch from existing Bardsong button rather than Special Abilities. This might be a hard-coded limitation. I dunno.
4. Not smart enough to figure out how to have the game recognise the new songs as bardsongs for scripting purposes (I assume some .IDS tweaking could do this but I'm too dumb and .IDS are not something I wanted to try messing with).

So although the bardsong effects mostly worked as I wanted, it all felt like a pretty crude hack job. I'd love it if smarter and more experienced coders took in on though. It's a really neat idea Klorox.

Cheers,
Luiz.

 

1-Well this does not sound like a big problem to me. I can not remember many instances, if any, my party being deafened by enemies often. I was not even aware that upon being deafened, bard songs do not effect party. (but I know that bards should not sing when silenced. This must be easy to code.)

2-Can't it be coded so as soon as the bard takes an offensive action(casting/attacking/pickpocketing), song effect is gone? Cleric spell Sanctuary uses this limitation I am describing. Maybe you can copy or get a hint from its code? (ofcourse I know absolutely nothing against moding, just an idea.)

3-Well this may be a problem but many people can live with it.

4-I hardly use scripts anyway, though if you mean the enemy bards using new songs...well I am not sure but in vanilla game, no bard enemy I encountered has started singing as far as I know. (and I believe I should have faced quite a few when fighting against Harpers.)

So despite this drawbacks and hinderances I encourage you to work on such a mod. Ofcourse, if it can ever be made in a more elegant way I would prefer it, but I doubt it. I think most of the things are hard-coded. Though IWD was pretty much like BG, but they were able to add new songs by just an expansion.

 

Luiz, take a look at spcl751 and spcl751a. The bard song can be redefined; spcl751 is what changes the jester's song to spcl751a. You could grant bards innate abilities that would change their bardsong (i.e. attach it to the bardsong button) that they could cast at will. This would probably mitigate (or at least bring them in line) with most of the issues you cite; the drawback is that the bard would have to cast a spell (and hence use a round) to change from one bardsong to another.

 

Damn, that's an excellent way of doing things, because the new songs really would be "bardsong" for all intents and purposes as far as the engine is concerned. So elegant!

And I'm not sure the extra round is a problem, because you can use the desired special ability to pick your song at any time, ie, in advance. If you actually wanted to change song mid-battle then it should take an extra round to do so, I think.

Hmm... you see this is why smarter people should do this stuff. They come up with better solutions. Besides which I'm really too tied-up with non-BG2 stuff at the moment to experiment with this, excellent idea though it is, so I'm really hoping someone else will pick up this ball and run with it.

Cheers,
Luiz.

 

Andy's mentioned he'll give this a go for Song & Silence v3 (we were too late for v2).

 

That's great news indeed! Will be waiting for it!

 

Seconded. (I saw the post on G3)

 

It's something I thought about previously but never got round to--hence a possible inclusion for v3, rather than the hopefully-soon-to-appear v2. The best way I could figure out to do it was Cam's use of innate spells to change the effects.