"Ten Towns Tactics"?

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I'm no modder (so I can't do it myself), but I'm wondering: when the hell is somebody going to make an Icewind Dale mod, equivalent to Sword Coast Stratagems? I think that would be truly awesome. And I propose the name Ten Towns Tactics, whenever it does take place (don't mind not taking credit for the name).

 

Most of the scripting is the same, but much of the rest changed, so it wouldn't be as easy as just porting SCS. On the other hand, the lack of mage superpowers in iwd2 means a lot of SCS could just be cut off.

There's the undead Targos mod that you could consider.

 

Ah, I think you're thinking of IWD II. I really don't get on with that game, but I love IWD I. Feats, a silly multiclassing system, and a broken XP-reward/level-up system just don't do it for me.

Anyway, off topic. Do you know much about modding the Infinity Engine? How different is IWD from BG2? It's occurred to me that the IWD-in-BG2 mod might have the potential to be basis for developing a tactical mod for IWD. I tried that one out, but the difficulty bar is a bit screwy: on Insane I managed the Orc cave at the beginning whilst taking almost no damage, without reloading. Maybe a tactical mod would restore a proper level of difficulty to IWD-in-BG2?

 

I'm very familiar due to my work on GemRB. Sorry for the confusion, I didn't realise the question was about iwd1. The iwd engine variant is similar to bg1, but with Heart of Winter, a big upgrade, it's somewhere between bg2 and iwd2. So very similar from the framework point of view. The biggest hurdle are still the data differences, so most of the scripts and tactics would need to be revisited for spell changes. If IWD-in-BG2 makes the gap smaller, then I guess it's a viable path — it would be bumpy either way.

 

I have played thru IWD-in-BG2. It's a nice change of pace from vanilla IWD, as Barbarians and Half-Orcs make more sense int eh IWD series than they do the BG series. But I think all the kits unbalance the game a bit. A SCS or a Tactics mod would be nice, but a ton of work for somebody. I would trying pinging the author and ask about it. Maybe it is already in the works.

 

It's definitely not in the works.

 

So, from what I understand, SCS (II) is basically a script re-writer: it alters the scripts of monsters to allow them to use more of their actual abilities (in the case of Dragons and Demi-Liches, it also gives them a few more abilities...), and to use those abilities sensibly.

If one went through the code of SCSII in its entirety, chopped out anything to do with HLAs and spells/monsters not present in IWDI, adapted the remaining code to alter the scripting of monsters in IWD with a counterpart in BG2, and added "copied"/adapted code regarding monsters and spells only found in IWD, one should in theory have a version of the mod that would work on IWD. I am aware this is probably a truly enormous task, but surely a lot less enormous than writing a mod of the calibre of SCS(II) from scratch.

Blades, that's exactly what I'm thinking. I found the difficulty in IWD-in-BG2 to be way out of whack (it really wasn't fun, for me). In theory it should be even easier to adapt the code from SCSII to handle stuff in IWD-in-BG2. That would be awesome, then, if all the monsters and NPCs encountered in IWD had BG2-style kits, proficiencies, spells and abilities, along with vastly improved AI scripting accounting for all the above. Maybe I should make a Gibberlings3 account and message David W. regarding this.