Items: Using NWN2 stock items

Development of standard ALFA palettes (ABR)

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Rick7475
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Items: Using NWN2 stock items

Post by Rick7475 »

Here is the issue. I would like to see a good variety of items on TSM merhcants. We don't have the resources to make tonnes of new items (and I want to thank all those who have built items already, they are awesome).

The big delay esp for weapons or armor is deciding on color and graphics. There is a certain naming convenstion that Rusty and the standards guys have painstakingly come up with. However, many items in 003 do not follow it, we try with new stuff, but many items were created before Rusty's standard naming comvention (they usually have the tag 003_ after the old style naming convention).

NWN2 has dozens of MW, +1 and ordinary stuff such as Adamantine swords, Dark Steel swords, some of which are MW, and some are +1, as an example. I don't think these items are too out of whack except maybe for pricing.

I am not sure what I am asking here, but I sure wish we had a great variety of items. I'll use swords as an example. In ALFA, our custom swords are ordinary and MW. Now, SM is a city of 37,000, that's a fair size, with one of the most reputable mage colleges in the land. It also has a bard college and some well known magic shops. The canon does not list many shops (except Optym's Blade) so I will have to add armor shops and other weapon shops as well as a variety of other merchants etc etcv etc, you get the picture.

I would like the selection of items to reflect the "Gem of the North" so that weapons shops will sell at least +1 gear as well as armor shops and othersould be drawn to the "Gem of the North" because of such a variety of items as well as a fairly choice selection of low magic items.

However, we lack the resources to create a large selection of different types of weapons, some armor, shields, etc. But the NWN2 stock list has what I feel a great variety of items that would suffice.


So, for me to get what I want to reflect my vision of Silverymoon, which I, of course, feel is close to canon, there are sevceral solutions:


1. Forget, and work with what we have, which still means renaming at least 100 items in the mod that don't follow Rusty's and the standard teams conventions.

2. Loosen the standards so like other PW we can have some of these items.

3. Have someone go through and check a supplied list of desired NWN2 items and convert them to ALFA standards with ALFA pricing and ALFA naming conventions, a wholly thankless and meticulous task.

4. Make up a ton of new items that are ALFA standards that give us the variety we need.

Personally I am in favor of 2 because it gets us to live faster, but we will be circumventing the work of the standards committee.

But, I favor this for seceral reeasons:

1. It makes us more compatible in some ways to other PW's

2. We get tonnes of cool items for merchants.

3. Cuts down on some DM customizing and more time for DM'ing (esp with the +1 stuff).



Now, I am willing to abide by whatever the community feels is the best choice. If don't have many items in the merchants, oh well. DM's can customize stuff. But, like I said, it sure seems a waste not use all that cool NWN2 stuff.
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Post by darrenhfx »

I'm familiar with the naming standards and wouldn't mind chipping away at the list of items. It should't take very long to name them properly.

Standards for pricing, on the other hand, is not an area that I am familiar with.
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Post by Rusty »

As the recommended maximum DM award for Level Four is valued at 1,750 GP, and a humble longsword +1 weighs in at 2,330 GP, I don't think there's a pressing need to have Silverymoon's magical emporiums stocked with the items of up to 100,000 GP value that a metropolis might be carrying.

Given the absurdities - both in terms of power and pricing - of a rather high proportion of standard palette items, I don't think they represent particularly desirable content. As one of the major boons NWN2 brings is the opportunity to get issues such as pricing right from the get-go, I think I'd fairly strongly deprecate the idea of ignoring them on our very first Live server.

The DM training process will include basic familiarisation with our standards, including item pricing, so all wannabe NWN2 DMs will find themselves wonderfully au fait faster than you can say Jack Robinson. D can be the first guinea, as soon as he sends in his DM App: there are other ALFAns as well who have made palette content in the past and may be interested in creating some good-lookin' suits of armour or shiny weapons. I shall poke a few.
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Post by Rick7475 »

The +1 stuff isn't essential, but I sure would like all those NWN2 adamantine, cold steel, and other MW and ordinary items.

If darrenfx wants to go through and go over all the MW and ordinary weapons and armor in NWN2 it would add a lot of item variety.

I think, for example, there are 3 types of ordinary weapons (adamantine, dark steel, and something else) as well as three varieties of MW.

That goes for shields, armor, and most weapons.

That would work for me.
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Post by AcadiusLost »

Just a side note- with the last hak update, I brought in sword appearance replacements for the worst of the "fantasy swords" of NWN2- so many of the standard-palette items may look different than expected- for those that mix/match hilts, blades, and pommels, the result may be fairly unpleasant. I believe the default Bastard Sword and default Scimitar both bear replacing with alternate appearance (I have done this for the 003 start area merchant and the rivermoot weapons one already). The masterwork and alternate-material ones may need a glance-over in the preview window with the new haks in place as well. Overall, the effect of the change is a very positive one IMHO- but it means we can't assume everything in the standard palette will look OK when equipped.

Also- should this be in the ABR or perhaps Collective Siscussion forums? Don't see the connection with the Core Ruleset here.
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Post by Rusty »

Moved to ABR.
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Post by JaydeMoon »

As the recommended maximum DM award for Level Four is valued at 1,750 GP, and a humble longsword +1 weighs in at 2,330 GP, I don't think there's a pressing need to have Silverymoon's magical emporiums stocked with the items of up to 100,000 GP value that a metropolis might be carrying.
I'm not sure what it is you are saying here.

It seems to be in response, somehow to:
I would like the selection of items to reflect the "Gem of the North" so that weapons shops will sell at least +1 gear as well as armor shops and othersould be drawn to the "Gem of the North" because of such a variety of items as well as a fairly choice selection of low magic items.
and feels like a recommended negation of what is being asked (+1 items in shops), even though the words themselves don't expressly state that.

To paraphrase:

Rick: "I would like to stock +1 items in some of the shops."

Rusty: "Here are some facts concerning +1 items as they relate to our standards. There is no need to stock stores with 100k items as canon suggests might be available."

Rick: "Oh, I guess we don't need to have +1 items in the shops."

I'm a bit confused.

Should Rick or should Rick NOT allow +1 items in some of the stores? Can Rick or can Rick NOT put +1 items in some of the stores?
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Post by Rusty »

What's our starting level, Jayde?
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Post by JaydeMoon »

Level 1. Not sure what that has to do with it.

Unless starting gold is 2k+, thus allowing 1st level PCs to buy a +1 Sword out the gate?

Perhaps barking up the wrong tree, but:

If we have standards in place and DMs are abiding by them and DM awards are given such that a PCs wealth is divided into items, consumables, and gold, I would think that PCs would not have the gold necessary to purchase a 2k+ item until about... 5th level?

While there are always cases where players with the driving desire to do so can make a +1 item happen at lvl 3 or 2 or whatever, depending on circumstance, I would think this to be an exception rather than the rule.

On the chance that a player might get a +1 item before level 5, in a situation where DMs are supposed to be trained enough to make note of such an anomaly and adjust awards accordingly, we are going to remove the option of purchasing low level magic items in stores?

Now, this is just a question, maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to get at and you're actually guiding me towards, "Of course +1 items might be found in shops!"
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Post by Rusty »

Not so much barking up the wrong tree as howling at a distant forest.

There is no pressing need for expensive magical items to be included in a mod when it goes Live because PCs will not have access to them.

Now, let me take that keyboard of yours away. :P
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Post by JaydeMoon »

pffft... I need my keyboard for the work I do at my job. Without it, I can't even look like I'm working.

So, basically not including because no one will be able to buy them, but in the future they may very will be added.

I assume disclusion is based at least partially on time constraints (ie tooling up a bunch of items that no one will have access to for at least a month or more)?

Because part of the immersion is to have the stuff in the stores that would be in the stores, right out the gate (even if they are out of reach), but that's easy to sacrifice in consideration of getting our servers Live as quickly as possible and I suppose I understand then.
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Post by AcadiusLost »

Rusty wrote:There is no pressing need for expensive magical items to be included in a mod when it goes Live because PCs will not have access to them.
Are the aforementioned +1 items included under "expensive magical items"? Or are you referring more to other, more staggeringly priced items such as may be found in the standard palette of NWN2? Seems there is a very large range between the +1-3 skill, +1 armor, +1 enhancement sort of items we've traditionally had available in NWN1-ALFA merchants, and the 100,000+gp items that might potentially be "available" (via DM, etc) in a metropolis of the size and sort of Silverymoon.

So, are we saying "no magic items at all in the shops for now, we'll add them later", or "keep store-purchasable magic below +1 enhancement levels", or "you can have +1 kit for sale in the stores, but don't get carried away with powerful items just because Silvy has a high ceiling for these things by canon"?
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Post by indio »

I made this mess. Mostly it was experimentation.

I have no qualm with all items being deleted.

After they're deleted, do a quick sweep of shops and mobs to make sure there's no residue.
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Post by Brokenbone »

NWN1 standard pallette items, at least the magic ones, took a long time to clean out of player circulation, whether in shops, drops, or awards. Common example, DM might've felt perfectly good dropping a +10 skill item from the standard pallette, thinking it worth a couple hundred gold pieces (toolset price), not realizing that the ALFA's standards (or even the DMG!) would consider that a 10,000gp item.

Players in NWN1 often knew the deltas between ALFA (or DMG) pricing and standard pallette type pricing, it's what'd cause a path to be beaten to the door of certain shops, and eventually builders wising up and plugging holes. "No wonder people always visit store X, the swords are only 70% the price of anyplace else in ALFA" kind of moments. Removing stuff you might have wished you'd never introduced into play is definitely like a "pound of cure" compared to the "ounce of prevention" one might've troubled to take in the first place.

...

I do not know how good or bad NWN2 standard pallette items may be. Assuming they're meant for a single player campaign from level 1 to a really high level, there is probably a wide, wide, wide range of low to high powered items. At least for the first few months of beta or live, one'd imagine slow advancement would be the norm, rewards to be reasonable, and in the rare case of a permanent magic item being needed, tooling as needed ought do.

Even in the waning days of NWN1, including in metropolis sized cities with the occasional 10+ PC wandering around, static merchants tend to very, very rarely sell any item worth more than 5000 to 10000gp. Can count exceptions in Sembia and Shadowdale that I know of on one hand, can't say the same for NC or Moonshaes though. If a mature world with level 10 to 20s doesn't need "wow factor" stores, this may be an indicator for the future of NWN2 servers... players of level 1-5 PCs probably don't need monty-haul content for their window shopping, at least not for awhile. Maybe people doing ABR tooling donations will pick up once beta goes into Live, that'd be nice (i.e., maybe there's people "waiting and seeing" before spending tooling hours, I can't say).
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Post by Rusty »

We'll have as much in as we possibly can (caveat: legal and priced properly), but if push comes to shove, we can go Live without fully fleshed out magical stores, because PCs won't need to have immediate access to them.

This is not meant to be a particularly significant point; just that we can focus on effort on what is most immediately needed (mundane) then diversify (MW, less rare materials) and then diversify further (rare materials, magic).
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