Racial Illusions

[Lucas Manderik]

Anyway to get spells so that individuals can appear as othe rplayer races? It would make deceptive characters have a lot bigger choices in race option. Not to mention it could work in to advance the lack of a disguise skill for these types of characters (buy a "gnome disguise" item, etc.).

Anyway, just a suggestion and wanted to hear other people's thoughts.

[hollyfant]

You may want access to the disguise skill first. Changing one's appearance into that of another race only adds a -2 point penalty to the check after all. As for actual spells, there's:

• Disguise Self: +10 to disguise checks.
• Alter Self: take on the actual shape of another creature.

More dramatic changes are available, but these are the low level spells that deal with mere appearances.

Also, within NWN2 an enlarged Halfling might pass for a half Elf, not so much by the actual rules but strictly by the looks of the model.

[Brokenbone]

I am fairly sure NWN2 lacks a key script to make this kind of stuff happen, see this link:
http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/SetCreatureBodyPart

Use of that sort of script was a fundamental in more than one "body mod" type application in NWN1, whether it was a head changing widget (which frankly, would be great in NWN2 to get rid of scaly faced yuan-ti purebloods or fire haired genasi), a disguise self widget or custom spell, or "fun things" kept in the DM's toolbox like the old Scarface Appearance Changer Widget, to add stuff like tails and wings and glowing eyes, etc. Come to think, "glow eyes" might be out of scope of the bodypart business, instead existing as a vfx, but anyhow... if the NWN2 Wiki is accurate about this being a missing function so far, then no amount of tech work will be able to make a go of this, without a patch which adds this in.

I suppose an extremely kludgey solution could be having a DM support a 2nd PC for you who "looks like the alleged race" with the same stats and abilities, but I do not know how much console work or Leto type work would be required to tear out bad feats, adjust abilities, add required feats, etc., and how much hand management would be required to keep XP, hp, gp, gear totals in synch across 2 character records, plus when you dispel (or take off?) your disguise, what, you log out with PC B and log back in with PC A and need everything "synched?" Bah. Gets worse if there's 20 disguises to choose from, you'd need 21 character records

Anyhow, maybe the SetCreatureBodyPart is actually in there somewhere in a patch, maybe it'll come in the future, til then, I'd say there's a serious technical barrier to this sort of thing.

[AcadiusLost]

Brokenbone is correct in that NWN2 lacks that nice function which allows part-swapping among player-character model appearances. We do still have functions which change the appearance.2da row used for an object, which might allow switching to one of a number of canned, static appearances (along the lines of the "commoners" from NWN1 who wouldn't show armor changes, or NWN2 companions whose helms never showed). These tend to come with some drawbacks, as things like movement rate, attack range, bump radius, and a few other parameters are imparted by the appearance.2da data. So, it's not really the best solution.

There are a great many spells I would like to see implemented for ALFA which would likely be much simpler than the alter/disguise self ones (though I'd like to get those in as well). I'm trying not to focus too much on spell scripting though, as it is an area which only benefits a few of our players. We've got a lot of core systems that affect everyone that could use some work first (vault/portalling, writable books, starting regions, custom skills).

Hopefully by the time we get back around to these spells, Obsidian will have adapted that scripting function to be compatible with NWN2's models.

[Vintenar]

Alternatively, what if there were armor pieces that contained body parts (much like a full helmet can cover one's face), since armor -can- be swapped easily in and out. Of course, there are clipping concerns to take into account.

However, that would be a very involved system, requiring a great deal of work for something that may or may not be completely simplified in the future.

[Kest]

Changing your own face and name would have been better before changing race, anyways...