DM tools: NPC matrix & henchmen

Ideas and suggestions for game mechanics and rules.
Ronan
Dungeon Master
Posts: 4611
Joined: Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:48 am

Re: DM tools: NPC matrix & henchmen

Post by Ronan »

The ability to flag any particular NPC as a PC's henchman would be a great help for me in my DMing, at least. Did the party's tank not log in today? Let them hire one. Managing NPCs in combat is a pain but the henchman commands and AI make it somewhat manageable.

I'm not volunteering to work on anything more involved at this point, but I'll go ahead and add henchmen into the party XP calculations.
Zelknolf
Chosen of Forumamus, God of Forums
Posts: 6139
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2005 7:04 pm

Re: DM tools: NPC matrix & henchmen

Post by Zelknolf »

Ronan wrote:The ability to flag any particular NPC as a PC's henchman would be a great help for me in my DMing, at least. Did the party's tank not log in today? Let them hire one. Managing NPCs in combat is a pain but the henchman commands and AI make it somewhat manageable.

I'm not volunteering to work on anything more involved at this point, but I'll go ahead and add henchmen into the party XP calculations.
Verify with Curm before setting anything in stone. Canon says that people hired on get counted as party members, and people acquired from class powers do not, but that's a cross-domain thing. Right now, it's just unhandled with no ruling from DMA that I'm aware of.

Lines to log when a henchman / hireling gets killed might be worth talking about, while you're in there. We should definitely log if one is killed by a PC (tbh, we should probably log if a PC kills a familiar or an animal companion, too); we might want to log regardless. Lower priority, that-- if we agree on XP calculations, erroneous over-CR kills go away, and we at least don't have false logs. We just might have logs which we wish were more robust.


// Edit-- something I probably should have said when I first mentioned that this was changes in teh guts of our everything: I'm also adding this to the AI redesign project. That will be the point of least-required work to add support for something nimble and well handled, but we'll probably want to tap interested parties to fling spells at henchmen so acquired, too.
HEEGZ
Dungeon Master
Posts: 7085
Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 4:17 pm
Location: US CST

Re: DM tools: NPC matrix & henchmen

Post by HEEGZ »

Did the Exodus henchmen ever make it onto a live server?

Would it be possible to revisit the use of them by DMs please?

I would like to see if any of the HDMs are willing to trial the use of henchmen, however, I'd like to know what technical issues this presents. From T-Ice's posts it sounds like it is a matter of some scripts firing and having the NPC blueprints. It also sounded like there was an unanticipated glitch in the scripts on MS that prevented them from working. Anyways, I would like to bump this idea as NPC henchmen were great fun to use on Exodus and I would like to explore their use in ALFA for my DM plots. 8)
Zelknolf
Chosen of Forumamus, God of Forums
Posts: 6139
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2005 7:04 pm

Re: DM tools: NPC matrix & henchmen

Post by Zelknolf »

HEEGZ wrote:From T-Ice's posts it sounds like it is a matter of some scripts firing and having the NPC blueprints. It also sounded like there was an unanticipated glitch in the scripts on MS that prevented them from working.
It continues to not actually be that simple, and all of those prerequisite bits about the C# AI (which does, indeed, treat the "party" as the core unit of management, rather than the creature) got almost no adoption on live servers (the only templates that seem to use it are the ones I've made and the handful of incorporeal undead that use our touch attack).

We're thus not really much closer than we were last year. At best, you'd be able to jam an NPC into a PC party and hope that it works-- and yeah, "most" of it probably will (but "slightly less than half broken" is generally "a project in unacceptably poor condition"). It also remains difficult to prioritize the work, as the need is for decidedly-small populations in fairly-specific cases (with suggested expansions being generally-bad ideas; "escort" behavior doesn't use party membership with good reason, for example).
t-ice
Dungeon Master
Posts: 2106
Joined: Fri Apr 17, 2009 6:24 pm

Re: DM tools: NPC matrix & henchmen

Post by t-ice »

Yeah the AI is what it is. But if we didn't use things that have their AI in at best "poor" condition, we wouldn't be playing much. It's possible some AI will go haywire with NPCs in the party, but that's not a killer issue since what you see is what you get while DMing. You shouldn't rely on untested systems to challenge the party in combat (i.e. first see that henchmen would work with easy encounters). And you should let players get used to it, too. As long as the henchmen use normal nwn2 AI, they work plausibly. (And Zelk's post seem to imply almost no other creature in the game use the more advanced AI)

The scripts just use old NWN2 logic for the henchmen once in party. They just change the creature referring logic to properly refer to the creature object as opposed to by tag. That fixes an nwn2 bug where two instances of the same henchman blueprint couldn't be added to the party (because they have the same tag).

So as for actual problems that I recall :

On the tech side, I recall there was worries that having NPCs in a party would make a mess of the kill XP calculation system. So if a level 3 NPC partied with level 10 PCs killed a CR 10 monster, the party might be rewarded as if they were level 3. So in order to be safe when using henchmen, the DM should note PCs xp before and after the session, and then manually see that xps at the end of the session make sense. Furthermore DMs don't have the tools to reduce xp if ridiculous amounts were given, and if compensation in DM xp awards is used, then gathering statistics is broken with xp sources being attributed wrongly (making it look like the PCs were farming spawns when in fact they were being DMd). But overall, it shouldn't be a massive issue in that making a good game should be more important than gathering statistics or setting xp "just right" (long as there isn't a surprise of a thousand xpees).

The main lesson from my DMing, and the real reason why I didn't use henchmen really, was however that the players didn't want it. Basically there was no interest on part of players I had at the time to have the responsibility of controlling another actor in nwn2. But of course that depends on the players and the DM and the relationship between them.

At the end of the day I'm not even sure if the henchmen scripts were ever operational on MS. Since I didn't have access to the module, I don't know why, but I do recall the creatures that were supposed to use the scripts were there at some point. I do think I had (have) them operational on the Amn module, so it doesn't seem there isn't a breaking conflict with the ACR or anything.

Of course the major logic in putting henchmen to play at Exodus doesn't quite work with how ALFA is supposed to work. There is much less stories about factions where PCs would hold a IC role of leadership. Plugging holes in a party with "NPC adventurers" depends hugely on the players who would control them. By and large it will be a mess, in my experience (basically not caring to make it play reasonably). If you rather assigns NPCs to a PC with an IC responsibility, and the player is game with it, then using the henchmen works much better. Also then the player will get used to handling his henchies.
t-ice
Dungeon Master
Posts: 2106
Joined: Fri Apr 17, 2009 6:24 pm

Re: DM tools: NPC matrix & henchmen

Post by t-ice »

Interesting aside from before:
And the use cases described seem to all be things better handled by auto follow and a friendly reputation or faction setting: those being things we do support.
So as a DM I can use the client to spawn a defender faction creature and make it follow a PC? Coupled with toggle AI on/off, that would pretty much give the hoped-for behavior in henchmen, wouldn't it? Then the "combat on/off" toggle needs to be set by the DM (by toggling AI on/off), but that'd work. Assuming with AI off, a creature set to follow a PC does that and just that. And when AI is on, the creature will engage enemies it sees, returning to follow the PC when it sees no hostiles.

So how does one do that?
Ronan
Dungeon Master
Posts: 4611
Joined: Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:48 am

Re: DM tools: NPC matrix & henchmen

Post by Ronan »

Without the ability to respond to player commands I'm not sure how useful auto-follow would be. Most DMs just say "the NPC is following you" and then limbo them, so auto-follow doesn't get you a lot. They're still a pain to manage in combat (lots of pausing). We can turn AI on and off via the chooser, though its a bit clumsy with large numbers of NPCs in the area. Even a NPC with its AI off will sometimes continue attacking, so I generally just limbo non-combat or fleeing NPCs.

T-ice, now that you're a DM on BG, we can try this out. Can you point me towards the scripts? I can add them along with a DM wand which will swap out any creature's AI to "companionfy" them and party them with the nearest PC. We can try it on BG and see how it goes; if poorly we'll scrap it. I've got some other toolsetting to do over the next few days so getting it in shouldn't be a problem provided its as straightforward as I hope it will be (swapping of AI event handlers with some setup logic).

I seem to remember the companion AI and its associated configurability being pretty damn good, so its probably worth a try? Can you edit their inventory, spells, etc. as you could in the OC? I can envision many possible issues with the system, but cannot imagine it being as terrible as DM-managed NPCs.
HEEGZ
Dungeon Master
Posts: 7085
Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 4:17 pm
Location: US CST

Re: DM tools: NPC matrix & henchmen

Post by HEEGZ »

How would I set a NPC to auto-follow a PC ?

Also, I'd love if we could test on BG temporarily to see if it is even a realistic possibility.

[edit]
First attempts at setting NPCs to auto-follow a PC have failed. Maybe you were discussing a simpler feature that is not currently possible?
Zelknolf
Chosen of Forumamus, God of Forums
Posts: 6139
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2005 7:04 pm

Re: DM tools: NPC matrix & henchmen

Post by Zelknolf »

If you wish to test systems as the one described as having been on MS, test with test characters on a test server. This isn't an appropriate thing to add to a live server with it in current state; the ACR still assumes that everything in party is there because of a class power.
Ronan
Dungeon Master
Posts: 4611
Joined: Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:48 am

Re: DM tools: NPC matrix & henchmen

Post by Ronan »

Zelknolf wrote:...the ACR still assumes that everything in party is there because of a class power.
Does this affect anything aside from XP granting? Because the ACR already does not take friendly NPCs in account when granting XP, so this would not be any loss there. You'd get other benefits of the PCs being in the same faction* as the NPC of course, such as party spells functioning properly. Edit: I suppose if said NPC gets a kill, party members would receive XP, unlike a non-henchman NPC.

* You can actually set a PC to a NPC faction. I've had to do this a few times, often during situations where a PC is captured and surrounded by hostiles guarding him or her. It often results in said PC needing to relog to fix all sorts of craziness. Not recommended.
Last edited by Ronan on Fri Jul 12, 2013 3:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Ronan
Dungeon Master
Posts: 4611
Joined: Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:48 am

Re: DM tools: NPC matrix & henchmen

Post by Ronan »

Grepped it. Henchmen:
  • Wouldn't be counted for the purposes of calculating maximum PC level when granting XP.
  • Could do who-knows-what to those breaky travel map scripts. BG of course does not have a travel map.
  • Would be passed as parameters to some logging and XP-granting functions, just like other non-PC party members are. No expectation of breakage there.
  • Would work with seamless ATs! If anyone actually uses those.
Zelknolf
Chosen of Forumamus, God of Forums
Posts: 6139
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2005 7:04 pm

Re: DM tools: NPC matrix & henchmen

Post by Zelknolf »

The primary points of breakage are XP and logging-- it's probably fine if an NPC henchman grants a party of PCs some XP (Castano can overrule me there, of course; I am interpreting DMA rulings to say so), but it ought to do so as if the NPC henchman was a PC -- e.g. a level 8 NPC henchman kills a goblin with a party of level 1 PCs; the PCs should get 1 xp, not 15-- and we should log for party level vs. NPC CR as though the NPC is a contributing member of the party, as false positives in logging are an extremely reliable way to undermine reporting and to prompt people responsible for oversight to ignore legitimate reports or to not regard them as valid or to regard them as saying things which they do not-- which we've seen drive servers and admin to take action based on entirely-false information.

In terms of coordinating NPC behavior, that's a complex question-- though trusting that our players will be highly-proficient is going to be a failing assumption. That's going to in the end manifest as the previous point-- it will reduce the utility of our logs and increase uncertainty in future decision making.

// Edit: forgot OLMs. Yes, obviously that will fail. Not a problem for BG-- but of course we already have too many "BG only" features; they make our world less consistent and coherent. I don't think that increasing the disparity is going to be particularly good for ALFA, and would prefer that systems which can be used by all of the servers be written (I don't anticipate that to be an enormous hurdle, mind [they're NPCs and can be despawned/respawned but] we should handle it).

// Edit edit: Make that limbo/recall. Rebuilding effects sucks, and despawning would require that we do that.
Ronan
Dungeon Master
Posts: 4611
Joined: Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:48 am

Re: DM tools: NPC matrix & henchmen

Post by Ronan »

Its hard to imagine players handling NPCs worse than DMs do, or any alternative being as troublesome as NPC control during combat.

I redact my last post; I'm not sure XP granting will break. We don't distinguish between PCs and NPCs when calculating the highest level party member or the party leader. This has likely not ever been an issue because party members created by class-skills are never higher level than their masters. Edit: Nevermind, I see bPCOnly defaults to TRUE, although we don't make such assumptions within the loop itself.

Log wording and party member count would need to be trivially tweaked; I will test this with everything else before pushing any changes.
Zelknolf
Chosen of Forumamus, God of Forums
Posts: 6139
Joined: Tue Jul 05, 2005 7:04 pm

Re: DM tools: NPC matrix & henchmen

Post by Zelknolf »

Three problems with that plan:
You will log numerous rewards to an invalid PC
XP will be rewarded as if all NPCs were level 1
Performance will tank on every NPC kill.
Ronan
Dungeon Master
Posts: 4611
Joined: Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:48 am

Re: DM tools: NPC matrix & henchmen

Post by Ronan »

Yeah, the "plan" was not consistent with my later observation that we do in fact filter out non-PCs. Whatever, I'm not going to trace all the possible code paths from work whilst browsing github. I'll make the changes when I can next get in the toolset; use them, or revert them. Or if you're going to revert them no matter what let me know and I won't bother.
Locked