NWN2 BG Statics

[ayergo]

Statics in BG work very differently from other servers. The difference can best be described as highly randomized and repeatable. This means the quests are not "FedEx", "Combat", nor "Scouting".

I'm currently going through to add the stuff to allow BG to properly handle the DB as it gives awards. I will update here with more numbers as i go through the scripts, but want to start with an overview:

There are a number of "useful" placeables that have a chance to spawn in any given area. To be able to use them however, a PC must possess the proper skill, spells, and/or feats as well as be able to gain access to the hostile areas.

In general the "useful placeables" can be broken down into the following groups:

1) Herbs. Require Heal and/or Survival skill in order to use. Redeemable in BG for xp/gold proportional to skill needed.

2) Spell components. Requires spellcraft to use, occasionally the defeat of a monster as well. Redeemable in BG for xp/gold proportional to skill needed. Edit: And many components (like bat guano. Tee Hee!) have a negative effect when carrying them, making it difficult to carry many at any given time.

3) Corpses (loot-less). Requires faith spells to be cast upon it and no hostile creatures near (conversation based). Gives XP for success.

4) Containers of loot. Generally better loot. Locked containers require lockpicking. Unlocked sarcophogas do not, but have a chance of spawning nasty undead.

All of these or none may occur at a spawn point. They don't all occur everywhere but are arranged logically in areas and dungeons. More to follow as i go through.

[ayergo]

Herbs:

Herbs have a low probabilty of spawning near the roads (safer areas), but are much more common in the wilds where spawns happen at all hours (and are particularly nasty at night).

The following herbs are currently possible to find:

Magpie Mushroom: 5 gold/xp. Fairly common in dungeons, can also be found in wilds. Requires 2 healing or 2 survival to pick.

Fireferns: 8 gold/xp. Only in wilds, tricky to spot due to coloring. Requires 4 healing or survival to pick.

Seaweed: 10 gold/xp Only found while diving (take damage every round, will explain more on diving scripts later), requires DC 10 spot as well as 5 heal or 4 survival while diving.

Cassil: 15 gold/xp. Only found in distant location. Requires some diving to get there as well as search check. Once you get there nasty baddies inhabit the island, and picking it requires 7 heal or survival.

[ayergo]

Spell Components:

These are almost exclusively found in dungeons.

Phosphorescent Moss: 3 gold/xp. Found in easy to access dungeons, requires spellcraft of 3 to pick. Has cumulative -1 hide for carrying.

Fire Rat Tail: 5 gold/xp. Requires spellcraft ranks, and defeat of creature in dungeon.

Vamprire Bat Fang: 8 gold/xp. Requires spellcraft ranks and defeat of creature in dungeon.

Bat Guano: 10 gold/xp. Requires 5 spellcraft to pick. Has cumulative -1 Cha for carrying.

Sulfur: 15 gold/xp. As above with the cassil, but requires 8 spellcraft.

[ayergo]

A note on dungeons i forgot. Most have some sort of "prerequisite" for enterance. For some its a charisma score, others persuade and intimidate. Still one has a search check required. A few are all access, but generally don't have things worth much.

[ayergo]

Chests/containers: These are fairly simple, and only appear in dungeons. Currently only two varieties. 1 a locked chest requiring lock picking skills to open, another that can be opened by anyone but risk having a big baddy jump out at you.

[ayergo]

Corpses:

Again fairly easy. They can sometimes appear in the wild, but more common in dungeons.

Spells you can cast on them:

Bless: Gives 20xp

Bane: Gives 20xp

Prayer: Gives 35xp

Bestow Curse: Gives 35xp

[ayergo]

Diving:

Diving is a higher risk bit of static content, mainly for higher hp chars.

First you must carry less than 30 lbs. Shallow areas inland will remind you and push you out of the water. Deeper areas will do extra damage per round while over the limit. The deeper spots have a higher probability of finding both good (and bad) things.

You also must purchase some goggles to avoid being blinded by the water, and if you want to spear fish, a special spear for the job.

Assuming you have all these things and can enter the water, while moving you have a chance to find things (other than seaweed already mentioned).

A number of things can happen, but every round you move you take at least 1 damage (From cold, fatigue, swell, seasickness, etc). Most of the time nothing else happens, but sometimes you find something more exciting such as:

-A crab may leap out. Relatively easy to kill. Killing it and bringing it in will result in 2 gold/xp (remember though that it does add weight, which can be dangerous in the water).

-Can see a large fish. If you have your spear equipped, and make a reflex save DC 12 then you get him. Worth 5 gold/xp (again it adds weight though).

-You can also get struck by a large wave. Fort save to avoid extra damage. The deeper you are the tougher the save and the more damage.

-You can spot a scallop with spot check DC 15. Worth 4xp gold in town.

VERY rarely (though increasingly common deeper) something extraordinary can happen.

You might find a pearl (300 gp), or some very nasty baddies.

[ayergo]

Thats all there is. Please let me know if anything needs clarification. All scripts have been fixed to use the ALFA ACR stuff.

[Brokenbone]

Sounds neat, but I guess even with the "low chance" of certain things happening or as the case may be, spawning, I guess it'll only be once you know what a dedicated explorer can net in an hour, that you'll have a better impression on balance.

Example: in TPI, Fionn more than once had to juggle the scripts around for results when judging that the net gains were too high for a fisherman who might just sit at the end of a dock and hit their fishing rod unique power over and over and over again. Sure, fishing is IC to do for more than a single cast, people sit around, have a beer, fish for hours... but if you make 20gp/hr vs. 200gp/hr, that might be too wide a range of possibilities. Still, it's also no-risk at most fishing holes, your exploration stuff sounds riskier.

Couple of other comments though:

Bat Guano: giving a -1 CHA, I'd suggest instead hitting some social skills like Diplomacy, Bluff, maybe Perform. I remember a long time ago someone complaining, validly, about a manure shovelling static in Shadowdale which hit CHA being a little unjustified in its impact to Sorcerors. Shovel dung and.... you forget half your spells until enough hours go by for a rest, and the DCs on those that remain plummet? Nothing about being covered in filth can't be achieved by CHA hits, that couldn't instead be achieved by hitting several social skills. Hard to impress local lord or whatever when caked in guano, vs. "forgot half your spells", one's the clear better option.

Corpses: if you're not a spellcaster but a nice guy (or terrible guy), couldn't you pick up a couple hundred pounds of DB and haul it to your friendly local temple of good or evil, or alternately, another authority like an undertaker's shack or the back room of a no questions asked school of necromancy? That's typical RP I've seen / participated in, in NWN1 DM sessions, when a moveable corpse object is sitting on the ground. Placeables, no one touches, but the ones you can pick up, get picked up a surprising amount of the time, especially by goodies (good RP, or angling for an alignment shift, reputation increase with local priests, whatever). Again, in cases you'd do it for the warm fuzzy feeling from the priest, in other cases, because you're getting a couple of shekels for a highly reanimatable body... again, even those without a priest at hand may feel compelled to do something decent or indecent with a roadside unfortunate. Maybe some rare chances on dialogue with different interested NPCs, when bringing in a corpse to say things that create another little bonus or penalty..."This was the famed bandit XXXX, you're due a bounty" / "This fellow was a deserter from such-and-such military unit, here's my sworn statement on that for you to turn into his CO for a reward" / "This was the third son of Lord Muckymuck, how do I know you didn't brain him in the woods?", / "This lass was a famed singer who once snubbed the High Terror of our Order, it shall delight him to see her reduced to a catacomb guardian" / whatever, but all results possibly modded up or down by social skills to eke out extra reward, possibly lose a reward, dodge a negative consequence, or even worsen a negative consequence. Fair trade for hauling 200lb through a screen or two of danger.

Diving: I guess I'd have to see in action to have a decent sense on rewards. We have no "Swim" skill due to custom skills problems, but I do not know if the idea here is wandering for a long time underwater without taking a breath every couple of rounds, or if it's just assumed "with your 30lb of gear, you frequently surface and get back down to the walkable areas." I also don't know if combat or other skills are hampered down there, i.e., absent a waterbreathing spell, you're not using anything which requires your mouth to open, like 90% of spells, bard skills, talking to partymates. Or, whether only piercing weapons work worth a damn and slash/bludgeon are seriously hampered... or whether missile combat is possible (ranged yes at -2 AB, thrown no?), absent an extra expensive crossbow built for the purpose. Or further to that, whether stuff like "stealth" works in an environment where the worst predators hunt with their noses, not caring much about how quietly swimming happens, in the murky waters. Anyhow, if it's a severely dangerous and inconvenient area to travel, high rewards maybe okay. If it's just "this is a blue area you walk around completely normally, subject to an encumbrance limit", maybe keeping a careful eye on things being too rewarding for the risk would be best. Yes I read something about taking 1 damage a round, but depending on its source, might Endure Elements or much tougher spells like Stoneskin dull that? Even if they aren't supposed to? Again, guess would want to see it in action.

Anyhow, it does sound innovative, I wish I remembered enough about the TPI diving system (which involved a gnome renting a diving suit) to know if maybe scripted solutions have been beaten out for this topic before, including at the time, possible use of Ulias extreme environment scripts + certain monsters tagged to ignore them. Certain gear was also tied to UES stuff too, helms tagged as "desert headwear" to avoid heat damage, or UW_ tags for stuff like a helm of underwater action, etc.

[ayergo]

Definitely going to see how things turn out in terms of balance. As always without a large sample size its tough to tell, but i strongly suspect the rewards will be low at first.

Bat Guano Cha:

I think it makes sense to forget the spells. At some point that stink is going to distract your natural capabilities. It also helps prevent farming. Unless everyone here strictly forbids it i'll likely leave it.


Corpses: Definitely some interesting ideas for expansion there. I'd welcome additions to the conversations/scripts! Please have a look and hammer out details, then submit them to me for inclusion.

Diving:

Combat not hampered really, but the fact that things get the jump on you (spawn on top of you) really takes the concerns away. Additionally there's no reason a bow or crossbow wouldn't work down there, hell i do it all the time. Most spearguns are basically crossbows anyway. A knife works fine too for slashing things. Hell, i've used my fist to bludgeon abalone off rocks before too. I might consider adding some slashing resistance to monsters if it becomes an issue, but i don't expect it will.

You are under the slow effect in water though. Some freedom spells could likely fix that, but i think that seems a reasonable benefit to casters (who are unlikely to have the hps to be able to be in the water long).

Source of damage is set to magic, this should allow it around pesky spells for the most part.

Definitely room for expansion and tweaking in the dive script. I will have to see how people do with it, but as in real life, i expect it to claim a lot of lives.

[Brokenbone]

Guano/Cha - definitely not a "Standards" problem, just sharing experience from some CHA altering statics I'd seen in Shadowdale and come to think, the almost resurrected Waterdeep beta, both in stables. Got switched to social skills based, so it didn't hit things like spells, pally abilities in terms of smites and saves, whatever.

Corpses - yeah I've meant to DL BG (and not game in it if I learn its secrets) though I'm a complete novice with the NWN2 toolset so far. Still, I guess seeing if corpses are already capable of being picked up (or could have a simplified corpse item inside a "container", which if you stole it, destroyed the container?) and to have a tag that an NPC or two like priests might say "WELL WELL YOU HAVE A STINKY CORPSE FOR ME?", hopefully not beyond my skills.

Diving - slow effect should hamper combat a good bit. Missile combat with bows / xbows is supposed to be -2 AB normally, with throwing wpns being impossible to use effectively... some resource, somewhere, talks about extra expensive crossbows that get around the -2 (thinking "speargun").

Maybe people should be under a "silence" effect as well onenter (since already Slow onenter, assume Silence could tack on too?)? They can't sing (*glub glub drown*) and spells could only circumvent that, if memorized with Silent Spell. Wandering around losing hitpoints = IC decision to cast some cure spells, unless recognizing "hey I shouldn't be opening my yap down here."

Also gotcha re: magic damage, that is "irresistible", so common elemental buffs and such won't accidentally save you from the environment. Sounds ridiculously damaging, really, but a bad swim in D&D means pretty much near instant death, as opposed to hp loss, so the system even if harsh looking, is actually generous. Still, it might also lead to requested scripted waterbreathing for caster 5's who memorize such. Wander around for hours with impunity, type of thing, WB spells are definitely the IC solution to "I want to retrieve buddy's body" or any other wet problems. TPI again used I think some kind of temporarily equipped helm item with tags that let you bypass some or all of the ill effects of submersion (the helm was just meant to represent "this guy has a WB spell on", not "this guy has a cool hat"). Lungs ready to burst is one thing, but cold, buffeting around, other stuff is also damaging... maybe hp drain would become 1/turn instead.

Again, sounds neat, but also normally not that scary once you consider spells that caster should be able to pray for / research, even if not shipped w/ vanilla game.

[ayergo]

Funny story actually with the first test i did with another player. I give him the equipment, he steps in the water and right off the bat rolled a 900:1 odds and had a seamonster leap out and eat him. I don't think he found it as humorous.

[AcadiusLost]

Bat Guano Cha:

Just as a heads-up, I believe stat damage can cause some strange bugs with the ACR (usually showing up as PCs' having semi-permanently lowered stats if they logged out or the server crashes/resets before the duration expires). Skill penalties are unlikely to cause similar problems, but might be harder to "enforce" over crashes/resets if you're talking long durations. Something to watch for in Beta testing, at least. When it's happened (on Exodus' server, with stink beetle diseases), it has tended to stay indefinitely until healed with a Restoration spell.

Source of damage is set to magic, this should allow it around pesky spells for the most part.

There is an extra parameter for EffectDamage() that allows it to bypass DR/immunities in the NWN2 scripting function (may be in the NWN1 one these days as well), this should probably be used to avoid immunities, and it would free you up to choose whatever sort of damage seems most appropriate.

[ayergo]

Effect for cha reduction is on the item while carried. Are there bug issues with that?

[AcadiusLost]

Hope not... we shall see in testing. Haven't tried Acquire/unacquire with stat penalties (or is it an itemproperty?)