Data entry needed: Feats & skills

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 9:20 pm

I'd like to document all 3.5 skills and feats in NWN2. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is easy-to-access documentation for DMs and players alike. I think this will help the "consistancy" of the ALFA experience, if more of the D&D ruleset is available without cracking a book or alt-tabbing to a PDF. Plus we are going to add many skills and feats anyways, so they might as well be given the right descriptions.

So the following is a list of 3.5 feats that either NWN2 will probably not come with, and which we may add at some point, or that we would want to change the description on (ignore the formatting, thats just how it got pasted from the D20 SRD website):

Code: Select all

 o Acrobatic
          o Agile
          o Animal Affinity
          o Armor Proficiency (Light)
                + Armor Proficiency (Medium)
                      # Armor Proficiency (Heavy)
          o Athletic
          o Augment Summoning
          o Combat Expertise
                + Improved Disarm
                + Improved Feint
                + Improved Trip
                + Whirlwind Attack
          o Deceitful
          o Deft Hands
          o Diligent
          o Endurance
                + Diehard
          o Eschew Materials
          o Great Fortitude
          o Improved Familiar
          o Improved Turning
          o Investigator
          o Magical Aptitude
          o Martial Weapon Proficiency
          o Natural Spell
          o Negotiator
          o Persuasive
          o Self-Sufficient
          o Shield Proficiency
                + Improved Shield Bash
                + Tower Shield Proficiency,
          o Simple Weapon Proficiency
          o Spell Mastery
          o Track

          o Brew Potion
          o Craft Magic Arms And Armor
          o Craft Rod
          o Craft Staff
          o Craft Wand
          o Craft Wondrous Item
          o Forge Ring
          o Scribe Scroll

          o Heighten Spell
          o Widen Spell

How to help:
1. Go here, and download tlkedit (or use another tlk editor of your choice):
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Ot ... ail&id=333
2. Post in this thread what range of feats you want to enter, so no one duplicates your work (Edit: This list ended up a lot shorter than I'd expected, so one guy could probably hammer this out pretty quickly)
3. Go here: http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/feats.htm
4. Copy the feats in with a name on one line, and a description on the next. So if the Acrobatic feat started at entry 20 of the tlk file, it would read

Acrobatic

and entry 21 would read:

Acrobatic [General]

Benefit:
You get a +2 bonus on all Jump checks and Tumble checks.

5. Play around with the formatting of tables and things to make it readable. Tlk files only accept plain text, so this can be tricky. Tabs (which you'll get quite often when pasting) and other special characters don't show up correctly, so be sure and remove them.

It doesn't matter what line you start on, we'll be pasting everything into another tlk anyways. Just be sure and always follow the name of the feat by the feat description, so two lines per feat.

Any questions? Did I leave anything out? Nothing complicated at all, just time-consuming.

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Sun Jul 30, 2006 9:36 pm

Also, I've already started on skills (I got to diplomacy before I nearly died of boredom), but if someone wants to work backwards from the end, that would be great. I want to document ALL 3.5 skills our own way, since the SRD's skill descriptions include information DMs will find useful. Otherwise its the same as feats, first line is the name, second line is the description.

Gotta run now, lemme know if there are any questions.

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 1:56 am

Indio is planning on tackling all of this, so no need for more volunteers at the moment.

darrenhfx · Post by **darrenhfx** » Fri Oct 06, 2006 1:13 am

I'm not sure how I missed this thread but now that Ronan has pointed it out to me, I'd be very happy to help out.

Indio, could you let me know where you are and maybe suggest where I could start?

Thanks

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 12:18 am

The last thing I got from indio was a copy of the feat and skill descriptions in TLK format. However, they aren't formated to be very readable in-game, and contain things like tabs which don't show up correctly. So some minor changes need to be made.

None of the 2da work has started, though. We can't guarentee 2da line numbers won't need to change by NWN2's gold date, but 2da lines are cut-pastable, so thats not a big deal as no other 2das reference line numbers on skills.2da or feats.2da for any real effect.

So, what needs to be done is:

Skills.2da lines entered (starting at line 100) for the new skills. Ignore craft and profession skills for now, as we don't know what exactly we'll be doing with those. I think we should also leave perform as 1 skill for now as well, though you guys may want to take some polls on this to see how people feel.
Remove taunt, parry, lore, craft armor, craft alchemy and craft weapon using the REMOVED column on the far right.
Edit the cls_skill_*.2da file for each class and PrC, setting the newly-added skills as class skills to the proper classes as per canon. Do not touch the skills you removed from skills.2da.
Format indio's tlk files a bit. I'll give you the proper line numbers to start at in the 2da tomarrow or sunday, so your skills.2da string references will point in the last place.
Mark down the line numbers of the feats associated with the removed skills in feats.2da, and list them on this thread. When we alter feats.2da, we'll need to remove those feats.
Test, and make sure it all shows up ok.
Hopefully some initiative will produce some crafting specs to add the crafting skills we want.
Once its finished & working, upload it to the repository in the /2da directory, or email it to me at ronan.alfa@gmail.com

Thanks!

indio · Post by **indio** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 1:09 am

Thanks Darren.

darrenhfx · Post by **darrenhfx** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 3:55 am

Thanks guys, I'll see what I can do.

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 10:34 am

Well, I was going to draw out all TLK usage needed, but decided to just add stuff as we need it. The info is here:
http://www.alandfaraway.org/docs/Technical/ACR2TLK

Let me know if you have any questions.

darrenhfx · Post by **darrenhfx** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 11:31 pm

I've started putting together the skills.2da table and just to make sure that I have a solid base to gone on and create the other files, this is what I've started to do: (note that I started the chart based off the Bioware skills.2da so all changes are based on their initial group; all changes are based on the list from the PHB with the exception of the Knowledge(Dungeoneering) skill which appears in the online d20 reference as well as a requirement in one of the FR feats (I forget which but will post it later))

Added:

Alchemy
Appraise
Balance
Bluff
Climb
Decipher Script
Diplomacy
Disguise
Escape Artist
Forgery
Gather Information
Handle Animal
Innuendo
Intimidate
Intuit Direction
Jump
Knowledge(Arcana)
Knowledge(Architecture and Engineering)
Knowledge(Dungeoneering)
Knowledge(Geography)
Knowledge(History)
Knowledge(Local)
Knowledge(Nature)
Knowledge(Nobility and Royalty)
Knowlegde(Religion)
Knowledge(The Planes)
Read Lips
Ride
Scry
Sense Motive
Speak Languages
Swim
Tumble
Use Rope
Wilderness Lore

Removed Column:

Discipline
Lore
Parry
Persuade
Set Trap
Taunt

So you mentioned to start with line 100 for the skills.2da, so by means of an example:

__________________Name__________Description
0______Alchemy_____100______________101
1______Appraise_____102______________103
(the lines are to keep everything.. lined up)
Would these be the appropriate tlk references?

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Sun Oct 08, 2006 11:52 pm

When you say "added", what do you mean? Most of those skills are already present, and we don't want to add new ones. Persuade doesn't exist, OE renamed it diplomacy. We do want to change their string references to point to their new descriptions which include PnP rules, but we don't actually want to add skills which are already present in the game.

Scry and Wilderness Lore are 3.0 spells. Scry was removed, and Wilderness Lore became Survival, which is already in NWN2. I'm not sure what Read Lips is, a 3.0 skill? Also, alchemy is a crafting skill, which we are holding off on now. Definitely leave off Knowlege: Local too, as it isn't really reproducable in NWN2. I'd just use the list here, as it encompasses all 3.5 skills:
http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/skills.htm

Start on line 100 of skills.2da, but don't start at the TLK line 100. TLK line allocation is here:
http://www.alandfaraway.org/docs/Technical/ACR2TLK
ie, skills.2da starts at 0. So the first line would be 0 + 16777216, the second 1 + 16777216, etc. TLK info is here:
http://ccg.dladventures.com/index.php/TalkTables

darrenhfx · Post by **darrenhfx** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 12:10 am

Ok so the first step is to go the the list of skills which are included in nwn2 and create a file that contains anything missing barring the ones you have mentioned above.

All of the skills listed are from the 3.5 Players Handbook so either we go with that list or the list from the d20 link, they aren't the same list.

You mentioned that you had completed up to Diplomacy, maybe you could email that file so I'm not way off base. I haven't done that much yet so it's no big deal. It's important to set the groundwork and knowing which source you consider the primary one for deriving skill and feat lists would be paramount.

d_shupe@hotmail.com

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 12:29 am

I'm looking at Player's Handbook, Core Rulebook 1 v3.5. It doesn't have Scry, Wilderness Lore, etc.

darrenhfx · Post by **darrenhfx** » Mon Oct 09, 2006 12:40 am

*tosses book out the window*

I have a 3.0... and I was having such fun getting all self-righteous.

d20 list it is.

darrenhfx · Post by **darrenhfx** » Sun Oct 22, 2006 2:48 pm

I have my PHB 3.5 and picked up the PGtF while I was at it.

The following is the content of an email to Ronan and included to keep everyone up to date on progress.

Step 1: skills.2da talk entries are completed and formatted, exceptions being profession, crafting and perform

I wanted to ask the question on the forums to our longtime bards whether or not they would welcome including the 9 categories of perform as seperate skills. I'll do so as soon as I get the nod from you.

I've attached the tlk file in case you want to do a little quality control and make sure I'm going in the right direction. What should I tackle next?

I know that we aren't sure what we are doing with crafting and profession categories but it wouldn't be a big deal to add them and not use them until we know. Maybe something I can do later on.

I was also wondering whether or not we are goign to carry the same system for languages to NWN2 that we use currently. With many of the feats in the FRCS and PGtF being regional in nature, and with the ability of our current language system to document the pc's home region(when working correctly), I'm wondering if we can tie all this together to allow for more regional feats.

Ronan · Post by **Ronan** » Sun Oct 22, 2006 4:38 pm

darrenhfx wrote:I wanted to ask the question on the forums to our longtime bards whether or not they would welcome including the 9 categories of perform as seperate skills. I'll do so as soon as I get the nod from you.

I don't see any clear reason to include profession skills, but I think spider may want them. Dunno, guess I'll differ to our other admin on this one, and get back to you. On perform, I'm still not exactly sure what the required changes will be to other in-game abilities to make it work mechnically for bards. I think the only thing we'll have to do is alter the bardsong script.

darrenhfx wrote:I was also wondering whether or not we are goign to carry the same system for languages to NWN2 that we use currently. With many of the feats in the FRCS and PGtF being regional in nature, and with the ability of our current language system to document the pc's home region(when working correctly), I'm wondering if we can tie all this together to allow for more regional feats.

We could, yeah. Its just a lot of work, and not something I want to shoot for at the start.

As for what to do next, that would be the 2da entries. Let me know if you have any questions on how those work, for the most part the column entries are self-explainitory.

Thanks Darren!