NWN2

Goblin Invasion -- The mountains north of Rivermoot on our Silver Marches server are experiencing some significant pressure from the goblinfolk in the mountains. Currently being run by DMs HEEGZ and JLM, with some activity found every night.

DM Events -- We still have DMs running regular events. DMs HEEGZ and JLM are associated with major events on The Silver Marches. JLM also runs ad hoc sessions with Lokan on Baldur's Gate on some U.S. evenings.

Wynna's DM events are on a temporary hiatus while real-world obligations are being met.

Player Admin Change -- Heero is our new player administrator.

Few things rolling out today:

• Quest triggers now record that a given trigger has already been tripped by a PC by saving that fact to the trigger instead of the PC. This means that...
  • You may now have multiple identically-named triggers with different variables and still have all of them operate on the same PC.
  • You may now "clean up/reset" a quest by deleting and recreating all of the quest triggers (see BG's *_patrol scripts for an example of this).
• You may now add an integer variable named ACR_QST_FORCED_STATE to a quest trigger, and cause the activation of that trigger by PCs whose quest state is ACR_QST_LOWER_STATE to be set to precisely the forced state. As with the default behavior, if the PC's new quest state is greater than ACR_QST_UPPER_STATE, they will be given the XP defined in the journal. By default, quest triggers increment quest state by 1.
• Shuriken now acquire Mighty (+10) as a temporary (non-price-adjusting) property when equipped. While this looks a bit hacky, this seems to be the only way to allow shuriken to benefit from the thrower's strength bonus, as is appropriate for thrown weapons.
• ACR Spawn Points actually respect spawn types of 8 (traps) now.

Another small ACR update today-- server-side only, but servers had to recompile. Properly-configured hosts will have done this automatically, but be careful if you version control your NCS files (as the server should be the new source of truth at least on your acf_mod_* series of scripts).

Changes:
•Waypoints with the tag ACR_QUEST_WAYPOINT will be automatically converted to persistent areas of effect having the default ACR trigger scripts (acf_trg_*) on its three events, carrying all of the waypoints which are assigned to the waypoint. In practice, this means that you can use waypoints instead of triggers for scouting and bounty quests by assigning all of the variables that you -would- have put on the trigger onto a waypoint instead, and tagging it appropriately. By default, these areas of effect will be persistent effect #83 (which is about the size of one tile), but you can create an integer variable named ACR_QUEST_TRIG_SHAPE and set that to any integer represented in that 2da to get the matching size/shape (potentially visual-- keep in mind that if you were to, say, use 44, then your quest trigger will look like a mass of writhing tentacles. Whether or not that's a good thing is between you and your HDM.
•Creatures with touch attacks can now have ACR_TOUCH_ATTACK set to WISP to acquire a will o' wisp's touch attack (doing 2d8 points of electrical damage).
•A crash that could result from a creature taking damage from the module (as in #sethp or ACR Traps) is fixed
•It is no longer possible to pick invalid packages during character creation (which could cause a spellcaster to begin play without any spells)
•A very-rare bug that could occur if a DM attempted to reprice an item before any item had been generated has been fixed.
•A specific case which could cause the CLRScript object manager to crash and lose its collections (to hilarious and disastrous consequences downstream-- mostly NPCs forgetting who their friends are and taking way too long to respond to being punched in the face) is fixed.

This will be the first of semi-periodic updates on events occurring in ALFA on the DM/builder side of things. DMs/builders may contact me via PM to supply news for inclusion.

1. Monsters - With shad0wfax's efforts, BG is revamping its monsters to include tech's updated AI (smarter more IC monsters) and better fit 3.5e rules. These monster files (.UTC files) will be made available to all servers via the campaign folder. Servers wishing to use them need merely add the files to their campaign folders and call the monsters as regular spawns or use the DM spawn tools.

2. Static Content - Through Rumple's efforts, MS has added the first perform static to many of its taverns. Players of bards or others with perform ranks (or no ranks) now have an easier way to RP performances, both good and bad, without the need to macro performances. Also, they can earn a small stipend to cover their food and drink costs, and some XP. Since the system is skill check based it provides vital independent feedback to your PC's activities. You may access the perform static via a useable floor candle lamppost located in Kingsbay's inn. DM spawned lampposts currently reside in the other inns so the static may disappear from your inn of choice until such time as we respawn it/update the module again.

3. Loot - Static loot drops have been altered to take account of PC wealth. Thanks to Zelknolf in tech for devising and implementing this change after a rather nebulous suggestion from the DMA side of ALFA.

We're rolling out another version of the ACR onto our servers this weekend.

Related to the discussions in Standards about adjusting loot drops by the looting party, slain monsters are now going to have wealth vary both randomly and by the wealth of the looting party.

People who are uninterested in the details need to only really pay attention to that the ACR will follow our (very old) DMA guideline to drop less in mixed parties, with the expectation of making it up to the poor people later. There is also handling for if items are dropped or exchanged between PCs before looting (with a fairly-long-term, but not permanent, definition of "before" -- giving something away a month ago doesn't count for anything, but if your best pal in the next area is suddenly at the cutoff because of all the stuff you gave him, the ACR will not drop anything for you, though that too functions with more-reasonable limits; giving low-value gear to the guy with the bag of holding doesn't really have an impact), but not if items are destroyed (as they're gone forever) or sold (as you now have money, which counts).

We might extend advice to people to try to play in diverse groups if that's possible, as being in the same mixed group every time you adventure makes it very hard to make random drops fix anything.

For actual changes...

• The problem with #sethp behaving oddly, as recorded in the last changelog, is corrected. #sethp should now actually try to place the creature's current hit points to its argument
• The Touch Attack monster feat now accommodates Allips (doing wisdom drain until driving their target insane) and Greater Shadows (doing 1d8 strength damage until it kills their target). The string values of "ACR_TOUCH_ATTACK" are "ALLIP" and "GREATER SHADOW" respectively.
• The OOC horse appearance item should now weigh a little less, to help mitigate its brutal OOCness.
• ACR_Candlekeep now stores information about all base item types, which the ALFA.Shared assembly can provide on request.
• NPCs on the ACR AI are now better at identifying which items in their inventories are actually weapons, and should no longer attempt to wield non-weapons as weapons.
• Slain monsters now modify their loot dropped by x4 (for very-poor parties), x2 (for poor parties), x1 (for near-target-wealth parties), x0.5 (for rich parties), x0.2 (for very-rich parties; decimal truncation is the reason this is not in practice 0.25). Parties containing members who are above the wealth cutoff will receive no loot for killing monsters.
• The acr_wealth_i library provides ACR_CalculateMultiplier(object oPC) and ACR_CalculateCombatMultiplier(object oPC), if module-specific content wishes to work with these systems.
• A bug that could cause incorporeal creatures to still drop corporeal things is corrected.
• NPCs who slay other NPCs will not prompt the dropping of loot.

The ALFA tech team has released a minor version update for ALFA Core Rules. Some changes include:

• Hammer of the Gods is split into the pen and paper spells: Holy Smite, Unholy Blight, Order's Wrath, and Chaos Hammer. PCs will need to prepare the new spells, provided they have the appropriate domain. NPCs tooled with Hammer of the Gods will see it function like an alignment-appropriate spell.
• DMs can #sethp to heal or damage their selected target
• DMs have collisions disabled when they log in, so they can't clip PCs
• NPCs on the ACR AI who are instructed to fight at range will not continue to use ranged weapons in the melee
• NPCs on the ACR AI who acquire distance between themselves and their targets can pick and equip ranged weapons
• Holy Word, Blasphemy, Dictum, and Word of Chaos now have their PnP area of effect (40 feet, previously 30 feet)
• Alter Self is added as an RP spell
• Default merchant scripts are converted to play nicer with the ACR. This means aappraise should function in fewer places.
• Horses should try to remember how many hit points they have when they're mounted, and return to that many hit points when dismounted.

Additionally, we have the following bufixes:

• Tumble no longer provides a synergy bonus to alchemy
• Players can no longer equip the brown horse ownership item
• ACR Item pricing counts pure silver weapons as automatically masterwork