BG I & II Issues and Feedback

[RafaelElendil]

Hello, Holic.

First of all, this mod is awesome and I was playing hundreds of hours with it. I will start by making a list of issues and updating over time. I intended to do it for almost a year, but always postponed, so since this mod is so great and you put so many work into it, I decided to move my lazy ass and do it.

I play without enhanced enemies (I really dislike the changes) and most of my runs are solo, so I can have a very deep analysis of each character I play. I raised the point creation Cap to 32 (DnD heroic) and it gives the side effect of since most attributes have a bonus, its far easier to find errors and incorrect aplications of those bonuses on class abilities.

Races: All races seems to be working just fine and with correct application of all abilities.

Classes:

Fighter

• First level bonus feat does not apply when you create the character.

Hexblade

• The level 5+ bonus feats did not applay, I was able to fix it simply by removing a comentary flag put on the instalation file making all the code a comentary instead of a code.

Paladin (and Cavalier)

• Channel energy charges does not change with charisma

Blackguard

• Absorb Health does not increase with level, it always steal 2 hp, the number of charges is working with charisma just fine

Cleric

• Channel energy charges does not change with charisma

Fighter/Thief

• Does not get any bonus feat (did not test fighter to see if it gets bonus feat beyond level 1)

Fighter/Cleric

• Channel energy charges does not change with charisma

Fighter/Mage/Cleric (seens to be the most bugged of it all)

• Channel energy charges does not change with charisma
• Does not receive bonus domain at 1st level
• Receives 7 +CON HP at level one, as said in the description, but only receives 6 +CON at each level up, tested multiple times with multiple CONs to make sure.

Tested classes working just fine: (at least the first few levels I tested) Kensai, Druid(all subclasses), Mage(all subclasses), Assassin, Shadowdancer, Swasbuckler, Ninja, Bards(all subclasses), Battle Caster (never tested pure sorceror), Monk(all subclasses), Fighter/Mage, Fighter/Druid, Cleric/Ranger, Fighter/Mage/Thief.

Feats:

• Combat Prowess 4: tooltip error saying it applies -5 penalty, but it applies the correct -3 which is the intended.
• Warfare 1: when creating a character in BG1 and importing it to BG2 (both with the same instalation of this mod) the imported character will not have the Power attack button, but the effect will be there if you left it turned on when you saved game. So to use it in BG2 i need to delay getting warfare until after I imported (getting it in bg2 creates the button) or leaving it turned on forever.

and thats it, i think its all the buggs i found so far.

Feedback:

I know that balancing around soloplay is a trap, but since many classes that are supposed to work better in a group are also king of soloplay, I think some balancing is deserving.

First of all: weapon styles Archery, Two weapons and single weapon seens to be in a good spot, they are powerful and really create their own playstyle, which i think its the point, 2 handed and shield are lacking... A LOT!

2 handed are slow, the damage they recive does not compensate for anything, does not improve any defensive problem like ALL OTHER STYLES do and leave a glass cannon that doesnt even seens as a cannon since the very low APR, slow attack and low crit makes the style just weak,

Sword and shield increases what the playstyle is already strong and adds nothing. Seems a waste of points since other abilities are adding a LOT of other stuff, it doesnt create any playstyle, as single weapon style that makes single weapons really viable.

Suggestion(i dont know if they are viable because i dont know this effects can be added to a style)

Two-handed (increasing the APR and giving AC, both make sense, and still leave single weapons as the king of crit) 1- +1dmg, -1 speed 2- +0.5APR, -1AC 3- +1dmg, -1speed 4- +1dmg, -1speed 5- +0.5APR, -1AC 6- +1dmg, -1speed 7- +1dmg, -1speed, -1AC

Sword&Shield (I dont know if my suggestion is implementable, but you made so many awesome things with this mod that i will suggest anyway) 1- Gain an extra attack(shield bash) that does 1d3 base damage (it gets same enhancement to hit and damage as the shield enhancedment to AC, plus the character +STR bonus and any other bonuses from spells like divine favor) 2- +1 to AC, shield bash damage increases to 1d4 3- +1 to AC, shield bash damage increases to 1d6 4- +1 to AC, gains evasion with shield equiped 5- Gains immunity to critical hits, shield bash damage increases to 1d8 6- +1 to AC, Crit on 19-20 7- +1 to AC, Crit on 17-20

Classes:

Almost all classes seens fairly balanced, and many that have problems are because they are not working as intended (the bugs above), that said some really need some help.

Paladin(and all subclasses): I tried a 2handed paladin(trying to get the holy avenger in bg2) and it sucks hard on early game. The inability to get any AC from dex due to full plate 0 dex, no defense in 2 handed style, made it really hard, even after level 6 with the +0.5 APR from base attack. I suggest both making the changes above, which would make sword and shield paladin a lot more fun and viable and either giving shield as a paladin spell OR giving paladins the ability to increase +1 max dex from armor starting from level 5 and every 5 levels to Max +4 at level 20.

Skald: To me, the best class in the game, specially for solo, right now, which is strange, since bard abilities are supposed to be more supportive. I dont think it needs a nerf, its not broken AT ALL, it just is very independent:

• The lack of bonus feat isnt a issue, since the power come from the class abilities, it can even be a blessing since you can use whatever weapon you need on demand
• High lore is very helpful
• Pickpockets is very useful, not needing to kill anyone to get key items (like charisma cloack early in BG1 and ring of regen early in BG2)
• 8HP is awesome
• Inspire courage is very good even as single character
• Rage in AMAZING, no need for greenstone amulet, and the buffs rocks
• Some of the best armor in both BG1 & 2 for casters are considered splint mail or less on the mod (Mithral Chain +4 BG1, Red Dragon Plate in BG2, so no penalty) Your only inability is to disarm traps, but you can live with that, most classes cant do it anyway

Lets compare with 2 classes that IMO, compares directly to IT: Fighter/Mage pros:

• Can cast 7 level spell
• Ability to use plate or full plate is irrelevant because of max dex, but i will list as a pro
• Dont need charisma
• Bonus feats cons:
• 7 HP
• Cant real with rage or song abilities
• Battlecasting is a VERY bad ability TBH, much worse than inspire courage
• Aside spells, no way to buff attacks
• No pickpocket
• No bonus lore

Not that fighter/mage is a bad class, Its just that skald is better. I wouldnt nerf skald because its fine as it is, i would just make the following changes to fighter mage:

• 8HP
• +1 Max DEX AC from armor at levels 8 and 16 (total +2 at level 16) (since they are half fighters)
• Change battlecasting to not consume spells, work similar to magus arcane pool from pathfinder, can be used level/2 +1 per 2 points of int above 10 times per day, and give +hit and +damage equal to 1 per 2 poins of int above 10

Fighter/Mage/Cleric

• 8HP
• +1 Max DEX AC from armor at levels 10 and 20 (total +2 at level 20) The rest is fine, Cleric spells have a lot of ways to improve hit and damage, specially with divine favor.

Fighter/Mage/Thief -7HP

• +1 Max DEX AC from armor and -10% penalty from thief skills at levels 8/16.
• Remove base battlecasting and add same battlecasting as fighter/mage but usable level/3 instead of level/2 times per day.

Monk All monks struggle a lot, the scaling ac you gave is unable to keep up and monks become complete potion dependants. Also a Ki mechanic similar to what you did to other classes would be very helpfull.

• Increase the speed of Monk AC increase from +1 per 5 levels to +1 per 2 levels, but put it as base AC (like the vanilla monk, will allow monks to not have ludicrous early game AC with potions, but also leaving the bracer slot open for the much needed damage increasing bracers, also, with +wis to DEX will solve most early game monk AC problems anyway)
• Make monks fist count as single weapons, so we could use it with single weapon style, that is all help monks need offensively.
• Give the monk a chi pool equal to that of the ninja and give chi cost to all abilities, including sun soul monks and dark moon. They can have they costed reduced by 1 each time they should be used another time. Suggested values: Stunning fist: 1st level costing 1Ki Lay on hands: 7th level costing 3Ki Quivering Palm: 13th level costing 5Ki Frozen Fist:1st level costing 2Ki Blindness: 1st level costing 1Ki Blur: 3rd level costing 2 Ki Vampiric Touch: 7th level costing 3 Ki Mirror Image: 11th level costing 2 Ki Sun soulray: 2nd level costing 2 Ki Flamings Fists: 5th level costing 3 Ki Greater Sun: 8th level costing 4 Ki Sun Soulbeam: 13th level costing 5 Ki

Now a twist, since most ability concour for Ki, monk has a unique Ki recovery method besides resting, everytime a monk scores a critical hit with a unnarmed strike its recovers 1 Ki, it works specially fine with the single weapon style working with unnarmed strike and make monks even closer to the Unchained Pathfinder Monk that seens to be the one you used as base.

Well, thats it for now. Very long, but is almost 2 years of intensive testing.

[RafaelElendil]

Found another issue:

Battlecaster have medium THACO progression, but their APR follows the Slow progression (tested both on BG1 and BG2), just getting +0.5 APR at level 11, instead of level 8 and 15.