[Request] Gradual thieving and casting penalties for medium and heavy armour
Lunever
Member Posts: 307
Current behaviour:
For multiclass fighter/thieves it is very inconvenient to switch between a studded leather and a scale male even for a minor trap or lock with low difficulty.
Desired behaviour:
There was a tweak in the g3 Tweakpack that introduced the paper&pen AD&D optional armour table, that allowed those characters to use their thieving skills while wearing heavier armour than studded leather, albeit with a significant penalty. Unfortunately it also introduced penalties to light armour, which was very inconvenient to standard single-class thieves.
I'd suggest to use this tweak, since it is convenient as well as absolutely in line with p&p rules, but I would skip penalizing light armour.
The same goes for the tweak, that allowed multiclass fighter/mages to cast with armour, but with the spell failure chance from third edition.
For multiclass fighter/thieves it is very inconvenient to switch between a studded leather and a scale male even for a minor trap or lock with low difficulty.
Desired behaviour:
There was a tweak in the g3 Tweakpack that introduced the paper&pen AD&D optional armour table, that allowed those characters to use their thieving skills while wearing heavier armour than studded leather, albeit with a significant penalty. Unfortunately it also introduced penalties to light armour, which was very inconvenient to standard single-class thieves.
I'd suggest to use this tweak, since it is convenient as well as absolutely in line with p&p rules, but I would skip penalizing light armour.
The same goes for the tweak, that allowed multiclass fighter/mages to cast with armour, but with the spell failure chance from third edition.
Post edited by Lunever on
4
Comments
My vote would be to allow thieving in armor with penalties as per PnP rules. As for the spellcasting component, I'm not really in support of it but it wouldn't bother me that much if it was implemented.
Constantly changing armour isn't exactly suporting immersion.
But then, when playing again, I didn't want to kill Drizzt, and I didn't want to cheat either.
So I constantly changed between Ankheg armour, Shadow armour, and the Robe of the Good Archmagi.
In my current BG2 playthrough I'm constantly changing between full plate +1, shadow armour and naked, since suitable multiclass armour is only available late in the game.
I support @jaysl659's idea of quick armour buttions - maybe even total quick equipment set buttons - in addition to my proposal.
I figured it would be best to keep these requests separated.
I fully support making the game as modder-friendly as possible, but I think a great deal of mods are things that should be implemented into the game itself as they have proven themselves to improve the game. This way future mod installations won't have to include those things that were already incorporated. I mean, installing a wealth of mods will almost always present at least some compatibility issues that will manifest in a variety of forms including game crashes, etc. The mods that have been made show us what needs to be corrected in the future (in this case that future is BG:EE) and I think that they're a great source for ideas of what needs to be done.
Additionally, there are plenty of Baldur's Gate fans that didn't even know of the modding community for the original games, despite it having existed for so long, until they joined this forum (that's what I gathered based on some comments anyway), and so I'm sure that there will be quite a few BG:EE players that never use a single mod. The final product should be, in my opinion, as final as possible.
If someone doesn't know the modding community, it's never too late to get acquainted :-) Once everything modders can't do is tackled, should the devs be left with additional spare time (which I doubt), moddable things could also be implemented (and God knows I would support everything P&P). Until then, I'd rather see them vanquish hard-coded engine limitations, fix bugs (which is the devs' job and not the modders') and do all sorts of things modders can't possibly do.
When I equip leather and studded leather armor, the character record does not show penalties. There is no penalty data attached to the items in the game data either (except for elven chain).
Where/how/is these penalties being applied?
Also, are there any penalties on other items helms/bucklers/etc.?
BG and BG2 really half-assed armor penalties and thieving. Chain and above outright disable thieving, light armor (leather/studded leather) allow it w/o penalty, with a couple of in-betweens--elven chain and hide--allowing thieving but with their PnP penalties.
The Tweak Pack component essentially allows thieving in everything, but with the PnP penalties. Leather is unchanged, studded leather gets modest penalties, and so on and so forth. Unarmored rogues also get their PnP bonuses. Shields and other items don't impose penalties, mainly because I couldn't find any in the source books.