Making a kit for panther NPC

dib

I was in the mood to start a new game again and wanted to be a druid, but I wanted my druid to have an animal companion with her as well. So I started making a specialized kit based on the monk class for my little kitty. This is what I've come up with, and if you have any comments don't be shy. I'm mostly wondering if it is well balanced.

The panther will be an actual full fledged NPC in my party and not a sideshow character like a familiar or summoned creature. If anyone's interested I could try to release it publicly, but I don't have much experience with WeiDU and some things are a bit clunky. Because of how the Create Item in Slot-effect works I'm forced to make the attack items movable because they have to be unequipped and equipped again to work for some reason. This also means that the panther can actually equip any weapon a monk can, contrary to the description. Personally I don't care - I will play it as I intended it - but others might find it immersion breaking.

- The panther has three types of attacks that improves with levels, Slash (1d8 slashing), Ram (1d4 blunt), Bite (1d12 piercing)
- Can become specialized in Short Swords (Slash), Club (Ram) and Dagger (Bite)
- The panther can make 1 unarmed attack per round; it gains 1/2 an additional attack every 3 levels (except bite which is always set to 1 APR).
- As the panther increases in levels, the damage its claws and bite inflicts does as well:
Level 5: +1
Level 10: +2
Level 15: +3
Level 20: +5
- A panther's natural armor class gets better as it goes up in levels. Its armor class starts off at 9, and then decreases by 1 for every 2 levels.
- Stunning blow, once per day. All attacks in the next 6 seconds force the victim to save or be stunned. NOTE: this special ability automatically modifies a panther's normal attack, no targeting needs to be done.
- Roar, once per day. All visible enemies must save or run in terror for 3 rounds.
- Panthers have the Deflect Missiles ability. This gives them a -1 to their AC vs missiles for every 3 levels.
- The panther gains a +2 to save vs spells
- A panther moves at +2 move
- Immune to feeblemindness
- 5th level: Panther's claws and bite are considered +1 weapons. Ram attack can knock an enemy unconcious
- 8th level: -1 to speed factor
- 9th level: +1 to all saves. Immune to blindness
- 10th level: Claws and bite are considered +2 weapons. Bite attack critical hit chance improved by 1
- 11th level: Immune to charm and confusion
- 12th level: Another -1 to speed factor
- 14th level: The panther gains 3% magic resistance per level (ie 42 at 14th level)
- 15th level: Claws and bite are considered +3 weapons. Slash attack can cause bleeding wounds
- 20th level: Claws and bite are considered +4 weapons. Immune to non-magical weapons

Disadvantages:
- The panther cannot wear armor
- A panther cannot use weapons

Corsymyr

The balance would be there in my opinion, as you are giving up a NPC slot for another NPC. Seems viable to me. There is a Kit by @Requiem

http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/14023/mod-request-npc-addition-i-would-pay-for-this#latest

that adds an NPC that is a Hellhound. It works very well and has probably most of your major hurdles already solved. I don't think you will have a "paperdoll" for your panther but that probably shouldn't be a deal breaker. You can exclude all weapons in your 2DA file, and you should, as I think equiping any weapon that has an animation (i.e. Katana) will cause the game to crash, as there will not be an appropriate animation rendered for the panther.cre with weapons.

The only thing I don't know how to work around is the ApR with only one bite. If in 1 round let's say you get 3 attacks; if you have a weapon in the main hand (1d8 Slash), and one in the offhand (1d4 Ram), then you would need a third hand for the (1d12 Bite). The ApR would rotate between the two as 1d8/1d4/1d8 ... at least as far as I know. You can always use 1d6 Slash/1d12 Bite/1d6 Slash and mathematically it will be the same.

Requiem

@dib my mod does seem to have your problem sorted, with the weapon the basic gist is to block all of the inventory weapon slots with unmoveable items, then create a permanent weapon in the fist slot (which is always automatically equipped without player input). Make sure when you make the create item in slot effect that you set the timing mode to permanent and not permanent after death, the latter tends to cause problems with disappearing items.

Hope that helps you out.

dib

Thanks guys, I will definitely take a look at the hell hound mod.
@Corsymyr which 2da file would I need and how do I do that? As for the 1 APR bite; the monk class has 3 weapon slots and every slot will be equipped with one of the attacks. And since I use the monk class, the off-hand slot won't even be used. So you would have to choose which type of attack you want to use, and the bite attack weapon item sets APR to 1 while equipped.

@Requiem Thanks, didn't know that. But I guess the problem is that I want to use 3 separate weapon items. Perhaps I need to rethink that...

Corsymyr

@dib your "Setup-mykit.tp2" file makes the entries into the games exisiting 2DA files. This will add all the entries required in the "WEAPPROF.2da" and KITLIST.2da files. You would add something like this;

BACKUP ~\mykit\mykitbackup~
AUTHOR ~dib~

BEGIN ~mykit~

ADD_KIT ~mykit~

//Weapons (these are the weapon proficiencies)
~mykit 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1~
~mykit 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0~

//Usable and Class (this is the armor slot .... I think this makes all armor unusable)
~0x00000000 20~

Suggested reading if you haven't read it already - http://www.shsforums.net/topic/7381-bg2-kit-creation/

Hope this helps!

dib

@Corsymyr Yeah, I've already done the proficiencies but that doesn't really make weapons unequipable. And since the innate weapons (bite etc.) will work with some of the proficiencie, I don't want 0 in everything. And armor isn't a problem since it's a monk kit.

Requiem

@dib i've been thinking about it and think i've come up with a solution for your 3 weapon problem. In the extended effects for the weapon you can have it create a new weapon in the fist slot every time it hits, this allows you to change from claw to bite to claw seamlessly every time you land a strike, and obviously the damage and apr are changed accordingly.

So on hit the claw weapon creates a new bite weapon in the fist slot and removes the claw weapon, and the bite weapon creates a new claw weapon in the fist slot and removes the bite weapon, each hit alternates.

Sound like a solution?

dib

Well, actually I don't want them to change automatically. I want the player to be able to choose himself which type of attack he wants to use by selecting the one of the three weapon slots. I know there are some workarounds to make this work as well; like creating a item ability for each weapon to switch to the other etc. but none are particularly elegant. Oh well. :P

Thanks though!