@Reddbane, it is impossible (in the current engine) to make new multiclasses (such as Monk/Thief).
However, it is quite easy to give a fighter kit or a thief kit the ability to multiclass. My current project is converting the Monk as a class over to a Fighter kit, which would enable four multi-classing options (Monk/Mage, Monk/Priest, Monk/Thief, and Monk/Druid).
For added fun, you can even do silly things like Monk/Mage/Thief and Monk/Mage/Cleric.
Monk names can be pretty verbose; "Monk of the Shining Hand" doesn't quite roll off the tongue the way a name like "Cavalier" does. This problem is particularly noticeable with the upcoming Monk multiclasses ("Monk of the Shining Hand / Mage / Thief" is far longer than I am comfortable with.) I am asking for stylistic feedback regarding Monk naming. Which of the following naming schemes is your preferred method for naming monk kits:
1) Monk of the [Order] (Monk of the Dark Moon, Monk of the Broken One...) 2) [Order] Monk (Dark Moon Monk, Broken One Monk...) 3) [Order]* (Broken One, Shining Hand)
The third option would require a bit of... creative reimagining of some of the names, or generation of an appropriate honorific title (Long Death, Dark Moon and Old Order would need new kit names.) Shining Hand, Broken One, Hin Fist, Sun Soul are all sufficiently ambiguous to allow for using them as titles.
Furthermore, how would you like multiclass naming handled? Using Monk / Thief as an example, the options would be:
1) Monk of the Old Order / Thief 2) Monk / Thief of the Old Order 3) Monk / Thief (Old Order) 4) Monk (Old Order) / Thief
I'd appreciate people's feedback on all of this. None of these seem truly ideal and I'm not sure how to proceed.
I think I'm leaning towards using the 3rd option for the single-class monks, with the names being Monk, Sun Soul, Eclipsed One (Dark Moon), Broken One, Shining Hand, Hin Fist, Death Disciple (Long Death).
This also fixes the issue with overly verbose multiclass names.
@Arthas, glad you're enjoying the mod. I'm actually in the process of redoing the various monk kits with a new base class and revised abilities. The end result will be that most of the current kits are much more similar to the base monk class, with small variations for flavor and balance.
@Aquadrizzt I would also suggest you to do a table for easy comparation between the different monks' kit, because reading and actually comparing them is sort of 'hard', if done only via text
For IWD i would say Gerth's Equipment Shoppe in Kuldahar. The thing with IWD is that the shops in Kuldahar improve their inventory according to your progress, so you will have to take that into consideration.
As for SoD i am sitting here waiting and keeping away from spoilers so i can play through it with your mod.
In the Severed Hand (first reachable in chapter 3):
Lehland's Shop (SHLEHLAN.STO) – ancient elvish equipment
(Note that the Kuldahar stores sell equipment that would be very overpowered at the start of chapter 1, but it is balanced by making it so expensive that you can't afford it. Then each time you clear a major dungeon, you can come back and afford maybe one or two good items.)
PS: For comparison, these are the two monk bracers that were added to the game by the Enhanced Edition:
The Flaming Fist of Lin Mei (OHBRAC01.ITM) – found as loot in Dragon's Eye level 4 (AR4004.ARE) on the altar, reachable in chapter 2:
+2 THAC0 (with fists)
25% chance of +1d2 fire damage (with fists)
Burning Hands (once per day)
Sarutobi's Stone Breakers (OHBRAC02.ITM) – sold in the Temple of Waukeen (AR9103.ARE, WAUKEEN.STO) in Lonelywood (AR9100.ARE), reachable at the start of the HoW expansion:
+1 STR
+2 damage (with fists)
+2d6 crit damage (with fists)
Also, here are some good early-to-mid game locations to place loot, if you don't want to rely solely on stores:
The four side-crypts in the Vale of Shadows [AR3101, AR3201, AR3301, AR3401] (chapter 1). Players have to comb through these to find the quest items (keys) necessary to advance the main story, but other than that they give mostly just minor/trash loot. Since the crypts are kinda monotonous, it's easy for players to loose motivation in that part of the game. Adding some memorable magical loot there, might make these crypts feel more rewarding. Each of them already has multiple containers, so it should be easy for a mod to add items to them.
Dragon's Eye, level 2 [AR4002] (chapter 2). The hardest map of the game IMO, and not much loot to make up for it. In particular, there is a side chamber in the top-left corner of the map that you have to fight a horde of really tough trolls and spiders to get to, only to be disappointed because after killing the beasts there is absolutely nothing there:
Not sure if it's possible for your mod to add a loot container there (maybe just make one of the rocks, or pools of water, or torch a container?), but I think it would a be a great location.
Here's a question for those interested in this mod: how important are the Monk's stealth and detect traps/illusions abilities to you when you play Monks?
If those abilities were removed, would you feel like some of the class' core abilities had been taken away? EDIT: Would the tradeoff of being able to multi-class Monks be worth it?
@Aquadrizzt I have a method in which you could simulate the effect of a multiclass Cleric/Monk (which is possible in 3e) by making a cleric kit, presumably called "Cleric/Monk". It's relatively easy since the two classes share the same experience table, and by dividing the experience of a single class level by two you can see what levels a multi class character would be at. I have attached an excel sheet that shows all the relevant stats. The blue column shows what the kit's actual level would be, while the second green column, "Effective Multi-class levels", shows what cleric/monk levels that the kit level would have to simulate, while all the other columns show what abilities it would gain at its delayed levels. Since most of the Monks skills are soft-coded spells and effects it would be relatively easy to apply them at later levels, and cleric kits can have custom spell progressions to simulate the slower leveling. (You would need to make a custom version of Stunning blows and other abilities that improve more slowly level wise.) You would not need to touch Thac0, since cleric progression already (more or less) closely simulates the slower progression of multi class fighter. Once again at level 22 (past the 3 million xp mark) they would gain access to HLAs, both warrior and cleric. The only thing the class would lose is the rogue abilities, which wouldn't be that big of a deal since the cleric gains a find traps spell and true sight. The only thing that might be a problem is the caster level and turn undead level. Is there someway to modify it using an opcode? Otherwise the class's caster level would climb as fast as the single class cleric. In regards to items and equipment, you can use certain opcodes to prevent a single kit from using items, such as armor and two-handed weapons, then you just have to decide what weapons a Cleric-Monk would be able to use.
@Aquadrizzt or anyone I suppose. How does the mod and or game files make it so the monk's fists are treated as the appropriate magical weapon at certain levels? In my playthrough my level 10 Rassad can't punch anything that requires magical weapons (spirit trolls, protection from normal weapons) despite supposedly having +2 fists. I just want to be able to check the appropriate files myself, to see if one of my other mods is somehow interfering with my Monks.
@Reddbane, can't check right now but if I recall correctly, there is a table (MONKFIST.2da) that defines what fist item is equipped onto the Monk's fist slot at a given level. The items assigned have names like MFIST (maybe QDFIST#.itm). Again, it's been a while and I'm overhauling it when I get around to updating Monks.
I checked, for some reason QDFIST2 (+1) and QDFIST3 (+2) do not have the magical box checked (though everything higher does) in my game. So I changed it and now its working. I have no Idea why this would happen in my version, as I installed Monastic orders last.
@Aquadrizzt By the by, are you still looking to make the Monk-Cleric? Also you might want to use the disable button opcode (stealth) for the Sun Soul Kit, since they are supposed to not be able to hide in the shadows, but with certain items bonuses, dexterity, they can raise their MS and HIN skills high enough that they can successfully hide in the shadows despite the fact that should not be offered to that kit.
@Reddbane , likely what will happen is that Monk will be made into a Rogue "kit" and all abilities transferred to it. Using Rogue as the new base class allows Fighter/Monks, Cleric/Monks and Mage/Monks, which are all pretty nice. I'd use Fighter but Fighter doesn't allow use of thief skills (although Find Traps and Stealth are the two least annoying skills to replicate.)
Hi, I was curious if it would be possible for this mod to be compatible with Might and Guile Quickstride change to the Monk. I really like the new kit and progression but seeing my monk rush past my entire group all the time is slightly annoying. Quickstride from Might and Guile was the perfect compromise you could turn it on if you wanted to do a little recon in Stealth and then turn it off so the Monk would move with the group.
@MedianAura , yeah I can definitely do that in the next patch. There is a complete overhaul coming soon™ so I'll add that to the list of things to incorporate.
For the standard kit it work at base level as as soon as you hit level 5 they actually get 1 point of speed making them faster and it keep going up from there.
For all the other kit it doesn't work outright they always start with the +2 speed passive from the get go so activating Quickstride just make them much much faster and with out they simply go faster
Some bugs: - unarmed strike +1 doesn't have an enchantment bonus. In the same line, both +1 and +2 don't have the "magical" flag set so can't hurt anything immune to non-magical weapon. - broken monk is missing some immunites to fear (probably best bet is to simply add cavalier's Pro Fear effects into his CLAB file, unless you want him to be immune to panic effect only).
True; I haven't read all posts here. Anyhow, here's more - Broken Ones monk gains charm immunity even his desc states he shouldn't, and his physical resistance bonus is bugged - he gets piercing resistance twice, while missing slashing bonus. Same applies to +1/level resistance bonus.
Comments
However, it is quite easy to give a fighter kit or a thief kit the ability to multiclass. My current project is converting the Monk as a class over to a Fighter kit, which would enable four multi-classing options (Monk/Mage, Monk/Priest, Monk/Thief, and Monk/Druid).
For added fun, you can even do silly things like Monk/Mage/Thief and Monk/Mage/Cleric.
1) Monk of the [Order] (Monk of the Dark Moon, Monk of the Broken One...)
2) [Order] Monk (Dark Moon Monk, Broken One Monk...)
3) [Order]* (Broken One, Shining Hand)
The third option would require a bit of... creative reimagining of some of the names, or generation of an appropriate honorific title (Long Death, Dark Moon and Old Order would need new kit names.) Shining Hand, Broken One, Hin Fist, Sun Soul are all sufficiently ambiguous to allow for using them as titles.
Furthermore, how would you like multiclass naming handled? Using Monk / Thief as an example, the options would be:
1) Monk of the Old Order / Thief
2) Monk / Thief of the Old Order
3) Monk / Thief (Old Order)
4) Monk (Old Order) / Thief
I'd appreciate people's feedback on all of this. None of these seem truly ideal and I'm not sure how to proceed.
As for the mc naming scheme, I suppose 1 is pretty good. But, I don't have any strong feelings for any of those options (positive or negative).
I think I'm leaning towards using the 3rd option for the single-class monks, with the names being Monk, Sun Soul, Eclipsed One (Dark Moon), Broken One, Shining Hand, Hin Fist, Death Disciple (Long Death).
This also fixes the issue with overly verbose multiclass names.
The rest of the mod is ready to go for the most part (other than some class description updates I need to make).
As for SoD i am sitting here waiting and keeping away from spoilers so i can play through it with your mod.
In Kuldahar (first reachable in chapter 1):
- Conlan's Smithy (KUSMITH.STO) – weapons and armor
- Orrick's Study (KUORK0.STO, KUORK1.STO, KUORK2.STO, KUORK3.STO) – spells, mage equipment, some generic magical equipment
- Gerth's Equipment Shoppe (KUGERTH.STO) – books, trinkets, bardic equipment
In the Severed Hand (first reachable in chapter 3):- Lehland's Shop (SHLEHLAN.STO) – ancient elvish equipment
(Note that the Kuldahar stores sell equipment that would be very overpowered at the start of chapter 1, but it is balanced by making it so expensive that you can't afford it. Then each time you clear a major dungeon, you can come back and afford maybe one or two good items.)PS: For comparison, these are the two monk bracers that were added to the game by the Enhanced Edition:
Also, here are some good early-to-mid game locations to place loot, if you don't want to rely solely on stores:
Players have to comb through these to find the quest items (keys) necessary to advance the main story, but other than that they give mostly just minor/trash loot. Since the crypts are kinda monotonous, it's easy for players to loose motivation in that part of the game. Adding some memorable magical loot there, might make these crypts feel more rewarding. Each of them already has multiple containers, so it should be easy for a mod to add items to them.
The hardest map of the game IMO, and not much loot to make up for it. In particular, there is a side chamber in the top-left corner of the map that you have to fight a horde of really tough trolls and spiders to get to, only to be disappointed because after killing the beasts there is absolutely nothing there:
I have a method in which you could simulate the effect of a multiclass Cleric/Monk (which is possible in 3e) by making a cleric kit, presumably called "Cleric/Monk". It's relatively easy since the two classes share the same experience table, and by dividing the experience of a single class level by two you can see what levels a multi class character would be at. I have attached an excel sheet that shows all the relevant stats. The blue column shows what the kit's actual level would be, while the second green column, "Effective Multi-class levels", shows what cleric/monk levels that the kit level would have to simulate, while all the other columns show what abilities it would gain at its delayed levels. Since most of the Monks skills are soft-coded spells and effects it would be relatively easy to apply them at later levels, and cleric kits can have custom spell progressions to simulate the slower leveling. (You would need to make a custom version of Stunning blows and other abilities that improve more slowly level wise.) You would not need to touch Thac0, since cleric progression already (more or less) closely simulates the slower progression of multi class fighter. Once again at level 22 (past the 3 million xp mark) they would gain access to HLAs, both warrior and cleric. The only thing the class would lose is the rogue abilities, which wouldn't be that big of a deal since the cleric gains a find traps spell and true sight. The only thing that might be a problem is the caster level and turn undead level. Is there someway to modify it using an opcode? Otherwise the class's caster level would climb as fast as the single class cleric. In regards to items and equipment, you can use certain opcodes to prevent a single kit from using items, such as armor and two-handed weapons, then you just have to decide what weapons a Cleric-Monk would be able to use.
How does the mod and or game files make it so the monk's fists are treated as the appropriate magical weapon at certain levels? In my playthrough my level 10 Rassad can't punch anything that requires magical weapons (spirit trolls, protection from normal weapons) despite supposedly having +2 fists. I just want to be able to check the appropriate files myself, to see if one of my other mods is somehow interfering with my Monks.
By the by, are you still looking to make the Monk-Cleric?
Also you might want to use the disable button opcode (stealth) for the Sun Soul Kit, since they are supposed to not be able to hide in the shadows, but with certain items bonuses, dexterity, they can raise their MS and HIN skills high enough that they can successfully hide in the shadows despite the fact that should not be offered to that kit.
For all the other kit it doesn't work outright they always start with the +2 speed passive from the get go so activating Quickstride just make them much much faster and with out they simply go faster
- unarmed strike +1 doesn't have an enchantment bonus. In the same line, both +1 and +2 don't have the "magical" flag set so can't hurt anything immune to non-magical weapon.
- broken monk is missing some immunites to fear (probably best bet is to simply add cavalier's Pro Fear effects into his CLAB file, unless you want him to be immune to panic effect only).
I believe I noted the enchantment bug.
Anyhow, here's more - Broken Ones monk gains charm immunity even his desc states he shouldn't, and his physical resistance bonus is bugged - he gets piercing resistance twice, while missing slashing bonus. Same applies to +1/level resistance bonus.