Kit Request

Axl_Krow

Hi, all. First, I guess I should mention that I'm new here. I apologize if this is the wrong place for requests. Mostly just dropping by to see if someone would be kind enough to create a Pirate kit for me. I would've created it myself and have looked into tools such as WeiDu and Near Infinity. However, I've come to the conclusion that it's just not for me and that if I want this done, I want it to be done right and enjoyable. In other words, I'm incompetent ;_;

I have the basic outline and while I'm more than familiar with BG itself, I am vastly ignorant of D&D and thus, have little to no guidelines for this outline aside from my gut feelings and desires. So feel free to make suggestions as to what adjustments could be made!

Before I post the actual tidbits that define a kit, I want to go through the general idea. I want this to be a frontline-focused kit. I'm not concerned with the history channel's description of a pirate but rather your typical fearless swashbuckler. For gameplay purposes, a fighter kit may work best. However, for role-play/characterization, it may be better to go with a thief or bard kit; keeping in mind that the thief stronghold is better suited for a pirate rather than the De'Arnise Keep. I'm also pretty sure that the bard song is hardcoded into the class, but if it's not, I think it would also be well suited for a pirate. I'm also not sure if the spellbook is hardcoded or not, but I assume you can disable it, since the Inquisitor loses access to Priest spells.

Here are my thoughts:

Fighter Kit

Advantages:
Receives two starting proficiency points in Scimitars
Immune to fear
Starts with 10% resistance to slashing, piercing and crushing and gains 1% per level

Disadvantages:
May only specialize in bladed weapons and darts*
May not wear any metal armor
Restricted to Chaotic alignments

Minimum stats
str 16
dex 16
con 15
int 3
wis 9
cha 12


Thief Kit

Advantages:
Receives two starting proficiency points in Scimitars
Immune to fear
Starts with 10% resistance to slashing, piercing and crushing and gains 1% per level
May achieve grand mastery in bladed weapons and darts*
May place three slots into two-weapon style

Disadvantages:
May only specialize in bladed weapons and darts*
Gets only 20 points to distribute between thief abilities each level.
Restricted to Chaotic alignments

Minimum stats
str 15
dex 17
con 14
int 3
wis 9
cha 12


Bard Kit

Advantages:
Receives two starting proficiency points in Scimitars
Immune to fear
Starts with 10% resistance to slashing, piercing and crushing and gains 1% per level
May achieve grand mastery in bladed weapons and darts
May place three slots into two-weapon style

Disadvantages:
May only specialize in bladed weapons and darts
May not wear any metal armor
May not cast magic
Restricted to Chaotic alignments

Minimum stats
str 16
dex 16
con 15
int 3
wis 9
cha 14


*- By bladed weapons, I only mean swords and similar weapons such as daggers; thus, no spears or halberds.

Aquadrizzt

These kits look pretty good and nicely themed around a pirate concept. Here are some suggestions I would make:

The minimum stats are outright cheesy; this is because the way the engine handles minimum stats actually makes high minimums beneficial (the engine will force you up to the minimum stat if you fail to roll for it during character creation). If you want all members of a class to be "particulary dexterous/strong/hardy/etc." then set the minimum to a reasonable number like 12 or pick one stat (not four) that needs to be high and set the min to ~15; dexterity would probably be an appropriate choice thematically.

Instead of restricting to chaotic alignments, maybe restrict to non-lawful alignments (as in: include NG, TN, and NE as well as CG, CN, CE). I personally think that pirates don't necessarily have to be chaotic, but I doubt that they could be lawful. Then again, the argument could be made for lawful as some pirates follow Pirate's Codes and that is technically all a lawful alignment requires.

The restriction to bladed weapons and darts is okay, however, grandmastery should be reserved for fighters exclusively (or at least warrior types) and select few other cases. I would suggest mastery (+++) for Rogues and Bards would be more appropriate, as you are taking away spellcasting and some thieving ability, respectively.

If you only want to implement one, I would advise picking Rogue (if you want the character to be able to do other thief-y things beyond picking pockets) or Bard (if you are absolutely set on having a pirate song). Fighter's default bar (4 quick weapons, no spells or abilities) is too boring for this class.

The immunity to fear bit is fine and on par with lots of other kits, vanilla or modded. The physical resistance feels a bit high to me and I'm also not sure what the thematic explanation is for it. It isn't helped by the fact that physical resistance is a relatively rare effect and pretty powerful, especially at low levels when most of the damage you will be taking is physical.

If you give me a little while I could probably push out a Weidu mod for it. The concept needs to be refined further first though.

Axl_Krow

Hey, Aqua; thanks for the reply! It was quite a lengthy post, so thanks for taking the time to read it as well.

For the minimum stats, this is exactly the kind of input that I was looking for. When I added them all up, their overalls were all around 70-ish and I thought that was pretty low, so I left it as is. Of course, I didn't take into account BG's mechanics regarding stats and thus, I see what you're saying. So how do these look?

Fighter:
Str- 12
Dex- 12
Con- 12
Int- 3
Wis- 6
Cha- 9

Thief:
Str- 11
Dex- 13
Con- 10
Int- 3
Wis- 6
Cha- 9

Bard:
Str- 12
Dex- 12
Con- 12
Int- 3
Wis- 6
Cha- 9


I also see your point as well, regarding alignment. With each of your points presented(pirate code and all that), I can see anything besides lawful good befitting a pirate to be honest. Although I'm having a few issues visualizing a NG pirate as well, but that can be up to the player just to not pick it; so if you want to throw that in as well, I'm all for it.

I don't have a problem with anything you said about proficiencies.

Finally, I agree about choosing between either the rogue or the bard. I was originally thinking fighter just for gameplay purposes, but what's the point of making a Pirate kit if you aren't going to go all the way with it? *shrug* As for choosing between Rogue or Bard, I'm really torn. Having the pirate song in there just seems so fitting, but at the same time, the overall thief class itself befits a pirate moreso than the bard class. I think I'll leave this one up to you or we can discuss it further; whichever you prefer.

If you want to lower the resistances a bit, that's fine. I mostly included them for the rogue classes to give them a similar functionality to the fighter and to make up the loss of hitpoints and THACO they'd normally get. I usually see pirates as the agile or "dodge-y" type when it comes to melee combat, so I threw in the resistances to make the kit stand out a bit more(although I'm well aware that "dodging" has nothing to do with resistances and moreso AC). Perhaps to emphasize the physical aspect, we could make them slightly more susceptible to magic as a pay-off? Or take away the crushing resistance entirely? I'm all open for suggestions.

CrevsDaak

Axl_Krow said:

Fighter:
Str- 12
Dex- 12
Con- 12
Int- 3
Wis- 6
Cha- 9

Thief:
Str- 11
Dex- 13
Con- 10
Int- 3
Wis- 6
Cha- 9

Bard:
Str- 12
Dex- 12
Con- 12
Int- 3
Wis- 6
Cha- 9

Those are very high, the game isn't like P&P, if you don't roll the minimum, the game gives you enough points to reach it, so it will be easy to have very high rolls with those mins. I recommend this for this particular kits:
Fighters
STR: 9
DEX: 6
CON: 9
INT: 3
WIS: 3
CHA: 6
Thieves
STR: 6
DEX: 9
CON: 6
INT: 6
WIS: 3
CHA: 3
Bards
STR: 9
DEX: 6
CON: 3
INT: 9
WIS: 3
CHA: 9