Mod to nerf illegal NPC's stats

ljbo

This is somehow a follow-up on the thread about Garrick's stats. The idea is to write a mod that changes the NPC's stats in BG:EE for the better, akin to the so-called "Level 1 NPC" mod (which does far more and is not compatible with BG:EE).

So we have Coran and Kagain that have impossible stats. What do you think about given Coran a dexterity of 19 instead of 20, and Kagain a constitution of 19 instead of 19 and maybe a boost of 1 point of strength?

ALIEN

For Kagain: http://www.gibberlings3.net/bg2tweaks/npc.php
For Coran: contribute another component for bg2tweaks - no one need nice tweaks spreaded across to much multiple mods.

ljbo

@ALIEN I thought of that too but I concluded the amount of work and time to plug into such a big famous mod were too much for my patience! But, ok, I'll have a look how I could code that into BG2 Tweak Pack.

10thLich

What I always find bewildering: why is it called illegal? What if they just so happened to stumble upon one of those handy "raise stat permanently by 1" tomes sometime in their past?

Or do you call Imoen's statline illegal if you give her a Manual of Quickness of Action? Or how about your main character? Is he/she completely illegal due to custom innates or an abundance of applied stat tomes etc.?

DreadKhan

I largely feel the same way. They could have got a +1 from various sources. Not easy at lvl 1 for Kagain, but he clearly shouldnt be a low-level find imho. If he only showed up during the bandit quest, which would have made sense anyways, he could start at a more fair 3rd level. Nabbing 2 fighter levels takes awhile if you're primarily a business man; heck, if he joined then, he would have had a decent reason to go bandit scalping. Poor Kagain's plotline is a depressingly crippled thing.

atcDave

Players have many ways of "cheating" their scores up; I never begrudge an NPC the same opportunity.

ljbo

Those are good points, guys, but since we are now talking about story writing, we could as well imagine that e.g. Kagain found a Manual of Gainful Exercise instead of a Manual of Bodily Health, i.e. that he managed to get +1 Str instead of +1 Con. The only difference is that the second story yields a better balanced Kagain. That's what modding is for: trying alternate universes.

atcDave

ljbo said:

Those are good points, guys, but since we are now talking about story writing, we could as well imagine that e.g. Kagain found a Manual of Gainful Exercise instead of a Manual of Bodily Health, i.e. that he managed to get +1 Str instead of +1 Con. The only difference is that the second story yields a better balanced Kagain. That's what modding is for: trying alternate universes.

I have no problem with a player tinkering with any character however they want. And I have done such tweaks on occasion, especially to make the characters more the same between BG and BG2.
But again, I have no issue with the stock characters being less than fully optimized either. I like their eccentric flaws.