Barbarian and Monk dualing. Is this possible now?

Adul

Now that hit dice for individual kits have been unhardcoded, would it be possible to create a perfect clone of the barbarian class as a fighter kit, and therefore allow barbarians to dual-class? Is this already a thing?

And I suppose the monk could also be replicated as a fighter kit, to an extent. Monks seem a touch more tricky, though, so I don't know how precise the clone kit could be. Thoughts?

TheArtisan

Barbarians are coded as a fighter kit, despite what it appears. I think it's coded to prevent dual-classing, but mods can unlock it (BG2 Tweaks does it, to my memory).

Monks are somewhat harder. Most of the issue with monks are tied into their model and animation. Two-handed weapons look glitchy and silly on them. I'd say it could be possible though.

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blackchimes

Artemius_I said:

Monks are somewhat harder. Most of the issue with monks are tied into their model and animation. Two-handed weapons look glitchy and silly on them. I'd say it could be possible though.

How hard is it to simply give Monks regular sprites? It's not like their unique sprites are anything amazing, to be honest. I think all they get is a kick animation.

TheArtisan

The problem is that monks have all their attack animations coded to the two-handed animation slots, so when a monk uses a two-handed weapon they do their punches and kicks while the two-handed weapon does a regular animation. It looks really stupid.



It is possible to make a single-class kit with all the monk bonuses. The arcane fist mod (http://gibberlings3.net/forums/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=887) does something similar.

Adul

subtledoctor said:

I think the main problem with dualling monks is that the game has no way to build a UI for monk abilities plus another class's abilities. It knows how to handle F/C, F/T, F/M, F/D, C/M, C/T, and M/T, but that stuff is all hard-coded. There's no UI coded for monk/x.

Barbarian has the same UI bar as fighters, so that can be done.

What if the monk were made into a thief kit, but with the thieving button disabled (greyed out)? That would grant them access to the find traps and stealth abilities as per regular monk, and you'd have all the regular dual-classed action bars of F/T, M/T, and C/T.

Then the only problem would be you could still put skill points into "illegal" thief skills like open locks, detect illusions, etc. unless thief skill availability has also been unhardcoded, which I'm not familiar with.

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Adul

Yeah, ranger was the other class I was considering, but a thief kit seems like it could be the closest approximation of the original BG2 monk class, because of find traps.

And sure, the monk doesn't make a lot of sense in the FR setting, and dual-classing/multiclassing it would make even less sense. I suppose my personal answer to the question of why is: "why not?" E.g. for more character customization options, or to see something familiar being used in a new way. Just to mess around with.

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kjeron

The only remaining hard-coded aspect of the monk is not taking a AC penalty/extra damage for having the fist slot equipped (being "unarmed"). Any other class would have to resort to a permanent magic weapon or an un-removable fist-weapon in one of their weapon slots.

You could dismantle it as a class entirely and treat it as kit-based weapon style for any class to take.
Any class could get the Fist progression(+Stunning Blow), Armor restrictions, speed bonus, and unarmed Thac0 / unarmored AC.
- Warriors(F/P/R) would gain unarmed apr faster as if they were proficient in unarmed. Limited to proficient in all other weapons. Only Rangers would retain stealth, only Paladins would retain Lay on Hands, Fighters would get Quivering Palm. None would get trap-detection.
- Thieves could only backstab while unarmed. No Lay on Hands.
- Clerics would keep Lay on Hands, but lack stealth and trap detection. Cleric weapon restrictions.
- Druids would lack stealth and trap detection. Shapeshifting would be changed to only alter the druids damage type(s) with their unarmed attacks, keeping their damage, enchantment level, and allowing stunning blow while transformed.

- Bards would keep Lay on Hands, but lack stealth and trap detection. Maybe replace/lose Bard Song or Spellcasting to balance out.
- Mage/Sorcerer would lose Lay on Hands, Stealth, and Trap detection. Mage weapon restrctions. Needs a downside, is otherwise a free AC bonus.
Or exclude the arcane spell-casters from taking it, handwaving that their unarmed training ruins their hands for somatic spellcasting gestures.

Grammarsalad

I have to go back to it to remember what I did, but I have successfully replaced the monk avatar with the thief avatar where a) the class could wield two handed weapons normally and b) it did not use two handed weapon animations when attacking unarmed.

But this worked only using human animations. I think I used two methods--scripting and an effect--each of which gave me a and b above. I believe all non human avatars used the two handed animation when attacking unarmed. Also, I only tried this in bgee (though I hear 1pp may have softcoded monks' animations to allow this in vanilla as well).

Aquadrizzt

Converting a monk over to a thief could actually work pretty well. In the EEs, you can specify which skills a class can use and put points into, and you could easily block the thieving ability and the option to wear armor (OR you could just say that a monk can't use any of their innates if they're wearing armor by modifying all armors to include a kit check). If you didn't want the monk to get backstabbing (except maybe the Dark Moon one), you could just not give it a backstab progression. Monks pretty much use the same weapon set as Rogues I think (is there any difference, other than maybe staff?).

There is some annoyance with the improved unarmed strike feature outside of monks, it doesn't persist through save games or something like that.