It may be too late It's better to start a new game when playing Innershade on EE. When I coded it, there was a problem with updating worldmap in savegames. (anyway thanks for your kind words, I'm happy that you people still play my mods)
It may be too late It's better to start a new game when playing Innershade on EE. When I coded it, there was a problem with updating worldmap in savegames. (anyway thanks for your kind words, I'm happy that you people still play my mods)
We have to thank you for your amazing work and hours of good entertainment coming out of it
Viconia issue has been hacked resolved and she's in the party again. Skie has been... "resolved" thanks to a petrification spamming monstrosity in Foundling's questline. CHARNAME's doppelganger heritage has kicked in, and she is now prepared to sweep Yoshimo off his feet.
LaViconia - Overall B?
Viconia is an assassin thief multiclass as per the options (the other choice was dual class, and inhuman dual classes don't sit right with me, though nor do human ones). There's the expected kerfuffle with Assassin getting 25 skill points per level, but generally my biggest issue is that the abilities it grants her as a Sharran cleric don't appear to have any descriptions, so I've no idea what her abilities are supposed to do.
You should give Innershade a go, too. It belongs to the CoI series, and is absolutely worth playing.
Thanks for the reminder - I had it, but forgot.
Innershade
Plot: Visit a little village in the middle of nowhere being haunted by something weird and evil across two and a half area maps (which are gorgeous as always, no surprises there). Innershade has a number of little side activities, many of them apparently just mundane little things like petting a dog, sending a guy off to become an adventurer, making friends with a geriatric, and wondering when the herbalist guy will show up, seriously it's been forever and I've never seen him.
Apparently there is additional ToB content, and possibly post-Spellhold content, so I'll cover more as I find it.
Loot: As per usual for the CoI quests, a fantastic and varied array, of which I'll include a small subsection:
Unique "Wolf Berry" - Permanent ability to Shapechange into a Wolf. 4.2k GP. - Slightly buggy, save before use, sometimes it doesn't grant the ability. The Wolf - 18 Strength, 17 Dexterity, 6 base AC (the form does nothing to stop you from re-equipping armour), +1 APR, 1D8, non-magical attacks. 100% cold resistance, 50% electrical resistance. The description wrongly says 18/00, 1d10 damage. - Not particularly powerful, particularly for SoA, but a cute and flavourful ability. Foodstuffs - A lot of this is pretty minor, giving small amounts of max HP for a few minutes, and generally for a pittance, but the most notable are balanced only by their limited availability: Soup - 10 HP and 50% fire resistance for 2 minutes Edible Bark - Restore 20 HP and cure all poisons. ~25 GP each for a double strength elixir of health for the cost of not curing disease. Roasted Locusts - Restore 40 HP, may cause disease. 100 GP for ToB level potions of healing with no downside for Gaxx users. Magic Drops - Effectively a 3 minute DUHM for +3 to each stat. 1.2k GP.
Third Eye - Belt, immunity to back stabs. 4.5k GP. Eva's Smile - +3 Warhammer, 15% chance of self-casting a 2 round haste per hit, AC +1, Max HP +6, and Stun Immunity. - I actually quite like this one, it's priced at 24k GP, so hardly a steal for a +3 weapon, and it's well worth offhanding or even mainhanding against an otherwise very hard to handle status effect. Golden Dragon Scale Armour - 45k. 2 AC, wearable by good bards, paladins and non-mage clerics. 5% slashing resistance and poison/disease immunity. Disables thief skills and spellcasting.
Ability: Burning Sacrifice - Bards only - 12k GP - The bard takes critical, unstoppable, damage, putting them down to ~5 HP but all party members nearby are healed. I believe to full, but couldn't say either way. While potent, aside from sticking on CHARNAME - A very risky prospect - the only canoNPC is Haer'Dalis, which means having Haer'Dalis in your party, its own significant downside.
Quest Finale Longsword +3: Infravision, 25% Imprisonment Resistance, 10% MR, 1 Regen/10 seconds. Usable by anyone. OR Quest Finale Staff +3: Infravision, 25% Imprisonment Resistance, +1 Strength, +10 Max HP. Notably, the Staff is actually a combination weapon, giving ranged and melee attack forms, usable by anyone except monks.
The Finale Longsword is doubtless the stronger of the two, considering it can easily be offhanded for the MR and Imprisonment resistance and regeneration, so the Finale Staff is probably less imbalancing if you're concerned about power creep, which is actually my immediate concern for +3 swords with MR and regen usable by anyone at level 9.
Harder to get, but far, far more problematic, is the Grandmother's Hope, a +2 dagger usable by anyone.
+1 AC, +1 APR, 10% to cast bless per hit, immunity to backstab.
It is probably the most overpowered item in the whole mod, partially because it's bugged. It doesn't add 1 AC, it sets AC to 1. Holding this knife is like wearing full plate.
Enemies: Two main types. The first are enemies with 60 resistances to everything... but a +60 armour class penalty to all damage types. As might be expected, these are trivial, possibly unintentionally so. The second are nasty level draining enemies which drop random spells, like Bigby's hands, self-buffs like stoneskins and haste, and so on.
Locks and Traps: Zilch.
Difficulty: I actually completed this with a party of level 8s and 9s because the AI for the actually dangerous enemies is faulty, so several times they did nothing but stand around waiting to die. Since I forgot to check if you could rest in the inescapable encounter map, this may vary from easy toimpossible, depending on your party composition, and since it's an area of no return, and you must have +2 weapons or better before triggering it (obvious trigger, fortunately).
Overall: B+ - Overpowered loot items available far too easily aside, this is still well worth the play, with good maps, interesting quests, and several features tired into the other CoI plots and NPCs for the astute.
Foundling
Content and Plot: A - Foundling's plot and content are more or less hand in hand with one another. No sooner have you met him than you are dropped straight into quest after quest, first to liberate him, then to recruit him, then to keep him. He has interesting plenty of interesting interjections with Viconia and multiple conversations to keep you entertained, and game mechanics are integrated and used to give a real, tangible motivation to keep running through his questline all the way until a novel boss fight at the end. He's pretty neat.
Power Creep: C
From a class perspective, the Shadow Adept class is a fascinating kit, shadow weave illusion spells have always been one of my favourite FR classes, and it makes me want to start up a character with the kit myself. The spells are interesting in their difference, and the Shadow Adept behaves much like the Magus kit I enjoyed, with additional APR and THAC0 as it levels to make it pseudo gish.
Foundling starts with artificially inflated HP, (around 22 more HP than he should for me, even after several levels on non-maxed HP rolls), but to compensate, his spell selection is obviously severely hampered, with only a fraction the power and versatility available to regular mages (though with some unique perks all the same). He also has a nasty tendency towards permadeath if he dies, so might want to avoid that.
In terms of items, here's a few of the unique or rarer goodies:
Perennial Ice Arrow - A returning Ice Arrow that never runs out. 1D6+1D2 Cold. I'm not sure what it counts as in terms of enhancement but it's pretty awesome, because I hate buying ammo. Chain of the Solar - Good Bards, Paladins and Clerics only. 3 AC, 25% fire resistance, "ignored by skeletons, zombies and ghouls". Does not restrict spellcasting. - Interesting at least partially because it's unenhanced platemail, so you can slap on Rings of Protection on top of that, The colour is awful though. Ioun - Protection from Wing Buffet and -2 AC that stacks with an RoP.
Leira's Lie - The literal sword of plot advancement, Leira's Lie is a "+3" longsword which counts as +5 and grants Mastery in Longsword proficiency, which for Foundling means it's effectively +6. And on hit: 5% chance to curse enemy with Wild Magic for 10 seconds 2% chance to restore used spells of the user 1% chance to kill target if it has less than 60 HP
So.... 1 in 50 hits restore the wielder's spells, 1 in 20 wild surges the victim for two rounds, and 1 in 100 is a power word kill.
Pretty powerful in the hands of the , as usual, this gets silly around the time you include UAI, at which point you can have a Mage/Thief and Fighter/Mage/Thief replenishing their considerably meatier spellbooks.
Shadow Sword - The unique blade creatable by Shadow Adepts once ever, the bonus for which depends on the Adept's level. Level 20 and above gets +5, the second strongest, which has "10% drains Dexterity" and 40% slow, along with 1D8+1D10 cold damage and an extra +2 THAC0 (on top of the +5) against "humanoids".
This one causes scripted cold damage to any non-Adept wielding it but otherwise doesn't require UAI, so theoretically any Fighter with GM in long swords could wear >100% Frost Resistance and recover health every round while gaining the substantial benefits of a +5 sword of slow and indeterminate length stat drain (which also bypasses Stoneskin), but by the time you can get it I'm inclined to give this one a pass, just because of the amount of effort necessary to make that happen for a comparatively modest payoff, at least compared to timestops, automatic entangles, refreshing level 9 spells or never missing swords of luck.
Melodrama: A - Foundling whines less about his horrible fate than other characters do about you not going to do their little side quests for a day, when you can see him actually losing stats as a result.
Overall: A - Foundling is mechanically interesting, low drama, and has plenty of unique areas in which to follow his questline, along with some interesting vanilla interjections.
Skie:
The fashion thief.
Plot and Immersion: C+ - First and foremost, Skie's personality is almost a caricature. She's ditzy, shallow, and obsessed with fashion. She's as likely to {trip and faceplant} as she is to let out some banal comment about makeup, shoes or fingernail maintenance. While this is pretty well in keeping with Baldur's Gate NPCs, and her personality in BG1, it's a little out of place in BG2's darker tone and more somber caste, and despite her 15 Intelligence, Skie comes across a little like partying with Noober, including an "Everyone ditches me because I'm annoying. Do you think I'm annoying?" which left me hanging for a "How about now?"... "How about now?".
But in all honesty, there's nothing to suggest that Skie's banality is anything but intentional. The mod is plenty self aware about this fact, giving the player the frequent opportunities to call Skie out, and never really taking itself very seriously. The writing, and Skie herself, do also improve somewhat over the short, thirty chat romance track, but outside of Love Talks I found precious few interjections elsewhere.
Content and Consistency: B- - I mentioned it above, but it's worth mentioning again that someone only with only slightly lower Wisdom than Korgan doesn't really feel true to their stats when they're arguably less sensible than Minsc, though there are occasional glimpses of something going on upstairs in a few of her conversations where she mentions being multilingual and speaking Kara Turan (which made me want to whip over to the underdark to finally know what that guy on the bridge is saying after all these years before I remembered they were Kuo Toan, ah well).
In terms of quests, Skie nominally has two, one meeting someone who designed her armour, and a second finding a jewel thief. The first one never actually worked out for me, since the designer never appeared, but this didn't stop the second one from triggering eventually, and a brief romp around town to find and fight the lone thief (a cakewalk even at level 9).
Bonus points for consistency that Skie is aware of CHARNAME's race, and the player gets comments based on that, and the conflict talk with Aerie is actually pretty in character. Lost points for suggesting Eldoth beat her - Skie could totally take Eldoth in a fist fight, he only gets 1 damage per hit more than her, while her far better AC means he only has a 50/50 chance of hitting her per punch, while she hits him on a 6 or better.
Not... Not that I make routinely my NPCs fight each other for my amusement or anything. *Cough.*
Power Creep: D - Skie's stats are unchanged from her BG1 incarnation (though there's an option to change them on installation), giving her a middling array of stats outside of her 18 Dexterity. She does have an illegal number of thieving abilities - 55 more skill points than she should have, but a large proportion of them are devoted to the Stealth skills, which I consider to be the thief's least useful, most expensive, skillset, and Single class thieves will always suck, and there aren't enough stat boosts that you might dual her into a Mage. She also picks up a unique ability called "Incessant Chatter", an innate friends spell, which is yet another sign of self awareness I thought was pretty cute.
Gearwise, she starts out wearing the cursed +2 leather of missile attraction (because she wanted to be more attract-ive), which is fine, but her quest items are over the top: 10,000 GP reward for an hour's - in game - work the Cloak of Balduran (with its glorious 25% MR and stackable protection features unchanged) Kiel's Morningstar (The berserking one, meh) And as a capstone for completing her romance track (which I managed to achieve before completing my first major quest area in chapter 2) she grants you:
The Bracers of Entar: 18/00 strength, Protection from poison, Protection from backstab, usable by anyone.
If only he'd been wearing these when he was assassinated, Skie probably wouldn't be an orphan.
So that's pretty much the best in slot for cloaks until Chapter 5, and it's guaranteed that someone in your party will benefit from the bracers, and even if you're flush with Giant Strength belts, you can override their strength bonus and pick up backstab and poison immunity whenever you're facing any of the long list of sneak attackers and poisonous critters that might otherwise hassle you.
Melodrama: B+ - While Skie does try to get gloomy and introspective at times, it doesn't really work, partly because of the tongue-in-cheek way the mod is represented, partly because she tends to break such talks up with absent-mindedly walking into walls and talking about make-up.
Bugginess: A- - Skie had one glitch where an NPC never showed, and her journal entries are broken in standard EE fashion. Neither needed fixing or broke anything I cared about.
Overall: C - While she's a very basic NPC, part of that is advantageous. She doesn't feature any creepy fetish material, she doesn't yack constantly at you, she doesn't spend five lovetalks angsting, and it turns out I can tolerate "vapid" far better than being told "{your heart skips a beat as she gazes at you with her chartreuse eyes, the mutual attraction burning in your breast}" or suchlike. Still a better romance than Saerileth, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend her outside of curiosity.
Plot: Face off against the White Queen and bring an end to a village's civil war. with six new maps and even a sidequest or two. Bring Viconia.
Loot: As appears to be the standard with CoI, it's a wide range of items, some interesting, some overpowered. Here's a selection of about a third of it, including some
Hamadryad's Dagger: +1 damage, +5 THAC0 dagger.
Fire Veins +2 - +2 Club, +1 Fire Damage, +50% Fire Resistance and +1 APR? While nowhere near as insane as the Granny Knife, you can pick this up with invisibility and a level 1 spell straight out of Irenicus' dungeon, no need to progress the plot or fight anyone.
Hellfire Arrows +1 arrows, 40% of level drain. - Disturbingly powerful, but you only get 20 and the most deadly enemies generally have a way of ignoring +1 Arrows.
+1 Charisma - I said it before, but permanent stat increases are my anti drug, and Charisma ain't imbalancing nuffin'.
Demoneye Sling: Nongood only: +3 Sling, fires infinite bullets of 1d6 +3, +1 fire damage, has 10% chance to slow target (save vs. spells to negate), 10% chance to cause berserk on target (save vs. death to negate), and gives immunity to fear. - So... Yeah, the best sling in the game, though the fact it requires you to grab +4 bullets every now and then is a minor downside compared to Everard's.
The Ladykiller - +3 Bastard Sword, +5 against ladies, but... -2 Luck, which means -2 to hit against everyone and -2 damage. Hm. Weird one. Also a 5% chance to kill females per hit unless they save vs. death at -3.
The Rape of Magic - Cursed +1 Dagger with -25% MR (not a penalty if you have 0 MR), a 15% chance per hit of getting +1 APR per round for 2.5 rounds, and a 25% chance to lower both wielder and victim's MR by 10%.
The Claw of Kazgaroth - I'm not sure what happens if you already have it from Irenicus' dungeon.
Archer's Doom necklace - +50% missile resistance, +2 AC versus missiles, Vocalise.
Golem's Heart - A +2 shield of Petrification immunity.
Spellbinder's Gloves - -1 Casting Time, +1 level 1 spell, +2 saves vs spells.
The "Stylish Amulet of Protection" - a +1 AoP, +1 Charisma.... And doesn't count as an AoP, so it stacks alongside a ring.
And the quest's finale: Twin +3 scimitars. #1: 3% chance of wish rest, 10% chance of fear, 15% chance of level drain, and 30% chance of destroying weaker undead on hit, and a -5 HP penalty. #2: 50% acid resistance, +1 AC, +1 Dex, and +1 Movement Speed with another -5 HP penalty.
Locks and Traps - Numerous traps scattered across the paths and several locked containers. Also some unmarked, undisarmable plot based automatic petrification traps. Asides from the plot petrification, I felt this was the dungeon that best matched what I'd expect from vanilla in terms of traps, though some trapped containers would have been even better.
Enemies - A wide and splendid variety. Teleport spamming Hamadryad beat me up and down the woods (yes, we're all still level 9), assorted minor undead, an army of monks and mages, a lich, trained wyverns, golems... and everyone is obnoxiously Neutral, which is pretty annoying for a party full of of clerics.
Difficulty: Pretty high, at least for my party of level 9 clerics. with instant automatic kill traps, swarms of mages able and willing to drop fireballs on you, a Lich with the usual immunities and save or dies, wyverns poisoning you to death... Fortunately resting is allowed, and you can generally fall back and regroup.
Overall: A - With a caveat that what happens in Silent Swamps should probably *stay* in Silent Swamps, this is well polished, with good maps, interesting encounters, and well worth the playthrough, just... be prepared for the some of the items you're going to get, particularly the level draining scimitar of infinite magic and the club of ultra-Belm.
@subtledoctor , having to nerf the club I will remove the other effects, leaving it as a plain +2 club with +1 APR. Clubs don't shine as damage dealers and clerics have only 1 APR and can not use the other 3 +1 APR weapons, they share the same THACO table of the rogues, that can use 2 +1 APR weapons for 4 APR, with UAI using the poisoning Scarlet in the main hand. Even mages have a +1 APR weapon, the throwing dagger. Giving also to clerics the chance, but with a weapon that is no more powerful then the 2 slashing ones seem to me more balancing, anyway is just a suggestion.
Also I see a possible ethical problem in changing other people Mod content, I know that some modders let other people use part of their mods, like the scripts, and ask only to have credits in the readme, other modders are more jealous of their work. And in mod resurrections usually if possible a permission is asked to the original modder. I am not a modder so I don't really know the etiquette of the modder community, but changing the content of a mod, even if with an other one and not reworking the mod itself, could be not so polite.
Demoneye Sling: If I remember correctly, you only get this when you choose the evil path.
The Twin +3 scimitars: I don't think these were actually +3 enchanted, but merely have a +3 bonus to attack and damage. Or the other way around. In any case they weren't as good as they sound.
Fire Veins +2: I don't remember finding that one, I assume it can be looted somewhere in the outdoors starting area of the mod? In this case, to "pick this up with invisibility and a level 1 spell straight out of Irenicus' dungeon" would be a shameless cheese tactic based on precise meta-knowledge, and players prone to such choices will already imbalance their game in many other ways. So I don't think it makes sense to demand the loot of that area (which has quite dangerous monsters) to actually be balanced for straight-out-of-Irenicus'-Dungeon parties.
1: Correct, it's an "evil" option. So is releasing Kangaxx.
2: Yeah, I believe they're +2, but get extra +1s. It's an interesting limitation, but doesn't really offset the grab bag of abilities and Wish Rest. 3% is 34 hits, you could nova every fight and generally still be fully fuelled by stabbing your own summons to death.
3: Yep, it's in a box just past the Petrification traps. I'm not sure how "invisibly scouting out enemies while looting an area" is a cheese tactic, but either way generally it's not good practise to put weapons in the beginning of an area, whose encounters certainly weren't bad enough to stop my sub 500k Exp party from sweeping the whole mod.
But again to be clear, that club wouldn't be balanced if you looted it off the mod's boss. Not only is increasing the number of APR weapons in general pure power creep, it's a troll-killing Super-Belm that puts the vanilla APR weapons to shame.
About these items: some of these are indeed extremely unbalanced. I wonder if I should add a component to my tweak mod that looks for specific mod items and nerfs them. Like that club, it would be perfectly fine if you just remove the extra APR. Which I can do with the item's filename and 5 easy lines of code.
Tone down tweaks sounds good to me, there's a lot of items scattered thoughout these mods which are just too powerful (and I've been by no means exhaustive with the item lists), especially when you account for interaction between other mod added items as well.
Too bad there's no simple fix to remove flirt menus. Sigh.
Regardless, in the underdark, successfully brought Yvette into and through Spellhold (though I did end up fiddling with a few variables since I wasn't sure what was supposed to be normal behaviour), and am prepping up for Eliastraee's Song. And if that's spelled correctly it's because I've been playing way too much BG2 lately.
No problem at all, Lava. Hopefully this will get them some well deserved attention. And yeah, Foundling is probably my favourite of this runthrough, even if he did glitch into a permanent 3 pips in Longswords somehow.
I Shall Never Forget item update.
Apparently in Chapter 6, the temple of Sune gets a whole bunch of new stuff I didn't know about.
Greenworm: +2 Staff with 20% of "making the target fall away", vocalise, and 25% wild magic protection. - Guaranteed NRDs for Neera methinks, so infinite spells via guaranteed NRD limited wish cycles is the order of the day.
Ilthasia Plate Mail: 2 AC hot pink armour. It doesn't restrict spellcasting, but slows casting speed by 2, and it doesn't restrict thief skills though it gives 25% HiS and MS penalties (presumably from the colour). It does, however, give +35% detect illusion, and protection from level drain. It can also be used by anyone, making this the ultimate armour for Fighter/Thieves and pure thieves while not being particularly imbalanced.
Hammer of the Fallen Sun - +4 Warhammer, with a 35% chance to Blind the target, and 10% chance to restore one cleric spell below level 6 per hit. - The 35% no save blind is beyond extreme, theoretically giving it effectively another +4 THAC0 from blindness after the first round.... Except the item appears to be bugged, having a 35% chance of blinding the wielder when equipped, rather than the target when struck. Still, cure the blindness with a cleric spell, you'll get it back soon enough, and it's still a decent weapon for any spellcaster cleric.
Sadly some of the immersive features I was hoping for weren't included in the end. No way of telling the grumpy mage that my waifu was indeed just eaten by vampires, my husbando just had his heart smashed before my eyes, and no way of telling the Incomplete that the soulless CHARNAME actually had a lot in common with him... These were just minor niggles considering the mod is plenty solid without it, but a tiny bit disappointing all the same.
Yoshimo Romance
Plot/Content: A - Nothing really added in terms of quests, but a whole lot of characterisation and interesting chats with everyone's favourite Bounty Hunter. It's in character, and oozes dramatic irony and well written misery without ever slipping into outright melodrama. There are some {actions}, but generally they were rare and used at points where dialogue wouldn't do the trick. It even sneaks in some content late game, which is nice.
Power Creep: A- - Yoshi gets a few additions, an upgraded sword, a necklace with some abilities, but nothing particularly changed game balance from it (the sword is still +1, the necklace is competing with a wide range of other, more powerful, amulets for the slot).
Melodrama: A - Despite the overall dark tone of the content, it never felt excessive, possibly because I'm well familiar with Yoshimo's plot already. It was heavier in some places than others, but well within my tolerances.
Bugginess: A- - Didn't notice any particular glitchiness going on, except a conversation about Yoshimo's Heart... Which hadn't actually happened yet.
Overall: A - Well integrated, well written, well executed, and well worth a try. I really liked this one.
Yvette's Romance
Plot/Content: A - A lengthy and complex romance with numerous pitfalls, the occasional {smile} but not much else in terms of action tags, and an intriguing premise. Outside of the quest of picking her up she has one short-ish quest in Spellhold with an interesting bossfight with a Hopereaper, which is a seriously awesome name. She also has quite a few places she pipes up without dominating the encounters, which is nice.
Immersion and Contistency: C+ - I didn't quite buy Yvette's deity bias against Viconia. I'd have been fine with it happening if the two shared a few harsh banters (Viconia's pretty abrasive, after all), but to have it happen instantly was a little jarring considering a Paladin manages to put up with her for several days. There was a conversation early on where she mentions that she can't turn undead - cute, if a little odd, but there wasn't really a conversation option I felt covered "Okay, don't care, there are four other clerics in this party, one of whom is myself, and you are level 2, you do not need to turn undead".
Jaheira's objection to the romance came across as bizarrely out of character as well, with her lambasting CHARNAME for wasting time talking to his pocket painting, and telling him they don't have time for such shenanigans. Not only is Jaheira all about helping people (because she's secretly neutral good), why would she complain about that? CHARNAME constantly helps people for free and talks to everything from poultry to ancient avatars of a dead god. Not to mention calls the party to stop and rest every few hours when he runs out of stoneskins, I'm pretty sure the five minute chats aren't going to change much. Aerie's banters on the other hand, were much more in character.
Power Creep: B+ - Yvette is straight out illegal, with 260 thief skill points as a level 4 -> 1 dualled thief>cleric with an illegal 16 starting THAC0 and 54 HP despite. This makes me think she was originally a level 9 Thief dual at one point and was never fixed. While I was sick to death of the over-abundance of both clerics and thieves in my particular group layout, Yvette's illegal 75 points invested in locks and traps is actually sufficient for all dungeoneering you might engage in, since she's at 90/80 respectively thanks to her dex, and is a DUHM away from hitting 100+ scores.
Itemwise, there's not very much to speak of. An Aerie banter gives her a lucky ribbon (which I stole for my UAIing CHARNAME, who looked *fabulous*), she starts with a few +2 weapons which quickly became obsolete, and she supposedly was supposed to take the TotDG's amber rose and turn it into a health regenerating Coral Rose... But that never happened.
Melodrama: B+ - There are a few eye-rolly parts in her romance track, but generally pretty low on the whining in general.
Bugginess: B? - I waded through global variables a few times to make sure things were progressing correctly, and generally didn't hit any bugs except Yvette never actually appearing when I rested in the beginning, which was a minor tweak at best.
Overall: B+ - Despite a few niggles, this is generally a solid romance NPC with a decent personality and plenty to say. I'm pretty sure she's supposed to have quite a bit of ToB content as well.
Eilistraee's Song:
Plot: Chat with a camp full of Drow in a lore heavy glimpse into Eilistraee's lore that I already knew because I am a nerd. Also learn their ways, complete quests and do your usual. Ostensibly to get help against Irenicus, but I never actually saw any of them. Hm.
Loot: The loot available was actually pretty modest, overall:
Viconia gets a special unique amulet: +1 saves, +2 AC vs spiders, +3 level 1 spells, Poison Immunity. <- She's going to need that one.
Swordbreaker - a Non-good only ring, for some reason. It gives 50% slashing resistance and slow-immunity.
Moon Sword - I'm not sure how this ended up in my pack, since I had a brief pocket-picking session, but it's a +4 Bastard Sword with +1 to hit, 50% cold resistance, backstab immunity, and level drain immunity.
Luck Charm - 1% MR, +5 Death Save, +2 Luck. - Checking it over, either luck isn't working properly, or it isn't stacking correctly, either way, this wasn't as awesome as I was hoping.
Boots of +1 Dex, +1 Move Speed
Ability: Hunting Chant: 1/day Party-wide Tenser's Transformation Innate. - Yes, it's as bizarre and wonderful as it sounds.
Sword Dancer of Eilistraee kit - Didn't correctly apply, but the kit itself appears to offer a low level Mord's Sword, an ability to summon a Moon Sword (which crashed the game whenever used), and a partywide Infravision innate. Woo. Also completing the quest to get the kit ended up with the holy symbol of Eilistraee, with the usual gubbins of 6th and 7th, +1 Cha, Vocalise and 5% MR.
13th Moon - +4 Dagger, +6 to hit, 20% MR, Protection from Level 1 Spells. On hit, has a 37% chance of having an effect (only 1 per hit): 15% chance of killing the target, and 2% of: Heal 30 HP, Fear Enemy, 10 Fire Damage, 10 Acid Damage, 10 Electric Damage, Drain 3 levels, slow, silence, banish a summon, blind or entangle. Each, presumably apart from the heal, gives a saving throw.
The 13th Moon is one of those kinds of weapons that I both really, really like, and really, really changes the game around it. It's cool, it's for an underrepresented item type, and it's the result of an at least moderately epic quest to create it (and it gave me a use for my silver sword blade, of which I typically have two thanks to pick pocket shenanigans)... But 20% MR alone makes it imbalancing, with the Vorpal effect being icing on the proverbial cake.
Rusty Myth: +4 Scimitar, +1 AC, +1 APR, 10% MR, Protection from Level 1 spells... This weapon is either the most absurdly overpowered, or balanced but Too Awesome To Use, depending on your savescum tendencies, because it has one other major feature: 6% chance to break every hit. Break it out for bosses, and keep a spare weapon handy, a good way to balance an otherwise almighty weapon.
Enemies: A demilich, a Chain Demon (I rather liked this one), a megasnake, and few incidentals.
Traps and Locks - Perhaps one or two locked containers, if that.
Difficulty: Your party will be post-underdark, so you should be able to handle the enemies it throws at you, which are well signposted.
Overall: A - I enjoyed the lore-centric, conversation heavy nature of the questlines, found an entirely new area of the Forest of Tethir I'd never actually been to before, and appreciated the extra commentary Viconia brought with her. Well worth a try, and not nearly so imbalancing while still adding the neat innates that I enjoy so much from the other quests of its ilk.
And... Yeah, I think that concludes my Lava Run. Unless there are any other pressing requests, which seems doubtful with 1.4 on the way, I daresay I'll start a no-reload/writing Loves Laughs and Libraries 2 run now.
Thanks! Did you have any problems with Yvette in Spellhold? The problem I mentioned was with the portal-mirror near the riddles, the one from which you get some gems that later enable you to move forward in the game.
Hmmm if I can recommend you some mods: Arath (the druid NPC), Xulaye (I just wonder is she works on EE...), Sarevok Romance (for ToB), The Sellswords.
There are some other of my mods too (and it's nice to get some feedback, it's quite precious), but they were never updated to work on EE...
Thanks! Did you have any problems with Yvette in Spellhold? The problem I mentioned was with the portal-mirror near the riddles, the one from which you get some gems that later enable you to move forward in the game.
Actually no, though because I didn't know the nature of the bug that was supposed to be happening, I hung around that portal checking through variables for a bit before triggering her reappearance on the next floor.
Xulaye - Not on EE or under active development as far as I can tell.
Sellswords, Arath, and Sarevok romance added to my to do list for after this current run.
One question to your Keldorn Romance review: Do you mean duplicate like buggy doubled dialogue (which should be fixed)? Any bug report is very welcome. EDIT: And also the question: The current mod version is including ToB part, did you take the mods there, too?
One question to your Keldorn Romance review: Do you mean duplicate like buggy doubled dialogue (which should be fixed)? Any bug report is very welcome.
For example:
Hey Imoen, you coming? Yeah, duh.
Hey, Mod Keldorn- Say nothing my love! I shall come with you of course!
Hey Minsc, you coming? Butts to be kicked!
Hey, Vanilla Keldorn... Are you sure you want to come with? I will not abandon you in this, duty etc vanilla response.
So yeah, his vanilla conversation isn't removed, so both dialogues are played.
It was a matter of 3 lines :P Erasing the check for ToB served the purpose + I just resized some portraits :P that kind of stuff can be done in few minutes :P
Overall: A - With a caveat that what happens in Silent Swamps should probably *stay* in Silent Swamps, this is well polished, with good maps, interesting encounters, and well worth the playthrough, just... be prepared for the some of the items you're going to get, particularly the level draining scimitar of infinite magic and the club of ultra-Belm.
The Scimitars have an Enchantment Level of 1, so while they are good at murdering riffraff, they have next to zero use against competent opposition. The Club may seem OP from a powergamer perspective, under the assumption one will exploit what is exploitable. Personally, I like the thing. In the hands of a Jaheira who sticks to Sword'n Shield style, it is a nice alternative to boring Belm, fitting the Druid theme nicely, without propelling her into absurd power levels.
Overall: A - With a caveat that what happens in Silent Swamps should probably *stay* in Silent Swamps, this is well polished, with good maps, interesting encounters, and well worth the playthrough, just... be prepared for the some of the items you're going to get, particularly the level draining scimitar of infinite magic and the club of ultra-Belm.
The Scimitars have an Enchantment Level of 1, so while they are good at murdering riffraff, they have next to zero use against competent opposition. The Club may seem OP from a powergamer perspective, under the assumption one will exploit what is exploitable. Personally, I like the thing. In the hands of a Jaheira who sticks to Sword'n Shield style, it is a nice alternative to boring Belm, fitting the Druid theme nicely, without propelling her into absurd power levels.
Worth noting that a significant majority of the foes you'll ever face are humans, drow, illithids etc who require no weapon enhancement to hit, particularly in SoA. It might not be the thing you whip out against demons, but it's still extraordinarily nasty.
And no, the club *is* OP. Even if you pick it up in Chapter 6, it's Belm, which is one of the best weapons in the game for offhanding, plus 50% FR, plus fire damage, plus being usable by clerics, plus dealing blunt damage the best kind of damage. Being available with zero major combat is just a bonus. I'd be amazed if you didn't like the whole thing, since the only thing that compares is Granny's Knife of Full Plate.
It was a matter of 3 lines :P Erasing the check for ToB served the purpose + I just resized some portraits :P that kind of stuff can be done in few minutes :P
If you know how, certainly. I'm hopeless at that sort of thing.
I have to say, I'm surprised Xulaye isn't more prominent when people talk about BG mods - she certainly seems like an interesting addition to the game, especially given how light on character content the Underdark can be.
It's 2016 and I am still playing BG2, what more can I say ? I did not yet reach 10 playthroughs, but it might come this year.
I wanted to share my own experience with some mods I played, recently for some and not so much for other. I'll attach my BWS selection in a later post if anyone is interested.
Some of my experience is old so feel free to correct me if what I say about a mod is just wrong, I might try it once more. I am following the BWS order in my reviews.
Quest Mods:
Assassinations
Pretty nice mod with some simple subquests, altough it really feels weird to be able to play it as a goody two shoes (for once, the reverse of what evil playthrough felt like).
Immersion: B-, contrary to other bg2 quests, it's not tied to anything in particular.
Balance: A. No problem.
Tactics: C. Nothing to see.
Verdict: B+. Would recommend
Alternative Harper/Xzar Plot (Ding0's Quest Pack)
Additional options are always nice, altough in the first place if you take up Xzar quest, you are probably evil, stupid or hate harpers. Hence the gap that this mod fixes doesn't really exist in the first place.
Immersion: B, it might feel like it belongs in the vanilla game...unless you start to think too hard about it.
Tactics: C. Nothing to see.
Verdict: B-. If you feel like maximizing your options.
Revised Hell Trials (Ding0's Quest Pack)
Immersion: A, it feels like it could have belonged in the vanilla game.
Balance: A. You are already getting amazing rewards with the original trials. The new rewards are on the same level, or below.
Verdict: A. Nice to have.
Saving Sanik in Brynnlaw (Ding0's Quest Pack)
Verdict: C. Mixed feelings. Only install if your heart is made of candy and rainbow.
Burglary of the Bookkeeper (Ding0's Quest Pack)
Immersion: B-. Those kind of mini-content feels very nice, but the thief dialogue tree is meh (too much candy and rainbow).
Verdict: B. Why not.
New Fate for the Dryad's Acorns (Ding0's Quest Pack)
Immersion: B.
Sound: C. The voice audio quality is a bit average, but does not stick out too much.
Verdict: B. Why not.
The Tragedy of Besamen (Ding0's Quest Pack)
Immersion: B-. At first sort of ok, but then devolves in cliches.
Story: C. Needs a twist, or something more than satisfying your heart made of rainbow and candy.
Verdict: C. Same than saving Sanik. The quest is also too linear.
Further Slaver Involvement (Ding0's Quest Pack)
Immersion: A. No problem here, it won't even pop up if you are not concerned.
Verdict: B. More evil options are always nice.
Sending the Solamnic Knights Home. (Ding0's Quest Pack)
Verdict: A. A simple fix that improves the game.
Reward Negotiation (Ding0's Quest Pack)
Verdict: A. A simple improvement that really fits the subquest.
Improved Oasis Encounter (Ding0's Quest Pack)
Verdict: C. The first time I played it, I liked it but now that the novelty has worn off...More options always seem to be good, but the point of TOB's story (there is one) is that you are running out of options in regard to dealing with Alundo's prophecy. Tethyr's Queen little punitive expedition isn't going to let you go.
Innershade
Innershade is its own little village with a few very short subquests and a slighty longer subquest at the heart of it.
Immersion: A-. It is definitely fanmade and feels different, but it is also well-made.
Balance: B-. As a boon to us powergamers, the local smith has some nice items. The items are sort of balanced for their price but have unusual traits that make them maybe too useful for an early BG2 adventure. Also given how BG2 shower us in gold, they might definitely feel a tad powerful.
Less acceptable are the too numerous reputation points that rain on you after small subquests.
Story: B+. The main quest is weird (in a good way) and has the right balance between story content and fighting. Other subquests felt too much like the PC was a nosy adventurer trying to take care of everything. But why not after all, the PC is allowed to sponsor a village if they want.
Sound: B. The fight music is great, but the village music is a bit too loud.
Tactics: B. The fight itself is entertaining but poses no particular challenge, and isn't boosted by SCS-AI.
Immersion Granny: C. The author wanted us to feel like normal people for once, or caring about one, but that is not why I am playing BG2. It feels out of place. However you can simply ignore Granny, which I coldly recommend you do.
Verdict: A-. A few problems, but a must play for those who wants more quests, good ones.
The White Queen
I am going to replay it soon but in my distant memories it was good. Just like Innershade.
Story: A-. I found it slighty better than Innershade as it was not cluttered by the lesser subquests.
Tactics: D. The fight can prove themselves a bit challenging if you for that quest early...unless you exploit the erratic behaviours of some NPCs and bypass the most difficult ones.
Verdict: A/C Would recommend, unless you have Viconia (maybe this little plot has been removed and/or fixed regarding Romance issues).
Tower of Deception.
Balance: D. The sword is an issue as it is OP.
Verdict: C. Would be a good subquest mod if not for unbalanced items.
Unfinished Business
Immersion/Story : A, except for Suna Seni/Valygar (C, just too...obvious and not well-written).
Verdict: A-. I would recommend most of it, except for the Suna Seni/Valygar Relationship (and possibly Artemis Entreri, down to personal preference).
The Minotaur and Lilacor
Immersion: D.
Verdict: C. Nice idea, but the Minotaur speaks too much (there is indeed such thing as going overboard in writing).
NPC mods
Adrian
Immersion:C. Adrian just like Isra's introduction sticks out too much from other Bioware NPCs. Bioware NPCs usually follow you ultimately because of your "aura", after you might have helped them or not. Adrian is pretty casual about joining you and the subject is barely adressed before the third dialogue (maybe the fourth).
The author is trying to mimic a more natural/pnp experience probably, but by doing so breaks a bit too much the immersion.
My other problem with Adrian are his observations about the plot. Yes, he's the kind of NPC that would say "the plot thickens". And yes, I find that infuriating.
I didn't see however any flaw in the writing, besides a lack of options.
Sound:F. No voice, significantly reducing my immersion when clicking on him. I don't want him fully voiced, I just want to hear something when I click on him. This was the small factor that made me decide not to keep him because of his other problems.
Dialogue: Mixed. It's refreshing to see a Lawful Evil NPC that is really Lawful Evil.
But some of its dialogue suffer from a cruel lack of range of options for your NPC. I want to have a real conversation with him, but too often I felt that my options were limited. I had either to agree with him in tone and content to go somewhere, or not. It would still go somewhere but damn it it's not what my PC wanted to say.
Verdict: N/A Did not complete a playthrough with him.
Angelo
Might update it with a more recent playthrough.
Voicing: C. I got used to it, altough like almost all npc mods, it's average. Lot of lines though.
Immersion:B-. The portrait sticks out.
Verdict: B. I have good memories of this NPC, he is one of the few that I would blindly recommend and that fit kind of well in a "vanilla" playthrough.
Chloe
Verdict: D. She takes too much room in your dialogue. Her stats or sword are broken. Etc.
Coran
Voicing: A-. Not enough variety as Coran is limited to his BG1 lines, but at least the quality is excellent.
Immersion: B. Everything was great until the subject of Sudelnassar popped up. Coran is just too invested with that part of the story, and it takes you a little bit out of ste story when he keeps trying to sneak a line during your tumultuous dialog with Elhan.
Dialogue: B. Coran is Coran, something the mod captures very well. But sometimes, Coran is simply too Coran, and he expects you to mirror him. It gets old after the sixth or seventh time.
Verdict: B. I would recommend it if you liked him in BG1, altough like many NPC mods that has numerous interjections, he doesn't play so well with other NPC mods simply because he is too chatty and might take you out of the tone set up by other dialogues. But if you like NPC mods, you are well aware of that issue and could use him nonetheless.
Isra (BG2, did not play BG1 mod).
Voicing: B-. It's almost there quality-wise, still missing something. Her lines are good, short and to the point (dialog, quest, area lines).
Immersion: B+. Isra suffers from the same problem than the other author's famous NPC, Adrian : she is a bit like a fly in the ointment at first. The first part of her quest feels weird, it's not really clear why you are helping her (unless you are a nosy goody two shoes...or a stalker ?). For me, it was simply to keep playing her, not really because I felt invested in her small quest. The first lines are a bit boring.
However after that, she become a great friend to the PC with multiple chat options. Her PID has some nice varieties, and the rest of her quest is good (altough I wonder how it does interact with Jan subquest ? I will find out on my next playthrough).
As usual, her portrait is a poor fit for BG1 or BG2 style, I substitued one of the female default one instead.
Dialogue: A. Good in general, multiple and real different optinos to explore. I wish she had more banters with Bioware NPCs, and others.
Verdict: A-. I am going to do a replay simply to try her romance. Except for the little hiccups at the very beginning and her portrait, I have no negative things to say about Isra. I feel that she is the best NPC mod out there. I hope the romance won't change my opinion.
Kelsey
One of JCompton's mod. Quite polished but...
Voicing: As good as Keto quality-wise, but not as convincing.
Verdict: C. He's too chatty and plain and boring. He's like Anomen, but without the thorns and the big mouth. However, he still has Anomen's other flaws.
Keto
The other JCompton NPC's mod. Quite polished but...
Voicing/Music: A. I take back what I said about Coran, Keto is actually the best voiced NPC out there. With the exception of an NPC (yes NPC of this mods have some lines), the quality is almost professional.
Balance: B-. Stats wise, it's below average. No broken content though if I remember correctly.
Immersion: B-. Keto sometimes barely fit in the story, feeling out of place and reminding that she has no idea what she is doing here. Well, at some point, maybe she should get used to it. She is also a very unique NPC, in both good (casual, bard) and bad ways (too casual to fight liches, vampires and demons maybe).
As usual, the portrait isn't BG2 style.
Dialogue: B. She has some good moments, and if you like her style, her uniqueness will feel refreshing.
Story: C. The bard part of her quest is boring. Very much so. It's the kind of stuff that would be awesome at a table game, but feels out of place in BG2. You only put up with it by respect for your friend Keto.
Verdict: B-. If you are looking for a casual NPC (story/dialogue wise), then Keto could be a good fit for your party. She also definitely feels like a bard npc, more than Haer'daelis who is tiefling first, bard second.
Additional note : She has no TOB content which is a downside or could be seen as perfect as you can trade her for Sarevok without any remorse.
Nephele
Might try her on my next playthrough (altough on the current one, I almost had hives as I read her very nosy introduction).
Ninde
Might try her on my text playthrough, as she is written in part by the author of Isra and Adrian.
Romantic Encounters Content.
Immersion: D. It's mostly a pretext to add some smut and bad fanfictions to bg2.
Verdict: Only if you enjoy bad fanfiction as a vice. You know what I am talking about, don't you.
Solaufein
Immersion: D. Solaufein can't shut up, and interjects everywhere in the story as a secondary if not primary main PC. To say the least, it's not done well.
Dialogue: D. Lines that are extended and extended way beyond the real content of the conversation. It's pompous, it's overwritten and it's not really a conversation, more like a verbal assault by Solaufein.
Balance: D. Some of the items are simply broken.
Tactics: E. The mod fights are some of the most difficult you will encounter in SOA/ToB, with unheard (and broken) abilities. Slighty better than some of Tactics component, but still out of place. Him fighting alongside Bodhi is no fun as well (altough with powerful dispel you can deal with it).
Verdict: D. At first, I was really enticed by the idea of having Solaufein join my party, even if he came so late. But he proved to be more an annoyance that an asset. If you want more Solaufein content, you should probably try the quest mod about Eilistraee's Song.
Sarah
I tried to give Sarah a shot a long time ago, but she is a bit too quiet for my taste.
Tashia
Voice/Music: C+/B-. Only the minimal lines, but they are of good quality.
Immersion: B-.
Her portrait is almost fitting BG-style.
Dialogue: B. PID is not exactly that great, and her past love story isn't told that well, but she does the part.
Balance : D. That figurine item is broken, and takes away from the awesomess of the spell Time Stop.
Verdict: B. If you want a good sorceress with decent content, Tashia is ok.
Xan
I am tempted to try him altough I fear he suffers from the same problem as Coran : he is going to be too much Elf-oriented. I should also have probably recruited him on my Coran playthrough.
Yvette
I am tempted to try her as it is written by a good author.
Ah only one playthrough but quite a few mods I want to try !
Next I might review some of the bioware NPC mods and the tactical mods.
Wellp, pretty bored of Beamdog's "siege" mod (B, way too linear for my tastes and a few other niggles so I gave up halfway to start over), so going to be doing a few of these and open to suggestions, will be starting in BG1 for a change (and maybe into SoD if mod content demands), with the NPC pack and Ishlilka, the green wizard slayer.
Current outstanding request list: Haer'dalis and Sarevok romance mods, which means a ToB run and a bard in my future. Yay.
If there are any major changes to mods since the last time I tried them - aka: Do I get a monk/sorcerer yet, does magus get extra APR, do all those weapons "balanced" by their +1 or +2 Enchantment become even more OP now enchant weapon works the way it does (spoiler: Yes, they do), and so on - please let me know so I can check them out.
Anyway, some quick mod reviews from my recent spate of restartitis:
+ Readily compatibility with multiclassing. (some minor requirements with HLAs like any kit that are easily fixed with EE Keeper, but I get very bored with "Oh look another sorcerer kit" and the shadow adept blends very nicely)
+ Every stat matters (though Charisma can safely be dumped and then supplemented at level up, since it only matters during spell acquisition).
+/- Spellcasting system
Shadow Adepts have a far more fluffy (not a bad thing) and restrictive (if you're a power gamer then maybe a bad thing) spell selection than regular mages, and are far more restricted in their acquisition (picking them up like a sorcerer than a mage, so no scroll hunting necessary).
Individually the spells are frequently "stronger" than equivalent mage spells (even accounting for the risk of losing Con on cast), but at the same time, they're much more limited, because a lot of the spells that make mages powerful are completely absent or their equivalents on the adept's list are severely flawed (like the complete absence of a shadow themed polymorph self equivalent from their spell list), and a lot of the simpler blasting type spells they do get (and they get quite a few) simply don't deal much damage for a spell of their level.
In fact, that very much summarises the full spell list as a whole, very vaguely tallied:
Mediocre spells (non-scaling or otherwise fairly low damage, mild effects, or otherwise more fluff than crunch - which includes most of the "drain some small amount of constitution from the target" spells in general, though I concede that they have niche utility and can be abused): 12 "Equivalent" spells but with some feature that makes them overall worse than the version a regular mage gets: 12 More or less equivalent spells more or less equal to a mage or cleric equivalent of the same level, or inconsequentially better (not necessarily equivalent to *good* spells, just equivalent): 39 plus all the sequencer/contingency spells which the Adept can pick. Spells not worth picking in the first place (put target enemy into melee with your mage and deal no damage to them? A death fog with poison damage and a save to avoid damage each round?): 5 Spells that are or become legitimately good for their spell level and generally solid picks, or are significantly better than the equivalent: 25
No apologies for tallying errors, mod has a whole mess of spells, which is awesome.
Missing Spells whose absence chafes most terrible: 18 - Protection from Petrification, Protection from Evil, Identify, Web, Invisibility, Poly Self, Fire Shield #2, Melf's or Scorcher or any cheap Fire or Acid Damage spell (or spells not dealing in regularly resisted cold damage, for that matter), Haste, Invisibility 10', Emotion, Enchanted Weapon, Cloudkill, Feeblemind, Spell Immunity, iHaste, Project Image, Shapechange, Spell Trap, Wish,
The Adept's spell list is far weaker and less versatile than the Mage, but they have a mix of some good, some very good spells, and quite a few spell levels where you run out of good spells long before you stop learning new spells.
Notably, they simply don't feel quite "self contained" as a single class (multiclass helped this, but not completely).
Their selection of saving throw debuffs was fantastic (-9 to all saves with the negabard familiar, -11 for their specialised spell schools), but their save or stun selection was pretty terrible (don't get me started on a save or die that requires two successful saves to stick), while many of their best spells were "no save just suck" anyway. They have a lot of short term debuffs that diminish THAC0 or MR or AC or damage resistance by a bit, but they have spells to bypass MR anyway, their THAC0 and AC are meh anyway, and they have better things to do than prat around in melee anyway. Their selection of damage spells is broad, but most of those dealt cold, or magic, damage, and their damage didn't scale while their secondary effects weren't good enough to compensate, and their access to useful damage types is limited.
They can't cover gaps in their prepared slots with scrolls like mages either.
Shadow Familiar
This was a weird one, and overall I felt that the familiar I ended up with as true neutral was both too annoying and too powerful to keep around. A bard whose song granted -2 to enemy saves and who was completely expendable, whose same song had a deeply annoying effect when active making you want to avoid using it.
The other choices were a regenerating shade wolf ranger with stealth, and a shadowdancer imp that could apparently use thief skills, so I'm not even sure I got the strongest. Overall I'd have been happier without it.
Shadow Magic Items
Nothing too exciting. +Chr and +Con items (important to the Adept), +Saves gear (again, super important to the adept), a +2 Throwing Dagger (very nice for an Adept/Thief), all well balanced and consistent with existing gear as far as I saw, and largely restricted to Shadow Adepts.
Overall: A.
A good kit if you consider mages too powerful, because even at their strongest the Shadow Adept isn't likely to dominate like a mage would, and works very well in tandem with parties who can benefit from their wide selection of minor debuffs and save penalties.
Another very interesting and massive attempt. Infinite spells is either overpowered shenanigans or pointlessly weaksauce. Warlock kit... kind of the former. I gave up after a bit due to feeling a tad excessive, and because the class is actually pretty buggy (not unsurprising for such an ambitious attempt)
Here's a mildly optimised selection for an example, and remember they're all infinite use:
Eldritch Blast: Infinite use, ranged, never missing magic damage up to level 15 where it stalls out at 37.5 average damage per round in early SoA. Fantastic for kiting, and kills faster than most low level thieves, and there are various types.
See the Unseen: Your spells can target invisible enemies without penalty, and by level 10 you have maxed find traps and detect illusions.
Dark Ones Own Luck: +1 to all saves for every 5 levels - Combined with gear, your Warlock should be rocking subzero saves quite quickly.
Cloak of Shadows: Gives +10 to Hide, MS, and Pick Pockets per level (the first two are irrelevant, the third is awesome as always), so your mage type caster has maxed five of the thief skills by level 10.
You have all three of those by level 4, still nothing crazy.
At level 6 you start getting:
The Dead Walk: Animate Dead: Yes, infinite. You can summon one skeleton per round, and so long as fewer than one skeleton dies per round you'll eventually swamp any opponent with your army.
Walk Unseen: Become invisible, as per the spell. Infinitely.
Brimstone Blast: Fire damage Eldritch Blast that causes 1d8 fire damage per round (1 round per 4 levels) if they fail their save vs spell.
You can have any three of those by level 10, or go for the infinite use dispel that damages targets by 1 per CL (up to 10) to give them an early, if low damage, AOE.
From level 11:
Tenacious Plague: Infinite Insect Plague - yes, the OP level 5 spell that prevents all spellcasting, once per round for the rest of time.
Stunning Blast: 10d3+10 by level 15, Save at -2 or stunned for 4 rounds.
Chilling Tentacles: Summon tentacles of forced intrusion: 3D6 to everything in the area, save or held for 1 round each round.
By level 15 you have those three (you could get an AOE blast, or an acid damage blast that ignores MR, but meh, you're single handedly shutting down everything that's not a golem or a lich at this point, and have an army of skeleton warriors to boot).
And, by level 20 you get:
Dark Foresight: Immunity to physical damage for 2 rounds per cast. Crack the Weave: Infinite spell protection/combat protection purging. Eldritch doom: 30' Sunfire equivalent eldritch blast. 15D3+15, save for half. Alternate this and Dark Foresight.
They don't get, or need, backstab, they don't get, or need, snares, they don't get, or need, to dual class, and they don't get, or need, thief skill points. The biggest downside is that they only get one timestop HLA compared to the usual thief, and that they aren't a mage.
Bugs: As mentioned above, the infinite spells mechanic gets a bit glitchy, and after every rest you'll end up with more and more castings of Eldritch Blast etc that never deplete that will eventually stack overflow and remove the spell entirely. Periodic house cleaning in EE Keeper to remove the various spell effects and extra spells was necessary to stop it from breaking.
Not sure if it would work, but giving warlocks an every round "limited wish" type effect that restored their innate spells (since they can only cast one invocation a round that's effectively infinite) might work better than giving them extra castings, but it might interact poorly with dream abilities, the only other innate that a warlock would pick up to my knowledge.
Overall: B
An overpowering kit in or out of a party, with incredible survivability from level 6 onwards and anti-mage stuff that puts Druids and Shamans to shame, with plenty of room to become the best dispeller in the game, pick up HLAs, and generally be super awesome through the high levels, but avoid if you're not up to manually fixing the extra invocation castings it gives you because it will break sooner or later if you don't.
Might and Guile kits:
Only really tried the Psypher, Ranger/Mage, and the Spellfilcher.
Psypher: Too buggy for me, despite wanting to try a psyker/mage hybrid. The powers system was interesting, but the fear power didn't seem to do anything, the slow power actually held the target with no save, and the HP reduction thing caused the usual glitches where the character was both dead and alive. Gave up early.
Ranger/Mage: Was confused to find "Sanctuary" as one of the ranger spells added, since it's Cleric only. Also while I'm sure it's an engine limitation I find it generally disappointing not to get any extra APR from being a pseudo ranger, which felt like I was giving up a lot of "Thief" for not very much Ranger at all.
Spellfilcher: Found this one to be no frills but pretty cool, since it has no downside in exchange for some neat anti-mage stuff, and good flavour for BG which has a high percentage of the game being "kill mages and take their stuff".
@Pantalion - it's nice to see you are still writing reviews! I am curious what would you write about some of my mods that you did not play before, so if you have some time, perhaps you would like to try them. I think those you haven't seen are: Verr'Sza NPC for BG1EE + SoD; Will of the Wisp - a mod mainly for BG2; Southern Edge - a new district for BG2; Weasels! - a tiny mod that adds few new items and spells.
However, I understand if you're not planning any new runs I just enjoy reading the reviews you share
Comments
(anyway thanks for your kind words, I'm happy that you people still play my mods)
LaViconia - Overall B?
Viconia is an assassin thief multiclass as per the options (the other choice was dual class, and inhuman dual classes don't sit right with me, though nor do human ones). There's the expected kerfuffle with Assassin getting 25 skill points per level, but generally my biggest issue is that the abilities it grants her as a Sharran cleric don't appear to have any descriptions, so I've no idea what her abilities are supposed to do. Thanks for the reminder - I had it, but forgot.
Innershade
Apparently there is additional ToB content, and possibly post-Spellhold content, so I'll cover more as I find it.
Loot: As per usual for the CoI quests, a fantastic and varied array, of which I'll include a small subsection:
Unique "Wolf Berry" - Permanent ability to Shapechange into a Wolf. 4.2k GP. - Slightly buggy, save before use, sometimes it doesn't grant the ability.
The Wolf - 18 Strength, 17 Dexterity, 6 base AC (the form does nothing to stop you from re-equipping armour), +1 APR, 1D8, non-magical attacks. 100% cold resistance, 50% electrical resistance. The description wrongly says 18/00, 1d10 damage. - Not particularly powerful, particularly for SoA, but a cute and flavourful ability.
Foodstuffs - A lot of this is pretty minor, giving small amounts of max HP for a few minutes, and generally for a pittance, but the most notable are balanced only by their limited availability:
Soup - 10 HP and 50% fire resistance for 2 minutes
Edible Bark - Restore 20 HP and cure all poisons. ~25 GP each for a double strength elixir of health for the cost of not curing disease.
Roasted Locusts - Restore 40 HP, may cause disease. 100 GP for ToB level potions of healing with no downside for Gaxx users.
Magic Drops - Effectively a 3 minute DUHM for +3 to each stat. 1.2k GP.
Third Eye - Belt, immunity to back stabs. 4.5k GP.
Eva's Smile - +3 Warhammer, 15% chance of self-casting a 2 round haste per hit, AC +1, Max HP +6, and Stun Immunity. - I actually quite like this one, it's priced at 24k GP, so hardly a steal for a +3 weapon, and it's well worth offhanding or even mainhanding against an otherwise very hard to handle status effect.
Golden Dragon Scale Armour - 45k. 2 AC, wearable by good bards, paladins and non-mage clerics. 5% slashing resistance and poison/disease immunity. Disables thief skills and spellcasting.
Ability: Burning Sacrifice - Bards only - 12k GP - The bard takes critical, unstoppable, damage, putting them down to ~5 HP but all party members nearby are healed. I believe to full, but couldn't say either way.
While potent, aside from sticking on CHARNAME - A very risky prospect - the only canoNPC is Haer'Dalis, which means having Haer'Dalis in your party, its own significant downside.
Quest Finale Longsword +3: Infravision, 25% Imprisonment Resistance, 10% MR, 1 Regen/10 seconds. Usable by anyone.
OR
Quest Finale Staff +3: Infravision, 25% Imprisonment Resistance, +1 Strength, +10 Max HP. Notably, the Staff is actually a combination weapon, giving ranged and melee attack forms, usable by anyone except monks.
The Finale Longsword is doubtless the stronger of the two, considering it can easily be offhanded for the MR and Imprisonment resistance and regeneration, so the Finale Staff is probably less imbalancing if you're concerned about power creep, which is actually my immediate concern for +3 swords with MR and regen usable by anyone at level 9.
Harder to get, but far, far more problematic, is the Grandmother's Hope, a +2 dagger usable by anyone.
+1 AC, +1 APR, 10% to cast bless per hit, immunity to backstab.
It is probably the most overpowered item in the whole mod, partially because it's bugged. It doesn't add 1 AC, it sets AC to 1. Holding this knife is like wearing full plate.
Enemies: Two main types. The first are enemies with 60 resistances to everything... but a +60 armour class penalty to all damage types. As might be expected, these are trivial, possibly unintentionally so. The second are nasty level draining enemies which drop random spells, like Bigby's hands, self-buffs like stoneskins and haste, and so on.
Locks and Traps: Zilch.
Difficulty: I actually completed this with a party of level 8s and 9s because the AI for the actually dangerous enemies is faulty, so several times they did nothing but stand around waiting to die. Since I forgot to check if you could rest in the inescapable encounter map, this may vary from easy toimpossible, depending on your party composition, and since it's an area of no return, and you must have +2 weapons or better before triggering it (obvious trigger, fortunately).
Overall: B+ - Overpowered loot items available far too easily aside, this is still well worth the play, with good maps, interesting quests, and several features tired into the other CoI plots and NPCs for the astute.
Foundling
Power Creep: C
From a class perspective, the Shadow Adept class is a fascinating kit, shadow weave illusion spells have always been one of my favourite FR classes, and it makes me want to start up a character with the kit myself. The spells are interesting in their difference, and the Shadow Adept behaves much like the Magus kit I enjoyed, with additional APR and THAC0 as it levels to make it pseudo gish.
Foundling starts with artificially inflated HP, (around 22 more HP than he should for me, even after several levels on non-maxed HP rolls), but to compensate, his spell selection is obviously severely hampered, with only a fraction the power and versatility available to regular mages (though with some unique perks all the same). He also has a nasty tendency towards permadeath if he dies, so might want to avoid that.
In terms of items, here's a few of the unique or rarer goodies:
Perennial Ice Arrow - A returning Ice Arrow that never runs out. 1D6+1D2 Cold. I'm not sure what it counts as in terms of enhancement but it's pretty awesome, because I hate buying ammo.
Chain of the Solar - Good Bards, Paladins and Clerics only. 3 AC, 25% fire resistance, "ignored by skeletons, zombies and ghouls". Does not restrict spellcasting. - Interesting at least partially because it's unenhanced platemail, so you can slap on Rings of Protection on top of that, The colour is awful though.
Ioun - Protection from Wing Buffet and -2 AC that stacks with an RoP.
Leira's Lie - The literal sword of plot advancement, Leira's Lie is a "+3" longsword which counts as +5 and grants Mastery in Longsword proficiency, which for Foundling means it's effectively +6.
And on hit:
5% chance to curse enemy with Wild Magic for 10 seconds
2% chance to restore used spells of the user
1% chance to kill target if it has less than 60 HP
So.... 1 in 50 hits restore the wielder's spells, 1 in 20 wild surges the victim for two rounds, and 1 in 100 is a power word kill.
Pretty powerful in the hands of the , as usual, this gets silly around the time you include UAI, at which point you can have a Mage/Thief and Fighter/Mage/Thief replenishing their considerably meatier spellbooks.
Shadow Sword - The unique blade creatable by Shadow Adepts once ever, the bonus for which depends on the Adept's level. Level 20 and above gets +5, the second strongest, which has "10% drains Dexterity" and 40% slow, along with 1D8+1D10 cold damage and an extra +2 THAC0 (on top of the +5) against "humanoids".
This one causes scripted cold damage to any non-Adept wielding it but otherwise doesn't require UAI, so theoretically any Fighter with GM in long swords could wear >100% Frost Resistance and recover health every round while gaining the substantial benefits of a +5 sword of slow and indeterminate length stat drain (which also bypasses Stoneskin), but by the time you can get it I'm inclined to give this one a pass, just because of the amount of effort necessary to make that happen for a comparatively modest payoff, at least compared to timestops, automatic entangles, refreshing level 9 spells or never missing swords of luck.
Melodrama: A - Foundling whines less about his horrible fate than other characters do about you not going to do their little side quests for a day, when you can see him actually losing stats as a result.
Overall: A - Foundling is mechanically interesting, low drama, and has plenty of unique areas in which to follow his questline, along with some interesting vanilla interjections.
Skie:
The fashion thief.
But in all honesty, there's nothing to suggest that Skie's banality is anything but intentional. The mod is plenty self aware about this fact, giving the player the frequent opportunities to call Skie out, and never really taking itself very seriously. The writing, and Skie herself, do also improve somewhat over the short, thirty chat romance track, but outside of Love Talks I found precious few interjections elsewhere.
Content and Consistency: B- - I mentioned it above, but it's worth mentioning again that someone only with only slightly lower Wisdom than Korgan doesn't really feel true to their stats when they're arguably less sensible than Minsc, though there are occasional glimpses of something going on upstairs in a few of her conversations where she mentions being multilingual and speaking Kara Turan (which made me want to whip over to the underdark to finally know what that guy on the bridge is saying after all these years before I remembered they were Kuo Toan, ah well).
In terms of quests, Skie nominally has two, one meeting someone who designed her armour, and a second finding a jewel thief. The first one never actually worked out for me, since the designer never appeared, but this didn't stop the second one from triggering eventually, and a brief romp around town to find and fight the lone thief (a cakewalk even at level 9).
Bonus points for consistency that Skie is aware of CHARNAME's race, and the player gets comments based on that, and the conflict talk with Aerie is actually pretty in character. Lost points for suggesting Eldoth beat her - Skie could totally take Eldoth in a fist fight, he only gets 1 damage per hit more than her, while her far better AC means he only has a 50/50 chance of hitting her per punch, while she hits him on a 6 or better.
Not... Not that I make routinely my NPCs fight each other for my amusement or anything. *Cough.*
Power Creep: D - Skie's stats are unchanged from her BG1 incarnation (though there's an option to change them on installation), giving her a middling array of stats outside of her 18 Dexterity. She does have an illegal number of thieving abilities - 55 more skill points than she should have, but a large proportion of them are devoted to the Stealth skills, which I consider to be the thief's least useful, most expensive, skillset, and Single class thieves will always suck, and there aren't enough stat boosts that you might dual her into a Mage.
She also picks up a unique ability called "Incessant Chatter", an innate friends spell, which is yet another sign of self awareness I thought was pretty cute.
Gearwise, she starts out wearing the cursed +2 leather of missile attraction (because she wanted to be more attract-ive), which is fine, but her quest items are over the top:
10,000 GP reward for an hour's - in game - work
the Cloak of Balduran (with its glorious 25% MR and stackable protection features unchanged)
Kiel's Morningstar (The berserking one, meh)
And as a capstone for completing her romance track (which I managed to achieve before completing my first major quest area in chapter 2) she grants you:
The Bracers of Entar: 18/00 strength, Protection from poison, Protection from backstab, usable by anyone.
If only he'd been wearing these when he was assassinated, Skie probably wouldn't be an orphan.
So that's pretty much the best in slot for cloaks until Chapter 5, and it's guaranteed that someone in your party will benefit from the bracers, and even if you're flush with Giant Strength belts, you can override their strength bonus and pick up backstab and poison immunity whenever you're facing any of the long list of sneak attackers and poisonous critters that might otherwise hassle you.
Melodrama: B+ - While Skie does try to get gloomy and introspective at times, it doesn't really work, partly because of the tongue-in-cheek way the mod is represented, partly because she tends to break such talks up with absent-mindedly walking into walls and talking about make-up.
Bugginess: A- - Skie had one glitch where an NPC never showed, and her journal entries are broken in standard EE fashion. Neither needed fixing or broke anything I cared about.
Overall: C - While she's a very basic NPC, part of that is advantageous. She doesn't feature any creepy fetish material, she doesn't yack constantly at you, she doesn't spend five lovetalks angsting, and it turns out I can tolerate "vapid" far better than being told "{your heart skips a beat as she gazes at you with her chartreuse eyes, the mutual attraction burning in your breast}" or suchlike. Still a better romance than Saerileth, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend her outside of curiosity.
Loot: As appears to be the standard with CoI, it's a wide range of items, some interesting, some overpowered. Here's a selection of about a third of it, including some
Hamadryad's Dagger: +1 damage, +5 THAC0 dagger.
Fire Veins +2 - +2 Club, +1 Fire Damage, +50% Fire Resistance and +1 APR? While nowhere near as insane as the Granny Knife, you can pick this up with invisibility and a level 1 spell straight out of Irenicus' dungeon, no need to progress the plot or fight anyone.
Hellfire Arrows +1 arrows, 40% of level drain. - Disturbingly powerful, but you only get 20 and the most deadly enemies generally have a way of ignoring +1 Arrows.
+1 Charisma - I said it before, but permanent stat increases are my anti drug, and Charisma ain't imbalancing nuffin'.
Demoneye Sling: Nongood only: +3 Sling, fires infinite bullets of 1d6 +3, +1 fire damage, has 10% chance to slow target (save vs. spells to negate), 10% chance to cause berserk on target (save vs. death to negate), and gives immunity to fear. - So... Yeah, the best sling in the game, though the fact it requires you to grab +4 bullets every now and then is a minor downside compared to Everard's.
The Ladykiller - +3 Bastard Sword, +5 against ladies, but... -2 Luck, which means -2 to hit against everyone and -2 damage. Hm. Weird one. Also a 5% chance to kill females per hit unless they save vs. death at -3.
The Rape of Magic - Cursed +1 Dagger with -25% MR (not a penalty if you have 0 MR), a 15% chance per hit of getting +1 APR per round for 2.5 rounds, and a 25% chance to lower both wielder and victim's MR by 10%.
The Claw of Kazgaroth - I'm not sure what happens if you already have it from Irenicus' dungeon.
Archer's Doom necklace - +50% missile resistance, +2 AC versus missiles, Vocalise.
Golem's Heart - A +2 shield of Petrification immunity.
Spellbinder's Gloves - -1 Casting Time, +1 level 1 spell, +2 saves vs spells.
The "Stylish Amulet of Protection" - a +1 AoP, +1 Charisma.... And doesn't count as an AoP, so it stacks alongside a ring.
And the quest's finale: Twin +3 scimitars.
#1: 3% chance of wish rest, 10% chance of fear, 15% chance of level drain, and 30% chance of destroying weaker undead on hit, and a -5 HP penalty.
#2: 50% acid resistance, +1 AC, +1 Dex, and +1 Movement Speed with another -5 HP penalty.
Locks and Traps - Numerous traps scattered across the paths and several locked containers. Also some unmarked, undisarmable plot based automatic petrification traps. Asides from the plot petrification, I felt this was the dungeon that best matched what I'd expect from vanilla in terms of traps, though some trapped containers would have been even better.
Enemies - A wide and splendid variety. Teleport spamming Hamadryad beat me up and down the woods (yes, we're all still level 9), assorted minor undead, an army of monks and mages, a lich, trained wyverns, golems... and everyone is obnoxiously Neutral, which is pretty annoying for a party full of of clerics.
Difficulty: Pretty high, at least for my party of level 9 clerics. with instant automatic kill traps, swarms of mages able and willing to drop fireballs on you, a Lich with the usual immunities and save or dies, wyverns poisoning you to death... Fortunately resting is allowed, and you can generally fall back and regroup.
Overall: A - With a caveat that what happens in Silent Swamps should probably *stay* in Silent Swamps, this is well polished, with good maps, interesting encounters, and well worth the playthrough, just... be prepared for the some of the items you're going to get, particularly the level draining scimitar of infinite magic and the club of ultra-Belm.
Clubs don't shine as damage dealers and clerics have only 1 APR and can not use the other 3 +1 APR weapons, they share the same THACO table of the rogues, that can use 2 +1 APR weapons for 4 APR, with UAI using the poisoning Scarlet in the main hand.
Even mages have a +1 APR weapon, the throwing dagger.
Giving also to clerics the chance, but with a weapon that is no more powerful then the 2 slashing ones seem to me more balancing, anyway is just a suggestion.
I am not a modder so I don't really know the etiquette of the modder community, but changing the content of a mod, even if with an other one and not reworking the mod itself, could be not so polite.
Demoneye Sling: If I remember correctly, you only get this when you choose the evil path.
The Twin +3 scimitars: I don't think these were actually +3 enchanted, but merely have a +3 bonus to attack and damage. Or the other way around. In any case they weren't as good as they sound.
Fire Veins +2: I don't remember finding that one, I assume it can be looted somewhere in the outdoors starting area of the mod? In this case, to "pick this up with invisibility and a level 1 spell straight out of Irenicus' dungeon" would be a shameless cheese tactic based on precise meta-knowledge, and players prone to such choices will already imbalance their game in many other ways. So I don't think it makes sense to demand the loot of that area (which has quite dangerous monsters) to actually be balanced for straight-out-of-Irenicus'-Dungeon parties.
2: Yeah, I believe they're +2, but get extra +1s. It's an interesting limitation, but doesn't really offset the grab bag of abilities and Wish Rest. 3% is 34 hits, you could nova every fight and generally still be fully fuelled by stabbing your own summons to death.
3: Yep, it's in a box just past the Petrification traps. I'm not sure how "invisibly scouting out enemies while looting an area" is a cheese tactic, but either way generally it's not good practise to put weapons in the beginning of an area, whose encounters certainly weren't bad enough to stop my sub 500k Exp party from sweeping the whole mod.
But again to be clear, that club wouldn't be balanced if you looted it off the mod's boss. Not only is increasing the number of APR weapons in general pure power creep, it's a troll-killing Super-Belm that puts the vanilla APR weapons to shame.
Tone down tweaks sounds good to me, there's a lot of items scattered thoughout these mods which are just too powerful (and I've been by no means exhaustive with the item lists), especially when you account for interaction between other mod added items as well.
Too bad there's no simple fix to remove flirt menus. Sigh.
Regardless, in the underdark, successfully brought Yvette into and through Spellhold (though I did end up fiddling with a few variables since I wasn't sure what was supposed to be normal behaviour), and am prepping up for Eliastraee's Song. And if that's spelled correctly it's because I've been playing way too much BG2 lately.
I Shall Never Forget item update.
Greenworm: +2 Staff with 20% of "making the target fall away", vocalise, and 25% wild magic protection. - Guaranteed NRDs for Neera methinks, so infinite spells via guaranteed NRD limited wish cycles is the order of the day.
Ilthasia Plate Mail: 2 AC hot pink armour. It doesn't restrict spellcasting, but slows casting speed by 2, and it doesn't restrict thief skills though it gives 25% HiS and MS penalties (presumably from the colour). It does, however, give +35% detect illusion, and protection from level drain. It can also be used by anyone, making this the ultimate armour for Fighter/Thieves and pure thieves while not being particularly imbalanced.
Hammer of the Fallen Sun - +4 Warhammer, with a 35% chance to Blind the target, and 10% chance to restore one cleric spell below level 6 per hit. - The 35% no save blind is beyond extreme, theoretically giving it effectively another +4 THAC0 from blindness after the first round.... Except the item appears to be bugged, having a 35% chance of blinding the wielder when equipped, rather than the target when struck. Still, cure the blindness with a cleric spell, you'll get it back soon enough, and it's still a decent weapon for any spellcaster cleric.
Sadly some of the immersive features I was hoping for weren't included in the end. No way of telling the grumpy mage that my waifu was indeed just eaten by vampires, my husbando just had his heart smashed before my eyes, and no way of telling the Incomplete that the soulless CHARNAME actually had a lot in common with him... These were just minor niggles considering the mod is plenty solid without it, but a tiny bit disappointing all the same.
Yoshimo Romance
Power Creep: A- - Yoshi gets a few additions, an upgraded sword, a necklace with some abilities, but nothing particularly changed game balance from it (the sword is still +1, the necklace is competing with a wide range of other, more powerful, amulets for the slot).
Melodrama: A - Despite the overall dark tone of the content, it never felt excessive, possibly because I'm well familiar with Yoshimo's plot already. It was heavier in some places than others, but well within my tolerances.
Bugginess: A- - Didn't notice any particular glitchiness going on, except a conversation about Yoshimo's Heart... Which hadn't actually happened yet.
Overall: A - Well integrated, well written, well executed, and well worth a try. I really liked this one.
Yvette's Romance
Immersion and Contistency: C+ - I didn't quite buy Yvette's deity bias against Viconia. I'd have been fine with it happening if the two shared a few harsh banters (Viconia's pretty abrasive, after all), but to have it happen instantly was a little jarring considering a Paladin manages to put up with her for several days. There was a conversation early on where she mentions that she can't turn undead - cute, if a little odd, but there wasn't really a conversation option I felt covered "Okay, don't care, there are four other clerics in this party, one of whom is myself, and you are level 2, you do not need to turn undead".
Jaheira's objection to the romance came across as bizarrely out of character as well, with her lambasting CHARNAME for wasting time talking to his pocket painting, and telling him they don't have time for such shenanigans. Not only is Jaheira all about helping people (because she's secretly neutral good), why would she complain about that? CHARNAME constantly helps people for free and talks to everything from poultry to ancient avatars of a dead god. Not to mention calls the party to stop and rest every few hours when he runs out of stoneskins, I'm pretty sure the five minute chats aren't going to change much. Aerie's banters on the other hand, were much more in character.
Power Creep: B+ - Yvette is straight out illegal, with 260 thief skill points as a level 4 -> 1 dualled thief>cleric with an illegal 16 starting THAC0 and 54 HP despite. This makes me think she was originally a level 9 Thief dual at one point and was never fixed. While I was sick to death of the over-abundance of both clerics and thieves in my particular group layout, Yvette's illegal 75 points invested in locks and traps is actually sufficient for all dungeoneering you might engage in, since she's at 90/80 respectively thanks to her dex, and is a DUHM away from hitting 100+ scores.
Itemwise, there's not very much to speak of. An Aerie banter gives her a lucky ribbon (which I stole for my UAIing CHARNAME, who looked *fabulous*), she starts with a few +2 weapons which quickly became obsolete, and she supposedly was supposed to take the TotDG's amber rose and turn it into a health regenerating Coral Rose... But that never happened.
Melodrama: B+ - There are a few eye-rolly parts in her romance track, but generally pretty low on the whining in general.
Bugginess: B? - I waded through global variables a few times to make sure things were progressing correctly, and generally didn't hit any bugs except Yvette never actually appearing when I rested in the beginning, which was a minor tweak at best.
Overall: B+ - Despite a few niggles, this is generally a solid romance NPC with a decent personality and plenty to say. I'm pretty sure she's supposed to have quite a bit of ToB content as well.
Eilistraee's Song:
Loot: The loot available was actually pretty modest, overall:
Viconia gets a special unique amulet: +1 saves, +2 AC vs spiders, +3 level 1 spells, Poison Immunity. <- She's going to need that one.
Swordbreaker - a Non-good only ring, for some reason. It gives 50% slashing resistance and slow-immunity.
Moon Sword - I'm not sure how this ended up in my pack, since I had a brief pocket-picking session, but it's a +4 Bastard Sword with +1 to hit, 50% cold resistance, backstab immunity, and level drain immunity.
Luck Charm - 1% MR, +5 Death Save, +2 Luck. - Checking it over, either luck isn't working properly, or it isn't stacking correctly, either way, this wasn't as awesome as I was hoping.
Boots of +1 Dex, +1 Move Speed
Ability: Hunting Chant: 1/day Party-wide Tenser's Transformation Innate. - Yes, it's as bizarre and wonderful as it sounds.
Sword Dancer of Eilistraee kit - Didn't correctly apply, but the kit itself appears to offer a low level Mord's Sword, an ability to summon a Moon Sword (which crashed the game whenever used), and a partywide Infravision innate. Woo. Also completing the quest to get the kit ended up with the holy symbol of Eilistraee, with the usual gubbins of 6th and 7th, +1 Cha, Vocalise and 5% MR.
13th Moon - +4 Dagger, +6 to hit, 20% MR, Protection from Level 1 Spells. On hit, has a 37% chance of having an effect (only 1 per hit): 15% chance of killing the target, and 2% of:
Heal 30 HP, Fear Enemy, 10 Fire Damage, 10 Acid Damage, 10 Electric Damage, Drain 3 levels, slow, silence, banish a summon, blind or entangle. Each, presumably apart from the heal, gives a saving throw.
The 13th Moon is one of those kinds of weapons that I both really, really like, and really, really changes the game around it. It's cool, it's for an underrepresented item type, and it's the result of an at least moderately epic quest to create it (and it gave me a use for my silver sword blade, of which I typically have two thanks to pick pocket shenanigans)... But 20% MR alone makes it imbalancing, with the Vorpal effect being icing on the proverbial cake.
Rusty Myth: +4 Scimitar, +1 AC, +1 APR, 10% MR, Protection from Level 1 spells... This weapon is either the most absurdly overpowered, or balanced but Too Awesome To Use, depending on your savescum tendencies, because it has one other major feature: 6% chance to break every hit. Break it out for bosses, and keep a spare weapon handy, a good way to balance an otherwise almighty weapon.
Enemies: A demilich, a Chain Demon (I rather liked this one), a megasnake, and few incidentals.
Traps and Locks - Perhaps one or two locked containers, if that.
Difficulty: Your party will be post-underdark, so you should be able to handle the enemies it throws at you, which are well signposted.
Overall: A - I enjoyed the lore-centric, conversation heavy nature of the questlines, found an entirely new area of the Forest of Tethir I'd never actually been to before, and appreciated the extra commentary Viconia brought with her. Well worth a try, and not nearly so imbalancing while still adding the neat innates that I enjoy so much from the other quests of its ilk.
And... Yeah, I think that concludes my Lava Run. Unless there are any other pressing requests, which seems doubtful with 1.4 on the way, I daresay I'll start a no-reload/writing Loves Laughs and Libraries 2 run now.
Hmmm if I can recommend you some mods: Arath (the druid NPC), Xulaye (I just wonder is she works on EE...), Sarevok Romance (for ToB), The Sellswords.
There are some other of my mods too (and it's nice to get some feedback, it's quite precious), but they were never updated to work on EE...
Xulaye - Not on EE or under active development as far as I can tell.
Sellswords, Arath, and Sarevok romance added to my to do list for after this current run.
EDIT: And also the question: The current mod version is including ToB part, did you take the mods there, too?
Hey Imoen, you coming?
Yeah, duh.
Hey, Mod Keldorn-
Say nothing my love! I shall come with you of course!
Hey Minsc, you coming?
Butts to be kicked!
Hey, Vanilla Keldorn... Are you sure you want to come with?
I will not abandon you in this, duty etc vanilla response.
So yeah, his vanilla conversation isn't removed, so both dialogues are played.
Edit: And also the answer: No, I didn't.
http://www.shsforums.net/topic/58589-xulaye-for-ee/#entry587457
The Club may seem OP from a powergamer perspective, under the assumption one will exploit what is exploitable.
Personally, I like the thing. In the hands of a Jaheira who sticks to Sword'n Shield style, it is a nice alternative to boring Belm, fitting the Druid theme nicely, without propelling her into absurd power levels.
And no, the club *is* OP. Even if you pick it up in Chapter 6, it's Belm, which is one of the best weapons in the game for offhanding, plus 50% FR, plus fire damage, plus being usable by clerics, plus dealing blunt damage the best kind of damage. Being available with zero major combat is just a bonus. I'd be amazed if you didn't like the whole thing, since the only thing that compares is Granny's Knife of Full Plate.
I have to say, I'm surprised Xulaye isn't more prominent when people talk about BG mods - she certainly seems like an interesting addition to the game, especially given how light on character content the Underdark can be.
Not currently, I stopped playing BG2 and actually got back to work. Everyone else is, of course, welcome to add their own reviews to the thread.
@Pantalion
WHAT???!!!?! Got back to work!?!?!?!?! Instead of playing BG2!?!?!?!?!?!?
I wanted to share my own experience with some mods I played, recently for some and not so much for other. I'll attach my BWS selection in a later post if anyone is interested.
Some of my experience is old so feel free to correct me if what I say about a mod is just wrong, I might try it once more. I am following the BWS order in my reviews.
Quest Mods:
Pretty nice mod with some simple subquests, altough it really feels weird to be able to play it as a goody two shoes (for once, the reverse of what evil playthrough felt like).
Immersion: B-, contrary to other bg2 quests, it's not tied to anything in particular.
Balance: A. No problem.
Tactics: C. Nothing to see.
Verdict: B+. Would recommend
Additional options are always nice, altough in the first place if you take up Xzar quest, you are probably evil, stupid or hate harpers. Hence the gap that this mod fixes doesn't really exist in the first place.
Immersion: B, it might feel like it belongs in the vanilla game...unless you start to think too hard about it.
Tactics: C. Nothing to see.
Verdict: B-. If you feel like maximizing your options.
Immersion: A, it feels like it could have belonged in the vanilla game.
Balance: A. You are already getting amazing rewards with the original trials. The new rewards are on the same level, or below.
Verdict: A. Nice to have.
Verdict: C. Mixed feelings. Only install if your heart is made of candy and rainbow.
Immersion: B-. Those kind of mini-content feels very nice, but the thief dialogue tree is meh (too much candy and rainbow).
Verdict: B. Why not.
Immersion: B.
Sound: C. The voice audio quality is a bit average, but does not stick out too much.
Verdict: B. Why not.
Immersion: B-. At first sort of ok, but then devolves in cliches.
Story: C. Needs a twist, or something more than satisfying your heart made of rainbow and candy.
Verdict: C. Same than saving Sanik. The quest is also too linear.
Immersion: A. No problem here, it won't even pop up if you are not concerned.
Verdict: B. More evil options are always nice.
Verdict: A. A simple fix that improves the game.
Verdict: A. A simple improvement that really fits the subquest.
Verdict: C. The first time I played it, I liked it but now that the novelty has worn off...More options always seem to be good, but the point of TOB's story (there is one) is that you are running out of options in regard to dealing with Alundo's prophecy. Tethyr's Queen little punitive expedition isn't going to let you go.
Innershade is its own little village with a few very short subquests and a slighty longer subquest at the heart of it.
Immersion: A-. It is definitely fanmade and feels different, but it is also well-made.
Balance: B-. As a boon to us powergamers, the local smith has some nice items. The items are sort of balanced for their price but have unusual traits that make them maybe too useful for an early BG2 adventure. Also given how BG2 shower us in gold, they might definitely feel a tad powerful.
Less acceptable are the too numerous reputation points that rain on you after small subquests.
Story: B+. The main quest is weird (in a good way) and has the right balance between story content and fighting. Other subquests felt too much like the PC was a nosy adventurer trying to take care of everything. But why not after all, the PC is allowed to sponsor a village if they want.
Sound: B. The fight music is great, but the village music is a bit too loud.
Tactics: B. The fight itself is entertaining but poses no particular challenge, and isn't boosted by SCS-AI.
Immersion Granny: C. The author wanted us to feel like normal people for once, or caring about one, but that is not why I am playing BG2. It feels out of place. However you can simply ignore Granny, which I coldly recommend you do.
Verdict: A-. A few problems, but a must play for those who wants more quests, good ones.
I am going to replay it soon but in my distant memories it was good. Just like Innershade.
Story: A-. I found it slighty better than Innershade as it was not cluttered by the lesser subquests.
Tactics: D. The fight can prove themselves a bit challenging if you for that quest early...unless you exploit the erratic behaviours of some NPCs and bypass the most difficult ones.
Verdict: A/C Would recommend, unless you have Viconia (maybe this little plot has been removed and/or fixed regarding Romance issues).
Balance: D. The sword is an issue as it is OP.
Verdict: C. Would be a good subquest mod if not for unbalanced items.
Immersion/Story : A, except for Suna Seni/Valygar (C, just too...obvious and not well-written).
Verdict: A-. I would recommend most of it, except for the Suna Seni/Valygar Relationship (and possibly Artemis Entreri, down to personal preference).
Immersion: D.
Verdict: C. Nice idea, but the Minotaur speaks too much (there is indeed such thing as going overboard in writing).
NPC mods
Immersion:C. Adrian just like Isra's introduction sticks out too much from other Bioware NPCs. Bioware NPCs usually follow you ultimately because of your "aura", after you might have helped them or not. Adrian is pretty casual about joining you and the subject is barely adressed before the third dialogue (maybe the fourth).
The author is trying to mimic a more natural/pnp experience probably, but by doing so breaks a bit too much the immersion.
My other problem with Adrian are his observations about the plot. Yes, he's the kind of NPC that would say "the plot thickens". And yes, I find that infuriating.
I didn't see however any flaw in the writing, besides a lack of options.
Sound:F. No voice, significantly reducing my immersion when clicking on him. I don't want him fully voiced, I just want to hear something when I click on him. This was the small factor that made me decide not to keep him because of his other problems.
Dialogue: Mixed. It's refreshing to see a Lawful Evil NPC that is really Lawful Evil.
But some of its dialogue suffer from a cruel lack of range of options for your NPC. I want to have a real conversation with him, but too often I felt that my options were limited. I had either to agree with him in tone and content to go somewhere, or not. It would still go somewhere but damn it it's not what my PC wanted to say.
Verdict: N/A Did not complete a playthrough with him.
Might update it with a more recent playthrough.
Voicing: C. I got used to it, altough like almost all npc mods, it's average. Lot of lines though.
Immersion:B-. The portrait sticks out.
Verdict: B. I have good memories of this NPC, he is one of the few that I would blindly recommend and that fit kind of well in a "vanilla" playthrough.
Verdict: D. She takes too much room in your dialogue. Her stats or sword are broken. Etc.
Voicing: A-. Not enough variety as Coran is limited to his BG1 lines, but at least the quality is excellent.
Immersion: B. Everything was great until the subject of Sudelnassar popped up. Coran is just too invested with that part of the story, and it takes you a little bit out of ste story when he keeps trying to sneak a line during your tumultuous dialog with Elhan.
Dialogue: B. Coran is Coran, something the mod captures very well. But sometimes, Coran is simply too Coran, and he expects you to mirror him. It gets old after the sixth or seventh time.
Verdict: B. I would recommend it if you liked him in BG1, altough like many NPC mods that has numerous interjections, he doesn't play so well with other NPC mods simply because he is too chatty and might take you out of the tone set up by other dialogues. But if you like NPC mods, you are well aware of that issue and could use him nonetheless.
Voicing: B-. It's almost there quality-wise, still missing something. Her lines are good, short and to the point (dialog, quest, area lines).
Immersion: B+. Isra suffers from the same problem than the other author's famous NPC, Adrian : she is a bit like a fly in the ointment at first. The first part of her quest feels weird, it's not really clear why you are helping her (unless you are a nosy goody two shoes...or a stalker ?). For me, it was simply to keep playing her, not really because I felt invested in her small quest. The first lines are a bit boring.
However after that, she become a great friend to the PC with multiple chat options. Her PID has some nice varieties, and the rest of her quest is good (altough I wonder how it does interact with Jan subquest ? I will find out on my next playthrough).
As usual, her portrait is a poor fit for BG1 or BG2 style, I substitued one of the female default one instead.
Dialogue: A. Good in general, multiple and real different optinos to explore. I wish she had more banters with Bioware NPCs, and others.
Verdict: A-. I am going to do a replay simply to try her romance. Except for the little hiccups at the very beginning and her portrait, I have no negative things to say about Isra. I feel that she is the best NPC mod out there. I hope the romance won't change my opinion.
One of JCompton's mod. Quite polished but...
Voicing: As good as Keto quality-wise, but not as convincing.
Verdict: C. He's too chatty and plain and boring. He's like Anomen, but without the thorns and the big mouth. However, he still has Anomen's other flaws.
The other JCompton NPC's mod. Quite polished but...
Voicing/Music: A. I take back what I said about Coran, Keto is actually the best voiced NPC out there. With the exception of an NPC (yes NPC of this mods have some lines), the quality is almost professional.
Balance: B-. Stats wise, it's below average. No broken content though if I remember correctly.
Immersion: B-. Keto sometimes barely fit in the story, feeling out of place and reminding that she has no idea what she is doing here. Well, at some point, maybe she should get used to it. She is also a very unique NPC, in both good (casual, bard) and bad ways (too casual to fight liches, vampires and demons maybe).
As usual, the portrait isn't BG2 style.
Dialogue: B. She has some good moments, and if you like her style, her uniqueness will feel refreshing.
Story: C. The bard part of her quest is boring. Very much so. It's the kind of stuff that would be awesome at a table game, but feels out of place in BG2. You only put up with it by respect for your friend Keto.
Verdict: B-. If you are looking for a casual NPC (story/dialogue wise), then Keto could be a good fit for your party. She also definitely feels like a bard npc, more than Haer'daelis who is tiefling first, bard second.
Additional note : She has no TOB content which is a downside or could be seen as perfect as you can trade her for Sarevok without any remorse.
Might try her on my next playthrough (altough on the current one, I almost had hives as I read her very nosy introduction).
Might try her on my text playthrough, as she is written in part by the author of Isra and Adrian.
Immersion: D. It's mostly a pretext to add some smut and bad fanfictions to bg2.
Verdict: Only if you enjoy bad fanfiction as a vice. You know what I am talking about, don't you.
Immersion: D. Solaufein can't shut up, and interjects everywhere in the story as a secondary if not primary main PC. To say the least, it's not done well.
Dialogue: D. Lines that are extended and extended way beyond the real content of the conversation. It's pompous, it's overwritten and it's not really a conversation, more like a verbal assault by Solaufein.
Balance: D. Some of the items are simply broken.
Tactics: E. The mod fights are some of the most difficult you will encounter in SOA/ToB, with unheard (and broken) abilities. Slighty better than some of Tactics component, but still out of place. Him fighting alongside Bodhi is no fun as well (altough with powerful dispel you can deal with it).
Verdict: D. At first, I was really enticed by the idea of having Solaufein join my party, even if he came so late. But he proved to be more an annoyance that an asset. If you want more Solaufein content, you should probably try the quest mod about Eilistraee's Song.
I tried to give Sarah a shot a long time ago, but she is a bit too quiet for my taste.
Voice/Music: C+/B-. Only the minimal lines, but they are of good quality.
Immersion: B-.
Her portrait is almost fitting BG-style.
Dialogue: B. PID is not exactly that great, and her past love story isn't told that well, but she does the part.
Balance : D. That figurine item is broken, and takes away from the awesomess of the spell Time Stop.
Verdict: B. If you want a good sorceress with decent content, Tashia is ok.
I am tempted to try him altough I fear he suffers from the same problem as Coran : he is going to be too much Elf-oriented. I should also have probably recruited him on my Coran playthrough.
I am tempted to try her as it is written by a good author.
Ah only one playthrough but quite a few mods I want to try !
Next I might review some of the bioware NPC mods and the tactical mods.
Current outstanding request list: Haer'dalis and Sarevok romance mods, which means a ToB run and a bard in my future. Yay.
If there are any major changes to mods since the last time I tried them - aka: Do I get a monk/sorcerer yet, does magus get extra APR, do all those weapons "balanced" by their +1 or +2 Enchantment become even more OP now enchant weapon works the way it does (spoiler: Yes, they do), and so on - please let me know so I can check them out.
Anyway, some quick mod reviews from my recent spate of restartitis:
Shadow Magic - Particularly the Shadow Adept. https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/64991/mod-shadow-magic-v0-9-4
+ Readily compatibility with multiclassing. (some minor requirements with HLAs like any kit that are easily fixed with EE Keeper, but I get very bored with "Oh look another sorcerer kit" and the shadow adept blends very nicely)
+ Every stat matters (though Charisma can safely be dumped and then supplemented at level up, since it only matters during spell acquisition).
+/- Spellcasting system
Shadow Adepts have a far more fluffy (not a bad thing) and restrictive (if you're a power gamer then maybe a bad thing) spell selection than regular mages, and are far more restricted in their acquisition (picking them up like a sorcerer than a mage, so no scroll hunting necessary).
Individually the spells are frequently "stronger" than equivalent mage spells (even accounting for the risk of losing Con on cast), but at the same time, they're much more limited, because a lot of the spells that make mages powerful are completely absent or their equivalents on the adept's list are severely flawed (like the complete absence of a shadow themed polymorph self equivalent from their spell list), and a lot of the simpler blasting type spells they do get (and they get quite a few) simply don't deal much damage for a spell of their level.
In fact, that very much summarises the full spell list as a whole, very vaguely tallied:
Mediocre spells (non-scaling or otherwise fairly low damage, mild effects, or otherwise more fluff than crunch - which includes most of the "drain some small amount of constitution from the target" spells in general, though I concede that they have niche utility and can be abused): 12
"Equivalent" spells but with some feature that makes them overall worse than the version a regular mage gets: 12
More or less equivalent spells more or less equal to a mage or cleric equivalent of the same level, or inconsequentially better (not necessarily equivalent to *good* spells, just equivalent): 39 plus all the sequencer/contingency spells which the Adept can pick.
Spells not worth picking in the first place (put target enemy into melee with your mage and deal no damage to them? A death fog with poison damage and a save to avoid damage each round?): 5
Spells that are or become legitimately good for their spell level and generally solid picks, or are significantly better than the equivalent: 25
No apologies for tallying errors, mod has a whole mess of spells, which is awesome.
Missing Spells whose absence chafes most terrible: 18 - Protection from Petrification, Protection from Evil, Identify, Web, Invisibility, Poly Self, Fire Shield #2, Melf's or Scorcher or any cheap Fire or Acid Damage spell (or spells not dealing in regularly resisted cold damage, for that matter), Haste, Invisibility 10', Emotion, Enchanted Weapon, Cloudkill, Feeblemind, Spell Immunity, iHaste, Project Image, Shapechange, Spell Trap, Wish,
The Adept's spell list is far weaker and less versatile than the Mage, but they have a mix of some good, some very good spells, and quite a few spell levels where you run out of good spells long before you stop learning new spells.
Notably, they simply don't feel quite "self contained" as a single class (multiclass helped this, but not completely).
Their selection of saving throw debuffs was fantastic (-9 to all saves with the negabard familiar, -11 for their specialised spell schools), but their save or stun selection was pretty terrible (don't get me started on a save or die that requires two successful saves to stick), while many of their best spells were "no save just suck" anyway.
They have a lot of short term debuffs that diminish THAC0 or MR or AC or damage resistance by a bit, but they have spells to bypass MR anyway, their THAC0 and AC are meh anyway, and they have better things to do than prat around in melee anyway.
Their selection of damage spells is broad, but most of those dealt cold, or magic, damage, and their damage didn't scale while their secondary effects weren't good enough to compensate, and their access to useful damage types is limited.
They can't cover gaps in their prepared slots with scrolls like mages either.
Shadow Familiar
This was a weird one, and overall I felt that the familiar I ended up with as true neutral was both too annoying and too powerful to keep around. A bard whose song granted -2 to enemy saves and who was completely expendable, whose same song had a deeply annoying effect when active making you want to avoid using it.
The other choices were a regenerating shade wolf ranger with stealth, and a shadowdancer imp that could apparently use thief skills, so I'm not even sure I got the strongest. Overall I'd have been happier without it.
Shadow Magic Items
Nothing too exciting. +Chr and +Con items (important to the Adept), +Saves gear (again, super important to the adept), a +2 Throwing Dagger (very nice for an Adept/Thief), all well balanced and consistent with existing gear as far as I saw, and largely restricted to Shadow Adepts.
Overall: A.
A good kit if you consider mages too powerful, because even at their strongest the Shadow Adept isn't likely to dominate like a mage would, and works very well in tandem with parties who can benefit from their wide selection of minor debuffs and save penalties.
Warlock (Thief Kit) https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/62232/available-warlock-kit-beta-release-v0-2-1/p1
Here's a mildly optimised selection for an example, and remember they're all infinite use:
Eldritch Blast: Infinite use, ranged, never missing magic damage up to level 15 where it stalls out at 37.5 average damage per round in early SoA. Fantastic for kiting, and kills faster than most low level thieves, and there are various types.
See the Unseen: Your spells can target invisible enemies without penalty, and by level 10 you have maxed find traps and detect illusions.
Dark Ones Own Luck: +1 to all saves for every 5 levels - Combined with gear, your Warlock should be rocking subzero saves quite quickly.
Cloak of Shadows: Gives +10 to Hide, MS, and Pick Pockets per level (the first two are irrelevant, the third is awesome as always), so your mage type caster has maxed five of the thief skills by level 10.
You have all three of those by level 4, still nothing crazy.
At level 6 you start getting:
The Dead Walk: Animate Dead: Yes, infinite. You can summon one skeleton per round, and so long as fewer than one skeleton dies per round you'll eventually swamp any opponent with your army.
Walk Unseen: Become invisible, as per the spell. Infinitely.
Brimstone Blast: Fire damage Eldritch Blast that causes 1d8 fire damage per round (1 round per 4 levels) if they fail their save vs spell.
You can have any three of those by level 10, or go for the infinite use dispel that damages targets by 1 per CL (up to 10) to give them an early, if low damage, AOE.
From level 11:
Tenacious Plague: Infinite Insect Plague - yes, the OP level 5 spell that prevents all spellcasting, once per round for the rest of time.
Stunning Blast: 10d3+10 by level 15, Save at -2 or stunned for 4 rounds.
Chilling Tentacles: Summon tentacles of forced intrusion: 3D6 to everything in the area, save or held for 1 round each round.
By level 15 you have those three (you could get an AOE blast, or an acid damage blast that ignores MR, but meh, you're single handedly shutting down everything that's not a golem or a lich at this point, and have an army of skeleton warriors to boot).
And, by level 20 you get:
Dark Foresight: Immunity to physical damage for 2 rounds per cast.
Crack the Weave: Infinite spell protection/combat protection purging.
Eldritch doom: 30' Sunfire equivalent eldritch blast. 15D3+15, save for half. Alternate this and Dark Foresight.
They don't get, or need, backstab, they don't get, or need, snares, they don't get, or need, to dual class, and they don't get, or need, thief skill points. The biggest downside is that they only get one timestop HLA compared to the usual thief, and that they aren't a mage.
Bugs: As mentioned above, the infinite spells mechanic gets a bit glitchy, and after every rest you'll end up with more and more castings of Eldritch Blast etc that never deplete that will eventually stack overflow and remove the spell entirely. Periodic house cleaning in EE Keeper to remove the various spell effects and extra spells was necessary to stop it from breaking.
Not sure if it would work, but giving warlocks an every round "limited wish" type effect that restored their innate spells (since they can only cast one invocation a round that's effectively infinite) might work better than giving them extra castings, but it might interact poorly with dream abilities, the only other innate that a warlock would pick up to my knowledge.
Overall: B
An overpowering kit in or out of a party, with incredible survivability from level 6 onwards and anti-mage stuff that puts Druids and Shamans to shame, with plenty of room to become the best dispeller in the game, pick up HLAs, and generally be super awesome through the high levels, but avoid if you're not up to manually fixing the extra invocation castings it gives you because it will break sooner or later if you don't.
Might and Guile kits:
Psypher: Too buggy for me, despite wanting to try a psyker/mage hybrid. The powers system was interesting, but the fear power didn't seem to do anything, the slow power actually held the target with no save, and the HP reduction thing caused the usual glitches where the character was both dead and alive. Gave up early.
Ranger/Mage: Was confused to find "Sanctuary" as one of the ranger spells added, since it's Cleric only. Also while I'm sure it's an engine limitation I find it generally disappointing not to get any extra APR from being a pseudo ranger, which felt like I was giving up a lot of "Thief" for not very much Ranger at all.
Spellfilcher: Found this one to be no frills but pretty cool, since it has no downside in exchange for some neat anti-mage stuff, and good flavour for BG which has a high percentage of the game being "kill mages and take their stuff".
However, I understand if you're not planning any new runs