Enchant the Missile Launchers (Ranged Weapon Tweak)
Dee
Member Posts: 10,447
Enchant the Missile Launchers: A Small Ranged Weapon Tweak
Download LinkIn the tabletop version of AD&D, magical ranged weapons bestow their full enchantment value on any ammunition that is used with them. In the Baldur's Gate series, that behavior wasn't possible; when you equip a nonmagical arrow, the engine didn't know how to see the launcher's enchantment level. We now have an opcode that can get around that, but it needs to be applied.
That's what this mod is for.
This small patch grabs every magical missile launcher in the game (slings, crossbows, and the various bows) and applies an effect that allows them to use their listed enchantment levels, regardless of what ammunition is being used with them.
That means if you have a +2 shortbow and normal arrows, it'll bypass creature defenses as if they were +2 arrows. (+3 arrows will still function like +3 arrows; your equipped launcher can't make your equipped ammunition less magical than it is). This also means that an end-game longbow doesn't also have to be paired with end-game ammunition in order to be usable against end-game monsters
It also means that infinite-ammo launchers like Firetooth and Gesen Bow are made more powerful by equipping real ammunition, not less.
Just install it like any other mod. It should work fine with BG:EE, SoD, and BGII:EE. Feedback is welcome!
New Component: Ammunition Recovery
I spent a lot of time thinking about how best to handle ammunition. It doesn't make sense to me, for instance, that you can't recover arrows that you use in combat--and picking up a dozen stacks of arrows obsessively because you don't want to go back to town seems like a huge waste of time. That's the reason for increasing stack sizes in a number of tweak mods: to remove the headache of inventory management so that you can focus on the parts of the game that are fun. Unfortunately, the inventory management is still there, it just happens less often.So. This thing.
The skinny: Any ammunition you purchase from a store is now treated as a rechargable quiver with a specific number of charges, which recharges itself after every rest. This means that when you buy arrows, you're buying a quiver of 20 arrows; it will always be limited to 20, but you'll start every day with a full quiver.
Each ammunition type has its own number of charges, as laid out below:
- Bolts: 20
- Bullets: 20
- Arrows: 20
- Throwing Daggers: 5
- Throwing Axes: 2
- Darts: 15
In addition, to keep things somewhat balanced, magical ammunition and thrown weapons have a maximum charge limit based on their particular enchantment. A given weapon will use this limit or the base weapon's limit, whichever is lower:
- +1, +2, +3, +4: 10
- Minor Secondary Effect (such as Fire, Acid, Cold, or Electricity damage): 5
- Powerful Secondary Effect (such as Poison, Stunning, or Polymorph): 1
Optional Components: Eldoth and Jan
Eldoth in BG:EE and Jan in BGII:EE have the ability to make their own ammunition as a 1/day ability, and the ammunition they create is pretty powerful. No one wants to spend fifteen days stocking up on Poison Arrows, and when you forget to do it in the middle of a dungeon that can be frustrating.To that end, I've taken away from those characters the ability to create new ammunition, and instead given each of them a rechargeable version of their special ammunition that has 5 charges.
That means you won't be able to stock up on Flasher Master Bruiser Mates, but it also means you'll always have five of them (and only five of them) on hand, ready to go.
Optional Component: Fix Fuller's Bolts
Fuller wants you to bring him some bolts. But because of the way the ammunition component above works, Bolts now cost 7 gp - and Fuller won't take them from you. So this component just adds a single stack of bog-standard non-renewable bolts to the Candlekeep store, right at the top of the list so you'll be able to spot them more easily.Notes
Pay attention to your characters if you use this component. There's a bit of a hitch where running out of charges on an ammunition item won't prompt the character to switch to the next ammunition; they'll just stand there idly, waiting for death. You can fix it on the fly pretty easily by switching ammo slots manually, but you'll want to pay attention to remember to do it.(Original post below)
[spoiler]
Working on something for myself here, and trying to make the work go faster so that I can get it working and installed to test it out.
I'm sure someone's already created a mod that does this, so if there is, just post a link to it and I'll be happy to take a look. Otherwise, any intrepid WeiDU experts are welcome to offer solutions.
The Concept:
Make all magical ranged weapons grant their enchantment level to whatever equipped ammunition is being used.Context:
As of Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition, there's an opcode (345) that allows an effect to change the target's effective enchantment level with all their attacks. I want to use that effect to give every magic launcher the same treatment that infinite-ammo launchers give to their weapon-created ammunition. Gesen Bow +4 is treated as a +4 weapon when you don't equip arrows on it; I want it to be treated as a +4 weapon even if you've equipped normal, nonmagical arrows.What I need
A way to quickly add an appropriate 345 effect onto every ranged launcher item that has an enchantment value of at least 1, based on that value. Here's my terrible pseudocode for what I'm trying to achieve:item.enchantment = enchantmentI'll zip up and attach a sample item with the effect already applied.[/spoiler]
if item.launcher == true then
if enchantment >= 1 then
apply effect(345, enchantment, "permanent/while equipped")
end
end
Post edited by Dee on
13
Comments
Enchant the Missile Launchers
This small patch grabs every magical missile launcher in the game (slings, crossbows, and the various bows) and applies an effect that allows them to use their listed enchantment levels, regardless of what ammunition is being used with them.That means if you have a +2 shortbow and normal arrows, it'll bypass creature defenses as if they were +2 arrows. (+3 arrows will still function like +3 arrows; your equipped launcher can't make your equipped ammunition less magical than it is).
Just install it like any other mod. It should work fine with BG:EE, BGII:EE, and IWD:EE. I haven't tested it in-game yet to see how it plays, though. Feedback is welcome!
I am surprised this change was not included as a bug-fix in the official release. I had thought it had only been a feature due to "limitations of the engine", which is no longer true.
I thought using opcode 249 (Ranged Hit Effect) with attached EFF containing opcode 345 would do the trick, but it didn't work in my tests either (even though I don't know why).
Tested it in SoD, added the effect to BDBOW03 with these settings
and I could hit a stone golem (BDGOLSTO.CRE wearing IMMUNE2.ITM) with regular arrow.
Seems like I posted basically the same thing as kjeron above except I went and checked for the effect used in Enchanted Weapon spell which uses "both weapons" (3) and copied that. *because value 0 didn't work*
COPY_EXISTING_REGEXP GLOB ~^.+\.itm~ ~override~ PATCH_IF (%SOURCE_SIZE% > 0x71) BEGIN READ_SHORT 0x1c type PATCH_IF (type = 0x0f || type = 0x12 || type = 0x1b) BEGIN READ_LONG 0x60 enchantment PATCH_IF (enchantment > 0) BEGIN LPF ADD_ITEM_EQEFFECT INT_VAR opcode = 345 target = 1 timing = 2 parameter1 = enchantment special = 1 END END END END BUT_ONLY@lansounet It seems to work now in a clean BG2:EE installation. Maybe another mod interfered with it before.
no the default are 0, i.e. "None" for "Target" and "Instant/Limited" for "Timing Mode". You must set them to 1 and 2 respectively. Also you are still erroneously applying the enchantment to param2 instead of param1.
Edit: ninja'd by @argent77
Uploading the latest version, using the code that @argent77 supplied. Thanks for the assistance, everyone!
New Component: Ammunition Recovery
I spent a lot of time thinking about how best to handle ammunition. It doesn't make sense to me, for instance, that you can't recover arrows that you use in combat--and picking up a dozen stacks of arrows obsessively because you don't want to go back to town seems like a huge waste of time. That's the reason for increasing stack sizes in a number of tweak mods: to remove the headache of inventory management so that you can focus on the parts of the game that are fun. Unfortunately, the inventory management is still there, it just happens less often.So. This thing.
The skinny: Any ammunition you purchase from a store is now treated as a rechargable quiver with a specific number of charges, which recharges itself after every rest. This means that when you buy arrows, you're buying a quiver of 20 arrows; it will always be limited to 20, but you'll start every day with a full quiver.
Each ammunition type has its own number of charges, as laid out below:
- Bolts: 20
- Bullets: 20
- Arrows: 20
- Throwing Daggers: 5
- Throwing Axes: 2
- Darts: 15
In addition, to keep things somewhat balanced, magical ammunition and thrown weapons have a maximum charge limit based on their particular enchantment. A given weapon will use this limit or the base weapon's limit, whichever is lower:
- +1, +2, +3, +4: 10
- Minor Secondary Effect (such as Fire, Acid, Cold, or Electricity damage): 5
- Powerful Secondary Effect (such as Poison, Stunning, or Polymorph): 1
Optional Components: Eldoth and Jan
Eldoth in BG:EE and Jan in BGII:EE have the ability to make their own ammunition as a 1/day ability, and the ammunition they create is pretty powerful. No one wants to spend fifteen days stocking up on Poison Arrows, and when you forget to do it in the middle of a dungeon that can be frustrating.To that end, I've taken away from those characters the ability to create new ammunition, and instead given each of them a rechargeable version of their special ammunition that has 5 charges.
That means you won't be able to stock up on Flasher Master Bruiser Mates, but it also means you'll always have five of them (and only five of them) on hand, ready to go.
Optional Component: Fix Fuller's Bolts
Fuller wants you to bring him some bolts. But because of the way the ammunition component above works, Bolts now cost 7 gp - and Fuller won't take them from you. So this component just adds a single stack of bog-standard non-renewable bolts to the Candlekeep store, right at the top of the list so you'll be able to spot them more easily.Notes
Pay attention to your characters if you use this component. There's a bit of a hitch where running out of charges on an ammunition item won't prompt the character to switch to the next ammunition; they'll just stand there idly, waiting for death. You can fix it on the fly pretty easily by switching ammo slots manually, but you'll want to pay attention to remember to do it.And that's everything. I'm updating the zip file in the top post; let me know what you think!
I would see 2 turns worth of ammunition per quiver:
20 Bolts, Bullets, and Throwing Axes
40 Arrows and Throwing Daggers
60 Darts
And scale the magical ammunition similarly:
Enchanted +X = 5 Rounds worth (Normal / 4)
Elemental = 2 Rounds worth (Normal / 10)
Other = 1 Round worth (Normal / 20)
As for thrown weapons, I set them lower for a few reasons:
1. Equipping twenty axes is impractical; you need them all to be accessible so that you can throw them, and the game makes it pretty clear that a throwing axe is just a battle axe that you throw. The same is true, to a lesser extent, for throwing daggers.
2. Throwing axes and throwing daggers share a proficiency with their melee counterparts, which means that a character built around throwing axes (or throwing daggers) should be comfortable switching to melee as needed.
3. Throwing axes and throwing daggers are not designed to be primary weapons; they're the thing you use when you're about to dive into melee. Throwing daggers get a higher charge limit because they're smaller and easier to keep on a bandolier, but they're not the same as a bow; you use them before you engage in melee, not as a substitute for a normal ranged weapon.
Darts could be set to 20, sure, but even at 15 that's enough for five rounds of dart-throwing. If you need more than that, carry spares.
This component isn't meant to give you enough ammunition to get through a dungeon in one go; it's meant to give you a way to recover your limited ammunition without having to run back to town, and to give you the freedom to use your specialty ammunition without worrying about not having it later.
A ) At a certain point I have so much ammo in my inventory that ammunition becomes irrelevant, and
B ) I never rest for my spellcasters to regain spells because they're all wielding slings.
With this component, I find that I'm more likely to rest at a regular pace, and less likely to have my mages sit in the back throwing bullets instead of spells.
So I'm working on bumping the +X versions to a charge limit of 20, and the minor secondary effect versions to a maximum charge limit of 10. (Major secondary effects still have a charge limit of 1, because from what I can tell they're only meant to be situational.)
It looks like the mod was developed on Mac OSX, where it's customary for users to install their own weidu launcher, and the author forgot (or chose not to) bundle a Windows launcher as most mods do.
But you can add it yourself: