A native function to create a GUID would be great, something like string sGUID = GetGUID(). It would be very helpful in instances where I need to work with tags that need to be unique.
1: Racial Proficiencies - Elves get their longbows, long swords, and rapiers. Would like to add... Dwarves: Dwarven waraxe (treated as martial instead of exotic.) Halflings: +1 bonus with throwing weapons should also apply to slings.
2: Wizard Spell School Specialization: Allow players to choose their prohibited schools. Default build packages can come pre-selected. But someone willing to tailor their build specifically should be allowed to choose what might be considered a non-optimal school to surrender for a concept. (Technically I believe it should be TWO schools surrendered, unless specialization is Divination, in which case it's one school.) This is particularly relevant on persistent worlds where specializations might matter (any setting in Thay, for example). Force extra spell slot to be filled with specialist school spells only.
3: Change the highlight button from tab to another key; make the Tab button bring up a 4th row of hotkeys. Change the console from the tilde key to another key. Make it the fifth row of hotkeys. That brings hot-slots up from 36 to 60.
Edit! 4: A +2 Strength Ring and a +3 Strength ring should not make +5 Strength. These are both enhancement bonuses and only the highest one should apply- the character should have +3 STR. Apply to all stat enhancements across all item slots.
I'd love it if combat modes (Power Attack, Rapid Shot, etc.) stayed on until I disabled them, instead of automatically disabling whenever I issue a movement command.
This- Arelith has found a way to make combat modes persistent (although activating one still cancels any previous ones). Would definitely be a high quality of life improvement if it were a base part of the game.
I'd like to see a "3e restoration pass" on NWN: EE. Some of 3e rules were changed to make single player more playable, which is rather backwards since NWN is multiplayer first. Some stuff just changed without a clear reason.
- Knockdown and Disarm don't require feats in 3e, and don't require a skill to be resisted. The real 3e rules are better since Rogues, Clerics and even Wizards have a chance of resisting those conditions with opposing ability checks or AB checks. Playing a Rogue in NWN is especially humiliating since they are helpless against those conditions and can't retaliate by Imploding their enemies like Clerics can.
- Some Armor categories were left out or switched or stats changed. I miss proper Breastplates and Chain Shirts the most as both got nerfed for no apparent reason.
- Summoning spells were changed and badgers introduced in NWN. Real 3e summons are more interesting Some variation based on alignment at least? And multiple summons at the same time would be nice. Necromancers need to be able to make an army of skeletons.
- Other spells: Mage Armor, Shield provide wrong AC bonuses for some reason, Premonition has a weird DR effect that doesn't fit the theme of the spell.. and there are probably others.
Un-hardcode spellbooks, classes, feats..in general making it easier for us to create custom content for these.
I agree about palemasters and other arcane casting prestige classes..it would be nice for us to select spells for these slots, rather than being empty, and not gaining anything from it, this would also be useful for other kinds of custom prestige classes that rely on Spell casting levels.
On the topic of summons. I'm pretty biased with necromancers, but I do think a little variety would be nice for different alignments, the army of skeletons Varangion mentioned would be cool, but I don't think it'd be realistic in the scope of the game.
Practiced Spellcaster in the second game helped out big time when taking more than arcane casting classes, perhaps it'd be possible to add it in?
Prohibited schools selection - I think it would be cool for wizards that specialize in one school to be able to choose their prohibited school like in the books.
Sorry if I'm not really offering much in the ways of new ideas but some of these I just had to reinforce interest on.
I just recently played NWN Diamond Edition, and the thing which annoyed me most was that original campaign allow only 1 henchman at all times (even cheatcode for multiple henchman is removed from game), so I would be very grateful if you could make the possibility in original campaign to hire more than 1 henchman into party (like it is with expansions now), of course with appropriate exp penalty.
Can we get a functions SetItemUnequippable / GetItemUnequippable so that it cannot be unequipped and calls for items to equip in that slot are canceled. It make cursed system simpler and allow for races like war-forge who cannot wear armor (we place a holder item there). I'm sure other uses for it can be thought of.
I've thought of several additional changes, but they, primary the first one, are long and probably a little too ambitious, so I'll put them in spoilers below so that they don't take up too space.
EDIT: Forgot to include one, whoops!
PnP-Style Natural Weapon Attacks
As the game stands right now, a creature may have only 3 natural weapons, and they have a 1 in x chance in using a particular weapon when they make an attack. They also use their BAB to determine how many attacks they have in a single round and for the AB of each natural weapon. For example, an Iron Golem makes 4 attacks per round while randomly alternating between its 2 slam attacks. In my opinion, this prevents some creatures and notably animal companions from living up to their full potential, such as the Badger, who has mediocre damage output compared to the other options with little to no benefits.
As more a general change, I would recommend increasing the maximum creature weapon amount to a higher number - the most I've seen on a PnP monster is 5 on dragons, though I'm pretty sure some go up to 12. However, I also propose the addition of a toggleable flag to either individual creatures or to the module that would allow them to attack in a similar manner to how they would in PnP. For reasons involving backwards compatability and potential disagreement, it would be off by default.
As far as I'm aware, in PnP natural weapons function much differently than standard weapons. As far as my research goes, the rules are as follows...
A creature makes as many attacks against its opponent as it does Natural Weapons. Their BAB does not determine how many attacks they make per round.
A creature has a number of Primary Attacks: In PnP, these would be a Brown Bear's two claws or a Wolf's bite according to the monster manual. These weapons gain the full benefits of the creature's Strength Bonus to their damage and their full AB when attacking. For the Wolf, who only has one natural weapon that serves as their primary weapon by default, the weapon is treated like a 2 handed weapon in terms of damage, gaining 1-1/2 times their Strength bonus.
All of the creature's other weapons are Secondary Attacks: In PnP, this would be the Brown Bear's bite attack. These weapons are at a -5 penalty to their attack bonus, and only get 1/2 times the creature's strength bonus to their damage.
If implemented into NWN:EE, in the Toolset I would propose changing the Natural Equipment tab of a creature's Inventory into a list, and potentially getting its own window entirely. The list could be formatted like my ugly google sheets image below, using the creature weapons of a PnP Prismatic Dragon as the basis.
This feature would obviously cause some backwards compatability and balancing issues, which is why I suggest it be an opt-in rather than an opt-out feature so that it doesn't break older modules. Also, it has been confirmed that the race selection screen will be made into a list in order to make playable custom races an actual thing. This means it may be possible that modders will be able to create races with natural weapons. If this gets added as an toggle for specific creatures instead of as an toggleable module switch, then a module switch or a scripting function to determine whether or not PC's will opt-into the system or not.
Multiattack Feat
As NWN2 added the Multiattack feat, I suggest it get added to NWN:EE, or at least be given the ability to be made by modders, as a Monster or Animal Companion feat. In PnP, Multiattack reduces a creature's Secondary Attacks AB reduction from -5 to -2.
In NWN2's implementation, it made a creature's bonus attacks from high BAB, natural or otherwise, go by -2 reduction rather than -5 if they had 3 or more attacks per round. If they had less than 3 attacks per round, they gained another attack as if they had the BAB for it. This feat was reserved for Animal Companions, and its implementation shows, as in 3.5e Animal Companions for a 9th level druid either recieved the Multiattack feat or an extra attack with their Primary Attack if they had less than three natural weapons.
If my suggestion on PnP-Style Natural Attacks comes to fruition, I propose a middle ground be added. If a module maker has opted-in to use PnP-Style Natural Attacks, then the feat functions more or less as it would in PnP. If not, then it would function similarly to its implementation in NWN2, but only applies to a creature's Natural Weapons.
More Natural Weapon Types and Modified "No Combat Damage" Property
In PnP, the Lantern Archon has two ranged natural weapons that deals 1d6 damage, presumably magic or divine by NWN standards, that ignore damage reduction to targets within 30 feet of them. This type of weapon doesn't really exist in NWN:EE, nor does it seem like it can be created outdside of a special Bolt attack, which isn't really the same thing. I'm thinking that it would be cool if ranged natural weapons were added to NWN:EE.
Then there is the damage dilemma. The weapon is stated to ignore damage reduction. (presumably by not being a physical damage type, I.E. slashing/piercing/bludgeon) One way of making this work would be to add 1d6 magic or divine damage to the creature weapon, as both damage types aren't affected by damage reduction, but then that adds the minimum of 1 physical damage that all weapons seem to have. This minimum is fine normally, but for this weapon we wouldn't want it to do any physical damage at all. Unfortunately, the No Combat Damage property does not get rid of this minimum like it implies, so I propose that it removes the minimum and makes a weapon do outright no damage in combat (barring modification from strength, but this is a ranged weapon so that doesn't apply unless Mighty is involved) or be modified to include a secondary field that determines whether it removes the minimum or not from the weapon.
Support for more Combat Sizes and a Creature Size Override
When I heard that Creature Scaling will be coming to NWN:EE outside of that giant list of models in the CEP that scale them as tails, I was very happy, as I liked making a small Earth Elemental for my Druids in NWN2 to beat up my enemies. However, something to note is that while I did enjoy having a tiny Earth Elemental, I was unhappy to see that I could not determine how large it was considered for abilities like Knockdown, Hide, and the penalty/bonus to attack bonus. If my elemental is only a foot tall, it doesn't make sense that it would be labeled a Large creature. When the scaling feature is added to NWN:EE, I would like something similar to the Movement Rate dropdown menu to be added to the Creature Properties that allows you to override the default Appearance.2da given size for a creature.
On a similar note, I would like support for sizes smaller than Tiny and larger than Huge to be added. I noticed in the CEP that it tried to add this using a modified CreatureSizes.2da, but in my testing it does not appear to work as intended, and creatures they labeled Gargantuan or Colossal have less combat penalties/benefits than those who are Huge. I don't know much about coding, but it seems like it'd be an easy change.
I don't think I'm adding anything new, but just in case Beamdog is counting the number of forum requests for a feature before adding it to the Trello board, I might as well post my wish list.
1. Add a small number of races or sub-races to the base game without requiring mods, in particular ones that provide bonuses to INT, WIS, or CHA (which none of the existing races do) and also ones that include cleric, sorc, or druid as favored classes (which also none of the existing races do). I'm not sure which specific races should be added, since it may depend on whether ECL can be implemented, but I like aasimar and tiefling.
2. Add a small number of base classes to the base game without requiring mods. My personal favorites would be:
- Favored Soul - Spirit Shaman
3. Add a small number of prestige classes to the base game without requiring mods. Personal favorites would be:
- Eldritch Knight - Mystic Theurge
(These particular base and prestige classes would also require that spell books and spell progressions be unlocked, but that's already up for votes on Trello, and hopefully they can add that feature. Mystic Theurge in particular takes it another step further, requiring two spell progressions at once, but hopefully if it's completely unlocked, it would still be possible.)
4. Add feats:
- Natural Spell - Able Learner - Practiced Caster
5. Add following spells to Bard and Wiz/Sorc lists:
- Heroism - Greater Heroism
6. Un-hardcode monk combat progression.
7. Quickcast menu.
8. Let bards cast in light armor without a chance of spell failure (not sure if this was a 3.0 or 3.5 thing).
9. Area-of-effect targeting graphics.
10. Change Shield and Mage Armor spells to provide shield and armor AC bonuses, respectively.
11. An interface that lets you map a series of commands to a single key-binding. (e.g., press F12 to cast long-term buffs, F11 for short-term buffs, so that you don't have to select them all individually each time).
I posted this here but it looks like it dissappeared? Dunno if mod or I deleted it on accident, but lets go again.
I've thought of several additional changes, but they, primarily the first one, are long and probably a little too ambitious, so I'll put them in spoilers below so that they don't take up too space.
PnP-Style Natural Weapon Attacks
As the game stands right now, a creature may have only 3 natural weapons, and they have a 1 in x chance in using a particular weapon when they make an attack. They also use their BAB to determine how many attacks they have in a single round and for the AB of each natural weapon. For example, an Iron Golem makes 4 attacks per round while randomly alternating between its 2 slam attacks. In my opinion, this prevents some creatures and notably animal companions from living up to their full potential, such as the Badger, who has mediocre damage output compared to the other options with little to no benefits.
As more a general change, I would recommend increasing the maximum creature weapon amount to a higher number - the most I've seen on a PnP monster is 6 on dragons, though I'm pretty sure some go up to 12. However, I also propose the addition of a toggleable flag to either individual creatures or to the module that would allow them to attack in a similar manner to how they would in PnP. For reasons involving backwards compatability and potential disagreement, it would be off by default.
As far as I'm aware, in PnP natural weapons function much differently than standard weapons. As far as my research goes, the rules are as follows...
A creature makes as many attacks against its opponent as it does Natural Weapons. Their BAB does not determine how many attacks they make per round.
A creature has a number of Primary Attacks: In PnP, these would be a Brown Bear's two claws or a Wolf's bite according to the monster manual. These weapons gain the full benefits of the creature's Strength Bonus to their damage and their full AB when attacking. For the Wolf, who only has one natural weapon that serves as their primary weapon by default, the weapon is treated like a 2 handed weapon in terms of damage, gaining 1-1/2 times their Strength bonus.
All of the creature's other weapons are Secondary Attacks: In PnP, this would be the Brown Bear's bite attack. These weapons are at a -5 penalty to their attack bonus, and only get 1/2 times the creature's strength bonus to their damage.
If implemented into NWN:EE, in the Toolset I would propose changing the Natural Equipment tab of a creature's Inventory into a list, and potentially getting its own window entirely. The list could be formatted like my ugly google sheets image below, using the creature weapons of a PnP Prismatic Dragon as the basis.
This feature would obviously cause some backwards compatability and balancing issues, which is why I suggest it be an opt-in rather than an opt-out feature so that it doesn't break older modules. Also, it has been confirmed that the race selection screen will be made into a list in order to make playable custom races an actual thing. This means it may be possible that modders will be able to create races with natural weapons. If this gets added as an toggle for specific creatures instead of as an toggleable module switch, then a module switch or a scripting function to determine whether or not PC's will opt-into the system or not.
Multiattack Feat
As NWN2 added the Multiattack feat, I suggest it get added to NWN:EE, or at least be given the ability to be made by modders, as a Monster or Animal Companion feat. In PnP, Multiattack reduces a creature's Secondary Attacks AB reduction from -5 to -2.
In NWN2's implementation, it made a creature's bonus attacks from high BAB, natural or otherwise, go by -2 reduction rather than -5 if they had 3 or more attacks per round. If they had less than 3 attacks per round, they gained another attack as if they had the BAB for it. This feat was reserved for Animal Companions, and its implementation shows, as in 3.5e Animal Companions for a 9th level druid either recieved the Multiattack feat or an extra attack with their Primary Attack if they had less than three natural weapons.
If my suggestion on PnP-Style Natural Attacks comes to fruition, I propose a middle ground be added. If a module maker has opted-in to use PnP-Style Natural Attacks, then the feat functions more or less as it would in PnP. If not, then it would function similarly to its implementation in NWN2, but only applies to a creature's Natural Weapons.
More Natural Weapon Types and Modified "No Combat Damage" Property
In PnP, the Lantern Archon has two ranged natural weapons that deals 1d6 damage, presumably magic or divine by NWN standards, that ignore damage reduction to targets within 30 feet of them. This type of weapon doesn't really exist in NWN:EE, nor does it seem like it can be created outdside of a special Bolt attack, which isn't really the same thing. I'm thinking that it would be cool if ranged natural weapons were added to NWN:EE.
Then there is the damage dilemma. The weapon is stated to ignore damage reduction. (presumably by not being a physical damage type, I.E. slashing/piercing/bludgeon) One way of making this work would be to add 1d6 magic or divine damage to the creature weapon, as both damage types aren't affected by damage reduction, but then that adds the minimum of 1 physical damage that all weapons seem to have. This minimum is fine normally, but for this weapon we wouldn't want it to do any physical damage at all. Unfortunately, the No Combat Damage property does not get rid of this minimum like it implies, so I propose that it removes the minimum and makes a weapon do outright no damage in combat (barring modification from strength, but this is a ranged weapon so that doesn't apply unless Mighty is involved) or be modified to include a secondary field that determines whether it removes the minimum or not from the weapon.
Support for more Combat Sizes and a Creature Size Override
When I heard that Creature Scaling will be coming to NWN:EE outside of that giant list of models in the CEP that scale them as tails, I was very happy, as I liked making a small Earth Elemental for my Druids in NWN2 to beat up my enemies. However, something to note is that while I did enjoy having a tiny Earth Elemental, I was unhappy to see that I could not determine how large it was considered for abilities like Knockdown, Hide, and the penalty/bonus to attack bonus. If my elemental is only a foot tall, it doesn't make sense that it would be labeled a Large creature. When the scaling feature is added to NWN:EE, I would like something similar to the Movement Rate dropdown menu to be added to the Creature Properties that allows you to override the default Appearance.2da given size for a creature.
On a similar note, I would like support for sizes smaller than Tiny and larger than Huge to be added. I noticed in the CEP that it tried to add this using a modified CreatureSizes.2da, but in my testing it does not appear to work as intended, and creatures they labeled Gargantuan or Colossal have less combat penalties/benefits than those who are Huge. I don't know much about coding, but it seems like it'd be an easy change.
Mystic Theurge is overpowered and has no place in the game IMNSHO. Sometimes people need to be saved from their own inclinations, and this is a perfect example.
Ok here goes a Hail Mary. I noticed a lot of votes for a new premium module. How about making it an Expansion pack with a lot of the requested tweaks annnnnddd....
A Y axis because it would be cool to fly.
(Hope this hasn’t already been mentioned and given the finger of death) ((If King Kong Bundy can do it...))
Favored Souls and Spirit Shamans.. I'm not really convinced all spellcaster classes need both vancian and spontaneous versions. And Warlocks on top. That always seemed to me like WotC couldn't decide how magic works in D&D and they just tossed in all kinds of different versions of spellcasting classes in the game.
5e Wizards are already flexible like Sorcerers which is great, but they still kept both for some obscure reason and forced them to be different by limiting metamagic to Sorcerers. So maybe 6e will finally manage to have only one arcane caster that is fun and flexible.
Eldritch Knight is important though. It enables a new archetype that wouldn't exist otherwise.
It would be great if the bug where your spell/action queue is cancelled when someone joins or leaves party is fixed. This is a common headache on Higher Ground where we use autocasters to queue up large numbers of buffs and they then get cancelled halfway through
Skill points need to be fixed so you can't pool them up through epic levels, then dump them into UMD or discipline upon taking a single level of rogue or a fighter class. That's nonsense. They need to be spent before you can exit the leveling screens.
Skill points need to be fixed so you can't pool them up through epic levels, then dump them into UMD or discipline upon taking a single level of rogue or a fighter class. That's nonsense. They need to be spent before you can exit the leveling screens.
If that's done, then it should also be possible to buy half ranks in cross-class skills. The only time I don't spend all my skill points is so I can buy a cross-class rank at the next level, and I'd venture I'm not alone.
Not sure if posted yet but wouldn't it be cool if you can do short, local client "pause game" also in multiplayer? The game would naturally have to keep rolling in the background...but this could help for targeting etc. Naturally a pause like this would need to have a time limit also...as well as running the risk of thing not being what they seem like...still like i said again....as a tool to make targeting easier...maybe even a special kind of "targeting mode"?
Not sure if posted yet but wouldn't it be cool if you can do short, local client "pause game" also in multiplayer? The game would naturally have to keep rolling in the background...but this could help for targeting etc. Naturally a pause like this would need to have a time limit also...as well as running the risk of thing not being what they seem like...still like i said again....as a tool to make targeting easier...maybe even a special kind of "targeting mode"?
Comments
Dwarves: Dwarven waraxe (treated as martial instead of exotic.)
Halflings: +1 bonus with throwing weapons should also apply to slings.
2: Wizard Spell School Specialization: Allow players to choose their prohibited schools. Default build packages can come pre-selected. But someone willing to tailor their build specifically should be allowed to choose what might be considered a non-optimal school to surrender for a concept. (Technically I believe it should be TWO schools surrendered, unless specialization is Divination, in which case it's one school.) This is particularly relevant on persistent worlds where specializations might matter (any setting in Thay, for example).
Force extra spell slot to be filled with specialist school spells only.
3: Change the highlight button from tab to another key; make the Tab button bring up a 4th row of hotkeys. Change the console from the tilde key to another key. Make it the fifth row of hotkeys. That brings hot-slots up from 36 to 60.
Edit! 4: A +2 Strength Ring and a +3 Strength ring should not make +5 Strength. These are both enhancement bonuses and only the highest one should apply- the character should have +3 STR. Apply to all stat enhancements across all item slots.
This- Arelith has found a way to make combat modes persistent (although activating one still cancels any previous ones). Would definitely be a high quality of life improvement if it were a base part of the game.
- Knockdown and Disarm don't require feats in 3e, and don't require a skill to be resisted. The real 3e rules are better since Rogues, Clerics and even Wizards have a chance of resisting those conditions with opposing ability checks or AB checks. Playing a Rogue in NWN is especially humiliating since they are helpless against those conditions and can't retaliate by Imploding their enemies like Clerics can.
- Some Armor categories were left out or switched or stats changed. I miss proper Breastplates and Chain Shirts the most as both got nerfed for no apparent reason.
- Summoning spells were changed and badgers introduced in NWN. Real 3e summons are more interesting
- Other spells: Mage Armor, Shield provide wrong AC bonuses for some reason, Premonition has a weird DR effect that doesn't fit the theme of the spell.. and there are probably others.
- Un-hardcode spellbooks, classes, feats..in general making it easier for us to create custom content for these.
- I agree about palemasters and other arcane casting prestige classes..it would be nice for us to select spells for these slots, rather than being empty, and not gaining anything from it, this would also be useful for other kinds of custom prestige classes that rely on Spell casting levels.
- On the topic of summons. I'm pretty biased with necromancers, but I do think a little variety would be nice for different alignments, the army of skeletons Varangion mentioned would be cool, but I don't think it'd be realistic in the scope of the game.
- Practiced Spellcaster in the second game helped out big time when taking more than arcane casting classes, perhaps it'd be possible to add it in?
- Prohibited schools selection - I think it would be cool for wizards that specialize in one school to be able to choose their prohibited school like in the books.
Sorry if I'm not really offering much in the ways of new ideasPlease raise the multi class limit from 3 to 4 or 5, or remove this limitation. This change will allow hundreds of new builds.
how about an option that allows players configure the +20 ab cap and the +12 attribute cap?
The ability through scripting to add UI elements through scripting such as buttons and timers.
EDIT: Forgot to include one, whoops!
PnP-Style Natural Weapon Attacks
As more a general change, I would recommend increasing the maximum creature weapon amount to a higher number - the most I've seen on a PnP monster is 5 on dragons, though I'm pretty sure some go up to 12. However, I also propose the addition of a toggleable flag to either individual creatures or to the module that would allow them to attack in a similar manner to how they would in PnP. For reasons involving backwards compatability and potential disagreement, it would be off by default.
As far as I'm aware, in PnP natural weapons function much differently than standard weapons. As far as my research goes, the rules are as follows...
- A creature makes as many attacks against its opponent as it does Natural Weapons. Their BAB does not determine how many attacks they make per round.
- A creature has a number of Primary Attacks: In PnP, these would be a Brown Bear's two claws or a Wolf's bite according to the monster manual. These weapons gain the full benefits of the creature's Strength Bonus to their damage and their full AB when attacking. For the Wolf, who only has one natural weapon that serves as their primary weapon by default, the weapon is treated like a 2 handed weapon in terms of damage, gaining 1-1/2 times their Strength bonus.
- All of the creature's other weapons are Secondary Attacks: In PnP, this would be the Brown Bear's bite attack. These weapons are at a -5 penalty to their attack bonus, and only get 1/2 times the creature's strength bonus to their damage.
If implemented into NWN:EE, in the Toolset I would propose changing the Natural Equipment tab of a creature's Inventory into a list, and potentially getting its own window entirely. The list could be formatted like my ugly google sheets image below, using the creature weapons of a PnP Prismatic Dragon as the basis.This feature would obviously cause some backwards compatability and balancing issues, which is why I suggest it be an opt-in rather than an opt-out feature so that it doesn't break older modules. Also, it has been confirmed that the race selection screen will be made into a list in order to make playable custom races an actual thing. This means it may be possible that modders will be able to create races with natural weapons. If this gets added as an toggle for specific creatures instead of as an toggleable module switch, then a module switch or a scripting function to determine whether or not PC's will opt-into the system or not.
Multiattack Feat
In NWN2's implementation, it made a creature's bonus attacks from high BAB, natural or otherwise, go by -2 reduction rather than -5 if they had 3 or more attacks per round. If they had less than 3 attacks per round, they gained another attack as if they had the BAB for it. This feat was reserved for Animal Companions, and its implementation shows, as in 3.5e Animal Companions for a 9th level druid either recieved the Multiattack feat or an extra attack with their Primary Attack if they had less than three natural weapons.
If my suggestion on PnP-Style Natural Attacks comes to fruition, I propose a middle ground be added. If a module maker has opted-in to use PnP-Style Natural Attacks, then the feat functions more or less as it would in PnP. If not, then it would function similarly to its implementation in NWN2, but only applies to a creature's Natural Weapons.
More Natural Weapon Types and Modified "No Combat Damage" Property
Then there is the damage dilemma. The weapon is stated to ignore damage reduction. (presumably by not being a physical damage type, I.E. slashing/piercing/bludgeon) One way of making this work would be to add 1d6 magic or divine damage to the creature weapon, as both damage types aren't affected by damage reduction, but then that adds the minimum of 1 physical damage that all weapons seem to have. This minimum is fine normally, but for this weapon we wouldn't want it to do any physical damage at all. Unfortunately, the No Combat Damage property does not get rid of this minimum like it implies, so I propose that it removes the minimum and makes a weapon do outright no damage in combat (barring modification from strength, but this is a ranged weapon so that doesn't apply unless Mighty is involved) or be modified to include a secondary field that determines whether it removes the minimum or not from the weapon.
Support for more Combat Sizes and a Creature Size Override
On a similar note, I would like support for sizes smaller than Tiny and larger than Huge to be added. I noticed in the CEP that it tried to add this using a modified CreatureSizes.2da, but in my testing it does not appear to work as intended, and creatures they labeled Gargantuan or Colossal have less combat penalties/benefits than those who are Huge. I don't know much about coding, but it seems like it'd be an easy change.
1. Add a small number of races or sub-races to the base game without requiring mods, in particular ones that provide bonuses to INT, WIS, or CHA (which none of the existing races do) and also ones that include cleric, sorc, or druid as favored classes (which also none of the existing races do). I'm not sure which specific races should be added, since it may depend on whether ECL can be implemented, but I like aasimar and tiefling.
2. Add a small number of base classes to the base game without requiring mods. My personal favorites would be:
- Favored Soul
- Spirit Shaman
3. Add a small number of prestige classes to the base game without requiring mods. Personal favorites would be:
- Eldritch Knight
- Mystic Theurge
(These particular base and prestige classes would also require that spell books and spell progressions be unlocked, but that's already up for votes on Trello, and hopefully they can add that feature. Mystic Theurge in particular takes it another step further, requiring two spell progressions at once, but hopefully if it's completely unlocked, it would still be possible.)
4. Add feats:
- Natural Spell
- Able Learner
- Practiced Caster
5. Add following spells to Bard and Wiz/Sorc lists:
- Heroism
- Greater Heroism
6. Un-hardcode monk combat progression.
7. Quickcast menu.
8. Let bards cast in light armor without a chance of spell failure (not sure if this was a 3.0 or 3.5 thing).
9. Area-of-effect targeting graphics.
10. Change Shield and Mage Armor spells to provide shield and armor AC bonuses, respectively.
11. An interface that lets you map a series of commands to a single key-binding. (e.g., press F12 to cast long-term buffs, F11 for short-term buffs, so that you don't have to select them all individually each time).
I've thought of several additional changes, but they, primarily the first one, are long and probably a little too ambitious, so I'll put them in spoilers below so that they don't take up too space.
PnP-Style Natural Weapon Attacks
As more a general change, I would recommend increasing the maximum creature weapon amount to a higher number - the most I've seen on a PnP monster is 6 on dragons, though I'm pretty sure some go up to 12. However, I also propose the addition of a toggleable flag to either individual creatures or to the module that would allow them to attack in a similar manner to how they would in PnP. For reasons involving backwards compatability and potential disagreement, it would be off by default.
As far as I'm aware, in PnP natural weapons function much differently than standard weapons. As far as my research goes, the rules are as follows...
- A creature makes as many attacks against its opponent as it does Natural Weapons. Their BAB does not determine how many attacks they make per round.
- A creature has a number of Primary Attacks: In PnP, these would be a Brown Bear's two claws or a Wolf's bite according to the monster manual. These weapons gain the full benefits of the creature's Strength Bonus to their damage and their full AB when attacking. For the Wolf, who only has one natural weapon that serves as their primary weapon by default, the weapon is treated like a 2 handed weapon in terms of damage, gaining 1-1/2 times their Strength bonus.
- All of the creature's other weapons are Secondary Attacks: In PnP, this would be the Brown Bear's bite attack. These weapons are at a -5 penalty to their attack bonus, and only get 1/2 times the creature's strength bonus to their damage.
If implemented into NWN:EE, in the Toolset I would propose changing the Natural Equipment tab of a creature's Inventory into a list, and potentially getting its own window entirely. The list could be formatted like my ugly google sheets image below, using the creature weapons of a PnP Prismatic Dragon as the basis.This feature would obviously cause some backwards compatability and balancing issues, which is why I suggest it be an opt-in rather than an opt-out feature so that it doesn't break older modules. Also, it has been confirmed that the race selection screen will be made into a list in order to make playable custom races an actual thing. This means it may be possible that modders will be able to create races with natural weapons. If this gets added as an toggle for specific creatures instead of as an toggleable module switch, then a module switch or a scripting function to determine whether or not PC's will opt-into the system or not.
Multiattack Feat
In NWN2's implementation, it made a creature's bonus attacks from high BAB, natural or otherwise, go by -2 reduction rather than -5 if they had 3 or more attacks per round. If they had less than 3 attacks per round, they gained another attack as if they had the BAB for it. This feat was reserved for Animal Companions, and its implementation shows, as in 3.5e Animal Companions for a 9th level druid either recieved the Multiattack feat or an extra attack with their Primary Attack if they had less than three natural weapons.
If my suggestion on PnP-Style Natural Attacks comes to fruition, I propose a middle ground be added. If a module maker has opted-in to use PnP-Style Natural Attacks, then the feat functions more or less as it would in PnP. If not, then it would function similarly to its implementation in NWN2, but only applies to a creature's Natural Weapons.
More Natural Weapon Types and Modified "No Combat Damage" Property
Then there is the damage dilemma. The weapon is stated to ignore damage reduction. (presumably by not being a physical damage type, I.E. slashing/piercing/bludgeon) One way of making this work would be to add 1d6 magic or divine damage to the creature weapon, as both damage types aren't affected by damage reduction, but then that adds the minimum of 1 physical damage that all weapons seem to have. This minimum is fine normally, but for this weapon we wouldn't want it to do any physical damage at all. Unfortunately, the No Combat Damage property does not get rid of this minimum like it implies, so I propose that it removes the minimum and makes a weapon do outright no damage in combat (barring modification from strength, but this is a ranged weapon so that doesn't apply unless Mighty is involved) or be modified to include a secondary field that determines whether it removes the minimum or not from the weapon.
Support for more Combat Sizes and a Creature Size Override
On a similar note, I would like support for sizes smaller than Tiny and larger than Huge to be added. I noticed in the CEP that it tried to add this using a modified CreatureSizes.2da, but in my testing it does not appear to work as intended, and creatures they labeled Gargantuan or Colossal have less combat penalties/benefits than those who are Huge. I don't know much about coding, but it seems like it'd be an easy change.
I noticed a lot of votes for a new premium module. How about making it an Expansion pack with a lot of the requested tweaks annnnnddd....
A Y axis because it would be cool to fly.
(Hope this hasn’t already been mentioned and given the finger of death)
((If King Kong Bundy can do it...))
5e Wizards are already flexible like Sorcerers which is great, but they still kept both for some obscure reason and forced them to be different by limiting metamagic to Sorcerers. So maybe 6e will finally manage to have only one arcane caster that is fun and flexible.
Eldritch Knight is important though. It enables a new archetype that wouldn't exist otherwise.
lol