[v1.50] Recorder, a gnome lorekeeper NPC for BG:EE, SoD and EET
Skitia
Member Posts: 1,085
Introduction
Recorder is a ministrel and scholar, better known as Lorekeeper, who was born in the nation of Lantan but works for the church of Oghma in Amn. Surprisingly soft spoken, she possesses a gentle demeanor but with the wisdom of her faith, devout in the belief of recording history as it happens so it not lost for future generations. While less effective with weapons than other bards, Recorder's strength is in her song and magic, allowing her to protect her party from dangerous enchantments and cast more magic than other minstrels could manage. She possess a feisty ferret named Gustav who will bravely scout ahead if asked, and also take all the snacks if it can get away with it.
She can be seen in Candlekeep initially, though she won't join the party until later, where she is found before the ramp in Ulcaster's ruins of its school of magic.
In Siege of Dragonspear, she can be found outside the Ducal Palace in the morning when you first begin the march.
Details
Race: Gnome
Class: Lorekeeper (Bard)
Alignment: Neutral Good
Strength: 10
Dexterity: 17
Constitution: 11
Intelligence: 17
Wisdom: 15
Charisma: 15
Kit
LOREKEEPER: Lorekeepers are bards that focus less on a generalist skill set and lean more towards spell casting, where their prodigious memory and knowledge makes them better casters than most other bards. They make excellent librarians, historians, and advisors with their large capacity for learning and recalling, with their talents ensuring history is not forgotten with the passing of time.
Advantages:
- +20 bonus to lore.
- +2 Spell Slots for every spell level.
- May use SONATA in place of the regular Bard Song.
SONATA: This song provides varying levels of intelligence, save bonuses, and mind protection depending on the level of the bard:
Level 1: +1 Int, +1 Saves vs Spells, Immunity to Charm and Sleep.
Level 15: +2 Int, +2 Saves vs Spells, Immunity to Charm, Sleep, and Rigid/Feeblemind.
Level 20: +3 Int, +3 Saves vs Spells, Immunity to Charm, Sleep, Rigid/Feeblemind and Confusion
Disadvantages:
- No Pickpocketing Skill.
- Can only be proficient in club, dagger, crossbow, and quarterstaff.~
Mod Content
– One new party member with the Lorekeeper bard Kit
– New spells and items
– 9 friendship talks with the PC in BG1, 8 in SoD
– Banters with every BG:EE and SoD NPC
– Small quests in BG1 and SoD
- A unique Approval System: Improve or worsen your bond with the choices you make in quests and conversations. High Approval grants a small luck bonus, very low approval may cause her to leave.
– A romance with any male PC with sufficient approval in Siege of Dragonspear.
– Crossmod content with Aura, Emily, Helga, Kale, and Vienxay.
- Can play between five songs for the player, if asked.
- Optional Music Soundtrack
Q&A
Q: Is this mod compatible with EET?
A: Yes. (If for some reason it is not, let me know.)
Q: Will you merge this mod with the other four in a single download?
A: Currently this is difficult for BG1, as the first three were heavily traified, and share some file names with the same number scaling. This means a lot of renaming would be required to get the mod to work. Thus I would rather spend time developing content for BG2 than configuring them in one file. It's not an explicit no, but definitely low priority at best. The BG2 parts of these mod however, will be an all in one file with convenience in mind.
Q: When will the BG2 content be released?
A: I'm in planning stages at the moment, and will start writing/coding officially on the 1st. I'll make a thread on that date in the BG2 mod section where you can follow progress. My estimated time of completion is Spring.
Q: What is the Approval System?
A: Approval is the character's thoughts on the PC. When high, the character receives a luck bonus, which has them take less damage and other benefits. If approval gets too low, the character will threaten to leave the party. If not satisfied enough, they leave for good. Significant approval is required for a successful SoD romance as well. This will be expanded upon and used for all my NPCs in Baldur's Gate 2
If you have other questions, post below and I will respond swiftly.
Post edited by Skitia on
12
Comments
The portrait was commissioned from the amazing Nicole Cadet you can find her work here: https://www.nicolecadet.com/
Her voice is actually from Fire Emblem's Azura. If it isn't well received I'll consider commissioning something, but I didn't like the options from NWN or Icewind Dale.
Eventually bug reports should go to my website, which should be done in a week or so.
Next is the work for BG2, which is very exciting. I am definitely taking ideas/feedback/suggestions for this! I am certain to include the following though:
it tries to install the aura cross mod and it errors out.
Near Text: CHAIN
syntax error
[Recorder/dialogue/CrossMod/Aura.d] ERROR at line 16 column 1-5
Near Text: CHAIN
Parsing.Parse_error
ERROR: parsing [Recorder/dialogue/CrossMod/Aura.d]: Parsing.Parse_error
ERROR: compiling [Recorder/dialogue/CrossMod/Aura.d]!
Stopping installation because of error.
Stopping installation because of error.
ERROR Installing [Recorder NPC MoD], rolling back to previous state
Unable to Unlink [Recorder\backup/0/OTHER.0]: Unix.Unix_error(1, "unlink", "Recorder\\backup/0/OTHER.0")
[Recorder\backup/0/UNSETSTR.0] SET_STRING uninstall info not found
well finch can only be used in bg 1. recorder can be used in the whole series and will interact with aura, glint, and jan.
-Fixed a bug that caused the string of her kit name to drop in a specific instance.
-Added a few more interactions.
-Now four total crossmod conversations with Aura. (Uncommented out the last one).
-Some Conversation adjustments/spelling fixes.
-Increased talk timer.
-Replaced Changelog with short Q&A
I will eventually update the other four mod posts to Recorder's short, simple format.
-Fixed a bug where her Talks would not trigger after her first talk.
-For Future Playthroughs, moved Gustav into inventory and out of her quickslots. (Still cannot be removed).
-Gave Recorder Innate Spell of Send Gustav, the same ability as her item. This impacts future playthroughs (Playthroughs with an already spawned Recorder in Ulcaster/in party will use the old style of spell from item).
-Some more conversation adjustments/spell fixes.
-Added a Timer to trigger a warning dialogue if the PC leaves Ulcaster Ruins without finishing her companion rescue quest.
-Doubled Recorder/Gustav one liner timer so it was less spammish.
-Adjusted Lorekeeper Sonata:
1: Sleep protection moved to level one bard song as it was pointless at level 15.
15: Moved Rigid Feebleminded down to level 15.
20: Added that Confusion Protection existed here (Previously did, but was not mentioned.) In BG2 Sonata also offers /some/ protection against psionic attacks (Chiefly the psionic maze), though not the mindflayer int drain and others, which her int bonus helps cover.
Most of these Conversation Adjustments are the addition of more interactions with the NPCs you come across. It's hard to remember all the BG1 ones, so I'm adding them as I do a play through.
This fixes a bug I made with her bard song that gave her the level 15 effects and not her level 1 effects.
This doesn't really impact BG:EE/SoD playthroughs with normal xp caps, but I also removed Maze from the level 20 effect. The intelligence bonus her song gives already helps with it.
There are also a lot more interjections and talk changes.
Non-modding updates:
-All files are now hosted on GitHub, and each page has a download "icon" that will download that file from there for you. So much easier to keep files up to date now.
-My website is now up! You can see at Skitias-Stories.com. I will post all my updates in its news feed, and you can get more details on my mods there as well. Additionally, since Picosong is down, you can listen to a sample of the music track to help you decide if you want to include the music feature for when the talks play, and listen to a voice sample on what they sound like.
The website was made from hand, using only custom code and was a fun side-project to work on.
- Missing BBAELOTHFix.d file, which will cause the installation to fail if no mod inserts the .d file prior
- Recorder gets her Sonata at level 2 instead of level 1
- A set of bolts is placed in Recorder's cloak slot
- Sleep protection was moved to the 1st level song, but the reflection still displays it at level 15
- In companion thoughts, selecting Aura or Sirene both lead to Aura's response
On top of the above fixes, she has a comment fix about Emily, a new interjection, and a little bit more delay between her interactions with her ferret.
Includes:
-Full EET compatibility.
-Nightmare Mode Fix.
-Bard Song Display Icon now displayed on portrait.
-HLA Bard song created: Scholar's Symphony
*Symphony of Scholars: A powerful song unique to lorekeepers, the song gives the bard a 6 point bonus to their AC, and 10% magic resistance due to the magic of the song. As well, the bard’s party receives +4 Intelligence, +2 to all saves, +5% MR, +4 Luck, and immunity to charm, domination, sleep, rigid/feeblemind, confusion, and fear.
*This ability replaces the current bard song. It does not stack with Sonata, Enhanced Bard Song or other song sources, and cannot be learned if Enhanced Bard Song is known.
Technically Recorder can't reach such high levels anyway in an unmodded/non EET playthrough, but now all five of my characters should be in sync with their future BG2 counterparts. There shouldn't be too much bridging work where I work on something for BG2 and have to update the BG1 files for it now.
-Fixed & Changed Recorder's Bard Song:
*(Duration should no longer far exceed the end of the song.)
*The Universal Save bonus was broken, fixed but changed it to a scaling Save vs Spell bonus.
-Added an additional interject when speaking to a certain NPC in Ulgoth's Beard.
-Fixed some other dialogue/spelling issues noticed.
Thanks so much for both downloading it and reporting the bug.
-Added an areacheck for dungeons for Recorder-Gustav one liners so they don't fire in them.
-Added a little bit more time before the next one-liner would fire.
-Removed player control of Gustav when he reached 25% health and tried to escape to safety.
By the way I guess you know there was a famous custom follower in skyrim named "recorder" too ? It could be fun to get the voice of this follower in bg2... !
-I did think of the skyrim Recorder as a caution when naming Recorder, but I liked the duality of the name with how it evokes both journaling and music in its name and kept it. She does have her unique real name though that I do use in BG2.
If it is the latter looks like I screwed up.
To get around my error until I push an update, I would type: C:SetGlobal("X3RecTalk","GLOBAL",2), and then talk to her directly, which is her first talk that fires after a rest. From there it should start working perfectly.
-Bugfix to prevent talks from trying to occur in SoD unless she is in the party.
-Change of how sound files fire so her music can be interrupted if another NPC speaks in dialogue.
-Added the option to make her a plain bard (Only recommended if you're using mods that change bards, since my bard kit will have zero compatibility with said mod. Let me know if it still doesn't work (Could be a load order issue, or the mod that changes kits needs to be changed to address custom bards.))
-Made Several Changes to the Approval System:
1: Fixed approval being shifted at times when Recorder was not in the party.
2: Everytime approval changes, red or green text will appear depending if approval was lost or gained. Thus if you get a lot of green or red text, you can begin to understand where the relationship is going.
Thanks to @AionZ for the suggestion of making the Approval System more visible.
Here's to a new run through I'll have to do with Recorder.
@redline It is a bug, well found. I was able to replicate it too. I uploaded a version with this fixed, let me know if it addresses the issue with dire charm.
I'm glad you like the approval system!
I've just started playing Recorder (with Emily, Aura, Drake and Kale)- we've just finished the Ulcaster dungeon and I love her to bits so far - her voice, the kit, her gnomishness ... it all means I can have a fresh and different tone to the game without having to go all evil.
However I've struck a slight problem - how do you activate her Sonata, her alternative Bardsong? Does it automatically play, rather than normal bardsong? I thought you might use the IWDEE system and put the alternate songs in her Special Abilities but I can't seem to find any way of changing between the two types of song.
This gets replaced by one of two HLAs in the upcoming BG2 content once you're in high levels and make a selection. You can pick your normal Enhanced Spellsong or:
Symphony of Scholars: A powerful song unique to lorekeepers, the song gives the bard a 6 point bonus to their AC, and 10% magic resistance due to the magic of the song. As well, the bard’s party receives +4 Intelligence, +2 to all saves, +5% MR, +15% chance of a critical hit, and immunity to charm, domination, sleep, rigid/feeblemind, confusion, and fear.
This ability replaces the current bard song. It does not stack with Sonata, Enhanced Bard Song or other song sources, and cannot be learned if Enhanced Bard Song is known.
I still need to toy with the numbers, both HLAs are very powerful, I wanted this one to cover different protections and offer higher damage with crits but less consistency.