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Wendelin and the Illegals

atcDaveatcDave Member Posts: 2,370
Sorry in advance for the length! But I was having fun planning a new run through of Icewind Dale.

For my latest run through of Icewind Dale I decided to build a team of all illegal characters, to one degree or another, inspired by many years of PnP gaming.
To be clear, this is not at all about power. I was inspired by a question on Reddit about “if anyone uses EEKeeper to add powers to their characters?” Well I have, I’ve done it a lot, to try and match characters I’ve played with friends. Anyone who’s played much PnP will know that every game, every DM, has its own quirks, house rules, or odd things that come up. Any game that runs long enough will eventually have things happening that aren’t by the rules. Just look at the original NPCs from Baldur’s Gate, most of them are non-standard rule breakers of one sort or another. That’s because many of them started as PnP characters in the developers’ own gaming experience.
The party I’m putting together varies from only barely illegal, to heavily modified. That reflects a range of games and DMs. The married couple I’ll get to first came from a Greyhawk campaign; the DM was pretty by the book, but several characters in his world picked up some oddities during the years we played and transitioned from 1E – 1.5E – 2E. I’ll describe the two strangest characters last, they came from my own setting. So without further ado… The Illegals.

The team comes from a small village near Neverwinter. The leader is Wendelin (17/16/16/14/18/18), the 5th (last) child of the local Baron. Her family runs a school for local children, and Wendelin has always taken an interest in helping with the school and making sure everyone learns reading, writing and ‘rithmatic. This is where she met most of the rest of the team that follows. She herself was also training as a Warrior with her father’s troops and learning wisdom and faith at the Temple of Torm. About a year ago she moved to the big city to finish her training as a Cavalier. She is “illegal” because she is a half-elf; under 1.5E rules this was legal, but when the game transitioned to 2E the DM decided she would remain his world’s only half-elven Paladin.
This was a simple change to make with EEKeeper. As an aside, this was a change I could never make back before EE versions. I could make the change with DaleKeeper, but the game would crash whenever she leveled up.

While training in Neverwinter, Wendelin met and married Akamas (18-00/15/18/10/18/18). Akamas had a fair amount of experience as a Warrior (3rd level) but was there training as a cleric to fulfill his true passion. The game starts with him as a new 1st level Cleric, obviously it won’t take too long to unlock his fighter levels. And then he’ll be illegal, because in the Greyhawk setting he served a LG Warrior deity who allowed his clerics to use axes. I use the Tweaks mod to make this possible.
This is a change from PnP, as you may have guessed from his scores Akamas was also a Paladin. But he had a follower who was an axe wielding cleric. In this case, since Akamas was otherwise not “illegal” I chose to go the dual-class to cleric route and have him dual wielding Battle Axes.

Next up is a mage from another 1E – 1.5E – 2E long lived game. At higher levels this game got very different, but we’re running starting characters here. From 1st level Psyche (7/18/18/18/15/20) had a special ability from her childhood; she was a slave until she was 9 when her older sister (who was an adventuring mage) bought her freedom. This led to her being an accomplished thief as a child, she then put her past behind her and became a mage thanks to the older woman who finished raising her. She attended school in town and became friends with Wendelin. This first started when Psyche was being bullied for her background as a slave and diminutive stature (Full grown she wasn’t 5’ tall. In her teens, mean girls teased she must have to shave her feet); Wendelin is passionate about no bullies and will come to the aid of anyone at a disadvantage. But Psyche was always scary smart and a staggering, perfect beauty. All things considered, she grew into a well poised and likable lady. But she often tries to hide from her early past. Just her luck, when Wendelin put together friends in an adventuring party, Psyche was the only thief…
This was all done via EEKeeper. You can assign thieving skills to any character, but I couldn’t figure out how to make the thief skill icon appear for her? So I went the dual class route again, I created her as a thief and added 1500 experience. Then dualled her to mage, changed her avatar over to mage and her alignment to LG. I also added another 100 points to her various thief skills, she originally had “6th level thief abilities” (under 1E the player didn’t assign points, it was just one table for all). She’s illegal on two counts, the LG alignment and too many thief skill points.

The next character up is unique in this crew for never having existed in PnP. Its more accurate to say she was inspired by house rules used by several buddies I game with. This is Fiona (10/18/16/17/18/17). She’s the daughter of the wealthiest business family in town, and her family has been close to Wendelin’s family for both girls’ entire lives. They knew each other long before school started and have always been good friends. Fiona is very smart, and a cute bubbly redhead. But she also has what we would call ADHD. This led to her committing 100% to mage training… and cleric training… and fighter training. Yes, Fiona is a multi-class F/M/C Human. This was easy to do with EEKeeper. After I created her as a half-elf I just switched race and avatar to human. I’ve played with many DMs who allow multi-classing for humans (and usually do not allow dual classing). This could have been addressed via the Tweaks mod, but I actually prefer to leave the core mechanics in place and just make changes on a case by case basis. She is however, a Short Bow specialist by the same cheat I used for Akamas.

Now we get to a couple of more “out there” characters. From my own setting, I ran a post-apocalyptic setting, but with AD&D rules. When I started the setting, it was derived somewhat from Gamma World, although it later morphed into more of its own thing. But I always preferred the balance (and class structure) of AD&D over Gamma World’s more simplified mechanics. But that makes converting characters over a bit interesting. Non-Humans, are almost always some sort of mutated human. So I chose two of my favorite characters, let’s see how this goes…
First up is Grok (19/10/20/3/3/16). He is 9’ tall and has a much strengthened skeletal structure. For the sake of the Forgotten Realms, we’ll call him a Half-Ogre. Grok is friendly, good-natured and loves to laugh; and he never actually gets the joke because he’s mostly non-verbal. He was abandoned at the small temple in town, and “adopted” by a local farming family. They apparently wanted a very strong farm hand. But from a young age it became obvious he had no aptitude for, well, anything. They sent him to school at 6 because they needed a break from him every day. No one would physically bully the young giant, but the teasing was relentless. Wendelin made it her personal business to look after the young guy. All those nasty taunts Grok didn’t understand, were returned with vigor. And Grok responded to Wendelin with puppy like loyalty. She accepted the challenge of getting him some sort of life skills, and some Fighter training. He doesn’t really like the idea of hurting people, but he will when his friends are attacked.
Obviously his scores were the big thing to fix in EEKeeper. He was also somewhat damage resistant, I gave him 15% resistance to all physical attacks. I changed his avatar over to a Half-Ogre, which does look the part! But it moves slow. So I bumped up the movement by “2”, not sure yet if that will help? I’m thinking this animation may be too limiting? If anyone has any better ideas I’d love to hear!
Finally some things about role playing. In PnP he was sort of a group character, he was run by everyone, especially if someone’s character was incapacitated for some reason. It was decided Grok loved using Clubs, and only clubs. He would choose to attack with a club in any and every circumstance. He was finally convinced to use a sword too, because the players were aware some things couldn’t be hurt by a stick of wood! But it required a successful argument with him anytime anyone wanted him to use the sword. Further, under house rules, he was not allowed to specialize in any weapon (Intelligence and Wisdom of 10 is required by me for specialization). But I think for the sake of gameplay here, I will allow him to specialize in club. Club only. Oh and maybe weapon and shield style specialization, because that’s stupid.

Last member of the Illegals is Jinella (18/16/10/11/11/15). In PnP, Jinella bore the curse of looking like a mutant race I patterned on Klingons; even though she wasn’t one. So in the Realms we’ll say Jinella’s childhood was often difficult and stressful, because she has the charcoal black skin of a Drow. Insult to injury, she isn’t one. She’s not a Tiefling either. She clearly has traits from both her parents, even though they have the more common fair skin of northerners and no elf-like traits at all. (For arguments sake, we’ll say a Drow ancestor some way back in the family tree). She was badly harassed in school, until the day Wendelin destroyed three older boys who were picking on her. They all had to be carried over to the temple. An apology was demanded from the parents, so Wendelin apologized to the temple clerics for exposing them to such trash. Jinella’s had a bit of hero worship towards Wendelin ever since. Naturally she became a Warrior just like her hero, well a single class fighter. She will master Long Sword and dual wield them.
Which leads to her actual traits. Her strength is arguably illegal all by itself, a fighter with no exceptional roll. I *think* (hey, its been a while!) the deal was just she got a +1 strength from 17, which under my house rules does NOT generate an automatic exceptional roll (only a naturally rolled 18 gets one). Another quirk is she is healed by fire. With EEKeeper I gave her a 127% fire resistance (and magical fire resistance) which should heal her when she’s torched. I’ve tested this a little and it seems to work. In PnP it should have been 1 to 1 point healing (200% fire resistance?), but EEKeeper wouldn’t accept any value over 127%.
Her last talent was called “Duality” which made her perfectly ambidextrous. Even to say, she could engage two opponents with no penalty. I can’t recreate that! But its really not a big deal, I don’t remember it ever being used anyway. But I did give her three pips with two weapon fighting as a bonus.

A few thoughts before I get to playing! As the only non-human (Half-Elf) I assume Wendelin was a little older and bigger than the others when they were young. Possibly more like a school tutor. Akamas is just now meeting the rest of the crew. In PnP he was more often the party leader, but for our purposes here we’ll assume Wendy is the crew leader. But Akamas is trying to assume responsibility for Grok, especially as a challenged young man it may be more apt for Akamas to help. And Wendelin has made clear she wants nothing to do with Grok’s various hygiene related issues, including those related to wearing armor.
This team was basically called into action when Wendelin and Akamas finished their training in Neverwinter. A cleric at their temple summoned them to say he had a vision. A Druid named Arundel in far off Kuldahar had prayed for help to deal with some increasingly ominous happenings. So the young couple hurried back home to round up Wendelin’s childhood friends and head up to Icewind Dale.
At the start of the adventure, they have all just arrived in Easthaven. They were separated from their gear when the wagon was lost in a winter storm a couple days out of town. That means Akamas and Wendelin lost those nice matching suits of plate mail they were just gifted from her parents as a wedding gift… At least they still have their coin purse and will be able to re-equip in Easthaven.

Comments

  • jmerryjmerry Member Posts: 3,881
    atcDave wrote: »
    You can assign thieving skills to any character, but I couldn’t figure out how to make the thief skill icon appear for her?
    This is actually only impossible by modifying the executable; which classes can use thief skills is not accessible to ordinary modding.
    Fortunately, this was a single-class character so you could fake it with a dual.
    atcDave wrote: »
    I changed his avatar over to a Half-Ogre, which does look the part! But it moves slow. So I bumped up the movement by “2”, not sure yet if that will help? I’m thinking this animation may be too limiting? If anyone has any better ideas I’d love to hear!
    "Monster" sprites are generally much more limited than player race sprites; they only have to display a limited range of equipment, while the player race sprites have to cover everything. It won't crash anything, but you might not get to see your armor or weapon. Big swords should definitely show up, but maybe not clubs.
    As for the movement speed, the player race sprites have speed 9 and half-ogres have speed 7. And it's not a stat that visibly shows up in the CRE file, so you probably can't reset the base value ... yeah, the +2 speed boost is probably the best you can do there.
    atcDave wrote: »
    Her strength is arguably illegal all by itself, a fighter with no exceptional roll. I *think* (hey, its been a while!) the deal was just she got a +1 strength from 17, which under my house rules does NOT generate an automatic exceptional roll (only a naturally rolled 18 gets one). Another quirk is she is healed by fire. With EEKeeper I gave her a 127% fire resistance (and magical fire resistance) which should heal her when she’s torched. I’ve tested this a little and it seems to work. In PnP it should have been 1 to 1 point healing (200% fire resistance?), but EEKeeper wouldn’t accept any value over 127%.
    Her last talent was called “Duality” which made her perfectly ambidextrous. Even to say, she could engage two opponents with no penalty. I can’t recreate that! But its really not a big deal, I don’t remember it ever being used anyway. But I did give her three pips with two weapon fighting as a bonus.
    Increasing your base strength from 17 to 18 with something like a tome doesn't get you an exceptional strength roll in the BG series either; your house rule is the same as what the games run on.
    As for the fire resistance, that's an engine limitation. The value for any given resistance is an eight-bit signed integer, between -128 and 127. This applies to both the value in the CRE file and the final value, though intermediate steps are calculated using a larger format and then the final value is capped.
    For the perfect two-weapon fighting, there's an effect you could use: opcode 305 "THAC0 Modifier (Off-hand)". You'd want a value of 2 here, on top of the three dots in the weapon style.
  • atcDaveatcDave Member Posts: 2,370
    Wow jmerry, thanks for all that! I’d just resigned myself to thinking there was no interest in someone else’s themed run through.

    I was aware of the monster sprite limitation at the time. I have Grok in plate mail with a club now, so yeah it doesn’t quite match. But I think it’s the closest I can get. It would have been great if the figure sprite could have just been enlarged by 20% or something, but I understand the sprites just are what they are. The movement bonus does indeed seem to be working exactly right.

    And very interesting points for Jinella. Does the resistance limitation apply to all pluses too? As in, can I get it higher with additional fire resistance? So far, it’s clear she has complete immunity, but I don’t think I’m seeing a healing effect. Fire damage doesn’t seem to be extremely common until late game, so I’m not completely sure what all is happening yet.
    Can that opcode be accessed from EEKeeper or do I need NearInfinity?

    So far, I’m about halfway through Dragon Eye and having a ton of fun with this crew. They are definitely a little different… And melee heavy! I just checked the combat stats last time I played and was surprised to see Jinella as the most effective by a fairly wide margin. I had expected Akamas or Grok to lead the way. But of course Akamas’ Thaco is lagging behind which seems to have a more dramatic effect than I expected this early. And Grok? Maybe it’s because he has to switch to the sword he is not specialized in for so many battles. I know there are magic clubs available in IWD, but I don’t recall where and we don’t have one yet.
  • atcDaveatcDave Member Posts: 2,370
    edited January 29
    OOOf, maybe not on the clubs! I was just looking at a walkthrough and didn't see a single magic club listed for IWD. This is testing my resolve, may need to give Grok a second pip on Bastard Sword!

    Disregard, I was looking in the wrong place. I was sure I'd encountered some before, but never played a character that cared!
  • jmerryjmerry Member Posts: 3,881
    edited January 29
    Your final resistance is capped to the -128 to 127 range, no matter what effects you pile on.

    Getting some healing is possible, but the amount of healing always rounds down for any given damage packet. So with 127% resistance, that character won't get any healing on a packet of less than four damage. The display gets a little weird, in that you won't see any feedback in the log at all for the healing, and can only see it by the effect on your character's hit points.

    I'm pretty sure you can just create an effect on a character with EEKeeper, with any opcode you want. Not that I can test it, since I don't have a version that can run at all on my system now. It's definitely possible with Near Infinity, of course.
  • atcDaveatcDave Member Posts: 2,370
    Okay thanks for that. In the pyramid fight in Dragon't Eye I was sure I got Jinella caught in a few flame effects while killing Trolls and didn't notice any healing, but that may have been less than 4 points. So no worries, looks like its working as advertised.
  • AerakarAerakar Member Posts: 1,046
    Enjoyed reading about the characters @atcDave !
  • atcDaveatcDave Member Posts: 2,370
    Awesome! I loved writing this up!
  • atcDaveatcDave Member Posts: 2,370
    Just a minor update for those following along at home...

    I should have mentioned before, this is my first play through with the Mods "Below and Below Inn" and "The Rediscovery of Kuldahar". Its been awesome to have some new material, and its very character driven stuff that further brings the setting to life. Its also far more sophisticated than I expected, with new maps magic items and monster types. The mood is a little different; more, I don't know, "Sappy"? That maybe sounds more derogatory than I mean it. I'm pleased at the new level of character it brings to a game I've played far too many times.

    I currently have the gang in TotLM. They left Kuldahar with Hjolder after clearing the Frost Giant caves. Then left Lonelywood with Hobart after the big fight in the Barbarian camp. I'm now about to enter the keep in the expansion. Most characters are 13th level or more.
    This has been fun and is going mostly like I expected. Its a good party for IWD, having several good hard hitting melee types. Checking the "Information" screen has some interesting numbers. Grok now has about 25% of all kills. I expected this, he's obviously a beast. But such a moron he's not actually any fun for me to role-play. Although I do enjoy the non-verbal sound set available in the game. I've never used it before! But I think it was made for my man Grok.
    I'm a little surprised at how well Jinella is still doing. With 21% of party kills she's in 2nd place. With no Constitution bonus she is sort of a glass cannon, so I keep her in the 4th slot which works well.
    Wendelin and Akamas are strong defensively, especially Wendelin. As a Cavalier she pretty much never fails a save. Of course being in the first slot I give her priority on all defense related items.
    I'm also at the point now where we have two Gauntlets of Ogre Power for the two warriors that were previously weaker.
    The two spell casters do their job.

    Not much else to add. Its been a fun play with a colorful team, and several portraits new to me!

    I usually do write up bios and plan characters/teams for both BG and IWD. I expect I'll post those here for future play throughs? At least that's the plan. But I won't post blow by blow recaps. You all know the game. The playing of it is a ton of fun, but I love doing replays because I love creating my characters and their team.
  • atcDaveatcDave Member Posts: 2,370
    That was fun playthrough. Definitely a strong party, maybe stronger than I expected? I knew Grok would be tough, but the whole melee unit was tough, and they always had good spellcasting support. No really good archer, but IWD doesn't seem to reward archery the way BG1 does. No reloads I recall. Every fight, including the last couple big ones went easily and quickly.

    I will write up another theme in a few weeks, but starting tomorrow I'll be starting a new Bhaalspawn.
  • atcDaveatcDave Member Posts: 2,370
    Well, this isn’t actually new content or anything; it’s just my latest party for a playthrough.

    I like creating characters with some backstory; knowing who they are, where they came from and how they relate to each other. I find it really brings the game to life to know who these people are. Especially the more civil interactions (!), I like knowing who these people are and how they’ll view the world and challenges they’ll face. Morally I saw this crew as pretty “good guys”. Certainly Wendelin and Akamas are determined to help and protect. The rest of the crew may be there mainly out of friendship with Wendelin. To me, that all makes her an appealing and strong leader.

    Looking back over this, there is a disconnect in places between the characters and the technical details. Ideally I will find a better way to present them separately. Maybe all bio with following entries on the actual character design details? I’ll be posting another this afternoon for my next run through the BG saga. That should be simpler with only two original characters.
  • atcDaveatcDave Member Posts: 2,370
    I just put up a slightly modified version of this post (with portraits!) at DavesGaming.blog
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