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[v1.7] Pai'Na, a half-drow hivemaster druid NPC for BG2:EE

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  • ilduderinoilduderino Member Posts: 773
    Imagine Gorion’s Ward wandering the grounds of Candlekeep and falling into a spider infested cave Batman-style ...
  • DaechirDaechir Member Posts: 13
    Hello, great mod, great druid kit. My question is, Pai Na is having her own voice sound? Or no sound?
  • CaedwyrCaedwyr Member Posts: 176
    edited January 2021
    She isn't voiced by default. For my personal playthrough I added a voiceset for her from one of the NWN NPC voicesets.

    https://www.gibberlings3.net/forums/topic/31370-back-for-another-playthrough/?do=findComment&comment=284609
    Post edited by Caedwyr on
  • RatatoskrRatatoskr Member Posts: 711
    @AionZ quick question. Does version 1.7 fix the issue with Neera starting banters while Pai'na isn't in the party? At a quick glance it looks like you just forgot to specify Pai'na being present in the banter code.
    megamike15
  • rossbach451rossbach451 Member Posts: 166
    Strange issue. Just as I start the Spellhold maze (Imoen reunited with the group), Pai'Na freezes. Just stands there, and I lose control over her and her inventory. Has anyone else encountered this? I have no clue as to why this is happening.
  • rossbach451rossbach451 Member Posts: 166
    Strange issue. Just as I start the Spellhold maze (Imoen reunited with the group), Pai'Na freezes. Just stands there, and I lose control over her and her inventory. Has anyone else encountered this? I have no clue as to why this is happening.

    Weird. I changed some of the dialogue with Imoen, bringing her back into the party, and Pai'Na is fine. I will keep playing around with it to see if I can find a cause.
  • EndarireEndarire Member Posts: 1,512
    @AionZ
    How compatible is this mod with tipun's subraces mod which allows for (Half-)Drow PCs?
  • shevy123456shevy123456 Member Posts: 174
    edited November 2023
    How does she compare to Jaheira? I plan to replace Jaheira with Pai'Na but I am not
    sure how strong Pai'Na actually is.

    Jaheira keeps on annoying me. She is supposed to be strong due to being a fighter,
    but I always found her to suck in melee combat, unlike e. g. Korgan. I am thinking
    druids aren't that great, except for: summoning deva and elementals, and perhaps
    shapechanging. But even then it seems too much work to get them into melee
    really. Seems so much easier to just put fat strong tanks like Korgan in there
    and have the others stay in backrow. Or, even using Viconia: Viconia seems to be
    doing better than Jaheira, e. g. Holy Might, best armour and perhaps flail or a
    shield. (Normally my fighters dual-wield good weapons, such as flail + hammer
    that sets strength to 25.)
  • shevy123456shevy123456 Member Posts: 174
    edited December 2023
    As I am currently finishing my last run, before calling it
    a day (new year \o/), I typically take Pai'Na rather than
    Jaheira. The spider theme is so nice.

    I do believe I have found a bug with Pai'Na, which is odd,
    so let me explain it.

    Pai'Na has some dialogue. In particular when she talks
    about her mother.

    Pai'Na also has some interjection, in particular when she
    is in an underground area, such as the area before the
    drow city. Then she says she is scared, kind of. So far
    so good, but then she somehow enters an infinite loop -
    but only sometimes. Not sure how or why that is caused.

    She will keep on repeating the "I am scared of the
    dark" or something like that. No matter what option you
    take, she will keep on repeating this. All the other NPCs
    I have in my party work fine, so that seems to be something
    pertaining to the code governing Pai'Na.

    Not sure if anyone is updating the mod, but perhaps if
    someone has time, the interjection-part could be changed,
    so that it appears only once; or, perhaps even better,
    a new option could be added, like "Pai'Na, please -
    find the courage and strength to support the team", or
    something like this, and then the dialogue option never
    again appears. Not sure if there are more interjections
    like that - I actually never managed to go past that
    threshold in her dialogue, it always seems to re-occur.
    As this is now the third time I noticed it, I wanted to
    report it, before I forget.

    Happy new year soon to everyone, by the way! \o/

    PS: Also the animation of the big arachnoid thingy is a
    bit buggy, it seems to jump to different places. Looks
    kind of cool, when the spider pseudo-teleports, but it
    is more an animation glitch rather than a real effect.
    Otherwise the arachnoid thing is quite cool. Love the
    spider theme. Can we have spider tattoos too? Like
    10.000 gold for +5 poison resistance? :D
  • FrenzgynFrenzgyn Member Posts: 78
    Could you be more precise regarding the lines she keeps repeating?
    I cannot find any "I am scared of the dark" or similar liens in her dialogue.
  • shevy123456shevy123456 Member Posts: 174
    So I think I found another cheese-exploit here.

    This time it has to do with Paina's ring. That ring summons lots of small
    spiders, about 12 or so of them. They don't last long, a round or two.

    However had, there are three aspects I think are too powerful here,
    especially when these spiders are hasted:

    1) As we have so many of them, even though they are individually weak,
    one can surround and thus block enemy units. This is perhaps not so
    important when the enemy can do area-based damage, but many encounters
    involve just one or two strong enemies and they get literally surrounded
    by the spiders. This in itself is already quite powerful, but it gets
    more powerful ...

    2) Poison. Thanks to the poison effect, I was able to kill NUMEROUS
    enemies including bosses. For instance the Cowled Enforcer Sorceress
    that has the hourglass, from one mod, was an easy kill once the
    spiders surrounded her and bit her to death.

    3) Last but not least, the most important aspect is web. I just killed
    a boss that got webbed. Before that, I cheesed the two liches in
    Tactics remix mod guarding Kangaxx' compound (I lured them outside
    first though). The spiders literally blocked the lich's movement
    and then just the lich to death.

    I think if someone ever wants to rework this mod then the item has
    to be adjusted. I am not saying to nerf it down to uselessness, but
    some of the above in combination is just too strong.

    If I were to understand the code then I would perhaps reduce the number
    of spiders a bit, say from 12 to 8 or even 6; and then change the
    spiders. Say, 2 + 2 + 2. So 2 will be super-small; 2 others will be
    somewhat small; and 2 more will be of medium size. Medium size will
    do spider-web; smaller ones will do poison; and the one in between
    will probably just have a faster attack rate but deal non-poison
    damage but have more hp (and the bigger one has more hp too). I
    think that will somehow keep them still fairly useful without
    making them overpowered, hence the reduction in numbers. Not sure
    what numbers may be relevant here, one probably has to tweak it.

    Anyway. Next on my todo list for this year's run-through will be
    dragons. I may be able to buff the spiders a little ... and make
    them invisible too, let's see ...
  • shevy123456shevy123456 Member Posts: 174
    In the event someone may want to update this mod - Paina is a lot of fun with
    the spider theme - I believe I have narrowed down the bug where Paina keeps
    on repeating that she is scared of the underground. Before I expand on this,
    I have a clean install of about 40 mods or so, give or take, fresh installation.
    I skipped installing older mods (these tend to be more problematic, even with
    that strange to-bg2ee conversion thingy), but more importantly I avoided
    triggering the "weidu here, I'm gonna re-install everything" - this one
    keeps on doing changes that somehow don't work for me at all. This may not
    be only weidu's fault, but some mods that were written in a way that makes
    updating harder. Anyway, now to the Paina-is-scared-of-the-underground
    bug.

    I was able to trigger that bug just now on the surface, in the Temple area.
    Paina said she is scared of the dark, but now that we are in the Temple
    district, that should not be triggered because it is not underground. So
    a first minor thing is that this trigger-condition lacks a "are we really
    underground or not" check.

    But I believe the bug is actually caused in a secondary manner; it literally
    gets executed when someone OTHER action is triggered. For instance, before
    I was in the underground with the eyeless folks, after leaving the game
    in an "idle" state where, after some time, the NPCs usually say something.
    So, when that eyeless leader said something, almost instantly afterwards
    Paina started the perma-loop repetition "I am scared of the underground".

    After that, when I walked to the surface (temple district), Viconia was
    saying something, and immediately after that, Paina again triggered that
    "I am scared of the underground" sentence. I don't know the internals of
    the game engine, but it is clear that somehow that loop is triggered
    in succession when a prior condition gets checked about other NPCs
    saying something (and perhaps also after idling; because I seem to
    get the loop situation only after idling for some time). I am able to
    work around the bug somehow though, so that condition of Paina saying
    the I-am-scared routine is not triggered always - it seems to be
    triggered via other conditionals, oddly enough. And, also what I noticed,
    Paina already said the "I am scared" sentence once, without the loop
    triggering at all. So the regular check works somehow. Only some add-on
    conditionl gets triggered, so I think at the least one conditional check
    must be missing in the code for Paina there.
  • shevy123456shevy123456 Member Posts: 174
    And, just now I also noticed that after leaving the game idle, Paina is
    triggering the talk about her mother. So perhaps that was on the stack
    of things the game engine works through, which is why the prior loop
    is triggered. That above Paina talk about her mother happened
    after perhaps 2 minutes being idle or so in the Watcher's keep area
    outside, so perhaps that all gets stacked and then triggered. The game
    engine handles this in a rather strange way IMO.
  • shevy123456shevy123456 Member Posts: 174
    So, as a condensed list, here are things that could be improved for Paina - Artemius is probably no longer active or semi-inactive, but in the event someone may elevate Paina to a 2.0 situation, here the condensed list of suggestions for improving Paina, some of which were voiced before, but I feel it is simpler to have it covered in one single subtopic there:

    - Paina gets that ability where insects swarm out if she is hurt. That's neat, but it also annoys party members. This is probably the single most annoying part about Paina in the late game, because she causes more damage than enemies in some cases. I would thus
    exclude party members from that effect, and possibly reduce the duration a bit for balance. Or perhaps just focus on the one who initiated the damage.

    - Perhaps the initial equipment should be adjusted; a two-handed staff may suit Paina better than a saber or something like that. Could also have the ability that the ring currently has (summoning the small spiders). Then that slot could be used for something else. (Oddly enough, in later installations Paina no longer had that poison-sword, no clue what happened there; there is also a weird bug that the items have to be identified, and once that is done, she can no longer wear the armour; no idea why, and as said I no longer had that issue lateron - perhaps another mod interferes there).

    - The small spiders are IMO too strong. Of course they are weak, but they can be hasted and can web and can poison. In some encounters this becomes super-useful and powerful, like that mage that has the time stop figurine thingy, but also a few other encounters where casting web is REALLY powerful and the poison can be very effective. Perhaps the amount of spiders should be lowered, and the smaller spiders lose the ability to web, and instead one medium spider is also summoned that can web. It can have more hp as compensation. This may be an acceptable downgrade.

    - Big arachnoid has some weird graphics glitch when moving. In caves this is quite cool as it looks as if it is walking on walls, but in general it can be a bit annoying since I often have no idea where the big arachnoid went. It's still close by, but the animated image is somewhere else, which is confusing.

    - As Paina loves spiders, I think she should refuse to attack enemy spiders. And/or perhaps heal them too. :D

    - The dialogue is a little bit too contrived IMO. I understand that Paina is a weird individual, with that spider-love, but Viconia has a much better dialogue outcome. Possibly the dialogue should be reworded a bit for Paina. Not sure how, but Paina seems super-snippish and bossy, even in later stages. Perhaps that could be extended towards some specific background for Paina lateron, e. g. parts of her family and what not.

    Anyway. That's the semi-condensed variant. I think I forgot a few smaller points. I played with Paina lots of times now and she is my second favourite NPC (Dusk still is at number #1, even though I think Dusk mod is also a bit too strong overall; not that I necessarily suggest it be nerfed, but I think mod authors should also keep in mind other regular mods, to not make the overall game too unbroken; some mods totally break the game with the rewards, which I think is not good. Many item mods offer too powerful items, but that's for another thread.)
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