[Mod] kri'Binn the half-mechanical spider.
deratiseur
Member Posts: 319
Gilbertus Agumanus is a tinker gnome you can find on the Waukyne promenade, accompanied by two half-mechanical spiders. The black one is his bodyguard, and the gray one is for sale, and if you buy it, that's where it all begins:
- The half-mechanical spider can follow you everywhere, like a 7th companion.
- Its stats are those of a 10 DV monster, CA 4, fire resistance 50%, electricity vulnerability 25%, magic vulnerability 25%, immune to non-magical weapons, immune to poison, disease, level drain, death effects and mental effects.
- It can attacks 2 times per round for 1D8 slashing damage per blow. These paws are not magic.
- It regenerates 1 hp per turn.
- It is invulnerable: if it falls below 3 hit points, it goes into "rest" mode, during which it shows a red back, is ignored by the AI, is inactive, untargetable and regenerates faster for 6 rounds. It restarts automatically after 6 rounds with 5 hit points.
- Each time it suffers lighning damage, it must save against death with at +2. If it fails, it is destroyed in an explosion that inflicts 10D6 points of fire damage (save for 1/2) over 10 meters (the inventions of tinker gnomes often end up causing their death^^).
- It incorporates a compartment into which you can pour any potion from the game (or from the L'Interplan and Jan's Alchemy mods) that will have an effect on the spider. The compartment is then locked (you can't pour anything else into it) for half the potion's normal duration. And yes, you can cumulate several potions if you play with the durations.
- Some potions do not lock the compartment: Healing potions (all forms), Invisibility potion, Disenchantment potion.
- Some potions are not offered because they are useless: Potion against poison/disease/mental aggression, potions boosting wisdom or intelligence, potions improving thieves' or magicians' skills, etc...
Download on Github et Mediafire.
- The half-mechanical spider can follow you everywhere, like a 7th companion.
- Its stats are those of a 10 DV monster, CA 4, fire resistance 50%, electricity vulnerability 25%, magic vulnerability 25%, immune to non-magical weapons, immune to poison, disease, level drain, death effects and mental effects.
- It can attacks 2 times per round for 1D8 slashing damage per blow. These paws are not magic.
- It regenerates 1 hp per turn.
- It is invulnerable: if it falls below 3 hit points, it goes into "rest" mode, during which it shows a red back, is ignored by the AI, is inactive, untargetable and regenerates faster for 6 rounds. It restarts automatically after 6 rounds with 5 hit points.
- Each time it suffers lighning damage, it must save against death with at +2. If it fails, it is destroyed in an explosion that inflicts 10D6 points of fire damage (save for 1/2) over 10 meters (the inventions of tinker gnomes often end up causing their death^^).
- It incorporates a compartment into which you can pour any potion from the game (or from the L'Interplan and Jan's Alchemy mods) that will have an effect on the spider. The compartment is then locked (you can't pour anything else into it) for half the potion's normal duration. And yes, you can cumulate several potions if you play with the durations.
- Some potions do not lock the compartment: Healing potions (all forms), Invisibility potion, Disenchantment potion.
- Some potions are not offered because they are useless: Potion against poison/disease/mental aggression, potions boosting wisdom or intelligence, potions improving thieves' or magicians' skills, etc...
Download on Github et Mediafire.
Post edited by deratiseur on
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Comments
Edit: No wait, more spiders .... ewwww. (Well, Paina may like the spider. Are there dialogue-triggers?)
My first suggestion is thus simple: could the cost be lowered?
If not, perhaps some tasks could be done for him to lower the cost?
There is a second issue, in that after the first discussion, he begins to talk and then says ... "Next!". So I am not sure if there is any way to resume negotiation or discussion (I actually wasn't paying that much attention to the first round of talking to him; I usually pay more attention when re-doing interactions, so right now I don't know why he does not want to talk; perhaps he just wants the money ... what a greedy son of a ... small parent.)
I'll probably revisit him once I have the 80.000gp if only for testing it out, but right now this seems like a fairly difficult threshold-step. Jazon we get for free after all.
(The other spider is confusing me a bit. I am not even certain what can be done putting things in it, despite the explanations. Perhaps the gnome can explain this more? It's also a bit peculiar that random person can just go and put stuff into the spider without paying a fee or something. :P)
For the second spider, you'll have to come up with a lot more money, as all dialogues are “conditional on the speaker having at least X gp” (you can't offer to buy for 80K if you don't have 80K). And for the 2nd spider, the amount you'll need is much higher (really much more, since you come with 80K +x) (but that's negotiable too^^).
The special ability is interesting and pretty cool, but at that point in the game I had fairly little need for it.
The spider seems hard to kill, which is good - I think I lost it only once. Not sure how, but I managed to actually lose all my companions this play-through, including Jazon, the perfect clay golem, as well as the Afaaq djinni, in a fairly interesting way where I could not get him back. I then settled for the perfect iron golem - while the clay golem seems better, the iron golem was kind of like a tanky boss, clay golem kind of rushed forward and then soaked up damage, and other giants really make short work of golems, so I ended up losing the clay golems again and again, despite high resistances in general. But back to the mecho-spider.
I think the combat abilities are a bit underwhelming. I found Jazon more convenient here, and ... cheaper.
My big gripe is that the mecho-spider in its current form, is not worth 80k IMO. I am not sure what I would change here - price could be lower, but maybe you wish to retain that high price, in that case it could be suggested that the mecho spider can gain a few unique things (= abilities) - perhaps not epic powers, but still useful traits.
One could be to "spawn small spiders", up to a maximum of three, a bit similar to Paina as NPC, but those small spiders stay with the big mother spider rather than be unsummoned again (unless e. g. killed). They could have a semi-strong poison but be quite weak otherwise. This could cost, say, 500 gold per small spider, up to max three. And they could be automatically surrounding the big mother mecho-spider.
Other ideas could be to perhaps build "add-ons". Poison effect for the mecho-spider to its current states would be neat, say for +5000 gold or so. Other abilities could be added too - not necessarily to overpower the mecho-spider, but to make it more unique.
Right now I think 80.000 is a bit too much for what the spider offers. Jazon we can get for free and we can just respawn him after he dies.
Also, the spider is a bit slow. A speed upgrade would also be fine.
I am not quite suggesting this to be cyperpunk, but instead it could be more with a fantasy feeling. One could also collect ingredients for those upgrades, similar to the golem mod. Also, perhaps the gnome should stay in the area; right now he walks away. If the mecho-spider could be upgraded, he could make even more money!
(I guess that is one reason why the spider is so expensive - that gnome is a greedy and clever merchant. And by running away, he avoids angry customers!)
80K too expensive for an INVULNERABLE companion? And 80K in BG2 is a trifle, plus if the buyer has good INT/WIS/CHA stats you can buy it for 55K.
Oh well, that's too bad. If you'd come to talk to Gilbertus with 400,000 gold pieces (good stats = 300K) in hand, you would have bought the other spider too, which would have fulfilled all your wishes.
And I imagine you have no intention of making the spider drink any potions? Potion of Strength to make it hit harder, Oil of speed to make it hit more, etc.
As for poison, there's what you need; it handles the potions in my Interplan mod, which offers a bunch of potions, including poison, enchantment +3/+5, and kill on hit.
But if you want it to be able to spawn spiders (mechanics, new "smaller spider" animation), that's worth exploring. The problem is, I'm not going to automatically implement every idea presented to me, otherwise I'd spend my time patching my mods to make them go off in all directions (see the comments on my other mods). However, nothing's stopping you from forking it and submitting a PR on Githbub.