Sirene is a tiefling paladin of Ilmater, the Crying God, patron of endurance and martyrdom. While she is still new to her responsibilities and uncertain of herself, she is a loyal follower of her faith and devoted the protection of the innocent. At the same time, the stigma of her infernal heritage has made her a lonely and withdrawn individual who desperately seeks the comfort of friendship and trust.
She can be found and recruited outside of the Song of the Morning Temple by a PC of non-evil alignment at level 2 with a minimum of 2500 experience, though she will gain experience to match the PC at the moment of recruitment.
In Siege of Dragonspear, she can be found in the Iron Throne building.
Race: Tiefling Class: Martyr (Paladin) Alignment: Lawful Good
Looks like a pretty great character. Like the theme of the skills, having to weigh the option of sacrificing some benifets to buff others a bit like a berserker but aimed at buffing others instead of yourself. To encourage the use of martydom might be nice to add a protection against fear or mind control as in the target has fortified courage after seeing your sacrifice?
Also really like the stats alot of modded npc's seem to have maxed out stats and the ones for Sirene are good but not excessive.
I'll certainly give it a go when she is released. Any plans to bring her to baldurs gate 2?
Thank you! I am already planning the expansion to BG2, though it will be larger and more fleshed out so it won't be released any time soon, unfortunately.
I could give a morale bonus to the target, but I think Martyrdom is probably strong enough as is. There are already many clever uses that can make a second tank practically invulnerable. I won't be messing with the kit too much before I release a version 2.
I know some people dislike it when a party NPC takes over the PC's decisions, but this is perfectly in character. She will also attack you if you try and kill Prism beforehand.
Keep in mind this interjection will not trigger if you installed Isra as that mod overrides this dialogue. It happened here because I altered a global script for the sake of showing, which amusingly also caused Isra to walk away saying I stood aside when she stood around doing nothing while we killed Greywolf ¬_¬
Good old Xan. They do not get along well, at least to begin with.
Edit: aah, I realized the screenshots are fairly difficult to read because I unscaled the interface. Sorry. Opening the images in a new tab will show a slightly larger version.
Looks alright but I must admit I'm one of those people who don't really like when someone takes decisions away from me without at least a conversation... I dunno. Sometimes it works though.
@Vyrulisse: Well, she is a paladin, so it's natural that she'd speak up when it comes to evil acts or defending the weak. Examples like that one only appear at blatantly evil moments, and some just result in her turning hostile. If people really don't like it I may just change all incidents to her leaving the party or some such.
Bumping the thread with more screenshots! Finally figured out resting dialogues.
One of the mid-point friendship talks, with an example of the optional flirting.
NPC paladins react to Sirene's presence. Since they can detect evil, though, it doesn't result in violence. This is actually helpful in one particular encounter. (guess which)
Yeah, sometimes it works though, just depends on if it's overwhelming or not. I've played a few mods where a character would take over so many decisions it was almost like it was no longer your party. I'm not worried about this mod doing that, like you said, Paladins are never shy about speaking up and doing what's right.
@Madrict Thanks so much! Encouragement gives me motivation to work harder
After much hair-pulling and shuffling through scripts (and stealing some from other mods) I think I've finally got the Dorn conflict to work as intended.
There are several options here - you can defend Sirene, defend Dorn (thus turning the other hostile) or you can let them duke it out (vanilla game style). Additionally I messed with my interface while taking these screenshots to make them more legible.
I think this'll be the last update I post before releasing a playtesting version. So far, the dialogues all seem to be working and I've only got two more friendship talks to write, so I'm aiming for a release by the next two days.
Meeting the grumpy mage Thalantyr. I'm particularly fond of this exchange for some reason, I dunno why, just the bit about the 'personal insult' cracks me up.
Okay, so, there's no actual desk in sight, so I'll probably change that to something else. Just use your imaginations for now.
Well, I've done it. The writing for Sirene is complete, at least for now. I want to rewrite quite a lot of the dialogue now that I'm done with it, as I still feel unsatisfied, but I've got other things I want to work on so that is up to the opinions of the players.
Warning: shameless self-pitying rant incoming
I'll say this much - I'm not a great writer. I love to do it, I hate showing it to others. I'm a shallow writer, the kind that wants what I'm writing to be deep and interesting but really just thinks my work sucks. Maybe it's just me, but I'll write and rewrite a line several times before giving up and leaving it as is. The result is a piece of work I don't feel worthy of showing. But this time, I'm biting the bullet and just doing it. I'm already worried that there'll be criticism - I'll admit it makes me uncomfortable, given that I rarely show my work to others, but please, throw it at me! It'll help me out a ton.
That said, I'm happy to finally have this mod complete. I've scrapped quite a few other ideas before coming to this and I feel at least satisfied that I've made something and all the time I spent doing this that I could've used elsewhere may at least give some people a bit of fun to read.
/end rant
Now that that's out of the way, enjoy the mod people. Report any bugs or suggestions for improvement here. If you're somewhat familiar with WeiDU, please look over the scripts yourself to see what went wrong. Thank you all.
@WhiteAgnus Ah, thanks for pointing that out. That's probably the result of me "borrowing" *cough*copying*cough* similar code from some other mod then being lazy and using the find and replace in Notepad++ to replace the variables. I thought I'd changed all of them but I guess I missed that one. In the process, I removed another useless script for a Viconia banter.
To any other aspiring NPC mod makers out there, this may seem stupidly obvious advice, but do read your code carefully, don't half arse it like I have. I've just come to the painful realization through testing that about four of the friendship talks either don't work as intended or just don't happen at all, stalling the dialogues indefinitely. After a lot of tedious backtracking to figure out what's wrong, I've managed to (hopefully) stamp out the issues. Probably. Apologies to any playtesters that are scratching their heads wondering wtf is going on, that was my reaction as well. Coding sucks.
On the bright side, I've learned a few valuable lessons out of all this - both of WeiDU and generally not being a lazy bum. Have a good one.
@Artemius_I , you are covered by the tagging as v0.beta - in an open beta, players will help you out Welcome to the Ancient Arcane Study of I.E. Modding; one of the coolest, most fun, most frustrating, most hair-tearing, most wildly time-consuming hobbies on the planet. Unless, of course, you consider archaeology a hobby, in which case... well, it is probably a tie!
Two little bug reports: - You should append CD_STATE_NOTVALID to your State.ids, if you use it in your mod... - You should use I_C_T2 instead of I_C_T for Davaeorn, or Sirene copys the Enemy() action from his dialogue.
Two more little things for the next update: - You're using UNLESS ~25POST~ by appending the pdialog.2da you don't need this line, because 25POST is only needed for BG2/EE - You should remove the 0 folder in your backup directory before packaging the mod (because this could lead to problems if someone installs and uninstalls your mod )
not sure why the portrait works, maybe it depends on the system, but it was saved as 36 bit portrait, while it should be max 24 bit. In my game the portrait did not show. When I changed that, it started to work.
I attach the modified portrait that should work for everyone.
I have no idea, too. I always thought it just wouldn't work, and them puff - it worked everywhere else but not at my PC :P It's strange, but hey -- that's how modding in BG series is!
BTW - very interesting mod. Maybe once you finish everything for BG1EE we may write a crossmod with my White NPC.
AionZ
Member Posts: 3,026
Comments
Also really like the stats alot of modded npc's seem to have maxed out stats and the ones for Sirene are good but not excessive.
I'll certainly give it a go when she is released. Any plans to bring her to baldurs gate 2?
I could give a morale bonus to the target, but I think Martyrdom is probably strong enough as is. There are already many clever uses that can make a second tank practically invulnerable. I won't be messing with the kit too much before I release a version 2.
Screenshots are now being added as playtesting goes through.
I know some people dislike it when a party NPC takes over the PC's decisions, but this is perfectly in character. She will also attack you if you try and kill Prism beforehand.
Keep in mind this interjection will not trigger if you installed Isra as that mod overrides this dialogue. It happened here because I altered a global script for the sake of showing, which amusingly also caused Isra to walk away saying I stood aside when she stood around doing nothing while we killed Greywolf ¬_¬
Good old Xan. They do not get along well, at least to begin with.
Edit: aah, I realized the screenshots are fairly difficult to read because I unscaled the interface. Sorry. Opening the images in a new tab will show a slightly larger version.
Bumping the thread with more screenshots! Finally figured out resting dialogues.
One of the mid-point friendship talks, with an example of the optional flirting.
NPC paladins react to Sirene's presence. Since they can detect evil, though, it doesn't result in violence. This is actually helpful in one particular encounter. (guess which)
After much hair-pulling and shuffling through scripts (and stealing some from other mods) I think I've finally got the Dorn conflict to work as intended.
There are several options here - you can defend Sirene, defend Dorn (thus turning the other hostile) or you can let them duke it out (vanilla game style). Additionally I messed with my interface while taking these screenshots to make them more legible.
Meeting the grumpy mage Thalantyr. I'm particularly fond of this exchange for some reason, I dunno why, just the bit about the 'personal insult' cracks me up.
Okay, so, there's no actual desk in sight, so I'll probably change that to something else. Just use your imaginations for now.
Warning: shameless self-pitying rant incoming
I'll say this much - I'm not a great writer. I love to do it, I hate showing it to others. I'm a shallow writer, the kind that wants what I'm writing to be deep and interesting but really just thinks my work sucks. Maybe it's just me, but I'll write and rewrite a line several times before giving up and leaving it as is. The result is a piece of work I don't feel worthy of showing. But this time, I'm biting the bullet and just doing it. I'm already worried that there'll be criticism - I'll admit it makes me uncomfortable, given that I rarely show my work to others, but please, throw it at me! It'll help me out a ton.
That said, I'm happy to finally have this mod complete. I've scrapped quite a few other ideas before coming to this and I feel at least satisfied that I've made something and all the time I spent doing this that I could've used elsewhere may at least give some people a bit of fun to read.
/end rant
Now that that's out of the way, enjoy the mod people. Report any bugs or suggestions for improvement here. If you're somewhat familiar with WeiDU, please look over the scripts yourself to see what went wrong. Thank you all.
This will help people download and install it.
I had a quick look through the code and in c0sirene.baf (13. Post Candlekeep) you're using cpmvars, but you haven't added a tpa, for the variables...
Fixed and updated.
To any other aspiring NPC mod makers out there, this may seem stupidly obvious advice, but do read your code carefully, don't half arse it like I have. I've just come to the painful realization through testing that about four of the friendship talks either don't work as intended or just don't happen at all, stalling the dialogues indefinitely. After a lot of tedious backtracking to figure out what's wrong, I've managed to (hopefully) stamp out the issues. Probably. Apologies to any playtesters that are scratching their heads wondering wtf is going on, that was my reaction as well. Coding sucks.
On the bright side, I've learned a few valuable lessons out of all this - both of WeiDU and generally not being a lazy bum. Have a good one.
- You should append CD_STATE_NOTVALID to your State.ids, if you use it in your mod...
- You should use I_C_T2 instead of I_C_T for Davaeorn, or Sirene copys the Enemy() action from his dialogue.
Two more little things for the next update:
- You're using UNLESS ~25POST~ by appending the pdialog.2da you don't need this line, because 25POST is only needed for BG2/EE
- You should remove the 0 folder in your backup directory before packaging the mod (because this could lead to problems if someone installs and uninstalls your mod
I attach the modified portrait that should work for everyone.
BTW - very interesting mod. Maybe once you finish everything for BG1EE we may write a crossmod with my White NPC.