Shaman tweaks for Bg1? Possible with EEKeeper?
randomhero890
Member Posts: 86
in BG:EE Mods
I tried making a shaman on insane mode BG1 and loved the design, but their spirit dance felt very underwhelming
For one, spirit dance is only good until you get to the animate dead/monster summoning levels with other classes. Then those spells (and the classes that use them) are immediately better because 1.) they are guaranteed to work 2.) you can control them and 3.) you don't gimp your caster by giving him a -4!! AC penalty and freezing his other actions
At the low-mid levels, there is absolutely no disputing that a cleric with animate dead is infinitely more useful than a shaman with spirit dance. Not only for all the reasons above, but also because they can actually wear decent armor other than hides and leather
So I was looking to try to improve the shaman class via tweaks or even on my individual shaman in EEKeeper. I noticed that their spirit dance is an effect called "Change bard song to spell listed [251]" in EEKeeper (at work now can't check to confirm). But when I look at this effect parameters, I can't make sense of them. If I change the "Caster level" parameter in this effect, it does nothing. There's a "probability" parameter, which has a min=0 and max=100, which doesn't make sense to me, since it should have a 35% chance to summon a spirit. I can't find this variable anywhere to improve the skill by making it more likely to work (I know it goes up with character levels). A lot of the other parameters aren't even labeled and their values are in hex code (which I've used hex editors before so that's not such a big deal)
Has anyone been able to modify the shaman spirit dance, or does anyone know how I can?
For one, spirit dance is only good until you get to the animate dead/monster summoning levels with other classes. Then those spells (and the classes that use them) are immediately better because 1.) they are guaranteed to work 2.) you can control them and 3.) you don't gimp your caster by giving him a -4!! AC penalty and freezing his other actions
At the low-mid levels, there is absolutely no disputing that a cleric with animate dead is infinitely more useful than a shaman with spirit dance. Not only for all the reasons above, but also because they can actually wear decent armor other than hides and leather
So I was looking to try to improve the shaman class via tweaks or even on my individual shaman in EEKeeper. I noticed that their spirit dance is an effect called "Change bard song to spell listed [251]" in EEKeeper (at work now can't check to confirm). But when I look at this effect parameters, I can't make sense of them. If I change the "Caster level" parameter in this effect, it does nothing. There's a "probability" parameter, which has a min=0 and max=100, which doesn't make sense to me, since it should have a 35% chance to summon a spirit. I can't find this variable anywhere to improve the skill by making it more likely to work (I know it goes up with character levels). A lot of the other parameters aren't even labeled and their values are in hex code (which I've used hex editors before so that's not such a big deal)
Has anyone been able to modify the shaman spirit dance, or does anyone know how I can?
1
Comments
It appears that shaman summons are BDSHAM01, BDSHAM06, BDSHAM12 and BDSHAM18....which are in the 2DA data files. These correspond to the summons you get at level 1, 6, 12, and 18....which made them easy to find (the "SHAM" was a dead giveaway as well)
For anyone that wants to increase the power of their shaman in the early game, simply take the names for the summons in the 06 file, and put them in the 01 file. Then you will be summoning the level 6 summons at level 1. You can bump back each level accordingly. Or you can go nuts and put the level 18 summons in level 1 if you want.
This goes really well with the mod above which lets your shaman move while summoning. Now, if only I can find the % chance to fail and adjust that....I'll post it if I do
edit: I found the dance "spell", had to use EEKeeper to locate the resource. It's buried in this huge list, under the names SPSH003 and SPSH004 (which change the icon of your bard dance button) in the SPL data file. In this list I can see the probability of each tier (based on your character level) to summon creatures, which I will adjust when I get back in a few hours. Will update when done
I left the -AC penalty at 4
I adjusted the % chance to summon on all tiers to 100%. This is sorta OP but there is a very real downside to spirit dancing. There is a significant delay after you cancel (by any means) before you can cast, which can be very bad if the cast was a heal. I have not tried a stop action command yet, but this delay I can't seem to find a way around
The camp itself had literally like 40+ enemies in it, including at least 5 named enemies who could hit very hard (the gnoll named crit my tank for 100 damage in one single swing), and there were clumps of 10+ bandit archers firing arrows of fire and arrows of cold at us the entire time
I exhausted all my crowd control such as sleeps, webs, stinking clouds, entangle, etc. I exhausted all my summon spells. Eventually I just flat out ran outta spells and there will still 15ish archer and named enemies still coming for us
So what we did was run, using the last of our crowd control to slow the pursuit down. The shaman was slowly following with us, summoning and endless (1-2 at a time only) stream of spirit animal tanks for us to use as we fell back
Overall, a very fun and well-designed fight by SC tactics, made more enjoyable by the new and improved shaman