I think that if you want to have the Dwarf vs. Elf perspective fully realized, then Hildreth being a Defender and Erevain being a Ranger (or Fighter/Mage) would adequately emphasize each of them as a good representative of dwarvish and elven culture.
I'd love to have some weirder companions; my understanding is that the Dales are a pretty "accepting" place (in the "don't start unnecessary fights" way not in the "oh yeah I'm totally fine with your Ogre friend" way).
Some random options: - Jhonen, the guy with the family sword [Easthaven] - Prisoner from the caravan [Easthaven Cave] - Ghereg, the ogre whose headache you cure [Kuldahar Pass] - Aldwin, the unscrupulous innkeeper [Kuldahar] - Mytos the Bonesinger [Black Wolf Temple] - Prisoner of the lizardmen [Dragon's Eye 1] - Ancient elven ghost [Severed Hand] - Vera, the slave leader [Aquatic Museum]
Looking over this list I would probably do the prisoner in the caravan as some sort of neutral or good thief or thief multiclass. This would give you a thief option early on. Or convert the boy in the mill to an npc thief maybe as another potential npc/thief option? Dunno. Mostly just brainstorming here.
The thing is, I don't think you need to go co-opting a bunch of existing characters. Aldwin and Oswald, in particular, means you're losing an inn and a store. Right, you say, so you make new characters to run the inn and store in their absence, in which case, just make new adventurers.
Three or four of the NPCs dovetail nicely with existing NPCs:
Accalia (CN human cleric) is an initiate at the Temple of Tempos in Easthaven, home of Jarrod's stone and the eventual IWD finale. She would be able to advance the story and reiterate the tale of Jarrod's sacrifice as needed throughout the game.
Hildreth Highhammer (NG dwarf fighter) is in the opening tavern in Easthaven and mentions that she's an adventurer, drawn to Easthaven by Hrothgar's call for mercenaries. She would be able to shed light on the old elven/dwarven conflict that resulted in the current states of the Hand and Dorn's Deep, and would be a natural antagonist to...
Erevain Blacksheaf (CG elven fighter/mage) is staying at the Snowdrift Inn in Easthaven. While he's not planning on going on the expedition with Hrothgar, he does mention that he's adventuring across Faerun. His body later turns up in the Dragon's Eye, but this can be easily reverted if he becomes a joinable. While he's listed as a fighter in his creature file, for balance he'd be better shifted to a fighter/mage.
Weenog (LE goblin mage) is Orrick's apprentice in Kuldahar. A goblin NPC presents some challenges and a lot of opportunities for interesting banters and interactions.
In addition to using existing NPCs, we'd probably need a good variety of classes to round out parties:
CG human thief (has scores to dual-class to cleric), NE human dual-classed mage > thief, CN gnome barbarian, TN half-orc druid, LN halfling mage, NG half-elf ranger. If we have the time, also a TN human bard.
Kits - Accalia would need a Battleguard of Tempos kit. Given the location, an Icepriest of Auril kit would also be appropriate.
Here's a totally hypothetical question, could IWD and IWD2 be linked together if they were somehow brought into the same engine? (Speaking completely in the hypothetical here, and not at all suggesting I have already spent about 6 hours falling down this rabbithole).
The issue (as far as people have thought) has always been that the mechanical conversion of each creature's abilities from one game to the other would always be too great right? But is that mechanical conversion really that difficult?
To put this into context, if you disregard allied NPCs in Targos, there are exactly 7 types of generic enemies (Goblin, Goblin Archer, Goblin Sapper, Goblin Elite, Doppelganger, Keg(!), and Wolf) and 6 specific unique bosses (Rukwurm, Ulek, Phaen, Vghotan, Ghotrag, Caballus) encountered in the first chapter (up to the Palisades fight). Bosses will probably require individual attention to bring them back to 2E, but we've already encountered all the other types of enemies (except maybe Kegs) in our adventures around Baldur's Gate and they can just be swapped in directly. Most of the remaining chapters have similarly repetitive (and reused) enemies from our Baldur's Gate experiences, so unless your merry band of murderhobos is particularly concerned about which friendly townspeople are able to fight back, the enemies part of the game is easy to handle.
Areas are tedious, but I have script running that can automate conversion of areas from AREv9.1 (IWD2's format) to AREv1.0 (EE format). Dialog and scripts would normally be tedious, but if you can merge the .tlk files, you can actually just drag and drop the dialog/scripts in freely (with maybe slight patches for the the slight variations in actions and triggers between the engines).
Items can largely be handled via associative array (e.g. IWD2's 00DAGG01 => IWDEE's DAGG01, etc.) and those that can't are probably unique and need to be dealt with on a case by case basis anyway.
I suspect I'm missing some part of a bigger picture, but to me it seems like there is a rather approachable amount of work necessary to drag IWD2 into the Enhanced Engine.
Auril's Bane for IWD1 already had NPCs. Created but not used. They were actually the NPCs from BG1 mod Dark Side of the Sword Coast. The original mod not, the TuTu redux conversion.
As for merging IWD1 and 2, I wanted to do that for a long time. It is workable, but involves a lot of work. Converting IWD1 to IWD2 is even more difficult. I did however managed to add Lonelywood in IWD2 (it is so good that developers thought to add all those locations on world map in IWD2, even though initially inaccessible).
Yeah, you'd have to rework the Vale of Shadows storyline quite a bit for Lysan.
Also, the encounter with
the woman in the frost giants' cave in Wyrm's Tooth, who (if I remember correctly) says she was sent by Auril to track you down to kill you as revenge for killing Auril's chosen (i.e. Lysan).
It's a cool fight, so don't just remove it though! :P
And while a NPC project might be interesting, I would advise not to over-stress with the presence of NPCs in IWD1. Is simply far more interesting to design dialogues and situations that might adapt to your characters.
Still, if your really want to add NPCs out of existing characters, I would suggest modifying characters that do not have a large impact on the overall story. Lysan for example is not a viable option. Not only because she's inherent to the story, but also because she is constantly referred during the game and story-wise is connected to IWD2 tale of the 3 Auriliate Sisters.
In other words, modify the characters, make them NPC, but keep the story intact, especially if you want to have compatibility with other Weidu mods.
Acalia and Hildreth are all right, though.
But I would rather create new NPCs, which much easier and then prepare their stories. A long time ago (11 years I think), I role-played a party with a story and a blog (which has been long since lost) and I created 6 characters for a balanced party. Nothing overpowered, as I hate that style of playing, but something good enough to cover all the bases when it comes to playing IWD1. Creating such characters and writing their stories is half the fun in modding an NPC.
@Redrake " And while a NPC project might be interesting, I would advise not to over-stress with the presence of NPCs in IWD1. Is simply far more interesting to design dialogues and situations that might adapt to your characters."
I would argue that this is IWDs biggest weakness. It needs fleshed out npcs to make me care about the characters.
I disagree on that. IMO, one of the best thing about IWD1 is that you can make up your own stories about the characters you are playing. Not care about characters made by others.
I'd say go for the middle ground, 3 characters made by you and 3 NPCs.
in ToTL there's the paladin that wants you to kill him, Harald. i think you should be able to comfort him and be able to persuade him to join you, with high charisma and wisdom...
Comments
The issue (as far as people have thought) has always been that the mechanical conversion of each creature's abilities from one game to the other would always be too great right? But is that mechanical conversion really that difficult?
To put this into context, if you disregard allied NPCs in Targos, there are exactly 7 types of generic enemies (Goblin, Goblin Archer, Goblin Sapper, Goblin Elite, Doppelganger, Keg(!), and Wolf) and 6 specific unique bosses (Rukwurm, Ulek, Phaen, Vghotan, Ghotrag, Caballus) encountered in the first chapter (up to the Palisades fight). Bosses will probably require individual attention to bring them back to 2E, but we've already encountered all the other types of enemies (except maybe Kegs) in our adventures around Baldur's Gate and they can just be swapped in directly. Most of the remaining chapters have similarly repetitive (and reused) enemies from our Baldur's Gate experiences, so unless your merry band of murderhobos is particularly concerned about which friendly townspeople are able to fight back, the enemies part of the game is easy to handle.
Areas are tedious, but I have script running that can automate conversion of areas from AREv9.1 (IWD2's format) to AREv1.0 (EE format). Dialog and scripts would normally be tedious, but if you can merge the .tlk files, you can actually just drag and drop the dialog/scripts in freely (with maybe slight patches for the the slight variations in actions and triggers between the engines).
Items can largely be handled via associative array (e.g. IWD2's 00DAGG01 => IWDEE's DAGG01, etc.) and those that can't are probably unique and need to be dealt with on a case by case basis anyway.
I suspect I'm missing some part of a bigger picture, but to me it seems like there is a rather approachable amount of work necessary to drag IWD2 into the Enhanced Engine.
As for merging IWD1 and 2, I wanted to do that for a long time. It is workable, but involves a lot of work. Converting IWD1 to IWD2 is even more difficult. I did however managed to add Lonelywood in IWD2 (it is so good that developers thought to add all those locations on world map in IWD2, even though initially inaccessible).
It's a cool fight, so don't just remove it though! :P
Kontik is her name.
And while a NPC project might be interesting, I would advise not to over-stress with the presence of NPCs in IWD1. Is simply far more interesting to design dialogues and situations that might adapt to your characters.
Still, if your really want to add NPCs out of existing characters, I would suggest modifying characters that do not have a large impact on the overall story. Lysan for example is not a viable option. Not only because she's inherent to the story, but also because she is constantly referred during the game and story-wise is connected to IWD2 tale of the 3 Auriliate Sisters.
In other words, modify the characters, make them NPC, but keep the story intact, especially if you want to have compatibility with other Weidu mods.
Acalia and Hildreth are all right, though.
But I would rather create new NPCs, which much easier and then prepare their stories. A long time ago (11 years I think), I role-played a party with a story and a blog (which has been long since lost) and I created 6 characters for a balanced party. Nothing overpowered, as I hate that style of playing, but something good enough to cover all the bases when it comes to playing IWD1. Creating such characters and writing their stories is half the fun in modding an NPC.
And while a NPC project might be interesting, I would advise not to over-stress with the presence of NPCs in IWD1. Is simply far more interesting to design dialogues and situations that might adapt to your characters."
I would argue that this is IWDs biggest weakness. It needs fleshed out npcs to make me care about the characters.
I'd say go for the middle ground, 3 characters made by you and 3 NPCs.
in ToTL there's the paladin that wants you to kill him, Harald. i think you should be able to comfort him and be able to persuade him to join you, with high charisma and wisdom...