Modding with Cosmic Forge

[Mardoin69]

Regarding class switching... and RPC's, with Cosmic Forge, we can modify the RPC's. Now I have to wonder, why modders didn't take advantage of this... at least, not in the mods I've played. While I'm working on this, I'm thinking to change up the RPC's a little by fine tuning their stats to be more in line with how we'd develop our party characters. The goal is to make them a better character that players would 'want' to keep in their parties more. As it is, many of them seem like they were built a bit wonky... wasting their potential.

What do you all think regarding the RPC's and how they could be better?

Should any of them be completely switched to a different class even? I wasn't planning to go that far with them unless it just made more sense. Thoughts?

Also, there are two instances of RFS-81 in the game with ID#'s '32' and '33' I'm thinking this maybe due to there being two possible different locations to first encounter them maybe? Anyone know why this is?

[Mardoin69]

Oh, I should mention... in regards to RFS-81, I am working with a modded version of the game so... it 'could' be this double instance was somehow an alteration (intended or not) with the modded version. So, it may not be present in the default vanilla game--I haven't checked that... yet.

[Zergs]

I think the RPCs are fine, actually. I wish they had more to distinguish themselves from regular characters you can make (e.g. RFS' unique immunities), otherwise they're just clones of your 6 characters. I wish they were more like Baldur's Gate, where the RPCs have unique abilities you can't get (Viconia's magic resistance or Edwin's bonus casts). Their only real flaw is the zone restrictions, which are unnecessarily cumbersome.

My evidence:

Snow White and the 7 RPCs ascended on Day 55, despite many days of solo grinding in the Monastery and lots of backtracking to retrieve dismissed characters. The run never felt difficult except for the few cases where I only had 1-2 characters (e.g., 2-womanning the Mine Tunnels with Vi+Bishop.)

The Death Wish MDP--using 6 custom-built characters with forum-vetted builds--ascended on Day 54. Did very little grinding there. If RPCs are so bad, they shouldn't have been only one day behind 6 user-generated characters.

I was not rushing on either run, just playing at my normal pace.

My Infinity Hybrids are still in Rapax Castle on Day 50. That run has felt way slower than Snow White. (Having even 1 competent caster makes such a huge difference.)

My conclusion: as bad as the RPC builds appear to be on paper, in practice they are fine. Levels, gear and training matter much more to a character's power than attribute distributions.

Further evidence that builds are overrated:

1) My Infinity Hybrids include 3 rangers, a Str/Dex, a Str/Sen and a Dex/Int. All 3 are performing roughly equally.

2) Horpner Sneed's various 4x repeat class runs generally show similar (not identical) performance from his characters, regardless of build.

[Zergs]

I believe the two versions of RFS refer to his broken version and fixed version.

[Mardoin69]

Originally posted by Zergs:

I believe the two versions of RFS refer to his broken version and fixed version.

Ah! Ok, that would make sense. Hmm... wonder if I can figure out which is which, lol. It won't matter... anything I do for one version will have to be duplicated for the other version anyway... just to be sure I don't cause some oddball errors. Thx for the insight.

Edit: Also, thx for pointing out thoughts on RPC changes. So, maybe not too much tweaking of their builds so much as just adding more flavor to them. I like the idea of them having something special you can't actually build your own characters with. I'm going to use that.

[Zergs]

I am going to make a video with detailed thoughts on the RPCs. All I can say is, having run a party that uses 7 of them at a time, they are not anywhere close to as bad as people think they are.

To me, the RPCs feel like an incomplete feature. Their dialogue is good but I have no idea what the developers were thinking on the zone restrictions--what is the point of investing in Sparkle when she refuses to go to 10 areas? One or two restrictions for flavor would be fine. But what was the logic behind recruiting and dismissing hirelings?

If I had another 3 months of development time, I'd add unique questlines to all of the RPCs, like in BG2, as well as interactions with each other. The game files have evidence of a questline for Myles. Tantris has a bunch of weird interactions that might have been intended to go with a deeper questline. Sexus as currently implemented makes no sense at all, and can only make sense if the developers intended a separate Rapax-aligned ending or playthrough option but didn't have time to put it into the game.

[Horpner Sneed]

There's remnants of the quest-lines that RPC's would've had. Myles and Vi literally have some that kind of work, while Glumph, Rodan and Drazik are defined by their quests. I'm certain you needed to bring Sparkle to unlock the Trynnie tree in some earlier version of the mod, based on Chief Gari's initial dialog. They papered over it and he just changes his mind for no reason, now.

It may be that with all the intended questlines fully implemented, or with all RPC's more tightly tied to their quests, the zone restrictions would've made more sense, or not mattered.

[Mardoin69]

Interesting points. I may dig into the quest lines and see what all can be done there. I also found it kind of disappointing how many places the RPC's (majority of them) wouldn't travel to... not without serious complaining. But, it would make sense if it WAS done with some quest line intended originally. Again, something I'll dig into. If it doesn't fall in lines of a story line for the RPC, I may lift some of their restrictions--easy to do in CF. Thx ppl's.

[Horpner Sneed]

The one we know about is Myles' kidnapping by the Rapax. There's dialog and so forth to support it, but the event never happens. Dodd's mod starts Myles as a prisoner of the Rapax, taking advantage of the unused dialog. It would be fun to theorize about how and when his kidnapping was meant to take place. In Vanilla his last quest is to defeat the Brigand Leader and "recover" the diamond. It would be fascinating for there to be some connection between the Higardi Brigands and the Rapax.

[Horpner Sneed]

I was just inspecting Chief Gari for evidence of my pet theory and found the list of bad words, but also the list of bad spellings of an important word they accept.

ASCENSION
ASSENSION
ASCENTION
ACCENSION
ASENTION
ASSENTION

The things we had to do before AI!

[Mardoin69]

Well that was nice of the devs... taking time to code incorrect spellings in case people couldn't properly spell some harder words... or, at least, some real important one's like that--which is needed for the main quest line. Don't think I would of thought to do that... figuring people could pick it out of the dialogue for correct spelling. Sometimes I give people too much credit though, lol.

[Horpner Sneed]

I always use simplified NPC interaction. It would be a more inconvenient game without it.

[Pebble]

In my current game I used Cosmic Forge to remove zone penalties to feel less shoehorned into picking RFS/Vi and I'm enjoying playing with Saxx and Madras. The RPCs have pretty bad stat distribution, but if you add up their stats, a lot of them also have 15-20 more attribute points than the should to begin with, so that makes up for it somewhat. The most annoying part about them is that seemingly none of them invest significantly in both Dexterity and Strength.

If I were tier-listing the RPCs without zone penalties, I'd probably sort them like this:

S: none, they're all worse than characters you build yourself
A: Madras, Sexus, Sparkle
B: Drazic, Myles, Saxx
C: Tantris, Urq, Vi
D: Glumph, RFS-81
F: Rodan

[Mardoin69]

@Pebble
Not sure what you are referring to with 'tier-listing the RPC's? Is this a list of what you think are the best RPC's descending to last choice RPC's?
So, my first negative impression about RPC's when I began playing Wiz8 was that some of them had some pretty low stats that shouldn't be for their race + class.
And, it didn't seem to me that they should of put points into some of the stats + skills that they had during leveling considering their class.
Finally, the zone restrictions seemed a bit much for certain RPC's... which has been pointed out by several people in this forum.

So, I (using 1.28 and the extra races) built some matching characters starting at level one just to get a baseline for what these characters 'should' have started at. My next step will be to plan them out for their appropriate levels in regards to where those points theoretically 'should' have been distributed. Obviously, this isn't too necessary--taking into consideration what Zergs has pointed out about them being 'not so bad despite their shortcomings.' But, I felt there's no reason not to give them 'some' adjustment along with making something unique about them. Then ofc, I'll take into consideration their possible quest / background story in regards to zone restrictions and see about removing 'some' limitations possibly. I did find the zone restrictions a bit odd for some characters.

[Zergs]

I have a table that shows the difference between RPC and base character stats:

https://ibb.co/GcGkL8Y

The highest extra stats is Urq, with +29 over a Mook Psionic you make yourself.

Having just completed a run with 7 RPCs and a solo bishop, I can tell you that Myles is seriously underrated and is a pretty good character, even with the zone penalties. RFS' immunity to poison is also high value, especially against the late game Bitter Wings that can stack huge amounts of poison damage very fast.

@Mardoin - also, the 1.28 stats for the new races don't reflect the stats of these races from the actual game. For example, a 1.28 Android has 70 Intelligence, but the only example we have of an android from the actual game (RFS) has only 50 Intelligence. Trynnies and Umpani also don't reflect the stats of the actual Trynnies and Umpani you meet.

I would not use the 1.28 stats as a baseline.

[Pebble]

@Mardoin69
Yes. Sparkle and Madras are mostly competently specced, while Rodan is a trash fire. That is based on modern min-max understanding of attributes, though (e.g. Piety is a dump stat even on Divinity casters).

Many of the RPCs actually get more total attribute points for their level than your own characters get, and none have less than all the player character races. You are right though in that they're often distributed horribly, more than any extra points can compensate for. My little tier-listing reflects which are the least and most sub-optimal, IMO.

I've actually given some thought myself to what base stats for the non-PC races ought to be.
This is what I came up with, based on the RPC statlines adjusted to be more in line with normal character creation attributes, and also just flavor (e.g. Trynnies dumb):

        Str Int Pie Vit Dex Spd Sen Total
Android  60  25  25  55  40  50  50   365
Rapax    55  40  45  45  40  35  40   360
Trynnie  35  25  30  45  60  55  60   370
T'Rang   40  45  30  50  50  35  50   360
Umpani   50  30  25  55  50  50  40   360

Glumph has 31 Intelligence and 27 Piety which is the reason I put Umpani Int/Pie so low, but Myles also has below-normal human Piety, so this is debatable.