A Land Far Away

This post will summarize all creature suggestions for the NWN2 ALFA Base Mod. General and specific suggestions welcome but please read the summary before suggesting new creatures or their specific details.

Thank you.

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Policy

*Erfs, haks or a little of both?
*The following creatures would be static, and variations by server could be CR +-2?

Summary

*MM I - IV
*Draconomicon
*Fiend Folio
*Libris Mortis
*Standard Faction representatives (Extrapolated from Cipher's Factions request in the Area thread)

Monster Manual

Libris Mortis

(yes Im volunteering)

MM II
Draconomicon

Suggestion:

Do not put creatures, especially NPCs, in the haks. In the current toolset you cannot alter a creature that is part of the hak pack. Factions, appearance, inventory, etc cannot be changed without creating a new creature. The current basemod has a slew of NPCs that are more or less useless for this reason. Making a creature erf would be more efficient.

I agree with Twigs. An Erf would be a lot better. Id love to see something done like what Riotnerd was doing with his creatures. All Monster Manual creatures.

Yeah, this can be pretty much summed up with an erf of every critter in the game made precisely per its MM entry.

I think we should divide monsters into two categories. Some that should not be changed, and some that should. The first ones goes into the haks, the rest in erfs.

These are things that have the possibility of adding to a module's size. So having a series of mobster template erf's to start with, would be a great asset. Every monster responsibile for each server, would list them and have the erfs of them available for the Alfa Global Monster team, so we don't have to duplicate effort.

Baalster
HDM 081 Whitehorn

One thing I'd like to bring up:

For *static* creatures/mobs...we need a base limit on divergence between what is possible on one server vs. what is possible on another. For example, some kobolds in some places might be a bit tougher than others. But having CR 1/2 kobolds in one place and CR8 kobolds in another is absurd. Let me suggest variance of +/- 4 on the CR across servers as a starting point of dicsussion.

Well, with +/-4 if the base mob is CR4, then you can have CR1/2 on one server and CR8 on another ;) For the *base* mob, I'd stick to +/- 1 or 2. If you want your Kobold King or Priestess to be CR8 with a few levels of something interesting, no worries. If you want your baseline Kobold to be tougher/weaker than normal it should be a minor change (say +2 STR or Weapon Finesse).

AJAI allows you to modify stats (static or random) onSpawn; perhaps NESS (or whatever comes) could do something similar.

an uber king or priestess...you could have it be any CR you want, as long as its run as an NPC. I'm referring to static, non-DM spawns specifically. and yes, +/- 2 is probably better, that gives a 4 CR range.

Loot systems sorted from the get go..

* Random spawning clothes/equipment for stuff like commoners, bandits, humanoids, etc.

* Loot merchants for creatures that are representative of alfa's standards.

* Fully implemented and easy to use diminishing returns for both xp and lewt.

Should probably go in scripts (or elsewhere) but since it pertains to critters/spawns, I thought I'd add it here.

Should be AJAI (or whatever) be mandatory for creatures?

Yes. And with a bit more work, I also believe we can apply an improved AI to NPCs so they too act more appropriately in relation to their roles.

just to clarify..

are we talking 3.0 or 3.5 creature templates for the base mod?

I favour the latter..

also the building of creature templates can not easily be extricated from custom AI as many of the listed creature properties are only available through scripting..

I've already got -:
* trolls that regen properly and require fire to kill them
* shapechangers & unseelie fey that require silver (or magical weapons of course) to bypass dmg reduction
* displacer beasts that displace properly
* Unicorns that have a constant prot from evil effect.

Just to give you an idea of the kinds of AI scripted creature properties that will require scripting. Hopefully they'll improve on this come NWN2.

Theres really no point in running off scripting a bunch of properties unless you are going to use them with your creature templates is all I'm thinking. Therefore AI and creature template building need a coordinated approach and it likely requires a scripting savvy person to 'finish' each creature template for the base mod.