kit creation question Options

[lroumen]

Hello everyone.

I am attempting to create a kit, but I run into a problem and I would like to hear some opinions.

I was thinking that since you cannot change the layout of the functional buttons, you may be able to change their behaviour. So I figured, since the bard already has a thieving button for his pick pocket skill, would it be possible to give a bardkit the ability to pick locks and remove traps?

1. I have attempted to add an OPEN_LOCKS line into the bard 2da right under his pick pocket ability, but I'm guessing that that never gets read by the game.
2. Next I tried to give him thieving points with shadowkeeper to see it that worked in any way. But when I detected a trap with another thief I simply could not get the trap disable button with the bard.

So I guess my current conclusion is that the bardic thieving button only works for pick pocketing. Now that means that it must have some of its natural capabilities disabled by the game (the pick locks and remove traps ability). Therefore, I wonder if anyone has ever looked further into the game to see how these abilities are removed. Since it is possible to disable a functional button using an op-code, maybe part of the thieving has also been disabled with an op-code and can be undisabed (reenabled).

It is also possible that thieving for thieves is added by thieving points, whereas the thieving for other classes (monk, ranger, bard) is added through a 2da. It does not seem possible to have a non-thief class to get thieving points per level, so perhaps additional thieving skills are impossible for the other classes as well.



Lastly I think I will probably be able to fix the usability of a bardkit as a semi-thief by giving it a few knocks per day and a few find traps spells per day as kit ability. That makes him all-purpose in the end, but too powerful due to 100% successrate for the skills. Is it possible to have the spells efficiency scale per level (knock and find traps are only effective for trap difficulty of 50% or less for instance, to be increased upon level ups)? I'm guessing that the answer is no, but perhaps I'm wrong. Related to this, is it possible to re-memorise the casting of a spell after it has been used but without requiring sleep? That way I only need to give 1 knock and 1 find traps as kit ability, but that still does not give it proper scalability (such that it does not become overpowered compared to a normal thief who has scalability of the thieving skills).

Thanks for the responses.

[Ardanis]

Perhaps it would be a nice idea just to give the bardkit the ability to polymorph into a thief that has x% in all thieving skills, and then have the thief cre (and thereby thieving skills) scale with the bardlevels/castinglevel.

It will probably work.

It wouldn't be possible to give the bard the choice to shapeshift into a thief that upgrades towards trap detection first or a thief that upgrades towards lockpicking first, correct?

I can think of such a trick - to give an invokable ability that will either trigger a dialog (via summoning a creature that's scripted to start a dialog) or will let to select the desired ability as per Spell Immunity, and then disappears from the character. I think a dialog would be better, as it also easily allows for storing and calling back variables. This way, you can get your select_the_type one-time ability from 2da at every odd level and each time to select from a pool of options - to get +15% to traps, or maybe to locks, or maybe to illusions. And since your previous choices can be stored in a form of local variables, then at the next selection those can be called back and you'll see somewhat like +15% to traps, another +15% to locks, etc. Though it may take quite a lot of work, to make all of those spl and cre. Of maybe not so much, now that I think of it, as the transform_into_thief can instead summon yet another invisible creature, which will scan the bard for his skill values (as he most certainly can have them, just no buttons to actually make a use of them), then transfrom into a thief, and finally boost it with skills that were on a bard.

If all that rambling makes sense to you...

[lroumen]

It does make sense. Perfect sense. I cannot believe I forgot the creature summoning to get this done. Now I'm just going to wonder whether I would make it an invisible creature or whether I would make it a Dao for the fun of it.

I will give the summon+boosting a try, but I think the quick fix would still be to make all the spl/cre files. I'm thinking it would be less of a problem to get that to work code-wise.