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]

We can increase the Global("ag_%skill%_set","locals",0) with 1 every time we pick a certain skill upon level up as suggested.
Then upon shapeshifting/polymorphing we check the value of the global of each skill and apply the +15% several times per skill at once.

I've thought of it, and it's how I had things to work in my case as well. But in game it may look a bit technical as IIRC there'll be a flood of '<CHARNAME> - SpellName' lines it the game log, whereas applying the boosts via single file would be 3-4 at most. Also, local variables can only be called by their owner, so if they're assigned to Charname then there's no direct way for a summon to read them. Though nobody prohibits to have Charname to temporarily switch his script.

While I was typing, I thought of something else - instead of polymorphing (and thus needing the scanning routine), the bard can simply change their class to a thief. I can see possible issues with the items currently being equipped, but it may work. Question is, what to do if such a character will decide to level up? Though it likely will remain a problem even with polymorphing.

PS Btw, said 120 files can be generated as well, without much effort involved. Then there won't a hassle with scripts at all, although the dlg will grow up and there'll many files in the override folder (which, while is undesired, isn't that much of an issue if their numbers are within a hundred or two). But the main drawback would be the large dialog file.

This post has been edited by Ardanis: Jun 5 2009, 05:38 PM