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.

[lroumen]

Unfortunately, I really didn't have much time to work on it this summer but I have set up a bunch of items, spells and cres. So far I have done a lot of thining and I have come up with a method that allows me to handle it a bit differently. I am currently attempting the following:

cre:
- thiefform
- djinni
I took a look at the polymorphing spells and they seem to use only one cre. I'm thinking that the level of the char is inherited from the original cre and that the HP, thac0, saves etc are based on the level of the caster with adjustments for str, dex and con. Seems like I would thus only require one cre file.

itm:
- thief weapon.
This is not necessary, but I thought it would remove problems with weapons that cannot be used by the thief. Bard gear is not removed upon polymorph, but I could script it in or limit the item use. If I limit item use to the cumulative value of bard+thief, would that mean that bard-only items would become unusable? I'm guessing so.

d:
- bard
- djinn

spl:
- shapeshift to thief
- shapeshift to neutral
- 10% bonus to thieving set A
- 10% bonus to thieving set B
- 10% bonus to thieving set C
- backstab bonus.... though probably not necessary, will test later on
- summon djinni

I will do a forcespell upon level up to summon the djinni. Using the dialogue I intend to have the djinni cast a spell upon the bard to enhance the thieving skills through the eff (permanent after death). Since polymorphed chars would inherit the thieving effect of the eff, I think it would be fine to just polymorph without having to apply the bonuses at the time of morphing. If I apply the same effect twice, the bonuses should stack, correct?

The problem I'm running into now is to give the djinni a dialogue option to check how many times a thieving set has been increased already. I keep track of it using a global variable (which should be LOCALS if there are more of the same bards in the party, correct?) which is incremented every time one of the sets is chosen (so I actually have 3 globals keeping track of A, B and C. The problem is, I would like to have the djinni answer: "you have picked set A an X amount of times", where X is the value of the global variable.

So questions:
- ad itm: would item restriction of bard+thief mean I cannot use bard-only items anymore?
- ad spl: are permanent after death effs inherited by the polymorphed forms?
- ad spl: if the effs are applied multiple times, the bonuses should stack with one another, correct?
- ad d: is it possible to change a global variable value into a string in a dialogue file?
- Would I be going wrong somewhere? I can still edit in the spell upgrade suggestions by Ardanis.