Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 - The Modding Dungeon Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Modding General Mod Release: Baardvark's Bard Class

Yes, that's right, a substantial gameplay mod in alpha. I know, it's kind of crazy, but I can't help myself :P (Don't try this at home!) I'm hoping to get people to play through this and give me some feedback so I can know what I should focus on in release. There are various experiments in this mod so I can see if my (and other peoples') ideas really play out as well as we think they would.

http://www.nexusmods.com/divinityoriginalsin2/mods/3/?


This mod adds 22 bard skills that fall under the leadership skill. These mostly involve buffing, debuffing, and manipulating statuses in dynamic ways, offering only a couple damage skills. Purchase these skills from Laslor the dwarf bard (near Rezik the aerothurge merchant, near Griff), or Kerban in the seeker camp.

Example skills:

Swindle: Steal buffs from a character.

Dance of the Elements: apply random elemental vulnerabilities to enemies, reducing their resistances whenever they take the relevant damage.

Dream Scream: Wake up a sleeping target into pain, madness, and a random debuff.

Masochistic Melody: A buff that grants a character increased damage and crit chance whenever they receive a negative status.

This mod also grants enemies random buffs when entering combat, including extra strong "champion" statuses. Also increases enemy loot. This should improve difficulty, freshen up encounters, and make combat more rewarding.


Three new racial skills for dwarf, human, and lizard: Stone's Embrace, Tactics, and Shed Skin (thanks Stabbey and Nivv for the idea) respectively.

There are 5 new/modified presets, including bard, skald, civilian, enchanter (modified), and a "cheat" bard start, which lets you start with a bunch of diamonds if you want to gear up and breeze through the fort to the swamp because you've played it so many times.

Major Status changes: Knockdown and stunned now do not completely disable a character, but are still hugely debilitating.

A couple dozen new loot modifiers, mostly custom skills that can appear on legendary items.

A bunch of tweaks to various weak talents, abilities, and constitution to make them more desirable (I only did these because they were easy to change).


I don't think my changes will be a waste of time even if Larian completely revamps many things to make them obsolete. I could've gotten a lot more nitty gritty and rebalanced many more things, but I wanted to focus on additions and major changes. I also think my skills are fairly unique and I'd be surprised if Larian implemented anything like most of them (though I suppose they have my permission to steal my ideas :D)

Hope you enjoy, and offer your feedback here or on the nexus page. Hopefully it doesn't have too many bugs.

Where do i dump the mod and public folder if my game files were placed in my documents/larian studios/divinity original sin 2?

Usually only stuff like your saves go into the documents folder. It goes in the divinity original sin 2/data directory of your main install location.

May I ask how you produced the mod (tols used, files modified etc)?

Heh, that's the million dollar question. You can extract the files with the same tool as the old game. Stat files can be edited with notepad++. I did the same thing in D:OSEE pre-editor. I'd recommend waiting for the editor so lots of things are easier to learn and test. I'm just familiar with doing lots of things manually at this point.

What do the new Racial Skills do?

All details are in the readme on the nexus or in the download, but here we go:

Lizard: Shed Skin. Remove all statuses on yourself, positive and negative, and apply a 25% all resistance penalty to yourself for 2 turns.

Dwarf: Stone's Embrace. Grant a target Stone's Embrace, which increases their physical and piercing resistance by 35%, but reduces their move speed by 75%.

Human: Tactics. For 2 turns, grant an ally +5 initiative, or an enemy -5 initiative. Note: initiative changes don't take effect until the turn after the status is applied.

XD found it i forgot i have two harddrives and i main installed in on the 2nd one.

Now we need a mod release sub-forum (admittedly, probably just for your mod, for now!). Looks great.

Ooh. Right off the bat, I'm really appreciating these tweaks:

Also, the CC nerfs and the extra racial abilities are very nice. Looking forward to this.

Thanks, glad there's lots of little changes you like. I didn't want to get too detail oriented with all that could change, but there were a few easy things to target. And the CC changes make a big difference.

Going to need a modding forum soon indeed :P Larian probably wasn't expecting a mod like this quite yet!

Larian should have done this in the vanilla game. Fixes most of the issues with armor system. AoE CC is cancer.

Is it possible to release this change as a separate mini-mod? I don't like some of your balancing changes but this one is just too good to pass. Regardless, thanks for an awesome mod!

Edit: read through bard skills and I love how it's all about using statuses instead of dps. Here are my thoughts on some of the skills:

Song of Living Nightmares, Jingle and Resonance are all awesome. I can see a lot of creative uses for those skills.
Rhyme is too good, hould maybe cost 2 AP, otherwise it'll be a way to grant insane turn 1 buffs.
Feedback and Creative Burden, I think, make removing hard CC too easy though maybe it's fine since Stunned and Knocked down were reworked.
Swindle, Sound Wave, Lullaby: I hope it does not penetrate armor.
Masochistic Melody, Glory to Gore, Dream Scream, Inspiration of Pain: I love how much synergy this skillset has. That's something I missed with polymorph.
Earworm: for 1 AP that's plain OP. I think it should either cost more or have a higher resist penalty.
Dance of the Elements: I hope this one ignores armor.
Can't really comment on source skills because I never use any of them.

I'm not planning on releasing different versions. It's alpha after all. Most of the balance changes are in the data.txt file in the Public/Shared/Stats/Generated/Data folder so you can delete that if you want. Requirements changes the talent requirements.

I also should add a correction that staggered and stunned don't actually reduce initiative. It was too confusing with turn order swinging around a bunch.

Thanks for the feedback. Sometimes I need just someone else's initial impressions on stuff to see obvious balance flaws.

You're right on Rhyme, I'll probably up its cost to 2 AP. The buffs/debuffs only last 1 turn, but still, granting even 2+ buffs to someone is too much for 1 AP.

I'm fine with Feedback removing CC on a teammate since at least it deals some damage to them, but Creative Burden is a bit strong at taking off CC. One strategy I'm not too keen on is playing your turn as a bard when your next teammate up is CCed, and then casting creative burden on them when you have 1 AP left. You gain the CC and by next turn it's gone. I'm not sure if I should increase the turns you gain statuses for to 2, increase the AP, or not let it take hard CC. Thoughts?

Swindle and Sound Wave pierce armor, but Lullaby does not. I hadn't thought about tying swindle to armor, might be necessary. Would like to make it chance-based perhaps, depending on various factors (Some combo of wits, leadership, thievery skill and enemy perseverance and constitution.) Dazed (from Sound Wave) should probably have an armor check too, or maybe I should change the status it inflicts since I would prefer an armor-piercing status for sound wave. Maybe something like "deafened," but not entirely sure what that would do (probably reduce dodge and hit chance or something).

Earworm is very good indeed. 2 AP is probably fine. I want to see how its numbers play out before judging it. 35% more damage taken is a good amount. Don't want to increase that too much, since I want it to be able to used offensively if you want, and too much resist malus would be too easy to abuse I think.

Dance of Elements ignores armor, yes. I'm considering making this one depend on the surface the character is standing in, or random if no surface, so you can have some control over it.

Thanks again.

How about knockdown and stun retaining their harder effects too, but only in case of critical hits?
Not sure how that could be actually done, but how about it as a general idea?

Good to hear that armors can be bypassed, btw.

Btw, does this Bard build require instruments to use? It should. Instead of weapons.

Making critical hits cause hard cc sounds tough. Not sure if I want to go down that road.

Yep, you can simply remove the armor check on statuses. But then you have to script the status behavior for each status you do this with to balance it. Not too bad to do that with just hard cc, but would get annoying with every status. May be possible to make some kind of system though.

I tried hard to add a "lute weapon" but couldn't get it working. I really want equippable instruments, but not sure if I can or want to make them requirements even to cast the skills. But I want to make them give special bonuses to different skills. Not entirely sure how to do that yet, but have ideas. They may just grant you skills that let you apply a status to yourself that changes how certain skills work. For example, an offensive-oriented instrument might upgrade your Feedback skill to always activate at 1 level higher than it normally would, or another might cause your masochistic melody skill to also heal the target when they receive a negative status.

There is that Laslor (?) lute he gives to Lohse and her demon breaks.

So there is such a thing in the game files. Maybe it can be copied and stats changed. So you basically change it into a "weapon" or "staff" type of item and make bard skills (spells) gray out without it equipped.

I think it would be only fair to have such a support build not be a fighter/scoundrel/ninja too, as it was always done so far in all other games. It would make it more unique.

Additionally it would be very nice if we could get new songs from quests and NPCs based on choices. Even make new songs based on companions history or adventures we go through. But thats of course outside of the scope and existing mechanics of the whole game.

I see issues arising from that since its not an equipable item but moreso a consumable.

Obviously that needs to be changed.

As it should be obvious i am not making any demands here. Im just talking about an idea.

WOOT, got the lute weapon working. I had tried making the lute weapon it a few times, finally got it. It's a bit silly because you just whack enemies with it like a club, but hey, it's still awesome :P

Expect instruments (well, lutes at least) next version!

D:OS is classless, so I don't want to make bards feel completely isolated. Bards are often melee fighters, rogueish types, and rangers in other games too. But I might make instruments so cool nobody will want to make a bard hybrid anyway (except, perhaps, DWing a lute and an axe.)

Ah, thanks, I'll just edit things myself then. Since you made changes to random loot, do you know any way I can stop STR based gear with +5 FIN and other similar useless things from generating?


I usually have my buffer go right before my 2-handed executioner so when I saw Rhyme I immediately thought Haste+Rage+Bless+Rhyme = 2-handed warfare opness makes a comeback. And that's only the most useful buffs.


This strategy was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the skill description. Since two of the most common hard CC are down I'd rather have it not remove hard CC. Those that remain are frozen which is easy to remove with fire and various spell specific CC like chicken. I'd rather have them hard to remove since it makes those spells more attractive.
For Feedback maybe it can count each hard CC as two statuses? Also should probably count each remaining turn of each status. As it's described now there's no difference between removing 1-turn burning and 2-turn burning.


Swindle does need either to be chance based or to have an armor check otherwise it's too powerful.
Dazed is too strong of a debuff to ignore armor. Perhaps it should be on one of the source skills?


2 AP will be fine I guess.


Yes, I like the idea of making it surface based.

Thank you for an opportunity to go through the beta again without being bored.

To change loot modifiers, you open the deltamodifier.txt file in the stats folder. You'll want to search for stuff like:

new deltamod "Boost_Weapon_Primary_Finesse"
param "BoostType" "Primary"
param "MinLevel" "1"
param "MaxLevel" "6"
param "ModifierType" "Weapon"
new boost "_Boost_Weapon_Primary_Finesse",1

The thing is, if you delete that I think you won't find finesse on any weapon. So instead you want to add a weapon type like:

param "WeaponType" "Knife" // dagger = knife

Then copy that for each additional weapon type. As you can see, it takes some work. I'm not sure if that's the only finesse modifier either.

I think I'll just make creative burden take on statuses for 2 turns. Then it will really be a decision, since you're going to deal with some CC no matter what (unless you can remove it with another char). Except it might still synergize with earworm a bit too well (unless creative burden ignores the immunity, I'll have to check that.)

Thought about making hard cc count as 2 statuses for feedback. This kind of makes sense for enemies too, since removing cc on them is usually a tradeoff as well. But it does a good amount of damage, and it's piercing. Dunno, it's tough. I might make feedback do some magic armor damage and reduce its piercing damage as well.

I think for Dance of the Elements I'll check if a character has a status like burning, chilled, poisoned, or stunned, then check the surface type, and apply the appropriate vulnerability. Otherwise, it will apply a random one.

Glad this freshens the game up again.

Well true, of course. Because they are also some kind of fighters in other games i suggested this approach - so its a novelty. Anyway, I meant the build like that just for starters. Later on the players can mix and match as they like.

Although... lutes and other instruments should be two handed weapons of mass entertainment.

Its like you cant backstab or use many of scoundrel abilities and skills if you dont have knives equipped.

But i guess banging someone over the head with a lute or a flute is also cool.

Also, since we can choose the music tone between four instruments in the character creation... could those be used as music tunes for the bard spells? So some kind of tune can be actually heard... or would that be too repetitive?

Just a thought.

I like some changes in this mod. Racial skills should be something that remain useful throughout the game and synergize with every classes.

cant say the same for current ones in vanilla version, the racial skills forced you into playing one specific type of class or else let it gather dust on the skill panel : /

I hope your mod reach devs attention : )

I admit, though I haven't downloaded the mod yet, I am astonished that so far you avoided the outright brokenness that the other versions of the Bard have had.

"4 ap permanent buff that heals you to full!"
"Leadership is now map wide!"

I am glad you are taking the balance of the bard into consideration.



Everyone has their "This should be in the game" and this is definitely mine (or at LEAST electrified water and ice shouldn't be able to induce it).

Not sure if I can tap into those sound effects, but I'll look into it. Custom sound effects would really help polish the mod.



Yup, I want globally, permanently useful racials. I may have to make the human tactics skill scale its initiative bonus/malus though. Hope Larian likes my mod too :P



Balance is important to me, though I do want to emphasize the fun and cool factor of skills over meticulous balancing. Still, I must unfortunately say I'll probably be nerfing multiple skills next patch (Sound wave and swindle especially). Instruments should make up for that. Got some real cool stuff!

I'm glad the CC changes have gone over well. I'm not even sure if I really need to hit every hard CC effect now that the stun and knockdown-fest isn't so awful.

Does human encourage currently scale with levels? It'd be half decent if it did.


Here's hoping the devs actually read this topic and do include CC changes in the vanilla game.

You might want to look at freeze and charm too but other hard CC, I think, are fine.

Are you planning any balancing changes for non-bard skills? If yes, Adrenaline+Skin Graft+Adrenaline is currently the worst offender.

I'm not going to balance any other individual non-bard skills. Too likely it will all change. Avoid super OP combos for now (and honestly rogues are just ridiculous in general.)

Could i take your mod and edit the usual preset builds myself? Ive just come up with redesign for them and would love to have them in the game, especially if devs dont change the ones that are there now.

And how hard is it to edit the origin character builds?
Or do they just take on the usual character builds so, for example, if im starting with a custom build, all origin characters will have the usual presets as they are?

Which means if i change the presets, those changes will be applied to the origin characters?

Im asking because in that case i need to make specific origin characters presets, so they are slightly different then the normal ones.




I dont know... i think the damage should stay but maybe resistances and both armors should drop for some amount for two turns.

I like my damage with Sebille...

-
Also, how about you make me a file/mod with my builds presets and i make you icons for bard skills?

Sure you can edit my stuff however you want. The origin character builds mostly take from the general class presets, but there's a few things in a separate file (like designating race, gender, not being able to edit tags, etc.) Starting skills and equipment for each of preset are in Skillset.txt and equipment.txt respectively, in the public/shared/stats/generated folder.

I'm not so sure about my flesh sacrifice change either. I don't want to make it too similar to Shed Skin with a resistance malus, but if it dropped armor also that could be interesting (though doesn't really make sense). Perhaps if it reduced piercing resistance by 25% it would make the constitution loss a bit more threatening - except not too many enemies deal piercing damage.

Sent you a PM about your offer.

Has anybody tried killing Dallis at the first encounter with this mod installed? I think there may be a bug as a consequence of there being no knockdown now - When Dallis goes to leave, she casts the spell, but then proceeds to just come after you instead. Kind of scary, because she gets the invincible status the first time she does it.

How about flesh sacrifice causing bleeding? It would fit with the pool of blood appearing underneath.

I really like most things except this:

Flesh Sacrifice now reduces damage by 15% rather than increasing it by 10%. Use it more for utility rather than extra attacks.

I think it's very unnecessary considering how you've already chosen not to include any additional skills for elf especially when you consider that encourage essentially adds +5% damage to everyone affected by it. I think your bias here is unfounded and unfair.

I would respectfully ask you to restore the original 10% damage increase because it's perfectly balanced with other class traits imo.

Bleeding would be a good tradeoff, maybe.

What if the character has leech talent though?

Flesh Sacrifice already heals you from the pool of blood if you have Leech though. I don't see it as a huge advantage, given how little it heals you, and that taking Leech over some of the better talents means that you're giving up one of your limited talent points for it.

Reverting flesh sacrifice nerf since so many people hate it. Just going to leave it alone for now. It causing bleeding is a good idea though.

Funny about Dallis. Knockdown change also feels silly on the boat and when first landing on the beach, but not sure it breaks anything else.

What do people think about slightly lowering the base damage of daggers, but granting Back Stabber for free at character creation? Solves two problems at once in my book.

I like that idea, and definitely think it's worth pursuing. It's probably as close as you can get to adding back-stab to daggers and knives. It could open up several paths for Rogues which are not always available. Maybe also slightly lower the critical bonus from Scoundrel?

Knew that would please you :P Stabbey wanting to stab, no talent tax wanted. Consider it done.

I like that idea. It both nerfs pogues who are stupidly op rn and cancels the unfair talent tax.

Which talent are you going to give rogue presets instead of backstabber? I vote for pawn or avoid opportunists.

I don't see the way you had it as a nerf but a complete break.

If you think about how the skill already functions:
Downside = -2 constitution (Which with your mod is -18% vitality, which is huge)
Upside: Plus 10% damage + 1 AP costs 0 ap

Compare this to Encourage:
+1 to Strength, Finess, Int and constitution for everyone in range for 1ap.
Downside: Costs 1ap
Upside: Buff everybodies damage for 5% and gives them +9% vit.

Sorry but given the already huge decrease in vit I feel that the current skill is balanced.

If this still isn't enough to pursuade you then either do as you've done and leave it be or reduce the damage increase from 10% to 7%. I still find this to be overkill though.

Adding bleed is just silly.

Everyone needs to stop trying to nerf a skill that's already balanced.



I really don't like the idea for this change Baard. Aside from nerfing every rogue in general, (which would make the game easier not harder), but also: Imagine a rogue with backstab + Executioner / One man / Guerilla / etc.... you're actually opening it up to even more abuse.

Rogues are, or should be, a high risk high reward class. Instead of nerfing their damage why not think of ways to increase their risk factor or actually add to the classes that are lacking?

It's never a good idea to nerf classes people currently enjoy to keep the ones that don't play them happy. Instead try to make other classes more fun and bring their potential up to the level of a good rogue, cleric or wizard.

There are plenty of skills in the game that could make very good classes like a real support.

Baard we should talk on discord or something. You'll find me a good bouncing board for ideas and changes and perhaps we can work together since I know how to mod the game too. I'm currently working on a cryomancer, a touch mage and some other concepts

Well don't worry, I reset flesh sacrifice to vanilla and not touching it anymore. You're right that the vitality change already nerfs it a little bit.

Rogues do a ton of damage. I don't really want to just nerf them across the board, but not really trying to get too nitty gritty with nerfing individual skills. Though to be honest if I just reduced throwing knife's damage that would probably be enough.

I play rogues and like them, but often it feels like they outshine the rest of my party (except my bard of course :P). Being able to burst down characters in one turn is gnarly. Obviously that's part of the point of the rogue, but it just seems too good. Not sure what you mean by saying nerfing rogues would make the game easier. Increasing rogue's riskiness is also complicated (they're already pretty risky).

But you are right that potentially the extra talent grants more power than a 10% or so reduction in damage subtracts. Still, I think this makes rogues more fun and versatile. The Pawn and Executioner, the two best talents probably are exclusive, so that's not an issue. Guerilla should be good now, but not gamebreaking. Maybe its damage bonus should be 40% instead of 50%. One Man Army (assuming an actual 1 man party) is a whole different play style.

Buffing every other class is a lot more work than making a little global tweak to rogues. Maybe on release I'll try and go for that route.

PMed you.

They do a tonne of single target damage and they can't keep that up all the time.

I do the same aoe damage on a massive scale when playing as a wizard except it's aoe damage. Include my habitual use of teleport to create what my friend calls a 'meat menagerie' and people would cry 'look how op this is, nerf plz'

Or perhaps I should include my cleric build that can kill absolutely anything with 3 skills. 'Nerf plz'

Or maybe my zombie fighter that uses shackles and healing elixers to effectively suicide bomb anything that moves

bah, worry less about nerfing and more about making 'less effective' classes more effective.


One thing I've been thinking about is creating an unofficial 'tactical mode'

Another thing I've been wondering is how to improve AI but this I feel is way beyond my time and skills to even attempt

One thing you could do with flesh sacrifice (if it's possible) is make it more like executioner. Instead of granting AP straight away, make it conditional. So for example:

Flesh Sacrifice: Buff damage for 10%. If you kill an enemy the buff will expire and reward 1 AP next turn. If you fail to kill an enemy before the buff expires 1 AP will be deducted from your next turn.

These conditions add dynamic / texture and risk+reward factors.

Reducing dagger throw damage (slightly) is also a good idea I think. But only slightly

You could also reduce or actually flat out remove the total critical damage modifier given by the scoundrel traitline.
So for example, Instead of:
Each point in scoundrel gives +5% movement speed +5% Critical damage modifier
It give:
Each point in scoundrel gives +10% movement speed
or
Each point in scoundrel gives +5% MS & +3% accuracy

or something like that.

The thing that makes rogues so strong is the backstab mechanic. The simplest way to deal with that is to hit the crit modifiers directly imo

another thing you could do is increase the damage penalty for dual wielding but reduce that penalty for each point in dual wielding. I actually think this is a far nicer way to balance the rogue but again, that's just my opinion

New Version! Excited about the new instruments.

Changelog V1.1

ADDITIONS



Instrument Weapons!

Super excited for these. You'll be able to find several lutes throughout the game that you can equip, usually as 2-handed clubs, though there are some 1-handed ones for them dual-wielders or shield users. Some lutes behave like a 8m range wand. These deal low damage, but most of them grant skills that set a semi-permanent status to yourself which alters how 1 or 2 of your skills behave. For example, one instrument might grant a status which always upgrades your resonance skill by 1 level. Using an instrument isn't mandatory, so you can still hybridize, but a pure bard will probably prefer equipping a lute over other weapons.

New Bard Skill:

Tame the Chaos: Target absorbs all elemental surfaces and clouds within 3m, restoring magic armor according to the amount absorbed.



MAJOR BALANCE CHANGES

Dance of the Elements is now actually sold by vendors.

Dance of the Elements now chooses the vulnerability with the following priority: Status of target (Stunned, Frozen, Necrofire, Burning, Poisoned, Oiled or Slowed, Chilled or Wet), Surface the character is standing in, and then choosing randomly if none of those conditions are met. Speed Vulnerability can't be chosen as a vulnerability anymore.

Glory To Gore renamed Cacophony, and now deals damage in an AOE when you cast it rather than the aura dealing initial damage when applying Cacophony to enemies. It still also does damage to enemies on their turn though. This is to prevent being able to damage targets multiple times by running in and out of the max aura range. Just too silly.

When using Creative Burden, Hard CC statuses (Staggered, Stunned, Frozen, Petrified) and some softer CC (Crippled) are now taken onto the bard for 2 turns. Most other statuses apply for 1 turn. It was too easy to just strip CC from an ally right at the end of the turn with little consequence.

Rhyme and Earworm now cost 2 AP. Rhyme can grant necrofire, holy water, holy fire, and masochistic melody.

Swindle checks against magic armor. It deals a small amount of magic armor damage.

Song of Living Nightmares can't apply Dazed anymore.

Sound Wave applies Cacophony I instead of Dazed, which reduces resists by 10% and deals some damage. Reduced initial damage somewhat, but overall it should deal more damage with the status.

Inspiration of Woe now converts necrofire into a burning aura.

Reverted Flesh Sacrifice nerf. People didn't like that :P

Crossbows have 1m more range than bows.

Daggers now deal about 10% less damage, but all characters start with the back-stabber talent for free. No more talent tax! If you REALLY hate the damage nerf, you can delete the weapon.txt in the public/stats/generated/data folder. But trust me, the damage nerf really is pretty minimal. Rogue has The Pawn talent by default, and Shadowblade has Guerilla.

Decaying Touch now converts healing into 125% damage, instead of 175% damage. Also, Decaying Touch is worth -2 postive statuses for Resonance. This is mostly to make it so you can't practically 1-shot a boss with 5 buffs and decaying touch (though still deals a lot of damage).




BUG FIXES & MINOR TWEAKS

Boosted player run speed by 20% or so. It's not a huge difference, but it should make running feel like running, not like a sluggish jog.

Reduced leadership requirements of all bard skills except source skills down to 1. Slightly increased bard skillbook gold cost.

Diversified bard visual skill effects, added some status effects.

The Cacophony statuses from Sound Wave and Cacophony can be discharged with Feedback.

Masochistic Melody will stay at level 5 when you get a negative status while already at level 5, rather than resetting to level 1.

Feedback damage statuses (not the initial status) now contribute to Masochistic Melody.

Halved the number of diamonds the CheatBard preset starts with.

I believe I fixed a bug where character creation would bug out if you changed the third character skill on my Skald preset (thanks Rykari).

Ha. Thats excellent.

Shame that spell-song effects would be very hard to create, so that the Bard can have its own kind of visual representation of his spells and songs.

Have you thought about using some of the existing magic visual effects and so maybe even incorporating those into the spells themselves, like for example - ... making a sort of bard version of Hail strike but call it a "cold love" song or something similar, while changing its effects to fit more with the Bard style.
Or "feel my pain" (dumb name) and using shackles of pain for it, only also slightly changed?

Not a big thing or demand, just thought about it.

"Daggers now deal about 10% less damage, but all characters start with the back-stabber talent for free. "

Shouldnt this be limited to some specific character builds instead of all?
Surely only the rogues should start or even have this skill-talent for free?

I think it's more that he's limited to what he's able to do with his mod, and without the tools solutions are necessarily cruder. Also, this is a classless system, and making it only applicable to the two presets (Rogue and Shadowblade) would go against Larian's design philosophy of allowing you to change classes (even if that philosophy is not actually practical in game terms.)

Ideally it would only apply to the daggers themselves, but that's a code change.

Well... most of rogue skills are available only to daggers.
Maybe the talent could be tied to rogue skills investment too.

Of course if this is hard to do now by modding then i wont complain about it, but it does feel like all characters getting this talent at the start is a bit too much.

I think that the best deal with talents would be to have only one locked by default, and players could then choose two at the start.

Just giving backstabber to everyone was the simplest way to do it. Didn't want to get too fancy in case it didn't work out. Not sure if there's a better solution that would be possible to implement. Functionally, tying backstabber to equipping daggers and just granting it to everyone is identical, and not sure how to grant a talent from a weapon type. Non-rogues probably aren't going to be just equipping daggers with the talent tax gone, but I could be wrong. In that case, I may have to nerf dagger base damage even more and then maybe slightly boost the scoundrel bonuses.

Would love unique spell effects for bard skills. It may be possible to make minor tweaks to existing effects (like changing the color and scale), but not sure how to do even that.

There is some kind of sense to allow any build to backstab with any weapon if you are in position and have the talent. Its not something thats difficult to do... although maybe rogues could get some kind of bonus damage and other relatively smaller effect to it.

So every point invested in rogue skills would give a few percent bigger backstabb damage and ... something else. Crippled status maybe... damage to physical and magic armors... weaken status... something to differentiate rogues as better at it then other builds.

You can only backstab with daggers, though. You can't backstab with a spear, as funny as that would be.
Tying it to daggers would change nothing

"Lizard: Shed Skin. Remove all statuses on yourself, positive and negative, and apply a 25% all resistance penalty to yourself for 2 turns."


I think this one should be better, reminds me too much of the Sebille special source skill and doesnt look like anything i would use myself, while its hard to see how it could be used if im frozen, petrified or stunned.
Besides, lizards dont shed skins, snakes do.

Maybe it would be better to have some kind of Lizard gaze, - soft stun or petrified for one turn, maybe lose initiative? Or something like lizards ability to regrow lost limbs - regeneration of vitality for two turns, maybe + remove crippled on yourself.

This is nice, thank you! I would love to see this in the hands of a great role player as a DM.

Lizards also don't breathe fire, so we're already not going for pure scientific accuracy. The idea for Shed Skin has been floating around for longer than Sebille's source skill, Nivv came up with it a while ago and I've been promoting it as a more useful racial than the Lizard's Firebreath. (Admittedly, I also dislike Firebreath for my own personal preferences when it comes to lore.)

It's quite true that it can't be used when you are under hard CC, but there are enough other negative statuses for which this would be helpful, especially for cursed-surface status effects.

Lol, just pretend that lizards shed in this world :P As far as its usefulness, it's hard to say whether it has too many downsides (memory and AP cost, resist reduction, AND it removes positive statuses). But a free skill that can remove every negative status needs to be tempered by something. With my mod it would remove stunned and knockdown since those don't completely eliminate your turn anymore (though unless you have 2 turns of stunned or KD, then it's mostly pointless since you won't recover the AP you've lost already).

Blind, decaying touch, shackles of pain, crippled, necrofire, or several smaller negative statuses can all be worth spending an AP to ditch. Obviously there's some strategy to consider if you have some buffs you'd rather not lose, and whether the resist reduction is worth losing the debuffs for, but that's what makes it interesting. I think I'll drop the resist reduction to 15 or 20% though. 25% is pretty harsh.

Sebille's source skill is just bad and boring, so I'm not going to compare shed skin to that.

I can pretend lizards shed skins, fine.

But i dont see how such a skill is useful. If i could cast it on others then sure, it would be useful.
But since we are playing in a party that usually has at least two healers or debuffers i dont see much need for this skill. Especially since i would lower my own resistances by using it. I just wonder why would i ever do that?

And it looks very similar to sebille source one.

It may be useful for one specific build but not for many others.

Blind is only hampering to range fighters. It doesnt do much to melee ones. all those other statuses can be removed by something else, usually in skills of the party.

I would rather just have fire breath.

Just sayin...

What about a gecko inspired skill that let you detach/drop (summon) a tail that had a taunt skill but no attack or movement.

Visually it would be difficult to mod, but I think it would work in any build.

New version with a dynamic difficulty enhancement feature, 5 new skills, major loot changes, and lots of rebalancing. If you're finding the game too easy at this point, you should check the mod out.

Bardmod Changelog V1.2

MAJOR NEW FEATURE: Enemy Buff Randomization and Champions!

Many people will find the game easy after a while, and more importantly, predictable. Obviously this is just the alpha so there's limited combat, but I wanted to try out a way to make the game more difficult, dynamic, and satisfying loot-wise at the same time. Thanks to Rykari for the initial suggestion.

On entering combat, each enemy above level 1 will receive a permanent random buff, ranging from hasted to floating to invisible to several custom buffs like +5 leadership, vampiric attacks, extra perseverance or pain reflection. Enemies also have a 15% chance to become champions. Champions are very powerful, ranging from a fairly standard boost to basic stats like damage and resists, to a polymorph champion, to a bard champion, and others. However, you'll be rewarded with a garaunteed blue or legendary and other loot on killing a champion, and all enemies have a chance to drop extra items. Bosses that receive champion buffs will drop one additional garaunteed legendary along with other champion loot.

These buffs are intended not just to outright buff enemies (though they do to a degree), but also to force you to change up your strategy. If you an encounter a leader-type enemy, for example, you'll want to avoid stacking up a group of enemies. You might face "Fragile Dodger" enemies that have high dodge chance, but reduced elemental resists, so you might have your mage go for that enemy instead of your rogue.

By default every enemy receives a buff at the start of combat, but the frequency of enemy buffs can easily be tweaked to your liking by editting the EnemyBuff.charScript file with a text editor. This file is located in the Public/Shared/Scripts folder. Change the line INT:%RandomOn = 0 to INT:%RandomOn = 1, and set the value of FLOAT:%BuffChance = 0.50 (50%) to your liking. You can also disable champions or change their likelihood of appearing.

To disable this feature entirely, set INT:%BuffsOn = 1 to INT:%BuffsOn = 0 and INT:%ChampionsOn = 1 to 0. This remove the buffs as well as the extra loot.

Note: all enemy statuses but the champion statuses can be stolen with Bard's Swindle skill.


NEW BARD SKILLS

Crescendo (1 AP, 4 CD)

Boost a character's movement speed by 25% for one turn, and then by 60% the following turn. Bard needed a good movement skill that wasn't just another teleport, and also requires some preperation for best effect.


Call and Response (1 AP, 4 CD)

Inspire a character with feelings of vengeance and gratitude alike, healing characters that have applied current buffs they have, and damaging characters that have applied current debuffs they have. Heals or damages for 8% of a character's maximum vitality per status. (Hopefully this skill isn't too confusing)


Barbarian's Delight (1 AP, 4 CD)

A barbaric jig of bloodbath that grants an ally a random buff whenever they slay an enemy (non-summon) for the next 2 turns. If a character kills a character with the Barbarian's Delight status, the killer will receive a random negative status.


Song of Travel (2 AP, 4 CD)

Boosts the movement speed of yourself and nearby allies by 25%. Removed on entering combat (however, it can be cast again in combat if you want). Mostly meant for use outside of combat, but can be useful for combat too if you don't have other skills to use.


Guilt Trip (2 AP, 5 CD)

Deal a small amount of piercing damage and apply remorse to nearby enemies for 1 turn. Remorse causes piercing damage when characters use skills. Bards needs another simple attack/damage skill, but still requires good timing to make sure enemies actually have skills to use to deal the most damage.




BALANCE CHANGES

Reworked Perseverance so that when Knockdown is removed (either naturally or with a skill), you are fortified for a number of turns according to your perseverance: 1-2 Perseverance = 1 turn, 3-4 = 2 turns, 5+ = 3 turns of fortified. Same concept for stunned, applying magic shell with the same ratio of Perseverance to turns. Toned down perseverance armor recovery from 15% to 8%.

Inspiration of Woe (convert damaging statuses to auras) can now be cast on your allies, not just yourself.

Receiving a critical hit now grants you a stack of of Masochism if you have Masochistic Melody.

Characters with zombie talent now bleed poison and have a status to indicate they are a zombie.

Boosted range of Jingle and Song of Living Nightmares to 12m each.

Jingle can't apply enraged or invisible anymore, but added a few other statuses it can now apply.

Resonance and Feedback cooldowns increased to 3 turns, from 2.

Buffed initial Feedback damage, no longer deals damage over time.

Reduced Tame the Chaos cooldown to 3, from 4. Increased range by 2m.

Staggered now reduces maximum AP by 3, from 2. Reduced the other maluses to 25% from 30%. AP reduction felt too forgiving especially against Glass Cannon characters. Fixed Staggered and Off Balance not applying the accuracy penalty.

Toned down the resistance penalty from Shed Skin to -15%, from -25%. It was a little too punishing.

Significantly nerfed the lucky charm treasure skill that adds loot to enemies, from 100% chance to get a magic+ item to 15% chance.

Increased angle of Sound Wave by 15 degrees, slightly boosted its damage, and made the resist debuff it applies last for 2 turns.


LOOT

More than halved the resists you can find on random loot (e.g., 30% resist items are now 15%, 20% grant 8%, etc.) Uniques and shields unchanged. Resist inflation was absurd without even trying to deck out in rares/epics.

Rare items can occasionally appear with a single legendary modifier (e.g., grants a skill or an immunity or high amounts in one stat).

Epic items can occasionally appear with two legendary modifiers.

Strength and Dexterity bonuses now only appear on weapon types that benefit from those attributes. Intelligence still can appear on all weapon types.

Thievery bonuses no longer appear on loot. Too easy to abuse by trading to allies to pickpocket.

Loremaster only appears on rings now. Persuasion only appears on helms and amulets (removed from rings and belts [wtf? sexy beltbuckle I guess?]).

Amulets can't provide an AP recovery bonus anymore. (Chest pieces can appear with custom AP recovery/start/maximum combos that are hopefully more balanced than a straight +1 AP recovery.)


MINOR CHANGES AND BUG FIXES

Bard skillbooks can now appear in random loot and have a custom description instead of using hydrosophist description.

Undocumented Change (since V1.0): Very slightly buffed lucky charm. Like, from 5% chance to proc to 6% to proc when looting a container.

Slowed, decaying touch, shackles of pain, diseased, and infectious diseased now grant a stack of Masochism if Masochistic Melody is applied with these statuses active.

Crooner (the healing lute Laslor sells) now applies a reduced healing effect than standard renegeration. The lute no longer provides a constitution bonus. Calming Presence now actually improves resonance skill.

Bard at character creation no longer displays an extra memory received from gear.

By default Bard and Skald presets now start with Mnemonic talent instead of Far Out Man.

Staggered now always pierces armor against Glass Cannon targets, instead of applying Off Balance if they have armor.

http://www.nexusmods.com/divinityoriginalsin2/mods/3/?

Wow. You've actually managed to add what is effectively a massive game-changer, almost a new game mode in the alpha. Impressive.

The cooldown on Guilt Trip looks excessive for such a situational skill.

Yeah I suppose it's kind of like a new game mode. Sort of like an arcade mode (but not dumbed down, as "arcade" can sometimes imply.)

Guilt Trip CD could probably be shortened by 1. I don't think it's super situational. Most enemies use skills frequently. Remorse does a fair amount of piercing damage, and the status isn't blocked by armor.

Nice, moved to a new sub MODS

Can't wait to read some discussions about mods

That all sounds great but, could there be an option that these new stronger buffed enemies mechanic applies only on some enemy groups?

So not to make all enemies stronger and better but only those where that would be reasonable?

Not sure how this could be done and its true there isnt many low level enemies in the game right now, but there are a few groups where one wouldnt expect to find champions. Mostly in prison area.

I think all magisters groups could be expected to be stronger in this way, and it fits with the narrative.
But maybe not literally every single enemy, or potential enemy.

Or am i wrong?

I could be. I need to first try playing this to see if its too much or maybe it fits better then i think.

Hello, awesome mod you got here!

Anyway, can you share a tutorial how to mod this game? Many thanks!

It'd be pretty tough to make exceptions. Most people aren't going to be slaughtering the prisoner camp anyway. I could up the level requirement for these buffs from 2 to 3, and that would put most prisoners out of reach, but then cool fights like the turtle one wouldn't be buffed (not a huge deal though).

A lot of the time the prisoner buffs feel fine. A lot of the buffs aren't like, wow this is some crazy powerful monster now. An enemy might be rested or hasted or tenacious (+perseverance). Only champion buffs on low level prisoners would feel really weird, though I suppose I could make it so champions don't appear until level 3.

Overall, yes, this random buff system sacrifices some immersion for gameplay reasons. Not sure if that can be fundamentally changed.



I want to release a video tutorial later on, after we've hopefully heard something about modding support. Probably Larian will be releasing videos and documentation on what I'd be describing. I may put together a tutorial template kind of thing for people to play with, but I'm also kind of leery of that, since that will be out of date by next patch. Kind of in wait and see mode right now.

The basic concept is to use the .pak extractor from the old game. Most important stuff is in the Origins.pak and Shared.pak. Look through the files and see what Larian did (and you can look through my mod and see my crappy scripting). Script files can be opened with text editors. Use Notepad++ or another good text editor.

Making mods is a matter of taking the files that you extract, and making folders in your game directory that match the same directory path of the files you want to modify (or add). So with my mod, you can see I created a bunch of folders, like the stats folders and stuff.

Okay I am going to look it up, thank you very much for the explanation

Finally got around to test out your mod. Started fresh with the newest latest version of it with a custom 4 player playthrough (bard, wizard, knight, ranger).
In the beginning, the bard felt really weak, but that's what I expect from a support class. Quickly enough, I really noticed the various buffs he brought and near the end, I saw the power of the debuffs too.
I was struggeling a bit with where to put the points and ended with something like a 2-1-1 ratio of memory, wits and intellect. Took a couple of hydro/aero spells for the ultimate utility.

I especially liked the random elements of spells like Jingle. It really helped to make the combat feel even more diverse than it already is.
There are some spells however, I never even considered using, like the one that was giving up your leadership in order to debuff the opponents, since leadership is just way too strong to give up. Also never tried the sleep spells and those that interact with sleeping targets. Felt like I had plenty enough CC already, even with the nerf of hard CC.

The hard CC nerf is also something I really liked. Especially for stun, which can quickly become out of control with the enormous blood pools lying around everywhere. However I would prefer if these soft CCs could end up in hard CC.
I feel that a battering ram on a target, already staggering, should knock it down for good.

Another really awesome addition of the mod is the loot system. Boy, is the loot boring in the base game right now. Now every encounter feels rewarding, instead of just having to save up money to buy the good gear from vendors.

I'm not sure if it is because of the influx of gear, or the strength of the bard, but this playthrough felt incredibly easy. I only had a single death, and that was in the final battle due to missing 2 shots in a row that would have saved my archer.

Looking forward to any future updates you make for this mod and hope to play the full game with a bard at some point.

Thanks for the feedback Gron! Very helpful. Bards do start off kind of weak but get a lot more powerful as they gain more abilities.

Glad you lack the randomness. I try to find a balance between unpredictability and consistency.

The leadership to debuff conversion spell (Cacophony) is definitely a bit situational. I'm reducing the AP cost to 1, from 2, and the CD from 5 to 4. My idea of it is you use it if you've been separated from most/all of your allies, or you're on the offense and have most enemies disabled. -30% resist to enemies can dramatically increase your teams damage, plus the damage the ability uses is decent. But yeah, giving up 30%+ resist and dodge to your allies seems kind of ludicrous a lot of the time.

Lullaby and Dream Death can fit well for certain parties (particularly magic focused.) I'm not sure if I should turn Dream Scream into a 1 AP skill and reduce the sleep time it can cause to 1 turn.

Glad you like the CC change. Stunned definitely is way less frustrating, though still very debilitating. Staggering a staggered enemy definitely could cause a true knockdown. There's kind of quirk with scripting that's given me trouble for doing this, but I'll look into it more.

I agree that vanilla loot is just... meh. I want to continue to make major improvements there. I definitely am concerned about over-supplying players with loot though. To clarify, you played with 1.2 with the random enemy buffs? And the random loot that enemies can drop and especially champion loot felt like a good amount of loot? And despite the random enemy buffs, the game felt easy? Well, that's not good :P Either made the bard OP, gave too much loot, or you've just learned the tricks of the game.

Thanks again.

I played with the default options (downloaded from nexusmods), and the loot felt very good. I can't recall an encounter that didn't gave me an upgrade .

Good to know that the staggering can result in a knockdown. Didn't work the first few times, then I just never tried again, except for finishing an opponent of, I think.

As for the gear, taking a look at all my chars at the very end, everyone has on average
278,5 armor (magic and physical combined)
16 attributes
2 combat abilities
1 extra ability
52.25 resistance

Unfortunately I must have overwritten my vanilla playthrough, so I can't compare, but that's a lot of stats, considering they will get a heap of buffs from the bard on top.

With a leadership of 10, I have quite a few resistances above 70 and even 80, while not even going for them since I have so much already. Also with all the valuable loot, I ended with roughly 8k gold and could easily buy every spellbook and item I wanted from the vendor.
Maybe lowering the sell price of items would help the balance a bit?

To clarify, Staggering an already staggered target doesn't knockdown. I meant that's a good idea I might implement.

Resists are still a problem, even with my nerf to loot resists. I wanted to tone leadership bonuses down, maybe give it some other benefit, but its stats except range seem to be fixed. Not sure how I would script changes to how it works, but open to ideas.

Not sure if I can lower sell price without lowering the cost of items to purchase. Going to slightly reduce the appearance of epics in the next version, maybe decrease the chance for gold.

Could you possibly nerf the traders in the camp so they dont get higher level items at all and maybe have less money? Is that even possible?

As ive said several times already i feel that would strengthen and improve the story and atmosphere of that section of the game.
It would reinforce the sense that players need to get better equipment by exploration and combat/stealing.

Not sure if it's possible to make them not get higher level loot, probably would need to use story scripts for that which I'll need the editor for. Could nerf their loot overall though, maybe cut down on gold, that might be tough too though.

hey first off thanx for the mod
i was wondering if there is a way to uninstall without starting a new game. if i run a barded save with no mod installed i get crash.
i like the mod and all but i hadnt played through vanilla b4 i installed. so i run into many situations where i dont know if the skill im seeing is you or vanilla.
thanx
SkinnyFat

No, you can't remove the mod after playing with it for a while. I only added the bard skills (white skillbooks), three racial skills, and some weapon/armor skills (appear on legendary weapons or occasionally rares). But yeah, if you never played vanilla, than you won't really know what is default and what isn't.

You'll probably just want to restart without the mod for a completely vanilla experience.

hopefully the finished game will have mod menu in the main menu for ticking/unticking mods. looks like something is kinda there now

New Versionino, lots and lots of changes, rebalancing, major changes to talents and lucky charm, etc. I've made several bard skills scale with wits. Probably the last version except maybe minor tweaks until game release. But who knows.


NEW SKILLS

Come Together (1 AP, 4 CD)

Bring all allies within 10m towards you and apply floating to you and your allies for 1 turn.

Push Off! (1 AP, 3 CD)

All characters within 6m of the bard are pushed 5m.


ENEMY BUFFS

Enemies are globally buffed in classic mode to receive 15% more vitality, magic and physical armor, and a hair more movement speed.

Three new champion types. About halved the initiative bonuses that champions receive.

Slightly decreased the chance for epics from champions and regular, buffed enemies. Non-champions will drop less gold.

Added a couple new enemy buffs and removed the weakest buffs that enemies could receive (encouraged, invisible, rested, favourable wind). Reduced Fragile Dodger's dodge bonus to 35% (from 40%).

Fixed the second enemy buff code (but still off by default). Also added a tweakable percentage chance (%SecondBuffChance) for enemies to receive a second buff.


LOOT

Reworked lucky charm so that whenever you enter combat, enemies have a chance to gain extra loot relative to your lucky charm amount (+6% chance per point). Even at level 1, you'll have a small chance for legendaries. Multiple characters with lucky charm can increase your chance for loot, but won't add more loot per character. Containers no longer benefit from lucky charm. The problem I had with lucky charm was that you always felt like you needed to have a designated looter, which was annoying. Removed the Treasure Song skill I added (no longer does anything if you still have it).

Wands no longer generate surfaces, but they deal 15% more damage and all have a 50% chance to apply the relevant statuses: fire wands have a 50% chance to cause burning, water wands chilled, air wands stunned, and poison wands poisoned. Fire wands deal slightly more damage than other wands, air wands provide a movement speed bonus, and poison and water wands provide resistances. This was mostly to make fire/poison wands not the only obvious choice for how much damage the fire/poison explode combo does.

Slightly buffed most of the unique skills that I added for random legendaries.


LUTES

Added a new, secret lute. Nebora might have a book that will help you...

All the lutes now have custom descriptions. Various major and minor balance tweaks to the lutes.

Prismatic Thunder lute is now unique (sold by Zaleskar). Rainbow Songs now allows you to cast Tame the Chaos on an enemy to give them two vulnerabilities (behaving like Dance of the Elements does, basing the vulnerability on status the character has, though it still restores their armor, so its best used when they're not near surfaces.)

Increased the healing of Creative Burden on the bard from 20% to 35% when you have the Headbanger status. Whiplash now contributes as a status for Masochistic Melody. Thrasher now applies masochistic melody to yourself for 2 turns on hit and has piercing damage.


BARD BALANCE

Overall lots of buffs to make various skills more enticing and interesting. I think I've overall been a bit too conservative and concerned more about balance than fun factor. Not trying to make bard OP, but many bard skills felt low-impact. Thanks to ReallyTho/Vozzlike for lots of feedback and discussion.

Completely rebalanced Jingle. It is now a 2 AP skill with a 1 memory cost, and reduced its range to 10m. Eliminated some of the strongest buffs it can apply (blessed, fortified, magic shell), added a few more weaker and mid-level ones. Overall hopefully it feels a bit less power-swingy, and allows for more versatility with the AP cost and memory redution.

Song of Living Nightmare now "upgrades" various statuses as well as applying a random status. Upgrades burning to necrofire, chilled to frozen (1 turn). If the target is poisoned, also applies acid, if slowed, also applies crippled, if bleeding, also applies weak. In addition the skill scales with wits. Each point in wits increases your chance by 3% to apply a status for 2 turns rather than 1, plus 10% chance for free. So with the base 10 wits, you have 40% to apply negative statuses for 2 turns, 20 wits is 70% to apply for 2 turns, etc. It will start off weaker than now up until about 14 wits, where it will start to get more reliable than before.

Barbarian's Delight is now an AOE buff of 12m. It also now heals the character for 25% of their max life when they get a kill. It also now heals the character for 10% of their max health when they get a critical strike. Should feel more rewarding to get kills with it, less situational, and less concern about "killstealing" for the buffs.

Soundwave now scales with your wits. With less than 14 wits, it works as now, with 14-18 wits it applies the second level Cacophony status which reduces resists by 20%, and with 19+ wits it reduces resists by 30% and deals more damage with its DoT.

Reduced the AP cost of Cacophony to 1 (from 2), and its cooldown to 4 (from 5), and increased the range of its initial damage from 8m to 10m. Should be more worth it to give up your leadership for 2 turns.

Masochistic Melody now also increases movement speed (.40m per level of masochism), and at level 5, it also increases AP recovery by 1.

Slightly Crescendo's movement speed bonus, and it now grants 1 AP recovery and floating on its second level.

Reduced Feedback's cooldown back down to 2 (from 3).

Increased the range of Feedback and Resonance by 2m.

Song of Guilt cooldown reduced to 4, from 5.

Rhyme now applies most statuses (nearly all buffs) for 2 turns rather than just 1.

Call and Response cooldown reduced to 2 (from 3), and now heals for 15% per buff instead of 10% (damage percentage unchanged).

Increased magic armor restored by Tame the Chaos.

Dance of the Elements range increased from 8m to 10m.

Earworm reduces resists by 30% instead of 35%.


OTHER CHANGES AND FIXES

The Demon talent now gives you increased power for each character you set on fire, and also requires Pyrokinetics 2 instead of 1. Every time you set a character on fire or necrofire (including yourself or an ally), you gain +5% damage, movement speed, and fire resist for 2 turns, stacking up to 5 times. I hadn't planned on changing existing talents, but I was implementing this for something else and figured it made sense for Demon instead.

Naturally, I had to do something similar for Ice King, which now grants you buffs to your damage, hydrosophist skill, and water resistance whenever you chill or freeze characters, for a max of 20% dmg, +3 hydrosophist, +25% water resist.

Five Star Diner now lets you equip a weapon for free once per turn and eat or drink something for free with +10% healing once per combat. That is, you immediately recover an AP when equipping a weapon. Remember, unequipping weapons costs 0 AP, so removing a dual wield set and equipping a bow will cost 0 AP.

Skin Graft, Wings, Adrenaline, and Teleport now require 2 points in their respective ability trees (though you can still start with adrenaline as a rogue with scoundrel 1). Again, I've been wanting to avoid trying to rebalance default things, but these abilities are just too good for a splash point.

Teleport scrolls now cost 3 AP.

Skin Graft now instantly reduces your AP by 2 (though you can cast it with 1 AP left if you want). Simply too strong, and this nerf probably won't even make too much of a difference, but it hurts the double adrenaline combo at least.

Reduced healing potions to 25% (small) to 35% (large), and healing elixirs to 50%.

Shed Skin now clears a lot more statuses (positive and negative), including staggered, decaying touch, shackles of pain, vulnerabilities, auras, bard buffs, etc.

Feedback can dissolve Shackles of Pain.

The origin characters now start with the backstabber talent like non-origin characters do.

Acid and Suffocating auras now properly grant immunity to acid and suffocating

Fire Immunity (e.g., from Phoenix Dive) can be stolen with Swindle and copied with Rhyme.

Rhyme can copy a lot more statuses, including most ones you can steal from enemies.

Updated many status and skill descriptions.

First session with the new bard wasn't too long so far but the only two issues I've had is not being about to customize a bard at character creation as the skills do not show up and as someone else said the knockdown / stunned change is kinda wonky out of combat and can let you bypass things meant to stop you for the story.

Really like the concept overall so far.

Awesome work Baardvark. I'll be starting a new game soon, so I'll give the update a shot.

Any word on Dallis? Do the knockdown/stun changes still prevent her from leaving if you beat her in the beginning of the game? I like tackling that challenge, and before, she would do the animation to leave, but it wouldn't complete, and she'd go back to attacking you in an invincible state, effectively forcing you to run and forfeit her hammer.

Thanks LaughingLeader and WMC51! As far as Knockdown/Stun interrupting story events, not entirely sure how I'll solve that. I think I might have to wait until story scripting (the editor) to solve that. Are there are any other serious bugs arising from that?

Bard customization at creation is a problem I'm not sure I'll be able to solve. There's skald and bard presets, which lets you choose between 5 different skills at start. It would be nice to be able to choose among the 8-10 bard skills, but it seems like a technical barrier for now. Basically, I can't define "Leadership" as a genuine ability skill, so they don't show up in creation.

I don't think it's a huge deal. Easy enough to head into town.

Guessing since it isn't in the code to select racial abilities you can only add or take them away as opposed to giving options?

No, don't think it's possible to make racial abilities selectable. However, I could create multiple versions of each race for character creation and provide different options for racial skills that way. For example, could create 4 different breath types for lizards and have 4 different lizard presets. That'd get very clunky to add them all to the non-origin and origin versions though (red prince would thematically breath fire though, so probably no choice for him).

Again I haven't done any modding since unreal engine 2 or 3 back in the day.

I was just thinking about the stun issue. Would it be better to are an ability that removes stun / other effects at the cost of AP so that it didn't interrupt scripted events with a 2 or 3 rounds cool down. Though I guess you could still just click the button to remove the stun.

I'm about 4 hours into my new playthrough now, and I have to say, I'm really liking these changes to enemies. The extra layer of depth champion enemies add is really fun - vampiric aura enemies in particular can be scary when not dealt with quickly.
Disclaimer: I totally abused a pickpocket bug multiple times, though that was after I rushed to level 3-4.

Currently my party consists of:


I'll be clearing out the rest of the prison on my next stream, and tackling Dallis after that (though I'll have to likely run when she goes to escape).

The Kniles fight in particular got pretty hairy when the whole room of dogs aggro'd - Though he died first.
__________________

Do you have any preferred ability combos with the Bard, Baardvark? Any tips?

Cool! Watched some of the stream, but my internet is slow so it cuts out a lot for me Satisfying to see my mod played from another perspective though. Glad lucky charm seems to be working out, hopefully not giving you too much good stuff early on though. Also note that enemies receive extra loot from the buffs, so it's not just loot from lucky charm you're seeing. I meant to add some kind of visual cue to show when lucky charm has activated on a target.

As far as combos, masochistic melody and creative burden can be good together. Resonance, Feedback, Swindle, Rhyme, Inspiration of Pain, and Creative Burden can be comboed in many different ways offensively or for spreading around buffs. Song of Living Nightmare + Soundwave + feedback can be a good combo. Lullaby and Dream Scream is an obvious one, and also lullaby and song of living nightmares (which causes madness to sleeping targets).


So it turns out a rudimentary status resist system wasn't too hard to implement. What do people think of this: armor only completely blocks hard CC like stun and knockdown, frozen, fear, chicken, sleeping, charm, etc. Most other statuses can be applied through armor, but your chance to resist is determined by:

your % of your current armor of the relevant type + 1% * your constitution + 3% * your perserverance.

So someone with 50% magic armor, 15 constitution, and 3 perseverance would have a 50+15+9=74% chance to resist burning. Does this make sense and sound like it helps with some problems? Armor is still very useful, but not completely binary. Haven't really tested it thoroughly, but my initial impressions is there's a whole new layer of decision making by evaluating status application chance, and that combat has a much smoother flow from healthy to debuffed characters.

Keeping strong CC fully resisted by armor means armor still holds its purpose of making the start of combat not just a CC-fest. And armor remains the most important factor for resistance, but a high con and perseverance tank character could reach high resist chances even without armor (70% chance with 40 Con and 10 perseverance, for example, though that may be too high from stats alone). Most characters will have a fairly low chance to resist without armor though.

I'm not a huge fan of trying to balance with RNG, but this system is nice because the power swings from RNG rolls will tend to be less dramatic than in the first game (especially with my nerfed stun and knockdown effects). Also the RNG is more interactive than the first game, since armor is the primary factor, and resist chances overall will be very low without it.

The second part of my playthrough is up. Did some prison cleaning here, and tackled the Dallis/Bishop fight near the end. That fight took me way too long. It was hard not relying on magic surface + AoE shenanigans, haha. I had to cheese the flee mechanic, and barricading pathways with chests/reinforced crates.

Also Paladin Cork went kind of nuts after we saved his life.


Ah, no worries. And yes, I was well aware that champions specifically drop more loot. I view them as walking loot-bags now.


My current issue with figuring out Bard combos is that I decided to go for some weird builds, and had everybody go physical damage. So I've had to scrap some of the Bard spells that rely on magic armor being depleted (for instance, in my streams, I kept trying to Swindle and forgetting that it's blocked by magic armor).

Song of Living Nightmare is great fun when the pieces are set and you dial debuffs up a notch. Song of Guilt is handy as well, and Barbarian's Delight has been, well... A delight. I haven't tested it with totems, but I imagine using the negative buff part of it would be effective.

Reposition has been really useful as well. Using it with summons feels very satisfying, especially if the person casting it has a height advantage, and can shuffle around party members and save them some AP that would have been used for movement.

I just started working Inspiration of Woe into my build, but I like the idea of turning negative statuses into a positive effect. I can see a Glass Cannon frontline build in the works, using Masochistic Melody + Woe to get some craziness happening.

Tame the Chaos is one of my new favorite spells. It's so simple, but I love the utility of creating a small safety circle in the middle of a lava lake.


That sounds really interesting, and definitely worthy of some testing. Being able to apply bleeds, burning, etc. to enemies without depleting their armor would make those effects feel more beneficial, as right now, it's usually just overkill on an enemy already headed for the grave.


I wasn't a huge fan of the RNG in the first game either, status-wise. It felt like such a waste when you'd try to debuff an enemy and it just completely misses.

With statuses like oil/slow bypassing armor, other minor status having a chance to bypass armor may feel right.

Some ideas:
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Come Together is an interesting ability. It really made me wish Warfare had a similar ability that works on enemies. Something like a small cone attack that pulls enemies closer. It would be sort of a "soft taunt", in that you could use it to pull an already clustered group of enemies closer, within attack of opportunity range (or set up an AoE combo).

Push Off feels somewhat less than ideal currently, given that it's an AoE circle around the caster. If it were in a similar shape to Battle Stomp (with shorter range), you could use it to push away an attacker, or push an ally closer to an enemy. If it worked on objects too (like pushing a barrel into an enemy), I could see some funny scenarios cropping up, but that may be more complicated to script.

I love the changes to Five-Star Diner. I find it very useful now. My flying dwarf Walnut has it, and I keep being happily surprised every time I remember it's there - A free heal/buff per turn is very nice, and being able to swap weapons to fit the situation is handy in its own right.

I think you should rename your mod to something else that Bard Class now! haha.
The bard class is like 1% of the whole thing now.

Ha, yeah. Was thinking of what to name it. Getting to the point where I should probably just make two different mods, the bard class and everything else, but that's... more work. Maybe I'll do that on release, hopefully when there's an easier way to merge mods.




Bard definitely benefits from having a fellow magic user, but should still be useful in a pure physical party. Glad you find those skills satisfying, especially Barbarian's Delight. Note that killing a summon/totem won't grant you buff when you have reapers delight, but killing a totem that has reapers delight will give the enemy a curse. I found it too punishing against summoners when enemies received the reapers delight buff and they got buffs for killing your totems.

Reposition is very nice with a 0 AP cost. I forgot civilian started with it, so I maybe overbuffed it for them, but if it's fun that's good.

Masochism/creative burden/inspiration of woe with glass cannon definitely has a lot of potential.

Agree, Tame the Chaos is a nice skill to, well, tame the chaos for a moment.



We'll see how Larian utilizes the push/pull mechanics I'm unsure about push off. I was thinking it could set Off Balance (the lesser version of Staggered) to enemies but not allies. I'll check if I can make it push items, that would fun, though d on't think it would damage enemies or break or anything.

Oops, I meant to make Five Star Diner only let you eat one free meal/drink per combat (or at least every 3 turns or something), not per turn. I imagine it's a bit too strong like that, no?

Also Dallis sounded like a challenge. Too bad you couldn't get the hammer out of all that :P

I'm hitting a sort of "Oops, am I getting too ambitious?" moment with the resists :P With how much it changes balance, and even messes with several bard skills (e.g., song of living nightmares is now meh except against armorless enemies), I have to go all in. So I definitely want to get the formula right. I've made it so int and strength boost status application chance by 1% for magic/physical statuses respectively. Constitution now boosts resist by 1.5%.

Resist Chance = Con(1.5) + Perseverance(3) + Armor Percentage - Strength or Int(1)

I'm also considering whether a critical hit should boost application chances, maybe as a factor of wits. Say, critting while using Sawtooth Blade when you have 20 wits would increase application chance of bleeding by 20%. This would also make savage sortliege slightly better.

I dunno though, I don't want to over complicate it either.

Are you planning to still have 100% chance to apply CC once armor is broken? That was one of a few benefits of armor system.

Currently, no, you have a chance to resist CC even with broken armor, but it's pretty low if not 0% if you don't invest in constitution and perseverance. I could make hard CC like stun and fear ignored by this system and apply 100% of the time, but I want to avoid that kind of inconsistency if I can. I'm not sure I see 100% vulnerability to CC without armor as a benefit, since it turns the game into pretty much you're dead without armor. But I also think armor should definitely be a majority of the defense against CC, except perhaps for a tank character.

Another thing I was thinking of was factoring character health into resists. Say, at a ratio of 2% missing max health is 1% less chance to resist. So at 50% health, you'd be 25% less likely to resist statuses. Then you wouldn't worry much about a character with 20% health remaining resisting a stun. It would also make piercing damage more useful, and add a certain kind of synergy to different damage types, where even a character with high magic armor would be less resistant to magic effects if a physical damager brought their health down low.

I guess I just dislike the idea of major "your hard CC was resisted by 1% chance" swings. So it'd be nice to have some way of applying guaranteed CC. Your health idea sounds nice. I guess no way to show final chance to CC in game until they release the editor? Would be useful since your formula is fairly complicated.

Is there currently a way to add new talents? Something like "30% of your damage is piercing" would go a long way in solving the problem with mixed physical and magical damage groups.

No way to add talents currently as far as I know, but hopefully will be on release. Maybe I'll do something for CC like when resisted, it still applies a weaker variant of the CC (like how I have Staggered and Off Balance, which reduces AP by 1). So there's still be some benefit to the CC even when resisted.

I definitely want to be able to display the formula calculation in the combat log, but not entirely sure how to do that yet. I think it's possible even without the editor.

Would be great if you did. I love the bard class but prefer the existing CC for example (battles are quicker).

I'm not sure scaling the CC resists will necessarily slow down combat. Damaging statuses can be applied earlier, which means more damage. Zero enemies have perseverance (except receiving it through a random buff through my mod), and your application chance scales with your primary stats, so most enemies will have near 0% resist chance without armor.

But I will probably just add an option to turn off the resist system. The only thing is choosing to balance around the resist system -- e.g., song of living nightmare now sucks because its statuses can be resisted. But I think I can roughly balance things for both the vanilla CC system and my resist system.

The main point that would make Push Off more appealing for me is to be able to control it better - meaning if the area you affect was directional, so you can push somebody in a specific direction, depending on your own positioning.

If you could push them off of ledges, and make them take fall damage, that would give me some hard Final Fantasy Tactics nostalgia, haha. That could be pretty complicated to script though, given that you need teleports or stairs/ladders to change elevation.


Oops, indeed! To be honest, I consistently forgot about using it, so it never felt powerful - just useful. I mainly ate something for the buff when I remembered it, so I rarely ate anything for healing.

Off the top of my head, a way to possibly balance the healing effects would be to add a "Full" status after you've eaten a certain number of food items within a certain number of turns. So continually eating while you're full just has no healing. You could even have the status continually progress per food item you eat. Something like:
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That fight was definitely more challenging with your mod, for sure. Dallis knows who really won!

Well, you might see a more directional push skill Push Off! definitely takes good positioning, particularly not being too close to allies at the wrong time. But it also could be used to space your party out, say after using Come Together. Using push or teleport skills to deal extra damage from heights is a big goal of mine. One thing I might do post-release with teleport is make it deal extra damage, maybe apply Off Balance or Staggered, when teleporting a character from a high location to a much lower one. Naturally, the skill would have to rebalanced (2 AP, longer cooldown, maybe a slightly smaller range), since it hardly needs a straight buff.

I think it might be possible to have some of push skill "teleport" enemies to a lower-ground area, though that does sound pretty gnarly to script.

Interesting idea for Five Star Diner, or maybe just for food in general. Not sure I'll go with reducing the healing effect, but definitely could be some downsides to speed and initiative for eating several things in quick succession. Adds some nice... if I will... flavor... :P I'll consider something like it.