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

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a tutorial template kind of thing for people to play with, but I'm also kind of leery of that, since that will be out of date by next patch.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.