Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Mods Guide: Editing companion starting properties

The final boss, the Void Dragon, has the stats HOM_Dragon, which is probably found in the Shared version of Character.txt not the Main version.

If you are unsure, look up what stats characters use by loading the levels in the editor.
For some NPCs it might require a bit of looking, e.g. there are several versions of Leandra, and at least two versions of Icara, and there are many different versions of Arhu. But in normal cases, which are the vast majority, NPCs are usually placed in the area where you encounter them, the Void Dragon is in the level Homestead.

As I said, Vitality from individual entry and Vitality from the meta entry (HardcoreNPC) are added before they are used as multipliers. (Or the Vitality in the meta entry is a multiplier for the base hp again, amthematically, it does not matter.)
So when you change the meta entry to 2000, base HP should be multiplied by 21, even if you set the Vitality in the individual stat to 0, it is still a multiplier of 20 (from 100+2000 down to 0+2000), so of course you don't see very much difference.

Setting Vitality in the meta entry to a value of 2000% is crazy IMO, you have to make players totally overpowered to be able to survive the massive enemy HP. That makes fights take a lot longer but not necessarily harder.

So again, for most NPCs, HP is 100% of their base HP because of the Vitality 100 that most stats inherit from _Base. When an individual entry does not have a 'data "Vitality" "..."' entry, it inherits it from _Base. If such an entry exists, it will overwrite the value inherited from _Base.
(_Base is the entry at the very top of Character.txt)
In Tactician, the HP is 120% of the base HP, because 100+20 (from the meta entry) is 120 and that is the percentage multiplier. In Baardvark's Scales, HP for most NPCs is 200% if base HP, because Baardvark has Vitality 100, and 100+100 is 200 (200% of base HP).
100 in the meta entry is sufficient to double the HP of most NPCs, of ALL NPCs that do not have the Vitality of 100 inherited from _Base overwritten in their used stat.

If you want to double HP of ALL NPCs, you have to add 100 to the meta entry (HardcoreNPC) and adjust the Vitality in the individual stats to a value that is twice the value from before when 100 is added to them. For example if a stat has 'data "Vitality" "120", and you change the meta entry to 100, you have to double the part in the individual entry that is above the default 100, so changing the whole value to 140 will double HP for this individual entry too which had overwritten the 100 inherited from _Base. (140+100 = 240, which is twice the value of the 120 before.)

You can also set Vitality to 0 in the meta entry and instead set Vitality to 200 in the _Base entry and double all values that are overwritten in the individual stats, that is better control of individual stats.
The meta entries serve as a distinction between the difficulty modes, but due to how things work, it does not change everything as one would expect. The entry in meta is not a multiplier of current HP but is calculated from base HP again. This also means that NPCs using a stat with an already very high Vitality in their individual entry are affected A LOT less by it than those that do not have their Vitality overwritten or not much of an increase.

The Void Dragon already has 'data "Vitality" "500"', 500% of base HP, so adding 'data "Vitality" "20"' to HardcoreNPC brings this value to 520 which is of course almost the same.
If you want to double the Void Dragons health, you have to change hi entry to 900 if you change the meta entry to 100, or to 1000 if you change the meta entry to 0 or to 980 if you leave the default 20 for HardcoreNPC.

Changing individual entries though affects ALL difficulty modes.

With your change of the meta entry to 2000 and the additional knowledge that this is added to the multiplier, it is very clear that there is no way to bring the mob's HP down to normal values again, you have to use negative values in the individual entries. (Should work because it also works for "CasualNPC".)
You'd have to use a huge negative value to counter your huge positive one. (like -1900 to bring it down to +100 again)
But using negative values affects classic and explorer mode again, with a value as high as 2000 and the required adjustments in individual stats, all NPCs in classic and explorer probably end up with 1 HP, all a oneshot basically.

Here's the creating combat document:
https://1drv.ms/w/s!AqX6ORoY5-DlgmG0j7xQPx56TrtC



If the child entry has a blank space in a column it will take whatever is filled in from the parent.

So I'm guessing those chickens and rats have nothing filled in for vitality (because they usually just use constitution like I mentioned). Basically you did give them 2000 vitality :P.




Did you run the macro after making changes? For simplicity just use the all.xlsm macro.

Also the excel files should go in Public\<YOUR MOD>\Stats
The excel files generate txt files which end up in the Public\<YOUR MOD>\Stats\Generated folder.



As far as I know, yes to all of those.

Thank you for the explanation. Now I slowly understand what you wrote last time, about how both base and meta entries are taken into account while calculating final stats. It was a bit confusing for me at that time because I was new to it, but now I understand after reading your post. Anyways, I did some tests with different "vitality" values in the individual entry while still keeping the vitality 2000 in "hardcoreNPC". In rat's individual entry, I modified the vitality to -10K(lol), and now its down to 1 HP.

Sounds good

It is NOT the HP value, Vitality is the multiplier for the base HP, which are calculated from constitution and Act Part.

Test it in a game, you can even test it with a player, it is the percentage that is shown as 'Boost' in the tooltip of the character's HP.



With a value of 2000, he changed the multiplier from 120% (default 20 for Tactician in the meta entry) to 2100.
Standard entries have the base value of 100 from 'using' _Base or an entry that is 'using' _Base.

Of course does changing individual entries to lower value hardly have any effect, changing individual Vita to 50 only brings the overall multiplier percentage down from 2100 to 2050 (2100% to 2050%), which is hardly any difference.

In one case, base HP is multiplied by 21, in the other by 20.5.


Yes, anything can be used in the 'using' part, as long as it exists.

Good.

Be aware that any change of individual entries affects all difficulty modes while changing the 'meta entry' (HardcoreNPC, CasualNPC, etc., all those between the _Base entry and the _Hero entry at the top of the file) only affects the corresponding difficulty mode.

So, for all stats, add Vitality from the individual stat and Vitality from the meta entry and divide the result by 100. Then you have the value by which base HP is multiplied to get the final HP value.

This means that changing the meta entry to incredibly high values must be countered by changing the Vitality in individual stats by incredibly high negative values or you'll end up with absolutely crazy HP values.


You also saw the only existing limit, and that is not at the top but at the bottom: a character cannot have below 1 HP or negative values which would be the result when multiplying with a negative number.
(0 HP is probably the status 'DEAD' ;-)

(Well, technically there ARE limits of course dictated by the values that fit into an integer, but those values are so incredibly high compared to the used ingame values that it's not really worth mentioning;-)

I didn't see this post earlier. Thanks for the files.
Yeah, I managed to get the txt files from the excel files

The rat had around 570 HP(tutorial dungeon, near the 2 undead mummy skeletons). Their individual vitality entries were 0. At -10000 individual vitality, the rat had 1 HP. At -2000 vitality, now it has 30 HP. That's what I am going with for now.



Makes sense to me. The hardcorenpc vitality was 2000, and rat's individual vitality was -2000. So now the rat has its base HP, which is 30.

Exactly.
(I suppose this is the HP that comes out for 2 constitution at level 1, although I haven't looked at the rat's stat.)

I do not know how the Excel macros work nor do I know VBA nor did I ever bother to look at the macros, not sure if I could even look at them with LibreOffice (and not willing to buy Excel only to do some modding).
But it could be that an entry of 0 in the Excel file results in no line with Vitality in the individual stat which means it would take the value 100 inherited from _Base (or _Animal which inherits from _Base, does not matter).
You always have to look at the result in the .txt file, looking only at the Excel values might give you false results. (If the rat really had an entry of 0, if should have 1 HP in classic and explorer mode.)


Of course you can change the tactician meta entry to 2000 and adjust the individual stats accordingly. But without any change to the classic and explorer mode meta entries, all NPCs in classic and explorer will have 1 HP because of the required high negative values in the individual stats required to counter the crazy high value in meta (HardcoreNPC).

It's much better to start with a way lower Vitality in the meta and only change the individual entries where necessary.
As already mentioned, Baardvark's change already doubled enemy HP of all enemmies that use stats which do not have a Vitality entry, because those use the default 100 from the included _Base.
If that was the only change he made, he did of course not double HP of all NPCs with Vitality higher than 100, because adding 100 can only double 100 but not 120. And he overdid it with NPCs that have Vitality lower than 100.

Every change you make in individual stats also affects all other difficulty modes, which is not the biggest problem for moderate changes, but a big problem for huge changes in stats required to counter a huge meta entry. (The individual stats are for ALL difficulty modes, the meta entry only for the corresponding difficulty mode.)
For example, it is much better to change meta from 0 to 100 than changing meta from 0 to 2000 and counter that by changing individual stats to -1800, which has the same outcome, but ONLY for the difficulty mode which has the 2000 meta Vitality. Without adjustment, all HP in all other modes would be 1 for all NPCs, independent of level, because without changes there all NPC Vitalities would have to be negative to counter the way too high 2000 of the meta entry !
(You saw this with your change to -10000, the result was negative which lead to 1 HP.)

So my advice is, use a way lower value in the meta entry and only adjust all stats that have Vitality different from the base of 100.
Start with the value that achieves your desired goal, e.g. 100 to have HP doubled for most NPCs. If you want triple HP, use 200 and so forth. Then adjust the individual entries that have overwritten the 100 from _Base. For example, with 100 in meta, the Void Dragon needs 900 in his individual stat instead of the default 500 to double his HP, because 900+100 = 1000 which is 2*500. Using 2000 in meta and setting the Vitality value of his stat entry to -1000 only to achieve the desired +1000 does not make sense (and negatively affects other difficulty modes).
As a rule, double the value that is above 100 and add that to 100 for the individual entry (because that is what is 'missing' in the meta entry.

Be aware that there are Vitality entries below 100 in stats, for example, the tutorial skeletons use 60 as far as I remember. To double their HP with a 100 meta entry, add the value that 60 is above 100, which is -40, so the stats of those would become 20 instead of 60. 20+100 is 120 and voila, you have HP doubled. (This is a change that would very negativley affect classic and explorer mode though.)

With 100 in meta, an entry of 120 in the stat should become 140, the resulting value is 240 (100 from meta + 140 from stat) which is exactly twice the original 120.

Not a single entry without any overwritten Vitality nor _Base has to be changed if you don't overdo it in the meta entry.

I doubt that you really want NPCs to have around 20 times the HP they currently have, so do not start with 2000 in the meta entry.
(The Dragon would only have 5 times his current HP because he starts with a very high Vitality of 500 already.)

For some reason after editing some simple stats my game tells me I will not be able to play the mod in multiplayer?
How do I get around this?

By just ignoring it. You will still be able to play it in multiplayer.

Did you get along anyway?