[tsl] Tabletop RPG Tweak

[vanir]

Okay firstly full credits for the inspiration of this mod goes to Paragon for his original "d20 conversion" mod. Without being able to follow his work I couldn't have expanded on it a little to do this. Second credits goes to Shem's idea of toning down unrealistic visual effects (not the focus of this mod, but I did tone down some visual effects and Shem did it first so, credits dude ).

 

I wish to foremost state that no original creative material by any modder has been reproduced in this mod. It is simply 2da edits and a couple of lines of script.

 

download here from mediafire until it is up at filefront with a review, etc.

 

Just to reiterate, can't believe it totally slipped my mind to mention (you tend to take it for granted when it's obvious...but some things are only obvious to a modder), this is RESTORED CONTENT for TSL. The specifics of its application have been edited by me based on my ideas, those of West End Games, Wizards of the Coast and Paragon's initial implementation (hence many bows and applause deserved towards them all).

Here's an excerpt from the readme,

The SW:RPG tabletop system is being used here, first featured by West End Games d6 system and carried through into the d20 system some years later.

 

The original system of Force Powers had three. Control, Sense and Alter. Then you had Force effects, which were gained by using these three powers.

 

Here is how the system worked. Let's say you had Control 3d6, Sense 2d6 and Alter 1d6+2 (each pip in a Force power costs you experience points).

Okay so now you want to move an object with Telekinesis. The GM tells you it's an Alter power, so you roll 1d6+2 to defeat the difficulty according to the mass of the object. A 1kg object is a 5 difficulty. Get it?

 

So now you've used your Telekinesis and you write that down under Alter as one of your powers.

 

Next your Jedi character walks into a Canteena and wants to read somebody's mind. Oh that's a Sense power, the GM tells you. So you roll 2d6. Easy, right?

 

Well let's say you happen to be one of those pain in the butt players who absolutely has to start the game doing everything Palpatine does. Force Lightning, you say, I want to Force Lightning those Bounty Hunters over there.

 

The GM looks it up in the Sourcebook and tells you it's a combined power, very difficult to do. You have to combine a Sense and Alter roll (add them and divide by two). That's 1d6+2 here and the difficulty is 30. Come back when you're a Jedi Master...though making more than half the difficulty could get you a little spark, like a short ranged shock effect. Just not the full blown Palpatine Force Lightning that blasts enemies across the room.

 

Making any sense? Say you want to Heal yourself. A Control power. Heal somebody else, a Control and Sense power. Alter somebody's mind, Control, Sense and Alter. Stun a droid, Control and Alter.

 

Like I said this got brought across to the d20 system used in common with the NWN Aurora Engine used in KotOR/TSL. It was adjusted for the new Proficiency/Feat system, but essentially retained its characteristics where Force Powers were concerned. It did slap extra rules on them.

 

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CHANGES IN THIS MOD - Force powers

 

Jedi must select a base Force feat Control, Sense or Alter during level up (among the force powers screen). These will give access to regular force powers, each Force feat gives access to different power trees and some require more than one to gain access (like the Force Lightning or Heal power trees). Additional force power slots have been provided so that you effectively gain these Force feats for free. Due to the way TSL starts you will get 3 powers at Level 2 (the first time you select Force powers, the two you should've got at first level you get now, in addition to one for second level).

The compromise to be made is that due to this, when recruiting Jedi later they cannot choose any powers until 2nd level, when they will get 3 (and have to spend one on the Force feats Control, Sense or Alter to get access to individual powers).

 

There is something very important to be noted about all this, but let's get something else out of the way first.

 

 

Jedi Guardians get access to the Control power at first level, Sense at 6th level and Alter at 12th level. Naturally this restricts the types of powers they can select at certain levels, but keep in mind that Lightsabre Combat relies upon Control and Sense, for blaster deflection and enhanced defensive abilities so these two are most important for Jedi Guardians.

 

Jedi Consulars get access to the Sense power at 1st, Alter at 6th and Control at 12th. They are like the wizards of the setting, beginning with telepathic related abilities and many say this is difficult for some to handle, Consulars have the highest ratio of leaving the Order or falling to the Dark Side, but also tend to be the most powerful Force users at mid levels. No other Jedi can do Force Lightning at 6th level.

 

Jedi Sentinels get Alter at 1st, Control at 6th and Sense at 12th. These are the adventuring Jedi of the Order, almost as capable as a Guardian in battle and almost as knowledgable as a Consular in the Force. At sixth level they can run around disabling Sith War Droids, at first level they can telekinetically move things. But their main strength is balance and skill use.

 

 

All other Force powers require any or any combination of Control, Sense and Alter to select during level up, in addition to any other requirements.

 

Now before you get all happy about there being so many force power slots being tossed around, there will come times during level up when you simply have no Force powers available, because you don't have the Force feat requirements for them.

 

Because you cannot leave the screen until either all available powers are selected or you have no slots left, this forces the PC to select good/evil powers regardless of their alignment. There are six levels between Force Feats and some combinations of Force feats might only have three good aligned powers for them, so you'll have to choose evil ones even if playing a lightsider. And vice versa. There's no real tailoring Lightsider/Sith only characters until Prestige classing, both good and evil PCs will have access to the others abilities like it or not.

 

Now this forces something else upon the PC which is an important piece of canon. Any Jedi can use the Dark Side of the Force, but whatever new tricks he teaches himself he'll tend to keep a secret for power mongering purposes. It is the Jedi Code and not ignorance which keeps the Order together. Darth Vader used simple telekinesis to murder from afar, but this is a Dark Side power. The temptation for the Jedi is there even during combat, these powers should be available readily, the great test is never to use them, never to submit to temptation. You'll get Dark Side points if you do.

 

Now I've got to tell you I usually play a Sentinel and I've been seriously tempted to use Wound more than a few times because Laigreks were carving me to bits and I was scoring like 1 hit in 5 with melee.

 

Oh yeah I tweaked combat.

 

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OTHER CHANGES

 

Class attack tables.

People, and RPG gamers do this too, tend to come at things like attack and saving throw tables from the wrong angle. They always take the most elite and consider that the standard when it is not at all the case. The standard or average is of course in the middle. Higher than this is most elite, quite specialised. Worse than this is simply being better at other things.

 

Average Joe isn't particularly good with twirling complex ornate swords or field stripping small arms and probably doesn't know the difference between a flash bomb and a thermal detonator, but he can toss a ball and swing a bat, he can lift a heavy object or go for a jog without collapsing, he can hit half the time at a carnival air gun contest. He's not incapable and that's our average galactic citizen. This is what CLS_ATK_2 looks like and this is our measure.

 

Scoundrels, Scouts, Expert Droids, Minions and Jedi Consulars are all average rank.

 

Professional Soldiers, Combat Droids, Jedi Guardians and Sentinels and all prestige classes are elite status.

 

Tech experts are now lesser rank, as these include professional scholars, doctors, scientists and computer programmers as well as starship engineers and other "tougher seeming" careers. None are at all combat orientated and their character backgrounds are necessarily far from it (even Bao Dur spent more time at HQ camp during the Mandalorian Wars fixing/engineering things than he did in front line combat obviously).

 

 

Experience table has had a slight adjustment. It's not far from original, just tweaked a little to work better with the new Force power system.

 

The creature difficulties have been slightly adjusted too, but what I did avoid was making a situation where you've got boring hour long combat with jawas that have six thousand vitality points. If creatures are going to be tougher they need to be special or unique, otherwise simply well balanced and some recognition of what type they are will do. There is a point where gizka just can't threaten a Jedi Master in combat for example, and they well and truly should go down with the first hit.

 

Okay so that's about it, enjoy the mod.

[Miltiades]

O Paragon, where art thou? He, along with some other guys, where working on another mod, in the same genre like his original and this mod. Haven't heard from him in a long time, though.

 

Anyway, while I'm not that into the pure RPG aspect of the game, I do love a new system to play with, and something that make sense in the context of the story and setting. Great job, vanir.

[vanir]

Thanks Miltiades, cheers mate.

 

Update.

Have to wait for filefront review/approval now for the link.

And I just thought of a possible (slight) bug. I'm guessing the jedi recruitment of party members reads character level for Force power advancement and not jedi level, which would affect available powers to recruited Jedi (they'd have too much proficiency freedom too quickly).

 

That'll mean more scripting. I'll have to make up an ncs file that calls getjedilevel scripts instead of getcharacterlevel (or whatever), for Force power progression. I'll start hunting through nss files but if any experienced scripters could narrow down the search for me that'd be much appreciated.

 

OP updated with a mediafire link in the meantime.

 

To install this mod you may need to merge some 2da files if they are already being used in your Override folder.

Files included in this mod are:

 

exptable.2da

visualeffects.2da

skills.2da

forceadjust.2da

classes.2da

classpowergain.2da

autobalance.2da

spells.2da

dialog.tlk

 

I'll do a TSL Patcher version when I've sorted the ncs requirement to make sure Jedi recruitment follows the restrictions, but it'll be a while in coming. This one is good for gameplay, the only thing is following Jedi recruitment the PC will likely have more Force power selection freedom for party members than he did for his own character (though considering he is their instructor that could work too). Making up a Patcher is going to be a long winded and tedious process for all the edits, so I mean I'll get to it...eventually. Kotor Tool and Winmerge can work wonders for you in the meantime

[Qui-Gon Glenn]

Have you contacted Pavlos or any of the other modders that were working on the project during Paragon's first (and long) absence?

 

They might have some resources for you...

[VarsityPuppet]

Now's probably not a great time for listing bugs, but it seems that you can get force powers via the "recommend" tool that are outside your sense/alter/control powers. I was able to get Force Push without having any of those (though, to be fair, it was a preexisting game). Just something to look out for.

 

On top of that, I would edit the strings in dialog.tlk which describe the force powers, as I was unsure which ones were attributed to sense/alter/control.

 

That's all the input I have now.

[R2-X2]

If you get force powers with KSE ore other tools it is cheating, and you can't call it a bug.

[vanir]

Have you contacted Pavlos or any of the other modders that were working on the project during Paragon's first (and long) absence?

 

They might have some resources for you...

 

Been talking to ermo lately. It's a little dead but we might be doing a revival. There's a bit of work done but it was a bit ambitious perhaps and RL got in the way. We may cut something down to the bare bones and release it, I'll have to see what everyone wants to do and who's still around.

 

@varsity, oh yeah I forgot about the descriptions. I'd thought of most of that ages ago but it's been a long time since I did anything tsl, I just kinda jumped straight back in and I clean forgot.

[VarsityPuppet]

@R2-X2

I can't use KSE for the Xbox and no other cheats were involved, so yes... it is a bug. However, like I said, I loaded up a normal pre-Tabletop RPG gamesave (Nar Shaddaa, level 12 or something like that) and I leveled up, hit recommend, and it gave me force push even though I didn't have the required base feat. BUG

 

@vanir

I figured it was something like that. You do plan on fixing it though, right?

[vanir]

Link updated (tlk file edited). I'll have to find some way to probably disable the "recommend" button, but this is more a lack of Player restriction than a bug per se. Simply don't use it (a real bug is some kind of scripting conflict within the program from the mod, of which there aren't any because it's restored content).

Similarly there is an issue with Visas and Kreia when they join the party, the standard 2da files for their characters should really be edited with the new Force powers restrictions (I like to also add Force Sight for Visas routinely, as she necessarily has this power being Miraluka). This also isn't really a bug, just laziness. I haven't bothered going through every npc and party member 2da editing. Several mods feature custom equipment for party member 2da files too, so this would best require a Patcher version. Relatively few mods deal with spells.2a and diolog.tlk (just one or two so editing manually isn't a biggie).

 

There is one slight bug, could be with Kotor Tool. I haven't figured out how to get Control, Sense and Alter to show up in Kotor Tool yet, which means when editing party member 2da you can't give them these feats, so they will necessarily come with Force powers without having the requirements strictly speaking, although when you initially level them up upon joining the party, you will still have to select these prerequisites then as Force power selection from this point is dependent upon them. It essentially means the best course is to edit Kreia and Visas 2da selecting Force powers in accordance with their Force feat requirements manually, then choosing the Force feats at the character screen in game to continue Force power selection. Not a bug again per se, but an easy way to cheat if you feel like it, which would be like a long version of using KSE in a sense.

 

The mod is still playable no prob and won't mess anything up, but there are these fine tuning points (and as earlier mentioned the same thing with recruited Jedi probably being read for character level rather than Jedi level for Force feat level requirement which is wrong). They'll get fixed in a future patch, but it might be part of a slightly larger version based out of the Gizka forum. I guess this could be considered a beta release just for kicks, it's the gameplay system I've always been using in my TSL installation and to tell the truth I wouldn't play it any other way.

 

 

link updated again, I'd missed some entries on the tlk file.