NWN2 Adding a Companion to NWN2 OC

[Xxtayce]

I've been looking forever and haven't found it, so I'm thinking I may have to either bug you guys or try my hand at it myself.

 

Originally, I wanted someone to convert HotU/SoU to NWN2. I love the characters and storyline of NWN1 but I miss a lot of the little things (like the sort inventory button!) and classes and such from NWN2. Then I realized, I'd probably be fine with NWN2 as-is... if I could add my own companions to the OC.

 

Namely, Deekin and Valen.

 

It looks like all the original voices are there in the toolset, and I think I would have to start by editing the OC, adding in a companion somewhere in the beginning, and exporting everything to save it in my override folder. I have a problem with the toolset, though, and it crashes or freezes on me constantly, so I'm hoping for advice from the people here.

 

Kind of sad that I have to force myself to like Casavir, or deal with Gann being a jerk if I want a decent OC/XP romance option. Oh - and I tried playing SoZ but couldn't get past the beach (it irritated me) and having fake Valen and fake Deekin there just wasn't the same without the voice sets.

 

Am I correct in thinking this is how I would start to go about creating a companion for myself? Does this exist somewhere already and I just haven't found it? Is there a better way of doing this that someone can think of?

[Tchos]

I checked first to see if anyone had made Deekin into a companion for the OC, but didn't find any. It is entirely possible to do, though, and could be done relatively easily. I've experimented successfully with taking over existing characters and modifying them on the fly.

 

It sounds like you might not know that Deekin is in the NWN2 OC, and refers to his adventures in NWN1. He's in the city of Neverwinter, in a location that's initially blocked off to you. I believe you're right that the original voices are there.

 

If I were to create the bare minimum scripts and conversation necessary to bring him into the party as a companion, he would lose his unique conversation. With more care, his unique conversation from the OC could be imported into his new companion conversation.

 

Unlike Deekin, Valen is not in the OC.

[Xxtayce]

Deekin is "in" the OC, but he's not really in the OC.

 

Having him as your own little merchant is cute and all, but it's just not the same as having the preteen voice-squeaking adorable little kobold with a heart too big for his body in my party. I'm thinking I could replace Grobnar with Deekin and just have some other NPC play Deekin's role of homeless merchant / keep merchant if it's less difficult than adding in a companion from scratch.

 

• First, how do I go about editing the OC? The campaign is visible in campaign editor, but the individual mods in my mods folder don't show when I try to open them. I imagine there's some button I'm overlooking for "Campaign Modules" vs "Regular Modules" like there was with NWN1. (Oh, and once I figure out how to edit the OC, what's the best way to back up my originals before I start doing it so that I don't break something?)

 

• Second, I'm thinking there's got to be some setting to lower resolution or graphics in the toolset. My "gaming" laptop isn't that old (~2yrs), and this is a pretty old game, but every time I try to open the appearance editor or have more than two walls and one door in an area, everything freezes and I have to close the toolset via task manager. What am I missing?

 

For Valen, I know I'd have to make him from the ground up and either replace Casavir (which probably wouldn't work too well) or have him as another companion option who just happens to be drinking in the bar in the docks, or hiding in Highpass or something.

 

Not sure how to port him from one act to another, but that's another hurdle I'll cross when I get that far.

 

Thanks for the response, Tchos :) I'll try to not bug you too much once I get the hang of this.

[Tchos]

It's not difficult to change merchant Deekin into companion Deekin. You just edit his conversation to add options to join the party and attach the proper scripts that add him to the roster, etc. The only difficult thing is writing and adding in all of the dialogue and conversation that a companion usually has.

 

Or you could create an alternate copy of Deekin and leave the merchant Deekin in place. It's not really any different in terms of difficulty, but that might be a better idea if you don't want any weirdness to possibly happen if the game tries to transfer Deekin to the keep when he's in your party.

 

It's also not hard to make an entirely new character into a recruitable companion from the ground up, aside from what I was saying about the in-depth conversations, but to make it work in the OC, which spans several modules, for a new character you'd have to give them hangout points and spawn points to allow them to persist across modules.

 

You can edit the OC entirely through the override folder, which is how I would do it. You can of course open the modules directly and save your changes into them, but my preferred method doesn't require any backing up. If you get nothing when you try to open the individual modules of the OC, as sometimes happens to me, I believe it's a lack of memory. Try closing and relaunching the toolset. Generally I can only open one OC module per toolset session before it runs out of memory.

 

Opening a module that is assigned to a campaign will automatically give you access to the campaign resources in addition to the module resources.

 

To lower the resolution in the toolset, choose View>Options, and click the option Graphics on the left column. Click the plus sign to the left of "RenderSize" to expand it, and type in your desired width and height. Also turn off any other options you don't need, like shadows, normal mapped terrain, fog, or whatever helps.

 

However, the Appearance Wizard is bugged, and almost always crashes. Don't use it. Instead use the Creature Properties palette for the basic options, and the "Armour set" sub-tab on the Properties palette to edit the clothing options and colours.

[Tchos]

See here, now. I did a rough draft mod just to show how simple it can be. By extracting these files into your override folder, you can ask Deekin to join your party, and he will readily agree. He will continue to talk about the same things he talked about when he was standing there as a merchant, and I haven't tested to see if he survives moving across modules.

 

As this is a very rough draft, there are some other things to note:

• He will join the party no matter how many people you already have in the party.
• The only way to remove him from the party is through the party management UI. If you do that, he'll fade into Limbo, and you'll need to make sure you have space in your party to add him back in, again with the UI.
• He doesn't know any bard spells, but he has all of the bard feats, songs, and inspirations. He's level 10.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27739431/Misc%20NWN2/Deekin%20companion.7z

 

The option for him to join the party will only appear when you tell him that you want to ask him about something else. That may require speaking to him several times until he's done with all of his special dialogue, like first-time meeting, Khelgar or Sand talking about him, etc. The option to look for is "Would you like to join my adventuring party, Deekin?"

Edited August 7, 2014 by Tchos

[Tchos]

Also, if you know which bard spells he's supposed to have, based on his NWN1 self, let me know, and I can teach them to him.

[Xxtayce]

Oh my gosh I love you.

 

The time-consuming dialogue part doesn't bother me as much, since a lot of the backstory will be copy/paste convos from HotU and SoU. I like the little details of mod making more than the big picture anyway, so I'm more than happy to do that part :)

 

For Deekin's spells, these are the only ones that show in the nwn1 toolset (in xp1 or xp2) - I think he picks up others with "Default Bard" package as he levels up to catch up to you:

 

Bard

Level 0

1 x Cure Minor Wounds

1 x Daze

1 x Light

1 x Resistance

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Level 4

Level 5

Level 6

Level 7

Level 8

Level 9

And his feats are:

Class/Racial Feats

Alertness

Weapon Proficiency (creature)

Combat Feats

Weapon Proficiency (rogue)

Weapon Proficiency (simple)

Defensive Feats

Armor Proficiency (light)

Armor Proficiency (medium)

Shield Proficiency

Other Feats

Bard Song

Bardic Knowledge

Darkvision

Rapid Reload

[Xxtayce]

I'm not very familiar with nwn2 toolset yet so I'm not sure what I need to do for hangout points and spawn points - these are created like waypoints were in nwn1, I imagine? And would Deekin's limbo go away if he was given these? I think I recall Deekin gets duplicated when he joins you at the keep, and if you go back to the merchant district, he should still be there, so aside from conversation weirdness of having him there twice, I think it's okay to turn hobo Deekin into companion Deekin.

 

I was worried about party limit with adding new NPC's. Would they all exist outside of the party limit, no matter how many I made?

[Tchos]

Thanks for the love. :) It goes a long way.

 

I've never actually dealt with hangouts, myself, but they're just normal waypoints like any other waypoints, and so are spawn points. The important things are the tags that follow whatever naming convention the author goes with. It's just what the scripts do with them that makes them one thing or another. I haven't checked the OC scripts for a while, so I don't know exactly what needs to be done, what the naming convention is, or where the tags of the waypoints need to be declared, or if they do at all, but doing that would make him appear in the Sunken Flagon with everyone else, or Crossroad Keep, or whatever other hangout you have. I speculate that if you keep him in your party all the time, you may not need them. Would need to test that by going from one module to another, and in and out of a place like the Sunken Flagon or Crossroad Keep.

 

The party limit is just an artificial limit that gets set in the conversations and can be changed to anything, or ignored. As far as I know, there is no real limit to how many characters you can have in your party, and there's definitely no limit to how many characters can be selected from. You could recreate all of your favourite characters if you wanted, and have them all in your party.

 

Since I didn't add any limits or checks in my modification, Deekin is exempt from the party limit only when you first talk to him, and afterward he is subject to it. This lack of checks also means that if you speak to him and ask him to join the party again, it'll reset his level, because I didn't add the usual conditions for seeing if he's already in the party or if you've already added him to the roster. The nature of a rough draft. Normally, I would structure the conversation with all of the same checks and limits that the other companions have, such as in my campaign, where I enforce a 5-member party, with an optional 6th member if you have the Leadership feat.

[Xxtayce]

Oh, no worries about it being 'rough draft', lol. Just asking questions so I can understand better. I don't want to bug people every time I decide I want to make/add a new companion :smile:

 

I actually started making my Valen the other day with feats, skills, etc but noticed something odd-ish? The "Conversation" box in his properties seems greyed out - I'm assuming I did something wrong there.

 

Edit - meh, I bet it's because my test mod doesn't have any conversations in it. Sorry. If that's the case, disregard. For companion conversations, would it be advisable to copy someone's from the OC and make modifications based on it? There's a lot of conditions on conversation there, I imagine.

Edited August 8, 2014 by Xxtayce