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Animal Companion/Familiar Rebalance
I've always thought that original mage / druid pets were poorly balanced, had many errors like no attack at higher levels, weird skill and atributes progression, no immunities / feats at some levels, low AC that made them a complete joke against serious enemies. Almost every player used only Bear, Direwolf or Panther. The rest of the animals could be useful only for RP purposes.
With this tweak pack I tried to completely remake all creatures and create the feeling that your pet is almost a part of the group with useful and progressive skills, attributes, feats, spells, abilities and resists. Every creature now viable at every level - direrat, bat, badger or hawk.
Installation and Compatibility
Put all of the files from the archive in your Override directory or place .hak file in Patch directory and add "PatchFile000/001=Animal/Familiar Rebalance" in nwnpatch.txt.
While doing this rebalance I took into account 1.72 Community Patch fixes, overriding most of them and adding new fixes so its ok to use them together.
I dont have an opportunity to test this on EE version or analyze their changes, though I think it should be compatible, doubt that Beamdog alter the game that much.
More detailed info on my changes is listed at attached Excel-file, which I strongly recommend to look.
Animal Rebalance Dire changes Bear and Badger to Dire Bear and Badger (appearance, portrait, name, description and soundset), nothing different about their stats. Use this instead of Animal Rebalance if you prefer it over original.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 description.rar (697) | 190 KB |
| animal_rebalance.rar (686) | 760.51 KB |
| familiar_rebalance.rar (678) | 2.84 MB |
| animal_rebalance_dire.rar (0) | 760.67 KB |
Really nice, I always hate the fact that animals/familiars are so weak, even the summons they are weak in my opinion, I hope you can finish balancing all the creatures, without a doubt it is a mod that is worth trying, although my only question is if it will be compatible with the EE version? It would be good if you put in the description if it is or is not, thanks.
it should be compatible with EE without problems
Updated Animal Rebalance, previous version was so horrible, I wish I could destroy it with fire and erase from my memory.
Its fully compatible with earlier saves, just resummon your animal.
Great!! Thanks for all you work with this, i can't wait to see the complete version
Thank you very much for your hard work friend, I especially appreciate it because my class will always be a mage/wizzard and i never summon the familliar because they were useless, sincerely thank you very much, I will be pending for when you start your other project, i whish you have a good weekend.
Thanks!
Added an optional version of Animal Rebalance with Bear and Badger replaced by Dire Bear and Dire Badger to better match their description: "They are often found in the company of powerful rangers or druids." This two creatures were only exception, the rest of the Druid animals are dire versions (boar as well, even though its called just a boar (changed this typo too)). And giant mammoth-like Dire Bear just looks cool.
This is only a visual change.
- Creature Blueprints now correctly displays in Nwn Tool, Tutorial Palette.
- Fixed challenge rating for every creature.
- Added missing creature descriptions when you inspect them (eye-icon).
- Added First and Last name to creatures on Level Up screen.
- Giant Spider 17lvl no longer uses original weapon and properties.
Comparison - https://ibb.co/c7kXSK
- Added new creatures - Great Cobra for Druid and Ghost for Necromancer. The ghost's downside is incredibly annoying moaning sound, so I included 2 files: one with 75% decreased volume and another with complete silence.
Cool, fixed and new things, thanks!! I would like to have more free time to try every class and test everything XD
Oh this looks wonderful! Thanks so much for making these fixes - but could you possibly make a version that keeps the Panther for mages? And for the Hellhound, maybe it would be possible to give him the Cone of Fire monster special ability, it scales and wouldn't have the awkward casting time.
Regardless, it's so nice to see something that addresses the weakness of the default companions.
There are actually many reasons I dislike familiar Panther:
1) By the DnD Lore and ingame mechanic Familiar is something secondary to a Mage, little obedient creature/slave who does the dirty work or helps with the researches. Panther doesnt fit in any of this, its neither a small animal or planar being. Familiar's ID actually is NW_FM_CRAG - white leopard-like magic cat with Enchantment-immunity. So it seems the Panther was supposed to be a Crag Cat, which make much more sense.
2) Panther is incredibly powerful. It has good Base damage, all ten ranks of Sneak Attack, Dexterity (armor) and a lot of HP. In original game familiars are much weaker than druid animals, because Mage is much more powerful than a Druid. I am trying to follow this idea and just dont know how to balance Panther into all this.
3) There is no way to make familiar Panther unique to an animal version and it really bothers me.
Cone of Fire is already taken by a Pseudodragon and I dont want to use it twice. Also its quite powerful and since Hellhound is the only fighter-like familiar (STR based, fighter BAB and Cleave), it would be too OP in my opinion. Hellhound's Breath should be a bit weak, just secondary AOE-attack, something like Burning Hands. I will try to do something with this script in the future.
Damn it, it's the closest thing my witch can get to a black cat familiar! But no, I see what you mean and it makes sense given the nature of the other familiars.
I can make a separate version with druid panther reassigned to a mage, without any stat changes, so it will be stronger that other familiars.
http://rgho.st/7cBm7tDdH
Added Cat Familiar with CEP models - Black, Orange and White. Its basically the same pet, but with different colour and resistances.
Once again changed creatures (movement speed, feats, stats). Returned Hellhound Breath Ability, because I'm an idiot and this ability was fixed long time ago by CPP.
Adding new creatures requires changes in Dialog.tlk, which could cause compatibility problems, especially with EE, so I guess the best solution would be adding 4 new lines (instead of empty ones) manually with TLKEditor:
- 112010 - "Black Cat"
- 112011 - "Orange Cat"
- 112012 - "White Cat"
- 112013 - "House and alley cats are common in populated areas, prized for their abilities to keep the rodent populations in check; that is, when they are not being persecuted as the familiar of a local witch."
Find out about annoying thing - while summoned, creatures have Custom Name (that you give them) AND Last Name (which is (x - Level)). So your familiar may have name like "Bob (5)" which is a bit awkward. I learned about it only now, because I'm using NWNCX and it hides Last Name.
http://www.neverwinternights.info/nwncx.htm
A little update.
Original game used creature's race by default as a class with predefined BAB and saving throw table. So every undead or fey has shitty mage attack, every animal has rogue attack, every outsider and dragon has warrior attack unless its manually changed. Because of that some familiars such as Mephits or Faerie Dragon were extremely deadly with 4-5 attack per round at 20 lvl and monk(!) saving throws. Pixie was generously given a Rogue class to made her able to at least hit something.
I decided to standartize all this to make balancing easier and created 2 new classes - Animal Companion and Familiar, each with Rogue BAB and generic Creature Saving throws. Companion differences will now be defined by their stats and abilities, not their class.
Animals already had Animal class with rogue attack table, so this change didnt affected them, but Mephits/Hellhound and Faerie/Pseudodragon from now on will be much weaker (it make sence that trickster-like Mephit/Faerie Dragon is similar to pixie, not killing machine), Ghost and Pixie will be stronger (basically upgrade from mage to rogue).
To lessen pathfinding problems and out of combat time, every animal and familiar now has Fast movement speed (approximately 20% faster than original). Considering increased combat capacity and speed Pixie no longer has permanent Haste. Great Cobra's Improved Initiative swapped with Snake's Blood. New creatures OnRest script had a typo, that was fixed.
__
Added missing Regeneration for Cats.
Great work! Any chance you could take the additional animals from this pack into account? I love the winter wolf...
https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/hakpak/original-hakpak/animal-companions-pack
I also would like to report that while using this as a hak patch, I get an access violation error every time I try to open a module in the toolset. No idea how this could be caused.
EDIT: It actually happens in the override as well. Something about this pack produces a toolset access violation error no matter which module I attempt to open (even hakless ones). I am at a loss. This is on 1.69/1.71 CPP.
Hello and thank u for the hard work! I have a problem tho, I've installed the mod by trasfering all the files in the override folder to the override folder in C:/User/Documents/Neverwinter Nights (I play Enhanced Edition) and I've already tried transfering them to the override folder in the game folder too. Funny when I try to summon my animal companion, a message appears saying that I've successfully summoned him, but nothing happens. Can u help me out? Also, I've tried to understand ur installation instrucions via hack file to no avail, there's no Patch folder anywhere in my nwn related folders, nor a nwnpatch.txt file. Thank you in advance!
EDIT: I've installed the module via hak file and tweaking the nwnpatch file (userpatch on EE), I'm completely sure that I've done everythng right, and I still can't get it to work. :/
EDIT 2: I've even tried it on a new game on a fresh reinstall.
EDIT 3: After hours I've realized that this module is simply incompatible with Aielund Saga, at least on EE. I've tested it on other campaign modules and it worked like a charm.
1st thing to try is to remove all user made files from the game install folders. In EE they do not belong there and can cause problems. All user made content for EE goes in the C:/User/Documents/Neverwinter Nights folders.
TR
Thank you for trying to help me, mate! Sadly, I've already deleted those and it still doesn't work. :/
Hello there. I am actually surprised to find that many messages all of a sudden. To clarify things about my mod:
I was very enthusiastic about it a year ago, but after some time I burned out of it and NWN in general. I have tried to test all creatures in different modules and there is a problem with their difficulty "theme" - for example in Swordflight my modded creatures seems week for obvious reasons, when in original campaign they could be too strong. So I lost interest in finding a perfect balance and releasing minor updates every week.
Adding creatures is actually a super easy thing to do, especially when I already have a template with feats/stats/abilities for them. But its still take a lot of time in Toolset to create 40 variations of that creature, which I have a little interest right now. You can try to do it yourself, its not that hard and I'll be happy to clarify thing if its needed.
I could add a lot more creatures a year ago (tigers, hienas, shadow dog, blinking dog and other ones from original game and CEP) but I had no idea how to balance it. For example tiger in original game is much stronger than wolf and even bear. So there is no way to justify it having it on 1st lvl.
About compatibility issues and errors - I have mentioned that I dont have Enchanced Edition and dont like it in general. And this is my first mod so I am new to NWN modding scene and probably will be as confused as you about any errors. It should work fine on 1.69 or 1.72 NWN though.
About problems with Aielund Saga - its a very complex module which overrides many spells, creatures, scripts of the original game to be more faithful to original DnD ruleset. So it probably replaced familiars with stronger versions as well, just as I did. You can delete their version with NWN Explorer to use my mod instead, but I wouldnt recomment it.
Thank you for your time and happy new year! So you've never had the access violation problem in the toolset with this installed? For the record, I am using 1.69 with no other mods than the CPP
I have just installed fresh Gog NWN DIamond + 1.72 CPP RC5 and Toolset is working fine, no errors. Modified creatures also work fine ingame.
Hm, then I am at a loss. Thanks for giving it a try though!
having an issue with downloading it. keeps saying the fies are corrupted.....
Check that you have the latest version of your unarchiver. I just downloaded all 4 and 7zip has no problem opening them.
TR
This mod is great, thanks! I'm using Enhanced Edition and it does crash the Toolset if you use the Hak or Override, but if you use the Hak in the userpatch.ini like the creator mentions, it does work and doesn't crash the Toolset.
Unfortunately the Eagle isn't disarming with or without Tony K ai. I even checked if the enemy was disarmable and he was. Can someone confirm if the eagle uses the disarm feat?
Thanks!
For me, it still crashes the toolset even as a patch hak. Can't quite understand why.
Not sure if it's working 100% for EE.
They're using new skills, but the stat sheet shows their attack bonus is abysmally low. They can't hit anything without buffs.
Unironically, it made the dire wolf worst. The AoE shout almost never does anything, and it just sits in place and spams it until it runs out. Resting before a big fight will just render this thing useless.
Working on NWN flawlessly, also coexists with 3.5 mod, the only conflict is classes.2da, but its easily modifiable.