Bad Habits

A high kicking, low punching, staff wielding, kama waving story driven campaign that will take your sack wearing brother or sister from level one to twenty. No need for bad haircuts or modelling yourself on Friar Tuck as you'll be expected to be in your mid twenties, fit and healthy and ready for anything.

Luckily for your misbehaving monk there are no alignment restrictions so don't worry about doing things that wouldn't be approved of back in your temple. This also applies to romancing your companions and providing that you're nice to them they should be more than happy to leap into bed. Lady monks however will have to follow a quest to seduce their darling.

There is nothing to stop you from playing as a Halfling barbarian if you want but it was made for human monks and therefore you will be treated as such and all equipment and things that you find are designed for a robe wearing brother or sister and their travelling companions.

Talking of companions you'll be teamed up for most of the game with a sorceror and a swashbuckler, there is also a fighter that will arrive and a favoured soul that needs a favour. Equip them well, make them some nice weapons or items and try to keep them alive as they're not a bad bunch and extremely loyal to your cause. They are also very talkative and like nothing better than discussing "current affairs" so don't forget to have a chat with them now and then.

There is crafting available and I strongly recommend that you use it when workbenches are available ( use the pestle and mortar on ingredients in your inventory to make the required essences ). Don't worry about giving your caster the necessary feats as she'll get them for free from somebody as the game goes on. However I do recommend investing in her "use magic item" skill so she can read any scroll.

A monk's life is not all about meditating, chanting and fighting and in this tale you will sometimes get the opportunity to be diplomatic and sneaky so invest in those skills as you will get more experience for doing some things without a fight. With diplomacy there is no "dice rolling" as if your level of competence is high enough the option will just appear in the conversation. If you feel the need to sneak then putting your companions in puppet mode ( behaviour tab ) or telling them to wait will prevent them from cramping your style. In fact in some situations rushing in and attacking everything at once will be a recipe for disaster.

Monks move fast so I strongly advise setting your companion's behaviour to make sure they don't get left behind ( guard distance and follow distance should be as short as possible ) and don't forget to turn off "back away" too because.. Well because you're a hero/ heroine of course. Your caster companion would probably appreciate being set to overkill casting mode too.

There are side quests in this and I recommend that you do them all even if some seem to be completely "unmonkish", but these are desperate times and call for desperate measures. Besides they'll get you to a higher level earlier and it will help your inventory too.

I have tested this on normal only and I've managed to scrape through with nobody dying at all but it wasn't easy. Apparently on hardcore it's very hard and there will be casualties so there's a challenge for your hardcore monk, but don't say I didn't warn you. If you get battered there is a respawn/reload/quit option so the choice is yours but save often if you want to keep everybody alive. You can rest just about anywhere providing it's not next to any villains or monsters but doing that would be rather silly.

Talking of monsters there is one big red one that you will encounter on your travels and I advise living to fight another day as you will get another chance to deal with him when you're better prepared as he's extremely hard to kill first time around.

To play this you need both expansions ( Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir ) and it's also compatible with a Mac. I have no idea how long it takes to play but it's a looong time.

There is one issue with custom dresses but they looked too good so I left them in this. So if you have a strange wardrobe malfunction try removing whatever's in the belt slot and putting it all back on again, that always worked for me and if by any chance your sorceror companion suddenly pops up topless on the level up screen don't worry about it because she does that sometimes too.. No idea why, I guess she's a bit of an exhibitionist on the quiet !

Installation...

This is in four compressed folders and I use win rar to unzip them.

Part one includes everything you need to get started. Put the folder called Bad Habits in your campaign folder, the three haks in your hak folder ( they're called badhab, blacb and blacd ) and the module called escape goes in your module folder.

Parts two three and four are just modules so put them in your modules folder.

Many thanks go to the following people for the custom content that's in this module..

Yaddaman, Chimneyfish, Aleanne, Porcelyn and Barrel of Monkeys for assisting with fashion issues.

zpirits, alupini and RWS for the scenery, ornaments and fungus.

Elyzius and komuro for some nasty looking baddies to bash

Rogue Dao for the flapping lips

and kamal for some special effects and lighting.

Thanks to all the helpful people on the Bioware NWN2forums for always coming to my rescue when I hadn't got a clue what I was doing. Which is quite often !

Also to Frosty44 for playtesting, ensuring this is compatible with a Mac. showing me things from a player's point of view and making releasing this not so scary because I know it works on other computers.

This module has been brought over by me from the Nexus where it was living for a few year so although not new it's new here and I hope you enjoy playing it.