Merging skills

[Legacy_YeoldeFog]

               Hey!

I want to use some custom skills, and with my experience, it's always easier to add to the aurora toolset, than to remove something.

Now, I would like to merge "Hide" and "Move Silently" into Stealth. I can remove this from the classes and the skills.2da, but player would still be able to spend points on Hide and Move Silently at the character creation.

Is there a way to automatically distribute those points to Stealth when the PC enter the module, so I can avoid the skillpoint error?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               To make alterations with these particular skills I think you will need NWNX since they are connected to how perception works and are hard coded. They are also linked to several feats. Of all the skills to modify, I think you picked a significant challenge.

My recommendation is to look at "Ride" if you don't have mounts, and also to look at "Intimidate", "Bluff", and "Persuade" and consider whether you can give up one or two of those.


--edit--
but to give you an inkling as to what needs to be done when dealing with stealth skills.
"Hide" is renamed to "Stealth"
"Spot" is renamed to "Perception"
Stealth Feat needs to be altered somehow so as only to give its bonus to the stealth skill.
Alertness, Keen Senses, and the handfull of other feats which give a bonus to "Listen" need to be altered so as only to give a bonus to "Spot/Perception"
Perception AI Scripts need to be gone through to remove checks for what the creature hears. Only Sight checks should be made since you only plan to use Spot and Hide skills.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 18 janvier 2014 - 12:08 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_MagicalMaster]

               Simpler solution: don't allow people to put points into Hide on character creation OR in-game (boot the character or something).  Only allow points in Move Silently.

Then, give a scripted bonus to Hide equal to the base ranks in Move Silently.

The only issue is that you could potentially run into the +50 magical skill cap (on a level 40 world a person could have +43 Hide bonus from levels meaning you could only add a further +7 from gear/spells) but if that's something you can work around then this would accomplish your goal for far less effort.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Squatting Monk]

               I was working on doing this with my world. We kicked around several different options, including those suggested here. My suggestions:

Do not re-purpose skills as henesua and MM suggest. Instead, make a new "Stealth" skill and, OnClientEnter and OnPlayerLevelUp, use NWNX to update the base ranks for both Move Silently and Hide to the base ranks of Stealth. Do this instead of giving bonuses in order to avoid the bonus cap.

You can disable selection of Hide and Move Silently by editing skills.2da and setting AllClassesCanUse to 0, then removing the skills from each class's cls_skill_*.2da. Not sure if this works at character creation in a server environment without NWNCX (I know it works locally, though). If not, you can use NWNX to re-imburse any extra skill points the PC spends on those skills.

Why do it this way? It's less work, because you don't have to go in and rescript perception events, account for feats, remake items (they can still give bonuses to Hide and Move Silently), consider how your changes are affecting things at an engine level, etc. Stealth is not a functional skill but a facade used for reducing the number of skills points a character has to spend in order to be effective at stealth (which, really, is the reason you want to merge the skills anyway).
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

Squatting Monk wrote...

I was working on doing this with my world. We kicked around several different options, including those suggested here. My suggestions:

Do not re-purpose skills as henesua and MM suggest. Instead, make a new "Stealth" skill and, OnClientEnter and OnPlayerLevelUp, use NWNX to update the base ranks for both Move Silently and Hide to the base ranks of Stealth. Do this instead of giving bonuses in order to avoid the bonus cap.

You can disable selection of Hide and Move Silently by editing skills.2da and setting AllClassesCanUse to 0, then removing the skills from each class's cls_skill_*.2da. Not sure if this works at character creation in a server environment without NWNCX (I know it works locally, though). If not, you can use NWNX to re-imburse any extra skill points the PC spends on those skills.

Why do it this way? It's less work, because you don't have to go in and rescript perception events, account for feats, remake items (they can still give bonuses to Hide and Move Silently), consider how your changes are affecting things at an engine level, etc. Stealth is not a functional skill but a facade used for reducing the number of skills points a character has to spend in order to be effective at stealth (which, really, is the reason you want to merge the skills anyway).

good suggestion, you can also put a modified skills.2da into haks where hide and move silently skill will be deleted BUT still keep the original 2da in the server hak - that ensures that players wont be able to put points into these two skills unless in character creation (which can be partially solved by nwn©x_connect)