I think that creating custom items based on Native American culture would give the module more of a feel of actually taking place in Maztica. Of course, a new tileset wouldn't hurt either, but that's probably getting carried away. Anyway, if anybody is familiar with tools, weapons, etc. used by any of the Native American peoples, I think it would be appreciated if you could design some items appropriate to Maztican culture.
Custom Items
Started by
Guest_CHAw_*
, Sep 27 2002 09:11 AM
7 replies to this topic
#2
Leo
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Posted 27 September 2002 - 05:24 PM
I think that creating custom items based on Native American culture would give the module more of a feel of actually taking place in Maztica. Of course, a new tileset wouldn't hurt either, but that's probably getting carried away. Anyway, if anybody is familiar with tools, weapons, etc. used by any of the Native American peoples, I think it would be appreciated if you could design some items appropriate to Maztican culture.
Hear ye, hear ye! All ye graphics designers and experts on the Maztican cultures! Don't ye hide away. 'Tis the time to step forward.
By the way, the graphics can be worked on separately, at least while the story and the list of quests solidifies. The expertise on the Maztican culture is needed right away, however!
Leo
#4
Leo
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Posted 06 October 2002 - 12:24 AM
What kind of weapons are we looking for? Obsidian-studded clubs? The atlatl? Very few of these things are possible with the painfully restricted Aurora toolset.
Firstly, what in the toolset holds us back? Secondly, we don't have to mimic the early American cultures to the core. The weapons could be similar, but with a lot of regional flavor.
Leo
#5
Guest_Tenebrous_*
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Posted 06 October 2002 - 06:59 PM
Firstly, what in the toolset holds us back? Secondly, we don't have to mimic the early American cultures to the core. The weapons could be similar, but with a lot of regional flavor.
Leo
Everything holds us back. The nonstackability of properties. The fact that every base type is predefined.
Consider the obsidian-studded club. This was much more than what Western European history considers a club: base damage should be 1d8, +1d4 piercing. Oh, but we can't change the base damage: Aurora says it's a club so it MUST do 1d6 damage. Sorry, go away.
Consider the cotton-padded armor. Its protective ability is pure gold in the jungles, better than plate - but the Torso Appearance of the toolset controls the AC of the armor - you cannot set it independently. So the cotton armor which will be used by most Maztican forces is limited to 0 or 1 AC, despite the fact it really should be 3 or 4. Aurora can't understand that sometimes soft armor is better than hard leather, and we can't make it understand. Sorry, go away.
Consider the atlatl. This is a sling that hurls spears, one of the most important and famous weapons of the New World. There's no way to do this: slings hurl bullets and do 1d4 damage, whereby an atlatl hurls a single spear a round for something like 2d8 damage. This isn't BG2 where I can assign a spear as a projectile and then assign a long arrow animation to the weapon: this is NWN where every base type is locked in stone. I can't change the sling's base damage, I can't change anything about the sling except to give it magical properties. And I can't change this to require exotic weapon proficiency or even a new feat, Maztican weapon proficiency, because Aurora doesn't provide for that.
Other stuff, too, but I've vented enough about how poor Aurora's item creation system is already.
#6
Leo
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Posted 08 October 2002 - 01:57 AM
Everything holds us back. The nonstackability of properties. The fact that every base type is predefined.
Consider the obsidian-studded club. This was much more than what Western European history considers a club: base damage should be 1d8, +1d4 piercing. Oh, but we can't change the base damage: Aurora says it's a club so it MUST do 1d6 damage. Sorry, go away.
Consider the cotton-padded armor. Its protective ability is pure gold in the jungles, better than plate - but the Torso Appearance of the toolset controls the AC of the armor - you cannot set it independently. So the cotton armor which will be used by most Maztican forces is limited to 0 or 1 AC, despite the fact it really should be 3 or 4. Aurora can't understand that sometimes soft armor is better than hard leather, and we can't make it understand. Sorry, go away.
Consider the atlatl. This is a sling that hurls spears, one of the most important and famous weapons of the New World. There's no way to do this: slings hurl bullets and do 1d4 damage, whereby an atlatl hurls a single spear a round for something like 2d8 damage. This isn't BG2 where I can assign a spear as a projectile and then assign a long arrow animation to the weapon: this is NWN where every base type is locked in stone. I can't change the sling's base damage, I can't change anything about the sling except to give it magical properties. And I can't change this to require exotic weapon proficiency or even a new feat, Maztican weapon proficiency, because Aurora doesn't provide for that.
Other stuff, too, but I've vented enough about how poor Aurora's item creation system is already.
I understand your frustration. However, we can deal with it as follows.
Consider this. Why do we need non-magical padded armor, for example? We don't! So, we could just implement some special instances of such armor, giving them whatever bonuses we like (because they'd be magical anyway!). Same regarding obsidian studded clubs. We could create some very special obsidian club, give it some magic bonus, and that'd work. Atlatl? A modified dart with a bonus. No non-magical atlatls needed.
Leo
#7
Guest_Tenebrous_*
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Posted 08 October 2002 - 03:19 AM
I understand your frustration. However, we can deal with it as follows.
Consider this. Why do we need non-magical padded armor, for example? We don't! So, we could just implement some special instances of such armor, giving them whatever bonuses we like (because they'd be magical anyway!). Same regarding obsidian studded clubs. We could create some very special obsidian club, give it some magic bonus, and that'd work. Atlatl? A modified dart with a bonus. No non-magical atlatls needed.
Leo
Still some problems. Did you know that only the highest type of physical damage is applied as a modifier? So if we have an obsidian-studded club +3, the +3 bludgeoning damage from the enhancement bonus will cancel out the +1d4 piercing damage. Bleh...
As for the dart with a bonus...all right, but that'll look really odd....
My concern isn't as to whether we can come up with something that will function properly - there's almost enough workaround space in the engine to make things function. What I'm wondering is if the finished product will make people go "Wow, this is Maztica" or "What the hell is this place?" Items aren't all of it, certainly, but...people notice little things.
#8
Guest_CHAw_*
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Posted 08 October 2002 - 04:32 AM
Still some problems. Did you know that only the highest type of physical damage is applied as a modifier? So if we have an obsidian-studded club +3, the +3 bludgeoning damage from the enhancement bonus will cancel out the +1d4 piercing damage. Bleh...
Actually, that's not quite accurate. Only the highest value for a single type of physical damage applies. So, if you have a +5 club with 1d8 bludgeoning damage, it is true that only the +5 bludgeoning damage applies. However, if you were to give a +2 club an additional 1d6 slashing or piercing damage, you would get +2 bludgeoning damage and +1d6 slashing or piercing damage. So in terms of the macana, we could make a club that does, say, an additional 1d4, maybe 1d6 slashing damage, and still give it an enchantment bonus, and both would still apply. What we would have problems with would be if we wanted an enchanted macana that does additional bludgeoning damage (and were using a blunt weapon as the base type). But we would run into that problem no matter what kind of weapon we were making, so it would not be a problem.
As for the atlatl, it provides a significant problem, but we ARE looking at a world where the 'Old World' invaders also are lacking THEIR most infamous and important weapon - the gun. And from what I understand of the use of the atlatl, it only came back into use by the Aztecs because of its armor-piercing capability. I would imagine that the need for the reappearance of the weapon would be less if the invaders lacked the powerful ranged weapon that the historical Aztecs needed to try and compensate for. Regardless of whether I am correct or incorrect about that, however, implementing either the atlatl OR the gun would be a project that would probably take as long as a chapter of the module series.
In any case, though the Aztecs were one of the most famous of the New World cultures, with some of the most exotic weaponry used by a standing military, we need not necessarily restrict ourselves to basing the society off of them. As Leo mentioned in his initial outline for the project, we could use the Mayans, the Incas, or even one of the smaller Native American tribes as our model. The principal weapons of the tribes of the American Northwest were, if I am not mistaken, were the bow, the spear, the tomahawk, the club, and the knife. All are weapons readily made in the toolset. The reason I started this thread was more to ask people familiar with Native American cultures to step up and help create items with a culturally based lore (and relevant enchantments). E.g., the Woodsman's Axe from the standard palette might not seem all that out of place in Maztica, as Plains Indians from the American Midwest had legends and myths with shapeshifters in them, and wood did need to be chopped down for fire (where they had trees). The Offhand Axe, on the other hand, would, as it specifically references rangers and their training. And that is the kind of thing which we are trying to avoid so that people DON'T, as you said, go "What the Hell is this place?" After all, it won't seem like Maztica if you kill a native and then loot a Kaga-To katana from his corpse because the default script chose to drop a treasure from the standard palette.
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