::gets on soapbox:: Well, to be honest, all that I had come up with thus far (and it's pretty crap, if I do say so myself) is that Mr Goblin is second in charge of CI's goblins, and feels that the goblin society within CI should be run a bit differently to what the leader (and consequently the clan at large) believes. This could be due to his higher intelligence, perhaps? Going against the chief's wishes has isolated him somewhat from the general group, but his fighting prowess has prevented any uprises against Mr goblin thus far. This isolation and utter frustration at the clan's structure, as well as his sheer awe at the protagonists beauty and grace causes him to defect and join her ranks. He does (and will) revert back to Goblin behaviour every now and again (mainly shown in dialogue than uncontrollable action - think Viconia suggesting the protagonist kill Nalia's Aunt rather than Valen down-right eviscerating her), but he will always respect miss cleric/mage's wishes. I think his conversational ability would be (for lack of another similarity) similar to Toad from X-Men. Not the sharpest tool in the shed, but by no means stupid. He will by highly subserviant - but WILL voice his dissatisfaction within situations if his advice or suggestions are not taken on board. Lets just narrow all that roleplaying jargon down into - more intelligent (for instance might employ tactics before going into battle, rather than charging into melee like most of his counterparts) than the usual goblin, and less evil (sees no need to attack all human's on sight 'just because' - eg protagonist). Has selfish and ambitious desires. ::gets off soapbox::

Any more questions?

Wow - sorry for the essay...

how do the mechanics of this work?

you mention CTRL-Qing - does that give you a controllable character with a record screen and an inventory and all?

do you then need to SK your changes?

i just tried editing my current fighter/thief (a female elf) to use the goblin avatar (goblinbow) and while (s)he can run around and fight he can't support different weapons and never puts his bow down

he actually fights with his spare hand (makes the arm movements) but no weapon appears - i tried a morning star and a q-staff - you could imagine he's got a dagger though - also the paper doll disappears in the inventory screen

[ 10-19-2006, 04:20 AM: Message edited by: Armen ]

The mechanics you ask? Well, basically, CTRL-Qing does indeed give you a controllable character, with a record screen, inventory, the whole kit and kaboodle.

With Shadowkeeper I have been able to modify Mr Goblin's stats to those mentioned earlier, given him a portrait etc.

You do seem to be correct in that the goblin seems to be unable to change weapon.. the only thing I can think of right now is to change the goblin sprite to the ICgoblineliteaxe sprite in Shadowkeeper - giving Mr Goblin the goblin elite sprite from Icewind dale whilst carrying an axe. The way I'll get around the lack of weapon change is to simply make him USE an axe - something which all the goblins in CI seem to do anyway.

Does anyone far cleverer (heh) than I know if non player character sprites (i.e. goblins etc) actually use the number of attacks per round allocated to them, if it is more than the sprite was intended to have in the first place? I'm also going to hazard a guess and say that the weapons used by Mr Goblin will indeed work - even if Mr Goblin's sprite does not actually 'hold' said weapon.

Ugh. Stupid limitations to Jaradu's fine idea.

About the avatars: I had plans of turning Andorian, the Minotaur underneath the Crooked Crane, into a recruitable NPC, but discovered that if he equipped any weapon other than an Axe, you couldn't see it. So I said, "Hey, since it's a mod I'm designing anyway, I can turn him into a Hobgoblin." But Hobgoblins have only slightly better weapon selections--Swords and Bows--and neither of those avatars has a paperdoll anyway. So, in my pointy little mind, Andorian is now a Half-Orc.

But back to the idea. Yeah, with Ctrl-Q and Shadowkeeper, you can do pretty much whatever the heck you want. I'll have to take some time to think about the intricacies of this idea once again, but for now, I'll just say that if you're going to do the Goblin, why not go whole hog and get the Kobold Shaman, Theshal, Drush, and the Spectator Beholder as well? (A setup like this is notably light on Tanks, so you might want your PC to be something more Warrior-typey.) Unfortunately, creatures like Andorian and Anath have scripted deaths, so not even Ctrl-Q and Ctrl-R can keep them alive.

On a side notice, is changing avatars to be able to use other weapons, or just changing them in general something difficult to do?
Any tools to do so?

A nice tank to add to that mix could be the vamp in CI (can't for the life of me remember her name, and cannot check right now) - I can hardly expect that a vamp would forgive Irenicus for being held prisoner... I expect ripping out Irenicus' throat would be highly appealing. I'd say that she may become overpowered, but then I remember that you suggested the spectator beholder... heh.

As far as my game goes, though, I really want to complete it as a duo.. So it will only be Arwen (can't think of a decent name and was watching LOTR at the time of creation, any suggestions would be welcome here heh) and Mr Goblin this time through.

I think I'm going to start off having Mr Goblin as the normal 'axe' goblin sprite - then when he hits level 15 or so I'll change his sprite to the Goblin Elite (also the axe sprite of the two available). I'm thinking of getting around the inability to view other weapons by simply using axes, and avoiding ranged weapons altogether.
Are there any thrown axes in the game other than Azure edge? Obviously I mean one that will return after being thrown. Ahhh... wait a minute. Hangards axe. How could I forget?