Hello there kiddies,

I've just been inspired by a thread in Gen Con regarding AD&D comics - in particular goblinscomic. As a result, I'm combining this new inspiration and <s>stealing</s> borrowing the idea of CTRL Qing a goblin into a companion off another IW member who mentioned it some time ago.

My general feeling is that my PC will be an elven (half or full, not sure) mage/cleric. After traipsing around in Chateau Irenicus she comes across Mr Goblin, a fighter/thief. It's early days but I think Mr Goblin will be utterly entranced by the PC's beauty and decide to help her out of the dungeon, purely to stay within reach of the beautiful and awesome creature.

Having written that I've noticed that my PC will be in need of a high charisma for the roleplaying aspect, but my question to IW is this;

What sort of stats does a lowly Goblin employ? I don't like the idea of him retaining the average 10 (IIRC) stats that the creatures currently possess - he's an individual in his own right. So.. thoughts, anyone?

Illumina, Six and Dundee I'm looking at you for a legal and roleplaying aspect... but everyone else please feel free to give me your opinion :D

Edit: Just searched for and found the original Goblin Companion thread (I read it aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages ago). Credit to Jaradu for coming up with the idea in the first place. I do feel like a total cop out now, as I had no idea that he also played a half-elf mage/cleric. Gah! Oh well. I'm too set on the idea now to change my gameplan. I'm not a copy-cat, I swear! :D

[ 10-18-2006, 08:08 PM: Message edited by: Dave_the_quack ]

I'd say above-human-average DEX (15 or so maybe), below-human-average STR and CON (penalties for being so tiny, between 8 and 11 perhaps) and absolutely abysmal charisma (charisma means ability to influece humans and humans in Amn consider goblins something to be attacked on sight). If he decides to join your PC, and disobey a direct command from a superior, he must be smart enough to independently think the possible consequences of his actions without the aid of elder goblins and goblin shamans who usually tell what to do. That's quite a feat in a goblin society where weird adulthood rituals usually weed out the potential anarchists at an early stage. So the mental stats would be more than those of other goblins.

goblin fighter/thief sounds like scout rather than expert lock pick (at least at first)

so all the thief points at creation should be in stealth (maybe set traps)

also - this brighter-than-average goblin might have spent longer than usual on his own scouting the 'enemy' spent more time for some periods 'with' humans than his own kind . . . watched them working . . . watched them playing . . . wondered . . .

if you're after legal precedent, i'm sure in one of the drizzt books (i forget which) our noble ranger while not exactly befriending a goblin (who was being used as a slave by a human farmer) at least develops a rapport with him to the extent that drizzt wonders if goblins really are universally bad and compares the goblin favourably to his immoral 'owner'

EDIT: of course if your PC is evil then it's all good

[ 10-18-2006, 01:01 PM: Message edited by: Armen ]

IG - I agree with the dex score, but I would have thought that a goblin wouldn't have lower than normal human score strength (if by normal you mean commoner or peasant, or even wizard)... at least not one that is found in Chateau Irenicus, seeing as how he's trained as a warrior(/thief).

What about the following:
STR - 13
DEX - 15
CON - 12
INT - 10
WIS - 8
CHA - 5

Are those acceptable guys? I seriously have no idea. I'm really trying to get this right for roleplaying; I don't want to overpower him, but nor do I want to underpower him.

Thanks Armen,

I'll definately be putting the majority of points into HIS/MS, but I also figure that seeing as how he's lived in Chateau Irenicus for God knows how long, he's likely to know the locations of most (if not all) the traps on the first level. This, of course, does not mean he will be able to disarm them.

Not really after a legal precedent, but it would help if I had something to work off as a 'template', for lack of a better word. Unfortunately I have no AD&D books of any kind, save the BG2 & TOB manuals :D

Those stats look pretty good....In the AD&D Humanoids Book, when you play a Goblin it says his stats should be....STR 4-15, DEX 4-17, CON 5-16, INT 3-18, WIS 3-18, and CHA 3-12...Looks like you have fallen in those parameters.

Ahh! Fantastic Jules, that's the info I was really looking for.

Cheers mate :D

See, you text me AFTER the info I just looked up was posted? Brilliant, simply brilliant [img]tongue.gif[/img]

I meant for a roleplaying aspect, ya jackass. You're the roleplaying Queen! Share that knowledge, mistress.

He will be the goblin with the arrows of biting (as six originally suggested) as that in itself makes him more unique than the rest of the goblins in CI. Give me some suggestions! I want to match the RP aspect to his stats, and the above stats I just pulled out of my bum.

What would Lilith say!

::puts on Author Glasses:: I think what we need here is an enticing reason for the goblin to be following you. Meaning, why is the goblin not with other goblins? Is it a bit too intelligent for its own kind, or perhaps not quite as evil? Does it sometimes regress to goblin-like behavior (I'm thinking here of the Valen mod, especially)? Can it converse at a reasonably intelligent level? I think these are things that you really think about and hammer out before you can go deeper.

Intelligence and alignment will be determined by some of your answers to the above questions. If he's carrying Arrows of Biting, I would give him a reasonable Dexterity, as well. ::takes off Author Glasses:: Thank you for coming tonight.

::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?