Hypethetical 1 on 1 NPC battle

[SpongeBobTheDestoyer]

Here' my idea -

Inspired by Dirty Meg's NPC rating thread here
A hypethetical NPC vs. NPC just for fun battle. There would be rules of course.

Each ironworks member wanting to play would pick their NPC.
Then each member would get to pick say, five items usable by that NPC.
The NPC's would each be at a set level of experience points, if that total were to be over 3 mil then TOB HLAs would need to be picked also.
We would need a mediator or referee and they would need a set of PnP dice.
Each player would PM their first move to the ref who would figure out what comes first or what effects would take place.
The referee could then post the details and another round of moves would occur if applicable.

For instance, Player A selects Minsc equipped with the Vorpal sword, Gorgon Plate, Amulet of Power, Potion of Invisibility and Boo. Player B selects Edwin equipped with the Robe of Vecna, Staff of Striking, Dusty Rose Ioun stone, Bracers of Defense AC 3 and the Ring of Gaxx. Player A PMs to the ref that Minsc will chug his potion at the start. Player B PMs the ref that Edwin will cast timestop. The ref posts that and the players see that their opponent has gone invisible and started casting a spell. The next PM goes as follows, Minsc attacks, Edwin casts Finger of Death. The ref rolls results and Minsc hits before Edwin gets his timestop cast and Edwin fails his save from the sword. 1-0 Minsc. Go Boo, it's your birthday.

Now if only we could have someone with no life whatsoever and an abundance of free time on their hands to ref we'd be in business.

[Dirty Meg]

Why bother with a ref? You could just cheat in the items and equal experience and just have them do whatever you would have them do in a proper battle. I sometimes let my NPCs hack each other to pieces using only mundane equipment, just for fun. On the subject of the NPC ratings, Minsc can wup Valygar (surprisingly), and everyone can wup Haer'Dalis. (Ok, maybe Viconia, Jan, Nalia, Aerie, Imoen and Edwin can't).

[Jorsh]

Like what Dirty Meg said, cheat up the characters and then have a multiplayer game where each player controls one of the npcs. THat would let the fight stay within the game engine, but still have it be against two different players and not the same person playing both characters.

[SpongeBobTheDestoyer]

Actually I meant more like role-playing it over the forum between two different members. I know you could have a multiplayer game but each person would have to have the same mods and such unstalled. I don't think there are too many members here who play BG2 online anyway.

[Dirty Meg]

You don't need to do it online. You can have your own NPCs kill each other in a single player game (you might want to save first [img]smile.gif[/img] ).

[Dundee Slaytern]

There is a flaw in using the game engine.

Party-friendly effects.

[Cerek the Barbaric]

LOLOLOL!!! I was thinking along the same lines, SpongeBob, only my thoughts were more along the lines of having Weimer construct a Battle Arena Mod.

I ran a roleplaying game such as you proposed a couple of years ago in the Roleplaying Forums. Players were allowed to create their own characters, choose items and spells, then challenge each other in an arena. We also expanded it to allow thieves to challenge characters to a fight in an abandoned warehouse (where the thief could make better use of their abilities - kinda hard to "hide in shadows" in the middle of a huge arena).

The original set-up and description of the game (along with the characters that were created and some of the battles fought) can be found here --> Enter the Octagon

I enjoyed DM'ing the encounters immensely, but it eventually became a LOT of work. I would sometimes have 2 or 3 battles waiting to be "rolled" (where I actually take the dice and determine the success or failure of the actions described by the players). It was also difficult to keep up with all the special abilities and items for each character, along with their AC, ThACo, and modifiers. And these were all relatively low level characters (equal to your starting level in BGII).

Your suggestion of sending tactics to the DM through Private Messages is exactly how I had the players in my game detail their actions. Of course, they could only give detailed responses to the first couple of rounds - since they didn't know what the other character was doing. After that, they would have to say "OK, If he catches me in a Web Spell or if I'm low on hit points, I'll do {action taken}". Sometimes I would get some odd results with the dice and just have to basically ad lib how the characters reacted.

That's why I think the multiplayer option would be best to settle the score on which NPC's can whup butt on the others. Because nobody else will play your favorite NPC exactly the way you do and the same is true for your opponent. Korgan is a pretty straight-forward guy, but there are still different strategies that could be employed (hurled axes vs rushing into melee), so the only true test would be to allow the players to go "online" and slug it out with each other.

This would also allow players to take advantage of their chosen NPC's abilities. For example, say the host server has already cleared De'Arnise Keep. The two NPC's could face off outside the walls of the keep, but if somebody decided to play Yoshimo, they could try to run inside the keep and set traps or HiS to Backstab their opponent. I'm sure other areas would offer equal opportunity to "move" the battle to a place more suited for a particular characters abilities. The Slaver's Quarters in the Slums might be a good setting once it was cleared, but you wouldn't want to take the fight outside where innocent non-belligerents could accidentally be caught in a Fireball or hit by a Lightning Bolt.

That was why I suggested a separate Mod with different areas completely free of innocent bystanders. If other players wanted to join and watch the fun, it would be with the understanding they needed to keep a safe distance away from the fight.

If anybody knows Weimer well enough to ask him about this (or if he happens to see this thread himself), I would be happy to offer him my suggestions on exactly HOW to protect the audience from the fight. I'm sure he would be able to implement whatever we came up with.

[Black Baron]

Cool idea. I alaway wanted to see the Anomen-Jan battles, Jaheira-Edwin and such like. Could be fun.

[Hank Parsons]

Well, if anyone wants to do one online, let me know. I will host and either watch(referee/DM), or play an NPC.

My only question is how to get the NPC as an exported Character file so that I can load one in the MP game. Only way I know to do this is maybe get the NPC's in an SP game, save it, and then load that game in MP with both NPC's already loaded. Cuz the regular game doesn't let you export NPC's.

[SpongeBobTheDestoyer]

Cerek -
Great minds think alike, LOL. Your Enter the Octagon is exactly what I was envisioning. I read some of it and you did a great job along with a ton of work. I'm going to get in trouble here at work if I keep reading it though. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Hank Parsons -
You are the one person I could actually think of that I knew played online. I happen to remember your posts a while ago searching for some more players.

Since you are experienced at the online end, does the game engine have the problem of party friendly effects in multiplayer online? I don't know if Dundee was talking about single player or both aspects. My guess is that he meant both and that if I wanted to cast Greater Malison, Chaos, ADHW and similar spells on another player the effects would not take place.

Therefore, like Cerek said, it would take a mod or something.