Thematic Sith Lords 2.0

Thematic Sith Lords

Premise

Anyone who’s played TSL knows that the eponymous Sith Lords are pretty disappointing. The most hyped fight of the entire game, against Nihilus, is almost always trivial. Sion has the potential to be dangerous but rarely is, and Kreia’s floating lightsabers are almost always more of a threat than the woman herself.

Thematic Sith Lords’s purpose is not to directly address these issues, but to push back against some of the underlying problems with these fights that results in them being so boring. While examining the .utc files for Sion, Kreia and Nihilus associated with their respective fights, I found that there was surprisingly little differentiation between them, especially in class & attributes, with very little specialization per Lord. Worse still, many feats and powers which the Lords should realistically have had were also missing: Sion, for example, lacked Ignore Pain despite his ability to fight through and even utilize his constant pain being the core of his character!

Thematic Sith Lords, as you may have gathered, is not a difficulty mod as such. Rather, it’s a realism mod the goal of which is to increase the overall difficulty of the Lord fights as a natural result of restructuring the stats, feats and powers of the Lords to more accurately fit their physical and mental conditions, as well as their experiences and training, without making every fight harder for all characters. The goal is to make each fight with a Lord feel different, with each Lord having their own specialties, strengths and weaknesses, such that some character builds will do better against some Lords and struggle against others.

For example, in Thematic Sith Lords, Sion has extreme STR and CON, but poor WIS and INT, and abysmal DEX and CHA. His archetype is as a bruiser, who trades taking hits for being able to dish out extremely powerful strikes with no fear of his close-range style resulting in his death—because Sion doesn’t need to worry about dying in a fight, and his combat style should reflect that. This overconfidence results in him being somewhat vulnerable to Force abilities, however, and a Consular might run circles around him where a Guardian struggles to bring him down.

The goal is that the opposite will also be true—Consulars who had no trouble with Sion might find themselves in a pickle when their abilities bounce off Nihilus, who now has even higher WIS and Will saves than he did before, and the DEX to frequently dodge the lightsabers of most Jedi not built explicitly for melee combat.

Additionally, for the 2.0 release of this mod the entire mod was reworked from the ground up with even more comprehensive alterations, as well as including the Visas ambush fight in the list of edits. The 2.0 changes were extensively tested for realism, balance & difficulty, and a full list of all the alterations made to each Lord is included in the file download for those who would like to see exactly what I did, as well as a brief explanation for why.

Why use Thematic Sith Lords?

As noted above, Thematic Sith Lords isn’t a difficulty mod, as most rebalances of the Lords are. The goal is to make each Lord’s attributes, stats, feats and powers a realistic reflection of their condition, and how they would actually fight. If you want pure difficulty, other mods might be for you; if you want to experience differentiated fights that are harder on average than what TSLRCM has to offer, however, Thematic Sith Lords is likely for you.

Thematic Sith Lords also has three features which other difficulty mods for the Lords often don’t: it makes adjustment to Visas’s ambush of the party on the Ebon Hawk; it modifies the Sion fight on Korriban as well as Sion's fight with Atton on Malachor (both of which are frequently left out of other mods); and it uses the TSLPatcher to inject .utc edit data directly into module files for maximum compatibility.

Difficulty, Balance & Testing Methodology

Users who have tried other mods which make serious alterations to boss enemies, or who used the 1.0 version of Thematic Sith Lords, may justifiably be concerned about difficulty and balance. I’d like to disclose how these fights were tested to hopefully put some of those concerns to rest.

This mod was tested with two DS characters, one Sentinel/Marauder and one Sentinel/Lord (although only DS characters were used in the test, none of the fights were won with unique powers or abilities which would make them viable on DS but not on LS builds). Both test characters were built well but not min-maxed, and for each battle the use of items (consumables or shield charges) was forbidden: I had to be able to beat each opponent with only melee and Force abilities. Some of the fights were still very difficult, but each could be won without needing to resort to cheesy tactics. For any player with an average or above grasp of D20 mechanics, I believe you can use this mod without concern. Beginners to d20 systems may need to turn the difficulty down for these encounters in some cases, but should still be able to beat them even with sub-par builds with a bit of clever positioning and pre-buffing.

I will note as an aside that there is one fight that is abnormally difficult: Atton vs. Sion. But I view this as being realistic, and designed it this way purposefully: Atton is an above-average Jedi at best going against a Sith Lord, and there should be a real chance of him losing there. It should be a major triumph if you can evade Sion.

Compatibility

This mod requires TSLRCM to be installed first, and NOT to be installed via the Steam Workshop, in order to install properly & function. The Workshop is very poor for mod compatibility, so if you have it installed via the Workshop, it’s best you install it via the installer version anyway.

This mod should be compatible with anything and everything else that doesn’t edit the Lords’ .utc files. Even mods that do so shouldn’t break this, they might just edit some of the same data. The only exception is if another mod drops a relevant .utc file directly to the override, which will fully overwrite Thematic Sith Lords’s module-based edits.

Installation

1. Ensure TSLRCM is downloaded and installed, NOT through the Steam Workshop!

2. Download the file and unzip it to any folder of your choice (except for the game directory) using a program like 7zip or Winrar.

3. Run the TSLPatcher .exe and, when prompted, choose which of the two main modules you would like: Standard (base changes only) or No Force Rating (removes the saving throw bonuses to DS characters in the Korriban Sith Academy, which can make the Sion fight there more difficult). Once you have chosen your preferred module, select your game directory (the one with the .exe file in it), click “install mod” and you’re done!

4. Optionally, if you would like Visas to appear as a Sith Assassin during her ambush, re-run the installer after installing your chosen base module and select the “Sith Assassin Visas (Optional)” install option, then install that module also.

Permissions & Thanks

As with any mod I have made or will make in the future, this mod has completely open permissions: modify it, redistribute it, reupload it, do whatever. So long as you give myself credit for the idea and the balance settings (if you choose to retain most of these edits) & JCarter426 credit for the mod’s development, go for it. You don’t even need to ask me.

Special thanks to @DarthParametric for his help with putting the 1.0 release together--it was my first time making significant edits with KOTORTool and creating a TSLPatcher install, and this mod quite probably wouldn’t exist without his help.

Thanks to @Pavijan357 for identifying the missing changes to Sion in 906MAL.mod, and @DarthTyren for cleaning up my changes.ini and applying the changes properly.

Credit to @offthegridmorty for his “Visas Marr: Sith Assassin” mod, which inspired this mod’s optional module to change Visas’s class to Sith Assassin during her ambush on the Ebon Hawk.

Premier thanks goes as usual to @JCarter426, who rebuilt this entire mod at my request for the 2.0 release, and tirelessly put up with literally dozens of revisions of the mod as we fine-tuned the balancing. As of the 2.0 release, this mod is much more his than my own and I am tremendously grateful for his help.

Thanks also to @doctoramanda from the KOTOR Discord for her help making the "preview" image.