MOD:Thematic The One

[Snigaroo 113]

View File

Thematic The One

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Thematic The One 

Premise

The One: warlord; conqueror; latent Force-Sensitive. A charismatic leader of the Rakata and a near-supernatural anomaly among their people. As an added bonus, he also dies in about two combat rounds!

In fairness, with a good character build there’s very little that doesn’t go down in two rounds or less in the lategame. But The One in particular irks me—he’s presented as special, a natural leader in Revan’s own mold, a warrior-prince leading both armies and the political structure of his people. Yet despite having all the resources of the hundreds of islands he has conquered and dozens of crashed vessels he has looted, indeed despite having a Sith Tremor Sword in a bin literally RIGHT BEHIND HIM, he uses two regular vibroblades; despite being so charismatic he convinced his own former chieftain to willingly sacrifice himself and allow his tribe to cannibalize him while being so brick-headed he’s sat on a single island for half a decade, his WIS is 18 while his CHA is only 12; and despite being latently Force-Sensitive, his Will saves are abysmal. This was a ripe field for a Thematic project.

Like my similar mod for KOTOR 2, Thematic The One’s goal is not to make the fight against The One actually challenging—this is not a difficulty mod. The fight will be slightly harder than in vanilla, yes, but for some builds this change will not even be noticeable; indeed, I took him out in two combat rounds just like normal. Instead, the goal is to present The One as the game insists he is: a charismatic warrior with vast resources and the—albeit unconscious—power of the Force behind him.

 

Changes

The One’s WIS and CHA stats have been nearly inverted, from 18/12 to 14/18; he has been given a Sith Tremor Sword in his main hand and an Echani Vibroblade in his off-hand (neither droppable); his Will saves have been bumped up to 15, to make him about as difficult as an average Dark Jedi to land Force abilities against; his alignment has been moved from Neutral to moderately DS, so that the Solari crystal will work against him; and, most significantly, he has been scripted to use Force Valor at the start of the fight with him. I felt this was important to represent exactly how close The One is to true Force Sensitivity, and how it’s clear that the Force has been supporting his meteoric rise from the start.

 

Compatibility

As is the objective with all Thematic-series mods, this mod should be compatible with every other mod out there. Even mods that edit The One should be compatible, as long as they edit his data in the module rather than with a direct .utc file drop to the override; at worst, such a mod would only replace some of my changes with its own.

 

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 me credit for the idea and for the balance settings if you choose to retain most of mine, go for it. You don’t even need to ask me.

Particular thanks to JCarter426, who made this entire mod at my request but then told me it would be funnier if I uploaded it like it was my own. Ok.

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• Submitter
  Snigaroo
• Submitted
  05/21/2024
• Category
  Mods
• K1R Compatible
  Yes

 

[darthbdaman 70]

9 hours ago, Snigaroo said:

 

Particular thanks to JCarter426, who made this entire mod at my request but then told me it would be funnier if I uploaded it like it was my own. Ok.

 

I was confused when I saw the author

[Snigaroo 113]

1 hour ago, darthbdaman said:

I was confused when I saw the author

Shocking as it is, Thematic Sith Lords was at least 40% my own work. I did sort of make that one for real! I only had Parametric hold my hand on how to set up the TSLPatcher, and Tyren hold my hand with updating it.

[Salk 356]

A couple of notes: from what I can see, the original file shows that The One uses two custom swords (g_w_vbroswrd002) with an Enhancement bonus of 5. After installing this modification, he's still using those weapons, not a Sith Tremor Sword and an Echani Vibroblade.

[DarthParametric 3,758]

2 hours ago, Salk said:

he's still using those weapons, not a Sith Tremor Sword and an Echani Vibroblade

The ini sets his equipped weapons to not droppable, but doesn't change their ResRefs.

[JCarter426 1,207]

17 hours ago, Salk said:

A couple of notes: from what I can see, the original file shows that The One uses two custom swords (g_w_vbroswrd002) with an Enhancement bonus of 5. After installing this modification, he's still using those weapons, not a Sith Tremor Sword and an Echani Vibroblade.

Nice catch. Initially I had him still drop the original swords and when Sniggles asked to have those removed I went and removed too much. It'll be fixed soon.

[Snigaroo 113]

Right now, as it were.

[Salk 356]

I'm still wondering whether the change of weapons was a good idea. Unless I'm mistaken the two weapons The One uses are not standard vibroblades but swords created by Bioware just for him? What does Enhancement 5 mean? +5 to attack and damage? If that's the case, I think they are fine the way they are.

[Snigaroo 113]

1 hour ago, Salk said:

I'm still wondering whether the change of weapons was a good idea. Unless I'm mistaken the two weapons The One uses are not standard vibroblades but swords created by Bioware just for him? What does Enhancement 5 mean? +5 to attack and damage? If that's the case, I think they are fine the way they are.

I went off StrategyWiki, which just lists his equipment as two standard vibroswords. If that's not correct and they're instead special vibroswords with bonus damage or attack, I would probably prefer to buff his STR stat slightly to make up the difference rather than returning those specific swords to him, because--and correct me if I'm wrong--I think even if they're unique in stat terms they just use the standard vibrosword GFX. Using the two different foreign blades each with their own unique appearances, in my opinion, creates a stronger visual impression.

[Salk 356]

2 minutes ago, Snigaroo said:

Using the two different foreign blades each with their own unique appearances, in my opinion, creates a stronger visual impression.

Yes, I'm quite sure that the look of the original weapons is that of standard vibroswords.

I'll wait for DP or JC to chime in and confirm that the effective power of the swords he wields is far from standard though. Since I'd personally not change what Bioware chose for weapons unless there is a sensible reason for doing it, I think the best solution would be to keep the property of the original blades (assuming I'm correct in thinking they are quite powerful) and change their look instead. And in that sense, I'd rather maintain the original symmetry by having the two swords look identical like in the original game (but fancier, so that the visual impression is stronger).

[DarthParametric 3,758]

An enhancement bonus applies to both minimum and maximum damage, as well as attack to-hit.

In practice it should be equivalent to having 5 extra strength (assuming not using finesse wielding).

[Salk 356]

It's as I suspected then.

The two custom swords for The One are more than capable weapons. It's just a matter of using a more distinctive texture for them.

[DarthParametric 3,758]

Just a case of changing the model variation number in unk_m43aa.mod\g_w_vbroswrd002.uti (vanilla uses variant 1).

[Salk 356]

Yes, I locally changed it to 3.

[Snigaroo 113]

13 hours ago, Salk said:

It's as I suspected then.

The two custom swords for The One are more than capable weapons. It's just a matter of using a more distinctive texture for them.

True enough, but it's still two of the exact same vibrosword which even if altered to utilize a different texture would share the texture between the two of them--that is to say that I could make them look like Sith Tremor Swords, but they'd then both be Sith Tremor Swords. I'm not wedded to BioWare's design in this case; I think it's more impactful thematically to be visually distinct, especially in that the Echani vibroblade is both shorter and clearly of a different design, because it makes it more obvious that The One is grabbing detritus left over from the spacefaring cultures that are crashing on Lehon, not using things ready-made for him. Especially since I can just boost his strength to compensate for the lost damage and ATK bonus.

EDIT: After speaking with JC a bit he seems to think it'd be no issue to use the enhanced weapons and have them both be aliased to visually appear to be two entirely different models (vibrosword & vibroblade), so in that event I have no problems retaining the original weapon stats.

[DarthParametric 3,758]

It's just a simple case of creating a new UTI and giving it a different model variation for the second weapon, which is what I gather JC suggested.

[Snigaroo 113]

6 minutes ago, DarthParametric said:

It's just a simple case of creating a new UTI and giving it a different model variation for the second weapon, which is what I gather JC suggested.

Not in so many words, he just said it wasn't impossible like I made it out to be, and was pretty easily doable. I had assumed that retaining the same weapons would at best allow for the skin applied to them to be changed, not the model as well.

[DarthParametric 3,758]

The model is the "skin". Weapon textures are tied to the model variant. If you want a different texture, you switch the model variation number. In this case, the vanilla model uses w_vbroswrd_001 (variant 1). There are 6 variants. They are all the exact same model, just with different textures applied:

[Snigaroo 113]

7 minutes ago, DarthParametric said:

The model is the "skin". Weapon textures are tied to the model variant. If you want a different texture, you switch the model variation number...

I understand that part, I meant in the sense that it wouldn't be an issue to switch to a model of an entirely different type (vibroblade rather than vibrosword) while retaining the altered stats, without needing to tweak the stat line anyway to re-align the damage and ATK. That's the part I assumed would make KOTOR freak out if attempted.

[DarthParametric 3,758]

If you switch the base item type to vibroblade or whatever to use that model, that will switch the base stats. If you want a vibrosword that uses a different model then you'll need to create a custom model for it. Or switch the base item type and add a bunch of extra modifiers to bring its stats in line.

[Snigaroo 113]

See that's what had me incredulous, differentiation of texture is definitely important but I also very much wanted his off-hand weapon to be shorter to make it visually clear that both weapons weren't tailor-made for him in the same set and were instead scavenged, and that's why I thought it wouldn't work as easily, because at best they'd need to be kept as vibrosword models to retain BioWare's edited statline. Part of me is glad that I had the right impression of what was possible in KOTOR terms, even if this now makes it more annoying to decide what to do.

[DarthParametric 3,758]

Edit: Here's a mainhand vibrosword and off-hand vibroblade with the same +5 enhancement bonus, plus a +2 slashing damage bonus on the vibroblade to increase its damage. Equipped on an 18 Strength char with Two-Weapon Fighting to match The One's setup:

You lose a couple of points of maximum damage, but gain an off-hand penalty reduction. Not sure it really matters much, but you could always just add an extra +2 damage modifier. That would actually make it better than a standard vibrosword, since it is better for dual wielding.