MOD:KotOR Skills Rebalancing Mod

[Thrak Farelle 8]

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KotOR Skills Rebalancing Mod

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This is my first mod for a KotOR game, I started modding about a week ago after several years of mod using beacuse of various things I wanted in a mod but hadn't been done yet, so I decided to learn so I could do them myself. One main one was this. I always felt the sentinel was a bit imbalanced in K1, that the measly 1 extra skill point didn't make up for what was lost in the way of combat and force. Plus the fact that the only combination to get all 8 class skills required the consular, when the sentinel was supposedly the skill focused class....

 

Anywho, this started off as a little mod to tweak the class skills and skill points of the sentinel for me to use, I wasn't originally intending for it to be big enough to upload, but it kind of snowballed. Now it changes skill point gains and class skills for all the classes, with K2 as a guideline. It couldn't be exactly the same, mainly beacuse the way K2 uses the intelligence modifier is different, and it has class skill feats, whereas K1 uses the base class/jedi class combination to determine class skills. However, I do think the skills are more balanced overall now, though this is still a Beta, and I've only tested it with the sentinel, so it may need a bit more tweaking to get the balance right. Overall, I've changed not just the jedi classes for better balance, but the base classes too, mostly to help balance the jedi classes as the input base class does determine a few things in the way of skills, and partly to balance them better, as I always felt the scout and scoundrel didn't have quite enough "skill power" to make up for their lack of combat skills compared to the soldier. The readme has complete details on all the changes.

 

Something else included with this mod is a fix for the droid class feat gains, done so the rebalance with their skills could be accurate, as in vanilla, just like K2, the feat gains are the wrong way round, with expert droid gaining more than combat droid, so a fix for that is included. As mentioned, I've tweaked the droid skills too, again, see the readme for exact details. Please note that this fix is optional, but recommended, otherwise the droid classes will be a tad imbalanced

 

A little bonus, entirely optional, which again started out just for the sentinel to help with the balance and snowballed, is 2 unique items for each class. Originally it was a couple of special stealth units for the sentinel to reflect the skill balancing, think K2 Watchman, but I decided to give the other 2 classes a little something extra too, hopefully they won't be too imbalanced, but this is still a beta. In short, you'll only get the 2 items for your class in a single playthrough, and they are class restricted. First is from Zhar after dealing with Juhani one way or another, the second is in the temple catacombs on the unknown world. Consular gets a couple of special armbands, and guardian gets a couple of special saber crystals. Again, this is an entirely optional bonus included in a separate folder, so it's easy to just install the rebalance, which is the main purpose of this mod.

 

The readme has all of the details, but that's the brief summary. I'd very much appreciate feedback and any discovered bugs, though I have tested it thoroughly twice, the latter with K1R installed too, and had feedback from others who have used it, obviously that doesn't mean there aren't any bugs

 

One last thing I'd like to point out is that, apart from the droid feat gain fix, feats and force powers haven't been modified at all. This is a skill rebalancing mod.

 

Enjoy

 

Any mod compatibility you'd like to know about, please ask, taking requests for that now I've finished a playthrough with this mod and K1R.

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• Submitter
  Thrak Farelle
• Submitted
  04/08/2013
• Category
  Mods
• K1R Compatible

 

[Fallen Guardian 27]

Cool. I'll definitely download it.

[Thrak Farelle 8]

Ok, this has been in Beta for ages, I could really really use some feedback from anyone who's used it.

[Thrak Farelle 8]

Hey, not been very active for a while, these last couple of years or so have been all over the place for me, but I'm hoping to once again be a more active part of the KotOR community now.  There are a couple of other mod ideas I've had that I'm planning to work on, but as far as this mod goes, I think it's finally time to get it out of beta.  So, any feedback would be appreciated, positive and negative as long as it's constructive.

[Box 8]

First of all, I recommend being more terse with your mod description. Start with a description of what the mod does, then you can talk about the story of how you made it.

 

Anyway, I'm not a huge fan of the bigger idea behind the mod. You give out a lot of skill points. I'm not convinced that that's a good thing. That's mainly because more skill points isn't uniformly better in the same way a higher base attack bonus or feat gain bonus is. How useful a skill is depends on how scarce it is in the party. If you fill everybody to the brim with skills, then those skills become less valuable.

 

I think the sweet spot you want to hit is that you want to give several viable options for skill development for each character. You either want to have more class skills than skill points to spend each level or you want to have a very small number of class skills so that you have to think about how to spend the leftover points. The point is that you say as much about your character's specialty by what he or she can't do than by what he or she can do.

 

 

That's my input from not having played it but from attempting to make my own class balance mod, but I'm not sure why you are saying it's in beta. Did you not debug it yet? I think if you've played through it with Sentinel, it's fairly safe to assume the other classes work.

 

I mean presumably you derived some satisfaction from playing with this altered configuration. If it works, then maybe that's good enough. I would have done it differently as I mentioned, but then that might not have been what you most enjoyed.

[Thrak Farelle 8]

FIrst of all, I recommend keeping to yourself if all you're going to do is criticize the idea of a mod you haven't even played.

 

Your post is not at all constructive.  All you do is complain about the idea behind the mod and suggest I shouldn't have made it, or that I should make a completely different one, and border on telling me what to do at points if you read how you've phrased your post at points.  If you don't like the idea behind the mod, tough, it is what it is, some people like it, some people don't, if you simply don't like the idea of the mod, then don't download it or play it, but don't just come onto it's thread to do nothing but criticize the idea.  I'm completely open to constructive criticism, which yours isn't, but at the end of the day I'll make my mod however I want to, I'm not going to change it and make a completely different mod just because someone doesn't like it.  I'd also point out that part of what you're criticizing is how skill points are in K2, which is what I've changed a lot of it to, if you don't like that, take it up with Obsidian, not me.

 

If all you're going to do is say how you think doing it differently would have been better, then make your own mod, don't just come here and criticize mine beacuse you don't like how I've done it, as to be blunt, that's your problem.  You haven't even played it, which makes this even worse.

 

To put it simply, if you want a different mod, make it yourself, but please don't come here and without even playing it, do nothing but criticize how I've made mine and suggest I should have made it differently.

 

In the interest of keeping this a mod thread, if you are going to argue this further, which I don't see as at all needed, then please stick to PMs, thank you.