Skills-and-Abilities VS bg2-tweaks-and-tricks

House Rules and S&A, if you need links. Note that their proficiency systems aren't compatible with each other - the monk proficiency tweak is totally compatible with Skills and Abilities' new proficiency system, if you use it, but the "rebalanced proficiencies" and "rebalanced weapon styles" are not.

I mentioned it in my comment, but skills and abilities does that, spread across a couple different components. Two-handed attacks receive 1.5x the strength damage bonus (rounded down), and the revised Two-Handed style increases base damage, speed factor, and APR, making it a faster and more reliable way of dealing damage. The revised two-weapon style also slightly decreases your offhand damage, even at 3 pips - not much of a nerf, but overall I think the mod's changes to single-weapon, weapon and shield, and two-handed styles make them very tempting alternatives, since they all have their own strengths.

Skills and Abilities: Larger writeup on this coming soom™. Short version: a proficiency overhaul that takes BG1’s weapon groups as its starting point and adds new proficiencies which can better diversify character builds, such as Spellcraft (bonuses for arcane casters), Divine (bonuses for divine casters), and Swiftblade (bonuses while hasted). Other components overhaul Protection from Magical Weapons, change Turn Undead, and allow bards to pick locks and disarm traps (EEex required for these). Optionally changes weapon styles as well, incentivizing approaches other than dual-wielding, and adds HLAs drawn from 3.5E.

Check out releases on the right hand side. Download that and put the 'setup-xxx.exe' file and the associated folder in your game directory. Then just run the setup from there. Or use something like Project Infinity to setup, sequence, and install your mods at one time.

There is a nice mod (https://github.com/Gibberlings3/Skills-and-Abilities), that gives bards "Find Traps" and "Open Locks". Maybe this is something for you?

Link: https://github.com/Gibberlings3/Skills-and-Abilities

Dude I swear If you Love Otilukes Resilient Sphere you need to check out this Mod's ORS component, it literally makes the spell match its description.

Tweaks and Tricks - https://github.com/BGforgeNet/bg2-tweaks-and-tricks

Maybe some enhanced Stronghold stuff? This is more convenience/QOL than an enhancement of the strongholds themselves, but I like the Tweaks and Tricks "improved strongholds," which notifies you when you can/should visit your stronghold and makes messengers more reliable.

Tweaks and Tricks: “trap intuition” makes trap detection a bit smoother. Now you get warnings if you’re near a trap (you know, for those of us who don’t have trap locations memorized). I haven’t tried the familiar changes, so won’t comment on those. The “Improved Strongholds” is a nice convenience addition that reminds you if you have business at your stronghold, and “convenient ammunition,” which adds non-enchanted infinite ranged weaponry, is handy if you don’t want to drag around 100 lbs of throwing axes. The soundset changes, which expand returning NPCs’ soundsets to include BG1 lines as well, are a good addition if you’re sick of hearing the same battle cry again and again. Other tweaks close the infinite-money fence loophole, improve Protection from Evil to protect from mind control attacks (eg, vampire gaze), add more bags (gem, ammo, etc) from the beginning, and give the option to buff Melicamp in order to increase his odds of survival. Very useful overall.

The Tweaks and Tricks mod has a component to reduce/nullify the detection delay, if it bothers you that much (or if like me ain't nobody got time to deal with dat). That said, I think it kinda fits for such a CURSED place that some traps could slip by.

Familiar and Improved Traps from here

It's a component in BG2 Tweaks and Tricks mod, found here: https://github.com/BGforgeNet/bg2-tweaks-and-tricks

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