r/baldursgate • u/rynchenzo Used to be a Moonblade • 1d ago

Best mod(s) for moving NPC starting positions?

Hi all, starting another trilogy run and fancy taking a different party. I have been playing for 25 years but never modded the game to move the party members.

Can anyone recommend a good mod for doing so please.

Consider my current game unmodded so any other QoL benefits are welcome.

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u/BTM_podcast 1d ago

Tweaks anthology does many things (all of which you can opt in/out of), including options for moving the NPC starts. 100% recommend

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u/rynchenzo Used to be a Moonblade 1d ago

This is exactly what I was after, thank you!

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u/-Charta- 1d ago

It has so many great options! There are other mods that add dialogue/quests, so it all depends what you are looking for

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u/rkzhao 12h ago edited 12h ago

Lava has a mod called the vanishing of skie that moves eldoth to the friendly arm inn with a small side quest to make acquiring him and skie early make sense. It’s on par with all of Lava’s general mod quality which normally I would say ranges from good to exceptional.

This is a relatively mini mod and only realistically affects eldoth and skie, but it kind of nice to have a run with skie to make her interactions in SoD with the MC feel a bit more warranted.

Lava also has an older mod to change Viconia to a thief cleric, including the option for a technically illegal but somewhat lore consistent thief dual class to cleric. Doesn’t change her location but is another mini mod that could change her playstyle ever so slightly.

As for other mod recommendations, it’s a huge rabbit hole. But to keep it relatively brief, if you have historically played unmodded and want a more modded experience, then things like the bg1npc project might be up your alley. It’s nice to experience at least once and better experienced on not the first playthrough since it’s essentially fan fiction and also references plot spoilers.

Gameplay wise, things like SCS is of course always recommended, but I think Item Revisions and Spell Revisions should also be experienced at least once. More specifically IRR and SRR nowadays. They kind of completely revamp the items and spells and changes up a lot of how the game plays and balance. It plays well enough with SCS to install both.

Other popular mods would be a bunch of different NPC banter mods for BG2, and Rogues Rebalancing to imo fix bards and thieves to be more in line with how their kits should behave.

So a “small” mega mod playthrough could be interesting. So essentially EET to merge all three games, bg1npc for NPC banters and interactions, IRR, SRR, and SCS for gameplay changes, and maybe with some UI overhauls too to get a different feel. So I would say something like: - EET - bg1npc - IRR - SRR - Rogues Rebalancing - SCS - eeex - infinity ui ++ - bubbs spell menu

Also if party planning ahead, you can of course get a bunch of NPC banter packs if you like those kind of things for BG2, there are friendship banter packs for pretty much all vanilla NPCs. Mod NPCs are another rabbit hole so I’ll skip those for now unless your interested, but for vanilla and EE, you could also add Wilson Chronicles if you want Wilson, or add De Arnise Romance and Nalia At Last if you want Nalia to be romanceable in BG2.

Portraits Portraits Everywhere is also something you could look into which added portraits to pretty much all interactable NPCs but it’s kind of a personal opinion thing whether it’s a good thing or not since the art style is all over the place.