Player-controlled Karma tweaks mod

Post by **Damianwolff** » Sat Nov 26, 2016 8:12 pm

Is it possible to make a mod, which would allow the player to use an MCM menu or an INI file to change the amount of Karma gained or lost through various actions? Not unique actions, like quest related stuff, but murder (of Very Good, Good, Neutral, Evil and Very Evil characters), theft, charity, etc.

Post by **Puppettron** » Sun Dec 18, 2016 8:50 pm

yes, to an extant. the murder and theft karma values are stored as game settings, but quest karma is rewarded by script, so if you want to alter that you'd have to modify the quests and their scripts

Post by **Damianwolff** » Mon Dec 19, 2016 6:00 am

Thankfully, I care more about game values than quest karma.

While I am not skilled enough in modding to do what I was asking about, I make do with a mod I cobbled together from RoyBatty's advice and from the value borrowed from some other karma mods.

It should give evil karma for most types of murder (except for Very Evil Npcs), remove karma gain from killing of creatures, increase karma loss for theft a bit, and add karma loss for graverobbing (by blatantly taking a script from a different mod author, although he did advise merging his mod into some other mod for space saving).

I'm not sure how well it works, though, because so far my karma stays on Very Good, and I haven't seen changes there.

Post by **Puppettron** » Mon Dec 19, 2016 6:59 am

might also look at the karma value assigned to cannibalism, it's in the perk's script

Post by **Damianwolff** » Mon Dec 19, 2016 8:49 am

I have that in the mod, I think. Cannibalized it from Color Me Evil mod.

Its -20 at the moment. I'm okay with it so far, even if I'm not using it.

I'm waiting for the Karma to drop, so I can start trying to use Animated Takedowns and Project Ultimatum more often, but I'm still Very Good, so waiting...

Post by **Puppettron** » Mon Dec 19, 2016 1:23 pm

the real problem with cannibalism is that the perk says it's an act of unnatural evil, but the script says stealing a fork is 5x worse than eating someone. so -20 is a good start

Post by **Damianwolff** » Mon Dec 19, 2016 2:08 pm

Yeah, -1 Karma for eating human remains is as ridiculous as pretty much every other decision both Bethesda and Obsidian have made about karma. Positive Karma for killing feral ghouls, and no karma loss for killing neutral npcs is ridiculous.

Ideally, in a cruel post-apoc setting, Evil karma should be easy to slide into, Neutral Karma should be closer to the norm, and Good Karma should feel like an achievement.

In vanilla games Good Karma is nigh-automatic, Evil Karma requires calculated puppy kicking and poodle-pocking to maintain, and Neutral Karma amounts to "save a character, burn an orphanage".

Post by **jlf65** » Mon Dec 19, 2016 4:40 pm

Not even "save a character", more like "give someone water" or "donate a few caps".

Yeah, the karma values need some major overhauling.

Post by **Puppettron** » Fri Dec 23, 2016 5:35 am

well, it doesn't help that in vanilla settings, killing an evil actor is +100 karma and killing a very evil actor is +5 karma.

i run the feral ghouls through tenpenny as early as possible to get the mask so i don't accidently become the savior defending myself from attacking ferals later on

Post by **Damianwolff** » Sat Dec 24, 2016 10:42 am

Yeah. I know Obsidian focused on reputation instead of karma, but the nature of game making implies that the stuff we see was decided upon by somebody. Now, how could somebody decide that the player should be receiving karma for killing feral ghouls? To the point where the player has to actively avoid killing the fallout version's of zombies and the majority of automatically aggressive human enemies (those tagged 'Evil'), to maintain Evil karma.

Which often means that half the time, the nightmarish Very Evil PC has to play the part of a saint, avoiding duking it out with half the wasteland.