NWN Data Format: Faction

1. Introduction

A Faction is a control system for determining how game objects interact with each other in terms of friendly, neutral, and hostile reactions. Faction information is stored in the repute.fac file in a module or savegame. This file uses BioWare's Generic File Format (GFF), and it is assumed that the reader of this document is familiar with GFF. The GFF FileType string in the header of repute.fac is "FAC".

2. Faction System Structs

The tables in this section describe the GFF Structs contained within repute.fac.

2.1. Faction Top Level Struct

2.1.2. Faction Struct

The Table below lists the Fields that are present in a Faction Struct found in the FactionList.

2.1.3. Reputation Struct

The Table below lists the Fields that are present in a Reputation Struct found in the Rep List. Each Reputation Struct describes how one faction feels about another faction. Feelings need not be mutual.

For example, Exterminators might be hostile to Rats, but Rats may be neutral to Exterminators, so that a Rat would only attack a Hunter or run away from a Hunter if a Hunter attacked the Rat first.

For the RepList to be exhaustively complete, it requires N*N elements, where N = the number of elements in the FactionList.

However, the way that the PC Faction feels about any other faction is actually meaningless, because PCs are player - controlled and not subject to faction-based AI reactions. Therefore, any Reputation Struct where FactionID2 == 0 (ie, PC) is not strictly necessary, and can therefore can be omitted from the RepList.

Thus, we revise our original statement and say that for the RepList to be sufficiently complete, it requires N*N - N elements, where N = the number of elements in the FactionList, assuming that one of those Factions is the PC Faction. In practice, however, the RepList may contain anywhere from (N*N -N) to (N*N - 1) elements, due to a small idiosyncrasy in how the toolset generates and saves the list. When a new faction is created, up to two new entries appear for the PC Faction.

If a Faction Struct does not yet exist for the feelings of the PC Faction toward the new faction's parent, then that Struct is created:

• FactionID1: <Parent ID>
• FactionID2: 0
• FactionRep: 100

Regardless of whether the above was created or already existed, a new Faction Struct is created for how the PC Faction feels about the new faction.

• FactionID1: <New ID>
• FactionID2: 0
• FactionRep: 100

The reputations are set to 100 in both cases, but remember that the actual reputation value does not matter if FactionID2 is 0.

From all the above, it follows that a module that contains no user-defined factions will have exactly N*N - N Faction Structs, where N = 5. Modules containing user-defined factions will have more. The maximum number of Faction Structs in the RepList is N*N - 1, because the Player Faction itself can never be a parent faction.

3. Faction-related 2DA Files

The file repute.2da describes how the core factions feel about each other.

3.1. Default Faction Standings

3.2. Reputation Adjustment

The file repadjust.2da describes how faction reputation standings change in response to different faction-affecting actions, how the presence of witnesses affects the changes, and by how much the changes occur.

Note that certain things affect whether a witness does in fact serve as a witness for its own faction, including whether the witness is dominated, charmed, is a henchman, or is some other associate, as well as what faction the master belongs to. These considerations are not part of the Faction file format, however, and are not discussed further here.