Icewind Dale 2 - so I wonder

I suspect IWD2's encounter design was because the game makers were new at 3.x stuff. BG1 & 2 were generally much more freeform compared to the rules as written.

Maybe the game makers simply wanted to give less EXP compared to RAW which is understandable. 2e D&D seemed bulit with the assumption of adventurers taking a long time to level so they could explore a big world. 3e D&D was seemingly built around the notion that people wanted to focus on a story or set of dungeons and reach level 20 from level 1 in 2 years of real time at max.

What about working with the Icewind Dale II EE team to port that version to ToEE?

 

Idk if there is much difference btw porting iwd2 vanilla and iwd2EE for @anatoliy.

• both use the same areas
• the weidu changes can't be ported to ToEE. The ideas and concepts can, though. A play-through of iwd2 EE could communicate these concepts. But all this code would have to be written for ToEE.
  Some stuff already? exists in ToEE. The menu has settings to increase monster difficulty, reduce xp, and such.
  
• the team is basically one IE specialist and one manager. ToEE has a bigger team to draw from if it had to: @anatoliy, @Sitra Achara , the many ones that made prcs and spells, etc.
• Npcs are a bit different, in that certain monsters (not core to the story) are designated as npcs, compared to npc projects that BG or iwd uses to start a game.
  
  Also, imho ToEE characters gain power faster. Consider all the new spells, prcs, crafting. Enemy AI and difficulty would need balancing for that.

 

@Endarire - you might find this retrospective interest:

It is a little lengthy and I only watched the first part, but one thing is pretty clear: IWD2 was developed under intense time pressure with lots of changes made at the last minute to support some version of 3.x rules and a lot of ambitious plans were dropped due to limitations of the engine and time constraints. It is a little sad that the IWD2 source code appears to be completely lost according to the game developers...

 

IWD2EE is not released yet. I suspect you were given beta testing access to try out. If I had data sources, I would certainly took a look and compared what was done. Btw two of key EE developers have Ukrainian names))

 

Yeah, 2e D&D and before were quite different indeed. I've read one printed adventure recently, and it was truly remarkable towards exploration in comparison to 3e D&D.

In any case, I strongly agree, that D&D 3.5 XP leveling is too fast for videogaming. Being DM for tabletop games I agree that levelup after 3-4 sessions is good gameplay balance.

On other hand I strongly dislike messing with leveling rules.

For example Pierre did remarkable design for KoTC. And I believe messing with 3.5e rules was the biggest erroneous design decision he did for KoTC2, which is NOT 3.5e D&D. He swayed too much from original rules. He went even further than Pathfinder did.

In real-time tactical game combat is quick. But in turn-based it is not.

 

I agree .... but I will never forget that single moment in all of those more or less hack n slash games when in IWD2 my invisible thief was scouting ahead like usual when he saw this big group of really nasty enemies and then all of a sudden one of the oppsosing spellcaster used "see invisibility". Wow, I was so impressed I just could watch my pour thief getting slaughtered within moments.

 

That's the code:

Code:

IF
    ForceMarkedSpell(MARKED_SPELL)
    SetSpellTarget(Nothing)
    See(NearestEnemyOf(Myself),0)
THEN
    RESPONSE #100
        MarkSpellAndObject("2104",[PC.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.CLASSMASK_GROUP_WARRIORS],SPELLCAST_RANDOM)  // [WIZARD_CHARM_PERSON]
        MarkSpellAndObject("21122118",[PC],SPELLCAST_RANDOM)  // [WIZARD_MAGIC_MISSILE, WIZARD_CHROMATIC_ORB]
        MarkSpellAndObject("211221182318",LastMarkedObject,SPELLCAST_IGNORE_SEE | SPELLCAST_IGNORE_VALID_SPELL_TARGET | SPELLCAST_RANDOM)  // [WIZARD_MAGIC_MISSILE, WIZARD_CHROMATIC_ORB, WIZARD_ICELANCE]
        MarkSpellAndObject("2205",[PC],SPELLCAST_RANDOM)  // [WIZARD_HORROR]
        MarkSpellAndObject("2220",ThirdNearestEnemyOf(Myself),SPELLCAST_RANDOM)  // [WIZARD_SNILLOCS_SNOWBALL_SWARM]
        MarkSpellAndObject("2203",Myself,SPELLCAST_IGNORE_SEE | SPELLCAST_IGNORE_VALID_SPELL_TARGET | SPELLCAST_RANDOM)  // [WIZARD_SEE_INVISIBILITY]
        Continue()

It means, that that wizard had list of spells he would cast if applicable. First ones were not applicable as your Thief was invisible, therefore last spell is bound to be See Invisibility.

Nice trick though )))

In tabletop situation, I as DM, would constantly ask the Player to roll Move Silently vs Listen check. And when heard, then would do the See Invisibility or even start combat if foes were alarmed.

 

Thanks @FredSRichardson ! Well given 4 month of development is crazy, to say the least.

It's another argument why encounters need to be redesigned

 

Thanks for good advices, @Allyx

My thinking of requirements would be:

• Stay with XP granted by encounters and / or a map.
  • So if some wilderness map would grant 1000 XP it should remain somewhat the same.
  • Leave room for XP tuning.
• Stay with monsters given, e.g. race, role (melee, archer, etc), but redesign levels and quantity of NPC
• Leave XP modifier to be 50%. Due to videogame, not tabletop.
• Stay true to D&D 3.5 rules. So no CR altering, e.g. Fighter 4 should be counted as CR 4, and not altered to be CR 2 for less XP.
  • So if CR expected, levels, HP etc should correspond to CR.
• Give "power game abilities boost" to monsters. Not sure Elite Array would suffice. It's not tabletop PB 25, bit Point Buy 38!
  • This is Pathfinder's approach. They increased PCs abilities but also increased abilities for monsters.
  • For example increase all abilities by 2 or 4 points, plus 2-4 natural armor bonus. That would compensate for Point Buy 38 power play initial PC stats.

As for Stealth - it's impossible to be hidden in plain sight, except, off course, when you do have such feat (extraordinary ability) of Hide in Plain Sight)). I think it grants -20 to hide check.

In any case Hide works very differently in ToEE, and is not worth buffing up in practice.

 

Well, as Dungeon Master for 4 years and more than tabletop 80 sessions, I got to tell you that MM monsters are easy even if PC created with 25 Point Buy (with 15 top ability), plus half HP for PC as well. Not to tell you about some broken classes like Warlock or Tome of Battle classes.

We even experimented with full HP for PC and Monsters, which led to boring "safe" combat.

It started to become more interesting for Players when I lowered starting PC level for high level adventures. So if 8th level is recommended for some adventure I would set level 7 for everybody.

For example, there are several Orc Archers in one of the encounters of Shaegan River map. Each Orc Archer has DEX 10 (!), CON 11 (but HP: 8?) and level 1 Fighter. He has Attack Bonus of 1 and, unexpected for me, simple Longbow actually grants +1 attack bonus as well. I guess it's leftover from the IWD1.

In any case attack of +2 means that they will hit 20 AC guy in 10% chance and a Wizard AC 17 (3 DEX + 4 Magic Armor) for 25%.

So even if you swap STR 13 => DEX 13 due to Archery role, such Orc would have +2 attack: +1 BAB, +1 DEX. And maybe +1 from Weapon Focus Longbow: Atk = +3

KoTC from Orc Fort had also Orc Archers, but they had 12-15 range for random abilities, focused on DEX. That's in the game and in my unfinished port. It's +4 Atk.

Atk of +4 means that they will hit 20 AC guy in 20% chance and a Wizard AC 17 (3 DEX + 4 Magic Armor) for 35%. If you add Bless (+1 atk) from some Shaman - now we are talking. Btw, +1 atk leads to +5% hit chance. E.g. hit 20 AC guy in 25% chance and a Wizard AC 17 (3 DEX + 4 Magic Armor) for 40%.

So as you can see, increasing abilities by 2 led to very interesting gameplay.

 

For the iwd2EE beta version access, you can post an access request here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussi...d-chimera-group-is-looking-for-playtesters/p1 or you can simply msg OlvynChuru and ask to be allowed to test (his msg details are in the linked thread. I don't think this would be a problem, as the whole point is to have more players try it and see how it plays. Iwd2EE is at the point where the main focus is catching all the bugs of the changes.

That said, imho the best way to approach this is to play a complete game of vanilla first -even if that does get a little boring for you.

Then, request access to the Iwd2EE beta, play around with the various new features, and try.

This would give you more insight to what changes were added to make it more interesting/fun. And also, you would have access to the Iwd2EE discord. This forum has some general discussion threads, which I'd think would be appropriate for any questions you might have about anything Iwd2->Iwd2EE. Like any mod, it has a concept direction...but the author(s) are quite willing to discuss the reasoning for the various additions to the mod.

 

Doesn't IWD2 have difficulty options to address just that sort of thing?