Circle of Eight Modpack v6 / v6 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Loot's great, though...

I think the real culprit might be the Appraise skill's effects on prices. It gets so profitable to sell things. I know your ability to mess with things is limited, but changing the Appraise skill's influence might help. From an in game perspective, having harder limits on merchants' money makes sense and would help. I've definitely had some absurd unloads in the little town of Hommlet while selling magic items.

Another alternative would be adding more high level magic items to craft and more optional, challenging fights in which to use them...

Fines and tariffs are great, until you start wondering how people who aren't carrying around 50,000 PP can afford to live.

 

Hi
I think that what is really missing is a "Barter / Haggle" skill. just because you "know" that an item is worth x amount of Gold, doesn't mean that the person you are trying to sell it too, will pay that much for it. To quote Publius Syrus, a Roman Orator from the 1st Century AD "Everything is worth exactly what it's purchaser will pay for it". It is also worth noting, that Appraise, as implemented in the game engine, seems to be a combination of 100% accurate "Appraise" ( as RAW ) and awesome bargaining skills. Appraise per d20 srd does not guarantee accurate appaisal of every item, and it only grants you the ability to possibly determine what an item is actually worth.
Another problem with the ToEE game engine is that in the original rules, if you failed a save against, say, a fireball, all your equipment and magic items had to save to, and if they failed their save..... pfft. If you want an example of this, you can read "The Team From Hommlet" which is a narration of an actual ToEE campaign. There are many times where the narrator / DM states "many magic items were destroyed". So yes there are lots of magic items in the game (if I remember correctly, the PnP module had even more), but if the "Fail a Save and all your items must save" rule were properly implemented, you would probably need most of them.
I will grant you, that these problems, which are "hard-wired" into the Vanilla code, probably can't be fixed. One possible solution (??) might be a sort of "supply and demand" script, some thing along the lines of "Another 5 suits of plain chainmail ?? I'll give you 50 GP each for them. Yeah I know that I gave you 130 GP for the first set you sold, but it was in better shape, and I don't have to many people asking for Chainmail these days. Now if you have a suit of Full Plate in good condition, I buy that for 175 GP, because I have a customer who wants one"
The Royal Canadian

 

Thanks Royal, that explains why the 1-5 selector is there. However, the spell still doesn't identify anything for me, and the caster gets that strange floating text of "not enough money". If I had to guess, I'd say the spell doesn't recognize the cash in the form that NPC party members carry it. Meaning, if the money is taking up a pack slot it won't fuel this spell, the cost of the spell must be pulled from the shared party cash pool. Which means functionally, the spell only works when cast by an original party member casts it. That's just a theory of course.

Edit:Regarding loot, I should point out that this is the first playthrough I've pumped up the Appraise skill to any kind of decent level.

 

I think the game might have a problem recognizing platinum as actually being money when looking for gold.

 

Hi Hal
I think you are correct. One quick way to test your theory is to have Spugnoir cast Identify, as that costs 100GP
The Royal Canadian

 

Ha ha i like that idea! Add a dude that either hangs out near Brother Smyth with a huge cart, that buys any item, but has a tough "barter/haggle" script. Each of the other village merchants (other than Rannos & Gremag, and the jewelry dude, maybe the church, and Burne) would only be able to buy a very limited amount of gear from your adventurers, as they are simply small village shops. Could they be assigned a value of gold that they have available for purchase of the heroes goods? Maybe that could be a variable amount that would change each time the map of Hommlett loads... so that on one trip, you could only sell so much gear.

I'd imagine the deepest pockets in town are Burne, the Church of St. Cuthbert, and Rannos & Gremag (until the party confronts them).

Or would this just be needlessly annoying...

Ha ha or maybe the new NPC with the cart could be like a medieval "E-bay" seller ... you offload your found junk to him, (how many Bugbear shields does the local economy NEED, anyway?) and he gives you money back as the stuff "sells" out of his inventory... to other people who pass through, or if he as Gaear said manages to offload it to somewhere else... Be funny if you come back and he's saying "man you gotta give me something i can sell here, i had to sell that last batch as scrap metal to Brother Smyth."

Maybe even quests could be added to this dude, like ... as above mentioned in this scenario by another poster:

"Hey, i got a guy who needs 4 long swords, a long spear, and 5 suits of fine chainmail" and the party can "supply" it, for a small EXP boost and some gold at a flat rate.

One thing i have been thinking about. Is there ANY use for the food or beer items, in game? I get the feeling they were just added for flavor.

Any way that food could be assigned as a necessity for resting? so that in a limited way, the party would need to stock up on provisions before heading out adventuring?

 

I just figured Smyth and Bing were frontmen for the evil hordes and sold all those rusty longswords and leather armor back to the goblins and orcs, who breed at a rabbit like pace.


Now the tailor is a different story. He complains about having to outfit the militia, so I give him 20gp, then he buys a 2000gp elven cloak from me.

 

Understood and agreed. I was trying to get at the fact that high tariffs or high inn prices would make little sense if most people (NPCs) in the game world wouldn't be able to afford those costs.

Oh, and on a tangent: that AoH fight was great. I take the NC as soon as I'm able and it's the only content so far that really hands me my butt (except for the EM hill giant without Entanglement/Web). My point is, I'm happy with more challenging fights!

 

As this is GD, I actually did have a couple of questions about that fight!

So, in my first attempt of three, the third mage with the hill giant skeletons didn't appear until several rounds into the combat. Having gotten smushed, I cheated by casting hide from undead and positioning my party behind the northern mage and his goons (because his stinking cloud is what devastated me in the first round--that's a good thing!).

Two things seemed to happen. I didn't notice the game rolling saves for the undead to perceive my party through the spell. I take from the spell description that at the very least the mages should have been given a Will saving throw. Was that made behind the scenes? Or is that not implemented/implementable?

The other is that the third mage seemed to spawn immediately after the first time. I'm kind of curious to know what's supposed to happen.

 

Hi Gaear
I like the idea of limiting the number of purchases per week that Brother Smyth, etc... , can make. Another possibility to add some challenge to the game ( assuming that most if not all the NC except WWB is going to be moved to after the fall of the temple ), would be to set up some sort of deadline that the player has to meet, so players don't spend weeks sitting around Hommlet waiting to sell their stuff at the best prices.
One correction if I may. The food and drink available in various places does serve a purpose, all be it a minor one, each drink, or item of food counts as a "Cure Minor Wounds" ( or at least it used to: I remember trying it once ).
The Royal Canadian