Protos.tab fixes 1.0 alpha

WARNING: there are some mistakes in CRs because I calculated twice CRs from class levels applied to monsters. The protos file may not work since the program used for modding probably has an unwanted collateral effect with columns. The effects of changes have not been tested. Make a backup of the protos.tab file before experimenting this one. Download the file only if you want to give a feedback untill the next protos is ready.

Description of changes

monsters:

-fiexed general values of monsters, restoring them back to the ones reported in D&D 3.5 monster manual when the changes were celarly mistakes; otherwise monsters have been "upgraded" accordingly to their rightful Hit Dice progression or using elite scores (15,14,13,12,10,8) plus racial modifier.
- all hit points have been fiexed for all monsters. Too many (really a lot) had just the hit points from basic dice rolls, ignoring constitution bonus; others had extra HPs graqnted by nothing and often undead creatures had extra HPs even if they don't have constitution at all.
- "plant" attribute added to all creatures that should ignore critical and sneak attacks and that didn't do it before.
- fixed all Challenge Ratings.
- fixed all attack bonuses for creatures with more than 1 natural weapon.

Must-know main changes:
-Balor: brought back to its original power, following D&D 3.5 rules, Removed "Slay Living" and "fear" (hoping that this does not mess up the scritp for combat) since he doesn't have those abilities. Added the proper 2 weapon fighting feats, a 1-handed flamming spike chain to work as a wip (but still not in his personal inventory, actually he doesn't use it yet). Maybe now he is too strong: need to be tested.
-Clestials animals: fixed all stats, since they didn't have the racial modifier for celestial attributed; fixed CR and dded the missing Damage Reduciton 5/magic
-Hidra: restored values, no more poisonous bite but it regains rapid healing 15
-Juggernaut: works like one of the golem described in monster manual, so that now it is a challengening fight worthy of its CR.
-fixed werewolves.
-Lamia: removed spellcaster levels because magical beasts cannot add class levels to their Hit Dices; still retains magical abilities. Increased HD.
-lantern archon has been fixed restoring his proper defensive attributes. Archon's attacks are unfortunately still melee attacks and not ranged touch attacks as they shoulds.
-Elementals (all): fixed stats, "critical damage matter" and attacks
-leucrotta: they were completely nonsense with extra attacks more than the bite and spellcaster levels: removed spellcaster levels because magical beasts cannot add class levels to their Hit Dices.
-Minotaur: stat fixeds, but needs to be equiped with a huge 2-handed axe.
-Hooti fungi: brought back to that puny crature that effectively is.
-Galeb Dur: stats have been restored accordingly with D&D 3.5 rules.

Items:

Changes:
- excalibur now is a real holy avenger with all proper charactersistics but dispell magic (dispell magic needs to be tested).
- Balor's vorpal 2-handed sword is now a +1 keen longsword, since the vorpal attribute was missing.
- fidex all prices of masterwork items, accordingly with D&D 3.5 manual.
- Prince Thormel's equipment is now magical. It was unbelivable that a rich prince had only a magical weapon and not magic armor, shield and generically magic equipment. All items are holy, so that an evil party won't be able to use them while a good party, used by a player that respects the choosen allignment, won't steal them nor will try to kill the prince for them.
- Gnome ring now has some minor magical attributes: it grants +2 on diplomacy, listen, gather information and perform skills, plus a +1 on ST: will (instead than a specific +2 vs illusions, too difficult to duplicate).
- unicorn ring now gives a +1 to AC and grants to the user the following unicorn abilities 1 x day like a 8th level spellcaster: cure moderate wounds, remove poison, dimension door and magic circle against evil. (both rings need to be tested)
- Javelin of Lighting now is a +1 weapon, since no weapon may have a magical use without being at least +1.
- Black TZGY scarab works like a stronger scarab of protection, but it is evil so that it can't be used by a good party.

added:
- Silvan Scimitar +3, +1d6 acid damage, keen (if somebody can, please replace keen with mighty cleaving), alchemical silver.
- flaming spike chain for balor, intended to work as Balor's fire wip
- Masterwork Composite Longbow +4 STR
- cold iron arrows
- a masterwork silver axe and a masterwork cold-iron morningstar.
- silent (+5) studded leather +1
- shield of ice resistance +1/Ice Resistance 10
- wild studded leather for druid (It si mainly a trick: it doesn't provide any real armor bonus but only a total +5 of natural armor to AC, so that the druid should be able to keep this bonus even when he is in wild shape. Need to be tested)

NPCs:

- lowered Elmo's and Otis' stats, even if they are still very strong. Now Elemo is more oriented to be a great ranger and Otis a melee fighter.
- Lightly rebalanced Pintak's and Tulek's stats: now they are chaotic-neutral (more in role with their lust for freedom) and are better oriented to be a barbarian and a fac-totum.

Long_description.mes
-added descriptions for new items, composite longbows and magic ioun stones.

New items have the following codes:
Balor wip: 4497
Silvan scimitar 4498
Masterwork composite longbow +4 4499
Silver Axe 4496
Cold Iron Morningstar 4495
Silent leather Armor 6318
Ice Queen Shield 6319
Wild Leather Armor +2 (no effective armor bonus, should grant +5 total of natural armor that should remain even in wild shape, it needs to be tested) 6320
Unicorn Ring 6126
Gnome ring 6017
Holy Avenger 4025

 

Infos and answer to:why those changes?

The 2 files are the protos.tab, descpiption.mes and long_description.mes updated from Livonya's 1.5.1, so they are compatibile with her last work.

Having here some time free, D&D 3.5 manuals and a lot of will to do, at the beginning I started looking for what I thought the game was missing: more magic stuff. Looking inside the game, I discovered there were too many things that were completely non sense and that highly unbalanced the game.
Playing as Dungeon Master myself, I discovered that altering D&D rules means to change a very delicated equilibrium, so I decided to fix all those (huge, many, so many, really!!!!!) errors that I found especially about monsters.
Now the ones of you who were effectively angry because many monsters were not the ones listed in D&D 3.5 monster manual will be happy, for all the others, just know that now the game will be challengening as it should be, because many monsters really missed very important things like the bonus Hit Points granted from constitution to hit dices.
If you liked some "weird" things like the hidra that was spitting venom, those things may be easily re-added to the game, but I liked more to create some variations empowering monsters with logic and according to existing real rules.

I tried to add/change some item in the game, thinking to keep equilibrium and avoiding power-playing items. I hope that you'll help me how those changes will work and that you'll enjoy my first effort to give my contribute to this forum.

 

To Livonya, Allix and other modders

Dear guys,

I hope it is clear that I did what I did to give my contribute to your efforts, not to make something that goes against them. As long as I was able to recognize your works, I tried not to change any of your changes, so that you may just work on my modified protos, since now it is as closed as possible to real pen & paper D&D 3.5.
I hope that, if you think that they are balanced enough, that you'll find a place in the game for them.

I just fixed the following things:
I fixed the prices for some masterwork and special metal items, since they were too cheap and to easy to obtain.
I changed the skeleton priest for the meadow trap: I just removed extra HP and increased HD to compensate the loss of those non-sense HP, making it a CR 5. Why this? The answer is that skeletons have INT 0, WIS 10 and CHA 1. They are just undead, with no coscience of themsleves so they can't be spellcasters. Of course everybody is free to create whatever he7she wants, but just for role-playing and logical reasons, I think it would be better, and very easy for you if you like my suggestion, to change the skeleton priest into a ghost priest: ghost keeps all the abilities of their past lives, while skeletons and zombies don't. More, zombies and skeletons (except some very rare exception listed in other manuals) have the same attack progression of wizard, then +1 to attack every 2 levels and they are puny opponents.
The ghost could be a veganceful soul that just can't quiet its rage and kills every living being that comes near the meadow, or better, the ghost of a fallen temple priest, wich fanatic fervor surivived the death of its body and made him a ghost that still lurks on the meadows, leading all those skeletons with no will, still attempting to fulfill the recived-in-life orders. I know that a ghost is difficult to do because there are not incorporeal attributes, but, assuming that you don't own Monster Manual, you may get a nice compromise using a shadow for the aspect of the priest, like the ones in the temple, making it invisibile and granting it the following abilities to the priest that you had in your mind:

+4 to charisma, +8 to hide, listen, spot and seek;
1d6 contact attack as alternative to attacks with weapons
fear effect with DC that depends from charisma
+X to natural armor, where X is equal to its charisma bonus.
+2 to CR and no constitution, but all HD becomes d12. So a 4th level priest would have 4d12 instead of 4d8 + constitution, and would be CR 6.

I didn't it by myself because it is not my work.

Another idea is, if you will, to create some bunches of special metals (cold iron, mithral, alchemical silver) so that the smith in homelet may forge a very limited ammount of weapons and armors accordingly with the metal that the party found. I know that this means editing many dialogues strings, but, if you think it is worthy of, you may create just 4 or 6 items total, the ones that the smith forged more ofthen in his life and the only ones that he may forge with limited ammounts of very-hard-to-work metal.

I'll await for feedback.

 

Oh ... can he cast blasphemy?

Anyway, great work!

 

Wow that seems like a lot of work! Will definitely try them out in my next run through and give you feedback on how they function in-game.

Zeb

 

Do what you want. It is your game. - Livonya

 

Thanks Liv for feedback, here is my answer.

"I know you mean well, but you don't have enough understanding of how TOEE works to be making these changes."

You have more experience than me, probably you are right but I Know D&D rules very well, and if Troika guys followed them, I think that many of the changes that I did may still be useful. About the others, like HP and CR, it is a quick work for me to restore them.

"1) You have completly wrecked some monsters so that they have absolutely no reason to even be in the game. You simply removed their special abilities? And took away their AI."
No, I didn't except for the Balor. He is the only one that I'm afraid of having wrecked, but it should quite easy to restore the few strings in the appropriate colums.

"2) Your CR changes are totally wrong. You don't understand how CR works in TOEE. All you are doing is giving out massive amounts of experience for killing the exact same monsters. I suspect someone playing with your CR levels would get to level 10 very, very quickly as the CR levels are totally inflated. You have increased the CR on some creatures by as many as 10? I don't think this is what you intended, but this is what you have done. Many of your monsters will have CR levels of 25+ in game when they used to have a CR level of 13 or 14. Do you realize how that will change the game balance?"

Yes, I just restored the CR of monsters accordingly with their effective power and D&D rules. Now a party has more experience to spend in crafting objects, it is ready to afford the risk of loosing a member and to resurrect him/her since there is now enough "experience" in the game to have him/her to level rise again. More some very strong opponents is really worthy of the fight.
I thik that it is unfair to fight a balor that is strong as it should be but that the CR is lower than 20. But if I'm wrong, I'm still keeping your protos and I'm gonna to test my game right now, so if I see that something is going bad, I'll bring them to original change. More, ToEE is realized for a party of 5 or 8, while a normal party of adventurers is of 4, so XPs are shared along 8 party members and now there is even the Cap Remover that will give even more meaning to proper CRs.

"3) Your hit point changes are all wrong. They ignore the actual game mechanics."

Probably you are right, but allow me to say that I'm not 100% sure.
I reached this conclusion by logic, looking at how values were before changing them. Maybe I was drived to wrong conclusions by misunderstanding elements, I can't but trust you, but please explain this to me and to others:
I make you 3 samples of what I found in the protos:
CON HP
14 1d8
14 1d8+20
14 1d8+2
As you see, in the first one the constitution bonus is missing, in the second one there is a weird +20 that comes from nothing, in the last one there is the proper value for creature. So, should I argue that only the first one is the fair one? That the second one is just an illogic try to make a monster stronger and that the last one is still a mistake that adds constitution bonus twice?
I reached the conclusion that only the third one is the right one because every column reported scores that were alreading including characteristic scores bonuses. Saving throws for every monster already included WIS, DEX and CON bonuses, even if in some situation there was just a wrong number in the column. As well, the attack bonus and damage dices already included the proper STR bonus for all monsters (even if, as well, there were some wrong creatures that had wrong dices, or wrong STR bonus and stuff). So it is a logic deduction to think that even the constitution colum needs to have the CON bonus added to the HP dice. Why should it make any difference?
And about CRs, I just looked the "upgrading monstes" selection, where I gave +1 for every new class level to monsters, +1 when I used elite scores and +X accorgdingly with the increment of new HDs, as written in the manual. For example, galeb Dur were CR 9 and I added 8 new HDs to make them as callendgening as before. An Elemental gains a +1 to CR for every 4 HDs, so now they are CR 11. After all, ToEE is still D&D and, honestly, I'm only afraid of corrupting 2 or maximum 3 monsters' script.
Anyway, even if you think that I increased too much CRs and HD, look that I fiex many many other things like prices, stats, feats, skills, items, but mainly attack rating accordingly with monsters' strength and dexterity and real HDs. skill and saving throws. Really many monsters were so crappy because they had lower values than the ones that they should have.
just to avoid misunderstandments, when you say:
"If a creature currently has 9d10+50 hit dice and you change it to 15d8+75 and add 11 CR then you have now turned a 9 CR creature into a 26 CR creature. That is a MASSIVE change."
I did nothing like that except than with Balor and Ghaleb Dur, that just were unfrair.
A balor in M.Manual is a 20d8 extraplanar creature, that is really, really strong. The previous CR was absolutely unfair, as well as Galeb Dur with that non-sense damage reduction.

So I say: players, let's go and test it. It is an alpha version, so something that still has to be tested. I belive in the potential of my ideas, so just go and kick some monster's butt to see if I really messed up the game or I improved it I'm sure that you'll enjoy the hardest hack'& slash ever or, if I'm lucky and I'm right, a game closer to the real p&p D&D that we love so much!

 

What Livonya's saying is the numbers stated in the rules do not translate directly into the numbers used in the protos.tab.

For example, the game automatically adds 1 CR for each character level the creature has on top of whatever value is in the CR column. So if you give something a CR value that takes into account its character levels, those levels end up getting counted twice.

Another example, I wasn't aware the game automatically added the Con bonus to HP within the engine until just now.

There is no denying that there are mistakes in the game for certain creatures (galeb duhr and the balor's CR being the most glaring examples) but you have to make sure you're fixing them correctly. Just plugging in the numbers from the game books isn't neccessarily going to work.

 

Interesting. In the logs of my game (granted this was with mod 1.0) the Balor was coming up as CR 8 and the Galeb Duhr as CR 4. Did you fix this in 1.5?

 

Ok, those are valid argumentations and something that I couldn't know. The thing about the CR, for example. And I agree with the fact that there is not any DM to master on the game and this is a trouble.
But, please, reflect on this:

Extra XPs
first, about the extra HPs, it is really difficult that a monster with 9d8 HD rolls 1 each time, obtaining only 9 HP + constitution bonus, but anyway a monster is strong not only for his HPs. Adding +50 HPs means to avoid that the monster will have few HPs, but this changes its effective power! So, if it was a CR 5, you can't still consider it still a CR 5 with +50 HPs! Note that I'm not naming a random number, but the one that I found applied to many creatures.
Take as sample a polar bear, that is a 8d8 animal with CON 19.
We have a minimum of 8+(8x4)=40 HPs, average is 68 HPs and maximum is 96 HPs. Looking to monster manual, polar bear constitution is average for creatures with 8 hit dices and, as you may see, polar bear's tolat HPs can't be lower than 40, that is really hard to happen, but even if it would happen, it would still give the bear the chanche to last some round in a fight, to deal serious damages to players because he is still a very strong animal. Think instead to the opposite thing: what damage would do a bear with +50 HPs to the party? I think it would be an unfair fight and a party of 4 of 4th level, equal to the polar bear CR of 4, may die or suffer really heavy damages because it can't effectively stand a chance against an opponent that has HPs doubled.
At that point, if the master really wants a thogher monster, it is better to make a stronger monster with its appropriate CR or to increase monster's HDs untill the limit of the +1 to CR. For example animals gets +1 to CR for every 3 more HDs, so it is more right for me to add 2 more HDs to the bear, granting him a reason for extra HPs, together with better attack rolls, skills and saving throws. Making a particulary strong bear that is more balanced instead than a creature that gains bonuses from nothing.
And about the fact that the programmers didn't know when the party would have reached some dungeon level, IMHO I think that it is fair that a party that entered from the temple main door, killed every single monster and succeded in all missions gaining all possibile XPs, should effectively kick monsters' asses of lower levels more effectively than a party that entered from the secret door in the center of the temple and that missed a lot of the fun. It is more logic, more real.
Many other creatures instead had less HPs from constitution bonus than they should. More, think that not everybody loves to play with a party of 8, but many wishes to play with a party of 4 or 5. With a group of 4/5 PCs, the game with "my" rules would be already balanced because it has already been tested from p&p players, otherwise the party of 8 will level rise more slowy than a party of 4, filling the difference of level with extra actions every turn. For me this is already balanced and, IMHO, the fungus queen should really be empowered, because she is just too weak.

Changes to monsters

"You changed the Leucrotta from CR 17 to CR 16 and took away all of it's special abilities and removed 7 hit dice from it and removed it's AI."
It was a non-sense. Leucrotta are magical beasts with very limited magical abilities, they speak but don't have hands to cast spells. Their magic skills were something just out of their role and I always felt angry with programmers that made such a non-sense. More, in my file it is CR 6 and I increased their HDs from 6 to 10 to keep them a challengening figt. And, yes, my mistake, they should be CR 5, not 6 but still nor 17 or 16.

"You changed the Balor from CR 20 to CR 30. Free experience."
Why? I wrote 20 in the CR column. Now he is a real CR 20 creature. What's the problem? That now he is just too strong? maybe, that's why that I named my 1.0 an Alpha version, because it needs testers.
Please, could you tell my why are u adding always +10 to the CR of monsters? Does the game automatically do that? I can't belive this and I don't think that it could even be, otherwise even the puniest creatures with CR1, like wolves, should become CR 11.

"You changed Galeb duhr from CR 12 to CR 26. Free experience."
Liv, but what file are you looking at? Ghaleb Dur were CR 4 and completely non sense, I fixed them and brought back to be CR 9. Then I added 8 extra HDs, so +2 to CR and in my file they are CR 11.

"You changed the Lamia from CR 15 to CR 21 but made no changes to it's hit points in any way but lowered it's Hit Dice levels by 2 and took away 1 attack and reduced the damage it does. So you make the creature much easier to defeat and give out free experience."
In verity, Lamia in my file is CR 8, even if it should be 7, I guess that I made a small error calculating CR modifications accordingly with extra racial HDs. But still, +1 CR is not that big mistake and I really don't understand what are those values that you are bringing to me. Anyway, Lamia was modified like leucrotta even if, maybe, I didn't had to touch the columns with spellcaster levels, because this may have influences on the "power" of spells, but not on saving throws against them because those are determined by charisma.

"Your "fix" for the werewolf was to reduce the Hit Dice from 12 to 6 and lower the CR 15 to CR 10. Why? Does this improve the game in some way? Were people complaining that the werewolf was impossible to beat? "
Many people complained that werewolves near the fire temple, in the room with the mirror, were really hard, yes.
And anyway, about jackalwere, I wished to make an experiment, because they were a couple of loosers with no history and I never understood why they have had to be so strong. I used real stats for a medium human that is under licantropy effect, with racial modifier for werewolves. If you think that they are weak, it could be nicer to make them part of a plot that involves the use of "belladonna", italian name for the herb used to cure licantropy, or just add some barbarian, fighter or ranger level to them, since werewolves gainst class levels instead of extra HDs. Anyway, they are a regular CR3.
About those werewolves instead, I used some ranger class level and elite stat scores, so now they should be still a good fight but more balanced. That's all. Not all the changes that I did were to make the game harder, but just to better fit creatures in the role that they had in the game. They are CR 4, and 6d8 creatures with good stats. Why should they be outpowered?

More, PCs are mainly unchanged from p&p D&D and I don't see why, if they are the same, monsters should be different. I think that, if somebody is able of running the game with my protos, he should be able to find the game just more equilibrated with less puny opponets, since 90% of them just gained benefits, and with level bosses that are more nasty than ever.
Right reward for each challenge.

 

Experiment: game does not automatically assign constitution bonuses.

I know that maybe Livonya will hate me since I always have to argue, but I really had to test things on my own to learn, otherwise I'll never be able to walk on my legs. More, I'm using the scientific method that teachers teached me to university: if you want to demonstrate that something is true, seek proofs that it is NOT.

Liv, I did what follow:
to be sure of not meeting any random creature, I took your skeleton priest, modified it to mc_type_humanoid jsut to avoid some trouble with undead racial abilities, removed all special abilities, assigned it a CON 20 score (+5 HP) and base HP of 1. More, I made a longsword to deal only 1d1 damage. I went to kill him with a party of 5, leaded by a melee warrior with STR 11 (no damage bonus nor malus) so that he could only deal 1 damage pre attack. At the first sucesful strike, the skeleton was unconscious.
Then I changed the once-skeleton making it with 1d4+5 HPs, and It was generally struked down generally with 7 or 8 hits (medium scores for 1d4+5).
I repeated each of the 2 tests 3 times, quitting and starting a new game every time, to be sure that loading a previous game didn't influence on latest changes.
Always the same result, and there is no mistake in the protos. Feel free to try this by yourself and I invite everybody else to reply my results.
This means, that, like saving throws, attack bonus and damages, the protos.tab needs the constitution bonus already calculated in the HD column.

 

I would advise that you test your changes before you release them to make sure they work as you think. If they work as you think then great, and if they don't then you will figure out what you are doing wrong.

I also suggest you learn what column 25 does.

I am done with this thread. I appologize for ever posting at all.

Do what you want. It is your game.

- Livonya

 

Liv, please, don't be angry with me. I really appreciated everything that you wrote. I'm trying to learn from you and to follow your steps and I would really like to help you and to give my personal contribute to the forum, but what's the meaning if you answer to me posting different values than the ones that I used? Then I learn nothing and it is all useless! Post more instead!
Even if I'm a crappy modder, I thought that from my experiment and my errors, it could rise some interesting discussion to make the game even more better.
Matt.

 

Strictly speaking a balor cannot be defeated by a level 10 party, blasphemy is TPK.