Questions before I embark on my ToEE:Co8 journey...

What an irony that would be if, in all this time, such a simple thing had been missed. It's got to be something hard-coded, else the great minds here surely would have consigned this littlle bugger to oblivion. Perhaps Spellzinger can fix it if the latter is true, rather than the former; making asses out of "all the King's horses" trying to fix this Humpty-Dumpty offspring of Troika.

:zap:

 

No Spike. It's in the protos. We could have changed it long ago. We haven't because of game balance issues.

The lack of a real time DM makes most combats easier than they would if we had one. There is only so much you can do with strategy.tab. One of the ways this is compensated for is by giving less experience for combat than you would get in PnP. Another is by reducing the number of charges in wands, staffs and rods. All of this was implemented by Troika, and I for one agree with it.

 

It works out pretty well as is, in that I seem to use up a wand of magic missles right about the time my wizard gets another missle when casting that spell, so I upgrade to a better wand very soon after expending the previous one.

 

There's also the fact that, AFAICR, ToEE doesn't reduce the price of charged items as their charges go down. So one can concievably craft a wand, fire off 19 charges and then still sell it for a full price. 50 charges would make this bug even more cost-effective.

That said, I understand the reduction in charges for balancing out combat, but maybe we could let utility spell wands get away with having 50 charges (though are there even 50 oppurtunities to cast Knock in the game?) Though that would introduce a weird sort of exception and lead to some debate over what should and should not have 50 charges, so it might be best left alone.

 

Somebody here has got to possess the talent to write a quick script to fix the sale price, basing it on remaining charges. I'm no scripter, but how can this be beyond scripting? All I'm saying is the talent is here, if someone will just focus on it for a little while.

 

How about recharging wands? That's a basic part of PnP.

 

I've usually played with a party consisting of:-

Half-Orc Fighter
Human or Elf Cleric (CE Erythnul - War and Trickery
Elf or Human Druid
Human Wizard
Elf Rogue

(I always hate using bards, as they are weak in everything, but not strong in any one aspect. Given the choice between using either a Cleric or a Druid, I'd opt for Druid, as (for once) this AD&D game allows Druids to become truly effective, compared to previous games like Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale etc.)
With CO8, I've recently added a sixth Human Monk character, as well. This is because, with just one fighter, it can get quite tough in the early stages. I don't take on any NPCs, except in the Elemental Nodes, where I merely use the very weak characters there as cannon-fodder and discard them after leaving the nodes.
I far prefer to give my 5 or 6 characters higher stats(92 points per PC) than normal, as, otherwise, with only weak PCs, I am then forced to take on Otis, Scorrp or Thrommel as side-characters and that makes the game far too easy for me.

 

I think wands are fine just the way they are.

 

Not in 3.x. There are no rules for recharging magical items.

 

Writing the script would be a piece of cake, Spike. The problem lies in that we can't access the data structure that stores how many charges are left. Without that bit, the script is useless.

 

Having never used a druid myself, can they spontaneously cast healing spells like a cleric? If not, then I would find a cleric is still essential (and for this same reason I never take an evil cleric). I tend to only rest when my party is completely exhausted of spells and HP, so being able to memorise combat spells but spontaneously switch to healing when necessary is an essential part of my party construction.

 

No, they spontaneously cast Summon Nature's Ally. I usually take a druid as an addition to the cleric, sometimes as a replacement for the wizard, but never as a substitute for the cleric.

Besides, I would never part with the ablility to craft Holy Axiomatic weapons :grin:

 

I see your point Kalshane, in that I am spending gold and xp on the wands, when I could get those spells for free by memorizing them, but both gold and xp are plentiful in this game with the side mods (I got five PCs two levels each out of Verbobonk alone), and also I figure getting past level 10 is doing better than Troika intended anyway.

My issue with carrying these spells on scrolls is that it takes up alot of space in the inventory that could better be used to recover treasure. (I never did figure out the extrplanar chest.) It would be nice if you could make scrolls of five or seven different spells like you could in 1st edition, but apparently you cannot in TOEE.

At least scrolls of the same spell stack in the inventory, but that doesn't help when you want to have a long list of spells available more than you want multiple copies of the same spell. What I do from level 1 to 4 though, is carry multiples of sleep, charm person, summon, ect. on scrolls, filling minimal inventory space by stacking the most commonly used spell scrolls. It's basically the low level wizards version of a wand.

If I carried srolls for five different first level spells and four or five different second level spells, plus some third and fourth level as well, I would run out of space fast. The wizards memorized spell slots thus serve to store those spells in lieu of taking the space in inventry for the scrolls. You are right though in one sense, because by put a couple of almost never used spells on scrolls in addition to the wands of most commonly used spells I'm using only a little room in the inventory and still expanding my spell selection available.

But to each his own, and I'm in no way saying that your way is wrong, just that my approach is a bit different.