Unfixed problems?

Just a few bugs

First some wierd typos in the d20 display box:

Man, ghouls getting sloshed and toking up... what is the nieghborhood coming too?

Next one is a wierd error that happens when you equip the egyption long sword in the tutorial. A scimitar appears above the character and acts with unison to the egyption one. only a graphical error, but very distracting.I dunno if this bug is in the rest of the game becuase i have yet to find an egyption longsword in the regular game.

Here are the scrnies:




enjoy.

 

While in the temple i found and rescued Countess Talliahi of Celene and Sir Juffer. Later i had a random encounter where i was to recieve my reward. I was told that i was to recieve 100 platinum pieces, a suite of elven chain mail and a unicorn ring. I reloaded many times and never recieved the elven chainmail.

Here is the only other reference i could find to this problem

http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=323279

 

You can fix that quest by changing the InvenSource.mes line 138 with this one

{138}{Elven maiden: 100,6214 100,6125 100,6126 100,6057 100,6058 100,4081 100,6027 gold,2-12 silver,4-24 platinum,2-12}

if you've already met her it wont work (obviously), the autosave at the beginning of the encounter probably wont work either (she wont give the armor). You'll probably have to rest or something like that for the changes to take effect.

 

evil positive energy cleric

all my evil clerics of obad-hai channel positive energy.

this was true prepatch, it's still true postpatch+mod. it's easily repeatable, but i've looked around in the forums and i don't think anyone else has caught it yet.

according to the rules, obad-hai's neutral clerics channel positive, they don't get the normal choice. that's probably the source of the problem. his evil clerics should still channel negative energy, according to the books (and ToEE's help files seem to back this up, so I don't think it was just a design decision).

-thomas

 

@Zhuge

Errh... I was somewhat surpised that you were not able to reproduce the low dex AC bonus bug. It has appeared constantly for me.

I decided to make a more dedicated test and rolled up five characters, Dex AC bonus 0, -1, -2, -3 and -4.

Lo and behold... "Borrowing" Elmo's chainmail+1 I found that the characters got a Dex AC bonus of 0, -1, +2, +2 and +2.

I'm starting to belive that this has something to do with how Troika tested their items. Most likely they used the advanced option instead of rolling the stats, or they simply never used characters with less than 8 Dex.

Since this positive negative roll: ) bonus only appear on some armour it hints on more rushed work.

Dev: "Can some betatester check out these new magic armours I just made?"

QA: "What! You made more? Man I don't have time for this! The game is supposed to go gold in three weeks!"

Dev: "Well just start a game with the pregenerated characters and see if it's bugged."

*Betatester starts a new game using the characters that come shipped with the game, none with Dex less than 8. Swaps the armours around a bit on the characters and sees no problem.*

QA: "Seems fine to me so far. I'll check it out with some rolled characters tomorrow."

Marketing: "Hey guys! Atari just called. They want us to release the game later today!"

QA: "AAAAH! Sweet baby jeebuz! But we haven't actually had a chance to play the game from start to end yet! Heck! We barely scratched out half of the bugs!"

Marketing: "Look just try and finish it quickly. We can always release a patch if some of the RPG nerds bitch about it."

Or perhaps I'm being a wee bit unfair...

Jokes aside I noticed a bug with the Co8 patch. There's a typo that installs some files under am "data/art/inteface" folder rather than the "data/art/interface" folder. Doesn't seem to be anything important, but apparently messed up the Iuon stones for someone. I noticed it when I was trying to get my custom portraits to work properly.

 

@rex_blade
Egyptian longsword with scimitar. Interesting graphics bug.
Maybe we could make a mod out of it. I dunno. Maybe call the scimitar a "dancing blade" which increases the damage of the original weapon. And of course we could make a simple fix to the damage and other properties of the Egyptian longsword.

@mannix:
All Evil clerics of Obad-hai channel positive energy. Noted.

@Wauthan:
I see. I didn't test with a char below Dex 8 so that explains why I didn't pick it up. Hmm, so it's not just plate armors which are involved and the disparity may only occur at even lower Dex scores. Now I really give up on figuring how they coded Dex modifiers with armor. Totally illogical!
Anyway, excellent piece of testing and I'll modify the entry on it.


Added duration fixes for Ice Storm and Guidance to fix list.


EDIT: Has anyone had any trouble with Read Magic post patch?
I have this bug on the list which states so but so far Read Magic works completely Ok with my Cleric and my Sorc.

Tasha's Hideous Laughter now seems to be correctly copied to a 2nd level spell slot for Spugnoir post patch. I guess the patch did indeed fix spells going into the right slots.

 

Okay, here is my story.

I bought the game and installed it and Troika's patch right away. I then started up a game and after picking up some NPCs from the Inn I went adventuring. I had 3 NPCs. The Mage who only wants scrolls. The thief you can play dice or cards with in the Inn. And a fighter that was waiting for a caravan to arive. They were in the order from left to right in my party: Fighter, Wizard, Thief. When I returned to town to sell here is what I noticed:

1) The fighter was carrying EVERYTHING that the NPCs looted. Ala, the theif had taken no new items, and the wizard never picked up a single scroll.

2) When I went to the Blacksmith none of the NPCs sold any of thier items, so the fighter stayed encumbered.

3) I could not make them drop or swap any items they had.

So, I then installed the CO8 2.0.0 patch. I started a new game and here is what I noticed:

1) It seemed all my NPCs were looting correctly now, that is one NPC wasn't picking everything up.

2) They would not drop items or swap items.

3) They STILL refused to sell looted items, but they had no friggen problem selling shit I gave them. So, they once again would become encumbered.

So, I then applied Shin's manual fix. Here is what happened.

1) NPCs would not loot items. Only money and treasure.

2) NPCs will not sell anything. They also will not sell items I give them for them to use. They will not drop or swap items with PCs, unless it is an item I have given them.

The only problem I can forsee is what if I get a NPC better armor to wear, will they not then keep lugging around their old armor refusing to sell it or trade it with me? How does one fix that?

 

@Jshandorf

The only known "cure" is to let an NPC die, which lets you remove their items, and then raise it from the dead. Apparently raising them also makes their inventory fully accesible, though I never have had the chance to see if that rumor is true.

 

That sounds Ok. Isn't that what most people want?

You mean they will not drop or swap items at all. That means you cannot use them as pack mules since you can't retrieve the item later and can't get them to sell it.

Shin wanted to do some dialogue lines to trade in old armor/weapons for new ones but I think it only works on the original armor/weapons the NPC had. Not to mention doing this for every NPC would be a large amount of work.
Anyone else have a workaround? Other than killing and raising NPCs that is.


Did some quick tests on the "all potions weigh 0 even though the description reads 1lb" bug.
Adjusted weight column to 10: potions now weigh 2lb
Adjusted weight column to 5: potions now weigh 1lb
Adjusted weight column to 2: potions still weigh 0lb

In all cases, the new weight description corresponds to the new value you set it to be in Col51 but the actual weight is not the same. :roll:

Tried with stacked potions. No difference from observed weights above.
Some items like Belsornig's poison vial registers actual weight correctly even though it looks like a potion.

 

It seems that the issue of shield/bucklers causing that -1 to AB is even more complex than I thought. I retested again with my Ranger/Fighter using a longsword and large shield (no shield penalty) and with the same Ranger/Fighter using a rapier and large shield (now the -2 AB penalty is present). Previously I had thought it was due to Shield Proficiency not transferring over in the case of my Rogue/Fighter. It now seems that it was not so.

After some tinkering, it appears that Weapon Finesse is the true culprit. The only times my
Rogue/Fighter and Ranger/Fighter had shield proficiency problems was whenever Weapon Finesse kicked in with a finessable weapon (tested with shortsword, rapier, dagger, spiked chain).
Using non-finessable weapon doesn't give this penalty even with my Rogue/Fighter so the case of Shield Proficiency not transferring is out.

Tested again with my Barb who has no Weapon Finesse and had no problems. Tested before my Ranger acquired Weapon Finesse, wielding a rapier. Again no problems. The problem only appeared AFTER Weapon Finesse was taken AND a finessable weapon was wielded with a shield in the other hand.

Sorry for the long rant. In short:
Weapon Finesse and a finessable weapon wielded with a shield results in AB penalties for (shield non-proficiency)

Weird? Yeah, I think so too. Confirmation on this rather complex matter would be appreciated.



Regarding magic weapon, greater magic weapon and magic vestment:

1)Magic weapon and Greater Magic weapon both give enhancements which do not stack with the original enhancement of an already magical weapon. The same goes with crafted weapons which originally started off as masterwork.
Both are enhancement bonuses and bonuses that are named the same typically DO NOT stack. Only the superior one takes effect.

Therefore the bug:
-magic weapon: Does not increase bonus on already magical items (it should), save crafted items.

is wrong and should be deleted.


2)Magic vestment can be placed on any clothing (robes, cloaks, hats, boots, gloves, body armor and shields). However, the bonus to AC is an armor bonus and again does not stack with existing armor enhancements.

Therefore the bug:
-magic vestment: spell increases the enchantment of armor but does not apply to AC. Does not increase bonus on already magical items (it should), save crafted items.

also seems wrong and should be deleted.

However, shouldn't enchanting a Shield +2 result in an enhancement to shield bonus to AC? Currently, enchanting shields with Magic Vestment still gives an enhancement to armor bonus to AC (not an enhancement to shield bonus to AC) which does not stack with enhancements on body armor to AC.


I hope all this is not too confusing. I'll try to further clarify if there are any doubts.

 

traps (comment), shield/sword combos (comment), & charging (new bug)

Regarding two bugs listed above:
1 - "Traps give experience for triggering the trap (experienced this with every chest trap myself)"

You're supposed to get experience for setting off traps, that's not a bug (cf. DMG 3.5 p39, specifically the second paragraph under "Challenge Ratings for Traps").

2 - "When my PC has a longsword equipped with a buckler, his strength bonus coefficient is 1x instead of 1.5x..."

With the longsword, maybe you should only get 1x STR for DAM when using a buckler, not 1.5x, because you're only allowed a one handed attack. (For further consideration, I recommend PH 3.5 p124). If they omitted the option to make a two handed attack with a longsword and buckler (which gives a -1 to your attacks and takes away the bucker's AC bonus for that round) I could accept that as a design decision.

HOWEVER, with a Greatsword, you also deal merely 1xDAM, that should never happen. It modifies your HIT and AC perfectly, taking a -1 to each whenever you make an attack during a round, it's just the damage that gets off.

I bet this is related to the problems discussed with power attack treating one-handed weapons as two-handed weapons by factol pentar and rex blade... I mean, I think there's a problem with their shield logic, not with their one-handed weapon logic.*

*Further testing reveals that when using a longsword with a dagger in the off hand (instead of a shield), PWR ATK damage is figured correctly. I'm not sure if that's enough to support my theory that these bugs are the same or not, but it certainly tells us that Rex Blade's bug is a shield logic problem, not a feat or handedness problem.

Another Bug I found while testing the above two:
3 - don't think anyone's got this yet. initiating combat with a charge attack crashes to desktop. confirmed repeatable attacking with a dwarven fighter and with elmo, targeting various inhabitants of the welcome wench, then on the blacksmith. initiating combat with a full attack or with spells does not cause such an error. haven't exhaustively tested all the other ways to initiate combat, nor have i tested this on hostiles, just on folks who are naturally friendly.

 

Re: traps (comment), shield/sword combos (comment), & charging (new bug)

@Wauthan:
Checked Elmo and he has NO chainmail. Which character are you referring to? Elmo or Otis (Blacksmith in Nulb)?

Elmo only has the following (from InvenSource.mes):
{4058}{Dagger +1}
{6011}{Leather boots}
{6016}{Cloth armor}
{12035}{White pearl}
{12035}{White pearl}
{12035}{White pearl}

Rechecked by killing him and indeed he only has the above items. No chainmail.


@mannix:

Yes I do understand that setting off traps gets XP. However in the case of rolling badly, setting off the trap, the trap still remains to be disabled once again. Repeated failures give repeated XP.
Is this really supposed to be so in DMG? That traps can give repeated XP for repeated failures?
If it is really so, I'll be happy to cross it off the list.

Agreed. It appears the default for using a Longsword and a Buckler is to use the longsword in 1 hand. You can't use the Longsword 2-handed with the Buckler and take a -1AB penalty.

Yes, this bug has already been noted. Bucklers seem to be recognized as regular "shields" by the engine so instead of allowing 1.5X Str damage, so currently bucklers only allow 1X Str damage even when wielded with a 2-hander such as a Greatsword.

Tried Power Attacking with my HalfOrc Bbn/Ftr with the following combinations:

Longsword and Shield, PAtt dmg X2, Str dmg X1
Shortsword and Shield, PAtt dmg X0, Str dmg X1
Light Mace and Shield, PAtt dmg X0, Str dmg X1
(no AB reduction for Shortsword or Light Mace as game prevents using PAtt with light weapon)

Longsword and Buckler, PAtt dmg X2, Str dmg X1
Shortsword and Buckler, PAtt dmg X0, Str dmg X1
Greatsword and Buckler, PAtt dmg X2, Str dmg X1, Buckler -1AB penalty applied
(no AB reduction for Shortsword, game prevents using PAtt with light weapon)

Longsword and free hand, PAtt dmg X2, Str dmg X1.5
Short sword and free hand, PAtt dmg X0, Str dmg X1.5
Light mace and free hand, PAtt dmg X0, Str dmg X1.5
Dagger and free hand, PAtt dmg X0, Str dmg X1.5
(no AB reduction for Shortsword or Light Mace or Dagger as game prevents using PAtt with light weapon)

Longsword in mainhand, Main hand PAtt dmg X1, Str dmg X1
and Shortsword in offhand, Off hand PAtt dmg X0, Str dmg X0.5
(no AB reduction for Shortsword, game prevents using PAtt with light weapon)


So yes, you are right. Power Attack with 1 handers work fine if its a weapon equipped in the offhand instead of a shield.


From the tests above, it appears the following still are bugs:

1)Power Attack for regular 1-handers gives +2 damage for each BAB when used with a shield

2)Light 1-handers should not give 1.5X Str damage when wielded in 2 hands

3)No option to use 1-handers with 2 hands and a Buckler, incurring the -1AB penalty for using a Buckler and a 2-hander. (DESIGN DECISION)

4)Power Attacking when dualwielding: Light weapons escape the AB penalty though regular 1-handers still receive Power Attack AB penalty and appropriate Power Attack bonus damage. (ALREADY IN BUGLIST)

5)Using 2-handers and a Buckler give wrong Str coefficient (1X only) but Power Attack values are correct and Buckler -1AB penalty applies (ALREADY IN BUGLIST)


Below I have quoted several sentences from 3.5e SRD to backup the above bugs:

quoting 3.5e SRD regarding light weapons:
Using two hands to wield a light weapon gives no advantage on damage; the Strength bonus applies as though the weapon were held in the wielder's primary hand only.

quoting 3.5e SRD regarding wielding regular 1-handers in 2 hands:
If a one-handed weapon is wielded with two hands during melee combat, add 1-1/2 times the character's Strength bonus to damage rolls.

quoting 3.5e SRD regarding penalty to AB for Power Attacking with light weapons:
You can't add the bonus from Power Attack to the damage dealt with a light weapon (except with unarmed strikes or natural weapon attacks), even though the penalty on attack rolls still applies.

Tested your hypothesis: Initiating combat with charge attack causes CTD.
Tried charging with HalfOrc Bbn/Ftr with 1-hander Vs Brother Smyth. Hit target. No CTD.
Tried charging with HalfOrc Bbn/Ftr with 1-hander Vs Tuperello (Inn). Hit target. No CTD.
Tried charging with Elven Rgr/Ftr with 1-hander Vs Kobort (Inn). Hit target. No CTD.
All targets were previously friendly and were caught flatfooted.
Elmo was not in my party. Interestingly, Zert fought against Elmo (instead of against the party) and was subsequently killed by Elmo.

Perhaps there is another reason for the CTDs?


Good testing. I wish there were more testers around to check on stuff, especially core rules.
If there are no objections, I will modify all relevant entries later.

 

@Zhuge

Oh you killed him outright. Sorry for my lack of clarity. Then no, he doesn't have any chainmail. It's an object that's added to his inventory when he joins your party. Together with his +1 battleaxe and +2 shield. Wonder where he found potent items for just 200 gold though?

Make him join then kill him. A strategy used against all NPC before Shin appeared like some angel of NPC mercy with his looting fix.

 

Ah, silly me. Right you are.

It's just that I never really took any NPCs in any of my games (except for escort missions - Thrommel and Paida). Heard the horror stories about looting and decided not to take any. Which is also why I much prefer to have others do "looting fixes", having no ready saved files or experience in them.

I thought I read about some story about him being in someone's service (can't remember who). Not sure whether that's true though since I never took him before. Perhaps he was supposed to be somewhat of a knight all along (which would explain the equipment) and was sort of pretending to be a simple drunk.
Just musing.

 

The thing really wrong about traps is that they give about 10 times more exp when you fail than when you actually disarm. I did my tests with Jaroo's chest and a party of 7 at lvl 1 get about 270xp and at lvl 10 it's about 67xp but the reward for disarming appears fixed to 17xp. I made Spugnoir lvl 10 without ever taking him in a fight