Comments on Target of Revenge

Re: SPOILER: Target of Revenge too hard?

Wow, I'm glad I saved before going in there. Party of five fifth level characters. I had to go get Otis and cast all the clerical strengthening spells I had before walking in my own front door.

Good work, but I do have two complaints, one is that these guys inflict way too much damage per hit. My guys are lucky to deal out half that many HP, and were the same level, withgood stats and good weapons.

Two, who in their right mind is going to stand there while Gremag taunts you for like three round while his spell casters buff everyone up and your missle armed troops do nothing?

That's why I didn't feel bad about loading up on Aid, Bless, etc. before unlocking my front door. I cast spells for three rounds before going in to offset the fact that I stand there and watch two spellcasters cast for three rounds without preparing my archers against spells.

 

Re: SPOILER: Target of Revenge too hard?

1. Is that the random number generator being glitchy?

2. The spell casters buff up with what could be considered their standard defensive spells. Unfortunately, they have to do this after they appear on the map which means either they die before doing it or the player has to accept this little logical flaw. Much as Terjon, Calmert and Jaroo etc will cast spells when you first appear on a map.

 

Bingo!

Gaear, you are a genius. Or at least a good clue finder.

I missed it in my earlier evaluation of the script, but that is exactly what it was. An "and" instead of an "or" was allowing parties less than 6th level to get the Revenge encounter. I'll fix it and post it over in the 5.0.1 thread in GM.

 

What level am I supposed to be to take these guys on. I'm level 6 and I maybe dished out 25 points of damage in total before my entire party was dead. The assassin keeps skewering my sorceress and then everyone else gets deafened, blinded, charmed, etc. etc.

I may never sleep in that house again.

 

I never found level 6 to be to low a level for that, but then I guess I exploit the AI, my only caster is a halforc cleric who stands at the back, everone else has combat reflexes so when NPCs target my caster they get AoO'd, then my dwarf barbarian with an amulet of health on top of 21 con has the lowest AC (by 2) to attract the guys that target low AC (he's got the most hit points so it doesn't matter if he gets to beaten up) and so the AoO's keep coming, the front line guys all have high dex to help them avoid the guys that target closest.

one final thing, I normally fight the assassin in a seperate fight so I don't have to deal with him as well.

 

How do you trip this encounter?

 

Talking about spoilers and difficulty I still think there are few uncertain things connected with these traders.
We are not asked to kill them in Hommlet. Most players do this because of rich loot. Though there is no REAL need in killing them. There is no such a quest.
Yes they are better protected now by CMF...
So if there is no logical need in killing them, then why does a honest lawfull player need to TRY to kill them? Especially if he knows that he will fail!
Then. There still remains the great sporting interest in killing traders in Hommlet. Because it's still possible to do!!! At first I thought it is needed just to block the entrance to prevent badger from entering. But later I discovered that badger appears when it comes Rannos Davl's turn. So it's just needed that his turn should not start or (perhaps) be interrupted! Thus casting Command spell on him, with order to fall, surrounding him and triping him - all this causes him not to trigger badger to enter. Yes there is still difficult to win, since both traders later try to use dust of disappearence. But with the help of Improved Trip feat, spells Command (to fall), Charm person they are still tasty targets for just 2-level groups.

So my conclusions: about spoilers and difficulty. At the one hand it is a very sudden and difficult encounter. But on the other hand it is triggered by a non-realistic desire since there is no obvious need to uselessly attack those traders in Hommlet. No need for USELESS attack. Then still, there is the described spoiler which still allows to kill them at start...
Another conclusion is made because of presence of these spoilers. Perhaps modders will try to modify this situation. While I'm quite convenient with killing traders at start and do this with each new game, here is my opinion how to modify this. Perhaps it needs a quest from Burnie and Rufus to arrest Rannos and Gremag after revealing the labourer spy. When we enter the shop, traders escape, but players may needs to be rewarded somehow... Perhaps that mercenary should remain and attack after he says that traders have been escaped? Also if a player uses an earlier reload to try to kill traders before fulfiling the revealing quest, these traders need better protection. Don't know what is possible to mod though. Perhaps a player should receive the Butcher reputation if he kills traders without taking the new quest? Or... this may work better... If you kill traders without Burnie's quest and talk to Burnie - ha attacks saying that you have killed them lawlessly (or something like that) So Burnie tries to arrest us, we attack... I doubt that 2-3 level groups may survive. If player retreats, he will never be able to buy anything from Burnie. Perhaps this is a serious penalty for lawless killing of traders.
My only wish to modders is to make the revenge quest attractive for both prepared and unprepared players.
Well this is just my imho. I'm quite sutisfied with the game uprgaded to 5.0.3. And yes, there is a masterwork sling with Bink (Bing?...) The game is good!
BTW, Happy Christmas!

 

I decided to play that the party *heavily* disliked the traders at Hommlet ... but they actually DID trade at them : They sold temple equipment back to them ! ("Pay or I'll say everybody that you're from the temple !")

Also, when the party has finally cleared the temple, they will be kind of "stranded" ... they'll HAVE to trade just for survival ! Or maybe the party tells the locals about them afterwards ...

Basically, I don't see any sense in killing everybody, sometimes not even bad ones.

There's a scene that illustrates my personal style of play :

In one of my favourite C-RPGs, named by the publisher as "Divine Divinity", there are barracks full of soldiers.

As the main character draws near that location, an evil sorcerer (or even several of them, don't quite remember) put a spell on the soldiers so that they all want to kill the main char.

For some gamers, this is - I'm not giving in illusions - an easy excuse to kill EVERYBODY in these barracks and thus gaining experience points, simply because they've become evil from the main character's point of view.

Me, I didn't do that. I decided - playing the role - that these evil soldiers weren't responsible for their behaviour. So I decided that the characters would rather flee from them. (I haven't tried it out, but I read somewhere that the spell wears off after a few days.)

The only difficulty in playing the role like that is that I'm not sure whether the characters could possibly know or even see the evil sorcerers putting the spell on he solders. But if I remember correctly, they only did that when the character was already within the area of the barracs and could actually see the sorcerers.

Regarding the posts at the developers forum, I am one of seemingly very few who actually did that. The rest just played the "standard role" and killed the turned-evil soldiers.

 

Yet there is sense - loot and experience. There are some moral aspects but no law. In the game. I can kill, estimate loot and reload after that. In combination with abscense of laws this type of gameplay is hard to be kept. BTW these traders are not protected by ToEE's law. Party doesn't become a party of butchers. What for are these game rules? So it's hard to play by the mentioned rules.

On the opposite side. If we play peacefully, we lose an episode later. An interesting and challenging episode.

 

Well, it depends. I decided, for example, to do all quests in the temple until a certain point. Let the fractions play against one another. From that point on, I'll let the party just switch towards "clearing" the temple. After collecting more information, though.

 

Ah ha. I have finally figured this one out. My sorceress kept on gettting wasted by the assassin as soon as I entered our little house. I kept on trying to rearrange the party formation, but that wasn't doing anything. I figured you tricky bastards had designed it to kill mages. Then I figured out the placement in the room was dependent on character position 1, 2,3, etc. and not the formation. Now that bloody assassin has a very heavily armored fighter pop up next to her instead. This made the battle winnable. Poor Elmo was the only one to die.