Final Post before completion

dulcaoin: That sounds to me like prestige classes might have been on the "to do" list, but not necessarily coded yet.

Although I would certainly like to take over the Temple of Elemental Evil with a party of Blackguards ...

 

Viewable NPC stats?

Any chance you could make it so when can see the stats and all that stuff for NPC's? Being able to level them up ourselves would be nice too, but that would probably be more difficult.

 

Can't wait

Livonya,

Just in case you're peaking at this thread....Thanks so much for your hard work! I just picked ToEE and I am reaping the benefits of the hard work of people like you who labored to make this game better and increase everyone's enjoyment.

Anxiously waiting!

 

Leveling up NPCs as PCs is already available through the Co8 3.04 patch.

I don't know how hard it would be to allow NPC stats to be viewable, but it's not too tough to figure them out by looking at their skills, feats, saving throws and attack bonus.

 

When you level-up the npc it shows their scores, just write them down. Like, Fruella has a strength of 14. Kind of low for a fighter,but gauntlets of ogre power or a belt of giant strength will fix that. Most of the npc's have okay scores, except for Meleny. Hers are terrible, but then again the right magic items can fix a lot of things. The prime scores of a pc or npc need to be as high as possible.

 

Looking forward to the mod

Interesting points on the NPC's -- I actually found the game to be easier with only one character (no other PC's, no NPC's ever accepted) than it was with a party of 5 and various NPC's. Of course, this was in large part because the solo character, a fighter-mage, would just web roomfulls of bugbears, ogres, and hill giants, then dispatch them at leisure with ice storms and a heavy crossbow. I'm guessing this will be impossible once the AI is improved so that they try to break out of the webs every round, so I'm very curious as to whether a single character could still successfully beat the game.

 

I can't imagine one player being so powerful they can "win" the game single-handed. They could get the Orb, then refuse the pillar of platinum, and end the game that way. Maybe it could be done. The player would have to be one powerful fighter/wizard with lots of magical help.

 

I tried it as an experiment to see how far I could get with just one character, and to my surprise I beat the game. I began with a human (17 STR, 18 INT, 15 DEX, everything else average or below) and maxed out bluff and diplomacy early. I then went through and completed all of the non-combat quests in Hommlet -- with 1 character this alone takes you to 3rd lvl (1 as a fighter, 2 as a wizard). Next hit Emridy Meadows -- the skeletons (bring a mace) and finding the rainbow rock take you to 3rd as a wizard. Now you can make yourself several web scrolls. Grab a heavy crossbow off a skeleton and hit the hill giant and his bear with web and plunk away until they're both dead. Now go back and take out the traders in Hommlet the same way. Selling all of the loot nets enough to craft a belt of giant strength +6 along with several wands, and now you're a 2/5 fighter/wizard with +6 to strength and a wand of fireball -- the Moathouse and Temple are a waltz (especially using a ring of free action to drop several webs around a room and then hitting it repeatedly with ice storm). Once you can cast stoneskin make yourself a wand and you're home free. The key to Hedrack is to ignore him and take out all of his guards first -- that way when Iuz comes you use expeditious retreat to run like heck until St. Cuthbert saves your bacon. Then you just have Hedrack and a whole lot of zombie cannon fodder to clean up. To finish I didn't bother with the Nodes, but had Pishella destroy the Orb and then went down and used a wand of dimension door to get past Zugg's summoned fungi (playing with the Co8 mod, so the lvl 10 cap is removed) and laid into her repeatedly with a holy mace +1 purchased off Cambert for just that purpose (the game's too easy with Fragarach, so I refuse to use it).

1 party member, no allies, and no cheating, except that the beginning strategy heavily exploits a game AI bug where enemies won't try to break out of a web. I plan to try this again with the new mod coming out to see if beating the game this way is still possible -- it should be MUCH tougher, if not impossible.

 

D&D CRPGs are always beatable solo. In fact, they're almost uniformly "impossible" at the beginning and gradually become "pathetically easy" right around the middle, then back to "relatively challenging" as you hit the level cap and monsters become more powerful relative to you. It seems impossible, but I just beat BG2 SoA+ToB on Insane with a solo mage (with very strict gameplay rules -- no casting until NPCs become hostile, for example). Smart character creation will get you through the beginning, the rest will be a breeze.
Just my two cents.

 

i could see how it could be done specially if you were in an evil party. i acidently ended the game earlier by agreeing to work for Hedrack, you can talk you way through a good part of the game if your careful.

 

I like to solo as a druid, though it might not be considered a pure solo as I made use of the Druid's animal companion. In general I think the druid has a great mix of spells (including the essential stoneskin and also a lot of good early buffing spells like bull's strength and barkskin), crafting ability, and combat skill (it is very handy that they are proficient with the longspear at the beginning).

 

Hm. Prestige Classes would add a lot of flavor, especially at levels above 10, when you can start enjoying the special features of developing across a non-core class path. True, your wizard would not be going archmage any time soon, but still.

 

I'd love to see prestige classes added. Out of the DMG, these ones would probably be the most suitable for TOEE: assassin, blackguard, duelist (hahahahahaha, just kidding), dragon disciple (with a LOT of work), dwarven defender, eldritch knight, mystic theurge, red wizard, shadowdancer (maybe...). Most of them wouldn't take much work after a way to add prestige classes has been found.

 

Would be great if we also could get whips jammed in (but that seems about as probable as dragons ), so we could get my favourite prestige class, the Lasher (from Sword and Fist).