5.6.1 Point Buy Play-Through

So Ah Fong's inventory was still there (and he even refreshed the stuff I had bought) though I re-added 6.2.1 because I didn't see any indication of it in the Front End and thought it may have disabled itself. But I guess it just doesn't show any indication and I never noticed. :doh: In any case, I'll try to check again a little later.

Entered the Temple and cleared the "bottom" part of the Earth Temple, as well as the ghoul/ghast room, the room with the horde of goblins surrounding the ogre, the giant viper and the room with the ogres, a bunch of gnolls and some bugbear archers. The only fight that really had me worried was the one with the two ogres, but then the AI did me a favor halfway through the fight and started having them run back and forth until I AoOed them to death.

Even though the fights in the Temple are a bit on the easy side so far, I have to wonder if that's not at least partially intended. I can't imagine Troika wanted the player to fight 2-3 rooms and then retreat back to Homlett to rest. The fights all consumed resources (hp and spells) so they weren't complete breezes, there just wasn't any moment where I was concerned I might lose (though I thought my rogue was about to get killed in the ogre/gnoll fight until their AI crapped out.) And it was nice to clear 8-10 rooms before I had to start wondering if I wanted to go back and rest.

I think something may have gotten goofed up when the Verbebonc references got removed. In the room full of prisoners with the pirate NPC (I can never remember his name) there are 3 of the "huzzah, you're heroes" Fire Temple prisoner, who you can talk to each in turn. There is one prisoner that's supposed to be there who will tell you about the ghouls and there's 3 prisoners that if you click on them absolutely nothing happens and they continue to hang out with pirate dude long after the others have vanished.

 

Hi Gaear
I have also noticed that one of the merchants on level 2 hangs around and the two non-noble elves never leave.
The Royal Canadian

 

Log: I continued on working my way through the Earth Temple. The medium Earth elementals are still too big. I thought we had fixed that, but I could be wrong. Hit level 6 about half way through the floor, went back to Homlett to rest up, sell my loot and prepare my new spells and then hit level 7 just as I cleared the floor. Almost lost my rogue again fighthing the bugbears in the oddly shaped room with all the turned over bookshelves. One of the greataxe-wielding barbarians crit her and took her from full health down to -8 in one blow and my cleric was blocked out of the room by another bugbear in the doorway. Luckily my barbarian had a CSW potion on him and got it to her in time.

Did the High Earth Priest and his group get changed back to KOS, or did I do something to trigger it? I know the last time I played he actually started up a conversation with me, even without me wearing the Earth Temple robes. In any case, that fight was really glitchy in that whenever my party members had a turn right after someone cast a spell (whether on my team or the baddies) they had no time in the hourglass, as if they were paralyzed. Towards the end of the fight that stopped happening and I still won without too much of a problem, but it was still annoying.

Headed back to Homlett, healed up, sold loot, prepared new spells. Did a little bit of crafting (my rogue's mithral shirt is now +2 and she now has a second wakizashi+1 to go with the one I took off the assassin. Passed her rapier+2 over to the bard.)

Does Burne's inventory change now? He used to sell a scroll of Teleport (which I would buy, learn and then scribe a crap of so I could Teleport out of the Temple instead of having to walk out.) but I haven't seen one the last few times I've checked his inventory.

Went back to Nulb, was able to complete the Triple-Cross quest and get Mona's orb back from Mickey, and free Serena, who I left on her own. Popped my head into the Brothel, resolved the Jelena (or whatever her name is) issue and was told about Mickey tearing up the place. Not sure if that quest is live or not.

Went back to kill the folks in the Waterside Hostel. Sadly, Dalia had apparently already sold the spyglass she swiped off me in my first visit when I discovered I didn't have the social skills to complete the quests there. But I got my bard's arrows back. Headed over to the Boatman's Tavern (none of the merchants are mentioning what I did for Grud and their prices are still really high, though Preston and Ophelia both mentioned him in their dialogue.) and beat Tulub in a boxing match. I may try Skole's quest next before heading back to the Temple to give the Broken Tower fight another go.

Also dropped by Ah Fong's shop and he still had all the cool armor in his inventory.

 

So as soon as I say something, Burne has a Teleport scroll in his inventory.

Head to Nulb, got jumped by brigands enroute. Dispatch them easily. Go do Skole's Assassination quest. Choose to double-cross Skole. Everything goes well except I don't have high enough Diplomacy or Sense Motive or whatever it is to keep Lodriss from taking Skole's gem off me. No biggie. Take out Skoll and his goon without much of a problem and use my ill-gotten gains for some more crafting. My Rogue now has gloves of dexterity +6 (and her gloves+2 go to my barbarian to give him a Dex of 16 to max out his AC with the mithral plate). Boost Lareth's breastplate up to +2 for Elmo. Make the barbarian and cleric's plate +2. Make the barbarian's bastard sword +1.

Hopefully the additional levels and magical gear will be enough to see me through the Broken Tower fight.

One more thing, Elmo hit level 8 from fighting Skole. I saw Greater Weapon Specialization (which shouldn't be available until 12th level) on the fighter bonus feat list, but no Greater Weapon Focus (which should be available at 8th level). Mousing over Greater Weapon Specialization gave me the description of Greater Weapon Focus. I didn't take it, so I don't know which feat it functions as, (I took Improved Crit: Battleaxe) but something is definitely goofed up.

 

Yeah, that's what I found. It actually is GWF and works accordingly.

 

Weird. It used to be in there as GWF. Did someone try to add GWS and miss?

 

Hi Kalshane
Yeah that's pretty much what happened. We had a discussion about it several weeks ago (just before you "returned to the fold IIRC), but I can't find the thread.
The Royal Canadian

 

Is playing with a point buy party fully viable for a novice player? 25 points seems very restrictive and I thought I might like the honesty and challenge of a pb party but didn't want to be constantly reloading and frustrated.

 

The max attribute total for point buy is 73 with nothing over 14. You can easily roll up characters with totals of 90 or more with most of the attributes over 14. So if you like a challenge...

The version 3.5 Basic Game used point buy characters and probably turned off a lot of people to D&D with it's incomprehensible combat system combined with: "Swing miss, swing miss, swing miss, swing miss, a pc dies! Swing miss, swing miss..." and so forth until "The arthritic cockroach has wiped out your entire party!"

Brilliant marketing! :thumbsup:

 

I'm not exactly sure how easy it is for a novice. I use the point buy the second time I played the game and found that it was more challenging and more fun than the first time. I definitely think it is possible. The key is to ensure you focus each character properly and not spread his abilities too thin. The first time I played, I rerolled until I got really high scores. This enabled me to not worry about weaknesses. When I used point buy, I found it more interesting because I had to make some important character choices with each character. I played it multiple times since and made difference choices different times.

 

Kudos for trying to play with the standard ToEE Point Buy.

Personally I think point-buy it's essential to keep the ballance between classes in d&d (since a class like the warrior can focus on just a bunch of statts, while a cleric or a ranger, having to raise attributes like wisdom, won't be as good with phisical attributes).. yet i always use a character editor in order to give me more point (32 like in nwn 2 i think it's quite balanced).. but i guess the fewer the points the more "hardcore" gets the experience

 

I seem to recall in vanilla you got one merchant prisoner who actually had dialogue and the rest had a generic line when you tried to talk to them. Once you finished talking to the prisoner with dialogue he and all the other merchants vanished leaving only Morgan. So that's how there was 11 (if there were ever 11. I've never had Mona spawn the Lame Triplets for me.)

Well, the simply solution would be to only have him spawn in one of the rooms. It's been awhile since I played vanilla, but I think Wicked was the only one in that room with actual dialogue.

I chose to go with point buy in order to have a "balanced" easily re-creatible party for the sake of testing. It is definitely more challenging than having characters with really good scores, especially at the lower levels, though I'm experiencing more frustration not having high enough scores for the social quests and to deal with trapped chests than I am with actual combat.