Circle of Eight Modpack 5.9.x/5.9.xNC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'The Temple of Elemental Evil' started by Necroticpus, Aug 27, 2010.

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  1. dolio

    dolio Established Member Supporter

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    I was going to accept this possibility, as it may not be possible to get the new weapons to work with 'weapon proficiency monk' or whatever it's called.

    However, then I remembered: this isn't really necessary. In fact, I think it's weird that ToEE handles it that way at all. The engine properly implements individual martial and exotic weapon feats (unlike NWN). And in pen and paper, that's what various races and classes are awarded to give them custom weapon options. I can understand having an 'all martial weapons' proficiency for various warrior classes, so that they don't have 20-some extraneous feats cluttering up the character sheet. But there's really no other reason to have 'weapon proficiency elf' and the like instead of just awarding elves the feats for shortbows, longbows, long swords and rapiers.

    So, can you just give monks the "Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Monk Spade)" feat at level 1? Assuming we all agree that they should automatically be proficient in it?
     
  2. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Okay, I'll take your word for it; the SRD is a bit cryptic on the topic: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/bard.htm

    I think the feat-adding was done by .dll hacking though.

    Again, this may be something doable only via the .dll. I'll look at it again, but I don't see any obvious other control files for it. (I was never deeply involved in feat modding et al, personally.)
     
  3. dolio

    dolio Established Member Supporter

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    Wow, I wasn't expecting that. I guess it's really not designed for extensibility in that area. Ah well.

    Edit: Here's a couple dialogue things:

    Mother Screng will still sell you "celtic runes" according to the text. I gather from searching that it was decided this should be "mystic" because celts don't exist in Greyhawk, and of course that's the actual item you get.

    The woman who will tattoo you in the labor camp calls Burne, "Byrne." Unless she's making fun of his name or something....
     
    Last edited: Dec 15, 2010
  4. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Fixed both, thanks.
     
  5. dolio

    dolio Established Member Supporter

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    Here's a few more.

    1) Natural spell can be taken at level 3, despite a prerequisite allegedly being the wild shape ability, which druids don't actually get until level 5.

    2) For both horn of goodness and white robe of the archmagi, one of the prerequisites are listed as "@-2Alignment: Good". Neutral and evil alignment requirements seem to display fine; I'm not really sure why good displays this way, looking at the mes files.

    3) While looking through the meses, I noticed the following line in feat.mes:

    for all the other similar lines, the opening bracket is before "Base attack bonus". This feat is probably never used, though.

    4) The description for the animal growth spell doesn't mention that that it gives damage reduction 10/magic (which it does) and a +4 resistance bonus to saving throws (which it should by the SRD, but I'm not sure how to verify).
     
  6. General Ghoul

    General Ghoul Established Member

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    What exactly is Antonio's Mace? There is no description when you click on it, but it sells for almost 1000gp. You can Identify it, but afterward you still can't see what it does.
     
  7. wizgeorge

    wizgeorge Prophet of Wizardy

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    It's a quest item and one-of-a-kind. I don't think it was ever fully implemented. It should be +1 or why bother for an ordinary mace? The GP price is in the range of a +1 weapon. Hard to say.
     
  8. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Doesn't it say something like "this Mace belongs to Antonio of the Fire Temple" or something like that in its long description? I think it's just a silver mace with no magical properties.
     
  9. Ausdoerrt

    Ausdoerrt Veteran Member

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    I've always thought it was a silver mace?
     
  10. Sitra Achara

    Sitra Achara Senior Member

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    Module only says it's embedded with a ruby:

     
  11. wizgeorge

    wizgeorge Prophet of Wizardy

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    Kind of like the Unicorn ring, nice, but no magical properties. Never have done the quest for Tublal. Just something Troika put in. Maybe he knows about the ruby or thinks it's magical?
     
  12. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    That sounds like some of the generic text corruption that Gazra encountered. It's not doing that because it's written that way in the game files, as you point out. Something's getting lost in translation in-game.

    Fixed, thanks.

    Okay, I added both references. If you should ever discover that the saving throw is a lie, let us know and we'll remove the reference, but I'm betting it's in there - no reason why they wouldn't or couldn't do it, particularly if they did the other, and I'm not going to run off and test it.


    According to its proto entry, Antonio's mace is just a light mace that is worth 1005 gp ... no doubt 1000 due to the mysterious ruby from the module that is never mentioned in the CRPG and 5 due to the weapon itself. It's not silver. So, I added this as a long description for it: "This Mace was the property of Antonio of the Fire Temple. In the pommel of the mace is a small but carefully set ruby." yay!
     
  13. dolio

    dolio Established Member Supporter

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    So, horrid wilting...

    The targeting rules in the SRD are:

    This is similar to the targeting for magic missile (although there, it's 15 instead of 60, which ToEE doesn't really seem to implement). This means that the implementation we have is off in a few ways:

    1) Since it's a 60 ft. radius, you can target people who are up to 120 ft. apart.

    2) You can't avoid targeting your own people if they're in the area of effect.

    3) Judging from the script and the spell .txt, it will work on undead and constructs, although I haven't verified this.

    So, I'd suggest doing one of two things:

    1) Make it target like magic missile/weird/etc., although this actually makes the spell more powerful.

    2) Cut it to a 30 ft. radius* that excludes friendlies.

    And either way, change the script to check for undead and constructs, to negate damage due to their non-living status (it may make sense for non-water elementals to take no damage, as well, since the spell is supposed to be evaporating water; I think elementals count as 'living' though, and the SRD only mentions water elementals). I think I can handle this last part if need be (I've been fiddling with implementing spells).

    * A 30 ft. radius isn't quite right. With the individual targeting, you could target three people who are standing at the corners of an equilateral triange with 60 ft. sides, and a 30 ft. circle could not cover the triangle. However, you can't increase the radius without allowing the targeting of people more than 60 ft. apart.

    -----

    Edit: Actually, I appear to have been partially wrong about ToEE implementing appropriate targeting. Weird has the following targeting flags:

    Code:
    mode_Target: Multi
    mode_Target: Once-Multi
    mode_Target: Primary 30 Feet
    mode_Target: End Early Multi
    min_Target: 1
    max_Target: 0
    radius_Target: 0
    And I tested it out, and the above options let you designate one primary target, and then target other targets that are no more than 30 feet away from the primary target. This is actually incorrect for weird (it's correct for chain lightning).

    However, there's another targeting flag 'Any 30 Feet' which ensures that no target is more than 30 feet away from another target. This is the correct flag for weird. Unfortunately, it looks hard-coded to 30 feet (and there's no 'Any 60 Feet' and so on), so magic missile, horrid wilting and any others that specify other distances can't be done properly.
     
    Last edited: Dec 17, 2010
  14. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    I had a note to check into this rather old bug report from Ranth, which I finally did:

    I couldn't replicate this behavior. In testing, Iuz acted normal, and so did Cuthbert.

    I did however get rid of the throwable rocks from the hill giant's inventory in that encounter, because he would throw those first and then switch to subdual attacks for some reason. I also made Cuthbert face toward Iuz when he shows up.

    Also, someone mentioned recently that it would make sense for the ettins and hill giant to be raised as giant zombies, which I thought was a good idea, but the scripting for Iuz's raising/reanimation is simply an Animate Dead spell, which apprently handles that sort of thing automatically. It seems lame no matter how you slice it: a bunch of canon fodder zombies to replace an elite Greater Temple crew? Meh ... vanilla.
     
  15. Gaear

    Gaear Bastard Maestro Administrator

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    Another from the archives:

    I couldn't replicate this either, but I think the general 'cause,' such as it is, is the same as with Hedrack. When an NPC takes off like Senshock and Iuz do, the remaining NPCs are generally scripted to resume combat afterwards. I've noticed in the past that sometimes this doesn't happen reliably, or it happens slowly, or it won't happen until you start moving around. When combat doesn't restart, then the normal NPC heartbeats start firing, which causes the at times goofy dialog. I'm not sure what causes this delay, but I'm pretty sure that's what's happening in both above cases. The scripting IS there, it's just not firing properly all the time.

    There's not a whole lot to be done for it, I'm afraid.
     
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