Co8 5.6.0 BETA Balance

It's been ages since I played the vanilla game, but I remember fighting Zuggy at level 10 while having skipped the Nodes completely (I somehow missed the passages leading to them.) So level 12-14 at the end with the Nodes doesn't sound too far-fetched.

This was removed because they're not supposed to have damage reduction. It was some kind of foul-up in the original game where some regular gnolls had attributes from the gnoll skeletons.

The Retribution fight was created by Livonya, but AFAIK the assassin has always been there. He's been powered up and received some better AI, but he wasn't a Co8 creation. Liv may have fixed the scripting that causes him to attack, however.

The galeb duhrs in the original game were completely ridiculous and bore no relation to RAW, which is why they are much easier in Co8.

Actually, the only restrictions on weapon creation by level are the actual plusses on the weapon, not the additional powers. Any caster with access to the necessary spells (and other possible requirements, like alignment) and the ability to pay the XP cost can craft pretty much whatever. The caster levels listed in the DMG are for use with random treasure, so the DM adjucate things like dispel magic and the like. (4th Ed changed this to make caster level be the only requirement for creating magical items beyond the GP cost.)

Also: hi everybody.

 

Side note, I can see what I can do about making Zuggy and the non-Balor Guardians a bit tougher if that's the general consensus. I have some ideas, though I'd have to find my notes to make sure I didn't already implement them the first time through.

Not sure I'd be able to do more than tweak those handful of baddies, though. Work and family are still keeping me ridiculously busy.

 

I think every temple priest - if you kill them - should summon the respective demon to help him, fire=balor, water=hezrou etc. That would make the temple more interesting :yes:

 

When you get into the temple, everything should be taken up a few notches. All the monsters are weak and pushovers. I would perhaps suggest giving the monsters class levels of whatever or maybe just replacing them with humans and demi-humans with serious class levels.

Like in the basement, the ogres and giants and bugbears are just nothing more than experience. Throw some 15th+ class levels in there and make it a fight. Hedrak should be a 20th level cleric, standing in back, sending his forces in while he hoses down everyone with brutal 9th level cleric spells, like maybe a 20d6 horrid wilting to all party members with -4 to all their saves. All ogres should be 10th level barbarians with the exception of ogre shamans who should be 10th level druids. Giants should be 15th level barbarians. The bugbears should be 10th level barbarians. The humans there should be 15th level wizards.

If I were the high priest of a god and in charge of coordinating their temple to take over the world, I would make sure that headquarters had the absolutely best talent available in the world. Maybe take the models for the eyes of the deep from the water node, take away their claws, put them in the basement and turn them into beholders, throwing around death spells, disintegrate, etc. Make people cry themselves to sleep at night because the game is just too tough for them! Now that would be fun!

 

What is the consensus on Senshock? I know I brought this up before, but before 5.5.0 he was always in his bedroom for me. I would fight him and his elementals. Since 5.6.0 he is never in there when I go looking for him (I do kill the commander of the guards first), all I find is his elemental (which do not attack me on sight, and I do not wear temple robes, though I do have those scarab things from the commander). Hell I can walk in, open his chest, and leave without them attacking me.

Since 5.5.0 he is now always with Hedrack, which makes the fight tougher.The last thing you need is to be fighting Iuz and have Senshock summoning every damn elemental he can. Did we code this differently somewhere?

 

necro: very good suggestions!

ranth: I believe it is random, in my games (5.6.0) he was in his bedroom.
same with barkinar, he's moving around, I actually encountered him on the way to a node long after Hedrack was dead already.

 

It would be fun to find the commander in Hedrack's room during the fight.

Necro: While I agree Hedrack should be more difficult, level 20 is extreme. You need to consider that we are rebalancing the mods so that almost all new content is pushed to after you kill Zuggy, so I dont know if a normal party (level 10-12) could handle a level 20 Hedrack and everything else.

 

Shouldn't an elemental enhancement also count as a +1? I mean, otherwise you're crafting ridiculously powerful weapons really early on. IMO, that shouldn't happen.

 

I concur. Basically a +1 Firebrand should equate to +2, etc.

 

Hi Kalshane
Welcome back !!

The Royal Canadian

 

I concur about the thing about galeb duhrs. Actually, everything that is native to the elemental planes should be considerably beefed up while on their native plane. This explains why the galeb duhrs are absolutely irritating in the way that a superhero fighter with 76 strength and using a double super secret +32 intelligent holy/dancing/wounding/vorpal 2-handed sword can only do 1-10 hit points every 6 attacks.

Also, while I'm thinking about it, ToEE definitely needs a few super huge and hungry rust monsters as well as a shower of rot grubs in there somewhere.

 

Hi Kalshane
What about tweeking the Efreeti with the Balor Guardian ?? If I remember correctly, in the original PnP game, Efreeti had a wide range of spell-like abilities, but the ones with the Balor don't do anything but physical attacks (at least that I'm ever noticed).

The Royal Canadian

 

Yeah. The Balor fight is just NOT hard enough as it is! :roll:

 

Thank you.

There's unfortunately a limit to what spell-like abilities can be used effectively by monsters without giving them wizard or cleric levels. Without those levels, the game defaults to a caster level of 1. Which means short of programming specific spells for each monster into the game, some of the abilities don't work as they should.

The Efreeti should be using Scorching Ray until enemies close to melee. At least I'm pretty sure they were doing that after the big overhaul.

The way the game is currently scripted, it's only triggered by selling one of Lareth's named items to Rannos or Gremag. Which I think was done intentionally by Troika to give another clue the traders are up to no good. Though I have no opinion either way about changing it.

Actually, that fight and my frustration with how broken they were in comparison with the rules is what inspired me to do the overhaul of every monster in the game in the first place. I spent a lot of my time making sure all the monsters in the game were as close to RAW as possible. You hopefully understand that the idea of going back and intentionally breaking them again sends me into conniptions.

Actually, no. That's a common misinterpretation of the rules that has been addressed by the folks at WoTC numerous times. Read how the weapon powers are laid out in the DMG. Icy Burst, for example:

Note the semi colon between caster level and the requirements, which are all separatated by commas? If the semi colon was used to separate components, then "Moderate evocation" would also be a requirement, as would "Price +2 bonus" which is rather non-sensical. WotC confirmed that Caster Level is used for determining the Caster Level of found magical items, not for restricting who can make them.

It counts towards the overall price of crafting the weapon (Adding flaming to a +1 sword costs the same as making a +1 sword +2) and the overall +10 enhancement limit on all weapons and armor.

I do agree the crafting rules should have been tweaked in the move from 3rd Ed to 3.5. In 3rd, damage reduction was based on weapon plusses, whereas in 3.5 what was based on material and enhancement type. Plusses weren't any more valuable than flaming or holy or whatever, but they still were restricted in a way those other attributes weren't.