Fruella and the mystery of the Great Cleaver

Hey Ted, he stole my line <wink>

 

I still haven't figured out how Fruella got in the game. In T1 she was the spinister daughter of a reclusive farmer that nobody liked. The Troika writers who designed the encounters put the cleaver in. Maybe a low cost alternative to Elmo. I got the cleaver crafted up to +3mightycleaving/frost once. With her strength boosted up she's as good a fighter as you can get. I like the cleaver at 1d10, but then again Fruella is my favorite. I saw a post where a guy called her a freaking amazon with a big axe. I know she's really hard on bugbears. I think most of her criticals come against them. In a straight-up no console game at level one she's not a viable npc. I guess Liv didn't like her.

 

But she was an F1, which makes her tougher than most of the folks in Hommlet, even to soldiers.

What's wrong with her? Her stats look good in protos.tab (couldn't get her in my current game, since I talked my way out of Terjon's last quest).

 

In the original game she is a level 3 fighter, 17HP, cloth armour and STR14. The cleaver is +1 and 1d12. Compare her to Elmo and she is not exactly over-powering. At level 1, 13HP and the cleaver at 1d6 she's just an ordinary level 1 npc. If you had to choose who would you take, Elmo or Fruella?

 

If anything, that's an argument that Elmo's overpowered. Most of the Hommlet joinable NPCs start at level 1, as they should. Why should the supporting cast overshadow your created party? (Though I'll give Elmo a pass, since he's right out of the original PnP module)

Besides, that's a false choice. You can take both Elmo and Fruella. (Can you take Fruella and Meleny these days? You couldn't in the orignal release).