Is this game supposed to be insanely hard?

I usually clear the Deklo grove at first level with just PCs. Arcanist learns 2x sleep spells, Divine takes a Summon 1. It's pretty rare that this doesn't work, and if I can't get the spiders to sleep, causing the Webs to magically disappear, there's always reloading if I lose someone. That's 2 massive cRPG benefits right there...

 

Re stock characters: I think these guys are the examples from the Players Handbook, which, given how D&D3.5 seems to assume exceptional scores as common place, is pretty odd. The availability of stat increases with levelling, plus the fact you can buy or create +6 enhancers pretty easily, seems to assume several stats in the 20s by circa level 10 or so.

 

Five longbows and a polearm are usually enough for my six 1st level characters (2 Rangers, 2 Fighters, 1 Rogue, 1 Barbarian). Everybody multi-classes at second level (the Fighters into spell casting classes, everyone else into Fighter).

 

I wonder how hard the game would be if it was set in 1e rules like it was originally written?

 

Has anybody tried a game with only spellcasters (Wiz & sorc)? I think it's hard in the beginning, but with the high level spells easy in the end.

An all fighter party was cool in the game without NC. Must try that with NC also in a while...

 

I ran a party of 6 (I think) that had 5 Wizards and a Druid. Druid and one of the Wizards had pretty good physical stats (16 & 18 con respectively I think) for front-line survival at low levels, and I wouldn't say my tactics were fully optimised for levels 1-2. Once you have Web it gets easier, once you can cast 5 fireballs a round it gets a bit samey... Druid ended up as the walking first aid kit of course.

 

i've already linked the spell, but i'll quote it for you:

level cap in vanilla is 10. balors have 20 hd. since he uses blasphemy as a spell-like ability his caster level for it is the same as his hit dice. 20-10 = 10. One cast of blasphemy kills the party. no chance of survival. the hezrou has exactly 10 hd, which still makes him able to daze-lock the party. in round one he summons another demon, in round two he starts daze-locking while his buddy kills the pcs off one by one.

 

That´s good. A Balor is a CR 20 encounter and so an approbiate challenge for a party of 4 20thlevel characters.

So it´s working as intended if he mops the floor with a party that has only 4 10th level characters. :thumbsup:

There certainly are a lot of tactics to overcome that problem, e.g.
Stay out of range - Blasphemy has a range of only 40 feet. If you spread out the party even if he gets 1 into range the others can still play Agincourt with him and rain a hail of arrows down on him. Preferably with +3 holy composite longbows and more than 4 party members.
I don´t know if that works in ToEE - but blasphemy is a sonic spell like Holy word so deaf creatures should be immune as are any evil party members.

 

Balor Guardian right? Its been a while since I last played but IIRC his CR was lowered to 16 >_>

 

The one thing u will learn to hate about ToEE is that after like the second or third playtrough u will pretty much be able to employ a crap load of dirty tricks that pretty much never fail and with each new dirty trick u pick up the ai and the overall difficulty of the game plummets into the sewers and u will actually find yrself looking for creative ways to weaken yr self/give the ai a decent chance of accomplishing anything.
In truth for this game and the vast majority games out there the difficulty is only that of overcoming the learning curve /adjusting to a new gameplay model after wards its a down hill slide into oblivion as without proper challenge most players simply walk away(at least ToEE is diverse enough in choices and creative self imposed restrictions that people simply stick around long enogh to make fond memories of it and the nostalgia periodically kicks in and makes em hop-in a session even after years of absence)
As far as i'm concerned there are just 2 games that can offer constant and most importantly diverse and unpredictable challenges : civilization 3(the emperor+ levels give ais that make u cry uncle even when u expect a blitzkrieg approach to work flawlessly also the randomness of stuff like alliances and pacts being made and tanks getting owned by lucky spearmans :dizzy Then theres the battle for wesnoth that can literally have u playing for years before u even qualify to play on hardest settings without u losing yr cool and reach for the 'load saved game' and theres always multiplayer where u get to meet interesting people some of them being complete retards(in both tactics and manners) and on occasion others that make u question if yr own tactics aren't some what retarded(or at least amazingly inefficient compared to hes)
BUT REMEMBER: if u get in trouble with any game at all there's always the 'strategy guyde' to help u !! (see heres a proper example oint: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/445123 naturally this applies to TOEE to some extent :evil_laug )

 

actually an appropriate challenge for four level 16 characters. a single level 20 character should have a 50/50 chance of killing a balor on his own.

 

?
According to the DMG 3.5 p. 48 "A monster´s Challenge Rating (CR) tells you the level of the party for which that monster is a good challenge. A monster of CR 5 is an approbiate challenge for a group of four 5th-level characters..."

So why should a monster of CR20 not be an approbiate challenge for a party of 4 20th level characters?

For a party of 4 16thlevel characters the DMG in Table 3-1 lists a solitary monster of CR 15-17 as approbiate.

 

a fighter 5 is cr 5. four fifth level pcs fighting one fifth level fighter is not a challenge. it's a pushover.

 

Then your definition of "approbiate challenge" is different from the DMG.

An "approbiate challenge" is supposed to expend around 20% of the resources of a 4 person-party of the right level as one encounter in an adventure. It is NOT meant to be a fight in which the party faces equal odds.

 

i don't even know what the word "approbiate" means, i guess you mean "appropriate".

as for the challenge rating system itself: it is broken.

let's say your party of 4 pcs encounters a clay golem (cr10). cast grease, battle essentially over. if you can fly you don't even need to cast grease, you just fire your elemental damage enchanted xbow until the sucker dies.

now your party has to fight multiple enemies. they encounter 16 2hd orcs (cr10 encounter). cast sleep, battle over.

in both cases a single level 1 spell ended the encounter. that's not 20% of a party's ressources.