Livonya's Beta 1.5 Mod.zip

could the armor be set to a type that druids can use (non-metal I assume), and turn it into medium, just as a fix?

 

Hey, Liv. I know you didn't give the NPC version of Spiritual Weapon hitpoints because players are smart enough not to try and attack it. However, during my most recent run through the broken tower battle, my fighter used every single cleave attack he got (which was something like 5) to hit the spiritual weapon one of the witches had cast. Mucho annoying.

 

documentation issue

In the installtion instructions provided with your new patch you write:

As far as I am aware patch 1 is included in patch 2. so you should only install patch 2.

btw.... Thank you for the patch.

Oh, and shouldn't this thread be stickied?

 

Yeah, I know that can happen. Trying to make this work is really hard.

What do you think I should do? Do you think I should change it so the same rules apply when the NPC's cast?

The problem is that the only time a PC will ever get a hit on a Spiritual Weapon will be AOO or Cleave attacks. I can't stop that from happening, but if I change Spiritual Weapon to work the same as PC/NPC then the PC won't really ever be able to "kill" the Spiritual Weapon.

Here are my options:

1) Make Spiritual Weapon work exactly like a summoned creature with hit points. Can be targetted by spells and melee/ranged attacks. (this kind of makes the spell pointless in some ways as it is merely a summoned creature with no special traits unique to spiritual weapon)

2) Make it so PCs can only hit it with AOO/Cleave attacks. They might do enough damage to kill it, but I am not sure.

3) Leave it as I currently have it.

I am open for suggestions on this one...

- Livonya

 

I'm thinking option 1, but give it a lot of hitpoints and DR of either 5/- or 10/-.

The idea here is that it can be "killed" (since we know the AI of NPC will cause them to attack it), but it cannot be easily killed.

By doing this the spell doesn't give NPCs an unfair advantage against PCs when using the spell, but the spell is different from a normal summoning in that it is super hard to kill by damaging it (but hey... a big hill giant who only wants to attack the spiritual weapon just needs a few really good hits, maybe a crit, before he'll be rewarded for his determination against the holy weapon.

Just a random thought.

Edit
And to address the spell thing... maybe make it invulnerable to just about everything... or maybe spell resistance of something in the neighborhood of 60 would do the trick!

 

Nitewolf,
You could do that easily enough - just go into proto.tab and set the feat requirement for the dragonhide armor to ARMOR_DRUID instead of ARMOR_HEAVY. That makes it immediately eqiuppable by any druid. The problem with that is that then druids don't need to take a feat to use it, as they should.


So, in order to really make it work right, we'd need to create another druid armor feat, say ARMOR_DRDHVY, and set that as the requirement for the armor. I'm just not sure if we're able to do that without changing the engine.

--Ikarius

 

The problem with this is that the NPCs will always attack it. Over and over again. So then you simply flood the map with Spiritual Weapons and you win because the NPCs do nothing but attack it.

That is exactly how it was before... broken and easily abused.

- Livonya

 

Hezrou Stench

Hi all,

First let me express my gratitude to everyone who has put in time fixing and improving TOEE--and especially to Liv. It really is great, and it would really suck without your work. Thanks.

Liv, a suggestion for the Hezrou. While I think beefing up the guardians was a great idea, and adding the Hezrou stench is in keeping with its stats in the SRD, as it's implemented now, there are a few problems.

First, it doesn't seem to be treated as poison by the game. Per the rules anything which provides protection from poison should also work on it. However, currently neither scarabs of proof against poison or necklaces of adaptation are providing any benefits against the stench effect. More importantly, neither delay poison nor neutralize poison spells have any effect on it. They are both supposed to remove the effect from one character. As it stands, even a heal spell cannot remove the nauseated effect before the duration runs out.

Second, a character who saves against the stench is not supposed to be affected by the same Hezrou's stench for 24 hours. I imagine this could be hard to implement in the game (forgive me, I know nothing about how the programing works), but as it stands the characters are having to save over and over again. My paladin, whose fortitude save is +17, still became nauseated after a few rounds due to a random low roll.

Third, although it is in accord with the letter of the rules, currently a nauseated character can do nothing but move, not eve drink a potion (of neutralize poison for instance). While this is what the SRD literally says, but having DMed a good bit over the years, I would not interpret the rules this way myself. Of course, this is only my opinion, so take it for what it's worth.

Finally, on a minor note, I think the descriptor "sickened" is being used for what is correctly "nauseated", though I need to look at this one again to be sure.

Put together, the first three problems make the Hezrou almost unbeatable unless you have a +24 or so fort save. This is the strongest party I've mangaged to make, and they've slaughtered the rest of the temple (they hacked through the greater temple as if they were just bandits), but I have fought Hezrous twice (once with Zugtomy and once with the water guardian) and the stench effect has beaten my party both times. If the first two problems could be rectified, I think the Hezrou would be a suitable challenge, but within the realm of possibility for characters of the level the game was designed for.

Thanks,
Jianglai

 

not to be picky

but how is removing DR "fixing" gnolls? They're too damned easy to deal with as it is, especially by the time you're exploring the Temple (L3 at least?) I know it's not in their official description, but if you remove their DR can you beef them up some other way (thus foiling the point of removing the DR)?

 

Working hard, there are really many things that may be done. But I think that there is no need to change basic rules about armors or gnolls.

Druids are proficient with light and medium armors, that means that, if the dragon hide is heavy armor, a druid may wear it, suffering standard armor penalities.
So, or the Druid/PC takes the feat for wearing heavy armors (both as feat or with 1 fighter level) or he just doesn't use it but he may wear it. The point is that he takes advantage of such an armor because it is not forged with metal, so it doesn't go against druidic religion.

About special armor proficiency for wizards, I don't agree. Something that may be weared from a wizard should be weared by everybody else: every class should gain benefits from spell resistance or other permanent magical effect of such an hypotetical armor. Instead maybe only a wizard should be able to use some magica abilities of the item.

About gnolls instead, if you find them easy to beat (honestly, I never did and I think that their CR is fine) it is easy to give them modified scores (+2,+2,-2,-2), elite scores (+5,+4,+3,+2,+0,-2) or to give them some class level, maybe ranger ones, since it is gnoll's favourited class. Anyway, for me they are fine.

 

I agree whole-heartedly with what Jianglai has said about the hezrou stench.

I've also noted the necklace of adaptation doesn't work against cloudkill either. (Not that cloudkill doesn't have its problems anyway.)

The point is to make them behave according to the rules. It's not that the DR neccessarily makes them too hard (though they should get a CR boost for it) but that it just plain shouldn't be there. Gnolls are what, CR 1 or 2 normally? (my books are at home so I can't check.) of course they're going to be fairly easy once you get the temple and are level 5+. Their CR reflects that.

 

Gnolls and Damage Resistance

Rules are fine and all, but how about the game being fun? The gnolls were given DR not because of a typo by Troika, but to make them more challenging. What exactly is the point of encountering several packs of these creatures in the Temple? They're nothing but an inconvenience (same with goblins, but at least there's only one group of them).

If the game is to be modded at all [IMO of course], it should *add* to the challenge, not make already feeble opponents completely useless. How about giving them a hand with some shamans, a gnoll chieftain or something?

 

Actually, it was a mistake. Which is why it was fixed.

Troika touted on many occaisions about how ToEE was going to be as true to the D&D rules as possible. It's one of the main reasons I got the game and still play it.

And have you actually read any of the posts here? Livonya is trying to make the game harder. But she's also trying to fix what's broken and/or wrong.

If you've played her mod and still think it's too easy, wait for her 2.0 mod with the increased difficulty option. Or follow her advice about only using point buy for characters and don't save and reload when things don't go your way.

Personally, especially with Liv's AI and enemy feat fixes, I think the game has a good balance of fights. There's things like the broken tower battle and the hill giant in Emridy Meadows where you have to make good use of your characters and their abilities to pull off a victory. But there's also times when your characters can make use of their feats like Great Cleave and cut a swath through their foes. Both are enjoyable to me, but too much of one or the other can become monotonous.