My first (sucesfull) try that goes over protos hacking

This is what I did, but nothing happened. I wonder why.

 

Ok, now it is everything fine. By accident, some raws has been deleted but I still i don't understand why. Now, no more door eated by (very hungry) zombies! If you see some more bug, it is because of the same reason even if I think that I got 'em all and now I know how to correct them. But just enjoy.... soon some other news! Download the protos from the first post of this thread. M.

 

Quick correction: Several Troika employees were, in fact, D&D players.

 

you shock me with that news because this means that, even if they were players, they really have had even less time of what I thought but still this doesn not means how knowlegable they are about D&D 3.5 or 3.0. I think that, in beta testing, both me and a friend of mine would have been able to fix monsters, NPCs, items and everything connected to rules in 48 hours or less. I don't think that an *expert* D&D player or master would deliberately make such nonsense.

 

There's also a question of how much fun some things would be in ToEE if they followed exact pen and paper D&D rules. When the designers were still discussing this, they made it clear that many areas (spell components, item crafting, multiclassing, shops, scroll availability, some monsters, etc) were simplified for ToEE in order to keep them fun in a computer game. I don't see that as a problem; every good DM will apply the rules differently here and there to keep things working the way he wants them.

 

me neither, infact I'm talking about other sides of the game, really.
About prestige classes, I'm sure that it would have been a glad add-on for a further expansion that will never come.

 

about the fact that masterwork items are available at very low levels... well since not all kinds of items can be found in game its good u can buy them. Otherwise many feats would be a waste since the weapons dont exist. However why not let the smith in nulb sell them instead? Then u have to sack the moathouse first and gain a few levels. Perhaps connected to an even harder quest than the giant. Im looking forward to harder encounters. Another good option would be to let your characters start with a masterwork weapon if they choose the weapon focus feat.

 

The problem is likely a managerial one. Troika's not so good at managing the bug fixing, as evidenced by all three of their games.

 

That comment made me smile. There's more to developing a game than just knowing the D&D rules. Sometimes rules have to be adapted, bent or broken. Not everything that makes sense in a P&P session will work in a computer game. And having done some QA work myself, I can tell you: Anytime you fix something, you run the risk of breaking something else (sounds familiar?). Anytime you change a few stats here and there, the entire balance of the game is at stake. Bug squashing and gameplay balancing is a highly delicate process. I'd be very careful with that 48 hours claim ...

 

I second that, masterwork smith should be in nulb imho

 

I know that I may look arrogant, but I'm sure about this. I brought ToEE because I wished to play the PC game experience closed as much as possible to p&p game. ToEE is a game on license for D&D 3.5 fans that want to play D&D and not something just closed to it. D&D is based on a mathematical engine already largely tested and, since the basis of the game that is represented by standard races, weapons, spells and class is unchanged, then it is only and just a mistake to modify other parameters.

About Otis as masterwork crafter, there are 2 problems:
1 - otis may join the party and when he joins it, as far as I can remember, he does no longer sell any item
2 - nulb is too far in the game, so they would be available too late in the game. That's a pity, I know, since Otis should be a better smith than brother smith. Maybe it is possible to move the special materials set from brother smith to otis, including the ghead of giant quest, but still here is the first problem.

 

My vote is to put the masterwork items in Nulb as well. The idea behind the giants head quest was that parties would be about to go to the temple by the time they could kill it, putting the items in Nulb would assure this, although the giant may already be dead at this point.

 

I understand and sympathize with both you and Morpeus. I too want to have a game that is consistent with the rules; but, when I started playing D&D 27 years ago, my group would agree to any rules at the beginning of the campaign. Then when the AD&D DM Guide came out, I remember a passage that defined those “rules†as guidelines that could be modified as gameplay dictated.
I think that ToEE is very close to the DM program I used to fantasize about writing, and it is a much better product than I could have made myself. Morpeus is correct about the give and take that automating the game for the computer environment requires.
I am thankful for all of the modding support that Co8 has provided, I make changes to the protos all of the time... and I have had to reload many times, part of the price to pay.
And getting back on subject, I think that all items should be available at some combination of shops in the game, the limiting factor would be the available treasure and the players own sense of balance.

 

But this would go against point 1 and 2. What if you recruit otis? you can't include him in and out all the time from the party. If you want, it should be quite easy to give Otis the same brother's smith dialogues to sell masterwork items, but without the giant's head quest, so that he would not be less good than B.S.
But still there is the main problem: masterwork items must be available from the beginning and moving them to nulb would mean to allow the player to fill the party with magic items and to obtain masterworks when he don't need them anymore and I'm absolutely against this.
In verity, I was waiting for the mob editor so that it will be possible to update his real stock, giving him even better items than the ones that he currently offers. Since .... *spoiler* ...... he knows Canoness Y'Dey, he could sell some real enchanted weapon or armor, being better than B.Smith.

 

I got the idea that the reason behind the giants head quest was so you couldn't get masterwork items real early in the game, I think that you should have to work for it, it almost feels like cheating to me that they're so easy to get, if i wanted masterwork at the very start I would just cheat. also imho I think that Nulb would have a larger range of "blackmarket" stuff avalible including masterwork stuff

hey hasn't liv fixed otis and burnne so that once they leave your party they sell stuff again?

for those that may know, what is a darkblade?