I have played through TOEE many times, and I am currently using VICKS AND WEDGE mod. I enjoy it immensely, but this mod including others shows an obvious bias and it is somewhat disturbing me. In the mod, you can get a Holy Longsword for marrying Meleny, Scather (changed to Holy Avenger), Fragarach, and all the other weapons of severe power (Holy Greataxe in the fire node) are all for the good aligned party. In any mod, or just the game itself, there is nothing for the evil party. No evil weapons, rewards or whatever, especially compared to a good aligned party. The aforementioned weapons are useless to an evil person, so the only alternative is to sell them. Not very usefull. True, you can make evil weapons of mass destruction, but to not code for them in the hardware is rediculous. Why are the good guys always favoured in any situation like this? I am not asking for outright favourtism, as we already have that, but what about balance. If there are going to be weapons of extreme power that favour one alignment, then surely there must be ones for the opposing alignments. Wrong. It could boil down to simple human tendancies, but from my point of view, it is rather annoying. I would love an evil, powerful party but to get there is much more sneaky, harder and obviously, within the game parameters, less favoured. True, anyone can use the Frostbrand or flaming longsword, but outside of those weapons I am continually asking why are the good guys always on the better end of the weapons selection. As I said, to any evil person, the weapons of real significance are nothing more than lottery tickets. Just a thought.
I'll give you scather and fragarach, but why do you say the holy longsword and such need to be used by good characters? They just to extra damage to evil creatures, so it doesn't really matter who's swinging the thing. Anyway, even an evil party will spend most of its time hacking up evil creatures in this game (which itself is a bias, but of a different sort...).
The holy longsword from Meleny's father is part of the normal game, not a mod. As for the holy weapons, only good and neutral characters can really use them. Evil characters should (and I believe do) suffer a temporary loss of two levels whenever they equip a holy weapon. So yeah, they're mostly useless to them. That said, LP is right. Most of the enemies you're fighting are evil, so having unholy weapons really wouldn't help much anyway. Hendrack's hammer is an unholy weapon, even though it doesn't Identify as such. It's the only unholy weapon I can think of in the game, though.
Woop, my bad. I just checked, and you're right about the level loss (though it's only 1 level, according to the SRD). Hrm, yeah evil parties just suck in this game.
My point exactly. So why would you want an evil party. Could the designers not of made the game so that there were equal (but different) rewards for an evil and good party? It just seems to me that the design of it is such the best party, of whatever makeup, must be at least neutral or good. You must be CG to wield Fragarach to its fullest potential, but for the evil party there is no such device. My point from there is: if this is so, then why waste the time to create the option. I am not angry, just a little miffed that if one wants to make a purely evil party for evil's sake, the rewards are not nearly as grand as that the good party can have. I mean, in the LE version, you have to get Fragarach only to GIVE it away. Not very exciting.
Only 1 level? That's what I get for not double-checking before I post. The original module was created with a party of heroes in mind, meaning good guys, for the most part. And it's not just evil parties that are restricted. Parties that have paladins in them can't do any of the temple quests, or the paladin will fall. And really good parties shouldn't be doing them anyway. These are all evil priests scheming for dominance, they shouldn't be helping any of them out. Personally, I think it's nice to at least have the option of playing evil characters, even if it isn't optimal. Though really, I'd rather play good characters anyway, so the lack of bonuses for evil parties really doesn't bother me much. Though it's definitely something a dedicated modder could improve.
I think this sums up the situation quite nicely. There simply are inherant disadvantages to being evil in a world that is predominately good, and that's reflected in the game. Whether they actually designed it that way is another question . . . Life ain't fair. There's the way it oughtta be, and then there's the way it is.
This is going to show my age, but I remember when the module for this came out in the mid 1980's. The game was made for the idea of good vs. evil. Besides the only thing you could do with an evil party would be to join the temple or take over and rule the temple or something along those lines I guess. I don't think Gary Gygax had evil parties in mind when this module was made and therefore evil parties don't get big rewards. Why don't you read the story line for peat sake. All it talks about is good vanguishing evil. I agree though that in this day and age makers should include that not everyone has good intensions even in an RPG. So if evil needs a boost, have someone create a mod to your likeing or what ever. At the same time if you want a tougher game to play, then play an all evil party so that it won't be so easy to finish the game. Gaear has it right; there are more good people in the world of Greyhawk than evil. From a seasoned fighter: I maybe done, but I get the job dumb.
I am a seasoned D+Der, and I too, remember the module coming out. I fully endorse your points, but in the transition to a PC game things are different. You will get those who know little or nothing about D+D and will play this game. They will not be so knowledgable in the intricacies you and I can discuss and will not understand our points. If the game was about good verses evil, then the alignments would be more restricted and NO evil alignments would be allowed. Seasoned D+Ders will already know the story (I have the supermodule) and when I compare the module to the game there is much that has been copied, and it should be so, but in a PC game, can we not start fresh and open up the restrictions? How about, as an evil party, becoming the new Greater Temple leaders, and in doing so, you need to obtain a Rod of Rulership (from a dragon, no less) and making the dragon a side quest for everyone else? I cannot believe why, despite there being none originally, that there is no dragon in this game despite the game being called DUNGEONS and DRAGONS. The less initiated may be somewhat puzzled. Don't get me wrong. I love D+D and I am an avid collector of older, vintage material. But good needs evil to survive, and vice versa, but I believe that the game should be that once you start down the dark path, new doors, available only to you, should emerge. Just my opinion.
Not to invalidate your point in the least, but here's how I rationalize this one: much like the triple-cross quest in nulb, you're pitting the temples against one another. You "help" romag insofar as you go and slaughter belsornig, but you were going to do that anyway, and as soon as you're done you lop his fool head off too. It's like no-frills, savage undercover work. Paladins just can't do it because they can't even appear to be evil or consort with the baddies in any way. (Otherwise they lose their paladin pro-shop discount.)
If you play a good party you need the weapons in case you need to smite your foes in a running battle to get to safety, but if your evil you use the fighting factions to your advantage, yeah you can use the weapons against them but if you start doing romags quests for example most of the earth temple won't attack you, this lets you scout around, and plan ahead how your gonna double cross them later and at your own pace.
No powerful evil weapons? What about the Golden Orb? For those complaining about the lack of evil magic weapons I would like to add at this point that the Golden Orb was supposed to be an evil magic weapon (or rather artifact, that coincidentally can be used as a weapon). It was supposed to aid Chaotic Evil players and change their charisma to help them. Paladins and good aligned priests were supposed to be unable to even touch it. Charisma with respect to Chaotic Evil was supposed to increase, and decrease for all other alignments. I have not seen this in the computer game version, but it could be happening unseen, I don't know. The point is: evil characters do have a powerful weapon of sorts to balance the good powerful weapons, and that is supposed to be the Orb. If it does what the original AD&D module says it is supposed to do, it would more than balance the good weapons, I think. What do others think ?
I'm pretty sure that the orb has no adverse affects on good aligned characters, regardless of class. It would make more sense if it did, and I think it may be easy to add. Some of Hendracks equipment gives negatives to good characters, and of course scather and fragarach do the same to evil characters so the ability to do it is in the game.
