Project Delicate Rebalancement: Tales of the Wild Coast

It seems to me that the xp slider is a good idea whatever. Apparently its not a big thing to introduce and lets you reduce xp without having to do so if you don't want.

The tweaks to encounter difficulties sound great too, especially the improvement to leader reactions.

However, one of the issues raised was that the new mods make the party too powerful when they reach parts of the Temple (as they have lots more xp and treasure). Will the option to reduce xp and beef up some encounters be enough to offset this? (The issue of the extra treasure is equally important as the xp, as its also an indicator of character power).

So, are people in favour of simply tweaking the "rewards" in the game (in which case I think we need to tweak treasure downwards as well as xp) and leaving the mods where they are?

Or do we want to move the new mods to the end game? This has the advantage of not interfering with game balance until the end, where it would be less noticeable, and leaves tinkering with the Temple not so urgently required. Also, other mods would be easier to tack on the end without the same problems appearing. On the other hand, the mods would need changing (meaning more work for the modders) and they add more interest to the earlier game where they are now.

We haven't really had many opinions on whether to move the mods or not....Allyx and Ted don't seem to mind (apologies if I am misrepresenting anyone). I haven't had chance to play the new mods yet. What do those who have played them think about moving them-would it take away more than it gave back?

 

Why? My concept of the Co8 mods is that they are supposed to be more challenging than the vanilla game. Why should I, or any of us for that matter, care if some who doesn't know anything about, or care to learn anything about, the D&D system, and can't be bothered to even read the manual, cannot beat the game with the Co8 mods? It's not like our income at Co8 is Dependant on the number of people who download and like our mod. We do this because we enjoy it. As soon as we start feeling a responsibility that anyone who might download our mod has to find it acceptable his will stop being fun.

But it is a big deal. Only one member of this community has the ability to add the slider, and he is completely swamped with RL for the foreseeable future. Never state something is not a big deal unless you yourself can do it easily.

 

My apologies. I was confusing the ease of changing the xp adjustment command (which you and others have referred to) with implementing this in the front end. Mea culpa!

 

This idea may be stupid, but if the characyers are getting to powerful, how about lowering the resale value of acquired items to, say a tenth of their original value. I do not know how hard that this would be to accomplish, but it would definately slow down crafing of items. This would make low level characters run out of money after identifying a couple of potions or scrolls. Just a dumb thought for today. I think you people are very gifted and dedicated to a game that I care about a lot. Cudos to all of you.

 

I just did 2 5.0.2's back to back with 5 pc's and Fruella. With no mods or respawns everyone was level 10 at Temple level4. With mods and respawns everyone was level 12 and over 400kGP. The mods and stuff are worth a couple of levels and thousands of GP. But, they're fun to play.

 

Just played through with the original game (no patches). Highlights of 'mad' encounters for level were:

Raging barbarian in moathouse.
Gnolls in moathouse.
Bugbears in moathouse.
All the elemental stuff.
Back stairs route into temple and meet big bugbears. TPWO.
Fighting wizard with his imp (wtf with that damage shield?)

Of course, I skipped many quests which had a huge impact on the xp I had when I made the encounters.

And that's really my point, unless one is planning for a specific level for an encounter and then ensures that the chances are it happens at that level then it's either going to be too easy or too hard. Purely from the tens of thousands of different options Troika games offer up to the player which then mean at a certain point the level difference is astonishing. Even something as simple as taking 3 NPCs with your party will play a huge role.

Not raining on the parade here, just voicing some concerns that you might be tilting at windmills and trying to address issues which are very much player/style of play specific.

Some great ideas here though - just to improve gameplay and RP the priest one is nice. Not sure about how 'easy' or not it is to kill the priests - if you get that close and assassinate, then sure that's easy - isn't the issue then going to be getting away? :ninja: But I do like the idea of bumping up their 'awareness' of the general situation in the temple. One death of a high priest and the others will be getting a little jumpy and looking to their defences.

 

I know Krunch hasn't been here for a while but
Hickory needs to be moved and tweaked (especially
the orcs). There are lots of them but most are weak
and give insanely high XP rewards probably because
of their high CR. I think someone should take a look at it
with Krunch's permission of course. Removing HB would be
a great loss to the Co8 mod. I,personally, think that a good
storyline and a little tweaking can make the addition one of
the good reasons to install Co8 mods (wasn't it discussed
somewhere on the forums?).

 

I looked over the Hickory Branch creatures for Krunch and gave him my suggestions. He had mentioned making changes based on them, but it sounds like RL has gotten in his way. So the final analysis of the HB should wait until after he releases his update.

 

Hi, it's been a while since I last played TOEE, co8 version 3 I believe, so this Christmas I thought I'd replay it and try out the new mods. I had already got my party to level 2 before coming across this thread, but I'm happy to continue with a 40% xp penalty.

IMHO a major part of the problem is the amount of loot available. In my PnP game I'm playing a 5th level mage but my canny rat-:censored: DM is being especially stingy with the loot and it makes a big difference. I don't know if it is in the SRD but certainly the Player's Handbook 2, and possibly the DMG have tables of how much treasure a PC is expected to have at each level. So, is there any chance that someone could please knock up a mod that reduces by 50% the treasure gained, possibly also reducing by 50% the resale value of items? Otherwise I'll have to try and manually do the calculations and get rid of half. If you guys would be interested in such an experiment, of course?

Y.

 

From reading this, it seems there are two problems. Namely too much XP and too much gold.

I'm gonna throw out another idea for dealing with the gold problem. A very common way for many other RPGs to deal with gold getting out of hand is to drop in a money sink. The big area where gold seems to be getting out of hand is after you finish the new CO8 content and head to the temple.

Possible solution: Change the various methods of marking the ToEE on your map to all require a large sum of gold.

For example, one method of getting to the ToEE is from Nulb by convincing one of the agents there to tell you where the temple is. This could be changed to have the agent demand you give him a large sum of gold to ensure that you're on the same side. Lots of other methods of requiring gold can be made pretty easily, I think.

So to sum it up: require that the player spends all of the gold you give him in the CO8 addons on the plot rather than making his party stronger.

 

There are many instances where it's redundant, however. I've given a few examples in my XP testing mod. And note that the original game also had too much loot to begin with!