Project Delicate Rebalancement: Tales of the Wild Coast

Re: Game Difficulty: Are The New Mods Making The Game Unbalanced?

Just 2c. from a player.

First, I liked the Verbobonc and Moathouse respawn mod, because it interrupted what used to be a very boring part of the game. Temple level 1 and 2 have always been (for me) fairly monotonous. I don't do the priest quests, because I tend to have a paladin in my party.

Some of the stuff in the temple was already lowly balanced (the humans in the Earth temple, goblins on DL 3, the non-bandit humans on DL2).

So, all I used to do was kill everything that moved, picked up armors, and hauled them back to Hommlet/Nulb. Now, those mods give me something to break my tedium. I clear level 1, then do the Moathouse mod, clear most of level 2, then do the Verbobonc mod. Krunch's mod is a late addition.

So, what I'm saying is that having some mods with quests etc. to interrupt the mid-temple levels is a good thing, especially for paladin-equipped parties. I guess, what I'd propose is the following:

(1) Make the moathouse respawn activate as a quest (there should be a story reason why people go back there), activated at party level 8. Most of the monsters there are "average" for that level, and I can clear the whole moathouse with a single run through of 6 characters- which is about right for a side-trek. So, if the moathouse respawn is denied to lower level characters, the mod does not have to be changed.
(2) Krunch's mod could be upgraded to be for 10th level characters. This is a pain, especially since all the orcs etc. would have to be upgraded. However, I recommend this, because most of those monsters (sans goblins, gnolls, bugbears) don't appear elsewhere. To make things a little easier, swap the bugbears with greater temple ones, and swap the gnolls and goblins with greater temple bugbears. The bugbears are led by a priest of Zuggtmoy, and some other mage. Or they're led by drow (Eclavdra's cronies). Link the story to the greater temple. Smigmal wants to beef up the temple defenses and they're trying to recruit a bunch of orcs led by the great orc general. What I'm trying to propose is something where changes incorporate underused monsters already in the game. The only monsters to be modded would be the orcs (I know, still a big deal).
(3) Verbobonc should be upgraded to be for 12th level characters. This again, would be another pain. However, as Allyx noted, none of the monsters except the spiders (who are underpowered for Verbobonc) appear elsewhere. The women and the merchants remain as is, but don't bring you to Verbobonc until level 12. Same with Rentsch etc.

In my mind, as the temple stands, parties of 6 characters should be about 6th level by the time they do the earth temple (4th after moathouse, 5th after Nulb quests, 6th after Imeryd's run), 7th for the other temples, 9th for the 3rd level (Smigmal and a couple of other enemies are EL10), and 11th for the Hedrack, Senshock etc. encounters. An 8th level moathouse, and a 10th level Hickory Branch would fill that requirement. Characters also need a couple of levels to face the Balor. Verbobonc and an Imeryd's run respawn would handle those issues.

 

Re: Game Difficulty: Are The New Mods Making The Game Unbalanced?

Possibly the most unbalancing thing which could be avoided. But then with DnD crafting (ye olde hobbye horsey), no time constrictions and a save function (no xp lost to death), items are overpowered for the group in any case. That said, Troika put in a holy longsword which you can obtain at level 2/3


Problem for me is that it's impossible to balance the game.

DnD is always way out of kilter in the early levels and way out of balance by later levels - that's IMHO a flaw with the system and not the game content itself.

How does one balance the temple? What level should one be to enter the temple? Doesn't assigning an arbitary level for that make a nonsense of the games alternate conclusions? Bumping up all the creature levels in the temple won't really solve the problem of trying to accurately gauge the level of a group which can consist of 1 -8 members which has open-ended ability to travel and move around the game 'world' with several ways of entering the temple.

The game wasn't balanced to begin with. It couldn't be because of the free-form way Troika tried to make their games. The only way I see to balance ToEE would be to reduce some of the options above and try to funnel parties to a certain point at a certain time. Which is something I guess none want.

Just my twopennethworth.

 

Re: Game Difficulty: Are The New Mods Making The Game Unbalanced?

I'd rather see buffed enemies and a smarter temple than see all the added content moved to the end. That said, I'm glad to contribute where I can in terms of plot and dialog. If the consensus is for a Tales of the Sword Coast approach, I'll budget time for it.

 

Re: Game Difficulty: Are The New Mods Making The Game Unbalanced?

I think this makes the most sense to me, short of some hero volunteering to rebalance the entire original material to accomodate the new mods. It also occurs to me that this option has the benefit of codifying the process of including any future add-on adventures, making it easier to fit in any future mods some future modder may add. I know (and support, for entirely selfish reasons!) the focus-shift to producing all-new modules (kotb and beyond), but since TOEE is the OC (so to speak), modders might still be drawn to trying their hand at something manageable and personal. So the adding-on-to-the-end solution allows for such future endeavors without bringing up the unbalancing issue all over again. I'd say it's smart to solve such a problem in advance--unless you plan on 'locking the thread' (i.e. saying no more mods added to toee through co8 cumulative patches), which solves the problem as well, though less dynamically.

I should say I also like the idea of cutting xp to 50%, fwiw. It seems to me either approach addresses the issue.

Just an opinion thrown in the pot, I hope it helps. Whatever you all decide, I'm sure it'll be reasonable and fun. You're pros.

 

Re: Game Difficulty: Are The New Mods Making The Game Unbalanced?

I like this idea. If it's possible to do engine-wise, it's probably the easiest solution outside of reducing XP awards. I'm willing to help Ted, Allyx and Krunch pump up their assorted baddies as well. I'm sure Allyx and I could make the white dragon, in particular, one tough cookie. Especially if it's going to be the new final battle. Maybe even give it some Frost Giant (easily handled with blue-haired dwarves set giant-size) body guards for extra fun.

I do agree with the idea that putting these events outside of the main story reduces some of the flavor, though.

Actually, pre-additional content (and Liv souping up the broken tower battle) after Nulb, I used to hit the broken tower first, use the secret door into temple level 3, wipe the floor with pretty much everything but the Umber Hulks (damn confusion gaze) and then work my way up into temple levels 2 and then 1 before making my way back down to level 4. Outside of the battle with the salamanders in the fire temple, I didn't have much of a problem at all.

Nowadays I need to hit level 5 or 6 before taking on the broken tower, which means I'm usually venturing into the 1st level of the temple to level up before I skip down to level 3.

ETA:

Re-statting is pretty easy, now that I know how the protos.tab interacts with the engine (though it can be time-consuming depending on how many NPCs you want to re-do). Unfortunately, it's the AI editing, pre-buff scripting and Mob recreation that I don't have a clue how to do and takes quite a bit of work from those who do know how. I've played with the strategy.tab a little bit, but it rarely works how I think it should.

 

Re: Game Difficulty: Are The New Mods Making The Game Unbalanced?

@Ted: I'm not sure. I knew Liv did some stuff with scripts and scrolls and potions, but I have no clue how it all works together. I don't think NPCs autocast scrolls, however, as I seem to recall picking up scrolls off of baddies. Though I could be misremembering.

That said, one issue with NPC spellcasters using appearing and disappearing scrolls to cast their spells is the Silence spell does not prevent characters from using wands or scrolls, though it should. (Although in retrospect this isn't really a problem with your idea so much as a bug in the game that needs to be squashed. So I think I'm going to hop over to the bug list and add it.)

 

Re: Game Difficulty: Are The New Mods Making The Game Unbalanced?

I generally like the idea of the Temple consolidating its forces in reaction to your killing sprees. The Earth Temple has a large number of troops scattered througout the first level, if they could be put in one room it would toughen it up quite a bit. Currently as it is, every room has one or two strong guys at most with a bunch of fireball fodder (e.g. the 11 HP Earth Temple troops weaklings + Earth Commander and Lieutenant, Romag and Hartsch + 3-4 bugbears, Ogre Chief + a bunch of gnolls and ordinary bugbears). A fight with the Earth Ogre Chief, large earth elemental, earth troop commander, Romag plus some elite bugbears all at once should be challenging even for an advanced party. If the party is really high level (say 11+), maybe we could even arrange for a scripted event wherein Romag and all the above gather at the altar to sacrifice some of the aforementioned fireball fodder to summon a demon (heh, this could double as a node workaround - if you can't bring Mohammed to the nodes, bring the nodes to Mohammed )

Another possibility is to have a competing adventuring party clear out the easy encounters and 'level up' while doing so. The longer you delay the Temple romp, the stronger they become (based on how far along in HB and Vbbc you are, for instance) and the more of the Temple is cleared out by them. We could have a vignette tie in as well - e.g. if you're LG, NG, TN aligned, the opposing party would be the one from the CE vignette who just run around slaughtering things at random (and upsetting the balance for the TN point of view), if you're LE/NE/CE, it's a bunch of LG paladins in search of Paida/Thrommel or elves looking for Tillahi, CG - Hextorite monks/clerics, etc.

 

Re: Game Difficulty: Are The New Mods Making The Game Unbalanced?

Gaear, do not take my posting as an insult in any way or as a WTF. I have been familiar with D+D for (my age is showing) almost 25 years. I am an old school fan where levels of experience were EARNED and magic and money almost as rare. The idea of a "Christmas Tree" campaign has been tried and long discarded. I enjoy all the new content as it keeps the game fresh, exciting and interesting and keeps me (and others, many perhaps) playing long after the game should of expired. But the added content, when taken into context of the original backbone, makes the game way too easy. I suggest that one could remove the magic and money to make it harder to craft, but players expect rewards for interesting fights. Catch 22 isn't it?

The idea of XP limiting is interesting, but when one needs XP to craft items of power and get spells, I no not see many players being honest.

I suggest that the game (if possible, I am not a modder) be able to read the game. IF one plays the vanilla version, then all is well. IF the full 5.0.2 is used with Max HP etc.... then the game can have the monsters do the same. Give them all max HP, make every random encounter in the wilderness hurt. I have had, since my new install and game, 5 very "near misses" with death due to random encounters I had to do. This is good and keeps one on their toes.

Perhaps making the crafting aspect harder is more realistic. I think the fact the game is too easy is due to the absurd level of magic one can get too early. If my characters today were to exist when I was a DM they would be on Godlike level. Not very realistic or a challenge for monsters. Magic, especially powerful magic, is supposed to be rare. If anyone has one, reread the original DMG about placement of monsters and magic written by EGG. I think it will clarify my point of view.

But on the other hand, seeing what one can make is half the fun. I have yet to have a real successful party that was pure evil (with requisite evil weapons) and now with added content this can be done.

 

Re: Game Difficulty: Are The New Mods Making The Game Unbalanced?

A collection of thoughts, rather random (this is a lot to digest):

I haven't played with more than a party of 4 in some time, so parties of 8 getting 3 levels higher than they "ought" to be is definetly a problem. That's a lot of experience going around. I think we should guard against creating encounters which will generate even more experience points to complicate this situation. That said, making the Temple fight smarter has always been something that people here have wanted, I think. And extra dragons are always warranted; its Dungeons & Dragons, after all. Avoiding the XP is the problem, or placing them so far towards the end it doesn't really matter. Red dragons in the fire node seem most logical since the PnP module had 2 in there. Hell, all the nodes had dragons of some sort. But how to minimize impact & rebalancing are the points, not adding more new stuff. But, I will gladly supply whatever (info) to whomever needs it (Ted, OB1, Allyx, K) for whatever is decided. I'm still in favor of this "delicate rebalancement" project, and I think it should be called Tales of the Wild Coast, since that area lies just beyond the Gnarley Forest.

Didn't see the above post, cause I was typing mine. Making crafting harder is another good way to burn up cash & XP. It should also be considered as a possible fix.

 

Re: Game Difficulty: Are The New Mods Making The Game Unbalanced?

Speaking of money and loads of items...
I'd suggest making armour not dropable
by enemies, (well except for some tougher
bastards) since it's from them one gets rich
pretty fast. Tried killing temple guards in
breastplates? See what I mean? Besides,
from the point of view of RP, a slain opponents'
armour may be the same condition as it's owner.
My team could never take of any armour from
a dead enemy in PnP, I think it would be quite
reasonable.

 

Re: Game Difficulty: Are The New Mods Making The Game Unbalanced?

That's a house rule on your DM's part. Nothing in the RAW says anything about the armor of defeated foes being unusable. The only specification in the rules about captured armor is that full plate needs to be refitted to a new owner, which costs quite a bit of money.

It's not an unreasonable house rule to make, but without a DM to arbitrate, it results in silliness like enemies killed via Circle of Death or Cloudkill having their armor destroyed. Plus, even if you run someone through with your longsword, his armor is likely still either repairable or can still be melted down and used for something else by a smith. Which wouldn't net you the price you'd get for functional armor, but it would still be worth something.

I think a better way to reduce wealth might be to reduce the amount of loose coin enemies carry on their person. Most people aren't going to walk around with their life savings in their pockets and a warrior carrying around 50gp is better served to buy a potion of cure light wounds. Loot that it's in the form of physical objects is worth less if the party doesn't need it because they have to sell it for half (or whatever the going rate is) price.