Project Delicate Rebalancement: Tales of the Wild Coast

THis is very sound reasoning. Old Book must have been one heck of a good PnP DM.


In thinking on this, I believe that either the Hickory Branch or the Verbobonc mod could, and probably should, be moved to later in the game, that much is evident in that they are both made for characters of about the same levels. If you do one you advance in level past the point where you should be doing the other one. I vote that Verbobonc be the one moved to later in the game.

Hickory branch and it's orcs sems to me a more appropriate lower level adventure that dragon slaying, with Verbobonc's drow and dragons a more appropriate high level challenge.

The female prisoners in dungeon level one could run off to Verbobonc without taking the PCs, and as mentioned, prisoners later in the game could take the PCs instead. I like that idea, with a juiced-up dragon to compensate for it being a later and higher level adventure, and with drow that have devastating scrolls to throw at the PCs and use up before they are looted instead of staves an such that add to the PCs firepower. Higher difficulty without an increase in xp awarded or magic items gained.

Taking Verbobonc's high experience point awards out of the game until later, such as after a good part of dungeon level 3, would go a long way to solve the problem of an overpowered party running through dungeon level two unnopposed, and would mean that pretty much only temple level four would need to be toughened up to account for the increased levels gained in the epic level side quests.

I've also been thinking about the Ranos and Gremag battle, and the idea that they could spawn in additional help to toughen that early fight. Maybe the same principle could be applied to some of the temple dungeon battles. Since the female prisoners check your level before deciding to take you to Verbobonc, maybe that same level check principle could be used to evaluate if various temple denizons will call for reinforcements.

Maybe the fire temple priest will fight a party of below a certain level as is, but if the average party level is higher than recommended by the CO8 oversight commitee than it would trigger the same sort of dialogue as we discussed for the traders, and bring in some additional help to counter the higher level party. Low level help, with correspondingly low xp awards would unbalance the game very little, and these low level opponents could be juiced up with expendable, even one shot type of items, to avoid spiraling the PCs firepower quotient higher.

You could give the warriors high strength, and one round to drink the single potion of bear's strength while they are dialogued in instead of using higher level warriors or giving them magic or masterwork weapons. Give a low level wizard a scroll to use instead of a wand or staff, since that way he'll use it against the PCs but there won't be anything left to loot. That gives a low level wizard the limited firepower of a higher level wizard for the only battle that counts without increasing the xp for defeating him. Give archers or crossbowmen a level of rogue for sneak attack damage and inproved initiative so that they can shoot while the PCs may be flat-footed instread of magic bolts that the PCs will gain as loot or instead of using a wizard that is worth more xp to the party. Kobolds worth very little xp could hurl one shot flaming oil missles that would inflict significant damage without being worth a level up when they are defeated.

These types of reinforcements could serve to bring the combats back into balance if the level check shows the PCs are higher leveled than they should be for that encounter, without increasing the party's power significantly after the battle. Then, because the PCs do eventualy gain all of the xp from the mods before the endgame, a fully statted Zuggy makes for a challange even at those higher levels.

Just my thoughts on rebalancing the temple.

 

If we are going to have reinforcements called in from the dialog, the said reinforcements should all be ninjas. This would go far to explain how they appear out of thin air. Ninjas are masters of not being seen.



I do like the idea of moving the surviving priests into their actual temple room (does Air even have one of those?) along with a good portion of their troops. We wouldn't even have to pull all these troops out of what already exists in the Temple. Many of the troops are most likely outside the temple on various missions to make the temple stronger. Some of these could easily be recalled to reinforce defenses or replace others killed. This could include humanoid troops, the missing ogres, or whatever we like, though they should most likely be low level.

I like the idea that the lesser temples should be on alert. This should happen when the party kills any of the troops in the Temple, or frees prisoners, and then leaves the temple for more than an hour, not just if they kill a high priest. It makes no sense that the party can go into level 1, kill everything but Romag and the others in his chamber, go back to Homlett or Nulb and rest up for a day or so, only to come back and find that nobody has noticed.

Each lesser temple should have it's own alert. If you kill off Earth Temple troops, the Earth Temple goes on alert, even if you are working for the Earth Temple. The other lesser temples do not. If you kill off Romag while working for the Water Temple, Air and Fire would go on alert, but not Water. If you kill off a High Priest while not working for any Temple, or kill Greater Temple troops no matter who you are working for, everybody goes on alert. This makes the most sense to me.

Temples on alert shouldn't KOS though. There should still be dialog, and the chance to "talk things down" if the party has high enough social skills. The KOS flags on the existing critters in each temple room can be removed or modified. I've done it before in the Water Temple. We can handle buffing during the dialog, ala the Broken Tower battle, leaving the enemy spellcasters free to use offensive spells. Once a temple is on alert it should stay on alert, even if they are "talked down". A heartbeat script could be written that would check party distribution and initiate combat if the party is setting up to attack. The idea would be that only one party member would be allowed past the guards at the doors to talk to the high priest. This would remove most the need for new dialog from the already voiced NPC for the challenging and "talking down".

All of this will take a lot of work. New MOBs will need to be created, old MOBs modified, new AIs, dialogs and scripts will have to be written, and most likely new proto entries as well. I'm working 6 nine hour days a week until Christmas. I have a 10 days off between Christmas and New Years, but I have several other current projects I hope to finish then, plus something I told Ted I would do for KotB during that period. I doubt I will be able to provide much more than token support for this project for quite a while.

 

It's entirely possible my protos overhaul contributed to the XP increase. There were a lot of wonky CRs in the original game.

The 4 guys around the pyramid are actually fighters, not priests.

You know, I had some really silly thoughts. These probably aren't remotely doable, but I'm going to put them out here anyway:

A big help in the "there's too much treasure department" would be if we could incorporate cold iron weapons in the game (which I realize would be a major dll hack and take a bit of work.) Demons require cold iron to penetrate their DR. More powerful demons (such as those in the nodes, and Zuggy) require good-aligned cold iron weapons (usually holy, but there's spells and such that can make a weapon good-aligned as well.) The reason this would help with the treasure problem is that cold iron weapons are more expensive to enchant.

If people wanted big, bad, demon-killing weapons, they'd have to buy the cold iron weapons (which are more expensive to begin with) and then enchant them, which would cost more than normal.

On the down-side, the various "cool" weapons folks find in the game would be pretty much meaningless, as they wouldn't help in the final confrontation and as such would probably just get sold.

Of course, we probably wouldn't be able to implement it. It was just a thought.

Another idea, though it would also be a major PITA and possibly undoable, would be to give every shopkeeper in Homlett and Nulb a "budget". These are small villiages. Realistically, they wouldn't have the gold to pay for all the longswords+1's and the magical suits of armor and whatnot the PCs bring back from the Temple. The various shopkeepers would each have a certain amount of starting cash, and the value of the items PCs bought and sold from them would be tracked and once the shopkeeper's cash value hit 0, they wouldn't be able to buy anything from the party anymore because they just don't have the cash on hand.

This would seriously decrease the party's liquid wealth and discourage the packrat mentality of strip the bodies clean and sell back every last boot.

Maybe we could even give the Trader's the highest budget, giving the party another reason not to arbitrarily off them.

I think the Jeweler should be given an unlimited budget, though, just because he's the only one in the game who can pay full price for jewelry and it'd be a PITA to not be able to cash the assorted gems you find in. Just set him to refuse to buy anything that's not a jem or jewelry.

Later in the game, once the party can travel to Verbebonc (I like the idea of changing it to Talahi or even the couple in the secret room on level 3), we give the traders there much larger/unlimited budgets, to reflect that it's a major city.

ETA: Okay, everything CtB just said makes a lot of sense too. I'm all for things happening in the Temple if you leave for awhile and come back.

 

Not too bad Kal, however I'd say that there's always
barter (probably also undoable) and the traders might
offer something else in exchange for the goods (like
arrows or belts, potions, scrolls, etc.). Another thing is
that Burne and Rufus are quite rich (they're building a
castle, and have slain a dragon) and could afford to buy
the goods offered by the player... Hmmm maybe they
could give something of a quest to give them enchanted
weaponry for arming the badgers, since the temple is raising
in power and threatening Hommlet?

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Yup, CtB has a great idea with the respawns.


Ooh, my 100th post! Yay!

 

Right, but they wouldn't want to spend everything they have on random magical knick-knacks. They've got a castle to build and Badgers to pay.

 

Awww, you always turn down my ideas. However
a LG party would agree to do it for free.

 

@CTB

It would seem strange for the reinforcements to "beam down" out of thin air Blue, so I was referencing the earlier debate about the traders. Any dialogue spawned reinforcements should appear near a door or in a "back room" type area where people would come from if the priest caled for help. I like your scenarios for different alerts as well.

The original PnP module did include a mechanism for the temples to replace losses and gain recruits if the PCs dawdled in their progress. Spike will need to give you the particulars, as my copy long ago went the way of my vinyl records. That brings up an interesting point.

"The town of Hommlet lay roughly ninety miles southeast of Verbobonc City, just to the east of the Kron Hills and just west of the Gnarley Forest." Ninety miles is a long way on foot. Just to get there and back should be a ten day trip plus whatever time the party spends there on the quests or any shopping. Given two weeks, the greater temple should be able to prepare a reception the PCs wouldn't soon forget. That fits in well with making the Verbobonk mod only accesable near the end of the third level, before the PCs get into the core of the greater temple but after having to go through all of the lesser temples.

I gained at least two levels with each character on the Verbobonc quests leaving for there from level one. From level three, you PCs shouldn't gain more than one level in Verbobonc due to the increased xp needed to advance, making them gain their levels the hard way on levels one through three, and then getting an xp boost in Verbobonc that doesn't advance them as much.

 

I agree, though they might be interested in some low level magic weapons.

 

Woot! Any chance you could give them a cleric or similar? A nice mixed unit for our heroes to fight?

 

Recruiting is constant in the temple, until the High Priest of each faction is slain. Humans & humanoids are replaced a the rate of 1/day. Larger creatures are replaced at the rate of 1/3 days, and monsters at the rate of 1/week. If the PC's do not work swiftly, the factions would actually grow at these rates. Random encounters can also be considered again, but I like the idea of sentries & guards better. Moving the HP into the area where the main body of their troops are quartered makes sense, as would allowing them to join any fight should it occur. There's a lot of potential help to Romag one room away. In an alert, someone would be screaming for the troops to come running. Some could come up behind the attackers, too. I wouldn't mind reviewing all of the areas to see if they are properly staffed in the first place.

 

Hmm... Talking about Temple gaining power, would it be
possible to make the temple raid Hommlet if the player is
slow on his efforts to destroy the temple, or for the evil team
to raid Hommlet from the order of the temple? I mean gaining
the reputation butcher of Hommlet with a reason, or even
encountering a good/bad party (let's say those who were
lawful good encounter the party which burned down Terjon's church
in Hommlet during the attack, or the evil party has to kill the good
one defending Hommlet?).

 

What T_F is this; Groundhog Day?

 

Setting temple alerts is good, but be careful - one of Belsornig's quests sends you out to kill Greater Temple troops, doesn't it?