Project Delicate Rebalancement: Tales of the Wild Coast

Thanks for the enthusiastic reception of my idea. :flamed:
However it would be possible from the point of the script
(as in the order of events) of the module. I mean, Cannoness
Y'dey is killed anyway, the caravans are slaughtered by bandits,
priests of Hextor send some of their minions to Rannos Davl, don't
they? I thought it may be an interesting idea and sort of correspond
with the whole module. Has your DM never divided your players into
two groups that had different (sometimes even colliding) aims in a
campaign just to confront you at some culminating point of it?

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Oh, I wasn't aware of that Spike already advised it, my bad that I
haven't looked for it... Sorry Spike, I didn't mean to. Oh, and I've seen
the movie (and liked it very much), Bill Murray starred in it, right? .

 

Part of the reason there's so many magical longswords is they're considered the default D&D weapon and in earlier editions of the game had the highest percentage chance to be found when rolling for treasure. That said, I would definitely like to see some more variety.

I seem to recall there are a couple of magical battle axes and warhammers in the game. Though it would be nice to throw some bastard swords (which katana are, and there is a magical katana in Verbebonc) and scimitars into the mix. (Part of the reason for 5.0 I swapped out the assassin's dagger of venom for a wakizashi+1 since there's approximately 5 million of the former in the game already.)

That said, the 3.x rules assume PCs and NPCs to have a certain amount of treasure based on their level and is calculated into the CRs. However, I have no idea if any of the baddies have correct treasure values for their levels. The only one I calculated this for was the assassin when I was re-doing his gear. It might be another project for me to take a look at.

 

I'd support this, especially the reduction in cash and magical weapons in chests. I'd like to keep items found on foes about the same; it's very satisfying to use Lareth's Staff or the Assassin's Rapier, knowing that you've won this weapon fairly by killing a worthy foe; that said, I wouldn't mind seeing these dropped down to +1 weapons rather than +2. You can always craft them up to +2 later. More variety in +1 and +2 weapons found on foes sounds good as well. All of that said, here are the Treasure tables per level: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/treasure.htm

Looking at the tables, a +2 weapon in the hands of the Assassin seems pretty reasonable.

 

The more I listen to this discussion, the more clear it is to me that the problem is: Cr ratings (& their attendant treasure levels) are dependent on those creatures the party is up against using their abilities as intelligently as the party is able to use theirs. As long as ToEE is kept as close to RAW as possible (and I personally think this is an important part of it) the game is going to be easy relative to the CR of the creatures--I mean, the Balor is one tough fight for a 10th level party, but what's the CR on that guy, 20? 28? I forget. Well, you see my point. In the game as implemented, something has to give: difficulty, or rules compliance. It sounds like lowering xp should be part of the solution (that's rules compliance giving), heightening enemies ability to 'intelligently' respond (that's rules compliance winning, because xp is awarded, as I said, based on the idea that the party's foes will use their abilities as they are meant to) should be a second part. Should treasure be decreased too? I guess so, in my opinion, maybe using the same modifier xp will be reduced by.

Just a running commentary, trying to sum up how it seems to me.

 

Hmm isn't it possible to make cold iron weapons by giving them the OIF_UBER against OCF2_NIGH_INVULNERABLE creatures to bypass DR? (Just asking, don't know if the
flags actually work here).

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That's what I meant to post.

 

XP is already reduced. Troika shipped the game with the XP awarded set to 70% normal. It may end up set lower than that, based on testing. Barring creatures missing essential powers, I disagree with arbitrarily reducing CRs for more powerful creatures just because they're not being played as intelligently as they should. Neither is every other creature in the game. It's all relative. A dumb Balor should be worth more XP than a dumb Bugbear.

That said, if people want me to House Rules the CRs of creatures based on missing powers, lower-than-normal treasure, etc, I can do so. But my main goal with my protos.tab update was rules compliance. Barring a few instances that I discussed with the community, I tried to avoid making personal decisions about CR values.

I'm not sure what those flags are for or how there used.

Normally, creatures with DR have their DR value designated in the protos.tab. Assigning them values that don't exist in the engine causes wierdness.

 

According to Agetian (somewhere in the toolset project)
INVULNERABLE should make creatures invurnerable to
all weapons except for those with the flag UBER.

No one tested it there from what I saw, I would but I don't know
how to edit creatures.

 

I'm sorry I wasn't clearer; I agree with you, and (semi-tangentially, but entirely relevantly) I'm really grateful to you for the work you did--I had no idea how screwy everything was under the hood until you went at it. I wasn't actually laying out an argument for one course of action or the other, just trying to describe the situation accurately--that something had to give given that the rules were written for Human DMs, not silicon ones--and make the point that given rules compliance, the game was (short of some genius programming) inevitably bound to be easier as measured by appropriate cr levels.

 

Ah. See, they shouldn't be invulnerable, just a whole lot tougher without the right weapons.

I didn't think you were knocking my work. Sorry if it sounded that way. I agree, things are already going to be easier with an AI involved vs a human being. (Which I'm sure is why Troika set the XP at 70%) I'm just saying you have to keep everything relative, and it's hard to adjust CRs without seeming abitrary. I was trying to make it as close to PNP as possible, not "ToEE as envisioned by Kalshane."

If people here want me to give it a second pass, and set some guidelines for what should and should not influence CR, I'm willing to give it another go, but it probably wouldn't happen until January at the earliest. I believe the engine pulls the CR directly from the protos.tab, so we wouldn't even have to re-mob everything.

 

Personally, I'm happier with an across the board XP reduction than with messing about with individual CRs.

I also think it's important to keep in mind the cumulative effects of attempts to boost game difficulty. We want to make the Temple more interesting by making it more of a challenge, especially the 1st and 2nd levels, we want to make the Nodes playable and possibly tougher, and it seems there's some consensus to make the final Zuggy battle harder. We don't want to make any of these unplayable for a relative newbie trying out the Co8 mods.

 

Yes, this. Which is why I'm more in favor of an XP "slider" in the Front-End (ranging from 70% to 35%, or whatever) that lets the player select how tough they want it to be over simply changing the XP percentage for everyone.

Right. And if our efforts to make the early levels of the Temple tougher result in the later levels being easier, then we can always boost those levels as well. We've pretty much got the game to the point where it will support characters of up to 20th level mechanics-wise. Why not shoot for an appropriate 15+ level end-game instead of a 10th level one?

Okay, sounds like folks are pretty much opposed to CR-tinkering. Which is fine, since it stems into the realm of opinion rather than what's written. Some of the monsters, particularly the Greater Temple Bugbears and ogre chiefs, are under-equiped for their character levels, though. We might want to see about getting them better stuff. (Which actually shouldn't add too much to the treasure, since bugbear and ogre weapons are unlootable. We'd just have to add some magical versions to the protos.tab and then add them to the appropriate mobs. [The two Greater Temple Bugbear Chieftans in the room near Scorpp could be really ugly and worth their CR if they had Unholy battleaxes :evil_laug])