Protos.tab fixes 1.0 alpha

Orion79 -

I am not mad at you.

I was serious when I said I appologize. It was none of my business.

I don't agree with what you are trying to do, but that doesn't mean that I should post negative arguments about what you have done.

I suggest you test your changes. If you like what you have done then that is all that matters.

Again, sorry, that I posted my complaints. It was none of my business. I don't have to use your mod and therefore I have no right to complain about it.

Sorry.

- Livonya

 

"Orion, I tried your protos.tab and got a CTD. O well, keep trying."
Woah, this sounds like arab for me: what is CTD?

"I agree with what Liv said about balance. I have complained in the past myself about the bugbears who have approx 20HD being a far cry from the D&D rules i was brought up on, but then this made them a challenge for my fireball-laden higher level party. If they were the 3d8+3 HP suggested by the d20 3.5 monster reference thingy, it would be a bit of a farce. You'd have your tanks cleaving them in all directions, and you'd probably get bored.
Testing is definitely the way to go. By all means keep trying!"

Ok, thanks so much for the feedback. Bugbears too puny, but ... damn'it... it looks like that people are really giving me a feedback about a different file, really. The only thing that I modified to bugbears are HPs, since I ADDED the proper ammount of HPs from constitution bonus, I did nothing different. Insted, when I saw that they had more HDs, I adapted saving throws and attack bonus to the new HDs, so I don't understand how they could be worst than before.
Please, anything else? Have you tried the balor, lamia or leucrotta or any of the monsters that I mainly changed, like noted in the readme file?
What about the modified items like the gnome ring?
Unfortunately I can't because the protos editor messed up my file so that my italian version can't run it. Now I'm trying to download from e-mule the english version, but it will take some day. Really, I need your feedback and thanks by your kind words: "keep trying!"

 

incorrect information

There are two points of mis-information in this thread (one of them is my fault).

In the interest of future modders I am going to try to clarify some things, just so that these mistakes are not taken as facts.


1) Constitution bonuses are indeed added automatically.

You can test this for yourself quite easily, however, I suggest you do not use any creature that is classified as Undead. Using Undead to test this may not produce an accurate result.

There are dozens of ways to test this. A very simple way is to simply get an NPC in your party. Check their hit points. Save your game. Open the protos.tab change their constitution. Open your save game and check their hit points.

Or you can create a creature and check it's hit points, change the constituiton and then check again.

Constituiton is added in automatically. This is a fact. If it didn't work like this then your NPCs/PCs in your party wouldn't actually be getting constituiton bonuses to your hit points. And that is absolutely working.

Also poison that lowers constituiton does indeed work in game. If constitution bonuses were not being added automatically then this would not be true.


2) CR is calculated by adding the CR and the Class Levels (not Monster Hit Dice).

It does not add the Monster Hit Dice. I was wrong about that. I already knew that and it was in my notes, but when I made my initial post I simply got carried away and didn't check my notes first. My bad. Sorry.


As always you should test everything yourself. A lot of modding information is wrong. People make mistakes. Things get labeled wrong. You should test everything yourself to make sure it is working as you think it is.

Again I appologize for my part in this thread.

- Livonya

 

Sorry Liv, but, if you say so, I guess that it is my fault since I wrote something unclear: I was talking about monsters, not PC/NPCs
Because all PCs/NPCs with class levels have constitution that is added automatically, infact the HD column is empty and the AI calclulates it as you rightfully say.
Monsters don't, infact their column is filled with the proper HD+CON and anyway, when I did the test, I wrote that I removed the undead attributes from your priest making him a perfect human, so no mistake. There is no sicence if you make an experiment that is different from my one.
About CRs, I didn't know that matter about CR + class level, so I guess that I calculated twice the CR bonus to monsters with class levels. Certainly a thing that I'll fix in the next "relase".

At this point, an hard question for you:
take as sample Lamia. In To EE she has 3 cleric levels and 3 sorcerer levels, she she should just cast spell like abilities like a 9th level sorceres. Accordingly to ToEE, if I understood right, she gets benefits from 6 class levels. Saving throws T+4,R+2,W+6; +3d4+3d8+CON bonus automatically calculated because class levels and CR+6, right?
And what if I want instead just to make Lamia as she is, so that she casts few spells like a 9th level sorcerer but does not have any sorcerer level? Should I lower her saving throws, CR/HPs/attack bonus so that the total is equal to original considering the bonuses comming from class levels? Or is there any other idea?

To Allyx
Allyx, I made a thread specifically for that many weeks before and many people wrote that they would like to have Black Scarab, Unicorn Ring and Gnome Ring with some magical ability and not only useless items. I already posted those ideas and I never had a negative feedback. If you really think that the gnome ring is outpowered, I tell you that I think not but that, if other persons think so, it is very easy to lower skill bonuses to just a +1 or to keep only some, just to give it a reason to exist more than for a quest.
As well for unicorn ring, even if you didn't mention it. I know that it may looks strong, but if you carefully think about that, you'll realize that many bonuses from it are not such a big deal for a party that may cast stronger cure spells when the ring is found.
Unfortunately, my italian version meet the CTD problem so I am unable to test it. I'm downloading a ToEE USA version hoping that it will works, so that I'll be able to see what mess I effectively did. Untill then, I can just use your precious feedback.

 

My tests show that you are wrong.

I made a Gnoll with 3d1 hit dice and 10 constituiton.

He had 3 hit points.

I then changed his constituition to 20.

He then had 18 hit points.

Are you creating new creatures to test this? You do realize that monster hit dice are not changed once the creature is initially made, right? You can't change the hit dice of an already created creature. You realize this, right? You have to make a new creature to test this.

I don't care what you say, my tests have ALWAYS shown that constitution is added in automatically.

Also, last night I was testing a Balor's death animation and I needed to be able to kill him with 1 magic missile to do it. I changed his hit dice to 2d1. I left his constitution as set in the protos.tab and I couldn't kill him. I then changed his constitution to 10 and I could kill him.

All my tests show that it is added in automatically.

As I have been saying never pay attention to what anyone says. Test it yourself and figure out how it works.

- Livonya

 

I was worried that I was wrong... so I went to test this one more time... just to make sure I was correct.

I did my test over and over again. It is always the same.

Try this... it is so simple...

1) Either create a creature with 3d1 hit dice and a constituiton of 16 (### = the protos number of the creature) or pick any creature that does not have any class levels and give them 3d1 hit dice and a constitution of 16.

2) Start a new game

3) Open console and type: x = game.obj_create(###, game.leader.location)

4) Type: x.stat_level_get(stat_hp_current)

This should return the number 12

How simple could it be. I tried it with 10 different creatures and I always got the same results.

I don't know how you did your test, but it was simply not done right.

- Livonya

 

Look, I directly asked Steve Moret. It was hard to reach him, but at last I did. This is his answer. The sentences among " " are my questions, sentences in abcd are Mr. Moret's answers. I may foward the mail to everybody that asks for it, but keep in mind that probably Mr.Moret wishes to keep private his e-mail address and would not like to recive 100 e-mails at once, even if he was extremely friendly and offered to help the forum in the future.

Hello Mattia,

I don’t have access to the ToEE code base anymore, but I’ll do what I can to answer your questions.

"1 - we are going crazy because we don't understand if the AI automatically assigns to monsters the hit points comming Constitution bonus or not. Many monsters have the proper ammount of Hit Dices plus constitution bonus (example 1: a monster with CON 20 and Hit Dices: 2d8 has 2d8+10 Hit Points); others instead have the proper Hit Dice without the constitution bonus (example 2: CON 20 >> 2d8). It is clear that the AI assigns the proper ammount of hit points to characters with class levels, but what about monsters? Are right the monsters with the pre-calculated ammount of hit points, like in example 1, and then example 2 represent a mistake? Or are right the monsters with only the Hit Dices without the constitution bonus, so that the ones represented by example 1 have the constitution bonus applied twice? Looking to the fact that Attack rolls, damage, skills and saving throws are already pre-calculated it is logical for me to suppose that the first one is the right answer."

1. As far as I remember, a monster’s final hitpoints are calculated as followed:

Take the monster’s hit dice field (in the form NdS+B) and resolve that roll.
Take any additional levels the monster has and for each level resolve that level’s hitdice roll, including the constitution bonus and add that to the previous total.
So if you have a monster who has in their hitdice field 2d8+10, and they have a CON of 14 (+1 bonus) and they have NO levels of other classes their final hitpoint total will be: 2d8+10, BUT if you give them 1 level of fighter their final hitpoint total will be: (2d8+10) + (1d10+1)
I answered to this with "Steven, [...] Just 1 thing: there is something weird about the example that you made me about monster's final hitpoints. The concept is clear, but there is something weird in the number, I guess, just for bad memory about D&D rules. So, before posting your anwer on the Co8 forum, let me repeat in into a algebrical equation:

A = XdY + (X*Z)
A = Total Hit Points to write in the Hit Points column
X = number of Hit Dices (from 1 to infinte)
Y = kind of Hit Dice (d3,d4,d6,d8,d10,d12)
Z = constitution bonus like what follows:

SCORE Bonus
3 -4
4-5 -3
6-7 -2
8-9 -1
10-11 0
12-13 +1
14-15 +2
16-17 +3
18-19 +4
20-21 +5

then +1 every 2 additional points.

So, using constitution 14 for a 2d8 monster, the equation sould be: A = 2d8 + (2*2) = 2d8+4.
2d8+4 is the final score that should be written in the Hit Points column.
As you told, adding for example, 1 level of fighter would mean to automatically add 1d10+2 PF, but we DON'T have to calclulate fighter's extra Hit points in the monster's hit points column because they are automatically added."

You are right, I was running off memory and stupidly thought 13-14 was +1. In my example just change the +1 to a +2

That’s what I get for not checking my book before replying.

2 - accordingly with the fact that class levels are automatically calculated, could you confrim what I'm next to write?
We want to make, for example, a Hill Giant with sorcerer’s levels. If in column 228 and 229 we add "sorcerer" and "9", we are adding 9 sorcerer levels to the monster, so that the game will automatically add sorcerer's attack bonus, saving throw, hit points comming from 9d4 hit dices + constitution bonus and +9 to challenge rating to the pre-calculated values in the protos.tab. Manually adding sorcerer's bonuses to Hill Giant ones would be to add them twice, right?
So, if we want to make only a monster with spell-likes abilities, like Lamia, that casts the spell "mirror image" like a 9th level sorcerer, but does NOT have any sorcerer level, in order to obtain a monster closed as much as possible to pen & paper Dungeons & Dragons, we should add 9 sorcerer levels but we should, at the same time, lower Lamia's attack bonus, saving throws, Hit Points and Challenge Rating accordingly with the bonus offered from sorcerer levels, so that, at the end, they are equal to Lamia's original values without any sorcerer level.

"2. Everything “seems†correct (to my memory) except: challenge rating in the protos.tab is final. There are no automatic adjustments to it."

(the thing about CR is wrong, but he admit by himself that he doesn't remember that detail clearly.)

3 - last, less important, question. Are there in the game some item's attributes that you didn't have the time to apply to any item? I mean, some special metal like Adamantium or Darkwood, Vorpal Weapon, or any other value? And what about feats for more than 10th level characters like Greater Weapon Specialization? Are they already ready in the game and just need to be coded?

"3. If it wasn’t used in game, it wasn’t implemented. We were on a super tight schedule that got even tighter when we switched to 3.5 rules, we had no time to implement anything beyond 10th level and item effects that were used in game.
It might be possible for us to add them in a patch but I don’t think Atari would legally allow me to do so. I will also ask Tim if I can look at the ToEE source so I can better answer your questions in the future."

--

Steve Moret

smoret@XXXXXXXX.net

Liv, about your experiment, I have no idea. Now I want to check again because I'm curious, following your steps but, honestly, my hypothesis that still needs some kind of empirical proof, is that using a Xd1 messes up the AI, since the smaller D&D dice is the d2. When I assigned 1d1 HP to your skeleton priest, after changing him to humanoid and removing all kind of bonuses, he always had at least 3Hp. I thought: it is impossible! Then I used the 1D4, so that I could make all the esperiments with no hypotetical disturbing elements.
And anyway, in the doubt I prefer to fight monsters that are harder than monsters that are weaker.

 

Hm. The posts are getting longer and longer, and more and more confusing. The numbers just don't add up. Given that Steve is working from memory, doesn't have access to the code anymore and states things that are clearly wrong (like the CR issue), I'd take what he says with a pinch of salt.

Anyway, kudos for actually contacting him and trying to clear things up - even though they're still not very clear for me.

 

Yes, you are right, Morpheus. Trusting people is good, NOT trusting them is better.
but the most weird thing is that, giving credits to Liv, I tried to make some experiment with creatures with only 1 HD, like a rooster (1d6) and other animals (1d8). The AI had no problems at all when it had to calculate the right ammount of HPs with constitution 10-11, but when I tried to simply modify the CON value to 20 AND NOTHING ELSE, it completely messed up the final score, assigning to monsters more Hit points of what they could have, rolling the maximum on 1d6+5 or 1d8+5. (note that I left untouched the Hit Dices column, without adding any constitution bonus).
Instead, everything was perfectly restored if I used CON 10 and I assigned manually the proper ammount of CON bonus to Hit Dices.
Honestly, I don't know what to think anymore, except that, accepting that the AI does automatically calculate the CON bonus and the monsters that already have it are a Troika's mistake, there is something broken in the code. If that can't be fixed, the quickest solution would be to make all monsters with CON 10 and to manually calculate all bonus HPs.
Note instead that for class levels everything goes perfect.

 

The problem with setting all monsters Con to 10 would be Fort saves and Concentration checks (plus other uses of Constitution I'm sure I'm forgetting) would also be wrong.