Salamanders and Giants and Gnolls (Oh My!)

The first heartbeat script thing is exactly what I was thinking. It's quite feasable, and it's not to hard to manupilate a NPC's inventory through scripting if you already have an idea of what's in it. And you can manipulate what weapons they wield as well. I would be willing to lend a hand with this.

 

How exactly would this work? Would we have to create a script for each individual creature that would say something like "Remove the fullplate and battle axe from inventory. Add Chainshirt. Add two shortswords. Equip shortsword in each hand." or could there be a generic script that says "Destroy all equipment. Create new equipment from invensource.mes" that could just be put in the protos.tab entry of every creature that needed it and maybe a specific script for unique creatures. If it's the latter, then rock on.

If it's the former, I would say rather than devoting time to writing scripts for each and every creature that I made an inventory change for, focus should be made on a specific "problem children" like the Ettin and the Broken Tower Brigand Leader that wants to tumble, but can't in his heavy armor.

I appreciate the offers of help on this. Just let me know what you need from me.

ETA: Found out what was up with the dual-wielding thing. I had found the right script (And it looks like Liv already attached Black Jay's script just about every creature in the game that didn't have a script of their own) but for whatever reason, NPCs using that script will not use a dagger to dual-wield with. Lodriss carries two daggers and had Cleave and Great Cleave as her feats (No Power Attack, no 13 Strength, no +4 BAB, so her feats were illegal across the board) so I was going to swap them out for Weapon Finesse and Two-Weapon Fighting. But she won't do it. Swapped one dagger out for a short sword and she used the short sword on its own. Gave her two short swords and she started dual-wielding. Gave her magical daggers, she just used one. I know the assassin uses his dagger of venom with his rapier, so I'm guessing he's got something unique in his script that tells him to do so.

 

The Module says Grank was actually a 3rd level Cleric...! But, even better, the bandits were level 0 fighters. Their leader was slain in the nodes, and Grank took over...barely keeping everyone alive. Maybe they got the number of bandits (7) confused with what the level was supposed to be. According to the notes, they lose a bandit in action every 1-4 days until they are all gone, and Grank is left alone. I'd say that he's maybe gained a level or two since he came to the temple, and it wouldn't be awry to fix him in accordance with the rules.

 

haven't much time, have to be at work soon but. No you wouldn't have to do all that. My idea is to basically write a file that lists what you want to be in the inventory keyed by the proto number of the monster in question. It would probably look something like invensource.mes. then write a single script, put it in utilities.py, run a find and replace in files from my handy dandy version of microsoft visual studio on all the scripts to insert a call to this script in every script files first heartbeat (might have to create that function for some of the scripts but that can be automated too) and done. we could use the work you have already done in invensource.mes so this would not be such a huge undertaking (gotta love automation!)

Darmagon

 

Very cool. I still have a lot of stuff to fix that doesn't involve the inventory, so for the time being I'll just continue working on that and when I come across creatures that need an inventory fix, I'll flag them to come back to later once we figure out if this is going to work.

Another question for the group, do you guys all want a detailed change log (as in, "I did X, Y and Z to this specific monster") or will a general "I did X, Y, and Z to all monsters, where necessary" with just a detailed account for some of the quirky ones or ones where I needed to use some form of cludge be good enough? I haven't been doing either (outside of noting strangeness I've encountered in this thread) and realized I should have some kind of log.

I think it's pretty farcical in PNP RPG as well, though in 1st ed the power difference between 1st and 10th level was a little smaller (but not a whole lot. One fireball could still take out the lot.)

In my own PNP games, I do like to throw the occaisional fight with way too weak enemies at the party just to give them a sense of what their characters have accomplished and because sometimes it's fun to just womp the crap out of a bunch of kobolds.

 

Ah. I'll leave him alone then.

I'm trying to put a change log together and I booted up the World Editor when I was home for lunch. Two new oddities:

1) Kobort's object type is listed as "portal". Uh... (Is this another experiment like the drow thing?)

2) There's a Hill Giant with 1 fighter level by the name of Baugi in the protos, that when spawned in the game has Skorrp's picture and dialogue, but the red dragon model. I'm guessing he's someone's test creature?

Does anyone have the basic protos.tab for ToEE? I'm trying to bump the NPCs back to their original levels, as was voted for, but I don't have a good point of reference and I can't find the original protos.tab on my computer anywhere. I looked at some FAQs and made changes based on those, but I can't vouch for their accuracy, and I don't want to inadvertantly channel 0rion and change them from what they should be.

 

he is - sort of, his model number should be 1096 - the same as scorrps, the dialogue stuff can get removed from him as well, one day he'll get some new stuff along with the other 2 giants that are next to him in the protos.

btw I'd like a detailed change log if you don't mind.

 

I used the fact that one isn't generally able to tell 1st level people from 10th level people to the role playing hilt, as it were, on many occasions. Once the jig was up, the NPC(s) either died swiftly or slunk away cowed; the players would often voice their incredulity to no avail. It was quite fun at times to punk out the PC's with a small group of nobodies...or lead them into a major conflict because they thought the opponents were a group of nobodies.

 

Okay. I'm assuming removing the dialogue simply involves removing the info in the san_dialog column?

ION, I'm hesitant to tinker with other people's stuff, especially those who are no longer around to ask permission of, but I noticed Biffer, one of Liv's attackers from the Target of Revenge quest, suffers from the same problem the Broken Tower Brigand Leader does. Namely, he's oriented to tumbling, but his armor prevents it. He's also missing a couple feats and his skill points are wrong. Does anyone care? That fight is tough enough as-is, but I'm sure Liv hadn't intended to have the character spend skill points and a feat towards tumbling without being able to use it.

 

I think Biffer is from ShiningTed's Desperate Housewives.

 

Is it?

There's another one, also from DH then, I assume. Name of Bouncer. Missing skill points and two feats (though technically it's 1, as the guy has Weapon Spec, but not Weapon Focus.)

ETA: Uh. Did we know the Braumeister was Chaotic Evil? What's that all about?:scratchhe

 

Is he? thats great - it ties in with my ideas quite well for expanding the evil plots in the game.