Salamanders and Giants and Gnolls (Oh My!)

Well, I'm not so worried about the bugbears' appearance, so much as how they behave. Some of the bugbears are coded in the protos.tab with AC bonuses of 8 or 9 (before the game calculates in their bonuses from their shield and dexterity), which could only be achieved by wearing medium of heavy armor. (Bugbears get a +3 natural armor bonus. To have a total AC bonus of +8 before other modifiers they would need to be wearing a breastplate or chainmail.) Of course, if they're wearing medium or heavy armor, that would affect their movement rate and their uses of skills like Tumble. However, those effects don't seem to be taken into account. That's what I'm looking at.

I can try adding armor to their listings in the InvenSource.mes and see what happens. I know their weapons don't show up in their inventory when they're killed, but I just now realized that might have something to do with how the weapons themselves are coded, rather than how they're listed in the InvenSource. The reason I thought it had to be coded into the mob file is the help in the ToEEWB says in order for inventory items to be worn, they have to be coded into the mob file with certain numbers. Hence my question. I'll give it a try tonight after work and see what happens.

The casting Suggestion on the creature is a good idea too.

I realize it's going to be a lot of work. There's just moments in the game where, as an unrepentant rules lawyer, I always end up scratching my head. ToEE is so far the closest thing to an accurate representation of the D&D rules out there. I like the idea of making it even more accurate.

Is there a place I can get a listing of all the NPCs other people have added so I don't inadvertantly tinker with anyone's babies? I know Liv added the skeletal priest and the people that ambush you in Nulb if you fail to kill Rannos and Gremag, though I'm not positive of the names she used for the latter. And I know Ah Fong is Ted's merchant (who apparently doesn't like any of my parties and hides in the closet when I show up) and Kent and Amii are Liv's kids in Homlett, but that's about it.

 

I was thinking bards, actually.:twisted:

Just think of it: dragon bards setting the world on fire with their songs, bugbear bards cutting a rug, gelatinous cube bards burbling away. It will be like Greyhawk: the Musical!

Just watch out for Hedrack's final number. It's a killer. :shame:

 

the bugbear weapons are set to no loot so thats why you can't pick them up, one of them is broken is its own strange little way - the bugbears use it fine and it looks right and they hold it properly but as soon as a PC gets it, its that axe thing they use that I think looks cool t becomes really big and twists to the right and can't be held properly - the PC holds it just under the head with the handle sticking out 12 feet behind him.

btw allyx you might have some more work to do with a red dragon cos atm hes a white dragon that looks red...

hey how bout a dragon welp for a pet?

 

I keep on picturing a red dragon breathing fire as fireballs and/or as a "spurt of flame" (I've no idea if its a real D&D spell or if there's something like it) but a spurt of flame is (apart from something I made up) a concentrated fireball - 1/2 radius, 2x damage or 1/4 radius 4x damage, either one <shrug>

 

Stretch out burning hands....into a more conical shape...?

 

Ah. That would explain it. This is set in the protos, I'm assuming?

Yeah, the bugbear sword is screwy too, as PCs try to hold it in the middle of the blade.

Anyone know why the two-handed bugbear weapons grant them reach, even though they otherwise function like normal greatswords and greataxes? (Damage and critical wise.) That's always annoyed me as being cheap.

Without. I assumed he was part of the baseline 4.0 and the DH mod was just additional RPing stuff.

 

I was assuming that the size of the bugbear weapons gave them reach - big weapon on big guy reaches further that little guy with little weapon

 

I understand that, but from a rules perspective it's "cheating". Bugbears are medium-sized creatures, just like the PCs (barring halflings and gnomes, who are small.) are. And like the PCs they're supposed to use polearms and the like (which have smaller damage dice than other two-handed weapons) if they want to have reach.

If we're looking at it from a completely rules-based perspective, there are two ways of fixing it. One would be remove the extra reach on the weapons. The second would be to downgrade the damage dice of these weapons to match those of similar polearms. I just don't think Mr. Raging Barbarian Bugbear with a greatsword really needs to get free AOOs when people try to close with him on top of it. Especially since he's already able to pop potions willy-nilly with no repercusions because of a bug.

 

Okay, so I played around with the InvenSource.mes. Placing 100,# for armor in the bugbear's lines will create armor for them and it will taken into account in their stats. As mentioned, their model doesn't change, but the armor is taken into account for AC. I couldn't coax one into tumbling for me, so I wasn't able to check if their skills are effected. I'll have to make sure I've got a spellcaster with Suggestion to do further experimentation, but so far, so good.

This does, as previously mentioned, add more treasure to the game, however, in the form of the armor. The other option would be to create special "monster" armor copies of leather, chain and plate, etc with a no_loot flag, but I'm thinking people would rather save protos #s for something more useful. Does this sound like the way to go with this to everyone?

I did find out, unfortunately, that trying to use the format that randomly determines the bugbears' weaponry does not work for armor. Placing armor numbers in parenthesis separated by commas resulted in a CTD when the game was booting up. Oops. So each flavor of bugbear will be limited to one type of armor.

I'm ready to get started bringing the bugbears up to PNP compliance. Is there an ETA on that soon-to-be-released new protos.tab that was mentioned?

 

Raging. Not Ranger. Take deep breaths. It will be okay.

Gotcha. I knew I saw him in the protos.tab, so I figured he had to be out there somewhere.

 

Honestly, a better idea is to just use the console to "give 12466", which is a wand of suggestion. You're using it for playtesting purposes, and it will allow you to cast multiple times without resting, even if the monster makes its save on the first try.