Salamanders and Giants and Gnolls (Oh My!)

I suppose you've never encountered Ice Toads, either, eh? They'll definetly give you something to worry about...radiate cold damage to all within proximity of the effect...compounded by the number of toads. It can get quite chilly with them around...and would probably cause the extinction of the entire race of brass monkeys. Seems to me like they'd be fun to have in the water node.

 

Unfortunately I don't think there's anything currently coded into the game to duplicate the ice toad's cold radiation effect.

Galeb Duhr have finally been rulesimitized. However, I set their CR at 6 instead of the 9 listed in the rules, since they don't have any of their spell-like abilities and there is no way (I know of) to give them tremorsense, so they're significantly weaker than their PNP counterparts (and even more weak than their original ToEE incarnation.) I gave them Blind-Fight to partially make up for their lack of tremorsense, but it's not nearly enough. And the CR of 6 is still better than the CR of 4 Troika gave them.

Flamebrothers have been given a gore attack to simulate the spear they should be using in addition to their tail slap. (PNP Flamebrothers attack with a spear and their tail at the same time. But there's no way (I know of) to make a monster use both armed and unarmed attacks, nor is there a Multiattack feat.) The game animation has them stabbing with their spears for both, and the first attack won't do X3 critical damage like a spear would, but at least they have the correct number of attacks.

ETA: Had to get creative with the hit dice for ghouls and ghasts. Since there is no turn resistance ability that I could find, I changed them to have have higher multiples of smaller hitdice to reflect the 2HD boost they should have against turn attempts. Which means their minimum and average hitpoints will be better than normal, but I also removed the bonus HP that were listed in their entries that shouldn't have been there, so in the end it should be about the same.

Also gave the ghouls and ghasts the ability to infect those they attack with Filth Fever (since there's no Ghoul Fever in ToEE and Filth Fever is identical except for save DC and incubation period, which are still close.)

I noticed one of the ghouls in the protos is flagged as "shoot_through". Any idea what that's about?

I improved the Gelatinous Cube's paralysis ability as well, as the DC and duration were much lower than in the rules. Too bad more monster abilities don't allow you to adjust the DC directly in the protos.

 

Kalshane, you are correct that multiattack is not a viable feat in ToEE. However, my experimentation with lizardfolk as monks seems to imply that giving them two-weapon fighting works the same way within the game engine. Although I can't say that I've tested it enough to be sure, you might want to try that.

 

this is interesting. i'm going to test that out too. it certainly opens up a host of new possibilities if it works the way you describe.

 

I'll give it a shot and let you all know what I find out. I have a feeling though a monk is going to be different case than a standard monster.

 

Well, as I said, I haven't I've tested things fully, just played around a bit. With a bit of judicious protos editing and consoling, I have tested lizardfolk as both druids and monks. Aside from the usual ToEE strangeness that increased effective character levels are completely ignored (the major reason that Oolgrist and Scorpp are completely broken as NPCs), lizardfolk seem to be pretty much in line with 3.5 rules.

Lizardfolk as druids seem to be pretty reasonable. Note that ToEE, for some reason, requires 11 wisdom to level as a druid, so this had to be adjusted. As a druid, my lizardman primarily used longspear. The animation is unusual - the lizardman swings the longspear like a greatclub - but other than that, I didn't notice any real oddities.

Lizardfolk as monks were a bit more unusual. Monks must be lawful, so I consoled the lizardman's alignment to lawful neutral. Bear in mind that there may be some extraneous data from the fact that monks have improved unarmed strike. Since the lizardfolk in the game are supplied with weapons, this was the first time I had seen a lizardman using his natural attacks. During a full attack, the lizardman monk would do claw/claw/bite. Both claw attacks were at normal to-hit, but the bite gave a penalty to hit for not having two-weapon fighting. The penalty was reduced because the bite was considered a light weapon. Flurry of blows did not appear to work with the lizardman's natural claw attacks. Furthermore, the damage of the claw attacks (1d4) superceded the normal monk unarmed damage, which should have increased with level. I did not actually try giving the lizardman two-weapon fighting, as I did not have a spare feat, but from the rolls history, it would appear that it would work (this is what I mean by "not tested enough to be sure" in my previous post).

One other thing I did not try was multiclassing a lizardman. According to the 3.5 rules, lizardfolk should have druid as thier favored class. I highly doubt that this has been implemented in ToEE.

I don't know how much of this, if any, is of use to you. But since Ted asked for more information, I give you what I have seen. I probably could have done more testing, but by the time the party gets the suggestion spell, picking up a first level lizardman as an NPC isn't very useful.

 

Well, my attempt to test this with the flame brothers was unsuccessful. Despite creating an inven_source.mes entry for them and adding it to the protos.tab, I could not get them to actually equip the damn short spear I put in there. I'll have to try with some creature that can use natural attacks or wield weapons already. Flame brothers are going to have to just have a "gore" attack to represent their spear.

ION, I gave giant ticks the stirge's blood drain attack since they should have one.

Now it's on to glabrezu, goblins and gnolls.

 

Kalshane, thanks for all the work you are doing - I'm really looking forward to trying your things out. As it happens, I've just gone through the earth node (playing with a single PC, a druid 3/monk 13). Quite fun Was just wondering if there was any way to speed the Galeb Duhr up? You know, they juuuussst mooovvvveee sooo sslloooowwwlllyyy! It's a bit like being at an Ent Moot...

Also, is it correct, as per 3.5 rules that my monk, even with his 'lawful' unarmed attack, can't get through their DR? Man, it's painful chipping away at them. Am I right in thinking that 15/- means even if was level 16 with 'adamantine', it wouldn't make any difference. Oh well,

Yavathol

 

The monk's Lawful strike means just that, that it will cut through DR that requires a Lawful-aligned weapon. Not many things have DR like that.

The Galeb Duhr currently have DR 15/- which means nothing will cut through it. Any weapon damage they take is reduced by 15 points.

What they should have (and I've changed them to in the protos) is DR 10/Magic, which means any magical weapon can punch through the DR (including the unarmed strike of a 4th level+ monk)

As for making them move faster, I'm afraid I'm not sure how to do that. Do any other modders want to weigh on this? I agree, it's incredibly frustrating to watch them crawl across the screen.

As for my current efforts, the Glabrezu, Gnolls and assorted goblins are done. Had some weirdness with the Goblin Leader. Troika just tacked an extra HD on him and the MM lists goblin sergeants as being 3rd level. So I decided to make him a 2nd level rogue (goblin favored class), first level fighter (and remove his generic hit die, as per the rules for 1HD humanoids with character classes.)

I ran into two problems with him. The first was I couldn't get him to dual-wield, despite having the TWF feat and two daggers in his inventory. I even swapped out one for a light hammer just in case the weapons needed to be different for some reason. No dice. Tried giving him the AI of baddies I knew used two weapons. No good. If I hit him with a Suggestion and put the second dagger in his off-hand myself, he could dual wield without a problem. I am very confused by this.

Second, he tried tumbling past my party and got smacked down in a hail of AOOs. When I went to check the roll history, his tumble skill was registering at as if it was cross-class. Which made no sense, since he had rogue levels. On a whim, I switched around the order of his Rogue and Fighter levels in the protos and suddenly he was getting full ranks in all his skills. Very strange. So now I'm going to have to double-check all the multi-class characters in the protos to be absolutely certain their skills are being represented correctly. Joy.

 

Doh. Didn't think to look for those.

The gear for the Flame Brothers is .mobbed in, or for all monsters? If the latter, does that mean all these inven_source.mes tweaks I've been doing are going to be pointless, or just that they won't take effect unless I start a new game? I've been testing with monsters I've been spawning myself through the create command in the console. If what I'm doing has no effect on the monsters already in-game, this could be a problem as I'm changing the protos entries to reflect equipment changes.

ETA: Okay, I removed the no-equip flags and the flamebrother started using the shortspear, but didn't follow it up with his tail slap using TWF. I even tried dropping a level of Monk on him just in case it would change anything and he still just uses the spear.

 

Greater Temple Bugbears are done. They'd be a whole lot nastier if they didn't waste time drinking potions while surrounded by enemies, but no sense in beating that horse again. Had to limit the Greater Temple Bugbear leader to a single weapon. He had 10 levels of fighter (well 11 levels and then one less bugbear hitdie. I bumped his bugbear hitdice back up to where they belong and removed a fighter level to compensate.) and I didn't have room in the protos to give him focus and specialization in all the random weapons, so he uses a battle axe.

And with that done, I'm off to bed.

 

but it would be easy to do just use game.obj_list_cone to get all critters in a certain range and do cold damage to them. You would put the code in the toads san_start_combat script so it was done every round at the beginning of the toads turn (you could even put it in the heartbeat so it was done even when not in combat). This might also offer a solution for the gaze attacks etc. you were lamenting before.

Darmagon