Small sized stuff

Thanks for chiming in @Allyx. So much time has passed.

I'm happy to see the second option is possible to do. iirc doing this one back then was impossible.

 

The 3.0 style weapon sizing rules are (basically) an optional rule for 3.5. It's the section "Variant: Weapon Equivalencies" on page 27 of the DMG. So there's nothing really wrong with #1 for weapons, except that a few don't have very good equivalents (like, clubs aren't double weapons like a quarterstaff).

I think the real disadvantage is on armor. There's no way for a smaller character to wear lighter armor but get more AC. You could do something similar to the weapon stuff for shields, but there's no sensible way to do it for body armor.

Anyhow, if new features are being implemented, it seems like it'd be better to just facilitate more script-based stuff. Like, you can make a small version of an armor by systematically changing a bunch of stats, so make it so that you can specify that 10% of stuff in a vendor is small versions, randomly. Or that there are small versions of everything (relevant). Then you only need prototypes for the medium versions, not every possible variation.

To be honest, I don't understand some of the methodology behind the original game in this regard. Like, I think there are prototypes for items (or creatures) that are only used once in the game in .mob files, and then the .mob actually manually overrides the unique columns about that proto with regard to the vanilla item, so it could use the vanilla proto to begin with and not use up rows.

 

Yeah, I mean in Temple+. I'm one of the guys.

Although, I went looking, and I found `scr/InventoryRespawn.py` from Co8. Did the original game not refresh inventories ever, and Co8 added it by just setting timeouts in a script? In that case, it might actually be possible to create small sized versions of things there, as part of random refreshes. You could even do stuff like making it somewhat proportional to the party composition, like Brother Smyth is deciding to make some small weapons/armor because a halfling adventurer is in town.

It might have some snags. Like, I'm not sure if it would survive a trip to the extraplanar chest (although perhaps that could be fixed, too; I haven't looked). Also, I'm not sure if you can set a custom description via script in original ToEE. Obviously the game can do it for e.g. crafted weapons, but I'm uncertain if it's possible by script.

 

Does Brother Smyth carry masterwork versions of Small gear?

Thankee!

 

I did a little experiment with the script I mentioned.

You can write a `MakeSmall` function that uses obj_get/set_int to replace the obj_f_size, obj_f_weight, and various description fields. If you copy all the armor descriptions (6000-6999) to other mes lines (26000-26999), then you can programmatically create small armor in the vendor refresh scripts.

There are just a few catches for doing this in vanilla ToEE

• obj_f_description is the wrong number in python. It's 23, but the actual description field is 25. You need to change that to actually get the different description for most stuff.
• If you try to move the descriptions above mes number 30,000, then it starts looking in a different file than description.mes (I think)
• Nothing prevents characters from wearing incorrectly sized armor, so you're effectively on the honor system to not just get half carry weight for those.

You can do the same with weapons, you just need to know how to decode/encode dice into the right numbers.

So, in vanilla, for vendors at least, you only need to duplicate the descriptions, which is rather less of a problem. I don't know if it's possible to hook into item creation similarly. You could also designate some NPC to let you manipulate item sizes, too, if you wanted. Like, Burne knows how to get magic items to change size or something. Similar to Jaroo fixing your bugged conditions.

 

For gear, it's obj_f_item_weight. For creatures, it's obj_f_critter_weight. Works in normal ToEE as far as I can tell.

 

I suppose all you guys knew this already, but I was quite surprised that the only normal-sized weapon that I can get a halfling to use weapon finesse for is a dagger. I can see 3.5 has daggers together with other light weapons. Was 3.0 different? For WF, 3.5 RAW would forbid everything unless it were correctly sized. I didn't remember it being so difficult to play a small character. Is Monkey Grip a possibility? It isn't as good as I had thought.

Normal
You can use a melee weapon one size category larger than you are with a -2 penalty on the attack roll, and the amount of effort it takes to use the weapon increases. For example, A larger light weapon is considered a one-handed weapon, a larger one-handed weapon is considered a two-handed weapon, and you cannot use a larger two-handed weapon at all.

WITH the feat, you still suffer the -2 penalty!​

So, with the current implementation, there is no -2 penalty and WF is actually generous to apply to daggers. Wow! Count our blessings on ToEE. The actual rules suck for small characters.

 

That's how it was in 3.0. There were barely any tiny weapons, and small characters just couldn't finesse rapiers or spiked chains (and you had to buy finesse for one weapon at a time).

(BTW, some of the tiny weapons were "halfling X", which you see in ToEE as the "halfling siangham." These are just smaller versions like in 3.5, but they only listed like two of them, instead of systematically including them.)

 

I remember doing a deep dive about the halfling monk weapons years ago. They are totally misnomers. They were intended for expanded monk weapons like the Monk Spade, but they did not function as monk weapons should. Broken!

Regarding the armor, my solution was to take the silver ones and change the weight on protos, which was difficult for me without having the MES name for them. The only problem for me is that there is only one kind of chain shirt, studded leather, and leather scale.