Tales of the Wild Coast Discussion Thread

I still can't get the 10th level spells AllDie, Enslavement or Infatuation though.

I think I would like the Alldie spell muchly. I would walk into the middle of the upcoming arena in Verbabonc and kill every living there, lol.

 

just stopping by to say this project looks fantastic

 

Actually, my contention was that the Viscount wouldn't work with evil parties, and that as much as it may seem unfair to those who want to play on the dark side, they simply aren't going to be able to have the same game experiences as good- and neutral-aligned parties, i.e., the possession of a fortress. As unbalanced as that may seem, however, I think that excluding the fortress would be, if not a disservice, at the very least a gross disappointment to almost everyone who plays the game. Don't deprive the community of such excellent content for the sake of striking a balance that the very game setting has rendered almost unobtainable.

Something that just occurred to me as I was typing: How about an expanded version of the Orc's cave as a base for evil players? Or another, hidden cave unknown to the the forces of law (you could have a survival skill check for evil Druids or Rangers to cover the party's tracks to and from their lair)? Maybe there's an abandoned tower somewhere near Nulb, or perhaps a great pirate ship (some of the blue-water ships of the Age of Sail were gigantic) secreted somewhere in the swamps that they could commandeer, only to face the wrath of her Captain, recently escaped from the custody of the Verbobonc authorities? Or, for that matter, how about allowing the bad guys to set up in Welkwood Bog after they've cleaned it out? Let them serve the Drow or somesuch.

As I said in my previous post, while I believe my arguments are objectively correct I am making them because I want to see the keep and all the associated content in the game. If they are not convincing, why not poll the community if they would be willing to accept evil getting short shrift if it meant that the fortress could be included in TotWC?

 

Will TotWC work with saves from the current version?

 

Hi Gaear
Why not make "Tales of the Wild Coast" a separate mod, a la KoTB ?? I realize that KoTB has been "a work in progress" (very nice progress I might add ) for some years, but think of the possiblities of creating a stand alone "Tales of the Wild Coast" mod. I always felt that "Verbomod" never really "tied in" with ToEE that well from a storyline perspective. Compared with the different plotlines (based on party alignment) that you have at the start of ToEE, the "You escort the prisoners from the Temple back to Verbobonc, Stumble upon an assassination plot and then interrupt a meeting between a Viscount and a Prince to find out about two other adventures" seems a bit thin to me. Think about it: If it isn't possible for a citizen to burst in on a meeting with the democratically elected leader of his country in the 21st century, do you honestly believe that Wilfrick's guards are going to let strangers (especially a group of people with weapons) anywhere near the Viscount and the prince ?? I seriously doubt it. On the other hand, if the group in question had dealt with numerous "small problems" for the Viscount, then he probably would be more inclined to meet with them.
You (and whoever has helped you with Verbobonc, Hickory Branch, etc...) have obviously put a LOT of work into "Tales of the Wild Coast". I think your efforts would be better served if TotWC were a "stand alone" mod. This would enable you to better "define" Verbobonc, add elements to the plotlines (allowing more options based on alignment, player choice, etc..). As it is now, TotWC doesn't really "relate" to the main "story" of ToEE. Maybe if you had a plotline where the PCs discovered that the Greater Temple has "up to something" in Verbobonc, it might tie in better, but as it is now, it just doesn't "fit the story" as it were. To be honest, when I first heard that Verbobonc wasn't going to be included in Co8 5.6, I was a little disappointed, but as I have played 5.6 the last couple of times, I can honestly say I didn't "miss" Verbobonc at all.
The Royal Canadian

 

Just put the stuff back in and let the players decide what and where to go. It's all optional anyway. I like them all and I like being able to get to higher levels with the spells and all. Then I can give my wizard(s) EnhancedFireball and burn'em all. At 14th level that dragon in Verbobonc is toast in one cast. Hedrack can't summon Iuz when he's ashes. Then again, I'm just a sicko fire mage anyway. Sure is fun, tho.

 

Did we determine that it "doesn't affect the balance anyway"?

Still not sold on that. Has anyone actually tried playing vanilla to the end with the level cap removed? I have a feeling players would still hit level 12 or so. The only way to be sure is to run two games in parallel and track the XP and loot progression.

On a related note to XP gains and CRs-

I still think it begs a third - should we reduce the XP modifier further down?

In addition to that, IMO, it also reduces the Temple's difficulty from mostly easy and occasionally moderate or difficult, to mostly trivial and occasionally easy. In other words it effectively replaces the mid-game, supplanting the Temple levels with the new Co8 material.

That's actually not so horrible for veteran players who've beaten the Temple several times already, and are looking for something new, but there are still many people who are using Co8 for their first ToEE playthrough (and for whom the Temple could still provide a challenge as is).

Yeah, that goes without saying

 

I sorta like Royal's idea of making TotWC a separate mod, ala KotB.

Failing that, moved TotWC to the end of ToEE, (with beating vanilla ToEE first as a requirement) would work.

Each scenario lends itself to further modification, expansion, and changes the the challenge, as need be.

Imagine, a beefed up TotWC content mod for those parties who beat ToEE and are hovering around levels 12-14, or so? Coool...!

Say it becomes a stand alone, some quick scripting of a story line to "set the stage" for the new content, say following on the heels of the events of ToEE, should be pretty feasible.

In either case, TotWC appears already geared towards higher level parties, so might as well expand from there.

 

I just played a 3.0.4 game with humble_npc and maxhp thru level 4 with 6 players, 5 pc's and Fruella. The levels where 9/10ish at the end of the Hedrack fight. A seperate mod or content after the Z fight isn't needed. Let the player decide where they want to go and when. There's already dialouge to do that. If you want to be level 15 by endgame ,then do all the extra content. But, let the player have the option to choose how they want to play, which they now have already. If level 15 is no challenge, then don't do all the extra content. With the options, a player can choose which scenarios they want to play. Don't write the game for noobs who played 4 years ago and didn't like it because of the bugs. People playing mods already know what's up anyway. The demand is for higher level content and such. If you want to play vanilla original, then 3.0.4 with humble and max hp works great. You can manually add the patch counter and level cap remover to a patch 2 game also. Lots of options, which is a good thing. Just, don't take away the options.

 

According to Erkper in the bug thread,

I also think the XP scale is broken for characters above level 10 - since Troika capped the game at level 10, they also capped the XP scale there - so level 15 characters get the same XP for an encounter as level 10 characters do when they should get much less, which probably affects Gaear's balance issues somewhat - characters level faster above 10 than they should. But that's a different issue, I guess...

I suppose there is no solution for this problem, or is there? It sounds to me like this is the critical issue affecting balance.

 

I remember the XP scaling capped at ten being discussed back when Spellslinger was doing his .dll hacking - I think Cerulean or someone had asked about fixing the issue, which makes me think it would take a serious hack to fix since I don't think Spellslinger ever got around to doing it.

If this is still an issue as I remember it, it does affect game balance - but only after the characters hit level 10. It doesn't really affect balance through the vanilla portion of the game, as in theory Troika designed the game to end at level 10 - though IMO from what I've read it sounds like Troika may have had to implement the cap to prevent leveling above 10 even in vanilla before Co8 started adding and changing things.

 

But isn't that the beauty of ToEE and the RAW XP system? There are currently ways for in-the-know players to bypass level 1 through legitimate means (the sentry). Even if level 1 were to be a cake-walk due to experience from other adventures, wouldn't it balance out by receiving fewer XP for the non-challenging encounters?