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Incline Temple of Elemental Evil

anvi

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TOEE is awesome but it does have problems. I hated Homlett, even SpeedHack didn't make any less shit. Although SpeedHack really makes Nulb easy and lots of other mindless journeys. There is some mod which replaces Homlett with some little battle that gives you the same exp which was a nice alternative. The temple does become a slog and the game is pretty repetitive, but the big battles are interesting and require different tactics so it breaks things up. I really like the engine, lots of combat abilities, interface works well, lots of spells, really nice graphics, etc. I always think with games like that, it must have taken them so long to build all the systems, it leaves them with less time and money to make the actual content. Which means a sequel could be awesome because everything is already built, they can just throw together a new and more interesting game and focus on better encounters etc. But we never got that because the world sucks.
 

Cael

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Ok, I completed the game.

Yesterday, finished off the last 4 elemental plane bosses (Balor and the Water guy). These guys are by far the toughest fights I've had in ToEE, especially Balor. Actually had to reload 3-4 times for him. Eventually decided that sending my massive damage fighter with a greatsword at him is a bad idea, so I just tanked him with my dwarf and summoned creatures, while slowly whittling his health down with my wizard from range. Took probably about 30 magic missiles, 5 cone of colds, chain lightnings, etc, and the summoned air boss also did some damage toward the end. Finally at the end, when I ran out of spells, I moved the fighter in and he closed the deal. Loooong ass fight.

So today, made it into the final level. I am guessing Troika ran out of money by this point, cause it's mostly empty. Anyway, by pure accident I found the easiest ending, just took the gems and banished Zuggtmoy for 66 years. I really didn't want to right her either, cause if I know anything about RPGs, the last fight is always retarded.

Final thoughts: Really much more of a combat demo than a full fledged RPG, there is some good stuff here (good general combat system, purdy graphics, some decent dungon design in places), but between the extreme dullness of Hommlet and Nulb at the start, and the bareness of the elemental planes and the final level at the end, just another flawed combat oriented slog. Way overrated here.
People don't seem to realise that ToEE is an older module where level 10+ is considered Epic. Balors and the like were supposed to be something that a level 10 party can deal with on relatively even terms. Even adult dragons only had 70 or so hp.

When they translated that to 3.5, they forgot the huge differences between the 3.x ruleset and the older rules. Balors are now level 20 challenges, for example, and your level 10 party is going to suffer hard against that. ToEE suffered from non-translation in many ways.
 

Roguey

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People don't seem to realise that ToEE is an older module where level 10+ is considered Epic. Balors and the like were supposed to be something that a level 10 party can deal with on relatively even terms. Even adult dragons only had 70 or so hp.

Though it is true that AD&D Balors were level 13 creatures and not 20, there wasn't a balor in the original module, you fought elemental dragons.
 

Cael

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People don't seem to realise that ToEE is an older module where level 10+ is considered Epic. Balors and the like were supposed to be something that a level 10 party can deal with on relatively even terms. Even adult dragons only had 70 or so hp.

Though it is true that AD&D Balors were level 13 creatures and not 20, there wasn't a balor in the original module, you fought elemental dragons.
Which made it even worse, although I guess Troika would be hard pressed to get the 3.5 stats for the elemental dragons back in the day when ToEE was being made.
 

Roguey

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Which made it even worse, although I guess Troika would be hard pressed to get the 3.5 stats for the elemental dragons back in the day when ToEE was being made.
In this particular node it was two level 10 red dragons, so very young would have sufficed, the problem being that dragons with all their animations take a ton of work to make.
 

Cael

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Which made it even worse, although I guess Troika would be hard pressed to get the 3.5 stats for the elemental dragons back in the day when ToEE was being made.
In this particular node it was two level 10 red dragons, so very young would have sufficed, the problem being that dragons with all their animations take a ton of work to make.
I don't recall that, but that was a few decades ago... unfortunately :(

They animated the bloody crayfish! A dragon shouldn't be much harder than that!
 
Joined
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If those combat systems are so goddamn cool, then explain to me why both KotC and ToEE feel the need to cover the screen with enemies outnumbering your party 3 to 1? Also, why no grappling and bullrushing, heh?

That's what I meant earlier in the thread when I said most tactical combat in RPGs isn't really very dynamic or interesting, you are just handicapped in various ways (a ton of enemies, or enemies with a ton of hitpoints/damage). It has to do, on a fundamental level, with how simplistic and binary combat is in these games. You use some ability/spell/attack, and short of some RNG stuff, it always works. So the interplay between you and the enemies is minimal. They cast something whittling your hitpoint bar, you do something whittling theirs, the cc and RNG and skill-levels slow down/speed up this process, but ultimately, these combat systems are just a more sophisticated whacking away at each other until somebody's hitpoints reach zero.

That is not how actual combat works. Real combat is a complex interplay between combatants, you can't just exchange blows until one of you goes down, because the other person will block/parry/dodge/wrestle you, and both of you will constantly be making dynamic decisions and adjustments to get the better of the opponent and actually land these blows.

To give a simple example: 2 boxers fighting each other. They don't just stand in place and exchange blows until one passes out. They are constantly moving, to get into their optimum range (which is different for each), they are also moving and bouncing around to be a difficult target to hit and to be unpredictable, at the same time they are throwing out jabs to get a feel for the distance and get a bead on the other guy, they dip and move their head side to side after throwing punches to defend against counters, try to predict the other guy's movement so they can throw punches to where they are going, not where they are now, they are ready to block punches and/or weave if they see something coming, they are combining combinations to do more damage and to catch the other guy as he defends, they throw feints, etc.

I think for a tactical RPG combat system to be interesting and fun, it has to have a general flow like this, where you are not making the same static decisions all the time, but rather constantly adjusting to a dynamic situation where there are no simple binary answers.
 

Sitra Achara

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Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
If those combat systems are so goddamn cool, then explain to me why both KotC and ToEE feel the need to cover the screen with enemies outnumbering your party 3 to 1? Also, why no grappling and bullrushing, heh?

That's what I meant earlier in the thread when I said most tactical combat in RPGs isn't really very dynamic or interesting, you are just handicapped in various ways (a ton of enemies, or enemies with a ton of hitpoints/damage). It has to do, on a fundamental level, with how simplistic and binary combat is in these games. You use some ability/spell/attack, and short of some RNG stuff, it always works. So the interplay between you and the enemies is minimal. They cast something whittling your hitpoint bar, you do something whittling theirs, the cc and RNG and skill-levels slow down/speed up this process, but ultimately, these combat systems are just a more sophisticated whacking away at each other until somebody's hitpoints reach zero.

That is not how actual combat works. Real combat is a complex interplay between combatants, you can't just exchange blows until one of you goes down, because the other person will block/parry/dodge/wrestle you, and both of you will constantly be making dynamic decisions and adjustments to get the better of the opponent and actually land these blows.

To give a simple example: 2 boxers fighting each other. They don't just stand in place and exchange blows until one passes out. They are constantly moving, to get into their optimum range (which is different for each), they are also moving and bouncing around to be a difficult target to hit and to be unpredictable, at the same time they are throwing out jabs to get a feel for the distance and get a bead on the other guy, they dip and move their head side to side after throwing punches to defend against counters, try to predict the other guy's movement so they can throw punches to where they are going, not where they are now, they are ready to block punches and/or weave if they see something coming, they are combining combinations to do more damage and to catch the other guy as he defends, they throw feints, etc.

I think for a tactical RPG combat system to be interesting and fun, it has to have a general flow like this, where you are not making the same static decisions all the time, but rather constantly adjusting to a dynamic situation where there are no simple binary answers.
You realize that, and that's when you switch to Tekken...
 

Cael

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Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,295
If those combat systems are so goddamn cool, then explain to me why both KotC and ToEE feel the need to cover the screen with enemies outnumbering your party 3 to 1? Also, why no grappling and bullrushing, heh?

That's what I meant earlier in the thread when I said most tactical combat in RPGs isn't really very dynamic or interesting, you are just handicapped in various ways (a ton of enemies, or enemies with a ton of hitpoints/damage). It has to do, on a fundamental level, with how simplistic and binary combat is in these games. You use some ability/spell/attack, and short of some RNG stuff, it always works. So the interplay between you and the enemies is minimal. They cast something whittling your hitpoint bar, you do something whittling theirs, the cc and RNG and skill-levels slow down/speed up this process, but ultimately, these combat systems are just a more sophisticated whacking away at each other until somebody's hitpoints reach zero.

That is not how actual combat works. Real combat is a complex interplay between combatants, you can't just exchange blows until one of you goes down, because the other person will block/parry/dodge/wrestle you, and both of you will constantly be making dynamic decisions and adjustments to get the better of the opponent and actually land these blows.

To give a simple example: 2 boxers fighting each other. They don't just stand in place and exchange blows until one passes out. They are constantly moving, to get into their optimum range (which is different for each), they are also moving and bouncing around to be a difficult target to hit and to be unpredictable, at the same time they are throwing out jabs to get a feel for the distance and get a bead on the other guy, they dip and move their head side to side after throwing punches to defend against counters, try to predict the other guy's movement so they can throw punches to where they are going, not where they are now, they are ready to block punches and/or weave if they see something coming, they are combining combinations to do more damage and to catch the other guy as he defends, they throw feints, etc.

I think for a tactical RPG combat system to be interesting and fun, it has to have a general flow like this, where you are not making the same static decisions all the time, but rather constantly adjusting to a dynamic situation where there are no simple binary answers.
You realize that, and that's when you switch to Tekken...
DoA might be more up his alley.
 

Jvegi

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vVYFBf.gif
 

Volourn

Pretty Princess
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"because RTwP gets too confusing when you have lots of abiltiies to choose from,"

No, it isn't. Unless you are dumb.



"That's the way it is in the module. "

Don't blame the fukkin' pnp module. That is what the DM is for. FFS
 

gurugeorge

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Strap Yourselves In
"because RTwP gets too confusing when you have lots of abiltiies to choose from,"

No, it isn't. Unless you are dumb.

It's got nothing to do with being dumb. Pausing is a gameplay choice that requires you to have in your head a sense of all the abilities at your disposal (otherwise you don't know when to pause), plus there's always an element of uncertainty as to whether you're pausing at the right moment to get the best out of the set of options you have. That's a kind of gameplay that's more aligned with twitch gameplay (in this case it's "thinking on your feet").

Now ofc that's a perfectly legitimate and fun form of gameplay. But it's miles away from the calm deliberation of options in a fixed sequence.
 

Volourn

Pretty Princess
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"Pausing is a gameplay choice that requires you to have in your head a sense of all the abilities at your disposal (otherwise you don't know when to pause), plus there's always an element of uncertainty as to whether you're pausing at the right moment to get the best out of the set of options you have."

IE. Intelligence. FFS Knowing what abilities your characters has and how to use them is intelligence. HOLY FUKK BALLZ.
 

gurugeorge

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Strap Yourselves In
"Pausing is a gameplay choice that requires you to have in your head a sense of all the abilities at your disposal (otherwise you don't know when to pause), plus there's always an element of uncertainty as to whether you're pausing at the right moment to get the best out of the set of options you have."

IE. Intelligence. FFS Knowing what abilities your characters has and how to use them is intelligence. HOLY FUKK BALLZ.

Memory is not intelligence.
 

Cael

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"Pausing is a gameplay choice that requires you to have in your head a sense of all the abilities at your disposal (otherwise you don't know when to pause), plus there's always an element of uncertainty as to whether you're pausing at the right moment to get the best out of the set of options you have."

IE. Intelligence. FFS Knowing what abilities your characters has and how to use them is intelligence. HOLY FUKK BALLZ.

Memory is not intelligence.
Especially when it is muscle memory.
 

Volourn

Pretty Princess
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FAKE NEWS. Pure and simple fake news. Memory is one thing but know what certain skills do is not 'muscle memory'. Don't be dumb shitz. Oh, I forgot, this is the Codex, of course you are dumbshitz.
 
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I really don't know why the edgelords here act like turn-based is clearly superior to RTwP. I am totally agnostic on this, as some of my all time favorite games include both turn based and RTwP, but you have to be somewhat retarded to claim that turn based is just clearly superior. They have different strengths and weaknesses.

Turn based gives more clarity, and can have a more relaxing pace, and also allows for in-depth abilities for your whole party (it's really difficult in practical terms to have 6 party members with a ton of abilities each in RTwP), but all of this comes at the cost of MASSIVE overhead. A typical RPG will have thousands of fights, so every freaking time, you have to tell every character what to do every turn, even if many times they don't have anything important to do, or anything at all. You have to wait for everybody's animations to finish, which if you have 6 characters and are fighting say 6 enemies, that's 12 animations per turn. In RTwP, you can run all of this in parallel, and ignore the boring stuff, and just focus on the important stuff, which is a HUGE advantage.

After decades of playing RPGs, I definitely prefer RTwP for party based RPGs, and enjoy turn based for single character RPGs, preferrably with no or limited animations.
 

overly excitable young man

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Usually in good tb games you can turn up the animation speed and that shouldn't be a problem anymore.
 

jewboy

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I am planning to do a replay of this soon. Yes it sucks but it is also one of the best cRPGs ever made. The combat is just so much fun. I cannot think of a game with better combat. I skip Homlett as much as possible and just get on with the rest of the game which is superfun compared to most games. It's great for minmaxers who like to play around with different builds to see how viable they are in the best battles. The game could have been much better but I wish more games were even 1/10 as much fun to play.
 

gurugeorge

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I really don't know why the edgelords here act like turn-based is clearly superior to RTwP.

Not me, I like both, I LOVE the fact that you can switch between them with the PFK mod.

TB is superior when I want to relax and dig deep, RTwP is superior when I want to speed things up and enjoy the story flow more.
 

Max Damage

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RtWP is trying to apply placebo instead of curing the disease. All it achieves is the opposite of fluidity and coherence when it comes to crowd vs crowd combat, trying to move anyone around and avoid AoOs is pain in the ass in NWN2, doubly so in PoE where there is no Tumble at all. Plenty of turn-based RPGs have options to speed up or even skip animations, if trash/filler/pointless fights are such problem, then the correct solution is to cut the bloat and make remaining encounters more engaging, not slapping on combat system that is ill-suited for complexity and encourages even more cookie-cutter tactics.
After decades of playing RPGs, I definitely prefer RTwP for party based RPGs
This may be the most cringeworthy combination of words I've ever read around here, congratulations.
 

anvi

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I don't mind rtwp but turn based is definitely better. The problem with rtwp is that if the game is too shallow or too easy or both, then you don't really need the pause and it should have been made more as an actiony game where you gitgud and using your abilities at the right time. And if it is tough deep both then you are pausing so much that it should have just been turn based in the first place. I think turn based games should do more to speed up the combat but you also gotta accept that most people who say "zomg turn base iz 2 slow" should just play something else. Also everyone should use speedhack, try it on everything. Life changer. I am currently playing Bards Tale 4 and love it but speedhack makes a huge difference.
 

Jason Liang

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Read my old post on Co8 yesterday and realized I'd forgotten what I actually admired about ToEE. It wasn't combat.
This is probably known already, but I haven't seen it mentioned yet, so...

I'm running ToEE patch 2 w/ the Co8 Mod pack. If an NPC under the suggestion spell is killed in combat by an enemy, they remain as NPCs but the Suggestion charm effects wear off, so they essentially become permanent NPCs. Moreover, if the NPC is a lvl 0 monster (such as say, a Seahag or a Minotaur), when they are raised from the dead, they end up with around 180,000 exp which is enough to take them to level 19.

Completely unrelated, there are also some bugs with the metamagic feat Heighten Spell: Spells don't heighten into the correct spells.

I'm currently having a lot of fun with my evil Asian Hookers Suggestion party (i.e. seducing Terjon and having him kill Calmert, or seducing Marek and having him kill Alethea while Meleny, in the party, watches. Poor Hommlett). I've compiled a list of most of the NPC stats for use with Suggestion if people are interested in such a thing. Suggestion rocks and really makes ToEE stand out from other RPGs.

Some other "inconsistencies" and other strangae things I've run into:

A lot of the NPCs have Deities that are unavailable to PCs. The ones I've found include:

Zuggtmoy (Air, Earth, Fire, Plant, Water)
Old Faith (Animal, Earth, Plant, Sun)
Procan (Air, Water, Trickery)
Ralishaz (Chaos, Luck, Trickery)
and assume Lareth is Lolth (Evil, Magic)

Here is another problem: a lot of the NPC clerics (such as the Ogre Shaman) don't have deities, so they are actually unable to advance as clerics. Other clerics have deities but no domain spells. Strangely, Allerem and some of the other Fire Clerics have Burning Hands as a Cleric Spell, not a Domain Spell. Chanda, the elven cleric imprisoned with the Gnomes, evidently lost her faith. Burne's Badgers seem to be level 3 Rogue AND Fighter at the same time (while still being a level 3 character), and are pretty awesome.

A cool thing I found while torturing the good folk of Hommlett is there is a lot of uses for Sleight of Hand, which was really cool.

And the reason why Terjon always kicks your ass is because he has ridiculous stats, +10 base attack and +10 natural armor. He's a lot easier to Suggest than Clamert though, and I have no clue why that is.

This game rocks when you play evil!
 

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