Fucking ToEE, how does it work

[Azrael the cat]

Wait. So you're telling me you preyed upon your own party members? In a cooperative, rl PnP session, and you made this habitual?

Seriously, are you retarded or suffering from some serious psychological disorder?

I just re-read and reabsorbed your post, and I understand a little better. Still, that's very bizzare and sounds like an utter waste of time. You actually got into fights with your friends over it. Don't you see how ridiculous that sounds?

Oh, and your attorney DM had no business being a DM.

One of our house rules is that a player's death results in either a new character 1 level below the rest of the party that the player can roll and get inserted into the events at some stage, OR the player takes over a DM-created character, AND THE DM CHOOSES WHICH OPTION APPLIES. In the latter case, the DM would sometimes have specific goals that the player was expected to try to achieve, sometimes including screwing the party over (use of fake character sheets was sometimes employed, with the DM keeping the actual stats/alignment/skills - so the player might be a dual-class fighter-thief antagonist, quite a few levels higher than the party, but acting as a pure fighter and only revealing the fighter levels unless skillrolls were passed to detect that something was wrong, or less fortunately, until he uses his full array of abilities to backstab someone in the night, steal the mcguffin that the party took from the dungeon that we'd just finished, and disappear off, with the player then rolling an authentic new character).

It was one way that the DM could influence the path of the game without railroading. I.e. rather than foisting an arbitrary antagonist onto you, the party could go wherever it wants, and the DM could bring the antagonist to them, and then piss them off enough that they decide to go after the fucker voluntarily.

 

[King Crispy]

If the DM is orchestrating events, directly or indirectly, that's proper. In his situation however it almost sounded like the inmates were running the prison, so to speak. Good points, though.

And congratulations, Skyway. Glad you stuck it out and enjoyed the game.

 

[deuxhero]

I just beat the main quest and have killed just about everything in the temple. Whee!

Now for the rest of NC.

After that, I'm thinking of a 1 PC 5 NPC "harem" party. Thoughts?

 

[LeStryfe79]

Back in the day, I was FAR too controlling when I played D&D. I told several of my best friends that they couldn't play because they wouldn't be good enough. Horrid!!! I use to be quite the bastard. However, now that I'm an alcoholic, I no longer care about supremacy, be it in real life or otherwise. As a buffoon, I have far more friends, and almost everyone likes me. It's almost like I traded in intelligence and constitution for wisdom and charisma. I wish I could find a nice balance between the 2, though. Who knows, maybe 5ed will present itself accordingly. Hahaha. :D If I was playing Azreal's game, I would have constantly killed the new guy or simply quit playing, fuck that DM god shit. In reality, a good game of D&D does have player conflict, everyone always getting along is a railroad in of itself. Don't get me wrong, player fighting in my groups was extremely rare, but the possibility was definitely present. If we all died, then fuck it. At least we played with a certain flair for freedom. In a week or two, we'd all forgive each other and get back to a new game. We had badass times. Try as I might, it'll probably never be that good again, but I aiin't giving up anytime soon...

 

[Oriental European]

Holly shit, The Order of the Stick is awesome!

Not anymore, i'm 300 strips in and now it's wall of text on every page, exposing the plot. Maaang, i thought this was gonna be like WTF DnD, a classic DnD party on various locations facing various situations, like during PnP game, and joking about DnD and RPGs in general.

Also, couple of days ago i've found a freaking golden skull in some basement in the Temple, after lame unfinished fight with some lame wizard with lame name, the skull opened a freaking elevator to some room, there i met some old chick with lame vo, then i opened the chest and took some gems, Zuggotsomeshit appeared (dem boobs mang), and she appears to be a goddess of fungi (really?) and the game ended with lame wall of text and lame voice acting, telling me about some people with weird names. Huh.

 

[NewFag]

I've been busy these past few days and found enough time today to finish another session of ToEE. I just murdered Hedrack and with a few attempts Iuz as well. (Summoned a monster with resilient sphere on it, while Iuz tried hopelessly to kill it, my two enlarged fighters with Fragarach and Scather hacked away at him) All that's left is the elemental nodes and Zuggy. Looking forward to finishing up. Combat is good and all, but that's all this game has going for it. Might replay it with NC in the future though.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS SO IF SKYWAYS CAN STICK THROUGH THIS GAME I REALLY WONDER IF IT HAS ANYTHING INTELLIGENT TO OFFER

 

[Papa Môlé]

Holly shit, The Order of the Stick is awesome!

Not anymore, i'm 300 strips in and now it's wall of text on every page, exposing the plot. Maaang, i thought this was gonna be like WTF DnD, a classic DnD party on various locations facing various situations, like during PnP game, and joking about DnD and RPGs in general.
.

Yes it's what happened when the guy realized he had a lot of fans and apparently started trying to take his stick figure comic as a serious piece of work rather than accepting his and its proper place by sticking to pointing out absurdities in RPG worlds, plots or game mechanics.

 

[NewFag]

Just finished the game. Zuggy is a huge pushover after the Balor and fire node, I didn't even have to stop to rest, my half beat up party still whipped Zuggy in record time. Surprisingly I had more trouble with the salamanders tossing fireballs nonstop than the actual Balor who seemed to do nothing but cast dispel magic and the annoying fear spell. Scather and Frag completely unbalance the game and turn it into easy mode. Other than combat (and even that gets repetitive), and that it still looks quite good, I'm not sure what else I can say about ToEE. It's quite average.

BROS SO IF SKYWAYS CAN STICK THROUGH THIS GAME I REALLY WONDER IF IT HAS ANYTHING INTELLIGENT TO OFFER

Nope, other than learning how to min-max characters and a few tactical battles, there's nothing in ToEE that requires any sort of thinking.

 

[Grunker]

Other than combat

You were expecting/needing anything else?

 

[Desmodus Rotundus]

It's also getting updated really slow now. Order of the Stick that is.

 

[Humppaleka]

Blah, edited because of rage. Raged at the engine mostly though I now understood I've played pretty stupid... Well, life is tough. Although the pathfinding and pixelhunting is shit. Better go grind some random mobs so I don't lose my mind against Lareth.

 

[Humppaleka]

Fuck this game, can't play any longer. Okay, it might be a good portray of the D&D rules but it can go to hell. It has a shit ton of bugs still, the ai feels like it is cheating (for example Lareth cast a sound burst to the other edge of the map where I left my sorcerer's familiar, killing it, wat), it keeps corrupting my savegames (this was the final drop, did every fetch quest and grinded myself to lvl4 again, and BAM, right when I tried to reload the Lareth fight, it corrupted my saves again), the beginning 5-10 or so hours have been unbearably boring, the entire game is just unplayable. Give me a shout if the game is fixed in the next 10 years, imma go play Divine Divinity or something other equally mindless... I might play it in a few months but not now.

 

[Skittles]

Are you using the Co8 patch?

I've never heard of that bug. What others have you experienced?

The save corruption means you need to exercise good save discipline, but I've only had issues with save corruption once with the Co8 patch, and that was due to saving 189+ times in Hommlet without leaving the area, as far as I can tell.

 

[Phelot]

Yeah, don't use quicksave as has been mentioned in this thread and save in different slots. I've personally never had a problem with corrupt saves other than back in vanilla years ago.

If the 5-10 hours that were boring included Hommlet quests, then play the optional combat replacement for it with the Co8 NC patch. It's much more entertaining.

 

[Skittles]

If the 5-10 hours that were boring included Hommlet quests, then play the optional combat replacement for it with the Co8 NC patch. It's much more entertaining.

Or just fucking man up and do Emridy Meadows with your new party. If you die, you start over. No time wasted, guaranteed fun.

 

[Humppaleka]

Hmm yeah I just might install NC (going with the Co8 patch now too) and start from scratch. What is the optional combat replacement? I do save in different slots and all but it still does corrupt even on the first quicksave which drives me nuts.

And I'm not good enough at this game that I know how to do the giant in the Meadows at lvl1-2, as ranged seems totally useless in the game. Haven't hit practically anything the whole time i've played, even with my 20 dex rogue...

And the bugs are just minor with that exception, and some of them I think stem from engine limitations, such as some fights starting automatically no matter if you are in field of view or not, the enemies ALWAYS rush your mages/rogues/bards even if they are in fog of war to them etc. Fog of war seems very flawed.

And of course the always funny "enemies stack so you can't pick out who you hit, same with corpses and prone opponents" and "you won't hit anything in 12 rounds straight". Yeah I counted them, and it included grease, web, scorching ray, sound burst, ranged attacks, power attacks, trip attacks, attacks against prone opponents, attacks of opportunity... Though maybe I'm just bad. :D

 

[Skittles]

For the NC, just remember to talk to the smith in Hommlet. Explore his conversation options--he'll direct you to most of it. Specifically, he can direct you to a dungeon/encounter designed for a lvl 1 party that'll get you to lvl 2/3 and on your way to doing damage in Emridy/the Moathouse.

Assuming you're not just getting screwed by the RNG, I'd have to see all of your char's stats to speculate about why ranged doesn't work for you. I don't usually rely heavily on it--only magic users use them and by a couple levels in, they use magic close to 100% of the time.

TOEE loves you. It loves you so hard because it has AoO and reach and positioning and flanking and so many good things. Enemies may charge your softies, but the game lets you do something about it. If you're really having difficulty, getting a couple of fighting type characters with reach weapons, combat expertise (IIRC) and later cleave + great cleave will give you a solid front line. Add 'Enlarge Person' to that (and eventually cheesy attribute increasing buffs) and you're golden. Before the end of the game, a single fighter built that way and properly buffed can solo just about anything (or a cleric focusing on polearms, actually) Some people swear by tripping dedicated characters as well, but I've never really experimented with that.

These are the most effective strategies, in my book, for doing Emridy Meadows early, by the way. Entangle and lots of ranged weapons can work as well, I believe, but that's like cheating.

 

[Johannes]

Are you shooting enemies who are in close combat? There's a big penalty when doing that, unless you have the feat to negate that.

 

[Humppaleka]

I'm not a newb though, I do have Bless, Enlarge Person, Mage Armor and Heroism, maybe Aid on my fighter with a spear and my cleric, I propably should go for a second fighter/berserker. And no, I can shoot at anything and hit nothing if that makes sense. I just seem to miss all the time. I usually reroll a lot, go for at least decent stats (18, 17, 16 and the rest whatever). Didn't actually think giving my cleric a spear, always think of them as mace/shield guys. Yeah and just thought of entangle, you could have it at lvl1 indeed I think. Blah, I don't think I'll need the bard as I kept him as a superdiplomat but I don't think you'll do shit with speech skills in ToEE.

And I want to love ToEE, holy shit the combat is beautiful in this game! I'm itching to play it already, just installing the NC. Addicted? Perhaps.

 

[Average Manatee]

ToEE gives you all the clues to figure out why attacks miss, click on the combat log report and check out the modifiers. I bet its shooting into melee as Johannes says, thats -4 to hit which will tank a 40% hit rate down to 20%. If you want to shoot at characters in a melee effectively then you either need a specialized perk or the character in the melee needs to take a 5 foot step back.

Reach weapons are absurdly overpowered though, if you have problems just make sure everyone melee-competent is holding one of those and then every enemy has to survive 3 or 4 attacks before even getting their first hit in. Then your whole party does a 5 foot step backwards and the enemies take another 3 or 4 attacks. I compensate for lack of a shield when using big reach weapons by crafting a magic item that casts the mage spell "shield" on them ASAP.

BTW 5 foot step is the absolute key to playing ToEE and 3ed D&D without being mercilessly mauled, learn how to use it properly or die.

At early levels I abuse sleep mainly. Its basically a save-or-die spell (drop on group asleep for a long time, coup-de-grace will kill instantly and never misses) for 2-3 enemies till you get past the moathouse, and if your mage/sorcerer has 18 int/cha then the enemy won't save all that often. A sorcerer that can cast 5 or 6 copies of Sleep can pretty much autowin 2 or 3 fights for the party before resting.

 

[SCO]

Exploit:
bucklers can be used with dual wielding with a penalty to hit.
Some shields can be used by spellcasters and have no dexterity bonus to ac penalty.
Shields can be exchanged.
If you equip a buckler on your dual wield, then a second sword, the right click on a normal shield, not only it will equip it while dual wielding, but also somehow lose the penalties to the offhand sword fighting (not the main hand penalties, so the dual wield feats still are important).

Banzaiii.

(though to tell the truth, a holy glaive + cleave + great cleave + a sorceror level with enlarge person are more interesting).

BUTTTT.....

did you know that you can dual wield reach weapons like the glaive when enlarged?
And that they also have no donut-area in this game?
And that they allow you to attack, and then take a 5-foot step (if you have the feat for that) and have a lovely attack of opportunity when the attacker gets his turn and moves towards you (and loses the full number of attacks he could do, only doing 1 - instead of 5 for instance).
MAXIMUM DAMAGE.

Pity there is a bug with enlarge person (some kind of floating point error, your pcs start to shrink to gnome like dimensions after a few hundreds).

Now the problem with dual wielding anything is that even if you get all the right weapon feats (a lot of them), you're still not going to be scratching the big fights. Those motherfuckers start at 20 AC and go till 70 or something stupid like that. You're (almost) going to have to use the cheating swords for that shit.
It's really only a issue if you're completicionist and soloing though.

 

[Gregz]

did you know that you can dual wield reach weapons like the glaive when enlarged?

Hmm...is there a way to keep the tanks enlarged, or do you need to cast/equip at the start of every combat sequence?

 

[SCO]

extended righteous might or enlarge person will last you for a few minutes at a time.

but it doesn't last too long even so... and the bug occurs... i wish the had a piece of equipment as a late quest reward for it before the horrible fights.

 

[Humppaleka]

did you know that you can dual wield reach weapons like the glaive when enlarged?

Hmm...is there a way to keep the tanks enlarged, or do you need to cast/equip at the start of every combat sequence?

Well the only way I can think of is the extend spell metamagic feat, and it's not permanent, but it would be pretty darn op if you could just perma-enlarge everything and preserve all your mages spells.

EDIT: SCO