Playing ToEE right now. Need advice.

[Rinslin Merwind]

Hi everyone, since my last thread I played in Jagged Alliance 2 , KOTOR 1-2, then switched on adventure games like Monkey Island 1-3, Sam & Max: Hit the Road, Loom (thank God I was able to find non VGA version), then switched again on RPG such as Dark Sun: Shattered Island and Betrayal at Krondor. Overall I had a awesome experience (maybe except Kotor 1, because game crashed every fucking not skipped cut-scene and several other issues connected to the plot and game mechanics) and started to look for another game to play. After some time I decided to play a Temple of Elemental Evil. I have installed original game, Co8 NC, Temple+ and started new game
However after creation of my party, I started to feel that something is wrong. I mean, my front line fucking dies from two hits and enemy rarely misses, my rogue archer can't hit for shit or if hit - 0 damage ( happened against undead).
List of my party:

Zerion Brightheart
race: human
class: Paladin of Heironeous
Str: 18
Dex: 15
Con: 18
int: 12
Wis : 13
Cha: 17
Weapon: Greatsword

Magnus Stonecrusher
race: dwarf
class: fighter 4 / cleric of Moradin (rest of the game)
Domains: Good, Earth
Str: 18
Dex: 10
Con: 20
int: 11
Wis : 18
Cha: 16
Weapon: Greatsword

(while I writing this post, I started thinking that it was stupid idea to give a greatsword to a dwarf, so I need a commentary on this)

Beatrix Starborn
race: human
class: Wizard
Str: 11
Dex: 17
Con: 16
int: 18
Wis : 12
Cha: 10
Weapon: Light crossbow

And here goes my most troubled character:
Terry Pathfinder
race: Halfling
class: rogue 4/ fighter (rest of the game)
Str: 14
Dex: 20
Con: 16
int: 13
Wis : 12
Cha: 10
Weapon: Short bow ( I suspect that this weapon is sucks in ToEE for ranged character, but I need commentary)

My rogue is fucking idiot who miss half of his shots and can't damage undead, but I fear that if I restart game and my party will have a melee rogue - my party will be slaughtered while melee rogue will trying to stab enemy backs.
Any suggestion on character builds/party composition/replacement for rogue is welcomed.

Btw. I need rogue mostly for his skills, if anyone willing to list skills that "must have" in party and which skills should be avoided to invest.

 

[haraw]

Archers can't hit shit without the right feats. Without Precise shot they'll get a -4 to their attack rolls when shooting to melee and in the beginning that means you rarely hit anyone (most enemies have fairly high AC). Halflings won't make that good bow-users, because they can't use longbows or composite longbows. Also, at least skeletons take -5 damage from any non-bludgeoning damage, so be sure to check attack and damage rolls to see modifiers and enemy resistances.

If you started with just four guys, would it be wise to ease the start by recruiting some NPCS? The first levels are difficult anyway.

 

[Prime Junta]

Polearms biatch.

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Thanks for answers. It's seems I have something to reconsider in my builds.

 

[Martyr]

However after creation of my party, I started to feel that something is wrong. I mean, my front line fucking dies from two hits and enemy rarely misses, my rogue archer can't hit for shit or if hit - 0 damage ( happened against undead).

you're doing something wrong, indeed.
create a new party from scratch. chaotic evil, 5 barbarians, that's all you need.
next you reroll your stats for at least 60 times with each character and you set the resulting 60+ as your strength stat.
have fun.

 

[Optimist]

Low-level D&D combat is pretty swingy in general. There is nothing weird in your main fighter suddenly going down; war is hell. Abusing ranged weaponry and sleep spells should get you through the very beginning; things should get less chaotic later on due to increasing HP pools. If you decide to stick to your party and save often, I'm sure you'll do just fine!

It's been a long time since I played ToEE, but 3.5 ruleset was burned into my mind back when it was the only system you could expect your pals to be familiar with, so I hope my advice will be at least somewhat useful.

Zerion Brightheart
race: human
class: Paladin of Heironeous
Str: 18
Dex: 15
Con: 18
int: 12
Wis : 13
Cha: 17
Weapon: Greatsword

Going for an armored muscleman/ party leader? Well, paladins are not so hot in 3.5. Careful rerolling on your part might have saved them from Multiple Attribute Dependency Disorder, but he's still not going to shine. I'd say it'd be better to grab a druid with a heavyweight pet (or wolf, for those sweet trips). If you want someone with high CHA, you might try and replace your wizard with a sorcerer, or a thief with a bard. Or grab a fifth character.

Magnus Stonecrusher
race: dwarf
class: fighter 4 / cleric of Moradin (rest of the game)
Domains: Good, Earth
Str: 18
Dex: 10
Con: 20
int: 11
Wis : 18
Cha: 16
Weapon: Greatsword

Drop those fighter levels. A full cleric with buffs and a huge stick will probably be more useful and capable than a fighter.

Beatrix Starborn
race: human
class: Wizard
Str: 11
Dex: 17
Con: 16
int: 18
Wis : 12
Cha: 10
Weapon: Light crossbow

Can't go wrong with a wizard.

Terry Pathfinder
race: Halfling
class: rogue 4/ fighter (rest of the game)
Str: 14
Dex: 20
Con: 16
int: 13
Wis : 12
Cha: 10
Weapon: Short bow ( I suspect that this weapon is sucks in ToEE for ranged character, but I need commentary)

Ranged rogues can be easily denied their main method of dealing damage - sneak attacks. Flanking someone is much easier to do than denying them their Dex to AC. If you want a halfling rogue, you might want to keep him 'pure', grab some short weaponry and lunge at opponents that attack your cleric/pet/whoever. You decidedly want him to be able to engage at range, but this is equally true for every character. Halflings get small bonuses to slings and thrown weapons, and with his above-average strength, these weapons will easily trump shortbows.

Best of luck!

 

[Rinslin Merwind]

Low-level D&D combat is pretty swingy in general. There is nothing weird in your main fighter suddenly going down; war is hell. Abusing ranged weaponry and sleep spells should get you through the very beginning; things should get less chaotic later on due to increasing HP pools. If you decide to stick to your party and save often, I'm sure you'll do just fine!
It's been a long time since I played ToEE, but 3.5 ruleset was burned into my mind back when it was the only system you could expect your pals to be familiar with, so I hope my advice will be at least somewhat useful.
Going for an armored muscleman/ party leader? Well, paladins are not so hot in 3.5. Careful rerolling on your part might have saved them from Multiple Attribute Dependency Disorder, but he's still not going to shine. I'd say it'd be better to grab a druid with a heavyweight pet (or wolf, for those sweet trips). If you want someone with high CHA, you might try and replace your wizard with a sorcerer, or a thief with a bard. Or grab a fifth character.
Drop those fighter levels. A full cleric with buffs and a huge stick will probably be more useful and capable than a fighter.
Can't go wrong with a wizard.
Ranged rogues can be easily denied their main method of dealing damage - sneak attacks. Flanking someone is much easier to do than denying them their Dex to AC. If you want a halfling rogue, you might want to keep him 'pure', grab some short weaponry and lunge at opponents that attack your cleric/pet/whoever. You decidedly want him to be able to engage at range, but this is equally true for every character. Halflings get small bonuses to slings and thrown weapons, and with his above-average strength, these weapons will easily trump shortbows.
Best of luck!

Thank you very much for reply and solid advice.

 

[Aothan]

also your Paladin is taking focus next to the Cleric, both are going to generate attacks of opportunity as they try to move into position to defend the Rogue or the Wizard, or whenever they try to cast spells such as healing. If your Paladin is going to stay at the front and be the first to meet encounters they need a shield for the early levels, which should be okay unless you really want to specialise and focus on Greatsword feats. I really need to look at spell progression someday to see what the potential (early and then late game) benefits of +14 Wisdom for a Paladin are

 

[King Crispy]

Why aren't you using six characters in your party? And have you picked up Elmo for extra muscle?

If this is your first exposure to a D&D game (evident since you didn't know about skeletons and their damage resistance to non-blunt weapons) then trying to game the system by only taking four characters is basically suicide.

While each of your existing characters' ability scores are suspiciously excellent, I think you still might need to start all over again or at least fill out your party with recruitable NPCs.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

While each of your existing characters' ability scores are suspiciously excellent,

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

2x Fighter/Rogue with pole-arms and combat reflexes
1x Cleric
2x Wizard

Give each wizard the Craft Wonderous Item feat, and cash in their excess experience to make awesome items. Don't worry about the gold requirement. Crafting is cash positive in a major way. Keeping a smaller party of 5 will allow you to offset the experience loss and craft more. If you've modded out the level cap of 10 and/or don't wish to craft, keep the same party composition but add another cleric.

PS: It is painfully tedious, but you should be able to get your party to Level 3 before ever leaving town except to kill two giant spiders.

 

[deuxhero]

Make a cleric with the Good domain and Craft Magic Arms and Armor. Holy is the best thing to add to your weapons, since almost everything you fight is evil and many end-game foes are demons with damage resistance that can only be beaten by holy weapons. Only a cleric of the Good domain has the spell to add Holy.

You'll have more than enough money by the time you first come out of the temple. Experience on the otherhand has a fairly finite quantity (random encounters from the map and resting can make more but it's not worth it). Instead spend your excess experience on stats boosting items and cloaks of resistance, which are quite rare in ToEE. Give your casters boosts to their casting stats, your melee some belts of strength and everyone that you can afford some gloves of dexterity and con boosters. Nulb has a shop with Wands of Cure Light Wounds for sale. Buy them whenever they go in stock since they are great for healing between combats.

As for party, I'd say the best is

1: A barbarian with a reach weapon and tripping/combat reflexes stuff (enemies that are tripped in ToEE can't do anything but stand, provoking an AoO).
2: A wizard for utility spells and craft wondrous items
3: A battle cleric. Ideally chaotic good and capable of using bastard swords+power attack.
4: A sorcerer for blasting all weak support enemies and spaming your favorite debilitating spells. Also can do some social stuff.
5: This one is relatively open. Rogue is the only one capable of opening locks, but a wizard can eventually do that with Knock and rogue isn't that useful otherwise. Bard can be quite helpful for the rest of tricky stuff since the party limit is quite large. With Temple+ I'd take an Assassin or Arcane Trickster.

 

[King Crispy]

Pretty good advice above, but let me throw a different angle out there.

ToEE is a special game, in my opinion. There are rarely RPGs that demand so much from their player and this is one of them. I think, because of that, there are two things you should also consider, combined with what's already been said in this thread:

1. You have a somewhat unique opportunity in this game to REALLY emulate playing a PnP, tabletop D&D campaign (by yourself, of course), and

2. Because it's as authentic as it is, you REALLY have to be intimately familiar with its rules in order to succeed, ESPECIALLY if you want to go all-in on the emulating a real session with rolled-up characters, etc.

I've been reading and messing around with D&D p. much my whole life, and I had a tough but glorious time with ToEE the first run through, even having memorized almost every square inch of the moathouse and most of the Temple itself. The combat is ruthlessly unforgiving and the consequences of failing certain tasks can really mess you up in the game.

Read, learn, and understand everything there is about the combat system. 5-foot steps are ultra-critical, knowing what penalties there are for firing missiles into melee, understanding types of damage resistances there are, etc., are all components that are crucial to not having to re-do all the tough fights the game has in store for you -- and there are plenty of them -- over and over.

You might want to consider taking the advice of the many character build threads for ToEE there are out there, but I'd actually encourage you to not follow them too closely. Pick the archetype of the characters that you'd most like to play in PnP and try to create them as faithfully as you can here, just with the concession that your vision of that character might not be all that viable in combat as-is. In other words, be flexible about it, taking into account what you may have learned from some of the uber-builds that are out there for similar characters.

If you approach the game this way -- by "doing what you want" but having fore-armed yourself with the knowledge of how not to get curb-stomped by those giant frogs in the first round -- I think you'll come out of one of the best hard core RPGs ever written with a huge smile on your face.

Good luck, soldier.

P.S. Don't even think about using Cloud's sword.

 

[vitellus]

alright, using temple+, moathouse, second floor of the dungeon, getting absolutely wafflestomped by those bugbears. have tried about four times and slowly but surely they just wear 'em down due to constantly missing weapon swings. advice on this? i'm not totally knowledgeable in 3/3.5e so uh....

party for your bemusement/mockery/criticism:

if i gotta restart and do a better party, so be it but the halfling barbarian stays

 

[Orud]

• Make sure to get weapon focus on your warriors and prioritize giving your Fighter some better armor (or shield) if you can, 16 AC isn't great with 16 Dex. I'd also keep in mind that for frontline fighters Dex isn't that great anymore due to armor restricting your max Dex bonus in 3.xE.
• Your Barb is actually looking pretty good for tanking, maybe toss him in the middle of the fray until you can get out of there.
• Keep in mind that "Bless" on the cleric is a really good spell at lower levels in 3.5, compared to 2E.
• Grease should be one of your staple Wizard's cc spells.

Your party isn't bad, but (as you should know) early D&D can be rough and your current setup (looking at your fighter) just hasn't leveraged the dices into your favor. If you want to go a full dex build on him, give him better armor (ignoring the Dex boost) for the time being until you get better items.
Don't give up on the game though, it's one of the best D&D combat games.

 

[vitellus]

Don't give up on the game though, it's one of the best D&D combat games

i've had a bit of success the last round. i was able to take down about 2/3rds before a wipe, up from 1/4 of them. more often than not i misclick and the result is one of my guys getting multiple attacks of opportunity on them due to me. i've been a lot more careful about that lol.

the barb is putting in most of the work with rage and the wizard has flare, daze (x2), bless, grease, prot from evil, m missle memorized; i need to drop ident for now and replace with another grease.

i played a lot of gold box and have put some stupid hours in running wrath of the righteous on unfair, so there's a lot of similar concepts that i recognize because of wrath, and knowledge of dnd spells from the aforementioned gold box.

this game is really enjoyable and glad i got around to putting some time in

 

[vitellus]

now that was a satisfying fight

thanks for the help!

 

[King Crispy]

Why didn't you delay the fight with the bugbears until the point where you learned 3rd-level spells, thus fireball?

 

[vitellus]

Why didn't you delay the fight with the bugbears until the point where you learned 3rd-level spells, thus fireball?

because i'm a fuckin retard lol. i had already cleared most of everything up to that point, i negotiated with the gnolls so i skipped that fight. a rest outside afterwards via the secret exit was interrupted which gave me the necessary xp to ding level 3

 

[Modron]

Can't you reach level 3 in Hommlet alone?

 

[RPK]

you'd probably be better off with your rogue using the crossbow. your to-hit with two weapons equipped is shit. Do you have any feats for it yet?

 

[vitellus]

you'd probably be better off with your rogue using the crossbow. your to-hit with two weapons equipped is shit. Do you have any feats for it yet?

i do now lol

 

[RPK]

you'd probably be better off with your rogue using the crossbow. your to-hit with two weapons equipped is shit. Do you have any feats for it yet?

i do now lol

progress has been made lol

 

[d1nolore]

Trick with low level 3.E is; shields- with low hit chance and low HP two handed damage is not justifiable at start and dual wielding is less effective than flogging yourself, use shield and whatever one hander has higher damage, bludgeoning for undead.

Damage spells are worthless, wow 1d6 damage 3 times in a quest! Use AoE spells on groups like sleep, and select protection spells like mage armor for +4 Ac. Daze is handy for reducing attacks against your melees, better than 1-3 damage rays.

Then as you progress you can move to two handed and dual wield, plus utilise more damage spells.

Use all consumables for early game, are you saving them for when they are least effective?

 

[vitellus]

Use all consumables for early game, are you saving them for when they are least effective?

bro, being a long time rpg player, i can absolutely guarantee that i am sitting on way more consumables than i probably should be, because there's always a chance that i'll need it in the next fight.


it really has been a long time issue for me and have definitely been getting marginally better at it lol