Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[Jaesun]

Yeah, weapon switching is very annoying (if only there was a quick key to switch to different weapon sets, of which Pillars of Eternity has). And it always felt like cheating when switching weapons on the fly, there should have been a turn cost for switching such weapons. I'm not aware if 1st edition had such a penalty though.

 

[Gozma]

A single combat round in 1st edition was supposed to be simulating an entire goddamn minute, and the combat rolls and stuff were supposed to be highly abstracted from what was "really" happening (e.g. a 13th level fighter getting 2 attacks a round is not supposed to represent two concrete physical swings). It's further broken up into 6 second "segments" for initiative and spell startup times but that's "under the hood" mechanics. I think that's probably nonsense if you think about it for very long (like I doubt movement ranges match up even close to how far you can move in a minute) but it's what was in the rules.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Thanks, guess I'll be playing PoR normally and making doing the silly stat modifying stuff in later games. I hate doing shit like that though.

 

[Jaesun]

Thanks, guess I'll be playing PoR normally and making doing the silly stat modifying stuff in later games. I hate doing shit like that though.

You can ONLY modify stats before you start playing. Once you add them to the party and begin game, you are stuck with those stats. Unless of course you are taking into account the stat effecting magic items you will find along the way. And some of those get really buggy between games.

There really needs to be a complete Pools series of all 4 games done in FRUA for consistency. Sadly only the first 2 games are done in FRUA. Or the entire series in Dungeon Craft, as one huge module. Which would be sweet.

 

[octavius]

Replaying DKoK atm; fuck skeleton warriors. They are highly magic resistant undead HP sponges with 0 AC that cannot be turned that also compel you to navigate gold box menus over and over to switch back and forth between maces and your good +2/3/4 swords. Also, using autofight switches to the highest bonus weapon in inventory, so if you want to autofight them you have to swap all your good edged weapons to a mule character and swap them back when you get to whatever non-skeleton warrior enemy. And they are by far the most common enemy in the game. Fuck

Best tactic against those fuckers is an Enlarged, and preferably even Hasted, Kender Fighter/Thief using a magic Hoopak. Hoopaks do full damage, and we all know how effective backstabs can be.

Thanks, guess I'll be playing PoR normally and making doing the silly stat modifying stuff in later games. I hate doing shit like that though.

You can ONLY modify stats before you start playing. Once you add them to the party and begin game, you are stuck with those stats. Unless of course you are taking into account the stat effecting magic items you will find along the way. And some of those get really buggy between games.

You can also use the Gold Box Editor made by Joonas.
I completed the whole Pool to Pools series with less than max base stats, but for the final battles in Pools of Darkness I used the editor to give all my guys 18 Dex.

 

[Jaesun]

Dammit, my Ranger has enough XP to go to level 9. I should have had him switch classes at around 7 or 8. I'm almost considering re-starting. I should have thought this party out better....

And yeah, my half-elf Cleric/Magic User was a waste. Now I am thinking of a Human Dual-Class EXTEME™ party....

 

[Jaesun]

So I was playing around with Hack CKIT (an editor that lets you alter all the tables and a bunch of other things in FRUA), and noticed that in Ray's The Realm setting, there are no level limits on non-human multi-classes (the limit of level 40 is set for all races). Hello Dwarven Level 40/40 Cleric/Magic User.....



Edit: OOPS... you can't have a Dwarven Cleric/Magic User....

 

[Deuce Traveler]

So I was playing around with Hack CKIT (an editor that lets you alter all the tables and a bunch of other things in FRUA), and noticed that in Ray's The Realm setting, there are no level limits on non-human multi-classes (the limit of level 40 is set for all races). Hello Dwarven Level 40/40 Cleric/Magic User.....



Edit: OOPS... you can't have a Dwarven Cleric/Magic User....

 

[Jaesun]

Indeed...

 

[Null Null]

Dammit, my Ranger has enough XP to go to level 9. I should have had him switch classes at around 7 or 8. I'm almost considering re-starting. I should have thought this party out better....

And yeah, my half-elf Cleric/Magic User was a waste. Now I am thinking of a Human Dual-Class EXTEME™ party....

No, go to level 9 (if you're not doing Krynn). You'll be able to cast mage spells in full armor once you dual-class. (This was actually in the Secret of the Silver Blades Adventurer's Journal.)

There really needs to be a complete Pools series of all 4 games done in FRUA for consistency. Sadly only the first 2 games are done in FRUA. Or the entire series in Dungeon Craft, as one huge module. Which would be sweet.

Dungeon Craft's still in alpha, but it's theoretically possible.

You could probably put Pool and Curse in one FRUA module, or Curse and Secret. Pools of Darkness, if looked at using Gold Box Explorer, uses almost 35 dungeons--and FRUA can't do more than 35. (Some hackers have found ways to use extra dungeons, but additional dungeons past 35, including the unmodified Dungeon 36, have the bug that 'do only once' events never happen, so they're only useful as text.)

You want a truly epic Gold Box experience, I think the best option is The Sect, which will take you from level 1 to level 15, and has a fun little story besides. (I've sounded out the FRUA boards about a Pools of Darkness sequel, but think I should finish Reverse Pool first.)

 

[TigerKnee]

Edit: OOPS... you can't have a Dwarven Cleric/Magic User....

Do you think the DM will allow me to play my Half-Dwarf Paladin/Thief?

 

[Jaesun]

Edit: OOPS... you can't have a Dwarven Cleric/Magic User....

Do you think the DM will allow me to play my Half-Dwarf Paladin/Thief?

If I was your DM I would let you. That would be vastly amusing....

But I found out (playing Ray's Realm series) You CAN make an Elf Cleric/Magic User, and can level them up to 40 in both classes. Ms. Bee is going to be kicking massive butt... (But those LOW hit points....)

 

[Monstrous Bat]

Edit: OOPS... you can't have a Dwarven Cleric/Magic User....

Do you think the DM will allow me to play my Half-Dwarf Paladin/Thief?

No because there's no paladins in Dark Sun

 

[Gozma]

Best tactic against those fuckers is an Enlarged, and preferably even Hasted, Kender Fighter/Thief using a magic Hoopak. Hoopaks do full damage, and we all know how effective backstabs can be.

Huh, you actually can't backstab with maces AFAIK. The fact that you can BS with a "blunt" weapon makes me wonder if there's just a can BS/can't BS flag on the weapons, rather than doing it procedurally by making it so all blunt weapons can't BS. And that makes me wonder if some random non-mace blunt weapons other than the hoopak are flagged to allow backstabbing.

 

[octavius]

Best tactic against those fuckers is an Enlarged, and preferably even Hasted, Kender Fighter/Thief using a magic Hoopak. Hoopaks do full damage, and we all know how effective backstabs can be.

Huh, you actually can't backstab with maces AFAIK. The fact that you can BS with a "blunt" weapon makes me wonder if there's just a can BS/can't BS flag on the weapons, rather than doing it procedurally by making it so all blunt weapons can't BS. And that makes me wonder if some random non-mace blunt weapons other than the hoopak are flagged to allow backstabbing.

I think Hoopaks are the only exception in the GB games. But then it's a very special weapon that can be used both as melee weapon, missiles weapon, backstabbing weapons and does crushing damage.
In the IE games you could use Staff of the Ram for backstabbing, IIRC.

 

[Gozma]

Found one other backstabbing blunt weapon, the first one I checked - bare hands. Useless against skeleton warriors because they can only be hit with +1 or better weapons, of course.

 

[Zetor]

I'm killing skeleton warriors OK with my frontliners using +2/+4 maces (there's a shitload of +4 maces in DKK for some reason) and my knight using olin's quarterstaff. Now blue dragons... screw those guys and their 100+ hp ricocheting murderbreath (frequently before my party even has a chance to move... I should probably prebuff haste or something).

 

[octavius]

I'm killing skeleton warriors OK with my frontliners using +2/+4 maces (there's a shitload of +4 maces in DKK for some reason) and my knight using olin's quarterstaff. Now blue dragons... screw those guys and their 100+ hp ricocheting murderbreath (frequently before my party even has a chance to move... I should probably prebuff haste or something).

The Blue meanies definitely feel more evil than other dragons. Maybe because they nearly always use their breath weapons and unlike fire breath lightning breath does not seem to have a range limit.
When facing a group of mixed dragons, I always go for the blue ones first and then the green ones.

 

[Erebus]

Now blue dragons... screw those guys and their 100+ hp ricocheting murderbreath (frequently before my party even has a chance to move... I should probably prebuff haste or something).

The Blue meanies definitely feel more evil than other dragons. Maybe because they nearly always use their breath weapons and unlike fire breath lightning breath does not seem to have a range limit.

Blue dragons are definitely a pain in the ass (especially when you don't have a dragonlance to kill them quickly). I'm not sure what the rules are concerning breath weapons, but blue dragons do seem to use theirs a lot more often than other dragons.

 

[Zetor]

I'm killing skeleton warriors OK with my frontliners using +2/+4 maces (there's a shitload of +4 maces in DKK for some reason) and my knight using olin's quarterstaff. Now blue dragons... screw those guys and their 100+ hp ricocheting murderbreath (frequently before my party even has a chance to move... I should probably prebuff haste or something).

The Blue meanies definitely feel more evil than other dragons. Maybe because they nearly always use their breath weapons and unlike fire breath lightning breath does not seem to have a range limit.
When facing a group of mixed dragons, I always go for the blue ones first and then the green ones.

Yeah, there have been a few encounters in DKK so far that could result in either a no-effort kill, or an instant TPK. They mostly involved large numbers of blue dragons (ie. Cekos), the death dragon ("oh, you have a 130+hp knight with a scroll of prot from dragon breath and a boots of speed? That's cute, let me just go around and breath 140hp of murder on that mage over there") and anything involving your avatar. I think my favorite was getting a random encounter in Cerberus with vampires that charmed my mage who then proceeded to unload two DBFs back to back on the rest of the party (before anyone else could get a turn, mind), killing 3 people right away. Good times...

 

[Gozma]

Dunno if you know this particular classic Gold Box exploit, but if an enemy does an attack of opportunity in a round before its turn comes up, that counts as its action for the round. So you can easily "stunlock" an enemy you beat in initiative by stepping into melee and then back out every turn to keep it from doing something more dangerous than a melee attack. I seem to always end up needing to do it in those stupid fights where they drop four of the 4-tile dragons right on top of you, each of which can 1-shot any of your non- knights/paladins/fighters with a breath.

 

[octavius]

I'm aware of this exploit, but have never been desperate enough to use it.

 

[Null Null]

I'm aware of this exploit, but have never been desperate enough to use it.

Makes the second part of the final fight in Pools of Darkness much easier.

Re blue dragons: We did the experiment in FRUA (where it's easy to set up any set of monsters you like) and found that blue and green dragons will breathe on allies, whereas black, red, and white dragons will not. Of course, the AI may have changed between DKK and FRUA.

And yes, there appears to be no range limit on the lightning breath; probably it calls the lightning bolt routine.

 

[madrigal]

I think I have a new avatar.

Also: my kender C/T is backstabbing the shit out of dudes in plate mail right now. I guess you can never trust those Goldbox manuals.

It is the weight of the armour that is important if the plate mail is enchanted enough it becomes weightless.

 

[Monstrous Bat]

I think I have a new avatar.

Also: my kender C/T is backstabbing the shit out of dudes in plate mail right now. I guess you can never trust those Goldbox manuals.

It is the weight of the armour that is important if the plate mail is enchanted enough it becomes weightless.

What? Never heard of or read about this in the manual. And I think the kender's plate mail was unenchanted.