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Yeah, Hirelings can be useful as distractions in big fights like this. I recall having my Hireling Heroes bravely charge the Orc horde (wasn’t my choice but it worked) or pepper them with arrows and thus get their initial attention while everyone else ran for the choke point. The NPCs usually died doing so but it was their own fault, so no big deal. They’d kill their share before they fell, and my guys were set up to kill the rest by then. It worked often because as Chokes said, the AI’s tactical grasp is lacking. But that trick will be off the table in games without abundant NPC Hirelings. I think Frogs also appear in a couple set encounters in the Well, Slums, or Warehouse.
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Nov 25, 2019 21:48
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Wow, another gold box game with giant frogs? They even showed up in Buck Rogers Countdown to Doomsday! (Do Matrix Cubed sometime, Chokes!)
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Nov 25, 2019 22:19
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I forgot this series went on for so long. It's got four whole games. Five if you count Hillsfar.
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Nov 25, 2019 22:58
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the official clue book also implies you should take on Sokol Keep right after the slums too, no wonder I always found it so wretchedly miserable
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Nov 26, 2019 00:18
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Don't they point you towards the graveyard right off the bat as well?
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Nov 26, 2019 00:30
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Seyser Koze posted:Don't they point you towards the graveyard right off the bat as well? Nah, that one comes right before the gate which seems to be the right time.
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Nov 26, 2019 00:41
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Nah, for that you want the PC version frog: 
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Nov 26, 2019 02:02
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My mind went immediately to the Ludosity-verse. 
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Nov 26, 2019 04:28
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Hob_Gadling posted:The only thing worse than AI-controlled party member not casting spells is AI-controlled party member casting spells. You can change that with an esoteric key combination I no longer remember and which changes between platforms, probably. As far as I know you never get to control your AI companions unless you kill them off and resurrect them with Raise Undead. That makes for some nifty free lvl 4 tanks. Hiring a couple fighters for this particular fight is not a bad idea either, provided you're willing to see them charge into the fray while you bravely bravely run away. Don't even have to give them shares if they're dead!  blehPierzak posted:Nah, for that you want the PC version frog:  Which one of you worked on the pc version, reveal yourselves coward
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Nov 26, 2019 07:09
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Goddamn the number of bad design decisions in this game seems staggering. Do they at least learn as the series goes on?
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Nov 26, 2019 16:50
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PurpleXVI posted:Goddamn the number of bad design decisions in this game seems staggering. 
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Nov 26, 2019 20:55
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PurpleXVI posted:Goddamn the number of bad design decisions in this game seems staggering. come on Purple, you know just as well that they're not "bad design decisions" but "encouragements of system mastery"
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Nov 26, 2019 21:09
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Pretending lovely holes and bugs in the system are intentional challenges that improve it is the core gameplay of Dungeons and Dragons in most editions, this is a faithful recreation.
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Nov 26, 2019 21:30
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Night10194 posted:Pretending lovely holes and bugs in the system are intentional challenges that improve it is the core gameplay of Dungeons and Dragons in most editions, this is a faithful recreation. To be fair that only became part of the official design policy during 3rd edition.  Meanwhile during 1st edition they just didn't know what they were doing. Now, 2nd edition.................................... is good.
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Nov 26, 2019 21:52
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I maintain that D&D has been moving in a generally forwards direction through the editions, at least up to 4e, the last one I have any experience with. 1e was a confusing mess that 2e built on top of. 3e might not be the best balanced, but imo they did the right thing by tossing out all the old cruft and starting from scratch. 4e got the balancing issue almost right.
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Nov 26, 2019 22:00
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Commander Keene posted:I maintain that D&D has been moving in a generally forwards direction through the editions, at least up to 4e, the last one I have any experience with. 1e was a confusing mess that 2e built on top of. 3e might not be the best balanced, but imo they did the right thing by tossing out all the old cruft and starting from scratch. 4e got the balancing issue almost right. 4E made the big mistake of not tossing out 3E, and basically everything bad about 4E is 3E leftovers, like the fundamentally lovely system and the hideous splat bloat they inherited. 5E insists that 4E was a mistake and just rehashes 3E with minor rebalancing, and is thus the least inspiring and interesting of all the editions.
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Nov 26, 2019 22:07
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PurpleXVI posted:4E made the big mistake of not tossing out 3E, and basically everything bad about 4E is 3E leftovers, like the fundamentally lovely system and the hideous splat bloat they inherited. Honestly 5e does not really feel like 3e at all to me. So I largely disagree with this premise.
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Nov 26, 2019 22:53
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PurpleXVI posted:4E made the big mistake of not tossing out 3E, and basically everything bad about 4E is 3E leftovers, like the fundamentally lovely system and the hideous splat bloat they inherited. 4e had it's own problems, many of which stem from the devs inability to do math (skill challenges, expertise feats), extremely high HP inflation combined with MMO style piddling status effects everywhere, a bloated system designed to minimize the amount of character customization while maximizing shovelware playbooks, and racial determinism by design, none of which stem directly from 3e. Granted, most of 3e's gameplay emerged completely accidentally as those idiots had their heads in the sand for a long time.
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Nov 27, 2019 04:36
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Chokes McGee posted:Woo yay 187 XP. And no magic gear. Sure am glad that 30 minutes of my life was wasted! Unsurprisingly, those two things are related. As I'm given to understand ye olden tymey rules, experience was calculated based on the difficulty of the strongest monster in the encounter and the value of the treasure, with very little weight given to how many monsters were actually involved. That's why all those treasure piles also give shitwhacks of experience, but huge armies of low level monsters are worth piss all. The Ruins of Adventure module doesn't say specifically when to send players to the keep, but it does specify "The council will propose this mission only after the bulk of the island has been cleared", and you can't get the mission to clear the textile house until it's done, because council politics are an actual relevant thing in the module and you actually have to interact with them instead of just getting jobs from Sash and then occasionally somebody else shows up.The keep is definitely not the very next thing to do after the slums like the game would have you believe. In lieu of the copy protected scroll, you're just upfront given the words "Lux" and "Shestnik" (why they shortened it, your guess is as good as mine), but the scroll was rotted, so you only got half the last word, "Samos...". I can't remember if it held over to the game or not, but on tabletop zombies make up for being otherwise total garbage by being immune to all your paralytics. No hold, no sleep, no charm, nothing, in addition to being immune to cold damage, which I don't think ever comes up in this game. Interestingly, the module calls out that not all of the undead are human, they're a mixture of races. I like the kind of attention to detail. As some people suggested should happen, during the final battle in the module (35 orcs and 15 hobgoblins there), any undead that you haven't killed will join in, on your side if you use the password, or attacking indiscriminately if you don't. The text actually states that the enemies should try to make a fighting retreat if they take 20% casualties, and rout entirely at 50%. Fighting 50 dudes is less frightening if you get undead backup and they bail after the first 10 are dead. Not sure why the undead backup wasn't available in the game. A few optional fights didn't make it into the game, most notably a Slithering Tracker near the armory. It's invisible, has 5 hit dice, higher than most things you've fought up to this point (though Mendor and other spectres have 6), has a chance to paralyze targets on hit, and anything paralyzed dies in 6 turns (but otherwise deals no damage). But you needed to go into the room it was in to find the full "Samosud" password to be able to skip undead fights on the way out after the orcs/hobgoblins battle.
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Nov 27, 2019 06:29
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PurpleXVI posted:Goddamn the number of bad design decisions in this game seems staggering. lolololol let me tell you about 1st edition Dungeons and Dragons.
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Nov 27, 2019 06:36
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So I actually played my one ever 1e game with E. Gary Gygax at a convention, which was cool, but hoo boy 1e D&D is the land of weirdness. You know how today we use thieves to detect traps? What you were supposed to do back in the day was use the elf's keen senses/secret door sense and the dwarven stonecunning, abilities that got cut after 3e because no one remembered they exist. You can imagine my panic when we encountered a dragon in a closet. See, 1e dragons have breath weapons that deal damage equal to their HP. I had an 18/something strength fighter, my buddy had a paladin with a +1 magic sword, we had 2 brave ladies whose archers fought with us, and the other 9 assholes in our party hid around the corner while this dragon wrecked our asses in a 2 round fight that actually felt like a desperate struggle. I'm given to believe this is a relatively tame 1e experience.
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Nov 27, 2019 07:19
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:4e had it's own problems, many of which stem from the devs inability to do math (skill challenges, expertise feats), extremely high HP inflation combined with MMO style piddling status effects everywhere, a bloated system designed to minimize the amount of character customization while maximizing shovelware playbooks, and racial determinism by design, none of which stem directly from 3e. I'd disagree there. Because the basic math and resolution mechanic they inherited was from 3E, which meant you had, at game start, very small modifiers(+1 to +5 or so) combined with an extremely swingy random factor(1 to 20). Now, you combine this with everything interesting you can do(dailies, per-encounters, etc.) being limited-use and still needing to land a hit for the most part, and you get a lot of "I use my big epic ability!" "well you roll a miss, and there's not even any sort of piddling on-miss effect, next player." which made encounters of any kind regularly very unfun, swiftly degenerating into whiff-fests of just everyone spamming basic attacks or their limited selection of at-wills. I'm also gonna argue that the minimized character customization is directly a result of the splat bloat inherited from 3E. Both systems would have been much better if they had, at most, one more base class than 2E and the remainder were customization options. Hell. Boil it down to four base classes: Swordman, Spellman, Sneakman, Holyman. Then let people customize their way into the remainder of the class options from there.
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Nov 27, 2019 12:28
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Wait, I thought that the once-per-day effects all had "on a miss, this deals half damage", which was still usually more than the basic or encounter move damages (barring lovely rolls)
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Nov 27, 2019 15:15
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PurpleXVI posted:I'd disagree there. Splat bloat started with the 2E handbook series, which they couldn't even manage to present consistently in terms of how character kits worked, and where after covering classes they started releasing race-based handbooks. 1E splats were mostly accumulated custom rules collected in a hardback, with adventure modules their main product. Given that adventure design was pretty much on a trial and error process, you had to buy enough well-written modules just to get a sense of how to put an adventure together, and the designers were working that out themselves as they went. 1E was a great thing to encounter at ages 12-14, and 2E “aged” with that cohort.
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Nov 27, 2019 15:46
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4e's unique innovation to the splat bloat was the power system. On launch you had very few character options you could make, to the point where when the devs actually cut the swashbuckler class when they added the warlock. Go look at the basic PHB again. It seems like you have a lot of options as a fighter, but if you look closely a ton of powers are gated behind weapon type and effectively behind secondary stats. If you want to be a dual wielding fighter you can't just do that out of the book you need to drop 30 bux on Martial Power. The powers don't scale with level because they are designed to take up space and actively block access to character concepts so you buy splat.
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Nov 27, 2019 16:06
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Randalor posted:Wait, I thought that the once-per-day effects all had "on a miss, this deals half damage", which was still usually more than the basic or encounter move damages (barring lovely rolls) There are a very small number of daily powers that do just miss when you roll poorly, though. IIRC, most of those grant multiple attacks. One Hundred Knives (a rogue power that allows you to make three attack rolls) and Blade Cascade (an attack-until-you-miss ranger power) were two that I could come up with quickly.
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Nov 27, 2019 17:18
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Narsham posted:Splat bloat started with the 2E handbook series, which they couldn't even manage to present consistently in terms of how character kits worked, and where after covering classes they started releasing race-based handbooks. 2E only ever introduced one new class past the PHB, though, which was the Psionicist(not counting rare, setting-specific stuff like Birthright Magicians, Athas Gladiators, etc.). That's specifically what I'm referencing with splat bloat.
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Nov 27, 2019 18:00
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I would love to know where level drain actually came from as a mechanic. I know it's technically better than death, but few game mechanics feel as spiteful as "lose 2 levels, no save, lol"
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Nov 27, 2019 18:34
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Night10194 posted:I would love to know where level drain actually came from as a mechanic. I know it's technically better than death, but few game mechanics feel as spiteful as "lose 2 levels, no save, lol" I ran into this story about how one group of players started hoarding wishes so Gygax asspulled level drain to give the players something to use them on. Other fan favorites: - since hitpoints come and go and anything short of death is almost irrelevant, level drain was made up to represent "permanent injury" - back in the day it was common to level up a few times during a play session, making a loss of one level not that big a deal - it was made so players would have something to fear: a boss undead monster capable of dealing terrible damage surrounded by smaller ones But my own guess is that it was just how the games were played back in the day. You know the Tomb of Horrors module with all its bullshit? Players were expected to pull at least as much bullshit in return. Who cares about trap detection if you can run a flock of sheep ahead of you into the grinder, or bring your own Dwarven Fire Truck to dungeon entrance and pump the drat hole full of flammable liquids before entering? Everyone knows the good stuff isn't in the front, anyway. And let's not forget how all of this is based on strategy games where losing a dude is expected. In a strategy game context level drain is much less terrifying than dragons breath which can wipe out masses of my fighting men. Tons of coins make sense when you have entire supply trains to haul your loot. And lets not get started on the polearms, bread and butter of armies everywhere since forever. Gold Box games are a very honest representation, I think. This is what it was _supposed_ to be.
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Nov 27, 2019 21:46
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Not to mention that exp was more easily gained depending on your class (if I remember correctly, a thief would basically hit the level cap as soon as the party killed a dragon, because they got bonus exp based on the value of loot you find, and they had one of the lowest amount needed to hit the cap).
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Nov 28, 2019 00:58
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Hob_Gadling posted:Who cares about trap detection if you can run a flock of sheep ahead of you into the grinder
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Nov 28, 2019 01:46
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Randalor posted:Not to mention that exp was more easily gained depending on your class (if I remember correctly, a thief would basically hit the level cap as soon as the party killed a dragon, because they got bonus exp based on the value of loot you find, and they had one of the lowest amount needed to hit the cap). Also don't forget that non-humans would never reach level 20 and need to recapture those lofty peaks if they got level drained, because they were capped at, like, level 10 or something! Not that many games starting at level 1 ever got close to those levels, but I've never met a GM who didn't somehow ignore or edit that rule.
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Nov 28, 2019 01:49
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Level drain was a way to avoid playing high level games.
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Nov 28, 2019 02:14
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I think it’s largely a way to power down the party if necessary. There’s an Oriental Adventures undead that drains the pluses from gear which exists for similar reasons.
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Nov 28, 2019 02:26
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achtungnight posted:I think it’s largely a way to power down the party if necessary. There’s an Oriental Adventures undead that drains the pluses from gear which exists for similar reasons. There's other, non-undead critters that do that too. Rust Monsters plus whatever the ones are that drain charges from wands.
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Nov 28, 2019 02:44
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The Disenchanter is a camel-like monster with an anteater snout that ate the magic from your gear. IIRC, if it ate some magic, it healed or became stronger or something like that. It existed in 3e and earlier, right up until Wizards realized nobody wants to lose their hard-earned gear to an unlucky die roll.
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Nov 28, 2019 03:06
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:See, 1e dragons have breath weapons that deal damage equal to their HP. Oh, is that where it came from? Every dragon in every Gold Box game works that way. I just thought the game was arbitrarily choosing a fixed damage amount just like how every monster of a given species has the same HP.
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Nov 28, 2019 05:45
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It's a cute mechanic, since it sort of implies that once you seriously bring the pain, it can only kind of wheeze fire on you.
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Nov 28, 2019 07:04
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The original trick of Dragonlances (in Dragonlance) was they did the wielder's HP in damage to dragons as a turn around. (Mounted ones did dragon+rider HP in damage to opponents I thiink? )
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Nov 28, 2019 13:34
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Tylana posted:The original trick of Dragonlances (in Dragonlance) was they did the wielder's HP in damage to dragons as a turn around. (Mounted ones did dragon+rider HP in damage to opponents I thiink? ) That's what they do, yeah, thus trivializing most dragon beatdowns if your Fighter still has over 50% of his HP left when he lands a good blow. There are also TRUE DRAGON LANCES which can only be mounted on dragons and are basically a normal mounted Dragonlance PLUS a raygun based on the dragon's breath weapon.
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Nov 28, 2019 14:18
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