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vilkacis posted:Yeah, this is something i'm pretty sure i saw explicitly stated in some of the manuals. Wisdom is the only 'Prime Requisite' for clerics, but I thought that all PRs had to be 16+ to get the 10% bonus in 2e.
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Aug 19, 2021 02:05
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I completely forgot spell failure being a thing. 
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vilkacis posted:Yeah, this is something i'm pretty sure i saw explicitly stated in some of the manuals. I definitely don't know for sure but if any crpg would have included the most sadistic anti-player bullshit, it would've been the Gold Box engine
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Aug 19, 2021 02:24
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I always remember Viconia from the BG games. People always complain about her lovely con (which is 9) and her resultant lovely HP. There is actually no HP penalty for 9 Con, but there's also no bonus. Given that the highest bonus a cleric can get from con at 16+ is 2 hp/level and only for the first 10 levels, that's only 20 hp over the life of the character. Mind you, that's guaranteed HP if one enjoys random HP rolls - and why would any sane person do that? - but 20 is still not a massive sum.
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Aug 19, 2021 02:31
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JustJeff88 posted:I always remember Viconia from the BG games. People always complain about her lovely con (which is 9) and her resultant lovely HP. There is actually no HP penalty for 9 Con, but there's also no bonus. Given that the highest bonus a cleric can get from con at 16+ is 2 hp/level and only for the first 10 levels, that's only 20 hp over the life of the character. Mind you, that's guaranteed HP if one enjoys random HP rolls - and why would any sane person do that? - but 20 is still not a massive sum. It's not a ton but it's still significant considering the maximum HP a cleric gets per level just from rolls alone is 8, so at level 10, assuming maxed HP rolls, you would have a little more HP than a cleric with no con bonus at level 12. And as you say, with random HP rolls it might amount to a whole lot more. It probably just does boil down to people being annoyed by a character being "suboptimal" rather than any material difference though, yeah, because it's the kind of thing where if your cleric is dying that's probably more due to poor tactical decisions than because they simply weren't tough enough.
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Aug 19, 2021 02:37
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The Cheshire Cat posted:It's not a ton but it's still significant considering the maximum HP a cleric gets per level just from rolls alone is 8, so at level 10, assuming maxed HP rolls, you would have a little more HP than a cleric with no con bonus at level 12. And as you say, with random HP rolls it might amount to a whole lot more. Fair points. I will say that I've always been a proponent of fixed HP progression at level up. It's too important to a character to be subject to the whims of dice, and I think that just giving everyone max HP for their class, level and Con and balancing a game (video or P&P) around that is the way to go. Everyone these days is down on rolling ability scores, which are crucial to characters and basically permanent, so why preserve the same antiquated system for max HP? Going with some other fixed value, like 4e, is fine too, but make it a fixed value to build around so that nobody is permanently gimped due to bad luck. One house rule that I would recommend for *any* version of D&D, except 4e which made it official, is that characters start with HP equal to their Con just for being alive and per-level HP rolls are on top of that. It makes low-level characters soooo much less frail and has a nominal effect at higher levels. It also creates an easy system for determining the HP of level 0 NPCs.
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Aug 19, 2021 03:44
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The thing with Viconia is that if you're putting her in harm's way you're doing things very wrong
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Aug 19, 2021 07:20
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Viconia's biggest issue, for me, was her low strength, which meant you couldn't stuff her into full plate until you found some strength enhancing items.
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Aug 19, 2021 09:56
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Tokyo Sexwale posted:I definitely don't know for sure but if any crpg would have included the most sadistic anti-player bullshit, it would've been the Gold Box engine Now I kinda want to see the Tomb of Horrors in the Gold Box engine, but then I remember that most of the fun in that was thinking up how to avoid/solve the bullshit traps in various nonstandard ways and my interest wanes. And I think Wizardry 4 claimed that niche already.
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Aug 19, 2021 10:45
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Ace Transmuter posted:The thing with Viconia is that if you're putting her in harm's way you're doing things very wrong It's possible to make her fairly tanky in BG2, but at the same time you also have the choice of Jaheira or Aerie, who are better for it, and  inscrutable horse posted:Viconia's biggest issue, for me, was her low strength, which meant you couldn't stuff her into full plate until you found some strength enhancing items. That's what the Ankheg plate in Nashkel is for! 
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Aug 19, 2021 12:01
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JustJeff88 posted:I always remember Viconia from the BG games. People always complain about her lovely con (which is 9) and her resultant lovely HP. There is actually no HP penalty for 9 Con, but there's also no bonus. Given that the highest bonus a cleric can get from con at 16+ is 2 hp/level and only for the first 10 levels, that's only 20 hp over the life of the character. Mind you, that's guaranteed HP if one enjoys random HP rolls - and why would any sane person do that? - but 20 is still not a massive sum. It is in fact a pretty massive sum, considering that HP gain slows at level 9 for all characters in 2nd edition. A Cleric who gets their max HP allotment or rolls it every turn would thus have 9*8 = 72 hit points at 9th level, and gain a further 2 points per level beyond it. So at 20th level, they'd have 94 hit points. Considering that, +20HP is actually a pretty big percentage of their eventual total.
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Aug 19, 2021 13:33
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PurpleXVI posted:It is in fact a pretty massive sum, considering that HP gain slows at level 9 for all characters in 2nd edition. A Cleric who gets their max HP allotment or rolls it every turn would thus have 9*8 = 72 hit points at 9th level, and gain a further 2 points per level beyond it. So at 20th level, they'd have 94 hit points. Because nothing can be simple or standardized in AD&D 2E, rogues and wizards go up to 10 HD before hitting fixed HP increases (and thus the loss of con bonuses). For wizards, the bonus HP from CON is an even more massive sum of their total - a 20th level wizard with average HP has only 35 HP, which you may recognize as the average damage from a 10d6 fireball or lightning bolt. A max HP 20th level wizard has 50 HP, and +20 HP is a massive 40% on top of that.
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Aug 19, 2021 19:39
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Olesh posted:Because nothing can be simple or standardized in AD&D 2E, rogues and wizards go up to 10 HD before hitting fixed HP increases (and thus the loss of con bonuses). For wizards, the bonus HP from CON is an even more massive sum of their total - a 20th level wizard with average HP has only 35 HP, which you may recognize as the average damage from a 10d6 fireball or lightning bolt. A max HP 20th level wizard has 50 HP, and +20 HP is a massive 40% on top of that. The casual viewer might go: "Hm, dang, does that mean high Con is less important for warriors? So AD&D is populated by weedy warriors and buff wizards?" Ha ha, no, because just to confuse everyone, there's a separate bonus HP track for Fighters/Rangers/Paladins which can get more than +2 HP/level.
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Aug 19, 2021 20:26
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PurpleXVI posted:The casual viewer might go: "Hm, dang, does that mean high Con is less important for warriors? So AD&D is populated by weedy warriors and buff wizards?" Ha ha, no, because just to confuse everyone, there's a separate bonus HP track for Fighters/Rangers/Paladins which can get more than +2 HP/level. It is both cool and good! Love me the jank of 2e, been running it on and off for years. High con is good, and mandatory for certain specialist wizards or priests, but while high hp is good, you still have to survive to the higher levels! Still, in something lile Birthright, dwarves get +2 con and cap at 20, so they can have a huge boost to survivability (and also get the jank bonus to saves vs poison, magic, and magic items of +1 per 3.5 con they have), but obviously high dex helps avoid getting hit in the first place and avoiding a surprise round and high str tears through hp pools. Every stat is good and useful, even charisma on tabletop. Viconia in particular at least has magic resist!
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Aug 20, 2021 16:20
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Chronische posted:It is both cool and good! Love me the jank of 2e, been running it on and off for years. High con is good, and mandatory for certain specialist wizards or priests, but while high hp is good, you still have to survive to the higher levels! Still, in something lile Birthright, dwarves get +2 con and cap at 20, so they can have a huge boost to survivability (and also get the jank bonus to saves vs poison, magic, and magic items of +1 per 3.5 con they have), but obviously high dex helps avoid getting hit in the first place and avoiding a surprise round and high str tears through hp pools. Every stat is good and useful, even charisma on tabletop. 2e has been my comfort food of pen and paper RPG's since forever. but... man I can't pretend it's a good system. It has so many dumb moron decisions and non-moving parts where it needs moving parts and moving parts where it needs static parts. It's just a mess of house rules with a nice hardcover that has no guiding philosophy, no central brain or red thread through it, and yet it's salvaged by having the most insanely good support of settings and lore books for what is, in fact, a really bad game.
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Aug 20, 2021 17:46
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I can't argue with that, you can basically modify 2e to be anything at all using only official products and Dragon magazine articles. Whether it's worth the effort is a very personal thing.
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Aug 20, 2021 18:10
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I feel like 3e was the point when they started approaching D&D as more of a game than a simulation. So many of the weird janky rules from older editions basically stem from trying to produce results that "seem realistic" (not that they actually were, just that the aim was a sense of verisimilitude) and thus producing dozens of one-off tables for various interactions rather than having a more fundamental mechanical philosophy for how all the parts should fit together. I mean poo poo it wasn't until 3e that they finally realized "maybe it would be less confusing if numbers going up was universally better rather than 'some numbers are better high, others are better low'" The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Aug 20, 2021 |
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Aug 20, 2021 19:51
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3.Xe is still fairly simulationist, it's just that it works to integrate edge cases as a gradual thing instead of the clusterfuck of 2e, it lets you break a glass wall without a quadratic equation and without "welp, it's a glass object, manual says breaking it is a free action" but on the other hand it straight up goes "classes are a suggestion, man" a few times while it also enforces them hard the rest of the time, it's a little weird.
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Aug 20, 2021 20:39
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PurpleXVI posted:2e has been my comfort food of pen and paper RPG's since forever. but... man I can't pretend it's a good system. It has so many dumb moron decisions and non-moving parts where it needs moving parts and moving parts where it needs static parts. It's just a mess of house rules with a nice hardcover that has no guiding philosophy, no central brain or red thread through it, and yet it's salvaged by having the most insanely good support of settings and lore books for what is, in fact, a really bad game. Same. I had an incredible run playing it during the 90s, but I realised long ago that it's not a good system, I just played it with good people.
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Aug 21, 2021 01:29
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EOTB 8: Magic Stones, Swords, and Darts The last major challenge of level 7 is a prison area with ten cells. Most of have one or two skeletal lords within them. You open the cells yourself, and there's a 3x3 room in the middle, which make this manageable. As you can see here, they can be turned like other undead, though a 6th level cleric won't often do it successfully.  The main reward is four keys (two drow, two jeweled) that will allow you out of here. Other loot includes the second-best armor type and a scroll of Lightning Bolt, which damages a single column of enemies and won't bounce off walls like in other games.  The four locks all look the same, so it takes guessing/trial and error or a guide to know which key to use for each.  This leads to a hub with five stone portals. These are the medallion portal to level 4, the necklace portal to level 5, the dagger portal to level 9, and two more (on perpendicular walls not visible from here) we don't have keys for.  Across from the portals are three shelves. One has a wand with no magic (amusingly identified as "Wand of Stick"), one has the item you "sacrificed" in the trial from the previous update, and one has this black rock which is +1. Level 7's special quest is to put a stone portal key on each shelf, which creates scrolls with hints about where some of them go: quote:Around the neck  Past stairs down to level 8, there is a cell with two more skeletal lords across from a teleporter to a vault room. The vault has three doors with a single item behind each, and opening one permanently locks the other two. They each have labels on the opposite side: Weapon - Slicer, a +3 short sword Armor - Bracers of Protection +3 Magic - A Ring of Wizardry, which doubles a mage's 4th and 5th level spells. I take the last one since it's the most unique. I'll find things that are the same as or better than the others in the first half of the second game.  One of the first items found in the main part of level 8 is this. It's -3 though that's still a net improvement over no armor (equivalent to scale mail) and it can be taken off with no problem.  Level 8 is one in which both monster types occupy the same area. In front is a hell hound, which attacks quickly and requires a lot of hits to bring down. Behind it is a drider, who throws spears, but not over the hell hound despite the height difference. The manual suggests that they can cast spells, but they don't.  There are two scepter portals in level 8. One in the west, one in the east. Using the western one will take you down to level 10, and using the one there will bring you to the eastern one, which cannot be activated.  A hallway in the south re-introduces rotation tiles and the much more annoying hidden teleporters. Getting past those and a drider leads to this. If it has any special effects I have no idea what they are.  This is the start of a gauntlet. Certain tiles will launch fireballs from the north, the direction you are trying to go, with three two-tile alcoves to dodge on the sides. Two of those have pits in one tile. Past that and more hidden teleporters, I find a Ring of Sustenance in the northeast corner. It's supposed to keep the wearer's hunger meter from depleting, but doesn't seem to actually work in this game.  Behind an unmarked illusory wall in the northern part, you can find a +3 longsword.  A row of pits toggled by plates to the west (the direction I came from) and another +1 rock.  In the southeast there is a split hallway. The one you go into first will close off a section of the other, blocking access to an item. I take the northern one to take scroll of Ice Storm (does damage over five tiles in a + shape, the most likely spell to harm your own party) over a set of lockpicks, which are entirely useless at this point.  This room has twelve empty launchers. Putting a dart into each one solves level 8's special quest.  Activating the trap causes ten of them to come out upgraded to +5. This room also happens to be close to the stairs down to level 9.  The start of level 9 is a room with doors at each corner. The northeast one leads to two of these doors. The item needed is not a gem like before.  Rather, a hall to the south drops another two +1 rocks which can open them. However, neither room has anything I really need, so I just keep the rocks. The northwest door leads to several displacer beasts and a locked door. The key is behind one of the rock doors, but there is another way to the same places:  The southwest door leads to another with four plates requiring certain item types. This one says "sword" but any weapon besides a bow, sling, staff, or dart will work. The others ask for "armor" (otherwise-useless helmets work for this), "food" (rations), and "missile" (arrow, dart, or rock).  Level 9 is mostly populated by displacer beasts, but also has a few rust monsters. Their hits do very little damage, often none at all, but they can eat any metal item that character's inventory. This includes weapons, armor (including helmets, shields, and bracers), rings, and even wands. Axes strangely don't seem to count as metal, which is probably an error. I made sure my front-liners only had useless metal items before coming here.  This hallway has a gauntlet of dart launchers on the north and south sides. They can be dodged by speeding through it.  At the end of it are the remains of Beohram. Despite what this holy symbol might lead you to believe, he is actually a fighter. His other items are plate mail, a helmet, a shield, and Severious, a +5 longsword. That's the best weapon in the entire series right there.  This room has buttons that activate Magic Missile launchers, but you don't need to interact with any of them. You can just pick up a key on the floor and unlock the door at the opposite corner. The remnants of a scrapped puzzle, I guess.  It leads to this, a puzzle that definitely wasn't scrapped. It's one of the more complicated and least intuitive ones in the game. It might look like you should just throw an item over this pit to the plate, but doing that just makes it come back at you. Instead, you throw it through the top of the north wall, where it ends up landing in the middle. That uncovers another plate to the west (past another pit), which opens up another way in from the south. That's how you press that plate to close the pits. This ultimately leads to one way into level 10, but I'll be taking the other.  The southeast door from the entrance leads to this corridor full of shelves. They will each take a small item from your party as you walk past, true to the name.  At the end is this plate, which deactivates the robbery and changes the message at the end to "You forgot something." That allows you to go back and retrieve your stuff.  The other end of the dagger portal, and another pair of drow boots. I don't know if those are any different from other boots.  Behind another unmarked illusory wall is a +3 shield, the best one in this game.  Giving up a small item to this shelf removes the north wall, leading to a Wand of Fireballs and the other way to level 10. Before that, I take the portal to identify my items and revive our new companion, Beohram:  If you refuse him:  He replaces Dorhum, though is a bit of a downgrade:  One last thing in level 9:  This works like the Oracle of Knowledge in level 4, but destroys the orb in the process. The Oracles are both very close to the portals in their levels, connected by the hub in level 7, so there's not much point in using this one over the other. Granted, Orbs of Power only have one other marginal use anyway. I take the south path to level 10, fighting one more rust monster along the way. Alpha3KV fucked around with this message at 01:10 on May 21, 2022 |
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Aug 21, 2021 23:25
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Odd selection of magical items this time around.
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Aug 21, 2021 23:48
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Whoever named that +5 sword may have been a fan of a certain Disney mad scientist voiced by Tim Curry. Or the name is a coincidence since it may be spelled differently. Hmm... Rust Monsters? Ah, the bane of many a D&D party. I recall once being part of a group that attempted genocide against them. We ended up facing a Legendary Extra-Planar Rust Monster Progenitor of Colossal size that we had to use nearly a whole iron mine to kill. Good times.
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Aug 22, 2021 00:00
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It just occurred to me to ask this when you mentioned not needing lockpicks... is there any use in this game, or either of the sequels, for a thief? I'm trying to remember specific traps that can be disarmed and/or locks that cannot be opened any other way, and it's not coming to me. That could just be due to how long it's been since I played the trilogy, though.
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Aug 22, 2021 02:59
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wait Lightning Bolt doesn't bounce in EotB?! Be right back, burning my copy  I think i've mostly always picked Slicer, since most of the fighting's done by just swinging the front row's weapons at things and i don't think there's anything better for the off hand all game or... possibly all series, even. Pairs wonderfully with the +5 longsword, too. I remembered the scepter showing up much earlier than this, like, the spider section of the dwarf area maybe? Not sure why. Also no idea if it does anything You get 10 +5 darts  Wow, i must have never found that one, i think i'd remember it... I feel reasonably sure Beohram was originally intended to be a paladin, given his gear and very paldin-friendly stats, but they changed him to a fighter either because it'd be unfair for a party with any evil member to be denied his help if they went through the trouble to resurrect him, or perhaps because they didn't want to bother writing the code to handle it. Though in that case they probably rewrote his story too, since a 7th level paladin's not generally "city watch" material...
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Aug 22, 2021 03:13
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vilkacis posted:
Yeah, I would agree that maybe he was a paladin but they ended up not wanting to get into a situation where the NPC would not want to join the party. There is apparently a portal (in that room of portals) that leads to the surface but there is no object to activate it. I wonder if that was a possible alternate ending or a chance for some other scripted event. My guess is that the original idea was that this item would be on the last floor, and you would need to use it to leave the dungeon after defeating the big bad. But you might get a different ending if the big bad wasn't defeated before you left.
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Aug 22, 2021 05:13
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JustJeff88 posted:It just occurred to me to ask this when you mentioned not needing lockpicks... is there any use in this game, or either of the sequels, for a thief? I'm trying to remember specific traps that can be disarmed and/or locks that cannot be opened any other way, and it's not coming to me. That could just be due to how long it's been since I played the trilogy, though. The second game has a few locks without keys, which means picking them is the only way to open some doors. Nothing vital is behind them. They also have another use in the third game, but there's another way of dealing with that. In this game, all locks from level 6 on are completely unpickable as far as I can tell. I did pick some redundant locks on level 5 to use the key I got there for another optional door. vilkacis posted:I remembered the scepter showing up much earlier than this, like, the spider section of the dwarf area maybe? Not sure why. Also no idea if it does anything The stone scepter is found on level 4, and they look the same when on the ground. You're probably thinking of that.
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Aug 22, 2021 05:41
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achtungnight posted:Rust Monsters? Ah, the bane of many a D&D party. I recall once being part of a group that attempted genocide against them. We ended up facing a Legendary Extra-Planar Rust Monster Progenitor of Colossal size that we had to use nearly a whole iron mine to kill. Good times. 
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Aug 22, 2021 11:03
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JustJeff88 posted:is there any use in this game, or either of the sequels, for a thief? However, EOB2 has quite a few pickable doors that lack dedicated keys so only a thief can open them, giving access to some good things. Also, color me surprised that in a game that ignores so many of the more niche mechanics of AD&D, the rust monsters work as intended. I don't think I ever saw that in my playthrough, but then again, the mere possibility of item loss/destruction is enough to make me unload heavy firepower on the offender. (yes, I do hate the thief-type monsters in DM with the fury rivaling the fire of a thousand burning suns, why do you ask? Which also makes grinding them for money in DM2 all the more satisfying  )
Pierzak fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Aug 22, 2021 |
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Aug 22, 2021 14:14
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Tiggum posted:Rust monsters led to a running joke among my friends and I in primary school. The first time we encountered one, one of my friends had the utterly brilliant idea to claim that his weapons were made of stainless steel and therefore unrustable. From that point on, if we wanted our weapons to be indestructible (or able to cut through any material) we'd simply say they were made of stainless steel. The absurdity is that rust monster are so "powerful" that their power could rust even mithril or adamantium, the uber metal of many settings. In fact those metal are its favourite food, or at least the Monster Manual says so. The joke was that putting the usually low level monster against far more powerful adventurers, charged with powerful (and expensive) armours and weapons: seeing the 15 lev. palain with holy sword and full plate armour running away from an overgrown cockroach was exhilarating.
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Aug 22, 2021 18:57
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Rust Monsters are a great example of the "gently caress you" design of classic D&D and it's sort of one of the elements I miss, although it's the kind of thing that really needed to be used sparingly. Something that threatens players on an axis other than HP damage makes for an interesting encounter dynamic (hell with Rust Monsters you might want to send your wizard in to tank because they aren't wearing anything made of metal), but yeah their ability to ruin absurdly expensive things could very quickly lead to making a character useless for a very long time.
The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Aug 23, 2021 |
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Aug 22, 2021 19:48
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Rust Monsters are a great example of the "gently caress you" design of classic D&D and it's sort of one of the elements I miss, although it's the kind of thing that really needed to be used sparingly. Something that threatens players on an axis other than HP damage makes for an interesting encounter dynamic (hell with Rust Monsters you might want to send your wizard in to tank because they aren't wearing anything made of metal), but yeah their ability to ruin absurdly expensive things could very quickly lead to making a character useless for a very long time. Funny enough, they make fantastic companions to druids and others that don't worry so much about using metal gear! That, combined with pretty good natural AC and hit dice, AND the fact that even attacking them with metal weapons can destroy them instantly, make them pretty excellent little pals if you don't mind the whole metal business! Certainly, you'd love to have them along if you're going against, for instance, a duergar fortress or band of iron golems or the like! And of course, if you DON'T like them, they can expressly be lured away from you by flinging daggers or coins down a side path and booking it. Xorns are another funny critter, because their obvious purpose is to show up and attempt to mug/intimidate the party into giving them their gems (and they are very nasty as enemies since they can phase through earth and stone to bite you from beneath), but could, in return, give you details about whatever place you're exploring.. maybe even be persuaded to pull levers, filch keys, or even obtain magic items for you from elsewhere in the dungeon. Of course, all that sort of play cannot be emulated in a video game without it already being pre-defined, so you just end up facing piles of monsters that often have much more clever solutions to handle than just 'hit with weapon until it stops moving'. I'd much sooner use either of those than the BS that is rot grubs or green slime, because instant death with no save and no realistic chance of even knowing something's wrong until you're already dead is anti-fun. It's one thing to put nasty traps, like poisoned oil on the doorknobs or having motes of quicklime float around in a previously closed room, it's another entirely to use total cop-out 'you're DEAD now, the book says you are dead and cannot be resurrected, now roll a new guy!' type creatures.
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Aug 23, 2021 18:45
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Not that you need creatures for that of course. Divine smiting works just as well, as does "Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies." But any Game Master who does that is not a good Game Master, no matter how much the players pissed them off.
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Aug 23, 2021 19:24
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Chronische posted:Funny enough, they make fantastic companions to druids and others that don't worry so much about using metal gear! That, combined with pretty good natural AC and hit dice, AND the fact that even attacking them with metal weapons can destroy them instantly, make them pretty excellent little pals if you don't mind the whole metal business! Certainly, you'd love to have them along if you're going against, for instance, a duergar fortress or band of iron golems or the like! And of course, if you DON'T like them, they can expressly be lured away from you by flinging daggers or coins down a side path and booking it. I always remember Xorns from NetHack because their ability to eat metal makes them a very popular form to polymorph into to acquire intrinsics by eating rings, since when you do that you get whatever bonus the ring normally gives you as just a permanent attribute to your character.
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Aug 23, 2021 19:40
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Pierzak posted:Yes. I don't know if they're any use at all in EOB1, but if they are, it's something like "pick the lock you could brute force with a high-Str character", so whatever. Fluff element. The way they say "MINE!" is etched in my brain The axemen will throw all the money you'll ever need at you Lady Jaybird fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Aug 27, 2021 |
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Aug 26, 2021 04:49
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EOTB 9: Moss, Mantis Men, Meetings, Mind Flayers Welcome to level 10. We're greeted by a mantis warrior. They are extremely fast, and attack the instant they are facing your party in melee range. What's more, their hits can paralyze. The Remove Paralysis spell will be valuable in the next couple of levels.  The manual neglects to mention their ability to paralyze, instead describing their completely mundane halberds as if they're something exotic. They can drop those or daggers.  Speaking of weapons, three of them must be left on pressure plates to open a door to the north. Once again the staff doesn't seem to count as a weapon for this purpose. I use the cursed axe from level 5, the actually good axe Drow Cleaver, and Night Stalker, since this game's power creep has spiked to such a degree that +3 weapons are now throwaways.  Doors here look like this, by the way.  In a section north from the central hallway, we find the remains of the ranger Tyrra as well as a key.  This room is at the end of that central hallway. Pressing this button will hit you with a fireball. Another button next to the message "In case of fire..." will hit you with an Ice Storm. Just ignore them and use the key from earlier to unlock the southern door.  That leads to a short hallway with a message that will hit your party with a fireball when you read it.  What it really leads to is Shindia, the game's only female drow who led the attack on the dwarves. If you select "Kill her" she'll fight back. That option and letting her go result in no further words, so let's hear her out:  The room Shindia is encountered in has both of level 10's stone portals. The scepter portal to level 8 is on the west wall, and the ring portal to level 6 is on the east. There are doors to the north of each leading to small rooms.  The east room has three shelves. The alcoves next to them are initially occupied by mantis warriors, who can be lured out one at a time. This is level 10's special quest. Take the items from the shelves (scroll of Flame Blade, Potion of Poison, Wand of Frost), and replace them with kenku eggs (the level 6 portal is near the nest room). This will spawn another four mantis warriors in the alcoves, so save the north one for last and retreat quickly to avoid getting surrounded. Each of them will drop a ring: one Feather Fall, one Sustenance, and two Rings of Protection +2.  South from the portal room is a long hallway with seven teleporters, each with a lever next to it. The levers will change their destinations, but it's much simpler if you don't. Simply go into the first teleporter, then stepping east from there will land you on a plate at the end that removes all of them.  Getting past the teleporters leads to plate mail and stairs to this isolated portion of level 9.  West of the portal room, we release the captive dwarf prince. Voiced version here.  Using the portal to level 6, we bring him back to his people.   We also revive Tyrra.  Our new companions:  We return to level 10 via the north entrance, which is a more direct path to level 11.  A slight detour to this pixel hunt of a button, opening a room with a scroll of Cone of Cold.  This pit is the only way into level 11. Shelves on the east and west walls have a Potion of Giant Strength and a Ring of Feather Fall. With three of those rings and three Aid spells, I take the plunge.   The starting area of level 11 is three concentric squares with a stone portal in the middle. Each square has a message, a star, an opening, and a button that changes which sides they are on. The messages in the middle and outer layers read "Leave no stone unturned." and "Alignment must be true" respectively. The goal is to get the stars and openings on each wall on the same side. Doing so will remove a wall in front of a door on the open side.  In the outer square I find this rock, which is +2.  I line everything up to go west. There I find this pre-identified longsword and banded armor +3. That's the best individual body armor in this game, though plate mail paired with a Ring of Protection is equal to or better than it (they don't stack with magic armor).  A door in the north path brings our first level 11 monster, the xorn. They hit hard and are hard to hit, but attack very slowly. There's another +2 rock in this room.  South from that door, we find the potion needed to cure the dwarf king. You can have one of your characters drink it, and from experimenting I've found that it cures poison. But it's best used for its actual intended purpose.  The room that potion is found in is also the location of level 11's special quest. This room is at the end of a hallway with eight levers, some of which change the positions of others. If you can get all of them up (just click each one once from its initial position starting from the north), there will be a Wand of Frost on the shelf, but that's not what the quest is.  Put any scroll on the shelf, and arrange the levers so that only those second ones from each end are up, and that scroll will become this one.  The northeast section of level 11 has a whole bunch of xorns in it. They never enter that middle tile, so you can go in and retreat to take them out one by one. That method is of course slow. This part is the biggest stumbling block for speedruns, since there's really no reliably fast way to get through it.  After getting past the xorns, you need to find and press this hidden button.  The room it opens up has this, the only way in and out of level 12. The portal it activates is not the one at the beginning. The key for that one is also in level 11. Speaking of which, it's now time to open up the east path from there.    This section introduces level 11's other monster, the mind flayer. As you can see, they can do a lot of damage if a hit lands - I think it might be percentage based, but I'm not sure. They can also paralyze multiple characters with their psionic powers. Note that Ileria's spell menu is still open despite being paralyzed. Using a spellbook or holy symbol beforehand can enable you to cast through paralysis. They have 90% magic resistance, so using offensive spells is pretty much pointless. They all inhabit 2x2 or 2x3 rooms and go down pretty quickly to physical attacks, though meeting them at the entrance can be a problem.  Here we find the remains of the mage Kirath, our final party member for this game. He was pretty decked out: in addition to the spellbook, there is a Robe of Defense (+5), Bracers of Defense +2, a Ring of Protection +2 (doesn't stack with the other two), and a +5 dagger named Flicka. We also find the key for the portal at the beginning. It goes to the hub in level 7, with easy access to the oracles and the dwarf cleric.  The room with Kirath's remains was also occupied by a mind flayer, the likely cause of his death. It dropped a regular robe. I'm finally showing what Detect Magic does. Since robes are all blue in the first place, you still can't really tell the magical one apart. Before coming here, I opened up the south path from the level 11 starting area. From there I went through a series of square rooms with hidden teleporters and collected some items. These include a Wand of Lightning, a second Luckstone Medallion, and a scroll of Hold Monsters. I'll go into spells a bit more next time when we finally have another mage. Alpha3KV fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Dec 31, 2021 |
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Aug 28, 2021 22:01
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I once had a character who challenged every Thri-Kreen he met to a kung fu duel. Not sure he ever met one who knew what he was talking about. Did you forget to include a picture of the brain-eating aberration, aka Mind Flayer?
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Aug 28, 2021 22:13
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Alpha3KV posted:instead describing their completely mundane halberds as if they're something exotic. They can drop those or daggers.
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Aug 28, 2021 22:19
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I wonder who's gonna get dropped for our new mage. Hopefully not Keigar, he seems important to the plot.
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Aug 28, 2021 22:24
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achtungnight posted:Did you forget to include a picture of the brain-eating aberration, aka Mind Flayer? Ah yes, don't know how I missed that. It's fixed now. wafflemoose posted:I wonder who's gonna get dropped for our new mage. Hopefully not Keigar, he seems important to the plot. His plot significance has already ended. He doesn't even have anything to add when his father is saved.
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Aug 28, 2021 22:55
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Keirgar does kick rear end, though, look at that strength! Barring insane luck, that's about as good as a starting 2nd ed character can ever hope for.
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Aug 28, 2021 23:39
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I'm mostly sure that the reason that the Mind Flayer did 82 damage to that one female characters (one more hit point than her maximum) is to simulate what flayers do in pen & paper, which is to paralyse with their cone of mind blast and then eat the brain of their helpless victim. This latter attack is, naturally, quite fatal.
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Aug 28, 2021 23:53
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