Well, releasing it in the short-term almost surely results in your horrible death, so that's definitely an end-game effect.Releasing the Vrock will have effect in end-game.
That is definitely true of randomdrop loot, but not true of staticly placed loot.Also, since loot despawn, you probably wont be able to take items you left behind.
In that case, after we level up enough to take such a thing, we must check out this cake.From what I remember, the cake is not a lie.
Well, releasing it in the short-term almost surely results in your horrible death, so that's definitely an end-game effect.
And of course, it is possible to keep the advisor alive. You'd probably need to cast the Web spell on him, not the mad king. But it's doable, if not easy.
Yeah, that absolutely does not help for those forced-teleport battles because...Someone needs to take improved initiative for their next feat
Actually, TOEE is more generous there than the core rules. In core rules, if you do this, you get a FREE surprise round of nukes, *AND* you get to roll for initiative and if you win THAT, you get to attack AGAIN. TOEE does not have surprise rounds, so you receive only first strike, after which you are last forever. KOTC, on rare occasions, actually permits you to DO this double-nuke attack, when you are permitted to manually initiate combat.Your comment about going into combat mode and then opening the door is cheesy as hell, by the way, as it'd effectively bypass the whole "roll for initiative" bit. Kinda ruins the game, actually.
Honestly, I never noticed the pathfinding being really atrocious. I guess it could be really bad if you simply blobmoved your entire group at once in the general direction of hostile territory, as opposed to advancing with scouting units first.ToEE may have had custom formations, but it also had some of the worst fucking pathing. Cleaning out the bugbears under the moathouse was so fucking annoying due to the engine.
Improved Initiative isn't even really productive. Moving in the wrong order is almost as counterproductive as moving last. The "Delay" move in KOTC is, again, much inferior to the TOEE version (which is the Core Rules method). In KOTC, if you delay, you are dead last. In core rules, you can merely be as slow as the slowest person in the group. Improved Initiative is frequently of little help if you get to move first, only to be stuck going last anyway because you have to wait until someone gets out of the way, or for enemies to actually move into range in the first place.Improved initiative helps (personally, I always take it ASAP when replaying KotC), but you can still lose your roll (and you will). Too much randomness + not being able to afford RNG trolling means one has to grind, grind, grind so one can be sure of winning even when RNG really wants you dead. And grinding in a game like KotC, well, is really boring. :>
Yeah, that absolutely does not help for those forced-teleport battles because...Someone needs to take improved initiative for their next feat
Actually, TOEE is more generous there than the core rules. In core rules, if you do this, you get a FREE surprise round of nukes, *AND* you get to roll for initiative and if you win THAT, you get to attack AGAIN. TOEE does not have surprise rounds, so you receive only first strike, after which you are last forever. KOTC, on rare occasions, actually permits you to DO this double-nuke attack, when you are permitted to manually initiate combat.Your comment about going into combat mode and then opening the door is cheesy as hell, by the way, as it'd effectively bypass the whole "roll for initiative" bit. Kinda ruins the game, actually.
Honestly, I never noticed the pathfinding being really atrocious. I guess it could be really bad if you simply blobmoved your entire group at once in the general direction of hostile territory, as opposed to advancing with scouting units first.ToEE may have had custom formations, but it also had some of the worst fucking pathing. Cleaning out the bugbears under the moathouse was so fucking annoying due to the engine.
The other thing the game really lacks is the option for recon by fire. SO many times I have done this in the Infinity Engine games, lobbing fireballs blindly into a room just to flush out any ambushes.
Improved Initiative isn't even really productive. Moving in the wrong order is almost as counterproductive as moving last. The "Delay" move in KOTC is, again, much inferior to the TOEE version (which is the Core Rules method). In KOTC, if you delay, you are dead last. In core rules, you can merely be as slow as the slowest person in the group. Improved Initiative is frequently of little help if you get to move first, only to be stuck going last anyway because you have to wait until someone gets out of the way, or for enemies to actually move into range in the first place.Improved initiative helps (personally, I always take it ASAP when replaying KotC), but you can still lose your roll (and you will). Too much randomness + not being able to afford RNG trolling means one has to grind, grind, grind so one can be sure of winning even when RNG really wants you dead. And grinding in a game like KotC, well, is really boring. :>
True, but the computer games also give you a ridiculously huge number of enemies you're expected to kill. Why, just the bodycount you log in a single level often exceeds the bodycount of an entire PnP campaign.I guess I'm showing that most of my experience is through computer adaptations. Considering that computer games will mainly consist of static actors, it's just way too fucking easy to get a surprise round in every fucking battle.
But it would be the GOOD kind of significant work.Now, in a pen and paper game where the actors *aren't* static, those rules wouldn't be too much in favour of the player as it'd actually require a significant amount of work to get a surprise round off.
I dunno, it's far easier to design around a fixed assumption of the player shooting first, since this is a constant factor: Designing the game around force-teleports results in extremely lame fake-difficulty where you either instantly die in the first round before you even get to move, or a cakewalk. On top of that, it's ANNOYING. Any fixed factor such as "player shoots first" can always be accounted for in design. You KNOW how that's going to play out: Designing with that assumption in mind, I'd just put all the "things that shouldn't be potshotted in the opening round" far enough back behind some ablative chaff or even cover. It's basically the same kind of stuff you plan for when defending a room in real life: The attacker is always going to have initiative, because the decision of whether and when to attack belongs to the attacker.If given the choice between forced-teleport battles or having encounters designed with the assumption that the player will always get the first shot, I'll choose the former. On a similar note, it's the same reason I don't mind the fact that KotC doesn't allow pre-buffing.
I didn't actually notice that as a real problem, in all honesty: It's not actually true that enemies could noclip through all of your defenders, just that without rigid grids, the amount of space you had to take up to create a solid impassable wall was much tighter. If you created an extremely dense formation of tightly packed defenders, you could still create an impassable wall. It just wasn't quite as easy as with 5' grids: Instead of one or even two guys being able to render an entire 10' passage totally impassable to enemies, you needed 4 or 5 guys in a dense phalanx. It was still entirely possible to cockblock larger enemies like ogres at narrow passages.Moving over open ground wasn't *too* bad, but the gridless layout completely fucked over pathing in tight spaces. The shitty pathing forced the decision to allow units to move through friendlies. That then completely fucked up many tactical options that rely on using character positioning as a means for crowd control.
I guess that depends on how loud of a boom fireballs game. According to RAW, fireballs aren't really an actual EXPLOSION and therefore do not produce loud overpressure blasts audible to everyone. On the other hand, there is absolutely no reason the actors have to be static. Even in this game, it isn't true...you'll see in the next update as I piss off an entire town. And the resulting battle? Awesome. Maybe not quite "pissing off all of Drassen" awesome, but still awesome.A fair complaint. But this draws back to the fact that, in most computer games, you're dealing primarily with static actors. So, while in some situations this should be a very viable strategy, you shouldn't be able to clear out every room in an orc fort with a single fireball because the orcs were too fucking deaf to hear your dozen earlier ones.
Because I took it already, and it didn't help, because of the aforementioned above points. The battles where initiative even has an influence aren't the ones that matter. It's those annoying "let's teleport the entire party into a position where there are enemies all around you" battles where you die, and BECAUSE the game force-teleports you in, the enemy gets that free round of attack.So often you're complaining about your wizard being taken out in the first round of combat. How the *hell* is getting an additional +4 initiative not going to help survivability? The points on the "Delay" move in KotC are valid (I haven't played in a while, to be honest), but it doesn't change the fact that having your arcane caster win initiative will significantly improve their survivability.
True, but the computer games also give you a ridiculously huge number of enemies you're expected to kill. Why, just the bodycount you log in a single level often exceeds the bodycount of an entire PnP campaign.I guess I'm showing that most of my experience is through computer adaptations. Considering that computer games will mainly consist of static actors, it's just way too fucking easy to get a surprise round in every fucking battle.
But it would be the GOOD kind of significant work.Now, in a pen and paper game where the actors *aren't* static, those rules wouldn't be too much in favour of the player as it'd actually require a significant amount of work to get a surprise round off.
I dunno, it's far easier to design around a fixed assumption of the player shooting first, since this is a constant factor: Designing the game around force-teleports results in extremely lame fake-difficulty where you either instantly die in the first round before you even get to move, or a cakewalk. On top of that, it's ANNOYING. Any fixed factor such as "player shoots first" can always be accounted for in design. You KNOW how that's going to play out: Designing with that assumption in mind, I'd just put all the "things that shouldn't be potshotted in the opening round" far enough back behind some ablative chaff or even cover. It's basically the same kind of stuff you plan for when defending a room in real life: The attacker is always going to have initiative, because the decision of whether and when to attack belongs to the attacker.If given the choice between forced-teleport battles or having encounters designed with the assumption that the player will always get the first shot, I'll choose the former. On a similar note, it's the same reason I don't mind the fact that KotC doesn't allow pre-buffing.
I didn't actually notice that as a real problem, in all honesty: It's not actually true that enemies could noclip through all of your defenders, just that without rigid grids, the amount of space you had to take up to create a solid impassable wall was much tighter. If you created an extremely dense formation of tightly packed defenders, you could still create an impassable wall. It just wasn't quite as easy as with 5' grids: Instead of one or even two guys being able to render an entire 10' passage totally impassable to enemies, you needed 4 or 5 guys in a dense phalanx. It was still entirely possible to cockblock larger enemies like ogres at narrow passages.Moving over open ground wasn't *too* bad, but the gridless layout completely fucked over pathing in tight spaces. The shitty pathing forced the decision to allow units to move through friendlies. That then completely fucked up many tactical options that rely on using character positioning as a means for crowd control.
I guess that depends on how loud of a boom fireballs game. According to RAW, fireballs aren't really an actual EXPLOSION and therefore do not produce loud overpressure blasts audible to everyone. On the other hand, there is absolutely no reason the actors have to be static. Even in this game, it isn't true...you'll see in the next update as I piss off an entire town. And the resulting battle? Awesome. Maybe not quite "pissing off all of Drassen" awesome, but still awesome.A fair complaint. But this draws back to the fact that, in most computer games, you're dealing primarily with static actors. So, while in some situations this should be a very viable strategy, you shouldn't be able to clear out every room in an orc fort with a single fireball because the orcs were too fucking deaf to hear your dozen earlier ones.
Because I took it already, and it didn't help, because of the aforementioned above points. The battles where initiative even has an influence aren't the ones that matter. It's those annoying "let's teleport the entire party into a position where there are enemies all around you" battles where you die, and BECAUSE the game force-teleports you in, the enemy gets that free round of attack.So often you're complaining about your wizard being taken out in the first round of combat. How the *hell* is getting an additional +4 initiative not going to help survivability? The points on the "Delay" move in KotC are valid (I haven't played in a while, to be honest), but it doesn't change the fact that having your arcane caster win initiative will significantly improve their survivability.
Maybe I should forge some Invulnerable Armor of Tankage. I remember putting that off because you have to be X level to start forging the actual real stuff, and not the inferior garbage versiions. But we've levelled up since then...I guess when that happens, the difficulty nosedives.
You're kidding, right? I *HAVE* Improved Initiative. IT DOESN'T DO SHIT. And luck USUALLY isn't the deciding factor in battles...except the kind where they teleport you straight into a deathtrap. When they have to actually approach you and maneuver to attack you rather than having all of that simply given to them for free, the battles become relatively easy.How is it fake? You haven't designed your character to reliably win initiative and are facing the consequence for that. I fail to see how the teleports and lack of pre-buffing aren't accounted for in the design, either. Save for the first couple of levels, luck shouldn't be the deciding factor in battles when using good character builds.
Surely you jest. TOEE's encounter design was far superior. You actually got to USE your character placement, rather than having it simply determined for you, generally in the most asinine method possible. You actually had the impression that you were Doing Something Tactical, rather than constantly just trying to salvage yet another enforced clusterfuck. And if something went horribly pear-shaped, it was somehow your fault, rather than a mess that you had zero actual input in because there is A: No way to bypass the encounter, with or without metagame information, and B: You don't actually get to do anything before you die.Pathing and character placement was one of the main reasons I abandoned my initial ToEE playthrough. It just played like complete and utter shit after the, in my opinion, amazing encounter design in KotC.
Never had that problem. If you position your guys as close as they can physically be, there are no leaks. If you leave any gap at all, it leaks. Fairly straightforward, really. And sometimes, you want that. TOEE really let you seriously punish enemies for trying it.It's also not just that they can no clip, but that you have no fucking idea if your character placement is adequate to prevent "leaks."
Really? Was it that bad? I mean, I found it straightforward. Enemies were over there, you were over here, and you pewpewed them.Combine that with the piss poor movement mechanics and it quickly becomes irritating. There's just no way to accurately measure with a gridless system, let alone the difficulties it obviously caused re:movement.
Well, what would they be doing instead? Presumably, a room full of orcs would be doing orcy, non-RPG-relevant things, hanging around in their rooms, occasionally patrolling between rooms, etc. If anything, anything else they could be doing would probably just decrease their actual readiness even more.I suppose "static" is a bit of an understatement. "Governed by incomplete scripts" would, perhaps, be better. They're "static" in the sense that they don't exist (or, at least, modeled) as living, breathing beings. Instead, they are nearly completely oblivious to their surroundings save for the occasional trigger (Like, say, how attacking a villager triggers the whole village to go hostile).
Very true. Games need to capture that more. Fireball would be so much more satisfying if it was accompanied by the anguished screams of the burning and the flailing around of the people you just set on fire. Instead, they just sort of take X fire damage and die instantly. I, for one, wouldn't mind if detonating a fireball pissed off the entire hive. It's not like such a reaction cannot be made. Back in JA2, I remember the fun of sneaking in, stabbing some guys in silence, then fortifying the crap out of a particularly defensible place in silence, before intentionally creating a disturbance to antagonize the entire hive and begin the turkey shoot, forcing enemies to run their way past a deadly gauntlet of exploding things to get at me.Even if the fireball itself isn't all that loud, the screams of the poor fuckers that are burning alive certainly are.
Initiative is always rolled anyway. It determines the order of who moves in the round after free fire. The round that doesn't happen because you are dead. Also, every single enemy has Improved Initiative anyway, so you gain no advantage by having it. You still get to move last anyway.I remember always having initiative rolled. Yes, even in those forced-teleport battles. Maybe there was the occasional exception, but I certainly don't remember them being the norm.