TOEE - Oh, Me-he-he-helany

So, armed with my Holy Longsword +1 and an NPC druid wife, its time to start acting like real adventurers i.e. time to kill something!

The local wood craftsman is highly skilled and can create masterwork equipment. Masterwork weapons give you a +1 on your attack roll and are a pre-requisite if you want to craft magical weapons (or armor). However, in order to craft masterwork equipment, he needs good quality wood.

Fortunately for us, the local woodcutter informs us that there is a source of good quality wood in the nearby Deklo grove. Unfortunately, the grove is currently overrun with spiders. Hmm, not quite the easy "giant rat" fight that I'm used to getting as level 1 adventurers in D&D games but still, spiders should be easy to take out right?


Of course, they would be giant spiders...

Wow - two giant spiders for my first real fight. Granted, I outnumber the giant spiders by a factor of 3 but considering that my guys are level 1 and liable to go down in a single hit, lets just say I'm not exactly filled with confidence.

The other big threat from the spiders is that they can cast web which can really frak up your party. To counter this, and against the advice of Wizards of the Coast marketing campaign, I immediately split the party.

Sonora, my thief, goes straight for the top left spider while Meleny goes for the top right. By locking down the spiders in melee, we get an Attack of Opportunity if they cast the Web spell and a chance to disrupt their spellcasting. Jaheira, my druid, summons a wolf to help Meleny while the other PCs split up so that we wouldn't all get caught in a web just in case the spiders manage to successfully cast.


Two web spells later, both Coryn, my mage, and Meleny are locked down in webs.

My plan didn't work out exactly as I had hoped. Still, at least my melee fighter and cleric aren't locked down in web spells. Sir Galahad, my fighter, starts to head top right to help out Meleny. Unfortunately, the web spell also slows down movement so its slow going for him. Meanwhile, Falgur, my dwarven cleric, charges the top left spider.


Critical hit!

And wipes out the spider with 27 damage on a critical hit! What a start to my first real fight as adventurers! With one spider left, time to pile on and overrun him.


Or rather, pile on and get caught up in webs

Unfortunately, things don't go so well with the second spider. Due to its position, its in a natural bottleneck and only two melee characters can engage him at a time (three if you include Falgur who has long reach with his spear). Naturally, I found this out the hard way when I tried to send Sonora in to help out but found that she could only stand around helplessly. The web also gives me a -2 on my attack rolls so even hitting the spider is proving difficult.

Naturally, the spider doesn't have any trouble hitting us and as you can see, Meleny has already taken 8 damage (on one hit).


Poor Melany

I eventually manage to take out the spider but not before it hits Meleny one more time. For 10 damage.

Alas poor Meleny, I barely knew ye. But this does show you how lethal combat can be for 1st level adventurers in D&D.

TOEE - Arriving in Hommlet

First off, I should tell you not to worry too much by the header. Although I intend to do a series of posts on TOEE, I don't really intend to chronicle my passage through the game. What I plan is to capture screenshots of different combat situations I end up in as I go through the game and explain my approach to that encounter. Hopefully, it will serve as a series of posts which will illustrate the tactical diversity available in an RPG with turn based initiative mechanics and also provide some concrete reasons as to why its such a shame that more games like this aren't published.

With that said, watch as I now immediately deviate from the plan!

Early Origins
Its not much of a spoiler to tell you that TOEE is based on the classic D&D module released in 1985 and voted as one of the most popular D&D modules of all time. And just as with the original module, the meat of this game starts off in the village of Hommlet.

One of the interesting things that this game does though is start you off with an opening vignette which is based on your party alignment and which gives you a reason to travel to Hommlet in the first place. Although nowhere near as extensive as the origin stories in DAO, its quite cool that the game gives you this motivation to be in Hommlet instead of just plonking you down there and saying that you are looking for adventure.

The Neutral Good vignette starts you off in the capital city where, while wandering the streets at night, your party hears a scream in one of the side streets. Rushing over like the bunch of adventurers that you are, you come across a thief standing over the body of a woman. The thief is easily dispatched at which point you search the woman and find that she was the canoness of the church in Hommlet.


In the world of D&D, this should actually be - "if only my cleric was high enough level to cast raise dead..."

With a good alignment, your party decides that it should make the several day trek to a remote village to tell the church there that their canoness is dead. Yeaaah. I know we are 1st level adventurers and hence, poorer than spit, but still - couldn't we even afford to hire a messenger?


Before I know it, we have arrived in Hommlet

Believe it or not, the first thing to happen to my group after we arrive is that we get shaken down by the game's equivalent of the local mafia. We had headed straight for the church to tell them of the bad news whereupon we came across Calmert. Calmert is the administrator of the church and if we wanted to see Canon Terjon, we would have to pay 10gp as a "donation" to the family church.


Luckily, I had pumped some points into my intimidate skill

Seriously? I'm here to do you a favour and deliver some bad news and you ask for a donation? Well, guess what, I got two pieces of bad news for you then cos you ain't getting even a copper piece out of me!


The Raise Dead spell, while great in gameplay terms, is a real drama killer

Hommlet quests
The quests in the opening village of Hommlet are some of the best I've seen in a cRPG. Unfortunately, the very same quests are also some of the worst I've ever seen as well. How? Let me tell you what happened when I first arrived in Hommlet.

When I first arrived in Hommlet, I found my party on a dirt track leading into the heart of the village. The first house I wandered past had a bevy of kids as well as a relatively young grandmother who tells me that she felt it was a shame that two brothers, both of whom are farmers, are feuding over the limited space they have in their barn. A family feud - me senses the potential for some xp!

Walking across the street, I enter the house of Percy, one of the feuding brothers, who promptly complains about how his brother, Filliken, is taking up more than his fair share of space in the barn. Oh, if only someone could talk some sense into Filliken! The wife though, who seems eminently more sensible, has a great idea - why don't they build another barn!

So, I start heading towards the carpenter and along the way, come across Filliken. Who is immediately belligerent toward me as he believes that I am there at the request of his brother, Percy. Which, to be fair, was true. So, no luck in talking some sense into Filliken. I guess that leaves the carpenter.

I look up the local carpenter and ask him if he can build a new barn for the brothers. Unfortunately, the carpenter is busy and isn't willing to help the brothers out by building their barn first. Current estimate is for the barn to be built in around a years time. By now, I should have seen sense and left them to their devices but the munchkin in me wanted the quest xp.

Anyway, the carpenter has a brother called Marek who tells me that he is in love with Althea, the eldest daughter of Filliken. Unfortunately, the carpenters were new in town and members of the Church. Filliken, being old blood, was a member of the Old Faith and before the two young lovers could be wed, Marek would need to convert to the Old Faith. Alas for poor Marek, Jaroo (the local druid) wasn't willing to perform the conversion on Marek.

Ah - true love. How could any hopeless romantic like myself not help out? So, off to see Jaroo to find out why he wasn't willing to help out these young lovers.

It turns out that Jaroo would love to perform the conversion of Marek to Old Faith. The problem is that he is trying to maintain a neutral relationship with the local Church so he won't actually perform the conversion unless he has the blessing of the local Church. At this point, its worth mentioning that this is the same Church that tried to shake me down when I was doing them a favour. Yeah - I'm sure they would be willing to do a good deed.

The Church was not willing to sanction the conversion of Marek to Old Faith (quelle surprise). Unless I could get someone else to convert to the Church and maintain the balance of power in Hommlet. To this end, the Church tells me that Jakk Borton, a local leather merchant, would be a good choice as they have been trying to get him to convert for a while without any success.

So, after quickly changing into my Jehovah's witness shirt, we trek across the village once more as we head out to find Jakk Borton and convince him to join the Church. Naturally, things aren't that easy. After finding Jakko, he tells us that he will only convert to the Church if the Church's God can perform a miracle. Not just any miracle though but a healing miracle on his brother-in-law, Bing, who used to help him in the shop.

Alas, the Canon Terjon is not willing to perform this miracle. The canon actually says that he doesn't have the ability to cast a Heal spell but this is a blatant lie as I find a scroll of Heal in his belongings. Some quick thievery later and I am armed with a Heal spell with which I can cure Bing's sickness! Finally, some progress in resolving this family feud (you do remember that all this is so that I can resolve the family feud right?).

After Bing is healed, Jakko declares his undying loyalty to the Church. The Church then approves the conversion of Marek to Old Faith. Jaroo then completes the conversion and Marek and Althea start planning their wedding. As Filliken is now family, the carpenter is willing to build the barn first. Awesome! Suddenly, everything is falling into place and the feuding brothers will soon have a barn each!

Except not. Naturally, things aren't quite that easy. Although the carpenter is willing to prioritise the building of the barn, he still requires someone to pay for it. Unfortunately, Filliken, who is a stubborn old fool isn't willing to pay for the barn as he thinks that Percy should pay for it. And no, Percy isn't willing to pay for it either. But again, Percy's wife comes to the rescue!

She tells me that Mathilde, the old grandmother I first met, is actually in love with Filliken. Furthermore, Mathilde is loaded so she could easily pay for the barn. Once more unto the breach as we brave the streets of the village looking for Mathilde.

We find Mathilde and sure enough, she would be willing to pay for the barn. Huzzah! Alas, she tells me that Filliken has rejected her advances. Boo!!

Off to Filliken to find out why. Turns out that, although Filliken also likes Mathilde, the stupid old sod believes that he is still in a period of mourning for his dead wife. His wife died over a year ago and Filliken can't remarry under the rules of Old Faith.

Even to my simple eyes, that sounded like a bullshit excuse. But what I needed was proof. So off to Jaroo again to confirm the rules of marriage under Old Faith. Jaroo clarifies that the period of mourning need only last one year at which point people are free (nay, encouraged!) to remarry and have children. In other words, Filliken is free to remarry and has no more excuses.

And with that last obstacle out of the way, Filliken agrees to marry Mathilde. Mathilde in turn, is willing to pay for a new barn and I finally manage to solve the feuding brothers quest. Huzzah!!

Wow - what a quest.

On one hand, this is an awesome quest in that it is so involved. In addition, the solution to the quest is not a simple one and considering the hoops you have to jump through, its no surprise that the villagers themselves never actually managed to resolve it themselves. Which is part of why I love this quest.

So many cRPGs have you doing simple fedex quests where you walk across the street, talk to an NPC and then bam - quest solved. At the end of it, you just sit there and wonder why these morons couldn't have resolved the quest themselves. I mean, all they had to do was walk across the street!

On the other hand, this quests involves you running back and forth across Hommlet numerous times which is really time consuming and soul destroying when you just want to get into combat and kick some ass. Never mind the fact that my party of adventurers, who go around killing monsters to help protect civilisation from the evil cults that value anarchy, ends up spending their time playing Cupid. Really? Geez, I really hope the evil cult doesn't complete their plan for world domination while I'm running around plinking love arrows into people...

Awesome Sword is awesome
Anyway, with all of that running around Hommlet, I actually spent a fair amount of time in Fillikens home. Filliken actually has two daughters in this game. The first is Althea who is in love with Marek. The second is Meleny who became very friendly after I talked to her a couple of times. And when I say very friendly, I mean "farmer's daughter" friendly...

Alas for me, I cannot consummate until Althea is married. Basically, Filliken is old school and won't even consider any hijinks with Meleny until his older daughter is married. Of course, this problem is resolved as part of the feuding brother quest as Althea is free to shack up with Marek. This in turn, leaves me free to shack up with Meleny (who is a level 1 druid).

But shacking up with Meleny is really just icing and is not my main objective. What I really want is the awesome family heirloom that I get for marrying Meleny. Filliken has a Holy Longsword +1 which he gives to me after my agreement to marry his daughter.

Naturally, he makes me promise to look after her.


After all the trouble I went through with his family feud, I can guarantee you that she will get what she deserves...

Temple of Elemental Evil

Well, despite what I said in my Fallout 3 review, I haven't been able to resist the lure of Temple of Elemental Evil and as such, Hitman: Blood Money continues to sit on my shelf waiting for its chance to shine. The thing is, although I enjoyed playing Fallout 3, I've always preferred party based RPGs where you have different PCs taking on different roles. Add in the fact that I've recently been re-listening to the D&D podcasts created by Penny Arcade, PvP and Wil Wheaton and you can probably understand why I've been itching to get back to a very traditional swords and sorcery style RPG.

However, by far the biggest draw for me is that Temple of Elemental Evil features a party going into combat using turn based initiative mechanics. I honestly cannot remember the last time I played such a game. Even the famed infinity engine, which was the basis of my all time favourite cRPG Baldur's Gate 2, wasn't able to scratch this itch as it wasn't a turn based engine (although it was able to capture the feel of D&D game mechanics extremely well).

As a result, after the payment of a mere USD6 to gog.com, I am now the proud owner of TOEE. Naturally, the first thing I did was to download and install the Circle of Eight modpack which fixes many of the bugs in the original game as well as tweaking the rules to make them even more compliant with 3.5e rules. Oh yeah, it also includes a ton of new content (gotta love mod communities!).

I've spent the last week mucking around with the game to get a feel for how the game plays (I even briefly recreated Acquisitions Incorporated ingame for kicks). Bear in mind that I've never played a 3.5e game before so it was important to get a feel for some of the differences (such as clerics being allowed to use bladed weapons!). I'm now ready to start the game properly and you can find the party I intend to use below.

Sir Galahad
Sir Galahad is my sword and board tank. I intend to start him off as a fighter to grab some extra feats and then multi-class him to Paladin to get the Paladin bonuses. I've been a huge fan of the Paladin class since the BG days so having a Paladin in my group was pretty much a no-brainer.


Granted, I had to reroll 81 times but check out those stats!

As you can see from the stats, Sir Galahad is a king among men. As a general rule, I did take the extra time to reroll stats until I managed to get some good ones but even with this in mind, the stats that I managed to get for Sir Galahad are beyond belief. Its probably a good thing I created him last otherwise I would have spent way too much time trying to get similar stats for my other PCs! Anyway, with stats like these, I naturally named him Sir Galahad (who, if you know your Arthurian legends, was the knight who found the Holy Grail).

Falgur Nalbek
Falgur is my backup melee fighter and main healer. I have armed him with a great spear which has 10" reach so that he can stand safely behind my tank during combat. This will allow him to still attack the same target as Sir Galahad while being close enough to heal Sir Galahad if the need arises.


With a Con score of 20, Falgur could have as much hp as Sir Galahad!

One of the nice things about 3.5e clerics is that they don't actually need to select any healing spells. Good aligned clerics can spontaneously change any existing memorised spell to an equivalent level healing spell at the time of casting. This is pretty awesome as it allows you to memorise and play around with other spells without fear of not having enough healing.

Jaheira
Jaheira will act as a backup divine spellcaster. I didn't initially plan on having a druid but in my initial muck-around, I found that all of my clerics spells were spent on healing. The druid will help alleviate this problem and hopefully allow me to cast some of the other divine spells in this game (I did consider having 2 clerics but felt that would be a bit boring).


I admit it - I just couldn't resist naming her after one of my fav NPCs in BG

One of the cool things in this game is that they have partially recreated the crafting system in 3.5e. Unfortunately, crafting magical items, scrolls and potions generally requires an XP cost. Having Jaheira in the group will allow me to create scrolls and potions based on divine spells without my main cleric taking the XP hit.

Coryn
Coryn is my artillery. His role is to stand back and blast enemies from afar. Sorceror is the preferred class for this as he doesn't need to memorise spells hence he can cast as many of the right type of spells as he needs. I also made him an elf so that I could get the free longbow proficiency for cases where I don't want to waste a spell.


With a face like that, I was soooo tempted to call him Edwin...

Of course, the difficulty for me will be in making sure that I pick the right spells. As sorcerors can only learn limited spells, picking the right spell at level up is critical. This wasn't as big an issue in BG2 as, by the time I played a sorceror in BG2, I was already intimately familiar with the game.

Sonora Lothiriel
A rogue to round out the party and to deal with traps and act as the face man for the party. As with the sorceror, Sonora is an elf in order to benefit from the free longbow proficiency as well as the +2 dexterity bonus.



I also intend to multiclass to a wizard after getting several rogue levels. I understand that traps aren't a huge deal in this game so 2-3 rogue levels will hopefully be enough to see me through. Meanwhile, the additional wizard levels will allow Sonora to act as a backup artillery caster as well as taking the xp hit for crafting items and scrolls.

Knights of the Chalice

I mentioned recently that I was interested in playing Temple of Elemental Evil primarily because the combat in that game is very much based the D&D turn based ruleset. Unfortunately, very few turn based tactical games are released these days which is a real shame as turn based games tend to have a very different play style to real time games.

However, as I was thinking about TOEE, something occured to me. One of the comments made about the 4e D&D ruleset was that it was much more easily transferable to a cRPG format. Although no publisher is going to greenlight a AAA turn based game, it was very possible that an indie developer may have made a turn based rpg using the D20 OGL licence.

And after a bit of digging around, I managed to find Knights of the Chalice. In essence, its an indie game based on the older 3.5e D20 licence but what really caught my eye were some of the comments around how complete the help file explained 3.5e rules and how well the game had managed to adapt the 3.5e licence. So it was with great anticipation that I downloaded the demo.

Unfortunately, after playing around with the demo, I uninstalled it. The problem is that the game doesn't appear to be very well balanced. For example, you can only rest your party at designated campsites. You don't get the option of trying to rest in a dungeon but risk being interrupted by monsters. Couple in the fact that, according to comments, quite a few dungeons seal off the entrance after you get in and you can already easily imagine your party going up against the end boss with few spells and limited hitpoints.

But this wasn't what made me uninstall the demo.

While playing the demo, my party of 4 were wandering down a corrider when we were ambushed by bandits. Our party was caught by surprise and lost the initiative battle so the bandits got in 2 turns before my team would be able to act. Two lightning bolts from their mage later and I was left with a mage who had to fight off 6 bandits on his own. This all happened before I got a chance to do anything.

Now, I am generally up for a challenge in terms of gameplay but from my limited playtime with the demo, this game just feels like it would be frustratingly difficult. Furthermore, the game is selling for GBP14.95. Quite frankly, I would much rather pay less money for TOEE and get what is probably a much more balanced game.