- The 2da files that were used on the original PoA are not all in place. This is deliberate because It seems strange that cloaks of elvenkind and rings of insight, to mention just two items, would otherwise be worth just 1gp. The downside is that there are major high level items which will be over level 20 on their usage requirements if things are left this way. I'm looking at tidying this up cleanly but will put the other 2da files in place if I don't have a solution before people get their grubby paws on them
The 1.69 patch has fixed some bugs that I think the original author of the mod had to code around. This has had a side effect of making certain areas of the mod harder to rest in then they should be. This may be slightly harder to sort out but is definitely on the to do list.
Minor update
Minor update
I've made a very minor update to the module, really just a check that my build toolset is working so that I'm in a position to fix any other problems if they appear. I'm aware of a few issues which I'll need to do something about:
Re: Minor update
It might not be connected to this update but I noticed the damage resistance is working... differently. From what I've seen it seems at the moment if you have let's say 5/- piercing damage resistance, and the thing you're fighting has a weapon which does piercing and slashing damage it will be treated as a slashing weapon and won't get soaked by the resistance.
From what I remember it used to be the other way round - 5/- piercing damage resistance would soak a piercing-slashing weapon.
I can't say which is better, since both these options seem logic: a weapon doing slashing and piercing damage at the same time can be soaked by piercing resistance, because that's the damage the weapon does... or: a weapon doing slashing and piercing damage at the same time can't be soaked by piercing resistance, because it does slashing damage.
I haven't played P&P D&D for a long time, I don't remember which is the "correct" one, however I am a bit worried about further encounters (abyss, coup for example), those might become truly impossible to go through.
Or I might be wrong assuming it has anything to do with weapon types, the symptoms are: Cesspool dragon uses its first attack, 20 damage gets soaked by the slashing resistance, the dragon uses its second attack - no damage is soaked by the slashing resistance - there's no line in the battle log about it, and the damage done is higher. My character had only slashing resistance (greater swordsman belt) on at that time.
From what I remember it used to be the other way round - 5/- piercing damage resistance would soak a piercing-slashing weapon.
I can't say which is better, since both these options seem logic: a weapon doing slashing and piercing damage at the same time can be soaked by piercing resistance, because that's the damage the weapon does... or: a weapon doing slashing and piercing damage at the same time can't be soaked by piercing resistance, because it does slashing damage.
I haven't played P&P D&D for a long time, I don't remember which is the "correct" one, however I am a bit worried about further encounters (abyss, coup for example), those might become truly impossible to go through.
Or I might be wrong assuming it has anything to do with weapon types, the symptoms are: Cesspool dragon uses its first attack, 20 damage gets soaked by the slashing resistance, the dragon uses its second attack - no damage is soaked by the slashing resistance - there's no line in the battle log about it, and the damage done is higher. My character had only slashing resistance (greater swordsman belt) on at that time.
Re: Minor update
As regards the damage resistance working differently, there was change in the 1.69 patch. To quote from the NWN Wiki:
In the special case of a weapon that deals more than one kind of physical damage, the lower of the resistances for those physical damage types is used. (Prior to version 1.69, the higher was used.)
I'm guessing Bioware must have decided that no one wanted to play clerics because they're such a weak, underpowered class and so took pity on them by making morningstars (1d8 of pierce and bludgeon damage) better than many weapons that require martial weapon proficiency.
As regards your battle with Cessie, that is more interesting. I thought resist worked on a per hit basis in that every time slashing damage was done a GSB would reduce the inflicted damage by 20. Maybe that's been changed to working only once per round or something strange. I can't find any reference though if such a change has been made. Certainly I've not intentionally changed this behavior. I'll try and do a test using the standard vpoa module on top of 1.69 with overrides in place to see if there is any difference, or would love to hear the result if anyone else gets a chance to do this sooner.
In the special case of a weapon that deals more than one kind of physical damage, the lower of the resistances for those physical damage types is used. (Prior to version 1.69, the higher was used.)
I'm guessing Bioware must have decided that no one wanted to play clerics because they're such a weak, underpowered class and so took pity on them by making morningstars (1d8 of pierce and bludgeon damage) better than many weapons that require martial weapon proficiency.
As regards your battle with Cessie, that is more interesting. I thought resist worked on a per hit basis in that every time slashing damage was done a GSB would reduce the inflicted damage by 20. Maybe that's been changed to working only once per round or something strange. I can't find any reference though if such a change has been made. Certainly I've not intentionally changed this behavior. I'll try and do a test using the standard vpoa module on top of 1.69 with overrides in place to see if there is any difference, or would love to hear the result if anyone else gets a chance to do this sooner.
Re: Minor update
Oh, excuse my ingnorance, then it seems they finally messed it up...
Did a few tests with all 2da's in place - the resting problem appears to be connected with 1.69 rather than 2da's.
And about Cessie - it's 1.69 as well. Most monsters have 3 weapons, each for each attack, while the 3rd is usually a bitting one (which does only slashing damage and got soaked by GSB), the first two are claw strikes, which happen to make slashing and piercing damage (I didn't have any piercing resistance - none of the damage got soaked). These 2 strikes won't get soaked until you have like Ancient Bracers and Belt on, or Battle Rangers or Astral Ring (which won't do much with 15/- and 10/- resistance, not to mention the trouble getting Battle Rangers thingies).
So basically Eternal Dragons are going to be quite impossible until Palace falls down a few times and that won't be happening anytime soon since with the spiders kicking the butt so hard and stuff critical hitting much more often a party of 4 isn't going to be enough without a great deal of luck. And the server is just picking up the society, so there's not that many players to pick from
Archers at Rhazid's fun place will definitely have more to say now with their Spirit Bows (piercing + slashing + bludgeoing)
Still, all those things can be solved with numbers of heal potions, the biggest issue remains the resting problem, you just can't get one in Manatakloss before your party dies
Did a few tests with all 2da's in place - the resting problem appears to be connected with 1.69 rather than 2da's.
And about Cessie - it's 1.69 as well. Most monsters have 3 weapons, each for each attack, while the 3rd is usually a bitting one (which does only slashing damage and got soaked by GSB), the first two are claw strikes, which happen to make slashing and piercing damage (I didn't have any piercing resistance - none of the damage got soaked). These 2 strikes won't get soaked until you have like Ancient Bracers and Belt on, or Battle Rangers or Astral Ring (which won't do much with 15/- and 10/- resistance, not to mention the trouble getting Battle Rangers thingies).
So basically Eternal Dragons are going to be quite impossible until Palace falls down a few times and that won't be happening anytime soon since with the spiders kicking the butt so hard and stuff critical hitting much more often a party of 4 isn't going to be enough without a great deal of luck. And the server is just picking up the society, so there's not that many players to pick from
Archers at Rhazid's fun place will definitely have more to say now with their Spirit Bows (piercing + slashing + bludgeoing)
Still, all those things can be solved with numbers of heal potions, the biggest issue remains the resting problem, you just can't get one in Manatakloss before your party dies
Re: Minor update
Hi Jag. Thanks for doing the research about the resistance stuff, especially about how Cessie was getting past that belt. That's very useful to me. 
The resting issue is definitely related to the 1.69 patch. As I understand it, when Tres was writing PoA he came up against a bug which meant that if he wanted a rest to have a certain chance to be interrupted, then he had to specify a much higher probability of this happening then he actually wanted. In patch 1.69 Bioware got around to fixing this bug so the artificially high chance of an interrupted spawn is now actually being used as the real figure. I'm now trying to work out how to lower the values back to sensible settings without breaking anything else...
The resting issue is definitely related to the 1.69 patch. As I understand it, when Tres was writing PoA he came up against a bug which meant that if he wanted a rest to have a certain chance to be interrupted, then he had to specify a much higher probability of this happening then he actually wanted. In patch 1.69 Bioware got around to fixing this bug so the artificially high chance of an interrupted spawn is now actually being used as the real figure. I'm now trying to work out how to lower the values back to sensible settings without breaking anything else...
Re: Minor update
I was helping someone new to the server last night who said they didn't have the expansions, so things seem to be working.kaltrip wrote: One other thing I'd like feedback on is if anyone without the expansions manages to log into the module successfully. I have a slight worry that the rebuild of the module may have stopped this being possible and if so I need to know so that I can fix it. You should be able to log in without either SoU or HotU installed.