Altered Thac0 Table
Reddbane
Member Posts: 222
Is there any Mods that give the Thief and Bard the Cleric Thac0 progression and upgrade the Mage/Sorcerer Thac0 to vanilla Rogue progression, both like in 3.5? I know about the unnerfed Thac0 table but all that really does is make late game rogues more combat viable. If there is not, how would I go about modifying it myself?
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Level: Thac0 Thac0
1 20 20
2 20 19
3 19 18
4 18 17
5 17 16
6 17 15
7 16 14
8 15 13
9 14 12
10 14 11
11 13 10
12 12 9
13 11 8
14 11 7
15 10 6
16 9 5
17 8 4
18 8 3
19 7 2
20 6 1
21 5 0
Guess I'll have to start learning near infinity, though now I'm really excited because I think this one change will make single class thieves and bards much more viable.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/15010/short-introduction-to-weidu-and-simple-mod-template
This would unbalance things, you realize?...
As it is Thieves can barely hit anything once you reach mid game (and it only gets worse when reach the late game), which really makes single class vanilla thieves unbalanced (compared to Fighter/Thieves or the Swashbuckler) in the combat focused BG, and kits like Shadowdancers and Assassins, who revolve around backstabbing, all but useless. There is a reason why 3.5 buffed thieves and bards combat abilities. For comparison 2E Rogue's final Thac0 (10) is barely better than the Mage's (13), which is really pathetic when you consider your Epic assassin can barely fight in hand to hand combat any better than the frail Wizard.
But i understand that in a pc game, which is battle loaded, the balance and fun is another thing, and it not the best feature to play a rogue in a fighting game. Maybe the dnd 3.5 or the 4.0 is better for modern pc games than adnd rules.
Sort of a Necro, I currently use my own 3.5 thac0 mod anyway, and it balances fine. Warriors in AD&D have other advantages besides their super-fast Thac0, mainly their large bonuses granted by weapon specialization and (with fighters) Mastery, and their increasing number of attacks, as well as the fact that they can break the 18 Strength cap at character creation, and access to numerous Warrior only potions. A Warrior can be expected to reasonably reach 3 attacks per round by mid BG2, 4 or even 5 depending on the weapon style and special weapon use, this added to the the Proficiency bonuses mean a Warrior is never going to be outclassed as a pure physical fighter, even if rogues have cleric level thac0. As it is in the Vanilla rules Clerics were nearly as good as Pure fighters by the late game in terms of tanking and fighting thanks to their complement of powerful buff spells, and a slightly better (3.5) thief is still not going to match the vanilla Cleric and Warriors in terms of tanking due to their poor health. The 3/4 level Thac0 rate simply means that the Thief will still reliably back stab by the end of the game, allowing it to still function in the one aspect of combat that should be best at (rather than the Stalker) and actually allowing an Assassin to take advantage of their late game x7 damage multiplier.
AD&D had a problem in that it was primarily balanced for level 10 and below play, while 10 and higher started to result in some wonky progression, such as Con no longer improving health, Druid progression and spell-casting ability slowing to a glacial pace, and thief Thac0 capping at nearly the same limit as the "fragile" Mage, meaning even the pure single-class Wizard by late game, with the right complement of spells, could often outfight his elite thief counterpart. Thus in BG2 your late game thieves were left with little to do besides sweeping up locks and traps, and laying a few traps, and almost nothing to contribute once a battle started besides avoiding being killed.
3.5 is rightly loved by so many fans for smoothing out many of the hiccups of the previous edition without drastically changing the way the game is played (like *ahem* 4E), and the problems it fixes on paper it also fixes when applied to the games. NWN 1&2 may have worse UI and perhaps artstyle than its predecessors, but the class progression was much more balanced.
To summarize the table of who hits 1 when:
All the Fighter classes+Multis hit 1 at 20th
Priests, single and Multi hit 1 at 31
Thief, Bard, and M/T hit 1 at 39th
Mages/Sorcs hit 10 at 31st (level cap), 7 at 40th, 4 at 50th.
@Quickblade
This thread is sort of outdated, as the changes in question have already been incorporated into a mod I made: 3.5 Edition/ Pathfinder style Tweaks Collection (thac0, Constitution, hit dice)
I explain the logic and balance behind the changes more in depth there, and if anyone wants to discuss it further they should probably go to that thread.