Found a small Warning on the "new encounters" component, Kuroisan;
Probably one of the many spell tweaks (MiH, MESPELLS, SubtleD, etc.) you have installed, yet you are not using any of the spell tweaks introduced via Tactics Remix. I really do not recommend that approach. Enemy scripts will not use any new spells introduced via those mods and any tweaks they introduce will not be accounted for.
Tactics Remix official release for version 09.9.3-beta which brings the following enhancements:
New component added to knocking PCs unconscious instead of killing them.
Updated and standardized enemies chasing the players.
Refined mage use of Time Stop.
(Fallen) Planetar will more aggresively hunt the player if out of sight.
Updated level 20+ mages and (Fallen) Planetar to teleport on the player if out of sight (insane difficulty).
Updated Mind Flayer teleport.
Updated the Sanctuary spell to have a cast time of 1.
Updated encounters and enemies in Bloodied Stings of Barovia mod.
I'm really excited about the new component: players will be knocked unconscious instead of killed. When reduced to 0hp, a character will be knocked unconscious instead of outright killed. Once combat ends, characters knocked unconscious will regain consciousness at 2hp. When knocked unconscious, characters will have 1 minute for the fight to end or they will die. Additionally, when knocked unconscious characters will be subjected to one of the following for 8 hours (these will stack with each other if you get knocked unconscious multiple times): Constitution penalty, Dexterity penalty, Intelligence penalty, Wisdom penalty, Thac0 penalty, damage penalty, AC penalty, movement rate penalty, casting speed penalty, and increased chance for miscast magic.
Exaltation spells will make a character regain consciousness in the middle of combat; however, the character is at risk of perma-death if they are again reduced to 0hp within 2 minutes of initially being knocked unconscious.
Finally, certain things will outright kill a character instead of knocking them unconscious (e.g., Level Drain, Ability Score drain, disintegration, petrification, imprisonment, etc.).
I am testing the recent 0.9.9.3-beta release - four semi-short comments:
1) Jaheira summoning a dryad now appears to cause the dryad to cast cause wounds
on ... Jazon (the revenant, in the party; https://github.com/Deratiseur/Jazon). I
am not sure why; perhaps dryads hate undead, or it may be a bug. I don't quite
recall dryads attacking Jazon like that in the past.
2) For this run I chose "go unconscious at 0 hp". I forgot whether it came from
Tactics remix or from the Tweaks mod. At any rate, I believe this setting is too
overpowered. Basically the party can soak up a lot of damage (aka all damage that
would set their hp below 0 is cancelled, or at the least a lot more than before). This kind
of allows others in the party to distract or dish out more damage even when the rest of
the party is already kind of dead; or have those with 0 or 1 hp jump up, run away, heal up,
then re-engage, when normally they would already be dead. This thus makes many fights significantly
easier, as otherwise the party members would have died already. I don't have a good
solution for this or change, but one change I can think of would be that the damage
threshold would be limited, e. g. ignore 10-20 hp or so only rather than "all excess
damage", as it seems to be right now. (I know this is kind of handled via the "will
die the next round if not healed, but it still seems to make some fights too easy,
as one can just run back when hasted and drink a heal potion, or even run away
from the fight with all party members alive.)
3) The demilich in the basement in Arxthas is still confused. He uses teleport field
but kind of seems to not want to use his regular attacks, e. g. maze or similar
attacks. I haven't yet tested other liches or undead.
4) Cowled Enforcers can become quite difficult due to chaining so many spells, in
particular the horrible writhing. While this may be ok, my party insta-died to horrible
writhing, whereas in the abandoned house in the Docks district, with the various undead
and big boss there, they took significantly longer to kill the party simply because
they did not use horrible writhing. I think that fight should be harder than four
cowled enforcers though; admittedly four of them are more than a single boss, so they
can do more spells, but I found it still a bit awkward that four cowled Enforcers
would be deadlier than the big undead boss. In earlier play-throughs I remember that
this fight was always much easier than four cowled Enforcers, and now this seems
reversed. (Admittedly this was also my own fault as I was not far away but close to
them. And too low in level, anyway)
I should do some more testing in the coming days. One thing I kind of like are the
nightly bandit raids; I may make a separate suggestion for that part at a later
time. Hope this is somehow useful for now.
(It seems Jazon is a bit buggy as he just turned hostile in the middle of
another fight, without any dryad, without any message indicating as to why.)
This is a follow-up thought about the nightly bandits. I've come to like them;
they are an upgrade to the older bandits/thieves/rogues, without being too
overpowered. Still a challenge but one that can be managed even at fairly
low level. Some ideas pertaining to them.
The bandits ambush is pretty nice overall. It is also an additional source of
income, by harvesting their loot. Nice of them to carry some money with them. (Or perhaps they are more assassins than bandits, so they look more to kill
the target than rob it blind.)
Feel free to ignore or pick what seems useful and reject what is not applicable
(or, possibly, too much work).
1) The nightly bandits seem to come with 100% likelihood at night time, that is,
if it is night and I go to certain places in the main city, the bandits will show
up. I could be wrong, but if this is the case then I would change this 100%
chance to, say, 90% or 95%, if only for a bit of intrinsic randomness (see Argent77's
Wares of the Planes explanation in regards to the traveling merchant needing a few
days before arriving at a target destination, during which the merchant is not
available, such as in Umar Hills, due to still traveling; so this rationale
could also be applied to bandits having an "attrition" phase, e. g. not always
appearing to ambush the party as it takes a little while to prepare the next
ambush).
2) Following up on 1), I would also change the randomness percentage value based on a
very few factors. The simplest factor I can think of is an aforementioned attrition
phase. For instance, say that the party has had 5 encounters with the bandits in the
prior 6 days/nights, or so; or in total. I would thus reason that the bandits now have
a bit of an attrition phase, aka needing to recover from those intense fightings. I
would thus drop the chance of, say, 95%, down to 60% or so, for perhaps a full week,
give or take. Then the percentage value replenishes to 95% again, aka the default
value. The idea behind such an attrition phase is to account for the bandits being
weakened, after many prior fights. (The numbers mentioned here can be changed, of course,
they are just an example. The aim is not to make it impossible that the nightly raids
happen, but instead to just to add a bit more randomness to it it.)
3) Following up on 1, I would also like to suggest to make the bandits a tiny bit more
varied. Right now they seem to be all humans. How about every now and then a dwarf
bandit with a crossbow showing up? Or a half-elf or some other race that could also
appear; could be an evil gnome too, with a crossbow; or with two knives. This can be
a low percentage that these non-humans appear, just to show that the bandits aren't
all necessarily standard humans 1.0. (Could also have a few other races; and if you
ever want to extend the bounty hunter part, such as the gnome illusionist, there
could be some more special NPCs too, like a Rakshasa or whatever may seem to fit.
Strength-wise I would keep them at the current level or so, give or take, perhaps
a tiny bit stronger than the average bandit, but not, say, some boss NPC showing
up with insane powers - although my next suggestion will actually tap into a
bandit boss.)
4) Based on the prior three points made, as well as the item mod where one fights the
leader of the cowled enforcers to gain that overpowered timestop item, how about an
event with the leader of the bandits?
Say, after 10 prior encounters or so with nightly bandits, the bandit boss could show
up. He could be somewhat stronger than the regular bandits, have some low magical equipment
(chainmail +1 and so forth, perhaps a unique item too, but it should not be too strong
either, just something that may be useful and fit to the theme of assassins/thieves). If
he is killed then the attrition level for bandits showing up, drops down significantly
for a longer while - but after that time has passed, it would replenish again to the
old default, indicating that while the bandits took a big hit, the remaining ones
managed to re-organize and spread more terror in the city.
5) The supporting mage could be a bit more randomized too, both in regards to
loot (scroll drops) and AI. I am not suggesting to go overboard here or make this too
complicated, so perhaps just two AI mages (one already being the current default); so,
one could be more specifically focus on offensive damage, whereas the other, new one,
may try to boost the bandits a little bit more - be it casting improved invisibility
or some buff or anything like that. The idea here is to show that the individual
bandit-mages specialized in different aspects. Or perhaps a summoner type mage, could
simply summon more monsters via the summon monster spell, level ... not sure, 3 or 4
or whatever seems appropriate for those monsters. The idea here is also just to add
some more variety, rather than make the encounters too difficult per se.
6) (There could also be a hideout for the bandits. Perhaps someone else could consider
designing an area; does not even need to be on the map as travel-area, but could be
reachable via a note or scroll or document or something like that, a bit like in the
BG2 Romantic Encounters where one hostage can be found upon reading a scroll that
shows the way; upon reading it the party is sort of "teleported" to that location.
Anyway, this one is probably too much work, so I put this last one here in
parentheses.)
That's it for some thoughts about the bandits. I'll test more of the changes
in the coming week / weekend or so.
Who is Jazon and is it mod added? What lich in the basement are you referring to?
I went through a few days ago and stripped much of the loot the bandits drop as it was quite ridiculous. Otherwise, the bandits are a near of not exact version of what was presented in og Tactics.
Work is being done to update the knock unconscious component as a number of flaws came to light with the release.
Tactics Remix official release for version 0.9.9.5-beta which brings the following enhancements:
Fixed spawn point bug in Umar Temple.
Fixed dragon wing buffet bug and made the dragon fights more responsive to the difficulty slider. These should be the toughest dragons found in an IE game.
Updated difficulty for Shade Lord and added compatibility with Artisan's Shadow Magic version.
Updated Umber Hulks that spawn with Trolls to the correct creature file.
Tweaked script checks for knocking PCs unconscious instead of killing them (not included in hotfix).
Tactics Remix official release for version 0.9.9.6-beta which brings the following enhancements:
Updated North Forest Drake script.
Improved difficulty in the Lich in the Docks and Twisted Rune components.
Rewrote Beholder scripts.
Fixed game breaking bug with Knocking Player's unconscious at 0hp instead of killing them. If anyone is running into issues, please reach out to me directly and I'll assist in getting this up to where it needs to be.
Looking closer, this seems to be the component causing the issue:
~SETUP-D0QUESTPACK.TP2~ #2 #4 // Verschiedene Verbesserungen -> With Additional Random Encounters: v3.5...
I can confirm that this component of sim Dingos Questpack caused the issue with Tactics additional random city encounters.
Leaving it out or installing without random encounters solved the Problems.
Comments
I have no idea, but ToF seems to be having a lot of different issues with compatibility.
Probably one of the many spell tweaks (MiH, MESPELLS, SubtleD, etc.) you have installed, yet you are not using any of the spell tweaks introduced via Tactics Remix. I really do not recommend that approach. Enemy scripts will not use any new spells introduced via those mods and any tweaks they introduce will not be accounted for.
Nevertheless, it might be probably one of those then.
I'm really excited about the new component: players will be knocked unconscious instead of killed. When reduced to 0hp, a character will be knocked unconscious instead of outright killed. Once combat ends, characters knocked unconscious will regain consciousness at 2hp. When knocked unconscious, characters will have 1 minute for the fight to end or they will die. Additionally, when knocked unconscious characters will be subjected to one of the following for 8 hours (these will stack with each other if you get knocked unconscious multiple times): Constitution penalty, Dexterity penalty, Intelligence penalty, Wisdom penalty, Thac0 penalty, damage penalty, AC penalty, movement rate penalty, casting speed penalty, and increased chance for miscast magic.
Exaltation spells will make a character regain consciousness in the middle of combat; however, the character is at risk of perma-death if they are again reduced to 0hp within 2 minutes of initially being knocked unconscious.
Finally, certain things will outright kill a character instead of knocking them unconscious (e.g., Level Drain, Ability Score drain, disintegration, petrification, imprisonment, etc.).
1) Jaheira summoning a dryad now appears to cause the dryad to cast cause wounds
on ... Jazon (the revenant, in the party; https://github.com/Deratiseur/Jazon). I
am not sure why; perhaps dryads hate undead, or it may be a bug. I don't quite
recall dryads attacking Jazon like that in the past.
2) For this run I chose "go unconscious at 0 hp". I forgot whether it came from
Tactics remix or from the Tweaks mod. At any rate, I believe this setting is too
overpowered. Basically the party can soak up a lot of damage (aka all damage that
would set their hp below 0 is cancelled, or at the least a lot more than before). This kind
of allows others in the party to distract or dish out more damage even when the rest of
the party is already kind of dead; or have those with 0 or 1 hp jump up, run away, heal up,
then re-engage, when normally they would already be dead. This thus makes many fights significantly
easier, as otherwise the party members would have died already. I don't have a good
solution for this or change, but one change I can think of would be that the damage
threshold would be limited, e. g. ignore 10-20 hp or so only rather than "all excess
damage", as it seems to be right now. (I know this is kind of handled via the "will
die the next round if not healed, but it still seems to make some fights too easy,
as one can just run back when hasted and drink a heal potion, or even run away
from the fight with all party members alive.)
3) The demilich in the basement in Arxthas is still confused. He uses teleport field
but kind of seems to not want to use his regular attacks, e. g. maze or similar
attacks. I haven't yet tested other liches or undead.
4) Cowled Enforcers can become quite difficult due to chaining so many spells, in
particular the horrible writhing. While this may be ok, my party insta-died to horrible
writhing, whereas in the abandoned house in the Docks district, with the various undead
and big boss there, they took significantly longer to kill the party simply because
they did not use horrible writhing. I think that fight should be harder than four
cowled enforcers though; admittedly four of them are more than a single boss, so they
can do more spells, but I found it still a bit awkward that four cowled Enforcers
would be deadlier than the big undead boss. In earlier play-throughs I remember that
this fight was always much easier than four cowled Enforcers, and now this seems
reversed. (Admittedly this was also my own fault as I was not far away but close to
them. And too low in level, anyway)
I should do some more testing in the coming days. One thing I kind of like are the
nightly bandit raids; I may make a separate suggestion for that part at a later
time. Hope this is somehow useful for now.
(It seems Jazon is a bit buggy as he just turned hostile in the middle of
another fight, without any dryad, without any message indicating as to why.)
This is a follow-up thought about the nightly bandits. I've come to like them;
they are an upgrade to the older bandits/thieves/rogues, without being too
overpowered. Still a challenge but one that can be managed even at fairly
low level. Some ideas pertaining to them.
The bandits ambush is pretty nice overall. It is also an additional source of
income, by harvesting their loot. Nice of them to carry some money with them.
the target than rob it blind.)
Feel free to ignore or pick what seems useful and reject what is not applicable
(or, possibly, too much work).
1) The nightly bandits seem to come with 100% likelihood at night time, that is,
if it is night and I go to certain places in the main city, the bandits will show
up. I could be wrong, but if this is the case then I would change this 100%
chance to, say, 90% or 95%, if only for a bit of intrinsic randomness (see Argent77's
Wares of the Planes explanation in regards to the traveling merchant needing a few
days before arriving at a target destination, during which the merchant is not
available, such as in Umar Hills, due to still traveling; so this rationale
could also be applied to bandits having an "attrition" phase, e. g. not always
appearing to ambush the party as it takes a little while to prepare the next
ambush).
2) Following up on 1), I would also change the randomness percentage value based on a
very few factors. The simplest factor I can think of is an aforementioned attrition
phase. For instance, say that the party has had 5 encounters with the bandits in the
prior 6 days/nights, or so; or in total. I would thus reason that the bandits now have
a bit of an attrition phase, aka needing to recover from those intense fightings. I
would thus drop the chance of, say, 95%, down to 60% or so, for perhaps a full week,
give or take. Then the percentage value replenishes to 95% again, aka the default
value. The idea behind such an attrition phase is to account for the bandits being
weakened, after many prior fights. (The numbers mentioned here can be changed, of course,
they are just an example. The aim is not to make it impossible that the nightly raids
happen, but instead to just to add a bit more randomness to it it.)
3) Following up on 1, I would also like to suggest to make the bandits a tiny bit more
varied. Right now they seem to be all humans. How about every now and then a dwarf
bandit with a crossbow showing up? Or a half-elf or some other race that could also
appear; could be an evil gnome too, with a crossbow; or with two knives. This can be
a low percentage that these non-humans appear, just to show that the bandits aren't
all necessarily standard humans 1.0. (Could also have a few other races; and if you
ever want to extend the bounty hunter part, such as the gnome illusionist, there
could be some more special NPCs too, like a Rakshasa or whatever may seem to fit.
Strength-wise I would keep them at the current level or so, give or take, perhaps
a tiny bit stronger than the average bandit, but not, say, some boss NPC showing
up with insane powers - although my next suggestion will actually tap into a
bandit boss.)
4) Based on the prior three points made, as well as the item mod where one fights the
leader of the cowled enforcers to gain that overpowered timestop item, how about an
event with the leader of the bandits?
Say, after 10 prior encounters or so with nightly bandits, the bandit boss could show
up. He could be somewhat stronger than the regular bandits, have some low magical equipment
(chainmail +1 and so forth, perhaps a unique item too, but it should not be too strong
either, just something that may be useful and fit to the theme of assassins/thieves). If
he is killed then the attrition level for bandits showing up, drops down significantly
for a longer while - but after that time has passed, it would replenish again to the
old default, indicating that while the bandits took a big hit, the remaining ones
managed to re-organize and spread more terror in the city.
5) The supporting mage could be a bit more randomized too, both in regards to
loot (scroll drops) and AI. I am not suggesting to go overboard here or make this too
complicated, so perhaps just two AI mages (one already being the current default); so,
one could be more specifically focus on offensive damage, whereas the other, new one,
may try to boost the bandits a little bit more - be it casting improved invisibility
or some buff or anything like that. The idea here is to show that the individual
bandit-mages specialized in different aspects. Or perhaps a summoner type mage, could
simply summon more monsters via the summon monster spell, level ... not sure, 3 or 4
or whatever seems appropriate for those monsters. The idea here is also just to add
some more variety, rather than make the encounters too difficult per se.
6) (There could also be a hideout for the bandits. Perhaps someone else could consider
designing an area; does not even need to be on the map as travel-area, but could be
reachable via a note or scroll or document or something like that, a bit like in the
BG2 Romantic Encounters where one hostage can be found upon reading a scroll that
shows the way; upon reading it the party is sort of "teleported" to that location.
Anyway, this one is probably too much work, so I put this last one here in
parentheses.)
That's it for some thoughts about the bandits. I'll test more of the changes
in the coming week / weekend or so.
I went through a few days ago and stripped much of the loot the bandits drop as it was quite ridiculous. Otherwise, the bandits are a near of not exact version of what was presented in og Tactics.
Work is being done to update the knock unconscious component as a number of flaws came to light with the release.
I think it would be fine, but I haven't tested or confirmed.
I work around Shadow Magic and will continue to boost HP, APR, Resistances, thac0 bonus, and add immunity to turn undead and undead killing weapons.
I can confirm that this component of sim Dingos Questpack caused the issue with Tactics additional random city encounters.
Leaving it out or installing without random encounters solved the Problems.