First, I'd like to announce a -major- engine fix by scient. I noticed that a lot of times, switching from one weapon to another, TNO's combat stats (To Hit, Damage, Number of Attacks) wouldn't update on TNO's character sheet. It turns out, this was not simply a UI bug - if this happened to you, TNO really would have those non-updated stats in combat. Scient has fixed this, and now all stats recalculate properly whenever you change weapons. That's a -big- thing. Huzzah!
This all started, actually, from my noting that weapon proficiencies never update any character's To Hit bonus either. We've still to determine if that's just a UI bug or if no character ever actually gets that bonus in combat. Stay tuned for that too.
Anyways... in discussing all this, something has occurred to me that is kinda astonishing, to me at least. We all know that you keep the best THACO of your 3 classes... that is, if you leveled to 10 as a fighter, then switched to level 4 mage, you'd keep a base 11 THACO. I'm actually thinking now that it wasn't supposed to be that way. That when you "give up the way of the Warrior", and take up the Art, you're supposed to have the THACO of a mage, but the game isn't updating your THACO properly, for similar reasons to why it's not updating it for proficiencies.
And with that came the thought leading to the other poll question. The manual explicitly says that TNO is supposed to gain 1-10 hit points when reaching a new level regardless of what class he levels in. That's not how it works either. If you reach your new class as a mage, you only get 1-4 hit points. The manual is a -really big indicator- that this is a bug.
Were we to change this, it would profoundly affect how one plays the game. Frankly, every time I've played this game, I -always- play through the entire Hive and Lower and Upper wards as a fighter. The way it works, it's pretty stupid not to... it gets you massively more hit points than any other option, and you get a THACO that you can keep in your other classes as well.
But should it work this way? You don't get to keep spellcasting or thief abilities as a fighter, so why should mages and thieves get to keep the single most important aspect of the fighter class?
I actually think the game would work a lot better this way, and that this is how it was meant to be, but they were stuck with engine limitations that (thanks to scient's engine uberness) we aren't. Think about it. Okay, so you don't get to be the kensai-mage anymore... but it would mean actually playing all 3 classes the way they're supposed to be played, rather than fighter, fighter-mage or fighter-thief. And you could play your preferred class right from the beginning of the game, rather than always always always doing fighter for the first 9-13 levels. And it would make the manual correct as far as hit point gain goes. And it would lower the absolute dependency of needing to travel with certain NPC's so that you can constantly change classes back and forth.
What do you all think? Please do read this thoroughly, think about it, and cast your vote.
In the meantime... I'm going to try and consult the Oracle (Chris Avellone) on this one, and see if we can get a definitive answer. Honestly, what the manual says is making me pretty sure that the hit point thing -would- be a Fix, not a tweak... and the more I think about it, the THACO thing seems to me like a fix as well.
Qwinn
Edited by Qwinn, 14 December 2008 - 01:40 AM.