I'm thinking about giving ToEE a shot with a custom Neutral Good oriented party with the Co8 mod pack installed. Last time I played an action RPG where I created the whole party I rolled with "Team Quest for Glory", a group of characters modeled after some of the NPCs from the Quest for Glory series, and I'm looking to do the same thing this time around. The problem is that I don't have much of a knack for (nor inclination to, truth be told) diagram feat trees to make sure that I am making a sensible build. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions that anyone has to offer about what feat paths I should commit the PCs to, along with other miscellaneous advice. The PC concepts I have are:

Toro: Half-Orc (or something to stand in for Minotaur) Barbarian
Rakeesh; Human (or whatever else works; not like there is a close equivalent to Liontaur XD) Paladin
Keapon Laffin; Gnome arcane caster (still on the fence between Sorceror and Mage)*
Erana: Half Elf Cleric (kind of up in the air on alignment, but I understand that has some restriction on deity choice)
Elsa von Spielburg: Human Rogue



*Might swap out with Katrina; Human Mage

The intro to Jagged Jim's walkthrough starts off with a variety of party recommendations, including feats. You can get a feel for how to develop each character class from this. Check it out here

Imo the trickiest ones to plan for are the characters whom you want to be able to craft magic items, since their spell choices will also determine which magic items they can make.

Also, one recommendation I would make, is to have either a Bard or Thief in the party with very high intelligence. Then make sure to always max out the Appraisal skill on that character. Buy a Merchant's Scale for the character in Hommlet. Eventually have that character also dual at least 1 level of Wizard, so they can summon a familar (you want them to summon a Raven). This will raise their appraisal skill even higher. And cast Fox's Cunning on the character during trading. Eventually you will get enough Appraisal skill to be able to make and then sell magic scrolls and other items for profit, which will give you access to as much gold as you will need to buy or craft anything.

A final tip: Ray of Enfeeblement is one of the few spells that doesn't allow a saving throw, and it stacks with itself. Many mobs in ToEE have very high strength, which gives them huge To Hit bonuses. That is, of course, until you turn them into quivering weaklings with the RoE spell. And the various Charm spells are quite OP if you get Spell Penetration, Specialization in Enchantment, and Heighten Spell skills. The NPC Darley comes with these skills, and she rocks.

Pump your strength, equip big two-handed weapon, and go to town. Barbarians are easy if you're happy with that. The only thing I might consider is multi-classing two levels of fighter for extra feats. Equipment-wise, you'll probably want to use a glaive or another two-handed reach weapon. When combined with the "enlarge person" spell it makes for a whirlwind of destruction.

Feat-wise, combat reflexes, power attack, cleave, great cleave, improved critical, improved initiative, iron will, and blind fight are all good choices (roughly the order I'd prioritize taking them). Your attribute priorities are STR > CON > DEX > WIS > INT > CHA Just be mindful that ToEE is really hard on Paladins. Got into a friendly drinking game? You fall.

Paladins are hard to build, so I'd recommend rolling until you get a good result. Minimum scores would be 16 strength, 14 constitution, 14 wisdom, and 16 charisma, and you would prefer a higher intelligence/dexterity score if you can get it, and "higher is better" is always true for strength and charisma.

Aside from that, there's not a whole lot else to Paladins. There are no good feat options or multi-class options available to them. Aside from "improved critical" in a chosen weapon at the 9th level, and maybe getting cleave and great cleave eventually, there's not a whole lot of good feat selections for them. Either Sorcerer or Wizard would work well. If you're going the Sorcerer route, then spell selection is critical. Character-wise, Keapon should probably focus on throwing around spells to incapacitate his enemies. Confusion is a particularly nice one. You'll need to pump charisma to maximize your success chance, however. Select damage-dealing spells sparingly. With metamagic feats, you only really need to know one or two damage-dealing spells. Ensure you diversify with spells to aid your party members; you will eventually run into monsters with spell resistance, and the only way for your Sorcerer to harm them will be to buff his allies. The "haste" spell is a particular gem in this regard.

If you're going for a Wizard, ensure you play a specialist wizard. The extra spell slot at every level is invaluable, and far exceeds the value of a small increase in your spell diversity. Just remember the iron rule of specialist wizards: never oppose conjuration or transmutation. Observe that rule, and you can pretty much pick opposition schools at random and you'll come out ahead. Given Keapon, an Enchantment, Evocation, or Illusion specialist seems appropriate. A Necromancy/Abjuration opposition would therefor make most sense. Abjuration can be a little risky to give up, but if you have a party Cleric then that can cover for the shortcoming. I'd place her in either neutral good personally, but any good alignment would be appropriate. One thing to be mindful of with spellcaster Clerics is that they get rather few spell slots. If you don't actually wade into melee with a weapon (which is antithetical to Erana's character) they either must be very subdued in combat or else they will expend all their daily abilities quite quickly.

Clerics make the best crafters in Temple of Elemental Evil, so the craft wondrous item and craft magical arms and armor feat are highly recommended. Ensure you take the "good" domain. I would strongly recommend multi-classing Fighter. At very minimum, one level for weapon proficiencies would be a huge benefit. Beyond that, it depends on what kind of fighting style you're going for. There are lots of ways to build a Rogue. Evoker, Enchanter, or Necromancy specialist would all make sense, but opposition schools are tricky. Illusion and abjuration seem to be the only sensible options here while staying true to the powers she's supposed to have and still picking sensible options.

Scrolls have minimum caster level and use the minimum DC. They're not bad for miscellaneous utility spells, but for offensive spells the lower DC makes them pretty useless, and for buffing spells pretty much everything of relevance is in the transmutation school anyways.

In a rest-happy non-party game like Neverwinter Nights, going generalist can make sense since you can basically refresh your spell slots at-will. ToEE will punish you for resting in dangerous places, so you can't just sit down and rest every time you need to recover spells, and since it's a party-based game the other party members can cover for the spells you can't cast.

The biggest problem with generalists isn't running out of spell slots, but rather not having enough spell slots to prepare every spell they want to cast. Due to their expanded number of spell slots, a specialist effectively can prepare a broader range of spells and is the more versatile of the two. If you choose your opposition schools well, you will barely feel the penalty of being a specialist since there are plenty of great spells left even with two disciplines blocked. Generalists, however, will feel the limitations of their lower spell slot limit for their entire careers. The bottom line is that the bottleneck of the wizard class isn't how many spells it knows, it's how many spell slots it has in which to prepare them. That's a bug, then. The materials cost of a spell (100 in the case of identify) is supposed to be included in the cost of crafting the scroll with no discounts. Nice. Great to have that graphed out. Probably listed separately because it's theoretically possible to multiclass wizard/sorcerer, in which case their spells known would be counted separately for obvious reasons. I had a wizard and sorcerer in the same party, and (opposition school choices aside) never noticed any spell that one could cast that the other could not.

Ergo why a backpack full of scrolls is a viable play strategy for a generalist. I mostly use the scrolls for low-level party-buffing (Mage Armor), or to keep some of the less-used spells on hand without taking up a slot (e.g. Knock, See Invisibility, etc.), so as to free up my slots for the main spells you always find a use for. But scrolls also come in handy for any spell that doesn't require a DC check or fail (e.g. Summon Monster, Resist Energy, any of the Transmutation spells, etc.)

If you rely on scribing scrolls too much of course, it can end up gimping your Wizard. But for me, I prefer the spell-for-every-occasion generalist to a specialist.

That said, there are plenty of NPCs in the game who can add generalist spell knowledge to the party pool. I am planning a new party build where I will use multiple-wizard characters specializing in different schools. So why not have the best of both worlds? Maybe in PnP D&D, but in ToEE a level 1 Wizard can cast any level Wizard spell written on a scroll (possibly limited by intelligence, haven't verified, but certainly above his/her actual level of casting). I have had a lvl 1 Wizard cast Stinking Cloud from a scribed scroll. Also, from what I have seen in ToEE, the resulting DC roll is the same as if that WIzard were casting a memorized spell rather than reading a scroll.

You misunderstand me. The scroll does not require a minimum caster level to activate. Rather, regardless of your caster level, a spell that comes from a scroll always uses the minimum possible for that spell. So a 9th level wizard who uses a scroll of magic missile gets the same magic missile as a 1st level character, rather than the far more powerful version a 9th level character would normally get.

Similarly, if a 20 intelligence wizard uses a scroll of sleep it has a DC of 11, whereas if he had prepared the spell himself it would have a DC of 16 instead. If this works differently, then it is a bug in ToEE and would vastly increase the power of scrolls and wands.


I'm very mindful of the "spell for every occasion" wizard; those "occasions" are few and far between, and when they do come up you often don't have the right spell prepared anyways (or a different spell or approach could also work). On the other hand, the limitations of spell slots happen every day and impact your staying power and versatility. The downsides of a specialist might feel harsh during character creation, but when you actually sit down and play that extra spell slot at every level is liberating and allows you to be far more versatile with your spell selection than a generalist could ever hope to be.

Exactly my point. Bug or not, it's a feature of the game and doesn't work as you would expect from other D&D games (nor as written in the description of the Scribe Scroll spell) and makes scroll scribing quite OP in ToEE. The DC reflects that of the level of the reader, exactly as if he'she were reciting a memorized spell. Not sure if wands work the same, though, as I haven't tried them out yet (I put all my wands in the Extra Planar Chest and they vanished!!!).

Haven't tried the Magic Missile scroll test yet, but it should be easy enough to do.

DC is not affected by caster level. It's based on your intelligence modifier (or wisdom for clerics, charisma for sorcerers, etc). In pen and paper, all scrolls have a certain intelligence score associated with them based on spell level. For instance, a scroll of fireball would have an intelligence score of 13 associated with it, giving a DC of 14. Since a real wizard will almost always have an intelligence score much higher than that it represents a huge buff to scrolls if you can use your own intelligence modifier for the purposes of determining spell DC's.

I'd be interested to see what the actual scroll and wand rules are in ToEE.

OK that might explain the DC difference. But I just tested Spugnoir (lvl 5 Wizard) scribes 2 Magic Missile Scrolls and gives one to Kali Finebottom (a lvl 1 Wizard) and the other to Darley (lvl 10 Sorcerer).

During combat both characters read their scroll, and in each case 3 Magic Missiles are produced. So it would seem the scroll level was tied to Spugnoir.

It's actually possible to create a customized scroll to those specifications in pen and paper, but its cost would increase proportionally (a caster level 10 scroll of magic missile costs 10x as much as a caster level 1 scroll). Did you have to pay more for the scroll, or was it literally just a better scroll at the same price?

In that example, it costs Spugnoir a flat 12 gp to scribe a MM scroll, which is the same as any other character pays to scribe a lvl 1 scroll. The in-game feat description for Scribe Scroll sounds like the cost should work as you describe for PnP, but it doesn't actually work that way.

This is the same for casting using an Identify scroll. According to Scribe Scroll description, the spell's material cost should always be in addition to the scribing costs. But the game lets you read and Identify from a scroll for free, and the Identify spell only costs 62 gold to scribe. Per spell, this is actually cheaper than crafting a Wand of Identify.

One thing I have not tested yet, is what happens if the scriber has the Maximize Spell feat? Does the scroll get this bonus too? I can't just test that one out without leveling up first, so it will take a while.

If they're faithful to PnP, then you should be able to scribe a scroll that is modified by metamagic feat. However, the scroll will use the modified spell level to determine its costs. For instance, a scroll of maximized magic missile would count as if it were a 4th level spell for its cost.

EDIT - it occurs to me that we've royally derailed this thread. Do you want to start an alternate thread to discuss magic rules in ToEE?

I don't think you've derailed it completely; I did ask for advice on feat trees for each character, "along with other miscellaneous advice" :)

Glad to see you are still there! So how did you form your party?

That might be better, otherwise it's all just going to get lost in the flotsam of the thread graveyard.