The special node “Destroy Monster” and “Destroy all Monsters” are two of the more versatile tools within the scenario editor, and used correctly they can accomplish many different things to add flare to a scenario. The “Destroy Monster” node allows you to choose one particular type of monster to destroy, whereas “Destroy all Monsters” allows you to destroy all hostile monsters, all friendly monsters, or both. A few of the many things you can accomplish with these nodes:
- Changing the hostile/friendly status of monsters.
Unfortunately, the scenario editor is very limited to the extent it can alter the friendly/hostile status of monsters within a town. You can force a monster to become hostile via a conversation node, and you can make the entire town hostile with the town hostile node, and that’s about it. With destroy monster, however, you can work around this, at least to an extent.
- Making some friendly creatures hostile, while leaving others friendly. To do this, you need to prohibit any originally friendly but potentially hostile creatures from movie. Place duplicate creatures at the same position that can move, and start off hostile, and make them a one-time special encounter. When you wish to change the original creatures to hostile, call a destroy node for each type of creature you want to destroy, then call the one-time encounter. See the “Nebulous Grotto” in Of Good And Evil for an example.
- Making hostile creatures friendly. This one’s much more difficult. You have three choices, each with significant downsides. You could just destroy all hostile creatures, and call a dialogue node explaining that they’ve all left (e.g., the Troglodyte Cave in Tatterdemalion. ) You could prohibit the hostile creatures from ever moving, then do the same trick as “A”, but in reverse, but it’s a bit cumbersome prohibiting hostile creatures from moving, leaving them in most cases as easy targets. Or you could simply destroy all hostile creatures, and call a one time encounter of friendly creatures in roughly the same location as the hostile creatures originally were. This method is probably the best — but just make sure that the creatures relocation makes sense. In either of these last two cases, make sure you’ve given each creature a SDF for its life, and given its duplicate the same flag.
- Moving/Evolving characters.
In some circumstances you may wish to have a particular NPC move from one location to another within the same town, after the party performs a specific action. For example, in Of Good And Evil, Protagorus appears in the bar until you’ve returned the trophy to him, at which point he leaves to go to his house. The easiest way to do this is to make *three* copies of the creature. Put creature *A* in the original location, and give it a SDF for its life. Put *B* in the new location, and give it a SDF as well, but begin the game with this SDF set to 1. Put *C* in the new location, and set it as a one time special encounter. Make *B* and *C* identical creatures outside of these differences. When you want the creature to move, call this chain:
- Destroy Creature Type
- Set SDF A to 1
- Set SDF B to 0
- Call One Time Special Encounter C
What will occur is this — Creature A will be destroyed, but Creature B won’t appear until the towns reset — after the party visits four different town levels before returning. That’s where C comes in — C will appear immediately, but will vanish once the town resets. The result is a perfect transition.
This is also a good trick for evolving characters. Sure, you could always tie response to SDFs, but that’s limited — you can’t change the look/name/job or any special response, and it’s very cumbersome.
- Ending the scenario during combat.
A few scenarios end the scenario immediately following some sort of big battle, calling the end scenario node after X creature or creatures have been called. There’s a little known problem with this, however. If your last PC uses up his or her last AP killing the monster that triggers the end scenario node, any remaining hostile monsters will get one final round of combat AFTER any dialogue nodes, but before the scenario ends. This can be more problematic than it initially appears — for example a scenario may end once the big bad evil spellcaster (tm) is killed — but what if he’s summoned half a dozen demons? It’s quite frustrating to win the scenario, only to have two PCs die and then be taken directly back the BOE main screen. This is one of the EASIEST bugs to overlook during playtesting — as it will only occur if the final PC using his or her last AP triggers the end of scenario node. In Tatterdemalion once, my party defeated the creature’s controllers, it gained consciousness, swore off evil, left the area, and the dialogue box said I had won. Then another round of combat ensued, and the Tatterdemalion killed one of my spellcasters, then the scenario ended. This can all be easily avoided by calling a “Destroy All Hostile Monsters” node before the end of scenario node.
A couple final things to keep in mind when using Destroy nodes:
- Destroying a creature will NOT set that creature’s SDF flag to 1.
- Destroying a creature will NOT trigger a special node called upon the creature’s death.
Oh, & one quick thing (to fulfill the title’s promise) about killing the party with an affect PC special node — a life saving magic item will defeat the Kill/Raise Dead node. If you want to just punish the party, Kill/Raise Dead works fine. But if you want to end the scenario, be careful, because calling such a node won’t always kill the entire party.
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