CRE conversion (revisited)

[FredSRichardson]

I'm just trying to get Grisella's Beetle quest to work. She's the barkeep you can talk to right at the beginning (after the long conversation with Hrothgar).

 

The default conversion of the beetles makes some very powerful monster to deal with indeed. I looked at a few CR 1 creature stats here to get some ideas:

 

http://www.enworld.org/cc/converted/index.php?s=CR

 

I think the "Oil Beetle" should be a close match as far as stats go. I've tried a few other things that are simple but don't quite work:

 

Using the existing creature "30FBEET.CRE" (one of the small beetles you see in the underdark cave) almost works. The beetle is almost a CR1 creature, except that it has on speed boots and has a dexterity of 20. I also tried using "00SBEETL.CRE" (summoned bombardeer beetles), but the animation is all wrong (too big), they start off as allys (so some will fight for you, heh), and they're still too tough.

 

So now there are many ways of handling these but I'm still trying to figure out which one would be the best. For these particular beetles, adding some more options might work like:

~EHBEETLE.CRE~	 < ~30FBEET.CRE~ SET_VAR (~EHBeetle_Kill_CNT~);
							   UNEQUIP (BOOTS); SET_DEX (12) >

But I feel uncomfortable with this. I'm just not sure how easy it will be to extend (for example for adding feats, or equipping other things ("ADD_AND_EQUIP_TARGET_ITEM(~001D6S.ITM~, WEAP1)" after doing "REMOVE_ALL_ITEMS()" might not be so bad).

 

Anyway, this is going to require some thought and experimentation. I'm sure whatever I come up with will use a really ugly syntax, but might actually work.