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List Philosophy

Classes and Subclasses​

  • Classes and Subclasses should represent something that exists in official D&D material, makes sense in the Forgotten Realms (sorry my fellow Dragon Mech and Dragon Star fans), and compliments Larian’s design. It must work within the Compatibility Framework, and it must have level scaling to 20. Anything that requires unusual deviation or disruption to the regular flow of gameplay, such as a class that introduces an obnoxious number of toggle abilities or changes to the action economy or impacts the basic features of all classes, will most likely not be considered for inclusion. Classes and subclasses should follow their book/tabletop counterparts as closely as practical, with minimal changes to translate to the game.

Magic Weapons, Armor, and Items​

  • New gear should reasonably exist in the Forgotten Realms. The design philosophy and distribution (as static loot, or new random loot table entries or shopkeeper inventory) should match Larian’s progression expectations and design sensibility. Vanilla gear that is changed should avoid “over tuning” and changes should focus on making items more interesting, under-used items more compelling, or provide Quality of Life changes to awkward mechanics or descriptions.

Feats, Class Features, and Progression​

  • New feats should add interesting options. Revised feats (nerfed or buffed or just tweaked) should prevent any options from feeling mandatory, polarizing, or weak. The progression of feats every 3 levels, instead of 4, allows more feats to be chosen over the course of the game; allows builds to come together sooner (such as polearm/sentinel tanks); and it allows multi-class dips to grab their 3rd level subclass features without having to choose a 4th level or miss a feat. Level progression should be faster than the base game, allowing players who do most content to reach level 15+ and completionists to reach level 18+. Completionist players will still be able to out-level enemies, but not to the same degree as the base game. Balance tuning is an ongoing fight; please provide feedback on what level you enter Act 2 and Act 3, and if you encounter enemies with excess AC or HP.

Engaging Combat and Difficulty Curve​

  • Enemies should roughly scale with the player, to a limit determined by their vanilla starting level or game act. Bosses should always be at least the player’s level, possibly higher. Enemy casters should have access to 5e spells and PF2e spells. Enemies are smarter, and more viscous: They will target unconscious characters, attempt to shove or throw characters off cliffs and into chasms, and in general feel like they are trying just as hard to survive an encounter as the player is. The list enables Honour Mode mechanics, including legendary actions added to boss fights.

  • Initiative in Listonomicon is calculated using a roll of d8+dex+bonuses. The vanilla calculation uses a d4 while the tabletop uses a d20. There are pros and cons to all three approaches. d8 was chosen to provide enough randomness to prevent most characters from consistently “beating” the initiative mechanic, while still enabling rogue (assassin)s, and other characters who heavily rely on going first, to reasonably guarantee success with the Alert feat, high dex, and +init gear.

Multiplayer Compatibility​

  • While somewhat niche, an advantage to using a curated list is easy mod list sharing between players, which should make cooperative play easy. Please note that many mods are not believed to affect multiplayer (such as UI replacers), and some may affect multiplayer in unexpected ways. Maintaining multiplayer compatibility is a tertiary goal of Listonomicon.There may be mods in the future that break COOP, but are so compelling that we sacrifice COOP for the best single player experience. We would like Listonomicon to be a COOP ready package, however, and will include basic instructions for what to enable/disable.

  • Currently, it appears that custom classes/subclasses cause an issue with multiplayer games being able to start correctly. All players must pick a vanilla class/subclass during the tutorial, and will have to wait until Withers is unlocked to respec. Future Features

  • As Combat Extender continues to be updated, new features will be incorporated into Listonomicon’s configuration file. For example, Zehtuka has announced plans to add random enemy duplication to CX which will replace the similar feature found in the deprecated Combat Randomizer. Once this feature is added, ideally all enemies (including bosses!) will receive a low % chance of randomly being duplicated, triplicated, or even quadrouplicated.

  • Balance will be an ongoing concern for Listonomicon. We cannot predict how in the future, major patches may break mods we are relying on for Listo’s blend of challenges and buffs; or how new mods might be released mixing up encounters the way AEE and CX do.

  • Hopefully, Oath Framework will expand and modders will figure out how to manipulate Paladin’s Oath rules to better accommodate modded oaths, such as Conquest and Redemption.

  • More cosmetic options are always sought, without wanting to horribly bloat the game with every random goofy haircut. Listonomicon currently lacks much in the way of new heads for the short races (dwarfs, gnomes, halflings); orcs; and dragonborn, which is a reflection of the state of the modding scene not yet catering to these races with much variety. There are also significantly more options added for women in terms of heads and hairs, than for men. We look forward to the community making more short race and male cosmetics and incorporating them into Listo!

Rescuing Minthara [minor spoilers]​

  • Due to popular demand, Larian released a patch that added “Good Guy Minthara” as an option, but recruiting her in Act 2 remains awkward at best. Mods exist to further try to “fix” Minthara (such as Ring of Minthara Summoning, and Daughter of Lolth), but they rely on messing with flags and game logic, cheating, or immersion breaking solutions which have unexpected consequences for aspects of Act 1 and Act 3.

  • If you want to recruit Minthara without sacrificing the Tieflings, you must toggle non-lethal combat and then provoke her such that she enters “temporarily hostile” status. Attacking the goblin in front of her, attacking the scrying eye, letting her catch you stealing, and other things that upset NPCs will work. If you kill Dror Ragzlin or otherwise lock in the pro-Tiefling ending to Act 1 first, she will be permanently hostile and knocking her unconscious will not spare her / she will not appear in Act 2. You also may be able to “agree” to attack the Grove with her and betray her, which should cause her to flee combat once her HP is low (as long as you don’t accidentally crit her all the way to zero!).

  • If performed correctly, you will encounter Minthara upon entering the throne room at Moonrise Towers. A brief cutscene will play with her receiving judgment from Thorm, before the normal cutscene with the goblins. If you see a goblin throw a spear at Thorm without seeing Minthara first, she did not survive Act 1. If you release the Nightsong before going to Moonrise, Minthara cannot be recruited (you also miss out on a lot of other things at Moonrise).