Solo server?
 

I asked about this a few years back and at the time it wasn't really feasible. Is there a simple way for me to toughen up player characters?

My big problem with Live is that your character is about the toughest it will ever be around level 5-8 - when you can take on white mobs and generally have a good chance of winning. By the time you hit the 50s anything dark blue is very chancy at best and only a few classes really have a decent chance of winning (with a lot of down time between fights). I'd rather see characters at least keep their toughness relative to the mobs they are fighting - so a blue trash mob wouldn't be near suicide.

Is there a fairly simple way I can raise player character damage without also raising NPC damage (i.e. I can raise all weapon and spell damage in the DB but that would also make NPC weapon and spell damage higher).

I see some entries in the database about this but I'm not sure if the damage modifiers apply to just players or to all damage.

You can change the stats on weapons and such in the DB as well as Spells (in the spells file). As for weapons that would only affect players that equip those weapons so it should not affect NPC in anyway. Spells; however, are a different story. If you change the spell damage in the Spells file then anyone that cast that spell including NPCs will be affected.

You can also lower NPC stats to make them more manageable. The NPC stats are controlled completely by the DB in the npc_types table. Poking around in there should give you some ideas of how you could nerf the NPC themselves to make them easier to kill by an equivalent PC.

Don't some NPCs also equip weapons?

And are those combat settings in rules_values applied to all combat or just the players outcomes?

Check out The Irreverent Server...its setup to be solo, works pretty well.