BGTSCC's Server Difficulty

[Hoihe]

Armour class alone feels strange. I remember 45-50 being enough AC when I started, and now you need 55 or even 60 if you want to make sure you only get hit on nat 20s.

This is a power creep issue. 45-50 used to be enough because most people were using +3 gear. Now everyone has +4 gear. I've tried repeatedly to explain why giving players more good items isn't the benefit they think it is, but people tend to see changes very myopically.

Why does the server need to match new items and builds, though?

Is it not the point of getting good gear and so forth to easily overcome challenges?

There's a reason why Morrowind is considered superior to Oblivion and Skyrim - enemy levels are more or less static, so you can feel progression by getting good gear or getting stronger. Same for the Gothic I and II games, where if you obtain good gear early on you've an easy life.

Here, it feels like "+4 gear becomes more common, +3 is mandatory for end-game. Some years pass, +4 becomes mandatory, +3 useless."

[gedweyignasia]

Why does the server need to match new items and builds, though?

Because builders are always trying to balance the content they add or update, so that it will provide an engaging experience for players. It's not a lot of fun for people if as soon as they see an enemy, it's already killed by another member of their party.

Is it not the point of getting good gear and so forth to easily overcome challenges?

Yes, but if you tune it too far in one direction or another, the gameplay becomes unenjoyable. Hence "balancing". It's a very good choice of words.

Here, it feels like "+4 gear becomes more common, +3 is mandatory for end-game. Some years pass, +4 becomes mandatory, +3 useless."

Yes. I would like to change that, but people would be furious if I made it much harder to obtain +4 items and prevented them from muling the ones they owned so that the median gear was +2 or +3 again. (And it would take some time to balance the enemies back down to +2 and +3 gear, so that's a lot of work to do something very unpopular.) Any suggestions that would prevent powerful items from circulating indefinitely would inevitably be very unpopular with the community. Like I said, myopia.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

If 10 points of AC is a power creep UMD's full accessibility to any class is the pilot's seat in a jet fighter. The amount of money now flowing in the PW with UMD enables UMD to be a functional class on it's own in any current PvE configuration.

[MrSmith]

I enjoy the playstyle of melee characters to casters, and yet my personal experience on BGTSCC leads me to believe the server is best suited for casters with 26 CL or higher, whether it was designed this way or not.

Every build is a glass canon unless it is capable of achieving a ~55+AC, High DPS, and Mid/High 30s-Saves without fear of being dispelled.

UMD may enable anyone with an adequate number of skill points to use wands or cast spells... but these "buffs" are routinely dispelled. Glass canon

High AC is meaningless without Uncanny Dodge... unless of course, you combine high AC with any form of DR (stoneskin, greater stoneskin, premonition, etc. without risk of being dispelled). Glass canon

High DPS is relative. Unless you have a Fortitude and Will Save in the mid/high-30s, you won't be around long enough to dish out the high DPS. Glass canon

Again, it's possible to pump up your saves with spells, wands, scrolls, and elixirs... Just choose your buff source wisely because wands and scrolls only attract dispell actions because of the game's AI. Glass canon

Spells are a reasonable source so long as you have a CL 26 or higher. Elixirs are the optimum choice (30 CL) unless you plan to drink a six-pack of them.

AC, DPS, and Saves are critical when fighting any bosses with 5,000 plus HP... This many HP allows them to stay around long enough to use every spell they have, while also spawning reinforcements.

Cheers!

[DM Boo]

Can I just put out here that it is really hard to create a good boss during a DM event, particularly when we are talking 25+'s. Every time I've done one, I've always felt unsatisfied with the results. Usually they die in 3 seconds, despite unbelievably high stats, at the hands of a few characters, while the vast majority of the other characters feel they aren't contributing much because they can do little against the high stats. That was my experience as well playerside, with a reasonably tanky character. It's an incredibly difficult encounter to get right. I'd like to hear people's thoughts about how we can better balance bosses, particularly in DM events, so the experience comes off as much better for those involved.

[DaloLorn]

Perhaps this is a consequence of my altoholism weighing me down, or my inability to tolerate prolonged periods of mindless grinding... but +4 equipment is not as common to me as some people make it seem. In about a year of active play over the past two years, I've accumulated enough +4 equipment (none of which would be considered tradeworthy in today's economy) to maybe outfit two characters. Said characters would only have +4 Armor (and most likely have to forgo mithral armor, which I've never owned with more than a +2 Armor or some similarly trivial effects) +4 Deflection, and +4 EB, since I've never obtained any items with +4 ability scores, +4 Natural, or +4 Shield; for the rest of their items, I'd have to settle for more abundant +2 ability score (or single-slot +3s) and +3 Natural/Shield items.

I have over ten times that many characters. I have, at this moment, characters in active play who settle for items as mundane as a +1 Move Silently ring because they can't find anything more powerful and/or relevant to their build. Characters with feats as utterly useless as the entire Fiendish Heritage tree. (... Well, not until epics.) Mercifully, the active ones are Shifters and/or dragged around by characters with builds far superior to their own, so it's not too much of an impediment... but I am definitely of the opinion that adjusting NPC stats to compensate for power creep is a mistake.

I also believe that some NPC types are blatantly overtuned and/or abused by area designers. Rhifox and Hoihe's examples of bosses being immune to everything aren't a bad example, but there's also the tendency to spawn large quantities of spellcasting mobs, and then arm those mobs primarily with offensive spells. For instance:

• Every fourth mob in the gnoll caves is an occultist with a Scorching Ray (subject to SR or obscene touch AC), Lightning Bolt (subject to SR or Evasion), and one or both of [Lesser Orb of Acid, Lesser Orb of Electricity] (subject only to obscene touch AC). Asking your warder (if any) to prepare elemental wards is futile, since the spawn frequency of occultists is high enough that the wards will be depleted far more rapidly than they can be reasonably replenished. Energy Immunity is an exception, but does not become readily available to even a dedicated caster until they've outleveled the gnolls.
• The hobgoblins in the High Moors similarly have a variety of spells with an alarming spawn frequency. Offhand, I can remember (Greater?) Shout, (Greater?) Fireburst, and multiple orb spells, but there may be more.
• It feels like one out of three bandits in the ruins in the High Moors is a mage with a Death Armor, a Flame Arrow, a Vitriolic Sphere, a Create Undead, a Magic Missile, a Cone of Cold, and at least one Orb of Force. Just one of them would be enough to kill a level-appropriate rogue (case in point, they nearly did), and on several occasions yesterday, Dae and Ishi found themselves having to take two at a time with nearly catastrophic consequences.

This, in itself, wouldn't be a problem. They're a nice challenge and all that, and dueling a player mage would probably go roughly the same way. (Ilhara did recently stomp over two intruding elves with Quickened Daggerbolts, after all. She should've gotten XP, they each had a few levels on her! ) The thing is, this extra challenge only seems to serve as a penalty to builds that can't instantly kill mobs like that anyway. You don't get any extra reward for it, and it happens way too frequently to be considered a (mini-?)boss encounter.

Furthermore, there's an inherent imbalance between what a player mage can do and what an NPC mage can do. Yes, NPC mages typically have a fraction of the spell slots available to player mages, but they have much higher innate HP/AC, and they have the benefit of numbers. A Sword Coast Bandit Mage or whatever it was called will probably not have to conserve spells for a second encounter, and may still have enough firepower to kill a PC if left unchecked. An arcane PC, on the other hand, might as well not prepare offensive spells at all, because the only spells that'll last through to the next rest zone are usually going to be long-term buffs. The amount of spell slots you'll be able to spare for offense is so minuscule compared to the amount of reasons you'll need to use those spells, that you might as well accept that you won't be able to blow up anything except the bosses that most of your spells can't touch. (This is particularly bad in DM events. If every encounter deserves a fireball, but there are more encounters than fireballs, no encounters deserve fireballs... and let's be realistic, one fireball would barely be noticed by the encroaching horde of 600-HP monsters in the first place. Ilhara rarely used her spell slots against the yuan-ti casters on Sunday, and never used more than an Invisible Dagger against the other mobs.)

Can I just put out here that it is really hard to create a good boss during a DM event, particularly when we are talking 25+'s. Every time I've done one, I've always felt unsatisfied with the results. Usually they die in 3 seconds, despite unbelievably high stats, at the hands of a few characters, while the vast majority of the other characters feel they aren't contributing much because they can do little against the high stats. That was my experience as well playerside, with a reasonably tanky character. It's an incredibly difficult encounter to get right. I'd like to hear people's thoughts about how we can better balance bosses, particularly in DM events, so the experience comes off as much better for those involved.

To some extent, I think it's out of your hands. The power gap between optimized and unoptimized builds is not something a DM can control, and detecting the party's power level becomes increasingly complicated as the amount of PCs rises. The DM's best boss-making tools - complexity and intelligence - are negated by a mixture of factors:

• Engine/toolkit limitations prevent you from selectively restricting the attacks that might work against the boss, or coming up with tricks for the boss to use against the party.
• This is a realtime environment, so the DM's bandwidth for applying and demonstrating a given set of mechanical quirks is limited. The players are equally limited, as they may not notice or be able to fully process the clues before it's too late.
• One of the first things we are told as DMs is "don't possess the NPCs in a battle (if at all)." The NWN2 AI being braindead on a good day, this makes your bosses even more dependent on raw stats.
• Most players expect to fight the boss. I've never seen people avoid a boss encounter (or any encounter!) for fear that they might get steamrolled... except maybe if the DM very actively telegraphed how screwed they would be, or outright forbade the attempt.
• Mob/boss design throughout the server makes it difficult to distinguish between mundane DM overbuffing and plot-relevant details such as "this guy is only immune to effect XYZ because he warded, you need to dispel him first".

It's part of why I enjoyed Frin's campaign so much last year. I was free to vary my encounters considerably, featuring such things as intelligent spellcasters, the use of the third dimension in combat, hostage-taking, the use of diversions, distractions, and gambits more complex than "group A kicks ass here to distract from group B kicking ass there", and the possibility of royally screwing things up. (Which Frin didn't. Usually. )

[Steve]

Can I just put out here that it is really hard to create a good boss during a DM event, particularly when we are talking 25+'s. Every time I've done one, I've always felt unsatisfied with the results. Usually they die in 3 seconds, despite unbelievably high stats, at the hands of a few characters, while the vast majority of the other characters feel they aren't contributing much because they can do little against the high stats. That was my experience as well playerside, with a reasonably tanky character. It's an incredibly difficult encounter to get right. I'd like to hear people's thoughts about how we can better balance bosses, particularly in DM events, so the experience comes off as much better for those involved.

This is so absolutely true, and a serious issue affecting both DM and Player experience.

Solutions that nobody will like:

1. Max cap PC level at 21.
2. Spawn 1 Boss mob per PC in Event…and crash the Server ( ).
3. Make Bosses fully Immune to 90% of dmg, forcing Playersto be creative (but do not also make the Bosses have insane AB and damage themselves).
4. Stop using Bosses and spawn tens of mid-to-high mobs…and crash the Server ( ).
5. Make it known in the campaign through IG discovery that The Boss can’t be killed by mechanical means, and can only be killed/removed/overcome through RP actions or other forms of discovery.

Good luck!

[DaloLorn]

Can I just put out here that it is really hard to create a good boss during a DM event, particularly when we are talking 25+'s. Every time I've done one, I've always felt unsatisfied with the results. Usually they die in 3 seconds, despite unbelievably high stats, at the hands of a few characters, while the vast majority of the other characters feel they aren't contributing much because they can do little against the high stats. That was my experience as well playerside, with a reasonably tanky character. It's an incredibly difficult encounter to get right. I'd like to hear people's thoughts about how we can better balance bosses, particularly in DM events, so the experience comes off as much better for those involved.

This is so absolutely true, and a serious issue affecting both DM and Player experience.

Solutions that nobody will like:

1. Max cap PC level at 21.
2. Spawn 1 Boss mob per PC in Event…and crash the Server ( ).
3. Make Bosses fully Immune to 90% of dmg, forcing Playersto be creative (but do not also make the Bosses have insane AB and damage themselves).
4. Stop using Bosses and spawn tens of mid-to-high mobs…and crash the Server ( ).
5. Make it known in the campaign through IG discovery that The Boss can’t be killed by mechanical means, and can only be killed/removed/overcome through RP actions or other forms of discovery.

Good luck!

I wouldn't mind solution 5. Or I guess possibly 3, but you may need to offer some clarification first.

In some contexts, there might also be a solution 6:

6. Make a boss mob whose performance is significantly amplified (or constrained, if necessary!) by DM possession, possess the boss... and crash the server.

[Rhifox]

Can I just put out here that it is really hard to create a good boss during a DM event, particularly when we are talking 25+'s. Every time I've done one, I've always felt unsatisfied with the results. Usually they die in 3 seconds, despite unbelievably high stats, at the hands of a few characters, while the vast majority of the other characters feel they aren't contributing much because they can do little against the high stats. That was my experience as well playerside, with a reasonably tanky character. It's an incredibly difficult encounter to get right. I'd like to hear people's thoughts about how we can better balance bosses, particularly in DM events, so the experience comes off as much better for those involved.

AC, SR, DR. DM bosses, like most of the other bosses on BG, are utterly lacking in AC. This means that they are bullet sponges more than anything else, their rate of death only dictated by how high the damage output of the PCs is and how many PCs there are. There seems to be a general encounter design philosophy on BG where players are guaranteed the right to at least hit the mob. This should not be the case. Some bosses should have to be debuffed, have their defenses broken, before PCs can start bashing on them. I'd recommend DMs take examples from existing high CR mobs from pnp (like Prismatic Dragons).

Also, multi-mob boss encounters. The boss shouldn't be alone. If they are, it becomes a lot easier for characters to just bash on them. Likewise, think like a player. If you're preparing a spellcasting mob, for example, what spells do you want to use? The same ones players would use. Bigbies, Storm Avatar to counter those high-damage archers, Cloudkills (have a poison-immune boss drop a maximized cloudkill on top of themselves, all those martial characters have to stand in it if they want to do damage), Displacement and Mirror Image, Elemental Shield, spells that won't fail against standard player defenses (eg little point in Wail when you know the PCs will be all Mass Death Warded). I don't know if you already do this, or even able to do this, but assuming DM possession at least works like familiar possession, manually possess the mob and direct it against vulnerable players/use the appropriate spells yourself instead of relying on its shitty AI.

Also, consider a boss encounter to be more than just a pve encounter with a boss mob. You can try to get the encounter to split the party before the boss actually faces them, or whittle them down and *not* allow resurrection. Or at least, remove characters that are resurrected from the event, due to their injuries or whatever. If someone goes down, that's it, they should be down for the count for that event, and the party has to make do one person short. A major problem with encounters on BG is that there's virtually zero threat of consequences to players. I don't mean permadeath or whatever here, I mean, there's zero chance to lose if the only way players can lose an event is by TPK. Mobs should be able to whittle players down to the point they just don't have enough resources/forces to handle the rest of the dungeon/boss. Treat it like dodgeball - you get hit (downed), you're out of the game.

You can also just flat out go DMFI encounter. Spawn the mob as neutral, have players go round-by-round. Admittedly we should really expand our DMFI system to make this more viable.

[Hoihe]

Also, consider a boss encounter to be more than just a pve encounter with a boss mob. You can try to get the encounter to split the party before the boss actually faces them, or whittle them down and *not* allow resurrection. Or at least, remove characters that are resurrected from the event, due to their injuries or whatever. If someone goes down, that's it, they should be down for the count for that event, and the party has to make do one person short. A major problem with encounters on BG is that there's virtually zero threat of consequences to players. I don't mean permadeath or whatever here, I mean, there's zero chance to lose if the only way players can lose an event is by TPK. Mobs should be able to whittle players down to the point they just don't have enough resources/forces to handle the rest of the dungeon/boss. Treat it like dodgeball - you get hit (downed), you're out of the game.

You can also just flat out go DMFI encounter. Spawn the mob as neutral, have players go round-by-round. Admittedly we should really expand our DMFI system to make this more viable.

On this whittling down, I've had similar-ish ideas.

But rather than being out for the event, which may not be relevant for the overall plot as a whole...

Give the players some sort of tangible resources: Some kind of "IC time" (since due to timezones, we gotta drag stuff out longer than ICly reasonable, we can look to the devil war/undead war and its "objective time" mechanics to resolve that), or literal resources (materials or stuff), or NPC lives (if it's part of some prolonged conflict with NPCs involved) and so forth.

PC goes down - those resources are reduced. It's a positive for RP, as no player characters are made impossible to play yet there is a tangible consequence.


Now, this has the issue of forcing people doing DM events to select for powerbuilds and exclude those that would go down easily in NWN mechanics (but may be awesome to have in PnP). For this, I do not really know beyond what was already said.

Have the boss encounter be a party on party fight, BUT allow the players to influence the final encounter through preparation.

Assassination, sabotage, splitting.

All these attempts should of course carry a risk - so, again: make them wager these objective resources to make the attempts, and even on success some will be lost depending on what kind of resources. After all, trying to sabotage the bodyguard of the big bad takes time, and if things are time sensitive...

And, even if it does remain party on party, the players will still have the tactical opportunity to influence it mid-combat through smart targeting which they can do due to scouting/other info gathering. Arelith's own PvE follows the philosophy of rewarding smart targetting by not having every mob have the same threat/defence.

The big drawback beyond the difficulty of ensuring no player is excluded due to build is bookkeeping. Defining these resources, and making their use/gain/loss transparent is a lot of overhead. But, it would permit for what Rhifox suggests.

[DaloLorn]

Can I just put out here that it is really hard to create a good boss during a DM event, particularly when we are talking 25+'s. Every time I've done one, I've always felt unsatisfied with the results. Usually they die in 3 seconds, despite unbelievably high stats, at the hands of a few characters, while the vast majority of the other characters feel they aren't contributing much because they can do little against the high stats. That was my experience as well playerside, with a reasonably tanky character. It's an incredibly difficult encounter to get right. I'd like to hear people's thoughts about how we can better balance bosses, particularly in DM events, so the experience comes off as much better for those involved.

AC, SR, DR. DM bosses, like most of the other bosses on BG, are utterly lacking in AC. This means that they are bullet sponges more than anything else, their rate of death only dictated by how high the damage output of the PCs is and how many PCs there are. There seems to be a general encounter design philosophy on BG where players are guaranteed the right to at least hit the mob. This should not be the case. Some bosses should have to be debuffed, have their defenses broken, before PCs can start bashing on them. I'd recommend DMs take examples from existing high CR mobs from pnp (like Prismatic Dragons).

If I remember the creature skins they can add correctly, some buffs can't be applied via DM tools. (But it's been nearly two years since I last opened up the DM creator, sooo...)

Also, my experience has more closely mirrored YYA's than yours so far. Playing medium-BAB classes like rogues (even with a high-BAB multiclass into Thief Acrobat!), there are situations where I'm just fishing for autohits and otherwise utterly incapable of harming the enemy. Furthermore, DR can't be broken by any method outside having the appropriate weapons.

Also, multi-mob boss encounters. The boss shouldn't be alone. If they are, it becomes a lot easier for characters to just bash on them. Likewise, think like a player. If you're preparing a spellcasting mob, for example, what spells do you want to use? The same ones players would use. Bigbies, Storm Avatar to counter those high-damage archers, Cloudkills (have a poison-immune boss drop a maximized cloudkill on top of themselves, all those martial characters have to stand in it if they want to do damage), Displacement and Mirror Image, Elemental Shield, spells that won't fail against standard player defenses (eg little point in Wail when you know the PCs will be all Mass Death Warded). I don't know if you already do this, or even able to do this, but assuming DM possession at least works like familiar possession, manually possess the mob and direct it against vulnerable players/use the appropriate spells yourself instead of relying on its (p00pie) AI.

This would only work if DMs possessing bosses in combat didn't crash the server. (Which, to be fair, I don't think has been retested since I left the team... but it's not really something people would usually like to see tested, I think. )

I definitely agree, though - it would make things a lot more interesting if bosses were DM-possessed.

Also, consider a boss encounter to be more than just a pve encounter with a boss mob. You can try to get the encounter to split the party before the boss actually faces them, or whittle them down and *not* allow resurrection. Or at least, remove characters that are resurrected from the event, due to their injuries or whatever. If someone goes down, that's it, they should be down for the count for that event, and the party has to make do one person short. A major problem with encounters on BG is that there's virtually zero threat of consequences to players. I don't mean permadeath or whatever here, I mean, there's zero chance to lose if the only way players can lose an event is by TPK. Mobs should be able to whittle players down to the point they just don't have enough resources/forces to handle the rest of the dungeon/boss. Treat it like dodgeball - you get hit (downed), you're out of the game.

Yep. No argument here. I already complained a fair bit about plots being railroaded towards flawless player victory in the other thread.

Aside from Hoihe's suggestions, I would probably go with:

• PCs can be taken prisoner. (This could work great, given adequate DM availability... but more likely, it'll be terrible unless the whole party is captured, and possibly even then. I would probably ask for consent before this became relevant. Telegraphing would also be nice where feasible.)
• PCs can be gravely wounded. (This is negated by ample access to high-level healing spells, but it may still be a temporary setback if such spells are not readily available for whatever reason.)
• PCs can die. (See the above point.)
• PCs can die without immediate access to resurrection, and/or with the need to expend more PnP-appropriate resources in the course of said resurrection, and/or require True Resurrection. (Since this is a variation on the prisoner theme that doesn't allow the PC any RP until they are resurrected, I would definitely ask for consent before it became relevant. Telegraphing would also be nice where feasible.)
• PCs can permanently die, no takebacks. (This is an option I am reluctant to suggest, but I am equally reluctant to completely remove it off the table. IMO, such great losses should be telegraphed well in advance of the decision that causes them, or consent should be given in advance.)

You can also just flat out go DMFI encounter. Spawn the mob as neutral, have players go round-by-round. Admittedly we should really expand our DMFI system to make this more viable.

Unfortunately, this can only reasonably work with a party of 6 or fewer PCs (if even). The DMs sometimes find themselves having to manage dozens at a time towards the end of large campaigns.

[Ghost]

I definitely agree, though - it would make things a lot more interesting if bosses were DM-possessed.

Unfortunately, possessing NPCs and casting spells, and even worse going into combat, causes massive server lag, and can crash it. Otherwise it would certainly be an interesting possibility.

[Rhifox]

I definitely agree, though - it would make things a lot more interesting if bosses were DM-possessed.

Unfortunately, possessing NPCs and casting spells, and even worse going into combat, causes massive server lag, and can crash it. Otherwise it would certainly be an interesting possibility.

Has this been tried since the recent upgrades to server stability? And if it's still a problem, can we do anything to fix it? I'd recommend talking to Ewe/Dae, since he's been doing a lot of working cleaning up the code to increase server stability.

[Hoihe]

[*]PCs can permanently die, no takebacks. (This is an option I am reluctant to suggest, but I am equally reluctant to completely remove it off the table. IMO, such great losses should be telegraphed well in advance of the decision that causes them, or consent should be given in advance.)[/list]

Hard no, that's anti-RP

Make it that you lose your inventory, and if you really want to, you can have your sentimental items stripped of properties and given negative properties. You get to keep the item, but not use it.

For some reason, nobody likes "Item loss" but everyone suggests permadeath, while itemloss doesn't destroy RP.

[DaloLorn]

I definitely agree, though - it would make things a lot more interesting if bosses were DM-possessed.

Unfortunately, possessing NPCs and casting spells, and even worse going into combat, causes massive server lag, and can crash it. Otherwise it would certainly be an interesting possibility.

Yeah, I mentioned that in the rest of the section you quoted.

[*]PCs can permanently die, no takebacks. (This is an option I am reluctant to suggest, but I am equally reluctant to completely remove it off the table. IMO, such great losses should be telegraphed well in advance of the decision that causes them, or consent should be given in advance.)[/list]

Hard no, that's anti-RP

Make it that you lose your inventory, and if you really want to, you can have your sentimental items stripped of properties and given negative properties. You get to keep the item, but not use it.

For some reason, nobody likes "Item loss" but everyone suggests permadeath, while itemloss doesn't destroy RP.

Yeah, sure, item loss too. Good catch, I forgot to mention those as options. In either case, the key words here are telegraphing and consent. One or both should be present before making radical, irreversible changes to the character.

And at the risk of rehashing a years-old argument for the umpteenth time: You do not get to deny consent on anyone's behalf except your own, any more than the rest of us get to grant it on your behalf. Use the rules to shield Atria all you want, but do not assume everyone else views their characters as equally inviolable.