Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

gedweyignasia wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 12:23 pm

Rhifox wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 8:47 amASlso, if someone lures them away... well, that's just tactics.

Is it also kinda metagaming, though? I'm not sure how to deal with repeatable dungeons with identical bosses from an RP perspective.

At the point that you're running the same dungeon over and over repeatedly for loot and know everything in and out, I think metagaming is only a small part of the issue.

Rhifox wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 2:37 pmAt the point that you're running the same dungeon over and over repeatedly for loot and know everything in and out, I think metagaming is only a small part of the issue.

Strongly agree with this. Needs more attention in the way we design things.

Rhifox wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 2:37 pm
At the point that you're running the same dungeon over and over repeatedly for loot and know everything in and out, I think metagaming is only a small part of the issue.

This is very true.

gedweyignasia wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 4:31 pm

Rhifox wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 2:37 pmAt the point that you're running the same dungeon over and over repeatedly for loot and know everything in and out, I think metagaming is only a small part of the issue.

Strongly agree with this. Needs more attention in the way we design things.

One must remember to make changes additively, rather than taking away what little there is already if they do wish to change that.

Hoihe wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 2:23 am One must remember to make changes additively, rather than taking away what little there is already if they do wish to change that.

I'm not averse to improving existing content if we can find ways to address deficiencies.

gedweyignasia wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 5:25 am

Hoihe wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 2:23 am One must remember to make changes additively, rather than taking away what little there is already if they do wish to change that.

I'm not averse to improving existing content if we can find ways to address deficiencies.

Hoihe's implied concern here is that the improvements will keep taking away what few epic zones Atria is capable of soloing. Adding the giant spawns to the FGK encounter, and especially in the obnoxious "we'll just arbitrarily pop up on top of our master when he's badly wounded" manner it's currently described as, has a disproportionately severe effect on builds which already struggle to take advantage of the few things the boss doesn't have undispellable blanket immunities to.

Swashbucklers and DC casters already have a limited enough selection of endgame content to play through, and this change hurts them a lot while having little effect on the sorts of builds that can already solo most of the rest of the server.

Before any cries of "you're not supposed to solo epic zones" crop up, from either staff or players:

• I am aware of, and in theoretical agreement with, the notion that you shouldn't be soloing most of the server content anyway. However, as a fellow European player, I'm not unsympathetic to Hoihe's oft-raised complaints of not having anyone to party with. Even if you open yourself up to all PCs in your level range, you may not always be able to find a party... and doing that requires you to ignore all IC and OOC conflicts, which isn't great. (Granted, I think Hoihe takes it to an absurd level, as is her way... but the underlying principle makes sense.)
• Other builds exist which can much more easily solo not just the FGK, but also a wide range of other places. I don't see why we should make exceptions to favour either group over the other.

DaloLorn wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 5:56 am

• I am aware of, and in theoretical agreement with, the notion that you shouldn't be soloing most of the server content anyway. However, as a fellow European player, I'm not unsympathetic to Hoihe's oft-raised complaints of not having anyone to party with. Even if you open yourself up to all PCs in your level range, you may not always be able to find a party... and doing that requires you to ignore all IC and OOC conflicts, which isn't great.

I would say this screen is quite explanatory. The problem at certain times is not just find DM events, but rather other players, RP and venture into a dungeon without XP penalities due to level differences.

Yeah. I get that in a perfect world, we'd want to make it nearly impossible to solo level-appropriate content, and people would still be able to do stuff... but we are not in a perfect world, not by a mile. Some allowances must, unfortunately, be made for the common necessity of soloing.

One should always build content from bottom up rather than top down.


Is the lower percentile ofnplayerbase provided for? If not, do not change existing systems to limit them even more.

At worst, add something more they cannot engage with. But at best create a strong foundation of content everyone can enjoy. And with the loot rebalance, this means ideally cr22+ areas that do not take an excessive amount of UMD, stats or a party to tackle.

Only after everyone has sth to do... only then go for things that are only possible in a party, or with a specific build, or with a large amount of consumables.

This frost giant change took what was possible, removed it and gated it behind UMD/partying without providing an alternative

I don't think it is the drastic power change you're painting. Can you try the encounter a couple more times instead ?

Yeah, I mean. Like, it's annoying, certainly, and can be a big difficulty spike, but it's not impossible to surmount. It's a surprise to people new to the fight, but once you know it's coming, you can take preparations. Doesn't really need UMD/a party to handle.

Valefort wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 10:59 am I don't think it is the drastic power change you're painting. Can you try the encounter a couple more times instead ?

Before the change, my build took 15 minutes to kill the frost giant king using full attention, going out of my way to gain every advantage possible - and even then, mistakes easily meant the fight might cost me 3 potions of Heal due to a missed HiPS or a missed Mirror or a missed mode switch or a missed weapon switch (like not noticing my Shield spell ran out and still using EB4 rapier than swapping to shield Rapier.)

This was already not fun, as it was way too stressful but I got it to work and created a rhythm.


My build's very advertised speciality is the following: Fighting a single foe 1 vs 1, and outlasting them through weakening them before going in for the killing blow. This is what all swashbuckler feats point towards, what duelist points towards.

This is mechanically represented by the Weakening Critical feat, low-innate damage (can hit around 150 damage per round, which is half of what's recommended minimum as a frontline melee), low innate AB (only hits 42 AB without any modes online, where most frontliners hit 48 AB), high innate AC WHILE 1v1 (can hit 63 AC without a single buff, can scale to 88 effective AC due to Weakening crit vs an enemy with 50 Str), no up-front DR (Weakening Critical acts as a slow, windup DR of up to 25 untyped if the fight goes long enough, but starts as 0).

Some of those numbers may seem insanely high once wind up is achieved, but you need to get there first. And those numbers are slowly eased as the fight goes on, more and more modes are dropped for sake of AB or damage.


And even with a strong rhythm to all of the above, with reliably pulling off the mode rotation and weapon swap... The fight still took me way longer, and way more effort, than an equivalent 6 APR frontliner build, or if I spent a lot of gold on UMD.




Now, what happens if the fight no longer is 1 vs 1, especially late into the fight?

First, I end up failing my HiPS dodge due to the small lagspike when enemies spawn, which lands a disjunction which strips my Shield and IMA, which unless I react fast enough loses me -6 AC (if I react fast enough, -3). This I can manage, and all it does is lengthen the fight by a few minutes. It happens even when doing 1v1.

Afterwards, I am flanked by 2 frost giants. This means they gain +2 AB to hit me. Furthermore, due to how Swashbuckler AC works, I only have 63 unbuffed AC vs a single target. The rest have 60 AC to hit. Aka: they spawn with an effective +5 AB to hit me, which means I need to go back to turtle mode with ICE/ID/Athkatlan. Which lengthens an already 15 minute long fight further.

Beyond this, I am now attacking around 6 more times in a round. This is 6 more times of a nat 20. So, I need to kill these flanking giants ASAP. But, when I do I lose 5 AC to the king. Who, if he casts some form of restoration, will proceed to hit me easily even with full mode on due to the +2 flanking AB and loss of 3 swashbuckler/dodge AC.

Because I cannot afford any lower AC while fighting the 2 frost giants, killing them takes me an entire minute. Again - a fight that already took me 15 minutes to win. Might even take 2 minutes if my rolls are very low or Flame Weapon ran out (which I now need to use, because formerly I could eschew it as the king was immune anyway). That's 1-2 minutes of the king being given flanking AB against a build whose job is to 1v1 big enemies.


This culminates in the fight now needing me to use Displacement, which is expensive. Heal potions, which is another expensive bit of of consumable. Use way more Mirror Images, (what I could previously do with 2-3 charges to last before str was low enough might need 6+). Much greater chance to get crit and just... die without much effort.

I actually managed to beat the king. But it was the opposite of fun or enjoyable, as it turned an already dreary fight into a nightmare.

For no increase in reward. In fact, a decrease as the first time it happened I burned 2 potions of Heal to recover from the Disjunction into -6 AC into getting flanked by 2 enemies.

Hoihe wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 10:28 am This frost giant change took what was possible, removed it and gated it behind UMD/partying without providing an alternative.

Valefort wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 10:59 am I don't think it is the drastic power change you're painting. Can you try the encounter a couple more times instead ?

I've run the FGK solo on my rogue dozens and dozens of times, and with minimal to no UMD usage... however, in order to complete the encounter I have to abuse the HiPS/line of sight mechanics for the entirety of the fight(which feels cheesy as heck). If there were no pillars in the throne room to run behind and break LoS, my rogue would probably get fugued 90% of the time, even with full consumable usage(mantle potions galore). As for the sudden appearance of guards/other spawns, the non-casters are fairly easy to deal with, as in more hiding behind pillars. When a caster appears, however, I'm usually a dead duck... in fact I'm not sure my gimp rogue has survived a single instance when a mage spawned. The metagaming AI loves my Will saves, and throwing whatever charm spell it is that they use (the rare giant will even spawn with ridiculous detection scores, as in: can reliably detect a character with hide/MS in the 80's, but this is maybe a 1 in 30 chance)

What might be better, and more realistic, is that when the FGK hits that damage threshold that he shouts out a call for the guards, and then perhaps a pair spawn at the doors...? Anything but right on top of the combat would at least give a player some time to prepare to fight, or even GTFO.

DaloLorn wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 5:56 am Before any cries of "you're not supposed to solo epic zones" crop up, from either staff or players:

• ... ~snip ~ .... Even if you open yourself up to all PCs in your level range, you may not always be able to find a party... and doing that requires you to ignore all IC and OOC conflicts, which isn't great.

Blaze wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 6:14 am The problem at certain times is not just find DM events, but rather other players, RP and venture into a dungeon without XP penalities due to level differences.

DaloLorn wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 6:27 am I get that in a perfect world, we'd want to make it nearly impossible to solo level-appropriate content, and people would still be able to do stuff... but we are not in a perfect world, not by a mile. Some allowances must, unfortunately, be made for the common necessity of soloing.

+1 to all of this.

DaloLorn wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 5:56 am

gedweyignasia wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 5:25 am

Hoihe wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 2:23 am One must remember to make changes additively, rather than taking away what little there is already if they do wish to change that.

I'm not averse to improving existing content if we can find ways to address deficiencies.

Hoihe's implied concern here is that the improvements will keep taking away what few epic zones Atria is capable of soloing.

I understood and was trying to communicate that if we can do things that improve the RP around existing areas, I want to do that.

I'm not trying to stop solos, but I'm not balancing for them. I try to build for RP so that players will develop their characters in interesting locations and tense situations. I don't like players sprinting through dungeons and killing everything as quickly as possible. I want dungeons to be a slow, thoughtful experience where there is time to RP. I also don't like content being extremely predictable; I want players to wonder what will happen as they are exploring a dungeon, not repeat the exercise as a rote, mechanical experience.

Losing is part of the game. How boring is to always win, just let the game be, you are not supposed to win everything.