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

scaling only occurs when you are above area CR. Going to trill claws at 16 will have no impact on the area.

Taking the same 16s to thunders though can produce an effect or would they be too high then?

They would be just 1-2 levels too high. Xvarts, Ulgoth pirates, uldoon trail, Hags, Minotaurs? Maybe fields of the dead and the Ogre fort in troll hills?

The old high hedge. The way it used to be. Would have been crazy if it were like thunders. Cause for me. Thunders went from being a good grind to a desperate rush to the exit.

note that thunders ride and the mine north of beregost are the only two with a specific dynamic that occurs if you grind too long. However, all areas of the server benefit from the dynamic spawns.

My personal opinion/ advice... don't solo areas unless they are ~4 below your ECL unless you first explore the area with a party and are certain you can handle it. Otherwise, if you have a balanced party you should be fine in areas of roughly equivalent CR to the average level of your party members.

Just had a read through of everyones comments and also this system.

I was unaware of it as I have 2 level 30's and I dont really loot/dungeon crawl much anymore except on my paladin to chaos now and then.

And bugger me did Chaos suddenly get a bit harder when a yellow named flame skull appeared ALONGSIDE his group. Sure I dont need the xp, but the added challenge of this made the experience actually fun for my level 30 great smiter, rather than the usual "speed run"

I love what has been done - Has made the server feel very fresh and dynamic. Adding to this system and tweaking it would be time well spend as it keeps on improving.

Actually makes me excited to try start a group of 4-5 low levels and try it all out old school style without muling etc.

Great work !

Kiran wrote:Actually makes me excited to try start a group of 4-5 low levels and try it all out old school style without muling etc.

I can highly recommend doing that. Nothing like being excited when you find that first +1 flail that is a huge improvement to your young adventurer

Does the xp you get scale?

I am absolutly not a fan of dynamic (character level adjusted) spawns and I think this special boss thing fails its purpose. In my opinion it soon will be as boring as before and even more boring because only the bosses will challenge you a bit as you only go where you can handle the random bosses. All the other enemies will be often much too low. That doesn't matter if you are in party or solo. When you go to a place where you had a challenge against all monsters, you will now be killed by one of the extra bosses that often enough spawns randomly next to you. Well powerbuilds will have more fun while the rest just will get it much harder to lvl and to earn gold. I fear that if xp losses happen to someone a few times because of a random overpowered boss spawn he/she will just avoid that place and complain about the system. The xp loss is just too annoying for the fun you get. In the badest case they loose motivation because of the slow leveling at the lower CR map and play another game.
We had such a system at my former nwn1 server and it was often just very annoying to fight your way through the maps to get where you wanted to go. And for sure I won't start to kill all the monsters on the map when I run with my ranger from a to b in stealth or invisible. Here and now I say sorry to all those who will die from it in the future. I like slightly random encounters but dislike any dynamic encounter that is scaled by a character's level. I love d&D games because they normaly don't have dynamic spawn systems. I love that I can set my own challenge. I am pretty sceptical here. So I will watch this very carefully and hopfully not loose my fun. I am just glad that is only a slight lvl adjustment if I got it right and from how I experienced it. For now I had some fun for sure but I already got frustated as well and I am for sure not alone as another player already stated to me oocly after we got killed by a boss monster, "I already begin to hate the new system."
Anyway thank you very much for all your efforts to make BGTSCC a more interesting place. It is always hard to satisfy all the players and for sure it can be pretty demotivating if you work a lot in your free time and then you get headwind from those who dislike the changes and those who see everything so negatively. So I am sorry if you feel like that, but some people just want to share their concerns in hope they will be noticed. Their purpose if for sure the same; to make/keep BGTSSC a great and exciting place.

Kanada wrote:Does the xp you get scale?

dedude wrote:Yes they do.

Touri, thanks for your feedback... You should never feel bad for giving it and as you say, not everyone is going to like everything implemented. I do think you should give it a go with various CR PC's and see how it goes. My experience testing multiple area's with multiple level characters is something I find exciting. You may go to an area and do fine, then go back later and struggle a bit. It keeps you on your toes and allows for more in character reactions based on struggling or overcoming an unexpected challenge. The fact that they never scale above your CR should give you time (in most cases) to beat a hasty retreat, but you need to keep an exit strategy handy!

Touri wrote:Touri, thanks for your feedback... You should never feel bad for giving it and as you say, not everyone is going to like everything implemented. I do think you should give it a go with various CR PC's and see how it goes. My experience testing multiple area's with multiple level characters is something I find exciting. You may go to an area and do fine, then go back later and struggle a bit. It keeps you on your toes and allows for more in character reactions based on struggling or overcoming an unexpected challenge. The fact that they never scale above your CR should give you time (in most cases) to beat a hasty retreat, but you need to keep an exit strategy handy!

Sure I will give it a go. And for sure you have to be much more careful and exit strategies are hardly recommended. In one case I died the boss monster just spawned next to me. Maybe a potion of invisibilty would have saved me, but my companion was just killed in seconds. So I think the gap between the boss monsters and the default monsters has to be adjusted very carefully. We just killed the Pitfiend in the Nashkel Mines with a lvl 25 fighter/druid and a lvl 21 pala/cleric or fs without much problem. We came back to the room with the chest and the many spawns. I saw a duergar sorcerer. So I sneaked in to attack him before he could dispel me. After I attacked him three duergar and a yellow duergar battlerager boss spawned and attack my companion. Well the lvl 21 player character was dead within a round and I was lost as well because I got blocked. This room always had dangerous spawns and I had good fights in it. This time it just felt unfair or overpowered to me.
Another boss monster killed us in the dragon cave at the serpent hills. A Dark Naga as boss can be very deadly. Normaly you can avoid them to use death magic if you kill them fast enough. But this thing casted a deathspell as its first spell with not much chance for my rogue to survive. For now I am not sure if the risk is worth it to go back there with this chars or any char without deathward or a priest as companion.
So it is just the thing that I am afraid that I now have to go to a place with much less xp, less treasure and less challenging enemies in the majority. Also it is now another map that is only playable by catsers which can cast deathward or you have a cleric with them. (I hope we soon can buy deathward potions for a fair prize for non umd characters) Otherwise you have a good chance of getting killed and loosing xp (if not lvl 30). Often enough this ends for me with logging off soon after.
I am still the opinion that it will get much harder for all weaker builds with the consequence that they will be played less and less just like it was mentioned here before. But I will see how it work out after some more testing and maybe some adjustments.

Level 16 characters having an easy time in troll claws doesn't sound very average builds for me. Years ago, the idea was to do hill giants until 20 and troll claws until 25 >.>.

Considering the average person would head to areas powerbuilds can take on at the "appropriate CR" way later (I hear ridiculous claims of sharp teeth orcs being cr 8! I want to see any non munchkin build go through the orc head quest at level 8, without using UMD Summon creature 9.)... This makes them deal with said areas even later. Some areas will also likely become outright impossible - see frost giants or Chaos.

Previously soloable at level 30 for most builds. Will be no longer, except for builds specially made for more and more power.



And Touri's Vendor isn't even a weak PC. He's a strength melee ranger that destroys the majority of things outright - so please no claims of "git gud."

CR is based on a balance party of 4 PC's. Frost Giant Keep is CR27, so a solo CR30 should find that area dangerous, though doable. The woods of Sharpteeth is CR8, but I don't know that the Sharpteeth cave is also only CR8. I personally wouldn't take on the Warlock or the Chief until at least 12 with any build.

I don't think anyone is advising to 'get gud', just saying it is a new mechanic, keep an open mind. My personal opinion is mechanics that reward grouping up are good, as D&D is meant to be a party based game. That said solo play is still fully supported and I have posted findings in QC with several character level ranges based on my play in various area's. Touri's post is helpful because it provides specifics of his experiences and additional posts would also be helpful as it is certainly something that may need further tweaks.

Maybe CR27+ area's should not be eligible for the CR increase mechanic, or at least no area should have be eligible to increase above CR30. Another possibility is when solo make the scaling of an area max +1, +2 for 2 players, +3 for 3 or more players (currently max is +2 solo, +4 with a group I think).

The point is that it's ok for an area to be too difficult and need to escape. There's lots of area's on the server after all. It's not just about being able to go to a set area where you know you can safely loot. Any dungeon experience should be considered risky, I mean, that is why you wear armor, cast spells and carry weapons after all.

There are many things that could be done to tone down the scaling or possibly make it less stressful for some, but it's an interesting mechanic that makes the game feel more like your playing D&D even with no DM present, which I feel is an amazing accomplishment. Perhaps it is short lived, perhaps not. I'm just saying give it some time, continue posting experiences live in game and consider if they made you feel good or bad about the game. I am sure dedude didn't expect the initial implementation to be final and fully expects to tweak the mechanic over the coming months.

is this live in all areas?

avernus is/was already frightening

The world got harder for some people. That is what it is. You will adapt. We all will. And as far as I am concerned, I will have an exciting time adjusting.