Dasaria II - A NWN2 Roleplay and Story-driven Persistent World

Q: How fun is it to go from full hitpoints to dead 1 out of 20 times a grunt spellcaster looks at you despite having saves that would pass except for the auto fail on a 1?

A: Not at all.

Please reserve death spells for bosses, or provide some way to guard against them for non-clerics ... please...

please?

.... pretty please?

Which grunt spell casters are you talking about?

Rob wrote:Which grunt spell casters are you talking about?

To avoid any spoilers theres scaley ones, green warty ones, and two types of tusked ones that spring to mind.

Well, take a party and have a cleric cast death ward on you. DnD is a party based game, so there will be balance issues soloing of course. Apart from that you could just get lucky I guess.

Ebannon, the areas you mention would also be the realms in which Mandrake roam. Sure, once in a while you die from those spells. But magic can protect you, and the exp is good enough to make up for the deaths. I don't mind having a bit of fear of dying in those areas.
I did think the use of death magic in a certain temple quest was unfair. But that is because it is such a crowded and rough place, so that even if you plan your tactics very well in a party then a single death spell could mean doom for everyone. Not so with the before mentioned areas, because there you can divert attention and outrun the foes to return later to raise your fallen.

Q: Why do only those complain that fail only on a one?

A: No idea

Just invest in some UMD and buy a wand of death ward, it's as simple as that. Failing that, take along a cleric to cast it for you, or just get some items that improve your saving throw. If your saves are already so high that you only fail 1/20 times.... well to be honest, you're not going to die that often. You just have to put it down to bad luck and keep on going when it happens. Occasional deaths are an inevitable part of soloing.

Why do people complain that some content is difficult? Do you want to solo everything in the game and never take any risks?

Though as others have pointed out, there's ways to defend against this particular risk. Please DON'T make things any easier than they already are; we need areas like this. Along the same lines, I personally think the oil pools should be taken out of the Troll Caves. First of all, I don't see trolls living right next to an extremely flammable substance! And secondly, it would stimulate the economy as people would have to stock up on potions of alchemist's fire or buy a wand of Flame Blade, etc.

In general, I'm for more difficult quests, or at least quests where you need to be really well-prepared to succeed.

Why do people complain about the difficulty of soloing?

A. Because they are not playing a cleric or druid powerbuild.
B. Because expectations are betrayed.

Example of B. In Dasaria 1 Koalisks had magic resistance 15, but vulnerability to fire. In Das 2 they do not have magic resistance, but do have immunity to fire... which effective screws over arcane casters who do not play the buff/polymorph strategy. Further, when you con something and it comes up as "Challenging" you have an expectation that an average character of any class should be able to take it one on one, but expend a good amount of resources doing so. It means that someone should not have to use a specific build or specific spell combo, it should mean anyone with any normal build should be able to. It should also mean that you should not log on, try and solo and end up loosing more than you gain due to simply due to bad luck, or due to that fact that things are designed for character builds much more powerful than you happen to have.

ladies and gentlemen, may I refer you to the.....

Haters thread!

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4763

I agree that spellcasters--especially clerics--are completely overpowered. But please; I'm tired of people accusing others of having powerbuilds just because we DON'T complain about the difficulty.

I have a pure Bard, a Fighter/Rogue who will never get HiPS, a pure Druid with no ranks in Use Magic Device or monk levels who actually took the Combat Casting feat, a pure Wizard, and a pure Ranger. Some have easier times with quests than others, but I don't want the difficulty to go down. When my Wizard hit level 11 he didn't have a prayer in the Monks quest because I couldn't get his AC high enough, but I'm fine with that--I'll just go with a party. So yes some content is difficult, and yes many of my characters can't solo multiple quests, but SO WHAT. I actually like it that way. I tried one or two "powerbuilds," but never got above level 6 or so because they weren't interesting to me.

As far as the original rant of this thread though: I understand the frustration, but there are easy ways around the problem (i.e., Death Ward from a cleric or a wand). I would agree with the rant if there really was a 5% chance of dieing each time they cast a spell at you, but with proper protection that just isn't the case. So basically the original poster brought up a potential problem, but which we've found is not a problem because it is easily bypassed by buying a single wand and/or partying up with someone.

I ask again: should all quests be soloable for all builds? Of course not!

P.s. Nerf Clerics!

You just need to just accept that sometimes your character dies.

It's not the point of the game that you're unkillable and there would be no excitement if it was. This is a d20 system, there is ALWAYS a risk of a bad roll, that's part of the beauty/fun of the system. It's probably a good thing that you have an emotional reaction to it, means somebody's doing something right.

I've been playing a bunch of xbox360 games recently, it's just stupid how easy they often are on the default settings. You'd have to go out of your way to die, and even then save points will get you through any mildly challenging part of the game. If I want to watch a movie, I'll watch a movie.

ps: For every power there is a counterpower. Death Ward, for instance is relatively low-level spell that'll protect you from death magic. One could even say that death spells are the poor Druid's only defense against RDDs dishing out comic-book damage, and even then it's a weak defense against an opponent with high saves.

Game balance is far from perfect, yes. But it also changes over the lifetime of a character, casters suck at low levels, rule at high levels, fighters the reverse.

I find fightery characters are actually pretty resilient at high levels because they benefit from party buffs and wand buffs, but they're not going to instantly die in the middle of a fight if dispelled.

Yes, casters can take out the big boys, demons, dragons, that sort of thing, but that's their role. Against these sorts of opponents, they should also be wary of getting dispelled or running out of spells generally, and relying on part fighters to engage opponents and let them do their thing.

But people get used to self-buffing themselves up like a fighter and thus making themselves invincible (at least until that dispell comes), or just repeatedly cheating their spells, rather than playing like a caster -- a character who's vulnerable and squishy, but has "the nukes." If there's a caster issue, it's that there's too many ways with all these prestige classes (or being a cleric), that make fighter/magic-users (to use an old term) possible.

I think the fact their removing death spells from DnD4.0 is a bloody huge indicator of what people in general think of death spells.
Anyhow thats just my thought on the matter...

Zephis wrote:I think the fact their removing death spells from DnD4.0 is a bloody huge indicator of what people in general think of death spells.
Anyhow thats just my thought on the matter...

That's disappointing.