Icewind Dale: True Heart of Fury challenge
Ark_Tolei
Member Posts: 69
Heart of fury mode is an interesting difficulty setting, that fundamentally changes the way the game is played. The ratio of monster damage to monster health is altered, and certain mechanics cease to function entirely (turn undead for instance). Additionally, reaching AC thresholds becomes extraordinarily difficult with the thaco bonus enemies receive. Icewind dale doesn't have a convenient suite of full plate armor just lying around a farm in chapter 1, and what few AC bonuses you can get in the early game, are tied to random loot tables.
The big issue the difficulty has, however, is that one type of ability the player has is actually more effective in HoF than it was in normal mode. Summons are more effective because their durability to damage ratio has gone up dramatically, and summons are mostly there to absorb damage, not deal it. The second the party gets a 5th level cleric, you might as well be playing on normal mode again, because your summons can absorb 100% of the incoming damage with no difficulty, and animate dead lasts effectively forever. This is different than, for instance, the stoneskin spell, which nullifies damage increases, but which is severely hampered by hp increases on enemies. The more times an enemy hits you before it dies, the less effective stoneskin becomes. Crowd control has similar diminished returns as enemy hp pools increase.
To fix that issue, this challenge issues a blanket ban on using anything that creates an additional friendly unit for your party. This includes but is not limited to summoning and charm spells. Additionally, spells are meant to be a limited resource, and as such rests should be limited to either convenient and sensible locations (i.e. when you finish one area and are going into town before another) or when the party is out of resources that can conceivably be used to press onward and must rest to proceed.
I.E. No spamming web swarms every fight. Your big cooldowns should be saved for the larger engagements, and the overall goal should be minimizing rests. It takes me 3 rests to clear Kresselack's tomb, and I could have done it in 2 if not for the meddling imbued wights (I ran out of shield spells before I ran out of wights).
This challenge mandates the use of 6 party members. Divine spellcasters, sorcerors, and most kits get to key levels faster if you have less than 6, and those key levels change the game more than having extra characters will.
In my run I also make an attempt to minimize consumable use, but that's just a matter of course for my playstyle. There's certainly an argument to be made that using the consumables to extend the time before a rest is more in keeping with the type of challenge this is. I'm tempted to ban fishing for RNG items because I don't do it in my run, but honestly getting 3 magic daggers before you get a single non-dagger magic item is ridiculous, especially when you're AC starved. I'm not bitter.
At any rate, that's the challenge. The Party I use for it is a sorceror, fighter/druid, fight/mage/thief, and 2 fighter/mage/clerics. Plus a Skald who just sits around singing until I run out of rocks. I honestly should have used a pure bard rather than the skald for this challenge, but I was just too lazy to create any characters specifically for the challenge. The party is not optimized, so if I can do it with this party, it can be done better with a more optimized setup.
I'm livestreaming this run on youtube, and this is the link for part 1. Hope you guys enjoy it.
The big issue the difficulty has, however, is that one type of ability the player has is actually more effective in HoF than it was in normal mode. Summons are more effective because their durability to damage ratio has gone up dramatically, and summons are mostly there to absorb damage, not deal it. The second the party gets a 5th level cleric, you might as well be playing on normal mode again, because your summons can absorb 100% of the incoming damage with no difficulty, and animate dead lasts effectively forever. This is different than, for instance, the stoneskin spell, which nullifies damage increases, but which is severely hampered by hp increases on enemies. The more times an enemy hits you before it dies, the less effective stoneskin becomes. Crowd control has similar diminished returns as enemy hp pools increase.
To fix that issue, this challenge issues a blanket ban on using anything that creates an additional friendly unit for your party. This includes but is not limited to summoning and charm spells. Additionally, spells are meant to be a limited resource, and as such rests should be limited to either convenient and sensible locations (i.e. when you finish one area and are going into town before another) or when the party is out of resources that can conceivably be used to press onward and must rest to proceed.
I.E. No spamming web swarms every fight. Your big cooldowns should be saved for the larger engagements, and the overall goal should be minimizing rests. It takes me 3 rests to clear Kresselack's tomb, and I could have done it in 2 if not for the meddling imbued wights (I ran out of shield spells before I ran out of wights).
This challenge mandates the use of 6 party members. Divine spellcasters, sorcerors, and most kits get to key levels faster if you have less than 6, and those key levels change the game more than having extra characters will.
In my run I also make an attempt to minimize consumable use, but that's just a matter of course for my playstyle. There's certainly an argument to be made that using the consumables to extend the time before a rest is more in keeping with the type of challenge this is. I'm tempted to ban fishing for RNG items because I don't do it in my run, but honestly getting 3 magic daggers before you get a single non-dagger magic item is ridiculous, especially when you're AC starved. I'm not bitter.
At any rate, that's the challenge. The Party I use for it is a sorceror, fighter/druid, fight/mage/thief, and 2 fighter/mage/clerics. Plus a Skald who just sits around singing until I run out of rocks. I honestly should have used a pure bard rather than the skald for this challenge, but I was just too lazy to create any characters specifically for the challenge. The party is not optimized, so if I can do it with this party, it can be done better with a more optimized setup.
I'm livestreaming this run on youtube, and this is the link for part 1. Hope you guys enjoy it.
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