Legacy of Bhaal Difficulty: Suggestions on how to Tweak It's Difficulty Curve
Fionordequester
Member Posts: 41
Now, most of the players I've talked to on the Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition forum are fine with Legacy of Bhaal as-is. However, most of them also agree that it's not a perfectly designed difficulty; and I made a thread on what I would do to change it.
Basically, I think the global 80+ HP boost to ALL ENEMIES, as well as the other stat increases, interact poorly with how the game was originally designed, and also messes up the difficulty curve. For example, the rats in Candlekeep now take around 9 minutes to kill, due to the fact that they already had 90% damage reduction to all forms of attack, and now have 80+ HP on top of that. Meanwhile, Sarevok, the supposed final boss of the game, is still as much of a joke as he ever was.
And that's personally my biggest problem with the mode; I feel like the wrong approach was taken in making the game harder. Instead of looking at some of the design flaws that ALLOWED players to cheese the game to start with, the mode just increases the numbers on every enemy in the game. This, then, has three negative effects...
1) It makes some spells outright impossible to use. For example, the Sleep spell; the spell ONLY works with enemies that have 4+3 hit dice or less. And with that global 80+ HP to all enemies...Sleep is now worthless. It literally cannot do a blasted thing; and I'm sure that's not the only spell that's affected by enemy HP. Plus, there's the aforementioned 90% that all the rats have; and it also makes early game enemies significantly harder compared to late game enemies. Finaly, every monster summoned by the Wand of Monster Summoning gets the 80+ HP boost as well; words cannot express how broken that makes it compared to how it was before.
2) Quick Saving, kiting enemies, spamming the Wand of Monster summoning, prematurely killing enemy NPC's by getting them before they can turn red, taking on large groups by casting multiple Stinking Cloud spells outside their vision range...these are all things that make the game easier than it should be. So by pumping up monster stats WITHOUT addressing these core issues...you're not even really making the game harder. You're just making it more tedious.
3) Remember the "you have been waylaid by enemies, and must defend yourself" segments? Well those are borderline unsurvivable now, if you happen to get one near the beginning of the game. You're completely surrounded in these encounters! Surrounded by monsters that are far stronger than they were originally designed to be. The ONLY consistent way you can consistently escape is by casting Invisibility on all of your party members before moving on from an area; otherwise, the enemies are just too tough for you! And that's not even getting started on stuff like the Ettercap encounters, which have traps hidden in the ground on top of it all!
So, what do I suggest doing to address these issues? Well...personally, I would make the following changes, which will make the game EASIER in some way, and HARDER in others...
Make the Game Easier by...
1) Decreasing the amount of HP and Attacks per Round of all enemies that appear during ambushes. Save the +80 HP and Attacks per Round for unique NPC's (like Carbos & Shank) and uncommon enemies (like the Black Talon Elites); those are the fights that SHOULD be insanely hard! So what I would do is remove the extra Attacks per Round from all of the below enemies, and adjust their HP totals to be the following values...
a) Give +16 HP to Bandits, Gibberlings, Diseased Gibberlings, Half Ogres, Hobgoblins, Kobolds, Wild Dogs, Wolves, Worgs, & Winter Wolves
b) Give +32 HP to Ghasts, Ghouls, Gnolls, Huge Spiders, Ogrillons, Skeletons, Xvarts, Cave Bears, Ogres, Polar Bears, & Dread Wolves
c) Give +48 HP to Lesser Basilisks, Vampiric Wolves, Ettercaps, Giant Spiders, and Baby Wyverns
d) Give +64 HP to Wyverns, Carrion Crawlers, Gray Oozes, Mustard Jellies, Greater Basilisks, & Ogre Mages
So again, all the fights that are SUPPOSED to be insanely hard...will stay insanely hard. It's just that now, the game's difficulty curve is back to where it should be; fairly simple in the beginning, moderately hard in the middle, but then very hard at the end. Plus, this drastically nerfs the Wand of Monster Summoning; +16 HP pales in comparison to the +80 HP and Attacks per Round that you will be facing from unique NPC's and lategame enemies.
Make the Game Harder by...
1) Increase the amount of Infrasion that enemies possess, so that casting the Stinking Cloud spells outside their field of vision will no longer be a valid option. This will also keep players from cheesing large groups by luring enemies away one-at-a-time.
2) Add a reputation drop for every time you attack a neutral NPC, even those that are clearly about to attack you. So now you can't cheese guys like Neville the bandit anymore (area just north of Gnoll Stronghold) or Mutamin (the guy who commands Basilisks in that area north of Gullykin). You can't just paralyze them and kill them before they can activate dialogue with you; you have to fight them fair and square.
So what do you all think?
Basically, I think the global 80+ HP boost to ALL ENEMIES, as well as the other stat increases, interact poorly with how the game was originally designed, and also messes up the difficulty curve. For example, the rats in Candlekeep now take around 9 minutes to kill, due to the fact that they already had 90% damage reduction to all forms of attack, and now have 80+ HP on top of that. Meanwhile, Sarevok, the supposed final boss of the game, is still as much of a joke as he ever was.
And that's personally my biggest problem with the mode; I feel like the wrong approach was taken in making the game harder. Instead of looking at some of the design flaws that ALLOWED players to cheese the game to start with, the mode just increases the numbers on every enemy in the game. This, then, has three negative effects...
1) It makes some spells outright impossible to use. For example, the Sleep spell; the spell ONLY works with enemies that have 4+3 hit dice or less. And with that global 80+ HP to all enemies...Sleep is now worthless. It literally cannot do a blasted thing; and I'm sure that's not the only spell that's affected by enemy HP. Plus, there's the aforementioned 90% that all the rats have; and it also makes early game enemies significantly harder compared to late game enemies. Finaly, every monster summoned by the Wand of Monster Summoning gets the 80+ HP boost as well; words cannot express how broken that makes it compared to how it was before.
2) Quick Saving, kiting enemies, spamming the Wand of Monster summoning, prematurely killing enemy NPC's by getting them before they can turn red, taking on large groups by casting multiple Stinking Cloud spells outside their vision range...these are all things that make the game easier than it should be. So by pumping up monster stats WITHOUT addressing these core issues...you're not even really making the game harder. You're just making it more tedious.
3) Remember the "you have been waylaid by enemies, and must defend yourself" segments? Well those are borderline unsurvivable now, if you happen to get one near the beginning of the game. You're completely surrounded in these encounters! Surrounded by monsters that are far stronger than they were originally designed to be. The ONLY consistent way you can consistently escape is by casting Invisibility on all of your party members before moving on from an area; otherwise, the enemies are just too tough for you! And that's not even getting started on stuff like the Ettercap encounters, which have traps hidden in the ground on top of it all!
So, what do I suggest doing to address these issues? Well...personally, I would make the following changes, which will make the game EASIER in some way, and HARDER in others...
Make the Game Easier by...
1) Decreasing the amount of HP and Attacks per Round of all enemies that appear during ambushes. Save the +80 HP and Attacks per Round for unique NPC's (like Carbos & Shank) and uncommon enemies (like the Black Talon Elites); those are the fights that SHOULD be insanely hard! So what I would do is remove the extra Attacks per Round from all of the below enemies, and adjust their HP totals to be the following values...
a) Give +16 HP to Bandits, Gibberlings, Diseased Gibberlings, Half Ogres, Hobgoblins, Kobolds, Wild Dogs, Wolves, Worgs, & Winter Wolves
b) Give +32 HP to Ghasts, Ghouls, Gnolls, Huge Spiders, Ogrillons, Skeletons, Xvarts, Cave Bears, Ogres, Polar Bears, & Dread Wolves
c) Give +48 HP to Lesser Basilisks, Vampiric Wolves, Ettercaps, Giant Spiders, and Baby Wyverns
d) Give +64 HP to Wyverns, Carrion Crawlers, Gray Oozes, Mustard Jellies, Greater Basilisks, & Ogre Mages
So again, all the fights that are SUPPOSED to be insanely hard...will stay insanely hard. It's just that now, the game's difficulty curve is back to where it should be; fairly simple in the beginning, moderately hard in the middle, but then very hard at the end. Plus, this drastically nerfs the Wand of Monster Summoning; +16 HP pales in comparison to the +80 HP and Attacks per Round that you will be facing from unique NPC's and lategame enemies.
Make the Game Harder by...
1) Increase the amount of Infrasion that enemies possess, so that casting the Stinking Cloud spells outside their field of vision will no longer be a valid option. This will also keep players from cheesing large groups by luring enemies away one-at-a-time.
2) Add a reputation drop for every time you attack a neutral NPC, even those that are clearly about to attack you. So now you can't cheese guys like Neville the bandit anymore (area just north of Gnoll Stronghold) or Mutamin (the guy who commands Basilisks in that area north of Gullykin). You can't just paralyze them and kill them before they can activate dialogue with you; you have to fight them fair and square.
So what do you all think?
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The ideas shared in this thread and other users' views are expressed in https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/62591/how-to-re-balance-legacy-of-bhaal-a-suggestions-thread.