LOL, I'm a follow along and grasp a bit,,,type of guy,,,,Maybe finally i can bite the bullet and be more expert/learn, it's great the EE is coming, my son's who were 5 and 6 then are now,,,"cool i remember how all the players used to help us",,,yeah, cause yer dad hosted the server.
tilemagic experts, advice, using nwncq or other newer tilesets makes tilemagic look like crap,,,, an EE idea, or am i so long in coming back this is moot?
I'm currently working on seasonal stuff for the mod, a script i always admired,, it wasn't tile magic based, it was placeable, I hope to pull out ShadowRealm quests and redo and extend with the base mod, hoping that'll give more extensibility, the areas I'll redo using project Q and or CEP, since I'm using NWNCQ, medevil and Q, the tilemagic idea is looking like crap. and the older placeable script is looking better, I'm not XP'd enough to be brilliant.
I took a look at the base module and it seems quite solid. I also took a look at the website but it says it is for Ardan Nights and I am sadly not familiar enough with the project to make the connection. But from what i read on their forum people were very sad when the project went dark and it had some extremly die hard fans who loved the world!
As for CEP or Project Q, I am a fan of quality over quantity so I always pick Project Q. CEP has become the gold standard but I hate scrolling through hundreds of low quality items/placeables/monsters that I know I am never going to use because they offend my sense of aesthetics. And I just don't have the time to retexture them all or the know how to fix the models. I have a huge amount of respect for everyone involved in CEP, but it's Project Q all the way for me.
LOL, I'm a follow along and grasp a bit,,,type of guy,,,,Maybe finally i can bite the bullet and be more expert/learn, it's great the EE is coming, my son's who were 5 and 6 then are now,,,"cool i remember how all the players used to help us",,,yeah, cause yer dad hosted the server.
I think being able to share your work with friends and family is one of the greatest joys with NWN.
Just think, someday you can hand your sever over to your children and it will be a Generational PW!
The in 30 years when they do the Super Mega Ultra Hyper Deluxe Enhanced Edition your childrens children can inherit your world!
Sadly I only have a cat so my work dies with me...
@voidofopinion To each their own, I guess. I personally dislike Project Q's aesthetic. Its too dark and gloomy for what I like, and I personally enjoy most of NWN's default models, to which most of them are overwritten IIRC. The default Ettercap and Troll are some of my favorite creatures in NWN, and dislike the actual PnP Ettercap and Trolls. Also, a lot of Project Q's models are actually in the CEP, though I'm not sure if they were put in with permission. I like CEP's variety, and while not all of their models are of the best quality a lot of them are good enough to fit in with the rest of NWN, IMO.
Also, I made a thread called Discussion of "Trash" Feats/Spells/Etc based on the previous conversation. If anyone wants to go weigh in, you can go ahead.
@voidofopinion To each their own, I guess. I personally dislike Project Q's aesthetic. Its too dark and gloomy for what I like, and I personally enjoy most of NWN's default models, to which most of them are overwritten IIRC.
You just listed all the reasons I like it!
I generally work on darker, grittier works in the vein of gothic and cosmic horror rather than more traditional fantasy so Project Q better fits the aesthetic I am going for.
However, I can absolutely appreciate wanting something that maintains much of NWN's original look and adds to it.
It's all six of one half a dozen of the other. Both have their place!
Also, I made a thread called Discussion of "Trash" Feats/Spells/Etc based on the previous conversation. If anyone wants to go weigh in, you can go ahead.
...a lot of Project Q's models are actually in the CEP, though I'm not sure if they were put in with permission.
Some of the same community-made content has been added to both Project Q and the CEP over the years, so there's where some of the overlap comes from. I was given permission to use other Q content in my updates to the CEP (so I've grabbed a few select pieces, such as some animal models).
...a lot of Project Q's models are actually in the CEP, though I'm not sure if they were put in with permission.
Some of the same community-made content has been added to both Project Q and the CEP over the years, so there's where some of the overlap comes from. I was given permission to use other Q content in my updates to the CEP (so I've grabbed a few select pieces, such as some animal models).
Well, both Project Q and CEP are momentous tasks and I tip my hat to you sir.
Last week we discussed our favorite Table Top Systems. The art of writing. The devolution of modern RPG's. Some of the negative attributes of D&D 3e and how fantastic CEP and Project Q both are!
This week's prompt is as follows:
Does death in video games matter?
It used to be you would pay your quarter, get your 3 lives and that was you until you put in another quarter. Games were designed to be as brutal and unfair as possible to eat as many quarters as they could. When video games moved to home consoles this trend continued and we had the 8-bit and 16-bit eras which worked on much the same philosophy.
At some point down the line punishing players for dying become less important to giving them the opportunity to continue forward.
Super Meat Boy is a far less punishing game than the old school Mario games if only because you don't have to start at the beginning every time you want to play. Likewise, checkpoints have become the gold standard in... well... everything. Heck, even Dark Souls is not as punishing and soul destroying as Rogue or Net Hack with it's one save and utterly unfair RNG.
Does this lack of danger take away the tension from modern games or are they more enjoyable because you can more easily immerse yourself in the world?
More so, what could NWN OC/Modules learn from modern/past death systems?
I really, really, really, really hate dying in NWN. Did I mention I REALLY hate dying? It's not about the loss of XP or 'stuff', although that just adds salt to the wound. It's about doing something silly or I guess 'failing' at some strategy or somesuch. Yeah, you can be blazzaei(is that how you spell it?) about dying and just click respawn and shrug, but I just find it more fun to actually try exceptionally hard to beat the odds/tricks/ encounters/ booby-traps, and not die at all. For example I saw Arelith on Beamdogs playthrough. Decided to give it a go. Chose Mark of Destiny legacy, which means death 10 is perma for your pc. I did that because for me, that is more of a challenge and fun! even though the Arelith forum advice, advises against it. Given I don't think Arelith is as tough and unforgiving as some PW's ive tried, I made it to lvl 12 with my fighter 0 deaths. Solo'ed a lot including new areas which was tonnes a fun ! The closest I came was being ambushed by transition camping spiders at about lvl 4 I think I was. So yeah, I see it as a test which makes it fun for me. What I would call console games only annoy me when I die and like you say lose progress. Exception- Dark souls. Silly me got Dark souls 2 with witcher 3 as a package deal. Loaded it up, after dying like 20 times in the opening scene after lasting 5-20 seconds, my pc in a straight jacket, I uninstalled it, destroyed the CD and put it in the bin. (My teenager watching and laughing his head off I might add) Apparently, DS is a very hard game and not having played DS 1 to learn the controls meant that 2 was impossible, so my teenager said whilst patting me on the back in consolation. I look at that game and just think....why?
I "really, really, really, really" hate dying in NWN as well. I was just playing a paladin with Tomi Undergallows through the OC the other day. I didn't die against the dire spider in the Beggars's Nest crypts, but I had to use the portal stone to get out of trouble twice, and Tomi died twice. Then I died twice against Gulnan, and had to use the portal stone three times to go to Aribeth for healing. Tomi was useless.
One of the times I died, it was due to a failed save against a Hold Person spell, despite the fact I had taken both Luck of Heroes and Strong Soul at character creation, and I had +2 to saves from the paladin class ability. I had of course destroyed her altar first thing, which didn't help this time. And she had a level-draining specter with her. (Is there any defense against Hold Person at these levels? I'll have the same problem coming up with Desther.)
The whole experience felt very phony and unsatisfying, not to mention frustrating. I usually play a druid or cleric, and had never had this much trouble with these fights before, except maybe the last time I tried the OC with a paladin. Spells like Barkskin, Protection from the Elements, and Animal Summoning plus animal companion make such a huge difference, it's not even the same fight when you try it as a melee character. My paladin didn't have enough money or resources at that point in the game to have access to enough potions to make up for the difference, either.
I wanted to build a greatsword wielder, but giving up the shield AC seems suicidal in NWN.
And there's no party to fill out spells and skills you don't have, and the one henchman has terrible gear and terrible AI. Even if you take Linu, there's no way to get her to cast the cleric spells you need to protect yourself from disaster in some of the boss fights.
Usually you're supposed to be able to handle the game with any class. Mod creators usually play test their mods with several class types and builds. But some classes, especially codzillas, sure do make it easier.
I may continue playing my paladin for a while to see if he gets any better with levels and increased wealth and resources, just to remind myself of what it's like to play NWN without having the huge advantages of being a codzilla.
But dying sure does suck. Does it enhance the game experience to feel so vulnerable and in danger, or is it more fun to play in Superman mode? I'm not really sure yet. Since I play to relax and forget about real life, I think I prefer games with less of a feeling of "death in every boss fight", and the tension and stress that come with that. I especially don't like it when the difficulty is very uneven, where trash mobs are blown away effortlessly and the boss fights seem next to impossible. Challenging and requiring concentration and planning is good, ragequit level frustration is bad.
Dying again goes to the heart of the matter and back to the history of the RPG. That is dying was essentially common place and players would have to prepare for it to have an NPC heir that would inherit their stuff and provide a new character to play. We have to remember that this came from war gaming roots and that simulation of lethality was quite important.
A modern RPG on the other hand is a much more casual endeavor, both as a social experience and as a form of collecting through the character sheet. There is not much respect for death and even games which are praised for being difficult actually don't penalize death too much.
On the other hand it seems gamers do still celebrate games with high risk of character death but usually only in other genres like indie platform games and survival games.
It's interesting to learn that in the hollow world setting raise dead and resurrection did not even function. On the other hand the latest mega adventure for 5e focuses on a death curse which prevents resurrection magic, while 5e itself is very forgiving, makes it hard to die, and also makes it trivially easy to come back. In AD&D it used to be that the raised character had to roll to see if they survived the resurrection based on their con score, raising would lower their con by 1 points, and I believe would age the priest by 2 years and wipe their spell slots for a day or maybe a week.
We know that humans tend to be loss averse but it also raises the question at what point does lowering the risk cheapen the sense of accomplishment and lower the character buy in.
Thats a really beautiful summery of NWN and a glowing recommendation for Arelith. They seem to have done amazing work and kept the lights on while so many PW's went dark. They are by far not the only one but I hear nothing but good things about them and what I have seen of their server looks beautiful!
I have over 100 hours in Dark Souls between 360 and Steam but I only ever got past blight town once. I think it's incredible from a design perspective but anything remotely metroidvania does my head in with all the back tracking. Stealth games and Metroidvania are my big glowing weak point.
Did your Paladin die from the hold person due to the natural 1 /slash 5% rule?
I really love the element of randomness auto-fail on 1 brings to PnP. They are a chance to get creative and provide the players with a memorable moment. But for the D&D video games it always felt like it was arbitrary forced failure which just isnt as fun for me.
That is a fantastic point about the roots of D&D. It's very easy to forget that it has a foot firmly planted in wargaming. Good ol' Chainmail!
I only had passing contact with the original boxed set but I remember going through more characters in a few weeks than months of Call of Cthulhu. I think it's good when death is treated with significant gravitas. Raising the dead should not be a casual thing. So many great adventures have happened because a party was trying to bring back a beloved member from the dead. That gets lost if someone has the power of life and death as a snap of their fingers.
@BelgarathMTH Ah, I feel your pain. Gulnan is a pretty tough encounter. Lvl12 cleric isn’t she? Not that I’m any kind of guru, but some things I’d try. You may already know much if not all of these so apologies if it’s not much help. Also this is my experience, others might have better ideas and stuff. Fighter types it’s all about the gear. I’d leave her till last in chapter 1 to maximise your level and kit. I personally also found when I first played through years ago, if I ignored all the side plots and just focused on the main plot, I ended up not gaining extra XP I should of and therefore being painfully underpowered, just barely able to do the quests as I was annoyingly low level for quest. Also when I make a fighter type, I pump the hell out of HP and AC. Expect to be frozen/ mindbombed and hacked at for a few rounds unable to do anything, big HP hopefully keeps you alive long enough to survive it then potion or run. (You already made pc so this won’t help) Castors in open space with a nice range to see you and set off some spells at you before you can get close are deadly. Likewise crowded castors in melee range have a tough time of it. Use the good old, tell your henchman to stand their ground behind cover. Jump out and attack with ranged weapon then back to cover with your henchman to lure her in. Attack nearest to the henchman once she arrives. Two of you in close quarters nailing her with melee hits and sneak attacks should take her out pretty good without her able to get any spells out. I do this whenever I can With dangerous castors. Failing that. If it’s getting hard beyond enjoyment, try the difficulty slider. If it’s still too hard, the last thing I would do is pregenerate a character using a vault character generator mod. A few well placed items some extra gold. Save character and you can play through with it but need to start at beginning of chapter. Can’t use save. Just a suggestion.
Also agree with scaling trash fights and then impossible bosses. This is one thing on another tangent since we’re talking death that annoys the hell out of me. Most action games have a very limited approach to how you kill the boss. It’s tricky and not immediately obvious which has the effect of making you die repeatedly to ‘learn’ the path to success. This kind of thing is what turned me off games like say Halo and IMO should be avoided by devs at all costs
@voidofopinion , Even with all his bonuses, at level five he needed a 7 to save, and rolled a 6. One huge problem was the specter. I'm still not sure why it was there, as I've never seen it before in this encounter. It kept level draining Tomi to death. I don't know if the EE changed the encounter scaling algorithm, or what.
I guess I could have concentrated on killing the specter first, but I was trying to interrupt Gulnan before she Flame Struck me to death. Then Hold Person happened. I am dreading attempting Desther with this character.
@BelgarathMTH Paladins get Prot. from Alignment. I think Gulnan is evil. Cast Prot. from Evil on yourself and you are immune to all mind spells coming from evil people, including Hold Person.
I am dreading attempting Desther with this character.
He's such a pain in the neck to fight. Wrecks me almost every time when I try something other than a wizard or generic fighter in a full plate with a shield. That damn skeleton chieftain...
@BelgarathMTH Paladins get Prot. from Alignment. I think Gulnan is evil. Cast Prot. from Evil on yourself and you are immune to all mind spells coming from evil people, including Hold Person.
@Tresset , Yes, good idea, but I only had one spell and I used it on Resist Elements against her Flame Strikes. I can usually interrupt her and kill her before she gets many spells out, so I didn't even know she would cast Hold Person until now.
Also, I've learned the hard way that Protection from Evil doesn't work against Desther's Hold Person, because for some reason he's flagged as Neutral.
Yes, many enemies have seemingly random alignments in NWN. Aribeth herself changes her alignment and even her race in practically every chapter of the OC. It is clear to me that alignments are not something they focused on when making the OC.
@BelgarathMTH Anyway, they don't last long, but maybe try stocking up on Potions of Clarity before fighting Desther.
BTW, this discussion has given me an idea. I wonder if the release of NWN:EE might spark the interest of our local no-reload community to try a no-reload, no-respawn run of NWN? It's not for me, as I would have already lost my current run.
Bloated Dire Spiders: Lesser Amulet of Health, available from Aribeth. Even if my build needs the +wis amulet or the natural armor amulet, I'll switch it out for these fights. (same with the Amulet of Health in chapter 2 and enemies that can cause level drain)
Intellect Devourer: Protection from Evil (apparently it's evil?) to protect from the mind effects. That's now one of my first spell picks for any caster that has it available. And if it's your first boss fight, you might run and grab the +1 weapon from the chest in the back before facing it. A high-strength fighter didn't have much trouble, but a low-strength fighter required a lot of save-and-reload. Wizards/Sorcerers - save the Ray of Frost from the prologue, because it's immune to many of the spells you'll have at low levels, and you probably won't be able to do enough physical damage to hurt it.
Gulnan: I always save certain potions that I find over the game, and since I do this section third, I generally have several potions of invisibility and speed by the time I face Gulnan. Take a potion of invis right outside the door, walk up to her and take the potion of speed, then attack. For buffed caster/warriors, Flame Weapon and Darkfire are your friend. Even a dedicated caster Wiz/Sorc can do pretty decent melee damage with Flame Weapon if you run low on spells (I think she casts one of the elemental protection spells, but it doesn't take too long to remove). For a non-caster fighter, I don't have much trouble with a high-str fighter using the invis/speed potions, just have to overwhelm her quickly and hope to interrupt spells like Flame Strike. For a low-str fighter or fighter/rogue, it again required a lot of save-and-reload. I've never been hit by a level drain enemy here.
Desther: Pretty much the same tactics as Gulnan, but even a high-str fighter can have problems here without stoneskin or any buffs to increase AC (make sure to at least have a potion of barkskin and a couple potions of speed). I don't really have any suggestions there for non-casters besides potions. On the other hand, Fighter 1/Cleric 8 with Barkskin and Stoneskin from domains, Magic Vestment and Bull's Strength, wielding a two-bladed sword with Greater Magic Weapon and Darkfire, makes this fight much easier. And it's probably easiest for dedicated casters if they use potions of speed to burn through spells quickly and can target their area-of-effect spells to take out multiple undead and those ritual creature things at once (though even for dedicated casters, I'll use Flame Weapon so that attacks of opportunity against Desther's casting will cause extra damage). I haven't tried Tresset's method of leaving the ritual creatures for last because I had always thought the undead kept spawning, so I usually try to overwhelm all the enemies as quickly as possible.
But hey, if you can take out these four enemies, the rest of the game is easy.
@jww , Those are all good strategies, assuming you have those resources. Usually one would have to do a lot of looting and stealing to get all that. Since I'm playing a paladin, I'm restricting myself from looting. So money is a constant worry.
I just beat Desther tonight with no deaths, but I set the difficulty slider to Normal beforehand. My paladin was using the crafted bone armor (effectively Full Plate +2), a tower shield +1, and the crafted Rune Hammer. I used lots and lots of healing packs, both on myself and Tomi, and I kept all the lesser undead turned. My paladin has maxed out healing skill, so healing packs are an important part of my strategy.
I used potions of clarity, speed, and bull's strength, twice each, but they kept getting dispelled within one or two rounds, so they weren't very useful. I'm not even sure whether it was Desther or one of the skeleton mages that kept spamming Dispel Magic.
Desther used his Flame Strikes to take out Tomi, so it wound up as him and me in melee, mano a mano, all spells expended. My AC of 27 plus plenty of healing packs available saved the day. Being in Normal difficulty stopped Desther from having access to critical hits, so that probably had some to do with it.
The bad pathfinding and ridiculously bad AI continue to be irritants in this game. Tomi could be very effective switching between bow and kukri on the fly, and using his stealth skills, but he does none of that. Set to melee, he gets up too close to enemies and dies, and set to ranged, he still keeps getting too close and getting AoO'd to death while trying to fire a bow in melee. He doesn't reliably disarm traps and open locks the way he's supposed to. Sometimes I can't get him positioned to see the traps and disarm them no matter what I do. Basically the OC doesn't play as intended, in my opinion.
I really wish Beamdog would do something about these problems. The horrible AI will turn many, many potential players off to the game.
@voidofopinion Said: I have over 100 hours in Dark Souls
It does look and sound interesting which is why I tried it initially. My entire experience of it is dying repeatedly in 2’s start but that’s probably more my fault then the games. Might check it out one day starting with 1.
@voidofopinion From a role playing perspective I also think it's important to deal with the fragility of life, not just through death but also through wounding and healing time, especially considering timed events. I understand it's less action packed but it takes a different route for a different type of immersive experience where a character might not charge at the call for initiative but instead retreat and plan carefully. There are also some interesting interviews out there with major David Wesley about his Braunstein game and how it all slowly came together, some good insights.
Comments
As for CEP or Project Q, I am a fan of quality over quantity so I always pick Project Q. CEP has become the gold standard but I hate scrolling through hundreds of low quality items/placeables/monsters that I know I am never going to use because they offend my sense of aesthetics. And I just don't have the time to retexture them all or the know how to fix the models. I have a huge amount of respect for everyone involved in CEP, but it's Project Q all the way for me.
Just think, someday you can hand your sever over to your children and it will be a Generational PW!
The in 30 years when they do the Super Mega Ultra Hyper Deluxe Enhanced Edition your childrens children can inherit your world!
Sadly I only have a cat so my work dies with me...
I generally work on darker, grittier works in the vein of gothic and cosmic horror rather than more traditional fantasy so Project Q better fits the aesthetic I am going for.
However, I can absolutely appreciate wanting something that maintains much of NWN's original look and adds to it.
It's all six of one half a dozen of the other. Both have their place! Excellent!
Heading over there now!
I couldn't find the seasonal script on the vault but, I did find it in the archive download, this is the screenie from the html file.
Last week we discussed our favorite Table Top Systems. The art of writing. The devolution of modern RPG's. Some of the negative attributes of D&D 3e and how fantastic CEP and Project Q both are!
This week's prompt is as follows:
Does death in video games matter?
It used to be you would pay your quarter, get your 3 lives and that was you until you put in another quarter. Games were designed to be as brutal and unfair as possible to eat as many quarters as they could. When video games moved to home consoles this trend continued and we had the 8-bit and 16-bit eras which worked on much the same philosophy.
At some point down the line punishing players for dying become less important to giving them the opportunity to continue forward.
Super Meat Boy is a far less punishing game than the old school Mario games if only because you don't have to start at the beginning every time you want to play. Likewise, checkpoints have become the gold standard in... well... everything. Heck, even Dark Souls is not as punishing and soul destroying as Rogue or Net Hack with it's one save and utterly unfair RNG.
Does this lack of danger take away the tension from modern games or are they more enjoyable because you can more easily immerse yourself in the world?
More so, what could NWN OC/Modules learn from modern/past death systems?
I am pretty sure this guy has caused more player deaths than any other enemy in video game history...
What I would call console games only annoy me when I die and like you say lose progress.
Exception- Dark souls.
Silly me got Dark souls 2 with witcher 3 as a package deal. Loaded it up, after dying like 20 times in the opening scene after lasting 5-20 seconds, my pc in a straight jacket, I uninstalled it, destroyed the CD and put it in the bin. (My teenager watching and laughing his head off I might add) Apparently, DS is a very hard game and not having played DS 1 to learn the controls meant that 2 was impossible, so my teenager said whilst patting me on the back in consolation. I look at that game and just think....why?
One of the times I died, it was due to a failed save against a Hold Person spell, despite the fact I had taken both Luck of Heroes and Strong Soul at character creation, and I had +2 to saves from the paladin class ability. I had of course destroyed her altar first thing, which didn't help this time. And she had a level-draining specter with her. (Is there any defense against Hold Person at these levels? I'll have the same problem coming up with Desther.)
The whole experience felt very phony and unsatisfying, not to mention frustrating. I usually play a druid or cleric, and had never had this much trouble with these fights before, except maybe the last time I tried the OC with a paladin. Spells like Barkskin, Protection from the Elements, and Animal Summoning plus animal companion make such a huge difference, it's not even the same fight when you try it as a melee character. My paladin didn't have enough money or resources at that point in the game to have access to enough potions to make up for the difference, either.
I wanted to build a greatsword wielder, but giving up the shield AC seems suicidal in NWN.
And there's no party to fill out spells and skills you don't have, and the one henchman has terrible gear and terrible AI. Even if you take Linu, there's no way to get her to cast the cleric spells you need to protect yourself from disaster in some of the boss fights.
Usually you're supposed to be able to handle the game with any class. Mod creators usually play test their mods with several class types and builds. But some classes, especially codzillas, sure do make it easier.
I may continue playing my paladin for a while to see if he gets any better with levels and increased wealth and resources, just to remind myself of what it's like to play NWN without having the huge advantages of being a codzilla.
But dying sure does suck. Does it enhance the game experience to feel so vulnerable and in danger, or is it more fun to play in Superman mode? I'm not really sure yet. Since I play to relax and forget about real life, I think I prefer games with less of a feeling of "death in every boss fight", and the tension and stress that come with that. I especially don't like it when the difficulty is very uneven, where trash mobs are blown away effortlessly and the boss fights seem next to impossible. Challenging and requiring concentration and planning is good, ragequit level frustration is bad.
A modern RPG on the other hand is a much more casual endeavor, both as a social experience and as a form of collecting through the character sheet. There is not much respect for death and even games which are praised for being difficult actually don't penalize death too much.
On the other hand it seems gamers do still celebrate games with high risk of character death but usually only in other genres like indie platform games and survival games.
It's interesting to learn that in the hollow world setting raise dead and resurrection did not even function. On the other hand the latest mega adventure for 5e focuses on a death curse which prevents resurrection magic, while 5e itself is very forgiving, makes it hard to die, and also makes it trivially easy to come back. In AD&D it used to be that the raised character had to roll to see if they survived the resurrection based on their con score, raising would lower their con by 1 points, and I believe would age the priest by 2 years and wipe their spell slots for a day or maybe a week.
We know that humans tend to be loss averse but it also raises the question at what point does lowering the risk cheapen the sense of accomplishment and lower the character buy in.
Thats a really beautiful summery of NWN and a glowing recommendation for Arelith. They seem to have done amazing work and kept the lights on while so many PW's went dark. They are by far not the only one but I hear nothing but good things about them and what I have seen of their server looks beautiful!
@MrDamage
I feel your pain.
I have over 100 hours in Dark Souls between 360 and Steam but I only ever got past blight town once. I think it's incredible from a design perspective but anything remotely metroidvania does my head in with all the back tracking. Stealth games and Metroidvania are my big glowing weak point.
@BelgarathMTH
Did your Paladin die from the hold person due to the natural 1 /slash 5% rule?
I really love the element of randomness auto-fail on 1 brings to PnP. They are a chance to get creative and provide the players with a memorable moment. But for the D&D video games it always felt like it was arbitrary forced failure which just isnt as fun for me.
@FreshLemonBun
That is a fantastic point about the roots of D&D. It's very easy to forget that it has a foot firmly planted in wargaming. Good ol' Chainmail!
I only had passing contact with the original boxed set but I remember going through more characters in a few weeks than months of Call of Cthulhu. I think it's good when death is treated with significant gravitas. Raising the dead should not be a casual thing. So many great adventures have happened because a party was trying to bring back a beloved member from the dead. That gets lost if someone has the power of life and death as a snap of their fingers.
Ah, I feel your pain. Gulnan is a pretty tough encounter. Lvl12 cleric isn’t she? Not that I’m any kind of guru, but some things I’d try. You may already know much if not all of these so apologies if it’s not much help.
Also this is my experience, others might have better ideas and stuff.
Fighter types it’s all about the gear. I’d leave her till last in chapter 1 to maximise your level and kit. I personally also found when I first played through years ago, if I ignored all the side plots and just focused on the main plot, I ended up not gaining extra XP I should of and therefore being painfully underpowered, just barely able to do the quests as I was annoyingly low level for quest. Also when I make a fighter type, I pump the hell out of HP and AC. Expect to be frozen/ mindbombed and hacked at for a few rounds unable to do anything, big HP hopefully keeps you alive long enough to survive it then potion or run. (You already made pc so this won’t help)
Castors in open space with a nice range to see you and set off some spells at you before you can get close are deadly. Likewise crowded castors in melee range have a tough time of it. Use the good old, tell your henchman to stand their ground behind cover. Jump out and attack with ranged weapon then back to cover with your henchman to lure her in. Attack nearest to the henchman once she arrives. Two of you in close quarters nailing her with melee hits and sneak attacks should take her out pretty good without her able to get any spells out. I do this whenever I can With dangerous castors. Failing that. If it’s getting hard beyond enjoyment, try the difficulty slider. If it’s still too hard, the last thing I would do is pregenerate a character using a vault character generator mod. A few well placed items some extra gold. Save character and you can play through with it but need to start at beginning of chapter. Can’t use save. Just a suggestion.
Also agree with scaling trash fights and then impossible bosses. This is one thing on another tangent since we’re talking death that annoys the hell out of me. Most action games have a very limited approach to how you kill the boss. It’s tricky and not immediately obvious which has the effect of making you die repeatedly to ‘learn’ the path to success. This kind of thing is what turned me off games like say Halo and IMO should be avoided by devs at all costs
I guess I could have concentrated on killing the specter first, but I was trying to interrupt Gulnan before she Flame Struck me to death. Then Hold Person happened. I am dreading attempting Desther with this character.
Also, I've learned the hard way that Protection from Evil doesn't work against Desther's Hold Person, because for some reason he's flagged as Neutral.
@BelgarathMTH Anyway, they don't last long, but maybe try stocking up on Potions of Clarity before fighting Desther.
What do you think, @JuliusBorisov , @semiticgod , @Grond0 , @Wise_Grimwald ? Would any of you care to show us how it's done?
Bloated Dire Spiders: Lesser Amulet of Health, available from Aribeth. Even if my build needs the +wis amulet or the natural armor amulet, I'll switch it out for these fights. (same with the Amulet of Health in chapter 2 and enemies that can cause level drain)
Intellect Devourer: Protection from Evil (apparently it's evil?) to protect from the mind effects. That's now one of my first spell picks for any caster that has it available. And if it's your first boss fight, you might run and grab the +1 weapon from the chest in the back before facing it. A high-strength fighter didn't have much trouble, but a low-strength fighter required a lot of save-and-reload. Wizards/Sorcerers - save the Ray of Frost from the prologue, because it's immune to many of the spells you'll have at low levels, and you probably won't be able to do enough physical damage to hurt it.
Gulnan: I always save certain potions that I find over the game, and since I do this section third, I generally have several potions of invisibility and speed by the time I face Gulnan. Take a potion of invis right outside the door, walk up to her and take the potion of speed, then attack. For buffed caster/warriors, Flame Weapon and Darkfire are your friend. Even a dedicated caster Wiz/Sorc can do pretty decent melee damage with Flame Weapon if you run low on spells (I think she casts one of the elemental protection spells, but it doesn't take too long to remove). For a non-caster fighter, I don't have much trouble with a high-str fighter using the invis/speed potions, just have to overwhelm her quickly and hope to interrupt spells like Flame Strike. For a low-str fighter or fighter/rogue, it again required a lot of save-and-reload. I've never been hit by a level drain enemy here.
Desther: Pretty much the same tactics as Gulnan, but even a high-str fighter can have problems here without stoneskin or any buffs to increase AC (make sure to at least have a potion of barkskin and a couple potions of speed). I don't really have any suggestions there for non-casters besides potions. On the other hand, Fighter 1/Cleric 8 with Barkskin and Stoneskin from domains, Magic Vestment and Bull's Strength, wielding a two-bladed sword with Greater Magic Weapon and Darkfire, makes this fight much easier. And it's probably easiest for dedicated casters if they use potions of speed to burn through spells quickly and can target their area-of-effect spells to take out multiple undead and those ritual creature things at once (though even for dedicated casters, I'll use Flame Weapon so that attacks of opportunity against Desther's casting will cause extra damage). I haven't tried Tresset's method of leaving the ritual creatures for last because I had always thought the undead kept spawning, so I usually try to overwhelm all the enemies as quickly as possible.
But hey, if you can take out these four enemies, the rest of the game is easy.
http://blog.beamdog.com/2018/02/neverwinter-nights-love-you-to-death.html
I just beat Desther tonight with no deaths, but I set the difficulty slider to Normal beforehand. My paladin was using the crafted bone armor (effectively Full Plate +2), a tower shield +1, and the crafted Rune Hammer. I used lots and lots of healing packs, both on myself and Tomi, and I kept all the lesser undead turned. My paladin has maxed out healing skill, so healing packs are an important part of my strategy.
I used potions of clarity, speed, and bull's strength, twice each, but they kept getting dispelled within one or two rounds, so they weren't very useful. I'm not even sure whether it was Desther or one of the skeleton mages that kept spamming Dispel Magic.
Desther used his Flame Strikes to take out Tomi, so it wound up as him and me in melee, mano a mano, all spells expended. My AC of 27 plus plenty of healing packs available saved the day. Being in Normal difficulty stopped Desther from having access to critical hits, so that probably had some to do with it.
The bad pathfinding and ridiculously bad AI continue to be irritants in this game. Tomi could be very effective switching between bow and kukri on the fly, and using his stealth skills, but he does none of that. Set to melee, he gets up too close to enemies and dies, and set to ranged, he still keeps getting too close and getting AoO'd to death while trying to fire a bow in melee. He doesn't reliably disarm traps and open locks the way he's supposed to. Sometimes I can't get him positioned to see the traps and disarm them no matter what I do. Basically the OC doesn't play as intended, in my opinion.
I really wish Beamdog would do something about these problems. The horrible AI will turn many, many potential players off to the game.
Said:
I have over 100 hours in Dark Souls
It does look and sound interesting which is why I tried it initially. My entire experience of it is dying repeatedly in 2’s start but that’s probably more my fault then the games. Might check it out one day starting with 1.