10 bandit Waylay should be removed from chapter 1
Necromanx2
Member Posts: 1,246
As the title says. The 10 bandit waylay should not happen in chapter 1. It is an death sentence to 1st level characters as they cannot run fast enough to get away.
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EDIT: I guess I see this as the one battle where you cannot decide to avoid it and run. All other ambushes I can run from with a good chance of getting away.
The game's built around making judicious use of the save feature. You're expected to die many times, but it's fine because they've enabled you to save frequently.
There's no real consequence to dying in an ambush. You just lose like ten seconds of play time.
I generally just try to just battle through it. Sometimes I win, other times I'll loose someone, or worse.
I just try to do what's best in the situation. I'll send (resilient) fighters straight into melee with particular archers knowing they'll probably draw the fire of the archers on either side. (So I don't attack the archers on either side as they're occupied). For other archers, I'll use sleep, command, etc. to try to disable them. And, if I see a particular archer targetting my weaker characters I'll try to focus fire them down with ranged characters.
It might improve the game if there was one or two less archers, at level 1, as this kind of ambush seems disproportionately hard.
Another hard encounter is when you run into a couple of black talon elite archers with their splint mail and ice arrows at level one.
With the ambush though, has anyone tried not attacking them but just running north off the top of the screen. I've not tried it but I assume you quickly get out of range of the archers near the bottom.
If a group of 4-6 adventurers can be slaughtered in an ambush like that, imagine a merchant caravan?
It shows the player why things are so bad
I agree these encounters should be removed. Not only are they too hard, they're stupidly unrealistic and immersion-breaking. Have you ever, while traveling on a wilderness map, allowed a group of enemies to completely circle around you in an area with clear visibility? No, of course not. You'd never let it happen - but this mechanic assumes that you've done just that.
Removing this was one of the things I'd hoped to see in Enhanced Editions. I also would love to see a way to control the number of random encounters in the game in the options menu. You can alter resting encounters in Tweaks, but a comprehensive menu for all random encounters would be great. Love trash mobs? Crank 'em up! Hate them? Simply lower their frequency or turn them off entirely.
The above timing relates specifically to bandits on the route from FAI to Nashkel - there are plenty of other possible encounters with ranged enemies as you note. Some of those you can guarantee to avoid by choosing routes and times, but not all of them.
I'm all in favor of keeping this ambush. Even as a no-reloader, this ambush costs me all of like 10 minutes if I'm careless or unlucky. It's rather like the ridiculous Fireball or lightning bolt traps in Firewine, in my opinion, or triggering Silke at level 1.
The game doesn't "care" if you lose, the whole point of any game is to stop you winning. All of them, from snakes and ladders to computer games.
There would be no games whatsoever if the emphasis was on people winning rather than being thwarted.
BG is a game, it's not an adventure, it's not a book, it's not a film ect.
It doesn't want you to win, it shouldn't want you to see the end credits, they are not part of it's reason to exist.
Instant death scenarios if they can be incorporated into a game, any game, and still be logical within the parameters of the design of the game are absolutely what a "game" should be about.
Should there be ambushes? Yes! Should the game be hard? Yes! I too love how the BG games don't handle you with kid gloves. But games aren't supposed to be unwinnable or unsurvivable. With most of the game's hard challenges you can run away from an enemy when you're under leveled. With the archer ambushes, whether they be human, hobgoblin or skellies, you have no chance. And IMO the lack of realism of those encounters bothers me just as much as the unfairness of them. You'd never let a group of enemies form a tight ring around you when you're exploring wilderness areas. Yet these ambushes take you out of character and put you in an artificial scenario that is immersion-breaking. I say get rid of those ringed ambushes and replace them with more realistic ones, where you're approached by a group of archers and at least have a chance to run.
But you can run away from them. Not all of the party, fair enough, but you can get charname away. Swig an invisibilty potion and get lucky and you can run away.
Which fits with the setting.
But if you're playing a mage charname, you're dead, plain and simple. It can take awhile to get those invisibility potions, and you can get ambushed multiple times, sometimes in succession.
Also: as in last post, I'm getting burned out from taking my mages to temples to be resurrected.
In defense of the ambush the bandits are AC 10, thac0 20, 8 hp level 1 fighters (with no stat bonuses) armed with bows and swords and wearing leather. It's the quantity of the attackers that makes them dangerous.
Are the skeleton and hobgoblin archers part of the ar6100?
At that point it sounds like the issue is more on your end than with the game.
And I'm loving it!!!
Why do we have this one thing in the entire game where there are no option to avoid?
I also don't think this ambush particularly stands out - there are multiple things in the game that can kill you if you don't prepare in advance for them or are not aware of the potential problems. Here are a few hurdles for an unprepared party that I would suggest are at least as bad as that bandit ambush:
- sleep for low level characters from Tarnesh or an ogre mage (in Arabelle's area or an ambush zone in the Cloud Peak mountains).
- walking into a group of several ankhegs.
- a number of conversations in which the wrong answer leads to an automatic death.
- taking liberties with important characters like Gorion.
- not being protected against lightning when telling Silke you won't do her dirty work.
- running into Neera unexpectedly.
- thinking Kahrk is just another ogre mage.
- getting stuck in one of the many web traps in the game.
- being ambushed by a basilisk.