Free action and haste should be patched to work together, nerf Web instead
borntodie
Member Posts: 199
Okay, so I know, many posts have been made about this before. But since the problem has not been solved, this bears repeating.
Free action disables haste, and I know this is not a bug. But it is a terrible, terrible design decision.
Haste and improved haste are bread and butter spells. They are fundamental to game play. Free action is a minor buff, it only protects you against a few effects that are very rare outside of cloakwood. It makes absolutely no sense from a game balance perspective to have Free Action block haste. That turns free action into a very bad *debuff*. It is so bad that it makes the FoA +5 a steep downgrade, avoided by anybody. It turns Keldorns personal plate armor into a cursed piece of garbage.
Now I can understand the reasoning behind the design. Free action let's you murder things if you cast web, that combo is some major cheese.. But nerfing Free Action into oblivion, and nerfing all items it appears on with it, was the wrong way to fix this problem. It is the Web spell that is OP and should have been nerfed instead.
The fact that the final upgrade of perhaps the best weapon in the game (FoA) has become a downgrade, is just wrong. An upgrade should never be a noob trap that kills your item.
So please, if anyone is listening, reconsider this. It can still be changed in the next patch. Better late than never.
Free action disables haste, and I know this is not a bug. But it is a terrible, terrible design decision.
Haste and improved haste are bread and butter spells. They are fundamental to game play. Free action is a minor buff, it only protects you against a few effects that are very rare outside of cloakwood. It makes absolutely no sense from a game balance perspective to have Free Action block haste. That turns free action into a very bad *debuff*. It is so bad that it makes the FoA +5 a steep downgrade, avoided by anybody. It turns Keldorns personal plate armor into a cursed piece of garbage.
Now I can understand the reasoning behind the design. Free action let's you murder things if you cast web, that combo is some major cheese.. But nerfing Free Action into oblivion, and nerfing all items it appears on with it, was the wrong way to fix this problem. It is the Web spell that is OP and should have been nerfed instead.
The fact that the final upgrade of perhaps the best weapon in the game (FoA) has become a downgrade, is just wrong. An upgrade should never be a noob trap that kills your item.
So please, if anyone is listening, reconsider this. It can still be changed in the next patch. Better late than never.
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Comments
I 100% agree something should be done to fix the FoA + 5. It can be done easily, at low cost, without really nerfing it (put 10 charges a day of 2-turn free action for instance). And increase ultimately the freedom to do the build the game tells you you can, which is a preferable outcome to limiting said choice.
If my assumption is incorrect and the FoA +4 is indeed your weapon of choice then I agree there's a problem - an "upgrade" of your weapon of choice should not be a downgrade in practice. If however my assumption was correct and you are using another weapon than the FoA +4 then I don't see the problem - the concept of "best weapon" need not be absolute, some builds being able to work around a weapon's drawback and make the best use out of it while other can't is perfectly acceptable in my book, even desirable.
There is inherently a problem with the fact that getting FoA+4 to +5 actually reduces its value in more than one instance. The example I gave came to my mind because of my current playthrough, my arguments are universal however. And unaddressed.
The first is that FoA +5 is only a downgrade over FoA +4 for some builds. Builds that have access to Greater Whirwind can compensate for FoA +5's drawback, making it an excellent weapon for them - arguably even the best weapon.
The second is that FoA +5 being a downgrade over FoA +4 for a build only matters if I was planning to use FoA +4 with that build. If I'm not planning to use FoA +4 as my weapon of choice - in particular if I'm not planning to use it because I don't consider it strong enough - then why would I care that my build would be worse with FoA +5 than with FoA +4? I didn't actually lose anything here, simply because I can't lose something I never had.
On the paper, there is no such thing as pure optimisation, because magical items are designed to bring very different things, all interesting. Many magical items make their owner very excited upon loot, and you can find them all along the game. This is different from most (if not all) modern RPGs where there is 1 objective best weapon that overshadows everything else (or 1 spell etc.). In Baldur's Gate you can keep being excited during an entire playthrough because the items you find could all be considered BiS, which makes the items system so great.
The best way a player can fully take advantage of that is by using all these marvels, game after game. In BG2, you can get ring of gaxx, the staff of the magi, purifier +4, foebane +3 and many other as soon as chapter 2, and many of these items will potentially be used by you until the very end of the game. It does not prevent you from finding more along the way, to complete your arsenal.
Freedom is the key here: freedom in choosing any build, any gameplay and still find items that will make them work, because so many items are so exciting!
Unfortunately, if you decide (knowingly or not of the FoA issue) to go for flails, you will not experience the same excitement. Excitment will grow as you add heads to FoA. Until the last head, and you realise your entire build is destroyed by thus choice. OR, keep a +4 at the expense of the super sweet damage bonus. FoA is *the* most damaging weapon in the game, it is natural to seek to use its strength to the fullest (improved haste, which btw is so, so much superior to GWW). But you can't. There is always this frustration that you cannot fully use FoA, and good flails are not that common (DoE is more of an off-hand and then...).
In other words, such things destroy what makes Baldur's Gate so great (one of the reasons at least) by either limiting choices (if I don't play flails, it's not because I preferred bastard swords, it's because FoA+5 is broken) or creating frustration ("what?!?! My upgrade is actually a downgrade and I cannot revert it back?!?!").
Again, it's like saying "this quest is broken, don't play it" instead of "this quest is broken, please fix it".
Your last point on FoA is taking things in reverse I believe: you may not plan on using FoA+4 but would be delighted to use FoA+5. In a previous game, I kept my axe if the unyielding in my bag until I could update it and started to use it then. What a frustration if I discovered "upgrading" it would have destroyed my entire build (for instance if the vorpal effect prevented me from attcking more than once per round)!
And your point illustrates exactly the current problem: why would I care about FoA+5 if it's lame compared to FoA+4, and FoA+4 is not as good as other end-game weapons? It destroys the whole weapon and by that the whole flail specialisation!
Why care about a broken weapon? Because I want the freedom to do the build the game is supposed to allow me. Otherwise let's go to modern RPGs and funnel all choices towards the unique best build. Let us use FoA! Let us use flails! Stop making us avoiding a whole wepon class and entire builds because of such a tiny overlook that is so easy to fix!
All hail the hypno-toad!
Removing Free Action from FoA +5 would have the opposite effect of what you want. As you point out this is the most damaging weapon in the entire game, and that's not even considering its other abilities. The only thing that keeps FoA +5 in check and prevents it from overshadowing other melee weapons is precisely its severe drawback.
As it stands now FoA +5 is still a weapon I'm happy to use with several characters and that I will never use with others. Greater Whirwind may not be Improved Haste but FoA +5's extra damage makes it a trade worth considering, and my latest Ranger/Cleric made good use of it.
Other than that the generalities there are two specific things you mentioned that I'd like to comment on. This I agree is the absolute sucker punch, not having any way of knowing that FoA +5 might be a severe downgrade over FoA +4 for some characters. I wouldn't appreciate it if I had walked blindly into it. This is however the only thing I see as a problem with FoA. This on the other hand I don't understand. As I said earlier I cannot lose something I never had. Greater Whirlwind is FoA's full potential. Saying "if Improved Haste + FoA worked together then it would be stronger than Greater Whirwind + FoA" is just saying "if the game's rules were different in a specific way then I could do something stronger than I can do under the current rules." Technically true but not particularly useful.
I believe FoA+5 is worse than FoA+4, which I do not believe was intended. I am merely asking this is corrected.
You believe that... hu... you don't care? Is that the message? Sorry, I don't mean to be that guy, but your position is not quite clear. That FoA+5 would be too powerful if free action was removed? I would be happy with a bit of a nerf, indeed, but not by adding free action. Maybe by getting +1 to each elemental damage instead of +2? Like what the other heads are providing, for instance. Maybe up to 50% chance of slow or something? Free action just renders it stupid.
Let's agree to disagree and see if something ever changes. This topic was really to provide feedback. If FoA is not fixed, let us hope at least another powerful flail will make its apparition instead.
B: Let's not forget it affects Keldorn's personal armor, too.
Having interesting item limitations / choices is good, but this feels like collateral damage rather than a well thought out limitation.
At the same time, I would say that webs are overdone. Consider how punishing web traps are in BG1. A 6-man party at the level cap hits a web trap? Unless one of them wields Spider's Bane: this is a total, unconditional party wipe. No other trap in the game is remotely as punishing. It's too extreme, there should be some real chance to break free, certainly for high level characters.
So I believe that the free action nerf is the wrong way to address the problem. And does not even solve it, because you can still cheese fights with it.
2.Reach enemy and switch to FoA
3.Pop GWW and blend enemy into fine mist.
4.Profit.
(And yes, free action blocking haste is totally crap)
Apparently, you're right indeed. Seems like my DM robbed me blind for almost a decade.
All I want to say is,
IT'S JUST SO DISAPPOINTING.
You know, it's not just the Flail that suffers from this design flaw. It's also the Ixil's Spear weapon that suffers from this "upgrade' - which isn't much (two weapons out of all that can be upgraded from what I can see) but it is still annoying if you're playing some form of Fighter/Druid that wanted to use Spears in your playthrough only to find that the best spear in the game can't be hasted (not as big an issue with multiclass, but a dual that can't use the whirlwinds - it sucks). And it's kind of weird that it is only those two weapons.
Like, with how OP busted Carosmyr is and it's allowed to exist without a penalty like that - Flail is punished and a random Spear that really isn't all that strong prevent you from enjoying the benefits of IH.