Monte Carlo

Yeah, go and gain a level. There's several fights where I've had to do that. I actually enjoy that about PoE.

Like I say, this used to be a helpful forum.

I'm glad you enjoy PoE. Nonetheless, you need to get over your fanboy sensibilities as lots of people have perfectly reasonable issues with it.

I am the ex-wargamer grog of which you speak - Avalon Hill / Squad leader / SPI LotR wargames and into D&D then RuneQuest and Traveller / Twilight 2000. People forget the first ever iteration of D&D was a miniatures game invented by a guy who liked Napoleonic and Civil War wargames with lead soldiers in his Lake Geneva basement. The very essence of D&D has always been infused with tactical wargaming. First it was deeply basic, as it was meant to be mass combat rules then it coalesced into this squad-based game. Ever since the 1990s computer RPGs and their pen and paper forebears have had an interesting, symbiotic relationship despite the fact pen and paper rules are suboptimal for PC games (the spirit of them is not). For me the ultimate irony of this video-killed-the-radio-star situation was 4E D&D which was a PnP game copying MMORPG tropes. For many of us (and WotC will acknowledge this) 4E sucked gangrenous donkey-balls. There is no 'best' iteration of D&D for the computer because it's like trying to make ice-cream from onions - you could do it but it just wouldn't taste right. The essence of D&D however - a small party of colourful heroes with special powers, class-based with stats fighting monsters etc etc is (as we have seen) great for computer games. I wish we'd just all acknowledge this and make a DnD engine for computer games designed for computer games. Trope heavy, specifics light.

Wow, this forum is awash with helpful people.

The system is nothing like BG. I had the same problem, and I played the backer's beta too. The Raedric Hold fight is very tough. Ignore the savants who find this game too easy - I had to knock the difficulty down to normal with my (level 4) party. The key to most battles in this game, from my own painful experience is - 1. A solid front-line with 'sticky' characters, that is they engage and pin a good number of enemies. There is an ability that adds to the number of people your tanks can engage. Take it. I made myself a hulking death godlike fighter henchman and put him in the best armour I could find. He and Eder hold the line. 2. Your casters / missile characters need to stay back and avoid aggro. Give them feats that allow them to disengage. Durance has some great buffs and that spell that sets a trap that knocks everybody over. I use that a lot. Use Durance as a missile character (typically, they gave him awful dex) and buffer. Keep him safe. Aloth plays the same role, but with more offensive / crowd control spells. I avoid AoE / direct line of sight magic and get him pumping magic missiles and spells that screw up enemy resistances / speed / mobility. 3. My PC is a barbarian. His job is to kill people by flanking and running around like a lunatic while the tanks pin. His abilities let him damage more than one character. Give your 'damage dealer' Eder's armour which basically resurrects you if you die. This might be a rogue, I had an NPC rogue I created for a bit and if you are up to the micromanagement they are good at killing people your tanks have pinned. With the Raedric's hold fight, you will have to carefully plan character loadout, spells, consumables and positioning. I did it third time with two characters left alive. Note there is a way into that fight that allows you to rest immediately before it. Hope a little of this helps. The combat system in this game is not intuitive, it's like you've been driving an automatic car for fifteen years then you get dumped in a stick-shift.

As we all have different humour tolerance (I like some slap-stick, I loved Edwin's pantomime villain act in the BG games) you usually answer this question with a bigger stable of NPCs. Minsc, for example, is completely optional - he's a solid melee fighter but nothing exceptional and easily replaced. So a token funny guy NPC you could take or leave would be no biggie. I can't really get my head around mystical too-serious NPCs like Grieving Mother, for example. I'd like a totally humorous RPG, a video game version of Hackmaster for example. Creeping around in dungeons lends itself to Monty Python stupidity but context is all.

What Prime-Mover said, not hostile to the question just baffled by the choice of party size and nature of question. What size party for power-gaming? What size party for max role-plaeying? What size party for optimum combat whup-ass? Etc.

Kids today -- they're no damn good! Why, when I was their age ... [grumble grumble hacking cough] Eh? Where was I? Oh yes, I was talking about my enlarged prostate. Gets me up three times a night! I never talked about kids. I meant the low attention span casual gamer. These seniors are playing a niche Japanese bukkake-based CRPG featuring tentacle monsters.

I find myself in the novel (but not entirely unwelcome) position of agreeing entirely with Grom.

Ha ha ha you've done it now. You've said it, and it has been summoned Gamers younger than us, pure of heart and stout of soul, are about to be sullied and ruined as they tap that cursed acronym into Google. Damn your eyes, PJ, damn your eyes!

Yep, I often let my characters get knocked out all the time. Someone is going to get knocked out? Meh, no matter. I can finish this fight off with the rest of my party. And the characters who are knocked out are safe with not losing any more health and won't die. And after the battle is over, they're on full endurance again. And introduced new degenerative gameplay that the IE games didn't have. Precisely. My irony-meter exploded.

Or maybe an Ilyich mod for PoE's starting dungeon...

This. Healing endurance should be allowable. Maybe expensive and / or difficult, but possible. Like I say, they've thrown out the fun-baby with the degenerative game-play bathwater.

Really? Many people were seriously put off by 2nd Ed AD&D. I was one of them. The franchise collapsed under munchkinism, splat-books and the Forgotten-bloody-Realms. Lorraine Williams / TSR / hubris / collapse... 2nd Ed AD&D killed the game. 3rd Ed resurrected it.

* sigh * And, in other news, some people prefer the slightly astringent, fresh-sour taste of a green apple to the sweet, sharply citrus tang of the orange.

I'm talking about OD&D grey-box version although admittedly most of my early gaming was 'Basic' D&D followed by 1st Ed. AD&D. I missed 2nd Ed entirely, we were playing RuneQuest by then. But, yes, Blessed Be His Garyness, the High Gygax and may the Geek-Lords bathe his immortal soul in sweet Mountain Dew.

I don't know what this will be like to play, but D&D is hardly dead as far as PC gaming is concerned. https://swordcoast.com/ I'm sorry about the ball-sack comment, :D I broadly agree that 3E was probably the crunchiest iteration of D&D and Pathfinder the best modern tabletop RPG out there. Although like many grogs, the uber-simplicity of back-to-the-dungeon OD&D clones like Labyrinth Lord and OSRIC still appeals.

This isn't DnD though. [grognard]3rd Ed was the only *REAL* D&D.[/grognard] I suspect I was playing OD&D when you were swimmin' in daddy's ballsack, son.

OK, I get that, but no pre-buffing. None? It's like my point about kiting / engagement... to stop tedious mechanic of yore you replace it with a tedious mechanic of now.

Yep. It's as if in the attempt to stop 'degenerative game-play' they kinda stomped some of the fun out of it. I mean, there must be a half-way house between kiting abuse and the engagement / dog-piling system we have now.

I know my view is inchoate (in that I can't put my finger on it), but all the time my nagging suspicion is in an attempt to make everything so different, it's all ended up very much the same. BG2 had trolls (need fire to kill) it had mind-flayers (could suck your brains out after stunning you) it had spiders (fast poison and those teleporting nasties), it had hobgoblins with poison arrows and it had human NPC parties will mad skills. The DR / resistances system exists in PoE but it doesn't feel as impactive / granular in combat. Those resistances might be going on under the hood, but I ain't feeling them. Engagement is also a pain. I like the idea of AoEs and engagement, just not the implementation / reality. I'll keep on saying it, though, all the elements are in place to make PoE something exceptional, it just needs some more loving and changes. I think Obsidian will do the necessary McGuyvering as the sheer level of feedback now the game has been released will give them some ideas about what people want to see ---- there is a lot of crunchy common ground between folks who like the new systems and people like me who would prefer a more IE feel.

No flames from me, AT, it's your opinion. I find the combat slightly repetitive too. The exploration element is interesting, but where are the battles like the Drow bridge in IWD or the goblin siege from IWD2?

Red squirrels FTW. Sadly American Greys decimated them over here.

Just plan an NPC-free run next with a wacky party of henchmen. I've done that soooo many times with BG2 using a multiplayer party game cut-and-pasted into my single-player folder. A party of thieves, a party of druids and rangers, a party of clerics and paladins and my memorable bard-only run (not as difficult as you think).