My weapon does nothing!

[PsychoBlonde 557]

However sometimes in the IE games, I'd face monsters that had immunities and had no way to be able to have anything in my inventory to overcome the immunity.

 

That's kinda the point? Read lore, ask around, keep magical weapons, use spells?... Tactics, you know.

 

That's not "tactics". That's Strategy. Strategy consists of carrying around the 3 or 10 or 18 weapons you need to be able to affect every type of mob in the game. Tactics would be actually switching to that weapon at the appropriate time. The prep you do before the fights is strategy, not tactics. Tactics is what you do DURING the fight.

 

That pedantry aside, this situation is a large part of the reason why a really good party in BG2 contained 5 casters. I could never put up with it because I didn't want to pitch MInsc, so I frequently had 2 non-casters.

[Sarog 190]

Give me a packmule to carry all my backup weapons around on, and I'll sell the packmule to buy more backup weapons.

[PsychoBlonde 557]

You are making a statement on a basis of things which do no exist yet.

 

Also, Obsidian making their own system, even if using D&D as inspiration.

 

I know. That's why I'm making a SUGGESTION that they NOT COPY this aspect of D&D which got completely out of control with 3rd edition. Heroes shouldn't carry around a golf bag stuffed with swords.

 

And making suggestions inherently means talking "about things that don't exist yet". It'd be a little weird to make suggestions about stuff that's ALREADY DONE and CAN'T BE CHANGED.

[Troller 107]

wow this poll isnt biased towards no resistance and immunities at all

I`m sure the devs will ignore this anyway, they are trying to make an RPG here, not Call of Duty Eternity

[Tauron 78]

Let there be resitances that mitigate damage, rather than immunities. If there are immunities, let them make sense...no abstract sense.

 

Smart immunities like Stone Golem is immune or heavily resistant to arrows, daggers, swords, makes sense. But Golem is supposed to be always epic encounter.

[Shadenuat 633]

That pedantry aside, this situation is a large part of the reason why a really good party in BG2 contained 5 casters.

You did't figure out that only other thing you need to kill any creature in the game is enchanted mace?

 

I mean, you get like hundred of fire or acid arrows every time you meet a troll, and same amount of basic weapons and Elminster's books for magical elementals. BG2 basically holded your hand there.

Edited September 18, 2012 by Shadenuat

[TwinkieGorilla 187]

If you're going to make a poll you should try to construct it in a way which does not present your own glaringly obvious personal bias.

 

That said, I voted "yes", since I do enjoy using strategy in RPG combat.

[Tlantl 11]

You are greatly exagerrating to make your point seems like it has more validity than it actually has. Neither of the Infinity Engine games required you to have so many different weapons. In fact, most (if not all) immunities were to non-magical weapons. Once you had a magical weapon you could use that, no need to switch. Also, if a creature is immune to fire it means that the extra fire damage the weapon deals doesn't count, not that you don't damage it at all. Maybe that's not good enough for you either? How about making all spells affect everybody too then! Can't be bothered to have a couple of different spells ready. Don't know how it's done in MMORPGs, but there's no reason to think they'd turn this into a singleplayer MMORPG.

 

This is a trend in D&D games and since more than half of the games ie engine games are D&D based there is reason to be concerned. I guess DDO has taken it a bit farther than NWN 2 and PnP D&D but it is a concern.

 

The last Obsidian games I played ( still play) are FO:NV and NWN 2 so I can only go by those games. one of them does have this issue the other does not.

 

From what I've heard, the Devs aren't enamored of D&D style rules so I would imagine that they won't be so inclined toward a lot of immunities or resistances but I'm not a mind reader and I do want to avoid silver axiomatic flaming greatswords if I can.

[Vin 13]

I've never had a problem with monsters or bosses having immunity to cold/fire/whatever. It's there -- and sometimes it just springs itself on you and you may want to bang your head on a wall -- but I've never seen it as something that necessarily needs to be fixed.

Because a vampire is going to be mostly immune to normal weapons. They're kinda dead, y'know.

A creature made of elemental fire isn't going to care about your fun Burning Hands trick. That's sort of self-explanatory.

That's how it goes, on and on down the list. Ridiculous amounts of immunity are ridiculous. But for the most part, it's something that should be expected.

[l3loodangel 27]

You've never played DDO, I take it. I have characters with all of those weapons + specific bane and debuffing weapons for use against specific bosses. Not to mention things like swap gear that grants specific debuffs. People will boot you out of groups if they find out you don't know what weapons work on what mobs.

 

No darling I did not. You know that this is not a MMO, right? In games made by Bio, Black Isle and Obsidian, you never needed large quantity of weapons. There were only few instance when you really needed them, and if you did not you were in trouble.It was in NWN ( infested lycantropes in Luskan) and BG2 (magic vs golems). And that's about it as much as I can remember.

Edited September 18, 2012 by l3loodangel

[Continuity 19]

Developing new combat strategies when you hit a wall in the IE games were one of the best part of those games. If anything, move further in that direction.

 

edit: that direction being more ways to force the player to think, and perhaps tackle the combat encounter from another angle.

Edited September 18, 2012 by Continuity

[Ashram 31]

As long as it is done in moderation and with purpose. As some have said...in a combat against a Lich...or perhaps battling with a Dragon...or a powerful construct of sorts. Its a great mechanic, but carrying umpteen weapons can be tedious at times. Though maybe the fun is in the collecting. Honestly I am on the fence with this one.

[Hoverdog 111]

Facing an opponent that forces you to change tactics drastically is good.

Having a fight in which you have to actually think is fine.

Brickwall foes that make you flee in panic hastily regroup is great.

 

The harder the battle, the more rewarding the experience - when you finally beat that damned liche, or whatever.

I'm all in for immunities.

[Continuity 19]

As long as it is done in moderation and with purpose. As some have said...in a combat against a Lich...or perhaps battling with a Dragon...or a powerful construct of sorts. Its a great mechanic, but carrying umpteen weapons can be tedious at times. Though maybe the fun is in the collecting. Honestly I am on the fence with this one.

 

That's a strawman though and the whole poll is too. You never had to carry that many weapons in any IE game. About the only examples I can come up with are trolls, golems and the occasional fight where you needed +3 weapons or higher to hit.

Edited September 18, 2012 by Continuity

[teknoman2 3,000]

resistances and immunities are fine, as long as they dont get too specific. its fine if an enemy can only be hit by magical weapons or if he is immune to arrows and you need to use melee, or even if he is immune to a certain type of magic (cant very well expect a fireball to hurt a fire elemental now can you?). but its a big no if you get something like "this one can only be hurt by this or that particular type of weapon" (ie a mace or a spear) or "this enemy is immune to all damage except ice arrows" and so on

[Delterius 106]

Thank you, but I very much enjoy inventory management and strategy. It adds to melee fighters, it adds to crafters and to the entire game.

 

Outright warning the player makes sense sometimes. If you're going up a mountain the presence of trolls is well known, there's no reason why the local populace wouldn't warn you about that. The local merchant would totally scream at you about dem trolls and how much of NEED his overpriced grenade of fire/acid.

 

However, I believe that other, more subtle ways should be there for the more obscure immunities.

 

Next time, try not to exaggerate things a bit. Carrying different weapons isn't a big deal, especially since many weapons can serve multiple functions. I don't even remember needing alignment weapons.

 

In fact, BG included a single sword with plus damage for all alignments except True Neutral.

Edited September 19, 2012 by Delterius

[Umberlin 397]

I generally like the idea that your one weapon can't do everything, and any system that ensures there's no one best thing for all situations. One of the divides that you don't see in many Console and PC RPGs is that a melee character can often just find one weapon to suit them and hack away with it non-stop. In contrast many games that have caster have systems and limiters imposed on them while the melee characters continues to hack away non-stop without limit. I always felt the way to make a melee character more interesting was by ensuring that they had to prepare for battle as surely as any caster typed character (this applies to ranged and other playstyles too mind you). They need to have that arsenal and bag of tricks, the strategy needs to be there just the same. It can't just be a passive non-stop whack a whole fest.

 

I rarely play melee character in games because of this, not because I dislike melee, but because so very few games manage to make melee combat interesting or tactics. They forget that there are limiters on physical effort, just as surely as any fictional idea of a limiter on a non-physical effort like magic.

 

As someone that likes to have to think tactically and think before battle, as well as on their toes during battle, I crave any system that would bring that back to melee characters (and ranged for that matter). I've just played one too many games where as melee you could whack away non-stop, and, even if you had a resource to spend, your constant normal attack that cost nothing was still there and still very effective either through your stats or the weapon's stats leading to no real need for tactics. Tactics are important to me. Systems that ensure I have to think tactically are welcome. Having to manage weapons for different situations is as 'needed' in my mind as systems that force a wizard to sit down and prepare spells thoughtfully ahead of time.

Edited September 19, 2012 by Umberlin

[kenup 232]

I, personally, find this conceit of some games to be kind of . . . annoying. Resistances? Okay. Armor that reduces damage from some sources? Okay. But needing to have:

 

The Bludgeon weapon

The Piercing weapon

The Slashing weapon

The Adamantine sword

The Silver sword

The Cold Iron sword

The Lawful sword

The Chaotic sword

The Good sword

The Evil sword

The Epic sword

The Wood sword

The Crystal sword

The Adamantine and Good sword

The Silver AND Good sword . . .

 

Just to do reasonable damage to most monsters is kind of . . . insane. Not to mention the fact that you can't REALLY build that Fire Specialist mage because, like, 1/3 of the mobs in the game are FLAT OUT IMMUNE to fire. And if you do a fire/acid specialist, there's still always gonna be some that are immune to both. And PLAYERS never get IMMUNITY gear.

 

Let's have resistances, sure. But I'd really prefer to ditch outright immunities unless they're extremely specific or only on unique boss mobs where it's pretty dang obvious. Let certain creatures be immune to Piercing weapons (and have weapons that do 2 or more damage types), maybe or have the Fire Dragon be immune to fire. But don't let's be crazy.

This happens a lot in games true. Elemental resistances make sense a lot of times though. A fire elemental shouldn't be damaged by fire for example, if not outright get healed. I understand the weapons argument, but I never *needed* to carry more than one. And even in the witcher the two swords are very well implemented.

 

Funny thing though, this reminded me of Guild Wars. Mesmers were hexers, but their regular attacks where the only ones that couldn't be resisted.

[Xantomas 26]

I like the idea that trolls must be killed with fire or acid, or lycans can only be hurt by silver or magic, or a very powerful lich has enchantments that make him immune to anything but higher level magic.

 

I think it can be done reasonably to add some tactical quality to monsters without needing a golf bag of swords. My fighter may only have his normal awesome +3 sword or whatever, but my Paladin's got a silver sword for undead killing, and my Ranger archer has fire and acid arrows for putting down trolls. It's a team effort.

[KateM 2]

The piercing/slashing/bludgeoning immunity thing is especially stupid because there's no real difference between the three. All are just force being applied over a wider or smaller area.

 

I can accept that there are some enemies who might need to be killed by lighting them on fire, and maybe you'll need a high-damage or armor piercing weapon to break through an enemy's armor. Those are fine.

 

Needing a +5 weapon when you only have a +4 is just dumb.

[Shevek 808]

This is a badly designed poll. You interject your opinion into the questioning and that taints the results. As for my opinion, I have never seen a game do this well. That doesn't mean it CAN'T be done well. I will say, it is pretty stupid to have a game say that you can kill a skeleton with a dagger. A hammer should be good at it. A dagger should suck at it.

Edited September 19, 2012 by Shevek

[Kevin Lynch 9]

I prefer the middle ground of resistances to immunities. I'd hate to be forced to go off and find a selection of weapons for every occasion. However, a party-based game does lend itself to having the player balance the party and hence the combat abilities of its members well enough to manage most situations where resistances are heavily weighted.

[boobio 1]

This is a TROLL POLL.

[Umberlin 397]

The piercing/slashing/bludgeoning immunity thing is especially stupid because there's no real difference between the three. All are just force being applied over a wider or smaller area.

 

So there being a distinction between poking a Skeleton with a Spear versus bludgeoning it with a Mace doesn't seem sensible in your mind?

[KateM 2]

This is a badly designed poll. You interject your opinion into the questioning and that taints the results. As for my opinion, I have never seen a game do this well. That doesn't mean it CAN'T be done well. I will say, it is pretty stupid to have a game say that you can kill a skeleton with a dagger. A hammer should be good at it. A dagger should suck at it.

Knives are quite capable of cutting through bone. They're not as hard as you think.

 

So there being a distinction between poking a Skeleton with a Spear versus bludgeoning it with a Mace doesn't seem sensible in your mind?

No. Bones are not made of steel. A spear point could cut through a ribcage (though that might not "kill" the skeleton, but that's not a discussion I feel is worth considering). You could also bash it with the shaft. There's also the silliness of confusing "blunt" with "heavy" when so few historical weapons are blunt. Look at a medieval mace and you'll see that it's covered in spikes and knobs. A three pound ax or sword would be just as suited to smashing a skeleton as a three pound hammer.

Edited September 19, 2012 by KateM