EI Mod and my opinions

[PrimeJunta]

All true.

 

But once you've solved Kangaxx, there's Thass'il'y'yaxsy'l'lable'soup, Firkraag, the #!$@!! beholders, the illithids, the demon knights, the necromancer, all those casters, the shadow thieves, the planar prison tanar'ri and cambion, the... and... and... and... they're all different.

[Zwiebelchen]

All true.

 

But once you've solved Kangaxx, there's Thass'il'y'yaxsy'l'lable'soup, Firkraag, the #!$@!! beholders, the illithids, the demon knights, the necromancer, all those casters, the shadow thieves, the planar prison tanar'ri and cambion, the... and... and... and... they're all different.

 

Yes... and this is basicly why BG2 is so awesome.

I'm not saying BG2 is bad for having all those immunities and hard counters. Due to the variety of encounters, there's always a challenge. However, some of the encounters are so severely hard-balanced, that they literally become easier than any "every day" encounter along the road once you figured them out. And this is just wrong.

 

Prime example:

Fights against trolls (especially the spirit troll packs... holy ****!). Those are always challenging. Firkraag is still challenging even if you have enough fire resistance and prepared well. Great encounter design! But Kangaxx otoh is just a puzzle, not an actual fight. Beholders are just broken. Even on high level, there is almost no way to beat a large Beholder group without cheesing it with summons or Balduran's Shield. This is just bad encounter design.

Edited April 16, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[gkathellar]

 

 

In other words, you only fight them when you're overleveled and/or overgeared to the point that they can't hurt you anyway.

No they appear at several stages throughout the game and the most dangerous I've found is probably the De'Arnise Hold hidden area where Tor'Gal is. That can be a pain in the ass. Usually I just run in with my Kensai and close the door, he usually gets Confused but will still attack the Umber Hulks, then I come in a bit later with Minsc equipped with Lilarcor who I think is immune to Confusion because of Lilarcor (can't remember) and spank them.

 

One thing I should probably try is sending in Minsc first instead, but that tactic has worked for me since I started doing it.

 

Sometimes I think I used a Potion of Mind Focusing or something against the confusion, don't remember.

 

It can be problematic because once the Umber Hulks are dead, my Kensai will still be confused, so I'll have to lock him in the room until it wears off.

 

 

Then again you could also do it the way it was intended by using the dog meat to attract the umber hulks to the other room.

 

 

Pfffft. Don't you know that you're supposed to use the dog meat stew, and then kill the Umber Hulks anyway for maximum XP? :D

[PrimeJunta]

Firkraag is still challenging even if you have enough fire resistance and prepared well. 

 

Not really. For example:

 

 

 

Firkraag Steak Recipe

 

Ingredients: one divine caster capable of casting Harm, one arcane caster capable of casting Lower Resistance.

 

Preparation:

Opening - divine caster casts Animate Dead.

Rounds 1-2 - divine caster casts Animate Dead to replace skeletons so there's one in reserve all the time, sending them at Firkraag as he nukes them. Arcane caster casts Lower Resistance on Firkraag each round.

Round 3 - divine caster casts Holy Power. Arcane caster casts another Lower Resistance.

Round 4 - divine caster casts Harm. Arcane caster casts another Lower Resistance.

Round 5 - divine caster slaps Firkraag with Harm. Immediately after, Arcane caster casts Magic Missile.

 

In the unlikely case that divine caster missed with attack on round 5, try again on round 6.

 

This will only fail if the RNG truly isn't with you and you fail both attempts at applying Harm. Even so it's probably possible to recover to cast another Harm and try again two more times.

 

Season to taste and serve hot. 

 

 

[Zwiebelchen]

 

Firkraag is still challenging even if you have enough fire resistance and prepared well. 

 

Not really. For example:

 

 

 

Firkraag Steak Recipe

 

Ingredients: one divine caster capable of casting Harm, one arcane caster capable of casting Lower Resistance.

 

Preparation:

Opening - divine caster casts Animate Dead.

Rounds 1-2 - divine caster casts Animate Dead to replace skeletons so there's one in reserve all the time, sending them at Firkraag as he nukes them. Arcane caster casts Lower Resistance on Firkraag each round.

Round 3 - divine caster casts Holy Power. Arcane caster casts another Lower Resistance.

Round 4 - divine caster casts Harm. Arcane caster casts another Lower Resistance.

Round 5 - divine caster slaps Firkraag with Harm. Immediately after, Arcane caster casts Magic Missile.

 

In the unlikely case that divine caster missed with attack on round 5, try again on round 6.

 

This will only fail if the RNG truly isn't with you and you fail both attempts at applying Harm. Even so it's probably possible to recover to cast another Harm and try again two more times.

 

Season to taste and serve hot. 

 

 

 

 

... harm isn't so much a hard-counter, more a broken spell to begin with, as you can use it almost everywhere, not just the dragons. So I'd say it should imho be left out of the discussion.

[Luckmann]

Interrupts don't break engagement, they just, well, interrupt whatever action gets interrupted.

 

I could swear that I've seen Interrupts break Engagement, just that it's not nearly enough to matter. It disappears for a split second, so I've never been able to actually even try to take advantage of it.

[gkathellar]

 

Interrupts don't break engagement, they just, well, interrupt whatever action gets interrupted.

 

I could swear that I've seen Interrupts break Engagement, just that it's not nearly enough to matter. It disappears for a split second, so I've never been able to actually even try to take advantage of it.

 

 

Maybe it's an animation error?

[Zwiebelchen]

 

Interrupts don't break engagement, they just, well, interrupt whatever action gets interrupted.

 

I could swear that I've seen Interrupts break Engagement, just that it's not nearly enough to matter. It disappears for a split second, so I've never been able to actually even try to take advantage of it.

 

 

If that actually happens (never noticed so far) and it's unintentional, then we should definitely petition for this to become an intended feature (with an extended time-span). That would actually make interrupt interesting!

Edited April 16, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[PrimeJunta]

 

Interrupts don't break engagement, they just, well, interrupt whatever action gets interrupted.

 

I could swear that I've seen Interrupts break Engagement, just that it's not nearly enough to matter. It disappears for a split second, so I've never been able to actually even try to take advantage of it.

 

I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually do it even if it appears so by the visuals. You'd see "Foozle engages Hero in melee" in the combat log pretty much after every interrupt, since they would re-engage almost immediately.

[archangel979]

 

 

 

I agree. Having scads of ways to deal with the challenges is the best part of BG2.

 

It's a double edged sword, really. I liked the different ways of dealing with iron golems, for example (tanking with a stoneskin mage with immunity to poison/acid; reducing magic resistance, etc.), as golems remained a challenge no matter how you dealt with them. But some encounters simply became trivial when you found out the "right" tactic (mind flayer cheesing with chaotic commands).

 

I never did that. I would summon skeletons or mordekain sword, haste them and send them to fight Illithids and I bet there are more ways to do it. So, what were you saying about right way to play it?

 

 

So you basicly only replaced one cheesy tactic (chaotic commands making you immune against mind flayer spells) with another (mordenkain sword and skeletons being immune against mind flayer spells). I don't really see the difference here. It doesn't change the fact that it basicly removes all the challenge of fighting mindflayers. How does that make my point invalid?

 

See my Iron Golem example: it's exactly how hard-counter balancing should be done. Iron Golems are still a significant challenge even if you found a way to deal with the massive damage output or found a way to deal with their magic resistance. Stone skin won't last long against an iron golem and reduced magic resistance will only allow you to kill them somewhat faster. In addition, you have to deal with the slow effect from the clay golems aswell. It's awesome encounter design. You have basicly 3 problems to solve at the same time: a stacking slow effect making your armor and attack speed drop the longer it takes, high damage resistances and immunities making them harder to kill and a huge damage output and attack speed. It's not hard to find solutions to any of these problems in isolation, but making them work together and lasting long enough to kill the golems is an awesome experience.

Also, I love how the map designers always build a chokepoint next to golem encounters to allow you to retreat safely if you messed things up. This basicly creates a dynamic in which players have the opportunity to try out different tactics without always having to reload if an attempt failed. It's engaging and fun.

The only downside was that golems weren't immune to missile weapons +4 or +5, allowing you to kill them from safe distance if you had access to such weapons... (but then again, if you really had such weapons, chances are you outleveled the encounter anyway).

 

I understand your point but I don't agree with it.

 

You want a game with no or simple problem solving challenges. A game like PoE. I want a game that on occasion puts hard walls in front of your and challenges you to find a way to go through or around them. It has all the tools, you just need to use them.

When I ran into Illithids I didn't know how to fight them. I experimented and remembered undead and constructs are immune to some things so I decided to try them out and they worked. That moment of discovery is worth than 100 PoE encounters where I spam Blindness and Hobbled with no need to do anything different.

 

And a game like Dark Souls is like BG games, only it presents twitch challenges instead of thinking challenges. And by its popularity it proves people like hard challenges where you need to learn best combinations of passing specific enemies or die trying until you do

Edited April 16, 2015 by archangel979

[Luckmann]

 

 

Interrupts don't break engagement, they just, well, interrupt whatever action gets interrupted.

 

I could swear that I've seen Interrupts break Engagement, just that it's not nearly enough to matter. It disappears for a split second, so I've never been able to actually even try to take advantage of it.

 

 

Maybe it's an animation error?

 

 

Could be. Hard to tell. Either way it'd be a small nit-pick at best - if Interrupts break Engagement, it doesn't really matter anyway.

 

 

 

 

Interrupts don't break engagement, they just, well, interrupt whatever action gets interrupted.

 

I could swear that I've seen Interrupts break Engagement, just that it's not nearly enough to matter. It disappears for a split second, so I've never been able to actually even try to take advantage of it.

 

 

I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually do it even if it appears so by the visuals. You'd see "Foozle engages Hero in melee" in the combat log pretty much after every interrupt, since they would re-engage almost immediately.

 

 

Fair point. I'm not keeping track of the combat log at all. There's unfortunately no point in doing so.

 

 

 

Firkraag is still challenging even if you have enough fire resistance and prepared well.

 

Not really. For example:

 

 

 

Firkraag Steak Recipe

 

Ingredients: one divine caster capable of casting Harm, one arcane caster capable of casting Lower Resistance.

 

Preparation:

Opening - divine caster casts Animate Dead.

Rounds 1-2 - divine caster casts Animate Dead to replace skeletons so there's one in reserve all the time, sending them at Firkraag as he nukes them. Arcane caster casts Lower Resistance on Firkraag each round.

Round 3 - divine caster casts Holy Power. Arcane caster casts another Lower Resistance.

Round 4 - divine caster casts Harm. Arcane caster casts another Lower Resistance.

Round 5 - divine caster slaps Firkraag with Harm. Immediately after, Arcane caster casts Magic Missile.

 

In the unlikely case that divine caster missed with attack on round 5, try again on round 6.

 

This will only fail if the RNG truly isn't with you and you fail both attempts at applying Harm. Even so it's probably possible to recover to cast another Harm and try again two more times.

 

Season to taste and serve hot. 

 

 

 

The thing with that example is that if I'm honest, I'd have problems pulling it off in a truly reliable fashion. It's a good recipe, but you get wing-buffeted repeatedly, enjoy playing catch-up or wasting spells, or if your wizards are fireballed. I'm sure that it is entirely possible to actually do it all reliably, and master the encounter, but that's really no different than mastering *any* encounter in *any* game, at that point.

 

But even so, I think we all know that hard Save-or-Lose spells suck ass as a game mechanic in general. The IE games main problem was always that they were the adaptation of a PnP TB system, arbitrated by a GM and subject to muh immurshun.

 

So you basicly only replaced one cheesy tactic (chaotic commands making you immune against mind flayer spells) with another (mordenkain sword and skeletons being immune against mind flayer spells). I don't really see the difference here. It doesn't change the fact that it basicly removes all the challenge of fighting mindflayers. [...]

 

The thing is, what constitutes a "cheesy tactic"? It's not a cheesy tactic, it is how you fight Illithids. If you want to fight Illithids, how do you intend to fight them? What would be "not cheesy"? They're meant to be weak and rely on their psionics, and you're intended to come up with creative solutions as to how to deal with it.

 

You see it as cheesing, because it makes the encounter easy, but in reality, it's really just about thinking and strategy. You have to engineer a solution to a problem. When you have, the problem is solved.

 

On tactic I like is to actually open a door, throw stinking cloud, cloudkill and acid fog in there, close and bar the door. Cheesy? I don't care; it's a way to solve the encounter that doesn't rely on a rote formula. Another person starts making undead and golems. A third person does something else. Fighting Illithids isn't really about straight-up fighting, it's about abusing the **** out of their weaknesses, more of a puzzle than a trite combat encounter, and even so, can still be challenging until you've reached a level of mastery that makes this entire discussion moot, because at that point, we're talking about people that have memorized entire games and knows every encounter and every mechanic by heart.

 

And even if there are Illithid-like encounters where you can "trivialize" part of the content if you, heavens forbid, adapt your strategy to the situation in front of you (instead of using the same one-size-fits-all-encounters-everywhere formula), it is entirely possible to break up encounters so that they're both. PoE isn't bound to the D&D universe at all, and if you feel that figuring out how to deal with illithids makes the entire thing boring once you have, you can add additional things to those encounters so that, even if you have broken the secrets of winning and applied strategic thinking, you still have to deal with their other minions, or still have to fight them in a more regular fashion, and so on and so forth.

 

Let's not fall into the whole BG2-Way-or-No-Way idiocy again.

[Karkarov]

 

Firkraag is still challenging even if you have enough fire resistance and prepared well. 

 

Not really. For example:

 

 

 

Firkraag Steak Recipe

 

Ingredients: one divine caster capable of casting Harm, one arcane caster capable of casting Lower Resistance.

 

Preparation:

Opening - divine caster casts Animate Dead.

Rounds 1-2 - divine caster casts Animate Dead to replace skeletons so there's one in reserve all the time, sending them at Firkraag as he nukes them. Arcane caster casts Lower Resistance on Firkraag each round.

Round 3 - divine caster casts Holy Power. Arcane caster casts another Lower Resistance.

Round 4 - divine caster casts Harm. Arcane caster casts another Lower Resistance.

Round 5 - divine caster slaps Firkraag with Harm. Immediately after, Arcane caster casts Magic Missile.

 

In the unlikely case that divine caster missed with attack on round 5, try again on round 6.

 

This will only fail if the RNG truly isn't with you and you fail both attempts at applying Harm. Even so it's probably possible to recover to cast another Harm and try again two more times.

 

Season to taste and serve hot. 

 

 

 

Junta do we need to link that epic Firkraag fight again?  You know the one where the monk just walks up and punches him once and he dies?

[Malekith]

Zwiebelchen, on 16 Apr 2015 - 1:04 PM, said:Zwiebelchen, on 16 Apr 2015 - 1:04 PM, said:

 

PrimeJunta, on 16 Apr 2015 - 12:53 PM, said:PrimeJunta, on 16 Apr 2015 - 12:53 PM, said:

 

Zwiebelchen, on 16 Apr 2015 - 12:42 PM, said:Zwiebelchen, on 16 Apr 2015 - 12:42 PM, said:

Firkraag is still challenging even if you have enough fire resistance and prepared well. 

 

Not really. For example:

 

 

 

Firkraag Steak Recipe

 

Ingredients: one divine caster capable of casting Harm, one arcane caster capable of casting Lower Resistance.

 

Preparation:

Opening - divine caster casts Animate Dead.

Rounds 1-2 - divine caster casts Animate Dead to replace skeletons so there's one in reserve all the time, sending them at Firkraag as he nukes them. Arcane caster casts Lower Resistance on Firkraag each round.

Round 3 - divine caster casts Holy Power. Arcane caster casts another Lower Resistance.

Round 4 - divine caster casts Harm. Arcane caster casts another Lower Resistance.

Round 5 - divine caster slaps Firkraag with Harm. Immediately after, Arcane caster casts Magic Missile.

 

In the unlikely case that divine caster missed with attack on round 5, try again on round 6.

 

This will only fail if the RNG truly isn't with you and you fail both attempts at applying Harm. Even so it's probably possible to recover to cast another Harm and try again two more times.

 

Season to taste and serve hot. 

 

 

 

 

... harm isn't so much a hard-counter, more a broken spell to begin with, as you can use it almost everywhere, not just the dragons. So I'd say it should imho be left out of the discussion.

 

mordenkain sword is immune to Firkraag's  (and iron golem's) basic attack and breath. 2  swords can tank the dragon indefinently, giving you all the time in the world to kill him.

I don't see this as a problem but as a boon. BG2 magic system was so great, that you gave you the tools to achive anything (and trivialize any encounter in the game with the correct obscure combination of abilities). And that puzzle like approach to  battles, and the moment you go "aha, that should work against this fukker, let's try it " was the most enjoyable part of any RPG combat to date. BG2 with SCS installed is...perfection.

PoE doesn't even come close. Trash combat in PoE is more difficult/interesting than trash combat in the IE games, but that's it. And trash combat is...trash. Uninteresting by default.

Edited April 16, 2015 by Malekith

[PrimeJunta]

There you are, several ways to reliably murder poor Baron Firkraag. QED

[archangel979]

 

 

Firkraag is still challenging even if you have enough fire resistance and prepared well.

 

Not really. For example:

 

 

 

Firkraag Steak Recipe

 

Ingredients: one divine caster capable of casting Harm, one arcane caster capable of casting Lower Resistance.

 

Preparation:

Opening - divine caster casts Animate Dead.

Rounds 1-2 - divine caster casts Animate Dead to replace skeletons so there's one in reserve all the time, sending them at Firkraag as he nukes them. Arcane caster casts Lower Resistance on Firkraag each round.

Round 3 - divine caster casts Holy Power. Arcane caster casts another Lower Resistance.

Round 4 - divine caster casts Harm. Arcane caster casts another Lower Resistance.

Round 5 - divine caster slaps Firkraag with Harm. Immediately after, Arcane caster casts Magic Missile.

 

In the unlikely case that divine caster missed with attack on round 5, try again on round 6.

 

This will only fail if the RNG truly isn't with you and you fail both attempts at applying Harm. Even so it's probably possible to recover to cast another Harm and try again two more times.

 

Season to taste and serve hot. 

 

 

Junta do we need to link that epic Firkraag fight again?  You know the one where the monk just walks up and punches him once and he dies?

 

I don't know which one but I can guess someone used Quivering Palm.

That is a lvl 13 or 14 monk ability and Firekrag is meant to be around lvl 10 party challenge. Also that Palm will work in maybe 20% of fights with him (or less if he manages to fire breath or wing buffet the monk) so it is not like it is a dominating tactic. Save or die spells murder you party members as often as they do enemies so I see nothing wrong with using it.

Also I don't know if Palm ignores spell resistance but if it does, that is only save or die ability that does that and since there are no monk companions in the game, only a super small percentage of players are going to kill Firkrag that way.

Edited April 16, 2015 by archangel979

[Zwiebelchen]

@ Luckman and archangel979 (Sorry guys, too lazy to quote your posts atm )

 

I'm not saying that the PoE approach of "no hard counters" is a good thing. If that's what you extracted that from my posts, then there's a misunderstanding here, because what I meant is:

- extreme hard-countering is bad

- extreme soft-countering is equally bad.

 

The optimum is somewhere inbetween.

 

Let's take Illithids and Kangaxx again:

Those fights should still maintain a somewhat basic challenge even if you hard-counter their trademark abilities. In case of Kangaxx, that could be easily done by adding a health regeneration effect to him (or buffing his regeneration, since it seems he already has one) to prevent players from "micro-poking him to death" and giving him some extra spells beyond imprison and wail of the banshee. Is there any real reason why he doesn't use some damage spells aswell?

 

Illithids: same story. Give them something that preserves some kind of "minimum threat" if their psionics are countered. Currently, the only remaining threat on the Illithid encounters as soon as you popped immunity to psionics are the umber hulks...

 

 

What I wished for PoE was a mixture of both worlds: hard counters and immunities vs. some trademark abilities, to "shape" an encounter towards problem-solving, but also keep a certain baseline difficulty that can not be hard-countered so that the encounter doesn't become trivial as soon as you solved the puzzle. This can be as simple as adding some extra abilities like a stun or knockdown or aoe-attack.

The only Illithid fight that was well done in this regard was the final battle against the "brain" at the end of the Illithid dungeon.

 

 

For a good example of how it can be done, just remember the human parties in BG2: Perfect encounter design, imho. Even if you "solved" the most significant threat (i.e. a wizard with abi dalzim's or the thief with invisibility potions), the rest of the party still makes the combat engaging. Oh how that Kensai dude in the temple district could mess you up if you didn't keep him occupied with holds and immobilizers. Or that one dwarf guy in the sewers with the throwing axes and ridicolous THAC0.

 

Give us hardcounters. But design encounters in a way that using this hardcounter doesn't auto-win the battle. This is what I'm asking for. Nothing more.

Edited April 16, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[PrimeJunta]

Whoo, I'll reiterate too.

 

From where I'm at the awesomeness of BG2 comes from the richness of its systems and variety of its encounters. 

 

The fact that the systems were heavily based on hard counters and on/off effects is incidental. You could have equally rich systems and varied encounters based on mechanics involving scalars rather than binaries.

[Quantics]

 

FYI I just uploaded IEMod 1.11 where I've attempted to improve this.  The AI is more proactive about switching to a different target when it is having trouble reaching its current target.  There are still times when an enemy will just inexplicably stand there doing nothing--I've not yet tracked down the cause of that.  But it does seem to play less ring-around-the-rosey now.

 

 

Man this is fantastic! Thanks for your work. 

 

I said it in another thread as well but we could REALLY use a separate sub-forum dedicated to modding. 

 

I'm sure lots of people are missing out on the latest mod updates because the info is scattered everywhere. 

Edited April 16, 2015 by Quantics

[Zwiebelchen]

You could have equally rich systems and varied encounters based on mechanics involving scalars rather than binaries.

 

This. It's not really the system of PoE that sucks, it's just the copy & paste encounter design.

[View619]

 

 

Interrupts don't break engagement, they just, well, interrupt whatever action gets interrupted.

 

I could swear that I've seen Interrupts break Engagement, just that it's not nearly enough to matter. It disappears for a split second, so I've never been able to actually even try to take advantage of it.

 

I'm pretty sure it doesn't actually do it even if it appears so by the visuals. You'd see "Foozle engages Hero in melee" in the combat log pretty much after every interrupt, since they would re-engage almost immediately.

 

 

Yeah, I'm fairly certain that I read about a design decision to make interrupts break engagement. However, I read about Wound mechanics working a lot differently than they do now and that didn't happen, so...

 

 

 

 

Attack of Opportunity is in 5e, but you have room to move without triggering it (within 5 feet of the attacker iirc). I'm hoping the current issue where moving a pixel triggers disengagement attacks is a bug, though. Also, aren't interrupts supposed to break engagement?

It's not a bug. It's been like that since forever and the issue has been mentioned countless times.

 

 

And with that being said, I have now lost all hope for the engagement system. No attempted simulation of the 5 ft safety zone for movement AND disengagement attacks when I'm no-where near you? No thanks.

Edited April 16, 2015 by View619

[Sensuki]

One of the moderators contacted Bester and I about a modding sub-forum but it was more that he was pushing for it and if it happened whether we wanted the old IE mod thread locked or moved. That was like 2 weeks ago, so yeah.

 

This. It's not really the system of PoE that sucks, it's just the copy & paste encounter design.

Even though the encounter design isn't very good, the system design doesn't facilitate very interesting encounters in the first place. There are only a few things in the game that require specific strategies that differ from the one that most half-decent players are using. You can put some of those creatures together, sure but then all you'd be able to do is copy paste that encounter because there's nothing else whatsoever without changing some of the mechanics/design principles.

 

Encounters with classes (which were fun in any IE game) can just be steamrolled with the same rinse/repeat ****. Quite literally the only case where encounters with playable classes had me changing what I was doing was in the Temple of Skaen (which I hated playing anyway) because archers target backline characters and it was annoying. I changed what I did a little bit to respond to that (swapped armors or left characters out of the fight until the archers were dead).

 

This could be improved *a little bit* by some improved use of spells/abilities, but that's about it.

 

The game doesn't really require you to dynamically change tactics / react to specific enemy actions other than responding to who they target (unless you make dumb mistakes), so for me, at this point it's unsalvageable.

Edited April 16, 2015 by Sensuki

[archangel979]

Let's take Illithids and Kangaxx again:

Those fights should still maintain a somewhat basic challenge even if you hard-counter their trademark abilities. In case of Kangaxx, that could be easily done by adding a health regeneration effect to him (or buffing his regeneration, since it seems he already has one) to prevent players from "micro-poking him to death" and giving him some extra spells beyond imprison and wail of the banshee. Is there any real reason why he doesn't use some damage spells aswell?

 

Illithids: same story. Give them something that preserves some kind of "minimum threat" if their psionics are countered. Currently, the only remaining threat on the Illithid encounters as soon as you popped immunity to psionics are the umber hulks...

Illithids even with chaotic commands could still drain your Intellect and kill you that way. If you installed SCS the summons tactics didn't work vs them or chaotic commands. They would ignore your summons and teleport to your group as well as cast dispel magic and other stuff.

 

Kangaxx was made to be the toughest encounter in pre ToB Bg2. It had to be immune to most things. But still there were couple of options to kill it.

 

For a good example of how it can be done, just remember the human parties in BG2: Perfect encounter design, imho. Even if you "solved" the most significant threat (i.e. a wizard with abi dalzim's or the thief with invisibility potions), the rest of the party still makes the combat engaging. Oh how that Kensai dude in the temple district could mess you up if you didn't keep him occupied with holds and immobilizers. Or that one dwarf guy in the sewers with the throwing axes and ridicolous THAC0.

This is not an example of a mild hardcounter but an example of couple of encounters already in PoE but weaker because in BG2 enemies had a wider range of abilities that were much more deadly. In PoE these encounters are just as watered down as those that have enemies with immunities. Edited April 16, 2015 by archangel979

[Matt516]

Even with my suggestions for a flat base deflection score for all classes the individual deflection scores between tanks and non-tanks would still be different due to talents and abilities alone (defense posture, etc.). The point I'm trying to make here is: there is literally no reason why classes should have different base deflection scores if the class abilities alone already provide a significant difference in deflection scores. Why pigeonhole classes into the tanking role and DPS role and the opposite? This is MMO-thinking. Why not allow me to create some unusual hybrids due to my talent and armor choices?

I'd love to build a tanky wizard that uses defensive spells only. But I am already severely punished in base deflection just for selecting the wizard class alone. On top of that, I even get punished on top of that for wearing a shield and armor with no way to counter it. 

 

As I said, I think this will eventually come down to a difference of opinion/preference. I have no issue whatsoever with classes having different base Accuracy and Deflection scores. I like it.

 

It makes sense to me that a wizard and a fighter will have differing natural levels of ability to deflect attacks. That's what the fighter class is - a person who has trained to be able to fight better than others. Why in the world would a wizard have a better natural ability to deflect attacks? And it's not like wizards can't make up for it with abilities - fighters may get Defender, but both classes have access to Improved Deflection, and wizards have a whole host of spells that improve their own survivability. In fact, I'd venture to say that wizards have more abilities that provide Deflection than fighters. Many, many more. The different base Deflection scores is part of what differentiates the classes. If fighters and wizards had the same base Deflection, wizards would probably be better tanks (at least from a Deflection standpoint, they still have crap Health). 

 

Speaking of Health.. I could actually sort of see an argument for flattening the differences in Endurance/Health before flattening the Deflection differences. It makes more sense. Although I'm not a fan of either tbh. The classes are distinct, and this is a good thing. You can build a tanky wizard if you want - there are tons of defensive wizard spells available to help with that. But I see no reason whatsoever that a wizard should be naturally as good at blocking blows as a fighter. It's nonsensical to me.

[Monte Carlo]

 

 

Oh how that Kensai dude in the temple district could mess you up if you didn't keep him occupied with holds and immobilizers.

 

You can thank modders for that one, namely Wes Weimer, not Bioware.

[Luckmann]

Illithids even with chaotic commands could still drain your Intellect and kill you that way. If you installed SCS the summons tactics didn't work vs them or chaotic commands. They would ignore your summons and teleport to your group as well as cast dispel magic and other stuff.

 

Kangaxx was made to be the toughest encounter in pre ToB Bg2. It had to be immune to most things. But still there were couple of options to kill it.

Let's just be clear on the fact that SCS has some truly BS aspects to it, though. Freely teleporting Illithids and mass-dimension-door-casting Liches comes to mind. The point that yeah, they could still drain your Intelligence even if you have Chaotic Commands, is a good one, but SCS messes a lot with design and is far from "clean", imo, in the interest of making things harder.