[SixOfSpades]

Whoops! Looks like I left this thread for the wrong ...uh...60 hours! Sorry.

I'll get the "personal attacks" out of the way first, and then get down to The Issues, and finally ramble on about Game Balance (whatever that is) at the end. And I've got to type all this on a keyboard with a wonky spacebar, dang it!

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Originally posted by Hank Parsons: Desire for a harder Bodhi should be a pre-requisite to participate in Tactics criticism. ..... uninstall Tactics: Improved Bodhi, and leave this thread so that people who actually enjoy it can discuss improving it.

Which would result in a chorus of yes-men going, "We all like it, the mod is perfect, harrumph harrumph," giving the modder a very skewed perspective of how his work is recieved by the public. Weimer's old forums, FWStudios, seemed to me to be full of powergamers, with very little input from anyone else, resulting in things like Improved Kitthix being "balanced according to your [gamers'*] specifications." Ironworks, on the other hand, traditionally has a more toned-down approach, and I get the feeling that most of us here frown on things like Sanchuudoku. Such polarizaion is, in my mind, a drawback to creative feedback.
* Weimer put up a survey at alt.games.baldurs-gate, and apparently based the power of the items on that survey. Now, that's all well and good, but where was an invitation to that survey announced? I don't recall anything like it being posted here on Ironworks.

Moral: Feedback does not come only from those who like something. Even a response as brainless as "This really sucks, change it," gives at least some indication that things like Red Badge, Improved Small Teeth Pass, and Shadow Thief Improvements are not all hunky-dory.


Link, perhaps your sig is causing you to appear supercilious and condescending in Hank Parson's eyes. "The only people worthy of being called In Charge" is rather blunt, you know. (Then again, my sig labels me as a homicidal maniac.)

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There is no such thing as a "Critical Save" or "Critical Fail" on Saving Throws. Get those Saves at 1 or below, and you will always make your Save--barring of course things like Greater Malison and Doom, and spells that impose a Save penalty. I realize that this has already been hammered out on this thread, but I also feel the need that Volothamp's Comeuppance says so as well. You think you can find an error in Volo's? Go ahead, I dare you (although there is at least 1): I'm compiling a list of changes for a 3rd edition.

1-hit-Bodhi: I suggested, way back on Page 3 now, that my ideal Bodhi "would have the standard Boss immunities of Hold, Charm, Death, and also Blindness and Turn Undead," etc. Death means death magic: Finger of Death, Power Word: Kill, Vorpal hits, Slay Living, and yes, Undead-slaying effects. Bodhi should still have good Saves, of course, but I'm not going to support cranking her Save vs. Death down to -20 (thus negating 1/3rd of all the spells in the game against her) simply because of two overpowered weapons that the player might not even be using.

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Azuredge and the MoD: Instead, I vastly approve of toning the Undead-slaying weapons way the f' down. I would start off by removing the Thrown component the standard Azuredge and making it confer NPP instead of enforcing a Save-or-die against Undead: Only the upgraded version has that quality. The same cannot be done with the Mace of Disruption because it is, of course, a Mace of Disruption. Now--it has been said in this thread that the "Save vs. Death or die" is equivalent to a 5% chance of instant death. This is true ONLY if the target has a Save vs. Death of 2. Most Undead, even Kangaxx, have a higher (worse) Save than that, with therefore a lower chance of survival. I would change the MoD and upgraded Azuredge to have a '5% chance with each hit of forcing any Undead target to Save vs. Death with a -4 penalty or die.'

Liches should be immune to instakill effects: Bull-puckey. This appears to be purely a powergaming concept, with no rationale for why a certain type of Undead creature should be able to ignore the enforced disadvantages of its race. Like Liches aren't already dangerous enough with their CC-bomb of Horrid Wilting, their spell immunities, their weapon immunities, and the risk of Imprisonment. As far as I'm concerned, if Liches are pretty much invulnerable to all parties under Level 15, and respectable enough to give anyone else a good hard fight, they're fine. Besides, you can't hit a Lich with the MoD or anything until their PfMWs are gone, and if you can survive that long, the Lich is already dead anyway.

Originally posted by Chimaera: And what is wrong with making the game simply harder? Why does it have to be realistic or given a reason?

I think some guy called Gygax has the answer to that one, and it's not simply because "It's too easy to kill everything with Celestial Fury."

Originally posted by Hank Parsons: Blatent disregard for laws of magic... (Response applies to the Fish Priestess, Imp. Bodhi, The Ritual, and probably others). When you see this, it's not always arcane magic, like you probably think at first. But in many cases, it's not a spellcasting of arcane magic, but rather it is a fact-of-life with this enemy. What you could call an "inate power" except that term already is defined in BG2 as the inate abilities, and this is different from that also. It's nature, it's part of their body or their natural abilities. In some cases such abilities appear to come from the enemy (Bodhi, Faldorn) but actually come from the venue, the room, the lair -- you hav to use your imagination a bit. For example, can't the Fish Priestess emit a Zone Of Sweet Air with no casting time? She's not casting a spell, she's whooshing this ability out of her blessed fish gills. It's ... sufficiently justified, why Imp. Bodhi would have numerous powers which are not actually spells ... these are abilities granted only to a supreme vampire. Such abilities are never accessable for the PC's, and I think that is what frustrates some people calling for "fairness", but no one said life-or-death battles should be equally matched. They're not equal in Iraq, they're not in a dark alley in New York, and this is not the Olympics.

You touch on three points here:
1) Special Abilities unique to that class or individual
2) Reasons why this attack cannot be defended against
3) "Fairly balanced" opponents, especially as relates to real life

And here I rebut:
1) I have no problem with certain creatures being able to do things that I cannot. When's the last time you heard me indignantly complain that "If Firkraag can still Wing Buffet after being Polymorphed into a squirrel, then why the hell can't I!?!" I agree that some creatures should have their own abilities that I can never use. All I ask is that the spells are either a) Defensive in nature, b) Blockable, and/or c) Make a whole lot of sense. (The Sahuagin Priestess creating a permanent Zone of Sweet Air just by breathing, however, is completely illogical on a creature that's supposed to breathe water.)
2) In the Ilyich thread running concurrently, I am postulating an enemy Conjurer named Kasparov, and with a name like that, how can he not cast "Chess Champion's Strength" at you, thus setting the STR of the targeted individual to 10. Now, by my own rules, this spell a) Is not defensive, but at least it's b) Blockable--it allows no Save, but it can be stopped by Magic Resistance, immunity to that Spell School, immunity to that Spell Level, the casting itself can be disrupted, Kasparov can be Silenced, and once the spell takes effect it can be Dispelled or overridden, by doing something like drinking a Strength potion. The spell also c) Makes sense, as Mages are making new spells all the time, and Gary Kasparov is himself the world Chess Champion. The only offensive abilities that are also unblockable (that I can think of at the moment) are Wing Buffet and Land War in Asia (there is no Save vs. the Fatigue), and both of those make sense. Bodhi's abilities, on the other hand, are too powerful and too spell-like to be considered innate abilities. The Cloud of Bats in question essentially renders any spellcaster completely impotent for a very long time, and its area-of-effect nature only compounds the problem. Therefore, it is wrong for Bodhi's abilities to be unblockable. It. Is. Wrong.
3) You are quite right, the war in Iraq is not fairly balanced. (The War on Terror is over -- Everyone Lost.) The Olympics might (and should) be fair, but life itself is not. Whoever says otherwise is either a damned fool or painfully misled. But this is not Life we're talking about, it's a scenario in a game, where the point is to create encounters that are challenging enough to give players a sense of achievement at having beaten them, but not so challenging as to make the player jaded and frustrated beyond all sense of pleasure after finally rolling a string of Critical Hits on his nth attempt. It is, essentially, a game where the goal is to create battles that are fairly balanced, and where the designers have failed if they have not achieved this equilibrium.

Originally posted by Hank Parsons: quote: Originally posted by chimaera: Well, some people like overpowered enemies beyond the realm of possibility.

Some like it hot. [/QUOTE]And some like enemies to be smarter and more realistic (always have Stoneskins up if you can, use the right spell for the right job) without being illogical cheaters ("Something just happened, so I can teleport party members I've never even seen right in front of me, so my Pit Fiend can tear them to shreds").

....Or is it just "Tactics is about creating tougher opponents, so let's grant Bodhi some special abilities to deal out"?

I'd like to draw a distinction here between what Tactics is about, and what I think Tactics should be about. The perfect example is Improved Beholders. Xyx scripted a smarter AI for them, where they know what the Shield of Balduran looks like and don't use their Rays on anyone wearing it, and they don't try to attack anyone who is supposed to be on their side, and they can hear their friends being attacked and come to their aid. Weimer took these Smarter Beholders and made the "Improved" Beholders by lowering their THAC0 by 10 points or so, gave them a nasty Poison to inflict with each hit, and gave the Hive Mother things like her infinite Chain Contingencies. There is a very real distinction between what the two modders considered "done," which correlates very nicely with the difference between making the "should-be-more-respectable" enemies more challenging and fun, and simply making them tougher.