Feeling like a hacker

[robertthebard]

Ok, here i am tooling through the mountain, living like a king on the lower lvls, because nothing can hit me. I'm thinking to myself, gee, i hope this luck holds, and i get to lvl 6. *long pause* I find my luck to still be good, and it stays that way to lvl 8, ofcourse others have gone ahead of me, so some of the one shot creatures are no longer there, to which i breathe a sigh of relief. I finally get to lvl 8, after backtracking to pick up a buddy, who is unfamiliar with the mountain, and have to quit.
I come back later, with the same char, and do the shortcuts to 10, with a companion in tow. I become suspicious, when the short cut guards, are nickel and diming me on dmg, instead of causing the respawn reflex. This continues on to the little surprise room, and i won't mention what i found, but I WAS surprised, and there my string is broken, slightly. Sustained much dmg, but no death, thanks to judicious use of healing potions.
My companion and i finally succeeed, and advance to the prviously posted most dangerous 25 feet in undermountain, and it's too easy, for both of us, and the city battle also comes off w/out a hitch, and then to lvl 11.
I died almost immediately, but after that, instead of the massive amounts of dmg they usually deal, i'm sustaining 5 or 6 points of dmg, and dealing out the kind of dmg that i am used to sustaining.
Here's the kicker, I went in game with one made item, which would test out around lvl 14 or so, and the rest was default items, that came with vanilla nwn's.
I have come to the conclusion that more is less, when it comes to items you take into the mountain with you. The only really cool items that i had i took from the corpses of the fallen. During the battle to get to the door, my companion called me robin hood on steroids, *playing a lvl 9 fighter/1 wizard/ 10 arcane archer*.
A check on my stats, during one of the slight reprieves in combat showed nothing that would account for it. During a test of the cow lvl this morning before work revealed the same kind of results. I was equipped with gear *armor and weapons* that i had pillaged from the fallen on my previous visit, and while I did die once, and got a lot of dmg when surrounded, I was pretty much the bullet proof monk. Need help figureing that out, as I don't take severly hacked items in, but seemed to enjoy the benefits of them on this char. My base ac with bow was only 24! What is happening????

[Micah Foehammer]

I've notice similiar effects ... but can't begin to imagine why, unless Z has the type and strength of spawned monsters vary depending on the average level of the party - that is the only way I can think that a group would have an easier time than a solo character.