On Mental Attacks vs Incapacitation
Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 5:04 am
Woo-hoo! You're all asleep so I have hours to fill this in with the proper text! Organizational stuff!
Last quote from Tara in the main thread:
So let's break this down into at least two parts.tarashon wrote:From what i understand from severel of your posts one thing that truly vexes you are the mental attackforms of some mobs. More particularly the Fear and the Paralysation. WHereas I can apreciate the frustration I should clarify a few things and then explain why this will not change.
Firest and foremost the forge ( from level 10+ ) can give you immunity to fear and immunity to paralysation. Both attackforms can over time be totally "dealth with" for all classes.
Secondly and more importantly these attackforms are there for a very vital reason. Melee characters excells versus melee monsters and are weak against mental ones. Now we try to amke something lethal and feared for all classes and I find it a very lacking server if we dont try to challenge the melee where they are weakest. Imagine the chorus of complaints should casters start to argue for the blatant unfairness of how easy all the monsters kill them, compared to the melee classes once they get within combat range...
Another thing is various casters have various spells against these types of attack and if they are not ingame we would indeed indirectly "nerf" all casterclasses, more than they allready are considered our monsterbase's overall immunities or resists to both mental and death magics.
As for mindeffecting the lowlevel chests scattered all over the server have "Potions of Mental Fortress" which offers mindeffecting FAR longer than your clarity potions. ALso the spell clarity have had its duration doubled so even semicasters like bards can actually extend it and have it function for a fair amount of time.
All in all these attack types are easely dealth with for a minor diverse Group, someone spending time on forging items ( must be level 10+ admitably ) and in severel cases from "farming" the ancient treasure chests all over the server.
Melee vs Casters
One of the ideas you focused on was the idea that melee should be stronger against some monsters (and weak to others) whereas casters are strong against other monsters (while weak to still others). Or, in other words, a fighter has more problems with the Demonic Beguiler (uses many mental attacks) while the mage has more problems with the Demonic Shock Trooper (very strong physically).
I don't object to this general idea...but I also haven't seen it implemented successfully on most PWs. In fact, on most servers mages encourage monsters to melee them since they'll reflect 3 x level + 8 right back from Elemental Shield and Mestil's Acid Sheath (plus possibly more from Death Armor). At level 15, that means anyone hitting you (even for 1 damage) is taking 43 damage in return. And Clerics get the same AC a Fighter will (technically more, at least for a while, due to Shield of Faith and Magic Vestment).
But let's assume that in fact has been done and casters are suckers in melee (...even though they could also just go Autostill Spell in that case). Great. That brings us to...
Mental vs Incapacitation
Most "mental" attacks in NWN have two primary flaws.
1. their binary state
2. their duration
1. it doesn't matter if you fail by 1 or fail by 20, you're still fully affected. Is that different from failing a reflex throw? Yes, both because you can get more HP to counter it and because you're making a lot of throws. Even if you fail a reflex saving throw, you only take twice as much damage. But failing even a *single* will saving throw in these cases is a death sentence. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Look at Slow as an excellent example. If you fail a Will saving throw and get slowed...you suffer a major combat penalty but can still try to react. Compare that to failing a Will saving throw vs stun/paralysis/confusion where you lose all control of your character.
Or Daze as another example. You can't fight (literally) but you can still try retreat/heal/etc.
Imagine if Fear instead gave a penalty of 3 AB, 3 AC, 25% spell failure, and 50% more damage taken. If you get feared, then you have a major combat penalty. It's harder for you to hit stuff, easier for you to get hit, fail some of the spells you try to cast, and take more damage from all attacks. But you don't run around like a chicken with your head cut off unable to do anything.
And, of course, the people with protection against fear (and other mind spells) *DON'T* suffer these penalties. They're substantially more effective in combat in those cases. They're better than the melee types.
But it's not binary on/off switch.
2. the funny thing is, even seeing the dragon and running in fear for 6-12 seconds isn't the end of the world. Once you recover control, you can either flee or try to approach the dragon again (and thus save against fear again). The problem is when you're running around like an idiot for two minutes (which is what a level 20+ Dragon will do). Or paralyzed/confused for over a minute. Or stunned for over a minute. Fail a single throw and you're out of the fight.
Fail a Hold Person spell and get Paralyzed for a few rounds? Fine. Fail a Hold Person spell and get Paralyzed for a few minutes? Not fine.
But beyond those two points, we haven't even discussed things like non-"you lose complete control of your character" attacks. Imagine Ithilid Mind Blasts that do more damage if you fail a Will Saving throw (or a Beholder Ray or many other things). Or apply affects like decreased movement speed/stat penalties/damage vulnerabilities. There's many options.
I just would prefer something that's not "Yeah, you need to get complete immunity to these attacks and then you can ignore them forever."
Sources of Said Immunity
Chests are not a good source. This is for several reasons.
1, there's no guarantee you can even open the chests. More on this in the chests thread.
2, you don't find enough of them. At a minimum you'd need to not only find a chest, but find a chest that happens to have one of those potions every nine minutes. And unlike the mobs the chests seem to take a lot longer than 10 minutes to respawn so you can't even effectively "farm" them.
3, these chests don't seem to be in many zones. Which means if you need mind spell immunity that you have to go back to lower level zones in order to find those potions in order to go to the level appropriate zones. Now maybe I'm just missing a bunch, but I'm not sure I've found more than like...two...chests past level 10.
Regarding the forge, well, that's (literally) somewhat of a subject for another thread.
