Feedback

[DavidW]

Apologies for the bump, but I have some feedback on SoA's dragons, as well as your changes to Watcher's Keep.

Thanks, much appreciated.

 

 

First, the dragons.

 

1. I didn't fight Adalon, good characters don't fight silver dragons on roleplaying grounds.

 

2. Thaxll'ssillyia. This is by far the weakest of the dragons imo, there are several reasons why. Firstly, it only casts Protection from Magic Weapons once, and seems to have no other arcane spells. This is a huge weakness, even a Stoneskin/Haste combo is much stronger. Secondly, its breath weapon does no damage, and only causes level drain (easily blockable) and blindness, which only lasts 2 rounds. Lastly, there are areas where you can hide, out of range of its claws (Melee is by far the most dangerous thing any dragon does) and hit it with ranged weapons until it dies.

 

3. Firkraag. Several times stronger than Thaxll'ssillyia, for all the above reasons as it turns out. It has several castings of Haste, Stoneskin, Breach and Melf's Acid Arrow. There are no areas you can avoid melee combat, and red dragon breath is 100+ damage, which when combined with the Lower Fire Resistance spell, very difficult to block entirely. A hasted dragon hits really hard, really often. By far the hardest of the SoA dragons I fought.

 

4. Nizidramanii'yt. Not as strong as Firkraag, but still dangerous. I don't remember much about it to be honest. Definitely much stronger than Thaxll'ssillyia though, mainly on the back of Haste/Stoneskin and never able to out of melee range.

 

5. The Dragon of Pride. All the weaknesses of Thaxll'ssillyia, plus it doesn't get the 3x HP boost from the Increased Staying Power component. A bit pathetic really.

There is a design constraint at work here. The dragon component attempts to be (basically) pure AI: I only use those powers that the dragons actually demonstrate in-game on a vanilla install. (I think I get a bit more relaxed about this in ToB, but I'm pretty militant about it in SoA.)

 

6. The library. Not much to say really, but the statues are actually quite dangerous now. Btw, the Ogre statue has no equipment. Is this intentional?

Ask David Gaider. (i.e., I don't modify it at the CRE level.)

 

10. The final seal. Azamantes and the Rilmani are not all that tough, although this is more due to my equipment more than anything.

I don't touch the Rilmani. (They've been on my to-do list for ages.)

 

The other fight, with the six seemingly completely random guardians, is much more dangerous.

It took me many years to realise that they're not exactly random: they're all female, and mostly canonically so. (Hive Mother, Succubus, Marilith, drow priestess, and two female warriors.) It was a sudden moment of inspiration when I realised that their file names were GORWOM01-06 and that this is what the "WOM" stands for.

 

12. Saladrex and the Green dragon. Saladrex can't fit through his own front door (how did he get in there in the 1st place?) and the green dragon is essentially a green Firkraag, with additional Heal spells.

Again, I'm mostly working inside a design constraint here; having said that, I think I played around with the green dragon's spell choices a bit. (Doesn't he have an Unholy Blight sequencer?)