Unbalanced encounters

[toxin]

stoneskin and the skeleton summons do last enough for you to walk around with. the others i mentioned i meant to say they are almost instantaneous to cast (or use potions) when the battle starts. and from a role playing perspective specially when walking in dangerous zones you shouldn't go blind into the unknown. have your thief hide in the shadows and scout the close area before moving forward or use the wizards eye spell.

 

The first rounds of a battle are critical - if you waste them casting protection spells where the AI has them already on you are at a huge disatvantage. Scouting with a thief or using Wizard would be great, and I did try that out, but unfortunately it's not practical. The wizard eye can't open doors and disarm traps. Many times you'd trigger all kinds of scripted event that mess things up, not to mention enemies that can spot invisible creatures. And of course, many tough encounters take place the second you get inside a new area.

 

agree but only for mandatory quests or areas you can't avoid. For all others i think any difficulty level is fair game. otherwise i could go face a lich just after irenicus dungeon and complain it's too hard for such a low level party. and going back to the op all the encounters he mentioned are optional including the underdark. He could easily steal the eggs, get out and come back later if he feels like it.

 

I agree, but it's not just a question of whether an encounter is optional, rather the context in which it occurs and the warning you get from the game. We both agree Dragons are handled well - the game knows you're not ready so you get a clear option to fight them when you're up to it. Some of the liches give you a similar warning when you're about to open their coffin. But "optional" is a problematic term here. Yes, you could avoid them, but only by metagaming. How would you know to avoid the Drow in the underdark? You're just walking around at that point. And in the pirate city, what if you decided you don't trust the pirate lord? You have to take on Perth the Adept.

 

The point Ithildur and I are trying to make is that from a role-playing perspective, these encounters aren't necessarily optional.

[Jarno Mikkola]

The point Ithildur and I are trying to make is that from a role-playing perspective, these encounters aren't necessarily optional.

But you also need to remember that those areas are after the Spellhold, what that means is that you have to have a capable mage in your group, it's not like you get the gold handed to you in the other quest for "nothing, but fun" to buy the arrangement with either Bodhi or the thieves, you had to do a quest or twenty just to get that far.