Is it too easy to enact enemy defenses / sequencers

[Guest radderzeitfan]

Hi Guys:

Here is another question concerning the Mage AI: I have the feeling that many enemy defenses / sequencers are triggered too early/wrongly. Just walk shortly into sight, and all defenses go up, step slightly out of sight (maybe wait 4 rounds to let PFMW expire) and send slowly one low level summon after the other in until all spells are used up. You just need some time and even Daevaron (probably spelled wrong) or the twisted rune lich are standing helplessly around begging to get killed.

Can the Mage AI catch this behavior? Is it possible to send enemy summons into the direction of appearance of charname summons? Is following with the mage such a bad strategy due to traps from thiefs?   

[polytope]

I believe in the past DavidW has said that he's not going to be immunizing creatures against traps.

About the general tactic of feeding spellcasters summons to waste their spells and wait for their buffs to expire, the plausible countermeasures are mostly outside SCS's design philosophy of AI improvements over hard changes to (most) enemies' powers and abilities:

• Improve the AC of mages so that they have little to fear from being left alone with low level summons that will only be hitting them on criticals.
• Improve the combat abilities of solo mages, allowing them to quickly kill such summons without spell use.
• Ensure high level mages have an escort of some tough bodyguards or allied monsters (Davaeorn already does with SCS), this is the most in line with SCS conceptually, but a skilled player will be able to separate mages from their guards.
• The mage could Dimension Door to the party if only summons and no PC's are visible to them, in which case they are indeed likely to get zapped by traps.

Balancing traps is also maybe outside SCS scope rather than a class/kit revision mod. Traps could do increased base damage but allow an intelligence check (with some penalty for higher level traps) to dodge it entirely, leaving enemy mages a bit more survivable than enemy fighters despite their low hp.

Edited November 19, 2022 by polytope