Iron Throne 5th floor

[DavidW]

I don't remotely mind the criticism - it's very helpful, please do keep it up.

 

But I don't think I agree in this case. Presumably, either it is or it isn't interesting to fight pre-buffed wizards/priests. If it isn't interesting (indeed "crippling"), I'd have thought that it's still crippling for difficult fights?

 

I also don't really agree about gameplay. For me, half the point of these games is to have a fairly immersive experience - I was led to write SCS as much by irritation at the unrealistic stupidity of BG1 spellcasters as anything else. ("Oooh look, that enemy cleric had a Wand of the Heavens! Good job he didn't know how to use it, wasn't it?")

 

Of course, there's no point having realism if the game isn't fun to play. I don't even particularly mind coding up a "special fights only" variant of the pre-buff component - but someone else will have to give me a list of sensible people to pre-buff.

[Lemernis]

See, I think it actually makes gameplay more fun that the enemy is pre-buffed. I love SCS for the challenge it presents, and enemies are more powerful when buffed. And from a realism vantage, I don't find that problematic. The protagonist is a marked man, and this is a world where spies and assassins are anything but uncommon. Also, enemy mages could be using Wizard Eye to scry that the protagonist's party is buffing in anticipation of them.

[BigRob]

But it makes it extremely unrealistic (which is more important than gamepay to me ) to pre-buff every single mage fight because they were spying on you in some manner, particularly if the encounter text makes it clear you just walked in unannounced.

 

I can happily accept mages wandering around with long duration protection spells like stoneskin on. I do it all the time in RPGs on paper and computer.

 

It's also fine for some encounters where they could reasonably expect to know you were coming, or have seen you, prebuffed and then attacked (any kind of ambush scenario I'd believe prebuffing could have been done), but it should be possible to provide a tactical challenge without making NPCs metagame.

[Salk]

I kind of agree with BigRob here.

 

Heavy prebuffed protections might be selected for specific encounters. Perhaps we should work out a list of such encounters and propose it to DavidW.

[DavidW]

I kind of agree with BigRob here.

 

Heavy prebuffed protections might be selected for specific encounters. Perhaps we should work out a list of such encounters and propose it to DavidW.

 

If someone else does the donkey work of coming up with a list of encounters that deserve pre-buffing, and has some reasonably coherent logic to offer as to why they've selected those particular encounters, I'm happy to code it as an alternative component.

 

I'm also happy to hear of examples where realism is screamingly, impossibly broken by prebuffing (at the level of: you turn someone back from stone; they prebuff) in which case I'll take them out even from the "everyone prebuffs" component. (There are about 2 of those already).

 

In general, though, I continue to think that prebuffing should be the norm, because even without metagaming, it's dead easy for the player to prebuff before the great majority of encounters if they scout intelligently. (The very first time I played BG1, for instance, I prebuffed before most remotely difficult-looking encounters because Imoen had sneaked ahead and warned me of them). There's no way of simulating NPC scouting, really, so I just tend to assume that mages and clerics somehow (Wizard Eye? scouting Familiar? Clairvoyance spell? Augury? Suspicious noises off?) get a bit of warning and snap off a few defences.

 

I know not everyone scouts, and that some people who do scout have good ingame justifications for why it's a fair advantage for them to have over the NPCs - that's why prebuffing is an optional component, separate from the core Smarter Spellcasters. But, as I say, if there some sanely-justified "some people buff, others don't" third alternative, I'll code it.

 

Incidentally, in SCSII there are three options: no prebuffing; everyone prebuffs; only people who start hostile and next to you (e.g., teleporting enemies) prebuff. But in BG2 scripting it's easier to get away with not using many prebuffs, because (i) there are longlasting spells (Stoneskin, Protection from Magic Energy, Death Ward) that everyone can cast in advance anyway, and (ii) Contingencies and Spell Triggers give a mage who's caught off-guard a chance to slam up some defences quickly.

[Guest Guest]

In general, though, I continue to think that prebuffing should be the norm, because even without metagaming, it's dead easy for the player to prebuff before the great majority of encounters if they scout intelligently. (The very first time I played BG1, for instance, I prebuffed before most remotely difficult-looking encounters because Imoen had sneaked ahead and warned me of them). There's no way of simulating NPC scouting, really, so I just tend to assume that mages and clerics somehow (Wizard Eye? scouting Familiar? Clairvoyance spell? Augury? Suspicious noises off?) get a bit of warning and snap off a few defences.

 

This is completely realistic, and in terms of game balance it is especially warranted from the vantage of all the pre-buffing that most players routinely do for he tougher battles.

 

From the realism perspective, the protagonist has a bounty on his or her head and is fast becoming notorious in the Sword Coast. There is no shortage of spies and assassins for the Iron Throne to recruit. This gameworld is an enormously hostile environment. Mages have many means at their disposal to divine the presence of the party--and to witness them preparing for a big battle just around the corner, where the enemy stands. The protagonist is leaving mass carnage in his wake in this adventure. They would be foolish not to prepare.

[Jadefang]

Hey, sorta off topic on the discussion at hand, but I noticed some things about this fight:

 

1. Kaalos doesn't give experience when killed.

2. Since you've edited the dialogue in the Iron Throne building in order to include the two new people, there's also something else you might want to modify: when you talk to Hafiz (the dwarf in the Gibberling Mountains), he gives you a scroll of Protection of Magic, stating it would help against "the six who serve your father's killer". Should probably be "eight" there instead.

[DavidW]

Hey, sorta off topic on the discussion at hand, but I noticed some things about this fight:

 

1. Kaalos doesn't give experience when killed.

2. Since you've edited the dialogue in the Iron Throne building in order to include the two new people, there's also something else you might want to modify: when you talk to Hafiz (the dwarf in the Gibberling Mountains), he gives you a scroll of Protection of Magic, stating it would help against "the six who serve your father's killer". Should probably be "eight" there instead.

 

Good catches both - thanks. (I did a fairly careful trawl through Iron Throne dialogs replacing six with eight, but I completely forgot about the scroll)