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Dr Pepper
Feb 4, 2012

Don't like it? well...

Except for the part where 5e is explicitly designed to have caster supremacy.

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Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

Dr Pepper posted:

Except for the part where 5e is explicitly designed to have caster supremacy.

Indeed, I would argue that 5E has perhaps the most complete caster supremacy of any edition I have enough experience with to comment on.

in 3.5 casters were overwhelmingly and stupidly powerful, but most of them at least had a few areas of weakness at the low levels. And there were a few things warrior characters could be genuinely good at if built right.

In 5E anyone but a caster is outclassed in every area of the game right from level 1. Some cantrips have more value than other people's entire classes and provide casters an unlimited resource. Casters do more single target damage, WAY more multi-target damage, have better defenses, have a near monopoly on control, have a near monopoly on out of combat utility, and have equal or superior social abilities.

Even if you want a character that does something suboptimal, like hitting people with weapons, there's always a way to have a caster do that better too. And almost everything a warrior character used to be able to do other than inflict damage has been gutted and removed.


Casters in 5E might be a bit less powerful compared to the world than they were in 3.5 simply because most spells to interact with anything other than by inflicting damage to it no longer exist. But compared to non-casters in the party the gap is as wide as it has ever been.



sebmojo posted:

SA has a real hate for it for a range of complicated and slightly muddled reasons, but yeah i don't think you're the only person to like the most popular ttrpg in the world.

i've played them all and I think 5e captures the essence of d&D really well, which ipso facto makes it kind of mediocre, but (e.g.) advantage is genius and concentration is a very clever way to address spell caster supremacy, and the compressed stat spread is a good way of avoiding some of the 3.5 pitfalls.

If this is a topic that's been rehashed in other places on these forums, I won't put my oar in by arguing about those things in detail. I will simply say that I disagree strongly on those last 3 points. I think advantage is one of the worst ideas I have ever seen in any game whatsoever, concentration hurts martials and encourages having everyone be a caster, and the compressed stat spread has big problems of its own.

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









Yeah let's agree to disagree and move on I think, it's probably not that productive and distracts from the lp.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!
7: Tunnel Vision

In which I get way too focused on treating a trap like a puzzle instead of just destroying it and moving on!

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!
8: Everybody Hates Wyll

Who would have thought that the warlock was so untrustworthy?

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather
You should really have a closer look at 25:30. I guess the loot was too alluring there.
Also those goblins were temporarily hostile because you could have absolutely solved that encounter peacefully until you attacked those innocent bystanders for no reason whatsoever. How evil of you.

cant cook creole bream fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Sep 24, 2023

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!
My rate of converting footage into videos is way behind how far I've actually got in the game, so this may seem to be a big jump ahead:

I just managed to get a super lucky drop of a legendary greatsword partway through Act 1.
It has (when wielded by a githyanki):
3d6 damage
+3 hit and damage
Confers resistance to psychic damage and advantage on all Int, Wis, and Cha saving throws.

Sounds incredibly good. However, insane as it might sound, I can't actually come up with a single mathematically strong build to use that sword... because melee combat is just that bad compared to archery. I'd love to find a way to make melee good because melee is fun.


So I'd be glad to hear if someone else has a good build idea to reliably use that legendary sword to outdamage basic hand crossbow archery. Here are my current numbers and calculations. Beware of math!


Melee Astarion Build
Class:Gloomstalker Ranger 5
Fighting Style: Defense
Feat: Great Weapon master
Elixir: Bloodlust

He has +5 to hit with his attacks. (3 proficiency, 3 strength, 3 magic bonus, 1 Happy status, -5 Great Weapon master)
Against an example armor class of 16, that makes a 50% chance to hit.

Each hit does 3d6 + 3 (magic) +3 (strength) + 10 (Great Weapon master) damage. So 26.5

So that's an average damage per attempted attack of 13.25

2 normal attacks per round, and then Gloomstalker also gives 1 extra attack per combat. If each combat lasts 3 rounds, call that 2.33 attacks per round.

If I also have a pair of hand crossbows, I can do a bonus action attack with one of them.
It gets +8 to hit (3 proficiency, 3 dex, 1 magic bonus, 1 Happy Status). So a 65% chance.
And it deals 1d6 +1 (magic) +3 (dex) = 7.5 damage if it hits
So overall an additional +4.75 damage

In total, the average damage for the 2.33 melee swings per round plus the bonus action crossbow shot is 35.75


Now things get spicier if I get a kill, because that will activate both Elixir of Bloodlust and the other feature of Great Weapon Master. Now I get an extra 2 attacks, and also get to do a melee attack with my bonus action instead of that weak crossbow shot.

If I could reliably get a kill every round, that would actually be 5.33 attacks per round then, for 70.6 or so damage!

I think realistically, there are going to be rounds where that happens and rounds where it doesn't. I can't get a kill aand then do additional attacks in a fight against a big boss with no henchmen, or if the enemies are spread out, or if I just happen to miss. But if I'm in a fight with a group of enemies, I can probably activate that quite frequently.

Let's say it works 50% of the time perhaps.

In that case my overall average damage with these assumptions is 53.185. Honestly that's quite good for a level 5 character at first glance.

However!


Archery Astarion Build
Class:Gloomstalker Ranger 5
Fighting Style: Archery
Feat: Sharpshooter
Elixir: Bloodlust

This really basic hand crossbow archer doesn't require a legendary drop, has better AC, doesn't have to go into melee, and will have an easier time focus firing with teammates since he can shoot any target instead of only the ones he can get next to.

To hit: With high ground (which is available in almost every fight in my experience) +7. 3 proficiency, 3 dex, 1 magic, 1 Happy, 2 archery, 2 high ground, -5 Sharpshooter. Without high ground +5

We could call high ground only +1 to compensate for it not being available 100% of the time, but it sure seems to be available almost all the time to me.

So that's 55% to hit.

Damage is 1d6 + 1 (magic) +3 (dex) + 2 (gloves of archery available super early) +10 (Sharpshooter) = 19.5 per hit.

So that's an average of 10.7 damage per attempted attack. But I get 3.33 attacks at that rate, for a total of 35.6

Insanely, you can see that actually ties the legendary greatsword version!

With Bloostlust things aren't quite as rosy, though I think realistically bloodlust will trigger more often on this guy since he can shoot whichever enemy he likes and has superior accuracy. Let's still call it a 50-50 shot of activating it for an extra 2 attacks. That'll be 57 or so average damage when it happens. So (35.6+57)/2 = 46.5 overall average damage.

So legendary greatsword guy does do a little bit more damage. But is it enough to compensate for lower AC, having to risk the dangers of going into melee, and sometimes your turn just being partially wasted because you can't reach the enemy you want to? I think not. And if you don't get an ultra rare drop of a legendary greatsword in act 1, it's not even going to be close.


Does anyone have a better idea for making this sword viable?

Melth fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Sep 26, 2023

sebmojo
Oct 23, 2010


Legit Cyberpunk









It's fun hitting people with a big sword, and the game isn't hard enough to need that level of optimisation? Also you have different options for loving with baddies up close, like kicking them into pits, knocking them prone to get advantage etc. E.g. you don't need to always take the -5 to hit, and can save that for when you have advantage.

If that kind of optimisation is fun for you then sure stick with the crossbows, but i do feel like your analysis is ignoring a number is potential considerations around advantage and magic items and spells, so keep going with it imo.

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather
Just use a standard fighter. It may not be as flashy, but for the big fights you're gonna use action surge in the first round which is a massive improvement if you already have double attack. You can also use that one subclass to use all those attack for disarming and goading. If you really want to use busted stuff, you combine that with haste to get like 6 actions in one turn turn. (later on up to 12) Plus, if your strength is high enough, you can just jump everywhere to make sure everything is in melee range.

Unless you're fighting large groups of enemies physical fighters aren't quite as terrible as in base 5e. My main character was a monk and by the end, she was just ridiculously strong, even compared to Gale. That wasn't even one of those absurd 500 damage per turn builds, since I made her a shadowmonk with focus on sneaking and exploring. (And using darkness and minor illusion to convince non-hostile enemies to lean over cliffsides where nobody can see them.)

You're not playing of legendary difficulty. Unless your making some severe tactical blunders, you wont have extreme problems, so you probably shouldn't sweat it. I left some of my guys on their default path and didn't even respec their inefficient stat distribution and it worked out fine. There's some really overpowered stuff in there and at some point I actively decided against some of it because some tactics were making the combat to boring.


That being said, I have no real familiarity with Gloomstalkers, so I can't actually help you there.
If your main focus is to challenge yourself to produce the highest number, at the end of the day, the best option for that will always be picking a fight with 50 enemies, stuffing them all into a small area and using a reliable AoE spell on all of them. No fighting class could ever beat that.
Unless you want to make ridiculous stacks of explosive barrels of course!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yVOcyzadvI&t=141s

cant cook creole bream fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Sep 26, 2023

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

cant cook creole bream posted:

Just use a standard fighter. It may not be as flashy, but for the big fights you're gonna use action surge in the first round which is a massive improvement if you already have double attack. You can also use that one subclass to use all those attack for disarming and goading. If you really want to use busted stuff, you combine that with haste to get like 6 actions in one turn turn. (later on up to 12) Plus, if your strength is high enough, you can just jump everywhere to make sure everything is in melee range.

Unless you're fighting large groups of enemies physical fighters aren't quite as terrible as in base 5e. My main character was a monk and by the end, she was just ridiculously strong, even compared to Gale. That wasn't even one of those absurd 500 damage per turn builds, since I made her a shadowmonk with focus on sneaking and exploring. (And using darkness and minor illusion to convince non-hostile enemies to lean over cliffsides where nobody can see them.)

You're not playing of legendary difficulty. Unless your making some severe tactical blunders, you wont have extreme problems, so you probably shouldn't sweat it. I left some of my guys on their default path and didn't even respec their inefficient stat distribution and it worked out fine. There's some really overpowered stuff in there and at some point I actively decided against some of it because some tactics were making the combat to boring.


That being said, I have no real familiarity with Gloomstalkers, so I can't actually help you there.
If your main focus is to challenge yourself to produce the highest number, at the end of the day, the best option for that will always be picking a fight with 50 enemies, stuffing them all into a small area and using a reliable AoE spell on all of them. No fighting class could ever beat that.
Unless you want to make ridiculous stacks of explosive barrels of course!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yVOcyzadvI&t=141s

Those are indeed all good options, though unfortunately most of them also apply to the ranged crossbow guy type build. You can multiclass to fighter on that or cast haste on that, etc. And jumping is useful, but it eats your bonus action and thus cuts into your damage for that round.

My current challenge run which I'm doing in parallel to this co-op run is to play on tactician, no healing potions, choosing a combat-heavy approach to most encounters, and see how long I can do without any long rests. So far it seems like I can do all of act 1 on 1 long rest

Anyway, since I'm doing so few rests I'm trying to find if there's a way to reliably do good damage in melee without spending a resource. Action Surge is indeed great, but if I only get it once per 10 fights or something, it's not as good, you know?

Melth fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Sep 27, 2023

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather
Well, those are indeed conditions which are a bit more harsh. I know of a couple of cheesy ways to do that, but i doubt you'd like those. Of course if someone REALLY wanted to play an optimized game they could quicksafe before every single attack and force the RNG to never get hit.

Frim what I understand, Crossbows are just really strong in general, unless you're in a situation where you are constantly swarmed and have ranged disadvantage. You can even dualwield them. Some dude who did a one man no leveling no resting challenge did it that way. I don't know how far that went on.

The Baldur's Gate 3 thread in the video games forum is quite active and they may help you optimize builds. Of course, someone might randomly throw a spoiler there, like offhandedly mentioning the name of a party member you haven't met yet.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

cant cook creole bream posted:

Well, those are indeed conditions which are a bit more harsh. I know of a couple of cheesy ways to do that, but i doubt you'd like those. Of course if someone REALLY wanted to play an optimized game they could quicksafe before every single attack and force the RNG to never get hit.

Frim what I understand, Crossbows are just really strong in general, unless you're in a situation where you are constantly swarmed and have ranged disadvantage. You can even dualwield them. Some dude who did a one man no leveling no resting challenge did it that way. I don't know how far that went on.

The Baldur's Gate 3 thread in the video games forum is quite active and they may help you optimize builds. Of course, someone might randomly throw a spoiler there, like offhandedly mentioning the name of a party member you haven't met yet.

You're right about dualwielding hand crossbows, that's used on the archery build I outlined. It's a staple 5E thing. There are basically only 2 ways in 5E for a warrior character to do decent damage. Either you take the Polearm Master feat and Great Weapon Master feat for melee (and use a halberd or glaive), or you take the Crossbow Expert feat and the Sharpshooter feat and then dual wield hand crossbows. Either pair does pretty much the same thing. You get a bonus action attack, and on any attack you can take -5 to hit to gain +10 to damage.

Fighter, Paladin, Barbarian, Ranger, whatever pretty much all take one of those two options. And they do pretty much the same thing except one is ranged and therefore mostly better unless you have a class feature which is melee only (like smites). There's a major lack of build diversity once people have any idea how to optimize, and in particular any weapon which isn't either a hand crossbow or a polearm is borderline unusable.

In this game though, it looks like they pretty much give you the main benefit of Crossbow Expert on every single single character for free. And they made up this high ground rule that exclusively benefits archery, without coming up with any new mechanic that benefits melee.

So the result is that dual hand crossbows are now so good that I can't even come up with a way for a legendary greatsword I shouldn't get until the endgame to outdamage them.


(Incidentally, I am using the melee build I posted anyway in a parallel run because I want to play around with melee and enjoy it, even if it's not good)

Keldulas
Mar 18, 2009
That's just 5e. There's absolutely no considerations for the advantages range has over melee when it comes to the damage numbers, they're just uniform across both in most cases. Adding in Larian's tendencies of high ground pulled from their previous games, and it exacerbates the 5e system flaws.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!
9: Braking Bad

We almost rescued that gnome! It's the thought that counts.

Melth fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Oct 2, 2023

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!
10: Loud Enough to Wake the Dead

The way Surprise works in this game is surprising to say the least.

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather
That's consistent with the tabletop, isn't it?

"Surprised creatures cannot move or take actions (bonus actions included) on their first turn during combat."

Yeah, setting up ambushes and surprises is really strong.
If you really fear dying on the first round because all of your guys are surprised, there's the Alert feat to circumvent that.

cant cook creole bream fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Oct 9, 2023

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

cant cook creole bream posted:

That's consistent with the tabletop, isn't it?

"Surprised creatures cannot move or take actions (bonus actions included) on their first turn during combat."

Yeah, setting up ambushes and surprises is really strong.
If you really fear dying on the first round because all of your guys are surprised, there's the Alert feat to circumvent that.

Superficially it works the same as the tabletop, but the tabletop (usually) has a GM who makes things make sense. Downright comical 'surprises' happen in this game.

Since making this video I've had situations where, for example, I suspected an ambush and sent in one party member while the others remained in sneak mode at a distance. As I expected at first, the scout got surprised, but the sneaky rest of the party was far enough away that they didn't get pulled into the fight at all and could move as they pleased.

So I had my rogue slip past the enemy and successfully sneak attack the enemy... and then my rogue got the Surprised status and lost his next turn! I guess it was really surprising how easily he sneaked up on those enemies who had previously ambushed his friend!

Or in this very room on a different run where I was testing things, my characters repeatedly got 'surprised' again and again that each coffin contained a skeleton... just like the last 5 had.


With some further testing I think I've mostly learned how it works. Some fights seem scripted to force a surprise against you even if you see the enemy and strike first. Some fights the surprise is mostly logical. And some fights are in between and the exact type of attack you take to start the fight will determine whether you get surprised or they do.

A good workaround to avoid the silliest moments seems to be to have a single scout with either the Alert feat or the elixir of Alertness and with absolutely no familiars or other companions. If the only party member drawn into a fight is immune to surprise, then you're good. The rest of your team can then join in and not be surprised.

If so much as a familiar is with your scout and does get surprised though, surprise for everyone else is unavoidable as far as I can tell. Any additional party members joining the combat, regardless of how many rounds have passed, will be surprised.

Samovar
Jun 4, 2011

I'm 😤 not a 🦸🏻‍♂️hero...🧜🏻



I could see myself being more able to play this game than on a tabletop, because everytime I've tried to get into one, I get consistently confused over what things are supposed to be, and I don't mean re. dice rolls, I mean on a conceptual level.

It's something about how the same place has to be envisaged by different people, and I know it's being envisaged by different people, and KNOWING that this means that the same places/peoples/things are seen differently just... causes me to freeze, to not be able to comprehend what is going on.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!
11: The Bless Brothers and the gripping pageturner!


This was an interesting little mystery/investigation adventure. As it turns out, it can't be completed until Act 3, which surprised me.

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather
You can get significant use from that book, well before chapter 3.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

cant cook creole bream posted:

You can get significant use from that book, well before chapter 3.

Yeah, it grants some really nice bonuses for a main character to have. Access to Speak with Dead is great, and +1 to Wis skill checks and saving throws come up a LOT. Spotting ambushes, spotting treasure, succeeding Insight, resisting dangerous magic, and there are a surprising number of conversations and events where one has to make Wis saves too.

But the quest itself is left hanging with no clear indication to me at least that it can't be advanced until act 3

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather
I do love how Wyll became the butt of your jokes, entirely unrelatedly to his lackluster personality and story line.
But I hope you meet the best companion at some point soon.

Since you mentioned that your actual playthrough is a bit farther I dare ask: Did you ever revisit that church? You weren't done there and missed the main thing. But from what I gather, that resolves itself anyway by chapter 2.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!
12: The Bless Brothers and the Case of the Pushed Button

So it turns out we missed the entire point and reward of that dungeon we went to so early. Apparently we had attacked the button that opened the only important room, but never pushed. And only some such buttons and switches can be affected usefully by attacking them.

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather
Convenient that you addressed my question in the very next video.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

cant cook creole bream posted:

Convenient that you addressed my question in the very next video.

Yeah, the timing there worked out pretty oddly. Ever since we'd first left that dungeon without correctly hitting the button, I'd heard that we missed something.

In hindsight, clearing that dungeon and meeting Withers is probably the most important thing to do once you've acquired 4 party members, since it's such a huge power spike for every single character to have good stats instead of terrible ones.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!
13: Lyin' of Sight

Not since Fire Emblem has there been a game where castles are so useless for their intended purpose! Being on top of the battlements prevents us from shooting arrows down apparently, but offers no defense against enemies shooting up from below.

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather
Picking a fight with a whole castle of goblins at once seems like a bad tactic. On the other hand, standing out of reach is good.

When I played that part, I sneakily killed every single gobbo without even triggering open combat. It took a while.

cant cook creole bream fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Oct 31, 2023

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
You can set up some pretty spectacular accidents to befall your targets there.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

anilEhilated posted:

You can set up some pretty spectacular accidents to befall your targets there.

Do tell! I've done this area on a few characters now and had a lot of fun fighting through in different ways, but I haven't found many ways to use terrain since enemies seem to be impossible to push off of many of the cliffs.



cant cook creole bream posted:

Picking a fight with a whole castle of goblins at once seems like a bad tactic. On the other hand, standing out of reach is good.

When I played that part, I sneakily killed every single gobbo without even triggering open combat. It took a while.

It's definitely one of my favorite fights in the game, since it's rare to have so many enemies. Talking or stealthing through is a lot easier, but I enjoy the challenge of some big tactical combats

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
Well, for one, characters generally don't react to objects being moved around. That includes flammable and explosive barrels.

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather
Also, there's this beer barrel just sitting there.

The funniest thing about those goblins is that they absolutely grovel to all dark elves.

"You were the one who poisoned the beer!"
"Well, yes. Be glad that's all I did!"
"I... I didn't see anything. *to the others* These guys are absolutely innocent."

Of course what I did was continusously cast minor illusio. To lure these guys to the cliffs and have [unknown character] pick them up and throw them down.

Fun fact, trying and failing to pick a neutral character up as an improvised throwing item doesn't trigger aggro, so you can just repeat it.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

cant cook creole bream posted:

Also, there's this beer barrel just sitting there.

The funniest thing about those goblins is that they absolutely grovel to all dark elves.

"You were the one who poisoned the beer!"
"Well, yes. Be glad that's all I did!"
"I... I didn't see anything. *to the others* These guys are absolutely innocent."

Of course what I did was continusously cast minor illusio. To lure these guys to the cliffs and have [unknown character] pick them up and throw them down.

Fun fact, trying and failing to pick a neutral character up as an improvised throwing item doesn't trigger aggro, so you can just repeat it.

Interesting, I did poison some drinks later on in the story but didn't know one could do that here.

I'm surprised that trying to grab a character to use as an improvised weapon doesn't count as an aggressive action.

Several completely harmless things do, or at least do in certain contexts.


anilEhilated posted:

Well, for one, characters generally don't react to objects being moved around. That includes flammable and explosive barrels.

True. I've mostly been trying to avoid moving (or especially carrying) barrels since it feels cheesy a lot of the time. If someone happens to stand near an explosive barrel of their own volition or if I can bait someone near it with an illusion, that usually feels fine though.

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather
Honestly, trying and failing to pick someone up should be an aggressive action. They may have fixed that interaction nowadays.

But it is fun to pick up every singe barrel and sent them to camp to save them for a rainy day. And one day, when you meet an enemy you particularly don't like you can bury them in dozens of barrels and set all of those off to kill them tenfold.
Of course it's absolutely cheesy and takes some time to set up, but sometimes cheesy nonsense is fun in games, as long as you don't actually rely on such tactics.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!
Looks like yesterday's patch included a huge nerf to hand crossbows.

When used in the offhand (which is their whole point), they no longer add Dex to damage unless you have the Two-Weapon Fighting fighting style.

They certainly deserved that nerf since previously I think dual-wielding hand crossbows was pretty much what every single character should do with their ranged slots, and hand crossbow sharpshooters outdamaged every other possible kind of warrior.

I'll need to rethink a challenge run I was about to embark on though, since my planned party had involved a number of hand crossbow users.

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather
Latest Video: You were so annoyed about how sanctuary didn't work like you'd assume. But you never actually used that spell, since you went for the bite instead.

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!

cant cook creole bream posted:

Latest Video: You were so annoyed about how sanctuary didn't work like you'd assume. But you never actually used that spell, since you went for the bite instead.

You're right, yeah, that was certainly a mistake. I was 2 hours into a giant battle full of bizarre events and was starting to slip up.

Incidentally, I couldn't actually post that video you were referring to here since I was on vacation without my computer. Here it is:

14: Not Ogre Till It's Ogre


And here's the one from yesterday:

15: Loot and Plunder

Melth
Feb 16, 2015

Victory and/or death!
16: Yes Gut, No Glory

Learning a few more painful lessons about the differences between various smokepowder items and how 'throw' works in this game...


I'm actually going to change gears after this video. I think there've been enough videos now to satisfy the people who initially asked to see how I play a game I'm new to.

Now I want to switch to something more my usual style. Mara and I beat the game, and now I'd like to tackle it with a challenge run. Probably moving at a faster pace since I know what I'm doing now.


My planned run rules:
1) Tactician difficulty
2) No long rests! I've got to stretch those spell slots and hitpoints over the entire act. As a corollary, no using those potions that give you short/long rests. Or just re-speccing to restore myself (Re-speccing because I found an item that calls for new stats will be ok, but I have to waste spell slots/hitpoints afterward so I didn't net out to regain any). And no using the pods that give rests. Or anything else that gives rests basically.
2a) In order to actually experience the story, rests in camp are required because most story things only happen when you sleep at camp. My workaround will be to rest without using any camp supplies. If I do that, I don't get any restoration. So I can get the story and character development without healing. There's one occasion I can think of when the game forces a long rest even if you used no camp supplies. When that happens, I guess I'll just waste spell slots and hitpoints to go back to the way I was.
3) No swapping in fresh party members from camp to replace the ones that are worn out. I'll only swap in characters when required for the story, and then return them to camp and put the normal ones back on the team.
4) No healing potions!
5) No cheesy stuff like carrying explody barrels around between combats. I can use the environment and the existing explody barrels in a room, but only in a natural way and only by actually spending movement to bring them from place to place instead of moving them for free by clicking and dragging. Also no cheesing with stealth. Using stealth in a normal way to get into position before a fight is ok.
6) Maximum combat. Every encounter must be fought, and I'll try to fight it with the hardest possible enemy configuration. Not taking the various opportunities to make enemy groups fight one another, or convince some to leave while the others fight alone, etc. I'm allowed to talk past people for story purposes as long as I then come back and fight them promptly
7) No using scrolls of the wrong class or higher level than I have spell slots for.


Anyone have any other ideas? Things I'm forgetting?

Melth fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Nov 19, 2023

Mzbundifund
Nov 5, 2011

I'm afraid so.
Not using long rests sounds really boring since the best part of this game is the big array of abilities and class combinations you can use, and refusing to long rest will greatly reduce the variety of tactics on display.

cant cook creole bream
Aug 15, 2011
I think Fahrenheit is better for weather
Yeah I agree with that. Challenge runs are only as fun as the variety they bring.

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Snake Maze
Jul 13, 2016

3.85 Billion years ago
  • Having seen the explosion on the moon, the Devil comes to Venus
I could see it being pretty interesting still since there's basically no healing at all beyond your very limited spell slots, unless there's some trick I'm not thinking of. Although, yeah, there are a lot of options that are almost entirely locked out this way, so I could also see it devolving into "ambush with 4 assassin/gloomstalkers dual wielding hand crossbows x100" or something.

Allowing respecs seems like a big outlier compared to how restrictive the rest of it is, is that just so you can have your cake and eat it too with the dex gloves and similar?

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