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Honestly, I think doing it the other way around - allowing for resting (at your discretion) but limiting the respecs to, say, the first time you get the character, would make for a more interesting if less well optimized playthrough.
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Nov 20, 2023 19:22
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If I rest, I need some way to crank the difficulty up about 400%. If I can go in guns blazing with high level spells and 1/short rest type abilities, I can win almost every single encounter in a single turn effortlessly. Heck, I can win many encounters in a single move with the right spell. Restricting rests is the only limitation on the overwhelming power of spellcasters in this game. Even level 2 spells can auto-win many encounters if they're used intelligently, and the power level grows enormously from there.
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Nov 20, 2023 20:16
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 Challenge run where you have to win every single encounter in a single turn (without barrelmancy)
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Nov 20, 2023 22:43
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Oh, permadeath for any party member who dies, and of course no save-scumming would be two more restrictions I'll add. I did find a fun trick involving killing and reviving a character before they join the party which I want to show though.
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Nov 20, 2023 23:14
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Snake Maze posted:
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Nov 22, 2023 00:23
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A challenge run where you have to kill at least one person with a powder barrel in each encounter. That might actually be kind of hard since you'd have to avoid battles to spare resources. It doesn't sound all that fun to watch though.
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Nov 22, 2023 00:43
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17: No Pain, Slight Gain I'd thought last episode would be the last one of the old series, but then I remembered I'd already recorded the footage for this one before a vacation. Next week I plan to start the new series, with a challenge run! Incidentally- is there a way to change the name of this forum thread to fit the new run? Would the normal thing be to make a new one instead?
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Nov 26, 2023 23:32
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Same thread, ask a mod. Usually they can be seen in the Sandcastle. Or you could report your own post with the new title, but thats a bit more of a gamble.
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Nov 27, 2023 01:06
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Challenge Ep 1: Slaying Zhalk & the Cambions Just before I was going to release this video, Larian released the huge new patch 5 which introduces an even higher difficulty mode called Honour! Sounds quite interesting, especially the new 'Legendary Actions' every boss will have. But that certainly threw a wrench in the works of the new challenge run I'd been 3 episodes into recording. So I'm going to use a mod to rework this challenge, starting at episode 4, to be on the new honor difficulty. In the meantime, I think slaying not just Zhalk but the cambions at the beginning is a pretty epic challenge in its own right, so I'm proud of this video. Melth fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Dec 6, 2023 |
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Dec 3, 2023 20:01
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Challenge Ep 2: The Pale Melth Beaches, bodies, brains, and boulders we apparently can't see!
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Dec 6, 2023 20:07
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Challenge Ep 3: Talking Shop Reaching the Emerald Grove, it's time to talk about merchant mechanics, and get geared up for the main adventures.
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Dec 10, 2023 20:16
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Interesting explanation of the merchant mechanics. In my casual Normal difficulty play through, I always wondered what the hell was the point of the "Attitude", because it never seemed to affect much even when I helped them out - oh sure you might have literally saved the merchant's life, but screw you this is commerce buddy, no change to prices. The idea of just flinging money at them never crossed my mind because why the hell would you? I just sort of assumed that outside of my Charisma/Persuasion, the prices were the prices. Of course, it also wasn't really needed in a casual playthrough since money never felt like an issue past the first couple trips to town when "literally anything to fill the empty slot" counts as an upgrade. I was surprised to hear you say at the end that you think Eldritch Blast is a bit overrated. Is that primarily because of your game limitations? Does it lose value on higher difficulties with more enemy HP? Not fit into your chosen fight strategies? Or am I just missing something? I played with a Warlock PC and pumped the hell out of my Warlock's Charisma (for Agonizing Blast power), and my character basically rode that spell the entire game start to finish whenever I didn't want to (or couldn't) toss out a higher level spell.
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Dec 11, 2023 02:01
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MagusofStars posted:Interesting explanation of the merchant mechanics. In my casual Normal difficulty play through, I always wondered what the hell was the point of the "Attitude", because it never seemed to affect much even when I helped them out - oh sure you might have literally saved the merchant's life, but screw you this is commerce buddy, no change to prices. The idea of just flinging money at them never crossed my mind because why the hell would you? I just sort of assumed that outside of my Charisma/Persuasion, the prices were the prices. Of course, it also wasn't really needed in a casual playthrough since money never felt like an issue past the first couple trips to town when "literally anything to fill the empty slot" counts as an upgrade. I was also confused by attitude for a while. And even more confused by the outright misleading 'discount' amount that one now sees after a patch. I found that so puzzling and frustrating, that it's what made me take the time to figure out everything I could about how prices actually work. A discount of '-50%' really means take 0.5 off of the multiplier you have depending on your difficulty mode. But that means of course that -50% for one person might mean something completely different from -50% for another person's run. And it hardly seems reasonable to call it a 50% discount when you go from buying at triple price to buying at 2.5x price. To try to clarify about Eldritch Blast. When I say it's overrated, I don't mean it's bad. In fact, I think it's quite good for what it is. But its reputation, especially among 5E players in my experience, is inflated well beyond that. I'd actually say that the restrictions of my run will make it better than usual, which is one reason I'm picking it. Honor mode gives a substantial nerf to Haste and Bloodlust elixirs for classes that attack to do damage, but not to ones that cast spells. So relatively speaking, Eldritch Blast will close some of the distance between itself and an optimized attacker. I would say that, without a certain item, it's definitely gonna feel weak on tactician after a while though. Especially since, unlike in 5E, a non-trivial number of things resist force damage. As I see it, Eldritch Blast does ok-to-good damage, for a comparatively small investment (2 levels, vs spending 5-6 to get Extra attack or using limited spell slots), and with the added perk of some battlefield control mixed in. Quite good overall! But the damage will never be competitive with someone actually built to do damage.
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Dec 11, 2023 05:47
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I follow a youtube channel called Treantmonk's Temple who does optimization, among other things, and he uses a warlock spamming eldritch blast as the baseline and bare minimum for what a damage build needs to do. I trust his opinion way more than whoever is complaining that warlock blasting is very powerful. Obviously you do not need to optimize or anything but it is interesting to get the thoughts of someone who knows the system quite well and backs it up with maths and arguments.
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Dec 11, 2023 11:39
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“Without a certain item” is key for this game though. Because you know what items exist and when they’re available, they become an entire axis of character optimization that doesn’t touch on tabletop 5e.
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Dec 11, 2023 16:16
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Poil posted:I follow a youtube channel called Treantmonk's Temple who does optimization, among other things, and he uses a warlock spamming eldritch blast as the baseline and bare minimum for what a damage build needs to do. I trust his opinion way more than whoever is complaining that warlock blasting is very powerful. Obviously you do not need to optimize or anything but it is interesting to get the thoughts of someone who knows the system quite well and backs it up with maths and arguments. Ah, yeah I've seen a few of his videos. I think he makes generally cogent arguments and he also, importantly, is good about laying out the assumptions he makes for optimization. I also like that he's in sort of the low to medium end of optimization where things still mostly make sense as characters rather than being exercises in rules lawyering nonsense, and his builds don't rely on cheesy tactics that would be boring at the table. He also wrote an influential guide for wizard optimization in 3.5. (Though on the other hand I also think I once heard him say that 3.5 bard was worse than monk, which would be ridiculously wrong, so maybe his 3.5 knowledge was limited to wizards). Back when I was GMing my first campaign, I had a munchkin kind of player who would quote verbatim from Treantmonk's wizard guide and had built his character strictly from an optimization standpoint. But that character also proved to be humorously ineffectual because the player lacked the strategic skills to actually use all the battlefield control spells he took. In particular, I remember that (because Treantmonk had correctly said that Wall of X spells were very good battlefield control in 3.5) about half of his prepared spells ended up being various Walls. Which was just not smart, because most of those wall types are redundant with each other! You want 1-2 types of walls maybe, not 20 slots worth of 6 different walls! That player also insisted that the only optimal form of healing in 3.5 was a Wand of Cure Light Wounds, and refused to use anything else on the grounds that it was financially inefficient. He optimized himself into an early grave when the party wound up in a situation where they had only a couple of rounds to heal up severe injuries between major fights, and he insisted on only healing 1d8+1 with the Wand of Cure Light Wounds instead of getting a more substantial and expensive heal from the more expensive item which the more practical party members had insisted on buying against his objections. Mister Olympus posted:“Without a certain item” is key for this game though. Because you know what items exist and when they’re available, they become an entire axis of character optimization that doesn’t touch on tabletop 5e. True! And there are certainly some standout items in this game that make certain moves or subclasses way better than expected. Magic Missile sees a lot of item support, so do Monks (who desperately needed it), and so does Eldritch Blast
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Dec 11, 2023 19:10
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That previous player of yours sounds hilariously dumb, the type of person who compensates for their own lack of brain with whatever the nearest 'authority' says. It gets worse because they're taking normally good advice and warping it to uselessness.
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Dec 11, 2023 19:56
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Challenge Ep 4: Jumping to Conclusions The classic scenario of meeting fellow adventurers in a dungeon and killing them, and then meeting the god of death and getting him to change your class. Actually that last part might be unusual. I always enjoyed this little dungeon quite a lot, even if I originally had a rough time of it as a first time player where I went in with just Shadowheart and Mara's character since we didn't know to find other party members first.
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Dec 13, 2023 20:32
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Shaking my head at all this Lae'zel slander. You will be ashamed of your words and deeds. Excited to see how things go as you get to the harder fights though, it seems like the relative value of the classes shifts a lot with these restrictions.
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Dec 13, 2023 21:17
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Snake Maze posted:
Absolutely! It's a very different game when you rest a lot vs never rest. Here's the next episode, as I try to get some camp scenes out of the way without restoring anything: Challenge Ep 5: The Bark Urge
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Dec 17, 2023 20:16
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The thing that amuses me is that despite it being in a no-rest run, the party is still 3/4s primary spellcasters.....
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Dec 20, 2023 07:09
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Keldulas posted:The thing that amuses me is that despite it being in a no-rest run, the party is still 3/4s primary spellcasters..... Yeah- that'll be tough to manage in some early sections, but spells are so powerful that even only having access to a small number per fight is still very useful (and more interesting than everyone just being an attacker). Here's the 6th episode, which I consider to be the last of the intro portion where I can't use any spell slots because a forced rest is coming up: Challenge Ep 6: Store Brand
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Dec 20, 2023 20:07
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That got me thinking about trying to skip that fight at the gate by triggering the absolute scene after entering the goblin camp through the side path by the Githyanki patrol. On the one hand I think that requires you to go close enough that the event with the dragon flying down triggers, which I think means you can't just ignore the patrol encounter or else the patrol leaves (not actually sure about this), but on the other hand maybe it would be possible to put the patrol fight off anyway if you're not long resting? It brings up the very funny image of Lae'zel running off to talk to the patrol, the party loving off to go explore the underdark for dozens of hours, and then coming back to join Lae'zel just as she finally actually talks to the patrol. I guess it wouldn't work anyway, if the goal is to long rest now to avoid a forced rest later, but I'm a little sad the route doesn't involve that kind of nonsense, taking "time is fake, we're doing all this in a single day" to the extreme. There's also that side path with the traps that I literally never take and forgot even existed until this post, I don't actually know what happens if you use that to avoid the guards.
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Dec 21, 2023 02:43
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Snake Maze posted:There's also that side path with the traps that I literally never take and forgot even existed until this post, I don't actually know what happens if you use that to avoid the guards.  The non-joke answer is that it doesn't really change much except for skipping that fight, IIRC the side path dumps you out pretty close to the gate.
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Dec 21, 2023 04:01
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MagusofStars posted:Mostly what happens is you get blown up and/or you waste a bunch of already-rare Trap Disarm kits. As I recall, it also plonks you near some drunk goblins (the reinforcements who would be called with the drum) who you can just blow up because of an exploding barrel right next to them all. But yeah, I find that side path to be absolutely not worth it compared to just killing the goblins at the mini-fort. Snake Maze posted:That got me thinking about trying to skip that fight at the gate by triggering the absolute scene after entering the goblin camp through the side path by the Githyanki patrol. On the one hand I think that requires you to go close enough that the event with the dragon flying down triggers, which I think means you can't just ignore the patrol encounter or else the patrol leaves (not actually sure about this), but on the other hand maybe it would be possible to put the patrol fight off anyway if you're not long resting? It brings up the very funny image of Lae'zel running off to talk to the patrol, the party loving off to go explore the underdark for dozens of hours, and then coming back to join Lae'zel just as she finally actually talks to the patrol. That's an interesting idea about using the sneaky upper route into goblintown to avoid the absolute scene temporarily. It would still happen when trying to go to the mountain pass though. I think it's better for my run to take care of it now when I can guarantee the rest is useless.
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Dec 21, 2023 22:52
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Challenge Ep 7: Picking Pockets to Pick I'm still exploring the pickpocket mechanics. To my understanding, no one understands them fully as yet. I'm betting I can uncover more in some later videos by testing pickpocketing on my various party members, once they've selected certain abilities that might affect it.
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Dec 26, 2023 02:43
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Challenge Ep 8: Generic Cultist Tripe Back into lots of battles for the next few episodes, there should be a good variety of tactical combats!
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Dec 27, 2023 20:16
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Challenge Ep 9: Florid Man Eats Pair of Gloves I liked the thumbnail for this one. And level 4 at last! A big power increase, making a lot of upcoming fights considerably easier.
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Jan 1, 2024 02:05
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Challenge Ep 10: Lump I 'The Enlightened' gets 'ogrethrown' One of my favorite early game characters and one of my favorite early game items: a circlet that sets Intelligence to 17. Perfect for a low level multiclass cleric/wizard!
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Jan 3, 2024 20:01
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Challenge Ep 11: The Highest Enemy Armor Class! I love this weird little puzzle fight. You can brute force it, but not in a run like this!
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Jan 7, 2024 20:04
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I've just remembered a huge problem for this no-rest run! One time in the past I was doing a similar no-rest run. I rescued Halsin, killed all the goblins, talked to Halsin at the Emerald Grove, and the tieflings got ready for the party. However, since doing the party requires resting, I skipped the party and just went to the mountain pass instead and finished Act 1 and then continued my adventure to Act 2. The problem is, that meant Halsin never showed up in camp! He'd said he would join us in camp but he simply never did, he never showed up in act 2, and thus I missed out on his entire questline about cleansing the shadow-curse. Terrible, and very silly. So I feel like I'm in a bit of a bind here. I either have to rest at the party (maybe injuring my own characters afterward/wasting spell slots in order to mechanically have the effect of not resting?) or have to skip the biggest sidequest in all of act 2, and the biggest fight with it What do people think? While I'm asking for input, I'm also considering whether to sacrifice a party member to the great god BOOOAL. The buff isn't really worth it mechanically, but could be fun. The main question to me is whether there's a character I wouldn't mind losing, whose death wouldn't deprive me of too many quests/unique items.
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Jan 10, 2024 03:05
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I feel like skipping one of the major questlines and the biggest fight of Act 2 would result in you breaking more rules than taking a single pseudo-mandatory rest, especially if you burn those spell slots afterwards.
MagusofStars fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Jan 10, 2024 |
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Jan 10, 2024 03:27
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I just checked in an old save and the party isn't actually a free long rest, you still choose supplies and can do a partial rest instead. I'd think that should be fine, that's less recovery than a short rest.
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Jan 10, 2024 03:33
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If your self imposed rules make the game worse, don't apply the rule in that case. I've been assuming you'd get a long rest at the party this whole time tbh. Never even occurred to me you wouldn't.
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Jan 10, 2024 15:00
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Challenge Ep 12: Set Phasers on Spun I originally recorded this as one video with what will be the future ep 13, but it turned out to be way too long. So here I'll be tackling the harpies and ettercaps, and then next time will be the spider matriarch. Snake Maze posted:I just checked in an old save and the party isn't actually a free long rest, you still choose supplies and can do a partial rest instead. I'd think that should be fine, that's less recovery than a short rest. It might even be 0 recovery for me because there's a good chance I'll be at above half health and spells, in which case a partial rest does nothing. I'll make sure to take note of how many spell slots and whatnot I have just in case. Sounds like the vote both here and on my discord is to go ahead and do that rest rather than miss out on the quest, so that's what I'll do.
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Jan 10, 2024 21:00
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Challenge Ep 13: Phase Spider Matriarch A long-awaited fight. Usually one of my favorites, I think this one is among the most interesting boss arenas. This time though, so many crazy things went wrong that I didn't have a lot of fun with it.
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Jan 14, 2024 21:38
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Challenge Ep 14: The Underdim Off to the upper most layer of the undermost layer of act 1. It's a sinister and alien environment where everything is exactly the same as the surface! There are even penalties to be had for being in sunlight! Melth fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Jan 18, 2024 |
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Jan 18, 2024 02:19
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Challenge Ep 15: Duwheregar
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Jan 21, 2024 20:01
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Challenge Ep 16: The Great Chicken Chase
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Jan 24, 2024 20:28
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You might've figured this out by now but the reason the spider queen saw through your invisibility is because she has the "see invisibility" condition. Pretty straightforward tbh 
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Jan 24, 2024 20:47
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