6th May 2004, 11:07 AM
Quote:Anyway, regarding NWN, it's NOT just one player. You are INTENDED to party up with other people online to play the game, so you can have a standard size party, but everyone is a human rather than just one human controlling everyone. The last expansion's campaign, sadly, doesn't allow this outside of a hack, which means you are right about that one. Thing is, you really need to make sure you can trust whoever you drag in, because something like this really requires some decent communication and friendship to work.
You know exactly what I meant. You control one player. End of story.
Quote:No, I wouldn't say that. I AGREED with you and we WERE talking about the same thing. Yes, I DO agree that the enemies should use better strategies. I agree that their move sets should either be altered so that all the moves are equally good, or the AI should be improved so the enemy knows exactly what move to use in a given situation. Some Japanese RPGs do do this, but not enough really. I agree with you here.
I realized what is probably the root of the difference. In D&D, everything follows the SAME RULES. That is, evil mages use the same level system you do. They draw from the same groups of spells per level and have the same rules of casting. Enemy warriors draw from the same pool of proficiencies and weapons. Oh, sure, they might have special equipment, and there is certainly equipment that is either special for a certain character (a few people have 'only I can wear it' armor or weapons in BGI/II, and Torment had character-exclusive weapons or types for most of the people), but it's all the same stuff, with a few exceptions that don't really matter here (Planescape has its own rules and by those, what that game does is fine...). That enemy swordsman is using a sword you could pick up and use if you wished and armor you can do the same with, in virtually all cases. And those mages are using spells you can use back on them. Same rules for everyone. Now, the enemies can be stronger, or special (like Dragons... ack... (to give you a hint, Dragons in D&D are quite tough...)), but it's essentially the same rules.
Console games just do not do that. They have enemies with lists of abilities and, it seems inexaustible magic points. So you have to come up with a stupid reason for why they don't just crush you... and they have patterns. Lame, but necessary given the way it works in those games.
Quote:About stats, you are telling me my HP is RANDOMLY GENERATED?! Arg! *destroys a galaxy* You see? This is what I hate right here. They KNOW I'm just going to reload over and over if I know that until I get the best bonus I can, so why, OH WHY, would they even BOTHER with such an assinine system? It's just ANNOYING, not fun. It's like the stats in FF4 actually, and there's a reason they didn't do that at all after that game. Rather, they came up with a different system which actually depends on the player's skills to determine that instead of "DICE ROLL!". In FF6 and FF8, they have various items that give "stat bonuses" to the character if they are equipped when that character levels up. That way, a character can be in control of stat bonuses to a degree, all depending on how many of these special things they found. In FF6, it's esper bonuses. If you want a fast character, equip the Esper Odin around level up, and if you want more HP, equip Bahamut. It's all fixed so you never have to deal with the annoyance of the random element on level up. FF8 used the Guardian Forces which could learn special stat upgrade abilities that you could equip near level up.
Randomly generated within boudaries set by what level you are, your class, and probably your constitution (since that sets your base HP). You get most all your health before somewhere around 8th to 10th level; after that point you just get 1 or 3 HP a turn, depending on class (more for warrior-types, less for mage-types). But for a 'starting at level one' D&D game, level 10 or so is a point you might be at at the very end, so it matters in such a game...
Now, I didn't do that 'save before levelup' thing much, as it seems kinda cheap, but you CAN if you want. It's not a game-changing difference, but with a few more HP you can have something advantage...
As I said, it is a random variable but like everything else set numbers have a big influence. Your class is vital here, as warriors WILL have more HP than most all mages. Same with the Constitution stat. That is hugely influential to how much HP you can get. The die roll decides the exact number, but your warriors will have a lot more HP than your mages... that's for sure. That is unless you stupidly created a warrior with a super-low constitution and your mages is really high...
Oh, and as I explained, D&D is full of items that give you stat bonuses. Before the end of Baldur's Gate II I had one belt of strength 21, one gloves of strength 18, a gloves of dexterity 18, and a gloves of charisma 18... nice items. :) Oh, and I've also gotten items that do such things as adding some set number of HP (though not many). And resistances (fire resistance, magic resistance, etc, that are added, as I said, also by items you equip) are percents... in D&D2.5 anyway... they stack too, so if you have a bunch of fire-resistance stuff you could have 50% or more chance of resisting it...
Oh, that explains why D&D uses a 'chance of resistance' instead of 'rate of depracation of the attack'. Dice. Do you want to do math every attack, to figure out what percent that roll of 12 reduces his attack of 15? I don't think so! :)
Quote:Now then, you comment on how you still don't understand what I mean by defeating the system later on in the game. Lemme put it this way. In early levels, when your attack and defense is like 9 or 10 max, a variable of 20 makes all the difference in the world. Whatever you do, it could be anything from totally awesome attack to the enemy, or complete failure. However, once you reach level "awesome", your stats are near the hundreds for everything, a variable of 20 has very little effect. It's still THERE, but it's been delegated to a much smaller roll. As a result, stats really DO determine the winner and in an even match, unless your strategies are better, both you and the opponent will die at about the same time. In any d20 based game, I always look forward to my stats finally being able to make the roll of 20 take a back seat to pure strategy, stats, and moves.
Umm... but that's exactly as it should be! No system is being "broken". It's working perfectly. When you're low level and your resistances are low, you should be failing at least as often as you succeed a resistance of, say, 9 (assuming it's a scale of 1-20)! So you fail half the time and succeed the other half. So? That's EXACTLY AS IT SHOULD BE! Just like how when you're high level making the throws most of the time is exactly as it should be. Your stats don't become more of a factor as they get higher! They ARE the factor. That 9 means you SHOULD be missing throws a lot and a 18 means you SHOULDN'T. I don't see why that concept is so hard to grasp, and it's why it sounds more like you're complaining about the concept of being able to miss throws than anything else.
I'd say that saving throws are one of the biggest things you get as you level up. Oh, magic is probably the biggest one, followed by HP through about your 10th level, but saving throws are after that (and keep improving even after your HP increase rate has dropped off)... given that even a super-amazing level 20 warrior has 'only' maybe 120HP, and a level 15 maybe 105 or something (at a 3 per level increase), the saving throws are probably a proportionally bigger difference between the two..
Quote:Look, in the end, I care more about having fun than the game trying to be realistic. I know I know, if me and the enemy are evenly matched in stats, there really is a chance it could go either way. However, I don't like that chance being taken out of MY hands and placed in that of dice. I prefer me, totally me, to be responsible for how I do. When I am forced to sorta sit back and watch while the random throws determine the outcome of battle, I get annoyed.
It is almost never just you. Saving throws in concept are not significantly different than something based on a percent, if that percent is a chance of success or failure... if it's a hard 'this is the percent damage is lowered by' percent that's different, but I'd bet that that's by far the less common use of them...
D&D just makes more use of random factors. Or, more precisely, makes it more obvious. I mean, console RPGs have all kinds of random factors! But the games hide them, for the most part... D&D doesn't. You seem to have a problem with that.
For instance, I'd bet that in console RPGs you don't always get the same level up bonuses every time you level up... but unlike D&D they don't explain themselves. You seem to prefer that they hide those factors... I take that as a bad thing. I'd like to know why it is that I get a level-up reward of whatever I got! Console RPGs don't tend to do that, while in D&D you can look up the rules and see exactly why (and what) your level-up rewards are and their exact meanings. Better.
Quote:Again, it's obvious you enjoy it. Don't take this as a "it's obvious you enjoy... TEH SUCK!1!" statement. I'm not saying you have bad tastes, just that mine are different. A VERY similar thing to this complaint of mine is yours against random battles. I don't really mind them at all, but you have a huge problem with them. I don't take it that you have better tastes than me, just different. I myself just don't enjoy, as I see it, having the control of the outcomes of battle taken away from me near the start. For you, it's all about playing with probabilities, playing the luck game at that point in the game for all it's worth. I've just never enjoyed that at all. With that, I think we've explained our opinions on this enough to get a good idea of each of our tastes. I believe we can put this to rest now.
I've never seen D&D as a game based on luck above all and I never will. As I have detailed, I think that that assertion is completely wrong... luck is a factor, but it is by no means the prevailing one and it isn't some super-more-important one like you portray it as. As I said, they just put all the details out for you to see.
As for random battles, note how now that I've put good amounts of time into random-combat RPGs my thinking is a bit different... as I've said for a while now, where it gets really bad isn't just normal random combat but when I don't know where I should be going (because of maze, puzzle, whatever). Why? Because you're forced to fight an unending stream of battles while you wander around lost. That is not fun. And while in BG enemies DO spawn randomly on the map (in areas you aren't in at the moment), it happens slowly and infrequently and usually when you go to another map and back. You do just a bit of extra fighting while wandering around confused.