Post by Raj on Jul 3, 2017 23:07:13 GMT
All thoughts welcome. If you're planning to go all war-and-peace on a single topic, however, might be better to start a new thread and link it.
With all monsters KV datas under my nose, I think one broad issue is how you designed the whole runs. Before you clean my vault and ban my IP, I can add that just editing 'some' creature files to add a bit of variety would be enough without re-inventing the wheel.
In the Hells, all monsters only have (low, like 10-20/) physical DR, and no ele/exo.
In the Abyss, most monsters have very low (5-10) physical, elemental and exotic DR.
In Limbo, all monsters have damn high (often in the 20-30 range, with few ~10 but also some ~40) physical and 15-20 elemental/exotic DR.
Flat DR kills dexters, dual wielders/single handed dps.
At the moment there's no single "low dr, but high ac" type of monster for example (even the humanoid gith/elves have better DR values than Balors and Pit Fiends); I have the feeling you went a lil overboard with all Slaads physical DR as well, with the result that beside 2handers you see very little damage going through (also all big ones are crit imm), with them being high SR targets it means most fights are a slog; the only p2 normal/hard runs that happened had to rely on 2-4 2handers, and lasted hours anyway.
Dexters/1handers need some target to shine at, and it looks like the ''to be tanked by a dex/high ac toon'' creatures are too resistant against them. Examples:
Chaos Rocs cause kd on DEX and eat stuff should they land a touch attack, but are crit immune and take very little damage if you're not 2handed (and can't reach them if small size but that's another issue...): since they already sport tons of temporary hit points, I think you can remove the physical DR without nerfing them too much (they're not going to be rush-killed anyway with all those HP, have all the time to cause havoc).
Death/White/Black Slaads have too high piercing immunity/damage reduction: that, paired with crit immunity, rules out a lot of finessable weapons (and bows...). Piercing weapons are mediocre at best overall, being truly good only in Ely, so them being so bad against all nasty slaads is a shame.
Too high regen on dex targets/stuff you might want to 1v1. Disclaimer: I like high regen on monsters, it awards smart group focus fire. Also Slaads and Proteans having high regen makes sense.
What I don't like, and makes fights boring, is high regen on creatures that already sport temporary hit points (overkill) and DR like Kaortis. They don't need it because they have to be focused by whole party or just tanked by one lone high ac guy. It sure makes some fights against them on cliffs a pita because multiple archers cannot deal enough damage to overcome it.
Not-dex related but still broken/unbalanced limbo creatures:
Pyrophors and Thalassi lack an instant-kill (except rebuke on no-paragon versions), unlike Erdeens and Eolians. I'm sure Drown should work on the former, and something available to cleric/druid would be nice for the latter as well.
Thalassi are also way too strong, and not enough iconic to deserve it. A paragon one can cause more issues than a Black Slaad if you ask me: no-save stuck in place on a thing with very high mobility and that you can't control (unlike the slow zio geyser you can stone, but are still super scary) is a death sentence. Making them insta-ble somewhat would help it a bit, but with high sr/saves it's not a given, I think their main ability (because they also mord on hit, cause inflictions, spam frozen blasts...) could use a save check. Even better, a DEX check, there you go a dex-target we need badly.
Playing cleric/druid in limbo is not very enjoyable so I support another edit, as for PnP Material (scroll down, page 176) one of the most annoying Limbo critters (immune to magic and 100% physical damage immune, also heavy kickback so you don't want low damage dexters attacking them), the Trilloch, should be disposable by Banishment and Word of Faith/Balance spells. The latter two spells could also use some more love, I think all hells/ely stuff is outright spell-immune to it and it's a shame, but for limbo it'd make sense to make the Words more interesting (and the part 1 set amulets even have a +1 DC for it, one would assume they'd be useful). Slaads are 100% sonic immune anyway, the lesser ones could be made vulnerable to stun/slow.
Tone down (from 90% to 80%) Black Slaads concealment (Ygorl can stay at 90%), or even better implement this idea and make Blistering Radiance a less-niche spell (atm it only instakills Nabassu and Shadow Jellies, that's sure too little for a nice custom spell that has working vfx/icon and fits nicely in clerics books). You went a bit overkill on the Blackies, it pretty much calls for an Eradicate on every single one or spend 10 minutes hacking high dr/temp hp/high regen/draining life + boss-level concealment targets.
Amorphons, Chaos Rocs, Unfinished Titans, Anarchic Storm Giants (any more stuff?): they are immune to saving throw decrease. I really don't like that, party play and class synergy should be encouraged: landing a Prayer or Eyebite takes efforts, standing next dangerous monsters with a Battletide should be rewarded. Caster clerics are also very little used in Limbo due to the lack of synergy, I feel this creature property is not necessary. Remove it and raise their base saves by 3-4 points to make up for curse song effects.
The known stuff to fix that can still use a bump:
Random minibosses (Umbral Blot and Gibbering Orb) have no script.
Ssendam Fear Aura is broken (he spams something like "TODO: Fear Aura" and some other gaze thing during the fight). He also is very hard to spot in that mess of fight, looks like a normal Death Slaad I think. He should have the same appearance he has in the introduction area, yellow/shiny lord of madness style.
The Total Random Question
What happened to the other random minibosses planned for Abyss, ala Pazuzu?