Player special abilities and defenses

[Talon_Moonshadow]

should mean something.

U12 has brought us changes in two major raids that have made it obvious that the Devs need to respct the fact that player special abilties and defenses should be useful.


Abbot: Monks walking on water. Cleric Divine Intervention. Rogue cheat death.
Despite fighting a would-be-demi-god... who has every right to have this super Inferno attack to kill everyone in the area of "his" personal arena. Players have super powers too! And should be able to use them!

Ice puzzle is a different matter. Actually I think all of the puzzles need looked at.

But players have the right to have special defenses that can be used to combat the special powers of monsters (raid bosses)

None of these are automatic survival tricks. But they should give smart players a chance to survive!
(I would argue FvS Wings as well...but they wont actually give us Fly. :( )

Shroud: and a few other areas like the Reaver spikes.
Blade like objects should be evadable! Ref saves should matter. DR. AC. (and ok...I admit it... HP should matter too... :cool: )

I am all for monsters having dangerous abilities. I am all for a challenge.
(But I hate puzzles. I can't jump. I don't have mad keyboard/twitch skills.)

But I am really against making quests that purposely just disregard a special ability of a class/PRE or whatever.


There are so many was to make certain things more useful and to make dungeons fun.

Pit Fiends should have fort IMO. But Rogues should be able to evade certain tyes of attacks. (and a group of spining blades should be very evadable IMO.)

High AC chars should be hard to hit with melee attacks (but not invulnerable). But those with low Ref saves and no spell buffs to deffend against magical atacks should be easy enough to kill for caster monsters.

Smart monsters should kill healers. Should fly is they have wings!


Liches who have super spells to burn up everything around them should still have to worry about the Divine Intervention of a God's High Priest.

Somehow the super Rogue can still cheat the death he was supposed to have.

Wow...that master of self discipline was able to run over the deadly water and survive....

So... let him. If he has no way to help his fallen comrades, he will die soon enough on his own.

And maybe the next Inferno will kill him.




It's not an exploit to use a special ability to survive.
If the dungeon was poorly designed that some mechanic can be bypassed, than fix that mechanic.

Why does picking up one book ahead of another break the quest sequence?

Why is a critical object in a spot that any Monk can just walk over too?


Change quests that have to be changed. But allow special abilities to be useful too.

There is a middle ground.

No tactic should be an easy button. But special abilties should still be useful.

[grodon9999]

let the monks walk on water, but give the Abbot sharks with laser-beams attached to their heads.

[Xenostrata]

I concur.

Giving us special abilities and then complaining when we use them is sending mixed messages to your customer base.

[Aashrym]

Is this including FoM not protecting against several effects that is should? Cuz I'll sign that. Giving players abilities just to have those abilities not work is bad planning.

[Cyr]

A very short list of special/not so special abilities that the developers ignore at times (I will leave the reasoning as why they do this in certain cases to each individual reader)...


Death Penality Boxes. They ignore a few special abilities of players the most notable being a simple raise dead spell.
Spikes. No evasion no to hit roll = a cheating DM. One or the other.
Ray attacks have no to hit roll. Always was a boon to beholders one of the developers favorite original monsters.
No evasion no saving throw asteriods.
No healing in asteriods.
No water walking in abbot.
Divine Intervention no more in abbot.
No save encasement.
No true seeing for tiles in abbot.
Blades with no reflex saves or to hit roll. Shroud being of particular note here.
No tripping/knockdown the titan except with pillars.
All red/purple named immunities (would be it's own large list)
Speciality rules for epic mobs
No save knockback from Air Elementals
FoM not working versus Earth Elementals
It is worth noting the number of those that are related to raids.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Sometmes I think an ability should not work. Wouldn't be much of a boss fight if we could keep tripping the raid boss all the time. or just go get a multiple TR to finger him.

But his minions....even his elite bodyguards....do not deserve the same level of protection.

And I do not want to see quests trivialized just because we brought a player who could do a certain "trick" that =s an easy button.

But surviving the Inferno in no way breaks the quest. And the player who des survive is still in danger of being killed before he can help anyone else.

The blades in the Shroud....from what I hear are rediculously over powered.
Not IMO because of the damage the whole wall of them does as they close in...which I think should be deadly.

But because there is no defense against them...well...other than not being in the same area as the blades are anyway.

And I have never liked "penalty boxes" that prevented things like Cheat Death and Divine Intervention from working.

There has to be a way to make a dungeon to both be a challenge, AND still allow special abilities to be useful.

[Seikojin]

I think it would be nice if our abilities were properly coded in. But that is a fix for another day I think.