Short and long terms plans for DDO

[Shaamis]

Being, as you stated, a PnP player for some 20+ years, you should know better than to ask the DM to allow you to see his Monsters character sheets. That is just poor form and a sign of poor Sportsmanship.

That's the crux, and the reasoning behind why people say the D&D system will never work in an MMO, and why DDO is destined for failure.

Call shenannigans if you wish but then prepare your party for Retribution.

The PnP system can not compensate for a DM'less environement. That is what it boils down to really.

I agree, but there has to be a better way to balance the games enemies than just plugging in numbers, and hope for the best, because that's exactly what they are doing when they "bump" the AC,HD, HP, and damages for the monsters as the difficulty increases. if they follow the Normal, Hard, and Elite difficulty pattern, it should be a 1 point increment jump for each one. Instead you see a skeleton in Goodblades quest going from 10 HP to almost 100 hp, from Normal to elite, even with a blunt weapon.

Knowing how they build the monsters won't change that fact, ever. Besides that, knowing their Stats would suck ALL the FUN directly from the game proper.

Maybe not THE stats, but at least the system they use. I mean, if they have standard CR for normal, then go +5 AC, +50% HP, +5 BAB, +10 damage, and A,B,and C special abilities when they go to Hard, and +15 AC, +150% HP, +15 BAB, +30 damage, and A, B, C, X, Y and Z special abilities when they go to Elite, at least I know they are using some kind of process, other than a "....+10d6 damage for scortching ray at "hard" looks about right...." method.

There has to be a balancing issue when you encounter something I said previously, quoted below:

Have you ever been at the business end of an Ogre, during it's three step charge? if that is not offense, AND mobility, I'm crazy.

You ever ask yourself why you charge at a team of Giants, but cringe when you see a team of Ogres coming at you? Why does an Ogre or a Troll hit so much harder than a giant?

Like I said, I'd like at see at least an inkling of a process, preferably mathematical, on how they standardize their Challenge ratings.

Don't get me wrong guys and gals, I love DDO, but I don't even look at challenge rating of mobs anymore, because it's worthless. I attack the mages and clerics first, because I know they have a TON of HP, and I have to beat them down before I get scortching rayed/flame struck/ polar rayed/disintegrated into dust.

It's hard to know your enemy in this game.

[KristovK]

I don't believe that SR has been addressed. I have checked the Vampire's (original in Phiarlan) SR and found it to be over 30, long ago. I suppose what we are saying is that we understand these things, but insist that it is arbitrary and not within the limits of what our PC's will be able to handle later in the game.

Those who have mentioned not having a problem in BAM should revisit, since a lot of changes were made to BAM over the last 6 months. My visit was recent, just a few weeks ago, and I could probably have run into a bug. Though I doubt that it was a bugged instance because I was able to handle the elementals in the entry area, with no problems.

Ok...my first question is...why in the hells would you toss a non-damage spell at the vamp in CatC? First off, he's a vampire lord so it's pretty **** unlikely that a 10th level caster is going to have anything that can do anything to him except for pure damage spells, taking for granted that you tested his SR before red named became immune to anything but damage spells, which means you had no Spell Pen feats or enhancements AND were capped at 10th. I haven't actually looked at the numbers, but my 11th cleric was able to hit that particular vamp with Curse on elite 2 weeks ago and that's without Spell Pen feats or enhancements(miscast, Searing Light and Curse were next to each other on my bar...wasn't a total waste though, someone was able to trip him after that).

SRs so far, in my own experience, tend to be in line with the CRs of the mobs with them, even on elite in Gianthold quests. Haven't seen a mob yet who's SR was too high to beat on a roll of 12..and that's the purple named giants in Gianthold Tor, need a 12 for them, 10 max for anything else in the game, with a 14th wiz with Spell Pen(not Greater) and a Mysterious Ring that gives Spell Pen. I've run Relic with that wiz recently and had no problems with SR of anything in there, problems with getting past their SAVES...but not their SRs. But that's to be expected, Duergar get a nice bonus on top of the normal dwarven bonus to Will saves, and Blackguard get the Chr bonus same as a Paladin to all their saves, so...

What spells exactly were you getting failed SR checks on?

[Gimpster]

Have you ever been at the business end of an Ogre, during it's three step charge? if that is not offense, AND mobility, I'm crazy.

Have you ever been in a PvP room with a ragey barb14 all in your face? Even with a +1 Greatclub, his DPS overwhelms an elite gianthold ogre because he doesn't stop at just three swings.

[Gimpster]

Like I said, I'd like at see at least an inkling of a process, preferably mathematical, on how they standardize their Challenge ratings.

In PnP, that's not how challenge ratings are made. CR is at heart an ad-hoc measurement that cannot be cranked out mechanically.

Don't get me wrong guys and gals, I love DDO, but I don't even look at challenge rating of mobs anymore

Good. D&D players are no supposed to be aware of the CR numbers for monsters they encounter.

[LogannX]

Well players dont play DDO like they play PnP. Alot more is possible in the way of...nicely put..player ingenuity. In PnP you didnt have 4 party members sit at a dungeon entrance while the "tank" ran and dragged all the mobs into solid fog cloudkill that the caster spammed around the room. Sure it counts as player skill and ingenuity, but its not sporting and not any fun. So you adjust mob behavior or how things affect mobs. Makes sense to me. pNp dungeons and dragons does have inherant weaknesses nothing is perfect. It's translation to a vidoegame definitely showed that you can be very faithful to the original game but chnages were definitley needed.
If they balance mobs properly it doesnt matter to me what system they use. It's much better than other games where they just make up new abilities and immunities with no rhyme or reason. Mobs do cast spells that we cast. They still roll saves ,they still fail to break through ac. Some people would like exact numbers but i don't thinks it really an issue.
Normal and hard dungeons seem to scale very well. Lots of elite seem to be eoite+ a little but hey isn't that what people who only play elite want?

[MtnLion]

... taking for granted that you tested his SR before red named became immune to anything but damage spells, which means you had no Spell Pen feats or enhancements AND were capped at 10th. ...

Quite correct.

...I've run Relic with that wiz recently and had no problems with SR of anything in there, problems with getting past their SAVES...but not their SRs.
...

Well. now I am not one to camp a particular quest, even to accumulate data to support my statements. It is possible that I saw immunity flashes rather than spell resistance flashes, but unlikely.

We did another run, and I on my fighter. The wizard and sorcerer in the party commented on the incredible saves the mobs were making. Hypnotic pattern is pretty useless nowdays. But, even Otto's Sphere would stop them for mayb three seconds if they failed the initial save. It sure seems unfortunate that in order to slow down the farming of Relic that was going on some months ago that the ACs, To Hit, resistances, and saves of the mobs had to be boosted to where on normal it plays as elite, and the quest level was not adjusted. (Yep, then when one enters on elite it gets very tough, indeed.)

[BurnerD]

I don't think it is unreasonable of the OP to ask for more clarification on how the monsters stats are derived.

I do think however that the devs have to evolve these monsters are the tactics within the game change.

In PNP as a DM you can react real time with changes to the monsters tactics based on how the players are approaching the encounter.. that is not possible in DDO. The AI while pretty good IMO is not capable of making complex decisions based on how an encounter is going.

I really don't want this game to be easy because what is the point in playing then?, but it should not be impossible either. IMO nothing is impossible right now. I do think when rebalancing occurs it tends to favor melee classes over casters though. Casters have greater ability to render a quest "simple" through spell use than melees do through their combat prowess. I guess it is only natural that the "fixes' tends to hurt casters.

[Klattuu]

It is actually quite simple really.

Mobs are made variable so the difficulty of a particular quest can be fine-tuned at the level of the adversaries instead of having to change the quest to add or subract adversaries to tweak adventure difficulty.

This allows for the Normal/Hard/Elite settings of the adventure.

[MtnLion]

...
This allows for the Normal/Hard/Elite settings of the adventure.

For example: Sunken Sewers

Normal: Strength >= 16*, Mob base (1) HP
Hard: Strength >= 18, Mob triple (3) HP
Elite: Strength >= 20, Mob quintuple (5) HP, remarkablly the kobold's AC are over 30 on this setting.

This is not a particularly popular quest, since it does not provide any "special" rewards or large portion of XP. If this quest were more popular, the base figures would probably be modified. Relic was extremely popular to farm the admantine ore, in which case the guards and casters were bypassed to get to the key for the mine area. Farming Relic for ore was usually run on normal settings, and the continued farming meant that the normal settings must have been tweaked considerably.

To complete Relic on any setting it is best to have a vorpal in party, since offensive spells are pretty ineffective on the mobs. That is only one of the quests that has become cheesey, requiring a specific tactic and equipment to complete the mission without having to run the casters (including the cleric) in and out of the instance to regain spell points.

* I don't have access to the character's stats atm, I know that I had to boost his strength by two and then have a rage potion to open the valve. This would make the progression 2 strength for each increase in difficulty level.