Enemy Clerics, Give them mana limits, concetration check or less casting speed.

[Dane_McArdy]

Spellcasters AI has seen some significant improvements lately. They don't just stand around casting spells at walls any more, so that problem is at least partly solved.



Yeah, these two are the ones that annoy me. And before anyone says "Oh they have quicken" I'll go ahead and counter with "Metamagics, which are limited by costing extra SP, are flat-out cheating when you have unlimited SP."

No, they actually would give them sorcerer cool down timers. Which is "cheating" as well I guess. The thing is, I've always found the monsters even in paper to be on the cheaty side.

[MysticTheurge]

The thing is, I've always found the monsters even in paper to be on the cheaty side.

Yeah, but there's a level of cheaty that people will accept and what we're trying to say to the devs is that this one, this sticking point that keeps coming up, is beyond that level.

No one minds (any more) that they've got a billion hit points. Most people are even ok that their to-hit, saves and AC numbers are mostly made up without too much logical reasoning behind them.

But the fact that you can't interrupt enemy spells according to the rules and the fact that they slide all over the place no matter what they're doing, those are two things that lots of people are unwilling to accept as just normal cheaty-ness.

[Yaga_Nub]

......
And that's all people would do, find a way to exhaust an NPC's mana and then trash it.

You've answered your own question.

The problem there is that waiting out the mana usage is a VALID tactic. Now if the big bad caster isn't smart enough to know he needs some additional support besides his spells that not my problem but I would expect a caster to be supports by warriors and summoned pets. So sure you can wait out his mana but then how are you going to get past the 3 CR 22 death knights and demon that the necromancer just summoned with his last bit of mana?

[Trapdoor]

You think Bosses recruit gimpy clerics with 50 sp and that it? the bosses give them special magical mana regen (unlimited) items that cannot be seen, and vanish on the mobs death... didnt you know that? Sheesh, where have you been hiding?

Vorpalsword - Khyber

[MrCow]

No one minds (any more) that they've got a billion hit points. Most people are even ok that their to-hit, saves and AC numbers are mostly made up without too much logical reasoning behind them.

If you play a quest on normal then the to-hit, saves, AC, ability stats, and most other things are faithful to the pen and paper implementations. About the only things that get inflated on normal is hit points, SR, and sometimes damage.

Once you go to higher difficulties such as hard and elite then you have to-hit not matching BAB/STR/DEX, AC inflation, ability stats inflated, etc. Generally, monsters have well scaled HD and saves based on their HD and DEX/CON/WIS.

If it is a named monster, all bets are off on being proper (still trying to figure out how Velah pulls off a DC 37 breath weapon without concluding that her CON is royally inflated).

[Jermacide]

No, I wish they made they made the game harder, that would be awesome to see cleric be able to cast comet fall in a flash. I’d like to see enemy casters do what we do to them. Like cast a couple stone to flesh spells on our casters and clerics, chain cast damage spell on tanks. I really wish we could have enemy human controlled characters but then everyone would whine that they couldn’t beat quests lol

How awesome would it be for a dev/mod whatever to replace the AI on some hard quests end boss every once in a while. Would really add to the challenge.

[Dane_McArdy]

Yeah, but there's a level of cheaty that people will accept and what we're trying to say to the devs is that this one, this sticking point that keeps coming up, is beyond that level.

No one minds (any more) that they've got a billion hit points. Most people are even ok that their to-hit, saves and AC numbers are mostly made up without too much logical reasoning behind them.

But the fact that you can't interrupt enemy spells according to the rules and the fact that they slide all over the place no matter what they're doing, those are two things that lots of people are unwilling to accept as just normal cheaty-ness.

Well I agree on the last part actually, they do tend to shrug off more then they should.

[Dane_McArdy]

The problem there is that waiting out the mana usage is a VALID tactic. Now if the big bad caster isn't smart enough to know he needs some additional support besides his spells that not my problem but I would expect a caster to be supports by warriors and summoned pets. So sure you can wait out his mana but then how are you going to get past the 3 CR 22 death knights and demon that the necromancer just summoned with his last bit of mana?

It's a valid tactic in paper, where you have two thinking people (I hope).

It's not a valid tactic when you are against a computer and can cause it to waste all it's mana, with no danger to you, and then go chop it down.

Because that's what people would do, find a way to get the casters to harmlessly spam spells that are not having any effect.