Champs and their added damage, etc.

[losian2]

So, with Reaper now as another level of 'challenge', I think it's time to cool it a little with the champs. Hard is a snooze fest for even a moderately geared character, while Elite is a kick in the teeth.. and it's mostly just the champs.

Being one-shotted is *not* difficulty, it's lame. I am more than happy with foes who possess greater strength at random - the idea of champions is fine, and reapers even.

But at level 5 they should not hit for 80+ damage.. or have 30+ damage added on every hit. This stuff *needs to scale* properly.

Another issue is that the damage-on-hit seems to apply to everything, so suddenly a champ in a level 3 quest with a CR5+ would add 90+ damage on a single magic missile, or area spells, or whatever.

The added damage needs saves, it needs to be scalable, and it needs to be remotely reasonable. Champions should require extra finesse, but oddly the answer is the same as always - kite them or play a build that's so ridiculously strong you can ignore them. The only ones this stuff adds "challenge" for is people playing characters who aren't supertanks, reflex evasion splashes, warlocks, or the current flavor of the month of monkcher/shuricannon/etc. who can just kill anything at range with complete impunity. Why don't some champions actually challenge or punish characters who stay at range and are forever free from most all game mechanics anyways? :| It's just the up-close characters, the non-"ideal" builds that take the hit here.

Even out the difficulty between hard and elite, that's long past overdue, let Reaper be the kick in the teeth if that's what people really want. But as is R1 is barely a sneeze harder than Elite, the only annoyance is the lockout penalty really. Champions are a thousand times more dangerous than reapers, and that's pretty silly.

[Hutoth]

Whereas I am enjoying the champs and low reapers, and the axe I'd grind is about the nonsensical stealth mechanics right now. But that's off-topic. So...

I do support the idea of a mechanic that would make the choice between melee and ranged less clear-cut. But that's cause I stubbornly play melee on my non-casters. My impression is that a more clever response to ranged assaults would be a great nice-to-have. E.g. Chance (increasing with diff) for mobs hit with ranged attacks to proc a "ranged shield" that gives a BIG PR bonus vs incoming missile damage, but which would also reduce attack speed of that mob. This to represent them actually pulling out a shield to block all those dang arrows.

Anyway - sorry I keep going off topic: I like the champs - they make elite feel more elite. And low reapers are a little bit harder than that, and give a teeny bit of reaper XP.

TLDR: Go hard.