Serious Reaper difficulty idea

[TheAlicornSage]

I don't do much reaper myself, but I've seen a lot of people wanting harder reaper difficulty, including some ideas that seem more of a joke.

SO here is my baseline idea for reaper difficulty, and yes it is intended that no one actually plays R10, and that if anyone ever does the devs can use that as a sign they screwed up somewhere.

So, the idea is that since reaper is for every quest, to basically make it so each skull of reaper is +5 levels to the quest lvl. So a lvl 1 quest on reaper 2 is now lvl 11. Obviously, r10 is +50 lvls, and if people are beating quests at that point, then something is wrong. Partly, this lets reaper be enjoyed a little bit while still at heroic levels since players can't normally do quests more than their lvl+4.

That is just the baseline, and all the lvl based stuff scales accordingly, such as save DCs and such.

Additionally, Each skull of reaper adds 5 resistance to everything including DR 5/-. This stacks with any existing resistances. If a creature has a weakness, this resistance is halved (for double dmg weakness) or cut by 2/3s (for triple dmg weakness) and applied after the dmg is multiplied.

Enemy spell dmg has the max CL (caster level) cap increased by 5 for each reaper skull. Casters above level 50 no longer suffer such CL caps.

Higher levels are also more likely to have special senses, such as scent (not sure if this is actually in game or not), see invisibility, and true sight.

HP is increased logarithmic increasing multiplier.

Reaper skulls * 20% chance to have the champion types added (like skyborn and such) in addition to the hard difficulty chances, and can even have two types added and stacking (at first this the monsters that would normally have champion plus also gaining title from reaper mode). Eventually every monster is a champion (at reaper 5), and at reaper 10, every monster has two champion buffs, with bosses having two tier 3champion titles. (obviously, some titles are incompatible, such as chaos and order themes).

Additionally, in reaper mode, all rez shrines are removed and players can only come back to life if party members use spells (or cakes). There is a limit to the number of times a player can be rezzed equal to 10-the number of skulls, which means that in r10, no rezzing at all. Additionally, the death penalties last for the entire duration in the quest and do not get removed until leaving the quest.

Well, these are just some basic ideas I'd start off with. What do you guys think?

[Aelonwy]

I'm curious, what did you think of my suggestion then? It adds difficulty yet does not make the easier difficulties harder, instead it just drastically increases the scale from being as easy as the non-reaper is now to so difficult that no one can run r10.

Just looked at it now. I really don't know what to say. I don't like Reaper, I'm not the best judge of what should happen in Reaper. I may have initially miss-clicked on this thread^ (that the quote is from) while drinking my morning coffee. I think I have 6 reaper points on one character where my friends have dragged me along less than happily to be their glorified cleric hireling and a couple here and there on other characters where my hubby has wanted to "test his character's metal" so to speak and I was along for the ride, sometimes crash course. Frankly, I think if they hadn't put benefits in it that applied outside Reaper... far less people would have adopted it as the standard difficulty.

Would there have been bragging rights players? Heck yeah just look at the Leader Boards of HC. Good on them. Would PuGs and newer/undergeared players be pushed/pulled/dragged into Reaper? Not as much. If Reaper were strictly for bragging rights, I think your idea would probably work. But as it is, Reaper is another power-grind creating more power disparity between those with oodles of game time, leisure time, and money and those without.

In that respect I don't know how your idea would work without changing the paradigm of Reaper.

[Epicsoul]

I don't agree with most of your ideas. Why? When I think of content being harder, I don't immediately think of monsters doing more damage and being more resilient. While that is a small piece, I enjoy strategically difficult situations, like the kind vengeance or despair reapers introduce. There should be more of that introduced in higher tired reapers.

[Epicsoul]

Additionally, in reaper mode, all rez shrines are removed and players can only come back to life if party members use spells (or cakes). There is a limit to the number of times a player can be rezzed equal to 10-the number of skulls, which means that in r10, no rezzing at all. Additionally, the death penalties last for the entire duration in the quest and do not get removed until leaving the quest.

Well, these are just some basic ideas I'd start off with. What do you guys think?

I do like this idea, except completing a quest allows folks to Rez at the end and excluding raids, however.

[TheAlicornSage]

I don't agree with most of your ideas. Why? When I think of content being harder, I don't immediately think of monsters doing more damage and being more resilient. While that is a small piece, I enjoy strategically difficult situations, like the kind vengeance or despair reapers introduce. There should be more of that introduced in higher tired reapers.

Well, I certainly won't turn down that method of greater difficulty, but I'm not sure how that is incompatible with my idea.

[rabidfox]

The various HC champs being added to spawn list as the skulls ramp up would be one thing I wouldn't mind seeing; they'd add bit more variety to the fights.

[TheAlicornSage]

The various HC champs being added to spawn list as the skulls ramp up would be one thing I wouldn't mind seeing; they'd add bit more variety to the fights.

Certainly, of course the idea of champions is something easy to expand upon, imagine champion types including various new abilities such as greater invisibility, or blinking from one place to another, or other abilities that change how they fundementally fight.