Demystifying the swarms meme, by anon.

[Pink Eye]

Why can't level 1 characters collapse a cavern on a dragon while it's sleeping?

Probably don't have access to powerful enough explosives, far outside the 3d6 x10 gp starting budget, and 20d6 damage save for half is unlikely to kill said dragon anyway.

You need to read a book on military strategy before making blanket statements like this

We're talking about CRPG governed by stats and numbers, not real life. In real life for example every bandit and animal should run away when it's clear they're going to lose, but in the game they all have perfect morale and never flee unless scripted. Another example of how the game makes things unnecessarily harder. Hell, even BG 1/2 had a morale system.

Yeah. Battle Brothers was great in that regard. Having a moral system for enemies would be amazing. It doesn't make sense enemies can keep fighting, even though the odds are stacked against them.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Because video games are not PnP. A computer game is not capable of thinking of every single unorthodox that a player will come up with. Limits have to be set, in order for the game to be shipped.

Absolutely, but since the game is funneling me into scripted unavoidable combat encounters, it should make those combat encounters reasonably balanced and fair. That's the tradeoff.

 

[Pink Eye]

We're talking about CRPG governed by stats and numbers, not real life. In real life for example every bandit and animal should run away when it's clear they're going to lose, but in the game they all have perfect morale and never flee unless scripted. Another example of how the game makes things unnecessarily harder. Hell, even BG 1/2 had a morale system.

No, C&C spells and abilities are literally the application of the "defeat in detail" principle. Moral is irrelevant, so long as there is a way to temporarily deny some of your enemies the chance to fight, the principle is applicable.

>No, C&C spells and abilities are literally the application of the "defeat in detail" principle.
Huh. I never thought about C&C abilities like that.

 

[Pink Eye]

Because video games are not PnP. A computer game is not capable of thinking of every single unorthodox that a player will come up with. Limits have to be set, in order for the game to be shipped.

Absolutely, but since the game is funneling me into scripted unavoidable combat encounters, it should make those combat encounters reasonably balanced and fair. That's the tradeoff.

I have no idea what it's like on the lower difficulties, but on Unfair I always look for ways to make the game fight on my grounds. Either through forcing a choke point, performing a preemptive charge, or looking for ways to abuse the AI.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

No, C&C spells and abilities are literally the application of the "defeat in detail" principle.

We're also talking about a game system where a 20th level super hero with magic weapons could overwhelm an entire army of level 1 recruits through sheer statistical advantage.

Putting players against CR 6+ foes is simply an abuse of the system, crowd control be damned.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

We're also talking about a game system where a 20th level super hero with magic weapons could overwhelm an entire army of level 1 recruits through sheer statistical advantage.

Putting players against CR 6+ foes is simply an abuse of the system, crowd control be damned.

Because of the way critical hits work, this isn't true unless the 20th level character has damage resistance/reduction. Imagine 500 commoners all stand in a line and fire at the same character with shortbows. Every round 25 of them are expected to hit, and 1.25 are expected to critical hit. For shortbows that gives an expected value of (23.75 * 3.5) + (1.25 * 10.5) = 96.25 damage every round.

Edit: Whoops, got the math wrong. It's fixed now.

 

[Daidre]

Putting players against CR 6+ foes is simply an abuse of the system, crowd control be damned.

Now you sound exactly like Pathfinder experts from Steam forums that rant about bad russian sadistic game design that is no proper Pathfinder. Because it should not be hard for them.

I could understand critique about too much trash fights (honestly I can't, I play waay to many blobbers for this), but claim that P:K is too unfair and stat-inflated to enjoy it on certified-PnP-veteran difficulty, aka normal, is beyond me.

 

[Pink Eye]

>Now you sound exactly like Pathfinder experts from Steam forums that rant about bad russian sadistic game design that is no proper Pathfinder
Lol. Some things never change. From one place to another. Only this time we don't have Ineffect to tell us how great level 1 vivi dips are.

 

[Efe]

all im saying is if in this thread people defending swarms could say "i went back to olegs, resupplied and passed the encounter after 2-3 reloads", then there is something wrong with this encounter.
Going in with full knowledge and countermeasures shouldnt end up leaving it to rng.

 

[Pink Eye]

all im saying is if in this thread people defending swarms could say "i went back to olegs, resupplied and passed the encounter after 2-3 reloads", then there is something wrong with this encounter.
Going in with full knowledge and countermeasures shouldnt end up leaving it to rng.

The developers addressed this issue within the 1.0.2 hotfix. By notifying players specifically about the swarms and their mechanics in a very blunt way. But people kept complaining about it, which resulted in a whole redesign of the encounter. A redesign that meant more swarms and more spiders, which was worse. The first iteration wasn't even that big of a deal compared to what we have now.

Players were thrown into the deep end and forced to swim, or drown. Trial by fire as they say. The irony here is that even though swarms are now completely optional, people still perpetuate the swarm meme.

 

[Silly Germans]

As memes go, id say it is among the more accurate ones. Even the items that are supposed to counter swarms
likes flasks and torches work badly. I think it took me 4-5 reloads while my whole team was equipped with flasks
to finish that goddamn fight without anybody dying. That is not good encounter design.
Also the point that you aren't supposed to go there early on is rather contrived. It is one of the very first quests
in the game, given by one of the very first quest givers while you don't have that much else to do. That people
would try it with a low level party is not a surprise. There is no warning or any sort of indication that it might be
to hard for a starting party. I see no reason to defend this encounter, it is simply a case of bad design.

 

[Efe]

i havent seen anyone on codex whining about it since release.
dont hang out with popamole crowd pink, stay in codex

Daidre , stat inflation WAS a thing too. this thread is about release version when people didnt know where to find x item or which encounters to avoid which exacerbated the problem

 

[Daidre]

I played early versions too, even if I missed my chance to meet in person couple of wolfs that ate MCA on live stream. Those were patched out of the game on next day.

Still, among the games I played recently:
- BG 1, first wolf encountered could 1 shot MC. Worse, every kobold with the bow could one-shot MC with lucky crit.
- BG 2 - any mage could suddenly one-spell kill MC on failed save. Liches in tavern back-rooms too.
- World of Xeen, MM 7, MM 9 - stepping into the wrong dungeon or even opening the wrong chest could obliterate whole party in the second.
- Japanese Wizardry clone - random encounters range from bunch of goblins to army of demons that brutally outlevel your party and blow it up with one spell.
etc etc

So among everything P:K swarms are pretty tame, and calling any enemy too hard to deal with on low level and not telegraphed by "Mortal Danger!" signs in the game "bad design" rubs be the wrong way.
I still trying to be more about it.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

BG 1, first wolf encountered could 1 shot MC. Worse, every kobold with the bow could one-shot MC with lucky crit.
- BG 2 - every mage could suddenly one-spell kill MC on failed save. Liches in tavern back-rooms too.
- World of Xeen, MM 7, MM 9 - stepping into the wrong dungeon or even opening the wrong chest could obliterate whole party in the second.

Xeen allows full party creation from the start and free roam. The first dungeon (Dwarf mines) is piss-easy and loads you up with enough treasure to practically finish Clouds by yourself. Not to mention you can always visit Dark Side and get zillions of XP for nothing and break the game if you feel like it. The hyper challenge of later dungeons is a scaling problem; the rest of the game is so easy the only way it can challenge you at all at level 200+ is with full party wipes.

The hardest part of BG 1 was the walk across two screens to get Jaheira and Khalid, and the Skeleton Warriors in the final dungeon. Nothing else remotely approaches the munchkinized opponents of Kingmaker. The Baldur's Gate games actually followed the Monster Manual very closely.

Baldur's gate 2 starts you off with a very effective party. Solid fighter, mage, druid, and rogue who can spot every trap and unlock every door. Game is free-roam after the starter dungeon, if you get stuck you can go someplace else, you are never forced along a determined path again until *well* into the game. Nothing major has a time limit. Certain quests lock you into areas (Planar Sphere) but these are all optional and can be approached once you've prepared yourself without any time limit. Both games allow full party creation without limits. They also have a very effective and well-rounded cast of recruitable characters, unlike Kingmaker's extremely limited cast of gimmicky specialists.

Very bad comparisons, the Baldur's gate and Might and Magic games are leagues easier. Again, this is a circular argument:

"Old D&D games were just as hard."

No they were not, they didn't have time limits and they allowed free roam

"Who cares, I like that Kingmaker is harder."

Pick one argument and stick to it, stop revising history just to try to support your point.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I could understand critique about too much trash fights (honestly I can't, I play waay to many blobbers for this), but claim that P:K is too unfair and stat-inflated to enjoy it on certified-PnP-veteran difficulty, aka normal, is beyond me.

I had a DM who would put stuff like Stone Giants and Manticores in a level 1 dungeon. "You're supposed to sneak around them," he would say. Except it's just as difficult to sneak around a CR 8 monster as it is to fight one. Their base spot check will defeat a level 1 stealth roll every time. Everything is stat based, just saying "use tactics" can't overcome math.

There's no justification for a CR 2 monster to have a damage modifier of +19 with three attacks per round. That's completely insane and the system was never designed for it. Sure, there's nothing technically against the rules about pitting a group of level 1 players against an elder red dragon, but it's clearly not a reasonable challenge.

 

[LannTheStupid]

I care, you are allowed not to care. To each their own.

Well, I don't care about PnP for sure. What I do care about is that such whining might lead Owlcat to tried and tired way of dumbing down (sorry: "streamlining") the game to please the crowd. Including the PnP crowd, it seems.
As you can see, your caring is the direct opposite of mine.

 

[Efe]

Low level one hit deaths are present here as much as baldurs gate. kobolds have +0 to hit and have 9 in all attributes according to wiki... so not even a contest
you are given a quest, thus directed into this encounter. You fail once, reloa and get your bombs and acid flasks (hardcounters for swarms) but sadly they dont work as hard as they should.
i dont remember mca playing it but wolves would constantly trip you whole fight. it was pure rng to kill them before party goes down

grampy you need to dial back the edge

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I care, you are allowed not to care. To each their own.

Well, I don't care about PnP for sure. What I do care about is that such whining might lead Owlcat to tried and tired way of dumbing down (sorry: "streamlining") the game to please the crowd. Including the PnP crowd, it seems.
As you can see, your caring is the direct opposite of mine.

It's fine to like the game as a ramped-up hardcore challenge. But every other post is "it's perfectly PnP balanced" followed by "I like how unbalanced it is."

Figure out your shit people. Pick one or the other.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

kobolds have +0 to hit and have 9 in all attributes according to wiki

No way, they have levels in barbarian, alchemist, rogue, cleric, etc. Giving random kobolds class levels is another thing you're not supposed to do. PC class levels should be reserved for rare, elite opponents only.

 

[Daidre]

Very bad comparisons, the Baldur's gate and Might and Magic games are leagues easier.

No offence, but only difference is that have enough experience not to suck at BG and M&M, but not there yet with P:K.

 

[Trashos]

It was the Codex that has been bringing along the decline all along.

 

[Efe]

baldurs gate kobolds are 9 stat, +0 to hit.
what are the stats for wolves/cats after tutorial (or oleg bandits)?
Grampy_Bone i think you misunderstood my post

 

[Pink Eye]

baldurs gate kobolds are 9 stat, +0 to hit.
what are the stats for wolves/cats after tutorial (or oleg bandits)?
Grampy_Bone i think you misunderstood my post

>what are the stats for wolves/cats after tutorial (or oleg bandits)?
Depends on the difficulty modifier. Since I only play on Unfair they have ridiculous stats. However, the developers have given the player the option to configure enemy state to reflect the pnp stats.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Very bad comparisons, the Baldur's gate and Might and Magic games are leagues easier.

No offence, but only difference is that have enough experience not suck at BG and M&M, but not there yet with P:K.

There we have the standard "you suck at the game" non-reply. Insisting all complaints are invalid due to low skill is a non-sequitur. I can be good at the game and still think it's badly designed.

Hey guess what? I made it through all the fights up to Season of Bloom before I lost due to the kingdom management game. I had no issue with the swarms or the wolves. The Stag Lord was annoying as fuck but I beat him, and the troll boss was no sweat. I cleared the entire map of super-hydras and whatnot without resting. I cleared the map of greater wisps and their chain-lightning spam. Just cast protection from elements, then recast every round because the wisps will blow through it pretty fast, then rest after every fight to get your spells back. Easy, but lame. A possible fight is not the same as a balanced one.

AFAIK, the kingdom is scripted to fall into anarchy in chapters 2-3 no matter what you do, putting a huge penalty on all the kingdom rolls. I didn't save-scum advisers so I started losing checks in Chapter 3 and it caused a failure cascade ending the game. I could have gone back and replayed the chapter but I wasn't having fun with the combat so why bother. I know later they added the option to never fail the kingdom but my backlog is too long to bother with bad games.

 

[Pink Eye]

It was the Codex that has been bringing along the decline all along.

I want more enemies like Lichs from Baldur's Gate 2. I want a harder difficulty than Unfair. If the difficulty is too much, then people have the option to configure the settings to match their preference. Just as how I have the option to make the experience as brutal as I want. I am STILL pissed about them removing the wolves from the very first encounter after the prologue area, by the way.