No other class but a fighter!
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This is true, as the DMs have said before. No quest -needs- a class to complete. If it does, it's a bug that should be reported. Rouge's do in fact do a good job at scouting, and if a fighter wants to run on ahead, it is in fact their fault. Probably bring it up in character, something along the lines of "I'm taking a cut out of your pay for every item you potentially damage when I have the skills to retrieve it safely."
I think the DMs have the right to punish said players who just run through an entire quest, bashing down every door, trap, and container in their path since IC, you should go through a quest as it is your first time. Doing a quest over and over does not give you the right to use OOC knowledge and meta-game the entire thing. I'm pretty sure there are a few DMs out there who do punish people like this already.
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I like when threads evolve, and not stoically stay on topic. That's when you get the best discussion.
Undead Lemon Knight is saying nothing but (hard) truths. Squishies are probably the easiest thing you could play: if you're terrible, all you have to do is buff and stay out of trouble. If you're not you can start mixing in damage spells and disables and get creative. You end up as a class that takes none of the risk in a quest, yet reaps a full share of loot. Sounds awesome to me. Every word he said in this thread about everything is true.
Veterans rarely play squishy characters, like pure casters, on EfU - though sometimes they do. This is often because they are so much safer to play and are absolutely terrifying in PVP. Wizards also have to use pretty much no consumables, unlike fighters, so they amass hideous amounts of gold. Squishy pure casters are awesome. Just play safer and cultivate friendships IG so that when you are injured, there are PCs that WANT to keep you alive. Did I mention squishy pure casters are next to ungankable?
Also whoever said that scouts needs to scout faster is speaking the truth as well. If you're going to tell me to "wait here five minutes" and then come back with a report that says "more orcs" then I'd really rather you didn't. I've seen efficient scouts. They scout while you're roleplaying or healing up. They do it quietly and extremely quickly and they give very useful reports in a concise manner. Scout smarter, not harder.
I try to always take a rogue because I hate dying to traps, though it's not always possible to find one who doesn't make me wait ten billion years to scout. If you can't scout while we're talking, picking up loot and healing you might as well not scout and just focus on living and dealing damage.
Here's a link to my awesome post on how not to die as a wizard:
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did you even read the entire thred Jasede?
I love it how you say casters are safer to play when it is obvious you have naver played one. a caster is not easy and never will be because if the caster get's hit he is dead… end of story, no more pulse, dead.
I would love to say it is safe but with fighters who don't use the tactics to draw agrow on the sever (aka all of them) then it is hard to stay safe when there are monsters who can one shot you running at you as they disengae from all four fighters who all missed there AoO on the monster some how.
there is no such thing as a safe character to play on a sight that involves dungeon crawlling and you can say things all you want about how to make it safe, but that doesn't mean it truly is safe and that everyone does them.
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So you think I never played a caster in, what, six years of NWN, not to mention working my ass off to keep them alive when they yet again plink their crossbow at some ogre they can't hit anyway, breaking their invisibility?
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I don't know.. I play virtually nothing but squishy characters and yet I manage to get decent levels, don't die in single hits, and don't have all that much issue with the AI as it is. Sure sometimes we get targetted, but then so does everyone else.
It all comes down to -you- playing smart/safe or whatever. If you're being reckless - expect to die. Carry invis potions, carry a wand. Hell - make yourself scrolls. Is this an end all to not dying? No - having a good party to support you is.
I often get told ICly - STAY INVISIBLE. And then asked at certain points "Can you target that group with a fireball, then run back down the hall or go invisible again."
Play a little smart eh? ;) Or don't. But at the end of the day, you die or don't. Sometimes it's the npcs getting lucky, sometimes it's them being smart, and sometimes it's players being not smart mechanically.
(And as a player who utterly SUCKS at mechanics - I don't die that much when I play smart.)
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Umm, saying one class is easier to play then another is entirely opinion based. There's no such thing as one class out doing another in all aspects. Any creature with high spell immunity will pwn a wizard, any creature with crit immune will pwn a rouge, and any creature with death vs will save spells will pwn a fighter.
I thought we were going back on topic here. xD
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Fair enough. What I meant was this:
In my experience, it is much easier to survive as a caster than as a frontline character. A few reasons for that: no risk of getting chain-critted, no need to trigger traps, can invisible, lots of AC buffs, no need to draw enemies, can stay behind or sneak.
I was a little drunk when I wrote my original post.
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I've had a lot of complaints about the AI, but from what I've seen most of the concerns I've had with them have been fixed.
At one point, I was actually genuinely confused why people would play a character who actually used a shield. The AI never targeted you because anyone else hitting them who didn't use a shield would inevitably be targeted as soon as they walked up, and then you're just dealing less damage while the rest of your party gets beat up. This is, from what I have seen, no longer the case most of the time. Characters who engage enemies first (Who should be the sword and board types, but don't always have to be) hold aggro fairly decently now. If they switch to me every once in a while, that's fine because it means I'm not completely safe during a quest and still have to be careful. The most common occurrences of the AI explicitly targeting casters/squishies comes from the very beginning of fights. It's the same principle I apply to my own game sense, but in the PC's case I think there are considerably more ways to avoid the enemies whether it be with invisibility, simply running in circles or any of the numerous methods mentioned in this thread.
If you've played any kind of competitive online game, you know what a metagame is in relation to a game. It's an evolving thing, that changes depending on the obstacles you have to face. Arabel has the same type of flow (But backwards, since the DM's create adventure FOR the PC's that are currently playing,) from what I've seen. It is heavily dependent on what the "Cool Kids" are playing, because typically these people have the most experience surviving on the server, and are looked up to because they are able to obtain the high levels required to be relevant when it comes to major plot conflicts. This is why I don't like it when DM's actively try to kill the high level PC's (Looking at whoever spiced that gypsy quest and ended up killing Chester six times instead of their intended target even once. Shame on you.) It gives people something to look up to, to strive for instead of being content at sitting at level six and doing the 1-6 quests over and over.
The point that I'm trying to make is that it's okay to complain about the AI, but at the same time you should take into consideration the advice of the people who are good at surviving on this server. These threads do neither, since it just turns into bickering between the 'AI is broken' side, and the 'You just need to play smarter' side. I belonged for a considerable time (In this game and when it came to the aforementioned online games) to the former, before I was convinced to join the latter side. Since then, my 'safe' level, the one which I feel most comfortable at has jumped two levels up.
tl;dr Listen to the people who give advice, they are the ones who are good at surviving, and learning from them is more productive than insisting the AI is broken and refusing to change the way you play.
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I don't think anyone's arguing here that you can't survive as a squishy, or that it's hard or easy, or whatever. The problem doesn't come from the squishy being at the head of the pack and the enemy sighting him first, the problem, as stated several times already, stems from all the fighters engaging, the mage sitting in back, literally hasn't attacked anything yet with any means, then the bad guys fighting your fighters suddenly run, provoke AOO from everyone, and go straight for the caster.
Taking advice from people who survive as squishies is a good thing. But you should -NOT- need advice on how to survive as a squishy against this kind of AI behavior as it's completely bogus.
Translated into advice, instead of it being a proper "This is how you survive if you find yourself distant from the party or you're walking along and suddenly get targeted." Instead, it's "When the fighters attack, the enemy is going to engage them, then suddenly suicide rush at you. This is how you survive that tactic." The problem being that, that shouldn't be a tactic in the first place…
In other words: You're giving them advice how to play against a machine, rather than a real monster.
AI can only go so far, and unless a DM is controlling every PC we'll never have a 100% accurate monster reaction attitude, so we're just gunna have to learn how to deal with it. Can we get back on topic please? Or better yet, since I've asked at least three times and am getting ignored, just lock down this thread due to the fact that nobody wants to actually talk about the topic?
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@Swifty:
I don't think anyone's arguing here that you can't survive as a squishy, or that it's hard or easy, or whatever. The problem doesn't come from the squishy being at the head of the pack and the enemy sighting him first, the problem, as stated several times already, stems from all the fighters engaging, the mage sitting in back, literally hasn't attacked anything yet with any means, then the bad guys fighting your fighters suddenly run, provoke AOO from everyone, and go straight for the caster.
…snip....
Actually, the point of this post was to point out that the majority of quests are, in the original posters opinion, designed to make it to easy to exclude support classes. But by page 5 it's just a bunch of ranting and rambling
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…. It is heavily dependent on what the "Cool Kids" are playing, because typically these people have the most experience surviving on the server, and are looked up to because they are able to obtain the high levels required to be relevant when it comes to major plot conflicts. This is why I don't like it when DM's actively try to kill the high level PC's (Looking at whoever spiced that gypsy quest and ended up killing Chester six times instead of their intended target even once. Shame on you.) It gives people something to look up to, to strive for instead of being content at sitting at level six and doing the 1-6 quests over and over..
Utterly and completely against what CoA is about, as far as my understanding of whats been said for the last decade.
Plot conflict relevancy has little to do with "high levels". -
Stop talking about the AI here.