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These have been annoyingly common on quests, with most any ranged mob simply spamming it (randomly) and even others.

Scripted quests are meant to be a static, fun, semi-challenging thing and I feel that these have gone too far towards simply draining PCs of things (things that have become more rare as of late)

I would like to suggest that these are not made so common on your average spawn, and especially not wielded by nearly every ranged creature on a scripted quest.

I will add that there is an obvious problem with dispel checks and NPCs (something I reported twice over ages ago) with their level and the spell cast. Quite simply, NPCs have some manner of unseen advantage when it comes to dispels, and I suspect that it may be some hardcoded stuff with their ECL rather than caster level. Gippy ran some tests years ago since he noticed it as well, iirc, but results were flawed and resulted in little.

The point remains, dispel spam is probably the least effective way of making something "balanced" or fun, and is simply a drain on people. Considering the rarity of these things to players, beyond pure rogues (which is still rare), I find it a bit odd!

I second this motion.

I think it's modestly balanced as it is.

I have never encountered this. On what quests are they?

Most anoying throwable items, and seems to be used very frequently in high mob quests. (Also seems to remove most buffs which is very anoying)

I believe he speaks of Castle Vrazdn, which I saw this happen alot.  Yet, since 95% of the NPCs are archers, which is not the same at all for other quests on the server.

Them monsters have their tricks since they don't got so many pots.

I have an issue with dispel as a difficulty-increasing mechanic in general, perhaps even moreso than the occasional unfortunate double-crit Chosen death scenario. Having a low-level dispel shot at us every so often is fine, but the startling frequency with which certain ranged NPC's throw them out sometimes can be distressing. I think it's safe to say that most quests assume that a party is going to be buffed to some extent, which is fine and understandable. But there's a level of unfair frustration when you buff pre-quest, get dispelled, drink an entire round of buffing pots to make sure you're enspelled and won't die, and then get dispelled another two times and lose your things all over again. I'd rather create challenge and suspense through having more mobs or more powerful "boss" mobs than see a dozen dispels thrown at us in a single encounter.

I don't know. I guess if you really think about it, in the case of dispels, you're using your buffing potions in replacement of your healing potions. It might just be a matter of perspective; we expect to walk into a quest fully buffed by spellcasters without using many buffing potions and having to rely on trinkets/potions to heal rather than spells, so it feels more unfair when we're dispelled than when we blow through a stack of cure moderates on a harder mob. Maybe it's just the rapidness with which a dispel happens -- a bolt comes towards you and suddenly an SFX pops over your head and you're down half of your buffs. Whatever the case, I still get a bad taste in my mouth when I get dispelled, whereas getting surrounded by three gnoll fanatics and having to drink a stack of potions while fending off all of them at the same time generally leaves me with a "wow, that was close!" feeling.

Just my two cents.

They might have some, they might have none. Hasn't been much of a problem thus far for anyone to get huge supplies or levels. I don't personally feel any need to make any effort to lessen it.

I think VP meant removing them in favour of strengthening the spawns in different/more interesting ways.

Really doesn't seem like a huge deal. It would be much more difficult to balance quests against the parties with uber buffing from moderately high level casters.

They are annoying...(I would rather the dispels came from a caster casting dispel you can see to try and react to intelligently by disrupting the spell/line of sighting though)....but I believe without a better idea presented to drain PC's supplies significantly that it's already EXTREMELY easy to amass as much supplies as you want with a group of friends in a faction working together/not skimming from each other.

Maybe it's not as easy to get the high end stuff from the high end quests....but I believe it's better that way.

So I guess the only real suggestion I might throw in is to maybe reduce the frequency of these throwable dispel items from NPC's and instead have more enemies who will actually try to cast dispels so you can have your ranged PC's holding their shots until they start casting to disrupt them, more back and forth.

I don't like them.
Canzah can tell you all about how much fun it is to be stripped of Bull's Strength about eight times each quest. It can be ridiculous at times.

I can live with it, but it's not that fun, really. Just frustrating. At least with enemies casting dispel there's a skill-component: yeah, they cast dispel- but you could have counterspelled or killed them faster.

With this it's really just the luck of the draw. I like skill-based challenges better than roll-based ones.

I hate the dispels as much as the next guy when they happen, but I feel strongly that some or all should remain in the game. Dealing with dispels is a different type of skill to picking the right buffs for the right enemies, and therefore adds to the server difficulty level in an interesting way. When dispelled, you have to work out what was dispelled by reading your combat log really quickly, then decide what action needs to be taken. For a tank, that may mean the next action has to be an invisibility, followed by requisite buff pots. For a monk, it may mean rerolling a new character (I jest). Either way, it involves thinking quickly on your feet, and that particular challenge is worth keeping in the game imo.

No one likes being dispelled, but Scrappayeti is correct that in general it adds another level of complexity to NWN combat which is a good thing (how many years have we been playing this simple game?). That said, I'm not personally a big fan of the throwable type myself.... but they are a crude solution to what is actually a deeper problem, which is that unfortunately we really have supply levels messed up in this chapter. Supply bloat is not good!

Which would be fine, Scrappa, but quests don't exactly drop comparable supplies for an entire party of PCs getting dispelled multiple times over. It adds a level of difficulty not during quests but on the scope of the character as a whole.

Speaking from personal experience I've actually obtained these items when I could find them and they have worked -better- than dispel, a single disruptor able to wipe out 7+ spells in one go.

Would love to see them toned down at least. It's already been mentioned that they are quite potent, so perhaps we can make it use a lesser dispel script instead of dispel magic. Maybe make the effect an actual AOE version of either spell instead of single target? This would allow them to dispel cloud effects and such and add another layer to it :)

I like them the way they are, but I believe low magic semi-retarded goblinoid monsters have way too many of them.

Quote from: Random_White_Guy;329193Which would be fine, Scrappa, but quests don't exactly drop comparable supplies for an entire party of PCs getting dispelled multiple times over. It adds a level of difficulty not during quests but on the scope of the character as a whole.

Speaking from personal experience I've actually obtained these items when I could find them and they have worked -better- than dispel, a single disruptor able to wipe out 7+ spells in one go.

Well, to be fair-

When you do the thing you might do a lot if playing in a slow timezone, or in an evil/monstrous concept, or when you are just feeling like a fun time with a few friends what you tend to do is go on some of the harder quests with two friends, take everything apart with minimal damage taken and then split loot meant for maybe 8 people amongst yourselves.

It's still profitable, loot-wise. Highly so, in fact. At times it almost feel like Underdark supplies again where you run around with 200 potions, Naga-style.

While, like I said, I am not fond of these, I think it's more of a stop-gap measure until the next, even more awesome chapter. The End is coming, isn't it?

The End...

Speaking as someone who is fond of playing support and buffer characters, it can be just a little bit disheartening to do your best to protect and aid your party and then see your entire contribution be wiped out by a couple of darts. Recasting is not always an option as you only have so many spell slots.

As to supply bloat, I find it a little odd. Maybe there is something I am not getting, such as not having a list of the best quests to farm, but it is rare I manage to get large stacks of the most effective PvP potions -- Blur, Haste, Displacement and so forth. I think I once had a stack of ten blurs. Of the rest, I've once -- just once -- had a character who had five of each, the rest of the time I've at most had three of them, total. As to Sludge and Shadow Shield, I've never even owned any of these. *scratches head*

The people who are good at crushing quests and hoarding supplies are really good at crushing quests and hoarding supplies because they consume less and come out ahead. The rest of us just muddle through.

There's an idea, half spoken by Old Hack- Can we have them throwing dispel darts instead? Then we have a decent chance of dodging the damn things or the throwables give them a reflex throw of DC15-20.

As is, they don't really effect the higher end parties because they are mechanically strong enough that they are just running with barkskin (which they have 100 of thanks mushroom quest) and probably a strength spell, which comes in spades. (Weapon spells cannot be dispelled)

The ones who suffer most are those who are not mechanically infallible and need to quaff a lot of potions to survive quests like gnolls quest.

It's not just supplies that make bloat, the module has equipment that is just too powerful for the module for the most part, people aren't going to horde all these supplies if they aren't either skimming on their friends/groups/pooling resources(Go figure) or are a avatar of bloody vengeance that can tear through 95% of the scripted quests with no self buffing except a barkskin potion and know that the guy behind them has the healing covered. This has been me, several times becoming encumbered from too many potions because, too strong don't need to drink.

Different discussion I guess, still relevant to the conversation I think however.

I think, there should be no +1 large shields except in extremely rare and DM given exceptions, no universal saves items unless given out by a DM ( I stacked these and got like, 17/18/17 saves no joke, almost all ambient loot and base saves + feats)

It would also make using a tower shield more viable(They are currently a waste of time unless you want to use one for flavor because somehow, the best tower shield is worse then the best large shield for ambient loot I have seen) and help quell the overpowered fighter/rogue fighter/bard powerbuild by giving them 1 less AC in general.

I could write a gigantic post 10x longer then this on how I think we could fix supply bloat but it would require a massive overhaul and a lot of DM time so I will SPARE anyone who has actually read to this point.

QuoteIt's not just supplies that make bloat, the module has equipment that is just too powerful for the module for the most part, people aren't going to horde all these supplies if they aren't either skimming on their friends/groups/pooling resources(Go figure) or are a avatar of bloody vengeance that can tear through 95% of the scripted quests with no self buffing except a barkskin potion and know that the guy behind them has the healing covered. This has been me, several times becoming encumbered from too many potions because, too strong don't need to drink.

You are correct that the dispels don't particularly affect those very powerful PCs that require few buffs in the first place.

QuoteI think, there should be no +1 large shields except in extremely rare and DM given exceptions,

Not necessary, making them equal to Towers is a good thing. I consider the eradication of the stupid use of the ugly Tower Shield (except for concepts for which it makes sense of course) a success of EFU.

 

Quoteno universal saves items unless given out by a DM ( I stacked these and got like, 17/18/17 saves no joke, almost all ambient loot and base saves + feats)

Without buffs? I am skeptical. Of course the Ghula encounter was unfortunately repeatedly being farmed by players abusing various path-finding issues, but I don't believe that it is possible to get that much in the way of +universal saves.

QuoteIt would also make using a tower shield more viable(They are currently a waste of time unless you want to use one for flavor because somehow, the best tower shield is worse then the best large shield for ambient loot I have seen) and help quell the overpowered fighter/rogue fighter/bard powerbuild by giving them 1 less AC in general.

Tweaked out fighter/rogue halflings are a powerful build on EFU, but far from the only one.

EFU is hard, I think, particularly if it's played the way it's intended to be: boldly, and to the limit.

These things are nowhere near balanced for quests that are designed so that pcs require buffs to survive them.
 
Lizardmen for instance.
 
And that's fine if doing these quests is now supposed to be a tax rather than a way to get more supplies than are spent.
 
But if that wasn't the intention, I think it needs looking at.
 
Sure, the odd group can succeed while being absolutely barraged with dispels particularly if they have permanent damage resistance.
 
Rogues and archers are more valuable now as sources of damage to shut down those dispellers.
 
But in general, I think the leap in difficulty will see most groups taking big losses at this quest solely due to these things.
 
 

These throwales are just way too powerful and screw you up big time, you can't even bloack against it once the NPC has decided to throw one (line of sight etc). Even moreso when you're going a large quest like Hive/Lizards where everything is spamming them on you (very anoying on lizards because they have shaman that dispel you too). I would like to see perhaps the dispel on these remove one buff (your strongest one maybe?) and not be used as often because dispel is a game changing spell and not every npc should have access to it, if every PC was going around with these throwables it would be crazy unfair for magic based classes in particular/just the same as quests.

I have to agree. One of these things can and have wiped a character of full enchantments from a level seven cleric + temporary bonuses such as aid/bless ect... They are hideously overpowered when considered on some quests they are spammed.