AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic - Remove +20 AC bonus vs dragon type monsters from enemies

Last edited by Commie on Fri, May 05 2017, 21:37 PM, edited 1 time in total.

Several Amia bosses simply have an arbitrary +20 AC against creatures with the dragon-race. This was done in 2008 (I believe) as the DM team at the time did not want players with EDK soloing bosses.

This is no longer needed. Almost anyone can solo bosses, unless you rely on an EDK or, more importantly, have the 'dragon shape' feat. It also fucks over special-race characters that have the dragon race. It is also not global, only some bosses possess the offending bonus AC. Snowbeast, Mindflayer, darkness (I believe), and the new Duergar boss which as far as I can tell is a copy/paste of the mindflayer boss/area. Quite simply, there is no need for this. Mummy dust can solo bosses just fine and Kilmar can do them with Summon Monster IX and some support spells, rendering the point of the knee-jerk +20 ac balance band-aid useless.

Either apply the +20 AC to all summons for parity (not recommended), or remove it from all bosses as its a questionable 'band aid' relic that was never needed in the first place (recommended), as a properly built melee/caster can just solo everything, and I bet they could in 2008 as well.

It's a leftover from an earlier age and served no purpose, defiantly no longer serving its 'intended' purpose.

edit; it is at least +20 ac. Proof. I miss on a 75 as a dragon and the animal companion hits on a 56.

I actually agree, because For example my Wizard focuses completely on summoning a dragon and buffing it. And it would be a lot stronger if I swapped and took EMd and buffed it. And that seems pretty srupid. Why is EDK the stronger summon, but nerfed artificially?

Also, with Half-Dragons afaik getting the dragon race, it pretty much screws them over. And it seems pretty pointless. If you need bosses stronger, make them stronger, not just against certain builds...

No, the dm's at the time didn't want people with EDK soloing some bosses. Some DM's still don't want people using EDK (EDK specifically, other summons aren't an issue) to solo bosses.

Amarice-Elaraliel wrote:

Yes it was intentional and made many years ago (before my time as a DM) when people used to just hide behind their EDK and solo all bosses in dragon shape.

So certain bosses (two come to my mind atm) were given a +10 AC vs. Dragon.

Uberuce wrote:

The Mindflayer/Duergar, Snowbeast and Darkness were all made before the EDK(and many other epic summons) were nerfed in 2007 or something silly like that. This was also when the only Epic Mummy Dust was the Pharaoh Sentinel* and the Black Blade of Disaster was invulnerable and Vorpal-ish but had no AB worth dick.

Back then, all you had to do to stomp any boss was have an EDK, watch it fuck the boss up with 50+AB, and feed it no-cooldown Heal potions.

Shifters were still in their default NWN mode, give or take, so were almost unheard of.

I actually can't remember giving the aforementioned bosses +lots AC vs Dragon, but it's exactly the sort of thing I'd do, given the circumstances.

*Still think it's bullshit that EMD was opened up to non-undead.

Commie wrote:

can this be changed?

Maverick00053 wrote:

Probably not. Not till there is a better solution. EDK is a bit much when it comes to boss running without the penalty, but I do think the flat +20 AC was a bit much as well.

So it's intended and can't be changed as DM's don't want people killing bosses with EDK. Just mummy dust or other summons.

I think that's a really bad balance feature that's internally inconsistent (not on all bosses only some and randomly, and you can solo bosses w/o edk and with just level 9 spells/summons/EMD no problem) and it needs to go. It was made on server 2007 balance that is no longer remotely applicable.

It seems like to me a good step, if not agreeable middle ground, is to reduce the bonus vs dragons. The point of the bonuses as it was put forward is to keep EDK from shitstomping bosses. Cool. That makes sense. But that doesnt mean that EDK should be completely useless vs bosses. They should be just as usuable as say mummy dust, no more and no less. A +20 AC bonus, the highest possible bonus you can mechanically have against a race/alignment/etc, seems knee jerk and overkill. The problem is or was "EDK is too strong against bosses" and the implimented solution was "make EDK is virtually unsuable against bosses."

I would highly encourage the devs to sit down and figure out something that is fair and works for the summon. Especially if it is having the side effect of screwing over PCs(dragonshape) when the professed reason for the bonus is only to balance EDK.

Hell, half-dragons are screwed over. Have fun doing any bosses.

I don't know if it even is neccessary. If EDK is so OP, why not nerf it, instead of raising defenses?
I'd just be careful, since EDK should be more powerful than EMD. I mean, EDK pretty much requires you to take four feats to make it worth it. I mean, very few characters will have any other effect of ESF Conj. For that reason, I'd say it should be better than mummy dust. Mummy dust lasts for ages, can be used with a more useful spell focus, and requires less effort to get it. And it doesn't metagame your alignment. (Well, unless you go outsider)

Edk isn't what it used to be. It's only slightly better then EMD vs bosses (because 1/2 the bosses on the server don't have the random +20 ac newbie trap bonus ac, so this can be tested), which is fine as it's on a shorter duration summon and less versatile as a feat.

Additionally every class that can summon the thing can kill those bosses with just base spells pre-30 and a base non-augmented summon monster ix or bbod.

So if they don't want players doing bosses, this isn't the way to do it, it's just arbitrary and needs to go.

As far as I know half-dragons don't get a dragon template sooo they don't get screwed. But even if they do get a template, it would be half-dragon which means they wouldn't get screwed still?

As far as monster balance goes, I save that for the guys who know what they are doing, so idk on the change.

Naivatkal wrote:

As far as I know half-dragons don't get a dragon template sooo they don't get screwed.

I assume they are screwed based on this;

Maverick00053 wrote:

Yeah it is +20. I found that out the hard way with Levy, and proceeded to go wtf.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=85361

Stormwind did, and I assume others do too. Again, the typical 'I get the downsides, but zero bonuses'. Same with Undead. I mean, I'm not saying they should get everything they should get, but they only get negatives, and no bonuses from that special race.

You know, I remember reading Mav saying that now, my bad haha. TBH I don't see why they do, if they get nothing from it (maybe the do? idk, can't be arsed to check it out right now).

I'm still totally against Undead PCs, so Undead templates being applied and getting negatives from it is a-okay with me. Different topic, though.

Well, to be completely honest here, the idea of having "bosses" that drop epic loot is a new one on me ala Amia. Not one other server ever had a system with which to gain endgame gear automatically. It was always DM granted, and you didn't get to choose. I do on some level believe the bosshunting and availability of said epic gear is a fundamental problem with the growing need or fear that all builds must conform to a certain standard. Sure PVP adds to this as well, but the measuring stick seems to still be bosshunting. Having that mentality ingrained into the entirety of Amian culture has fostered a lot of competition among builds, yet in no way has it ever added to roleplay. Is it coincidence that I've played on 6 different servers now, some for years, and Amia is the only one that has the powerbuild issues we have, has the toxic culture we have, and... has bosses.

I don't really care what gets done as long as its uniform and internally consistent with the other bosses.

and like, not specific only to dragons because that's dumb

I can't help but find this amusing since the changes were made in 2008 and no one noticed until 2017.

They've been noticed. Its just that until recently pointing this kind of thing out in public was poor form.

It still might be, I'm just kind of over it.

I learned how to use the toolset and now know most of this stuff is about a 4 minute fix. So I mean, I'm just going to start making topics about stuff.

Commie wrote:

They've been noticed. Its just that until recently pointing this kind of thing out in public was poor form.

It still might be, I'm just kind of over it.

I learned how to use the toolset and now know most of this stuff is about a 4 minute fix. So I mean, I'm just going to start making topics about stuff.

+1 and best of luck to you!

Commie wrote:

I learned how to use the toolset and now know most of this stuff is about a 4 minute fix. So I mean, I'm just going to start making topics about stuff.

Thats 3 minutes to load the toolset and one minute to actually fix it, right? :lol:

Quote:

Is it coincidence that I've played on 6 different servers now, some for years, and Amia is the only one that has the powerbuild issues we have, has the toxic culture we have, and... has bosses.

yes, because you have very muhc not had your eyes and ears open enoguh if you think amia is the only server with issues.

re: this topic - i don't particularly care if your build can or can't solo a +5 boss, i explicitly do not care about balance when i design them beyond 'are these ACTUALLY completeable', ergo i do not really care if a dragonshaper has issues soloing a particular boss, or if EDK has issues soloing a particular boss. i consider this about a zero on the priority list.

So, Tormak, in theory, you would also be against adding this for any new bosses that are added/remade?

TormakSaber wrote:

ergo i do not really care if a dragonshaper has issues soloing a particular boss, or if EDK has issues soloing a particular boss. i consider this about a zero on the priority list.

Just so I know here

Fixing this, or making it constant across all +5's involves;

Opening an ftp client or whatever
Downloading the relevant parts of the module
Opening that
Saving a pre-revision of the module in case you have to revert to backup and dating it with a note (such as "amia5-6-17_pre_commie's_bitching_about_dragon-ac_bossfix.apk")
Going to the +5 bosses that have this (or don't if you want to make it uniform) so about 4-6 mobs tops
Deleting +20 vs dragon on each one's armor or whereever it is
Save
Upload pre-revision and revision.

That's like 6-10 minutes of work, most of the time will be in waiting on the builder or downloading/uploading. But you think it's a waste of time?

I'm not being sarcastic here, I just want to know for sure that I have the process for fixing this actually right, and updating <10 mobs isn't like some monumental undertaking, so I know I'm not asking for some super-huge amount of work here when I ask for this to be changed. I simply assumed it's a quick fix, but you say it's a waste of time. I don't want to waste dev hours, but I just assumed this is a quick fix and want to be sure I'm right before I keep asking for it.

They could also make it so that other summons receive the same treatment, so that casters stop being the mother of all tanks / damagers / on top of being the core-essential buffers and a one-man army.

I agree the way it was implemented is a bit funny (should have just straight up nerf the summons), but I don't think making casters even stronger than they are is a good investment of time (even if little and only in pvm). Even though the current situation makes little to no sense in its implementation, the end result is you can't sit back and look at omega-dragon beating the crap out of every single dungeon by itself while the casters sips a cup of tea in the back (they can already do that with mummy dust, actually).

So, in my opinion, while it might not take that long to fix, it is not a fix that really even needs to happen. Casters have 10000000 toys to ruin the game already, they don't need their old one back.

robbi320 wrote:

So, Tormak, in theory, you would also be against adding this for any new bosses that are added/remade?

I don't add this to new bosses when I make them, no. The duergar has it because he is a complete copy reskin of the Mindflayer boss, otherwise he wouldn't have it either.

This was not just made because of the EDK, but also because of Dragon Shape and how it easily solo'd every single boss on the entire server.

Amarice-Elaraliel wrote:

This was not just made because of the EDK, but also because of Dragon Shape and how it easily solo'd every single boss on the entire server.

If that's the case then that's fine, but it should be like +10 vs dragon not +20, to give them an edge not a shield (if you legit feel bosses need an edge against some builds/feats), and applied universally to all bosses not sporadically to only three (4?) bosses.

Also I have a far easier time soloing bosses on my WM then I do on my EDK/dragon characters. They just tear bosses apart with 16-20x5 or 12-20x4 crits and 55+ ab. EDK and Dragon Shape can't touch that. If you want to prevent farming of bosses, consider more 'global' boss buffs.

In general I totally support making bosses much harder across the board.

Not saying I heavily support it. Just quoting the reasoning that was given way back then!

Amarice-Elaraliel wrote:

Not saying I heavily support it. Just quoting the reasoning that was given way back then!

I don't want people to get the wrong message here. What bothers me about this is the lack of consistency and somewhat arbitrary nature of the thing, in 2017, not that it borks one of my characters.

Its not that I can't do some bosses (I mean I can do them anyway, but I also solo'd them at like level 23 and onwards as part of my grinding path cause I powerbuild like crazy) it's just like, so odd, to still be there, and only on some things, when it (I feel) no longer needs to be. Or if it does, should be global.

Yeah the server is much different than back then.

Certain classes still can solo every single boss, mostly melee clerics and wizards/sorcerers with some boom magic.

That said I do not mind a bonus vs dragons if said creature has a specific reason to have a bonus against dragons. The snowbeast comes first to my mind there that took over the layer of a white dragon which could make into a cool story of how that may have affected it.

Anyways, this might become redundant if Tormak still wants to do his boss-project!

Remove +20 AC bonus vs dragon type monsters from enemies

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