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[old man rant]

I really, really wish mob saves would be re-balanced endgame. Almost everything you run into is going to have very high 30s (or more) saves in every category, regardless if the monster is obviously a mage-type, warrior-type, or finesse-type. It's silly and frustrating to characters reliant on DCs that every single mob in endgame content is in "only fails on a 1 territory." I'm not just talking about mages and clerics, I'm talking about entire characters devoted to a playstyle like assassins and monks (of which, I've built and played both). It's irritating beyond belief to make characters that literally cannot be built better to make the most use of a capstone mechanic (assassin widgets, stun fists/quivering palms) and to attempt to justify their existence by using those abilities only to be met with every single monster you hit them with and see "X save +40something." I'm not talking about poorly-built characters here either, I'm talking about characters that have been built from the floor on up to "be the best at" these mechanics and having a DC higher is simply impossible.

I can understand a big, brawny tough warrior-type endgame monster having a fort save in the range of 35-40, but it's not just them, it's every monster. When you hit something that spends every round casting high-level mage spells with a stunning fist and see a fort save higher than most PC con-based barbarians, it makes you wonder why in the world you ever bothered trying to make the world's best assassin or most-skilled fist fighter since it literally is a waste of not only your character, but time.

I lost interest in my assassin simply because I felt in terms of PvE the widget could be entirely ignored. It didn't matter, no matter what save I tried to employ it was almost always "fail only on a 1 territory" against monsters suitable to her content. Currently, I'm playing a wisdom-based monk who's gotten a ton of stunning fists and quivering palm under his belt and they sit there largely unused every outting. Why? Because clicking them ends up with the same result everytime, "Oh look, nothing happened. *scrolls up* Yep, fail on a 1 territory again."

I'm not talking about bosses here or even monsters which obviously should have a high save in a particular catagory. I'm talking all endgame monsters who have absurd saves in all categories. There's no excuse for a mage-type or finesse-type monster to have a fort save of 38 or a brawny warrior brute-type monster to have reflex saves of 35. Yard-trash shouldn't have saves rivaling a charisma-based paladin sporting fully mythalled epic gear, it just makes characters that blew feats and resources to get good at a thing feel like they'd have been better off not blowing all them feats on focii or building an assassin or unarmed monk.

[/old man rant]

Before PvE can be balanced, the classes would have to get balanced in between themselves. It all start with how disables work in the game, but I reckon it's too huge of a task for the DM's to ever bother with. As it stands now, any disable is kind of broken, and so is insta deaths

I had the same problem with my Evocation mage, i simply gave up on him at lvl 30 when it became apparent that half my Evocation spells wont even work , and he has Epic spell pen, epic spell focus evocation and 42 Intel !
Ended up having to Dominate monsters/undead , bufing em up combining that with other summons and me just hiding.
While i understand that the old days of Wailing past entire mobs of gaints shouldent return its kinda the other way around now.

I often found the saves silly. In a lot of monster groups there are varied types of people, Rogues, Fighters, Casters. I think when these groups appear the saves are more obvious. Fort save spells wont work on the Fighter, Will saves won't work on the caster, and Reflex wont work on the Rogue. I like that, personally. What starts to get to me is well prime example would be the snow beast (If that is even still a thing) where it has weakness to fire.. while also having i think a 42 reflex save AND evasion. No, i do not want to return to the days of insta killing the Snow Beast with Flame Arrow, but a spell's DC can be factored for in most builds. I've played with the idea of a creature's high save being say 34. A 34 save means that if a caster with 40 int uses a 9th lvl spell, and they are not focused in that school, there is only a 5% chance to fail. Now if that caster happens to be an Evocation Focused, now they have a shot. Someone talked about Wail Spamming away hordes of giants, there are a lot of giants, and if every group failed all there saves, my mage could clear 8 groups before being spent. But a Giant is a high fort creature, so would likely have 34 fort, and thus a normal mage could not do that, while a Necromancer might be able to.

Personally i can not stand creatures balanced in such a way that spells have no effect at all, no chance. The abyss is a good example, i get that these are creatures that are resistant to some energy, but they are not immune. Yet here, the only energy that affects them from a mage pov is Sonic, Negative and Magical. Instead of 100% immunity, why not say 75%? It is still a bad idea to throw Ice Storms at them, but if you really wanted to force it, it would have a minor effect. With the Snowbeast, why give it both 42 reflex AND Evasion? I am going to guess because Flame Arrow is friggin amazing, so why not just give it fire resistance 50%? Let the spell have some effect, while not being the most economical choice.

Really what it all comes down to is letting spells have some sort of impact, instead of making whole schools of magic useless. I don't want to see Evo Mages blasting their way through the abyss, but i would like to see them be able to have a minor impact with their chosen school. Even then, in the case of the abyss, it would be in their interest to think outside their focus.

But rebalancing this stuff is a huge project, so i've not bothered to bring it up in the past. Always ends in "Mages OP, no buffs for you" anyway.

Playing a character entirely reliant on DCs both in the past and now again as he got pulled out of mothball, I find that spells go trough more often than not on powerful creatures and end level monsters, because from what I've noticed, they tend to lack X fort/ref/will if another's extremely high etc. Just don't expect your one trick pony to work on all of them, but rather a few of them. Helps to have multiple "tricks" in your bag and the ability to make high DC vs save stuff against at least 2 different save types.

This has been on my mind for a while, though monster balance has fallen way onto the back burner. I'm not even sure who would be "that guy" who handles it for us now.

My idea for making endgame somewhat more enjoyable for all builds was to specialize saves. So often our mobs are balanced purely off of dialing up raw Reflex, Fortitude, and Will. However, just like equipment can have Saves vs X, so can creature hides and so on. Maybe instead of having every mob have 30's and 40's vs all saves, they have 20's, but say +10 vs Fire, or Cold, or whatever have you. It's a middle ground between simply having lower or higher saves on mobs. If you're an Evoker, maybe your Delayed Fireball won't be much use in one particular place, but switching out to things like Chain Lightning might get you through. Changing your setup based upon what you're up against used to be a cornerstone of how our PvM worked.

The same idea can and should be applied to Necromancy(Wail) and Dev Crit. Instead of just dialing up the Fortitude to 38 to because we're afraid someone will Wail them to death(or alternatively Dev Crit them), focus on Saves vs Death, both positive and negative. If we want a mob to be resistant to Wail but able to be Dev Crit'ed a bit easier, give it moderate Fortitude, but a high dose of Saves vs Death. If we want a mob to shrug off Dev, but still be weak to spells, give it high fortitude but a penalty to Saves vs Death. Then mix these creatures into the same spawns. Okay, your Wail killed the 3 shaman giants, but what are you gonna do about the Warriors now? Or, these bug bears seem resistant to being slapped about, better call in your mage striker. That to me is a lot more fun and fair than making it completely unfeasible to use capstone spells and abilities at max level. We have some things to balance in the way of gold when it comes to grinding and mobs, but ideally, you are supposed to occasionally feel like a big badass at high levels against mob. You don't mop the floor with all of them all the time, but when you're in your element you should be sublime.

A related idea(but fundamentally auxiliary thing) would be to incorporate something seen in a few other games: commander mobs. Kill this mob and you break the morale of the group, lowering their abilities and/or saves. This could be accomplished by making a custom buff for certain mobs that affect their allies and goes away at their death. It again presents a situation that better handles previously powerful things like Death Magic and Dev. Those things are usable, but you have to get through a big tough guy first. Then you can Wail or Dev away. A bit more involved than the specializing saves thing, but it's there as an option to vary up our gameplay.

Dark Immolation wrote:

many sensible things

I'm Liz and I endorse this message.

Endgame Monster Balance

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