Smashing Chests

[Ebonstar]

All those who say changes like this makes QoL poor, or the game hard, need to remember this is not WoW or other MMO crapshows.

Dungeons & Dragons has never been a take the easy path you always win sort of game.

Arelith should not be that way either.

Arelith isn't a game you play with a small group of personal close friends around a table in a personally constructed narrative where all interactions, combat, and loot is actively tailored by the dungeon master for the positive experience of this group, rarely if ever with the exceptional goal of failure or tedium for the participants, but to have a fulfilling and fun experience without needing to compete or fight with one another. The spirit of a tabletop game isn't competitive.

D&D doesn't require you to make a clandestine group with other players through OOC means like discord and use meta-knowledge and communications to maximize efficiency, which mind you is generally looked down upon based on how it's done while also competing with over a hundred other players, likely with like-minded groups all fighting over a minimal pool of materials and resources to create equipment in a living economy to further participate in the game lest you be locked out by inefficiency caused by exclusivity over late game gear.

Last I checked Arelith is a "MMO crapshow" and trying to undermine a perceived notion of how the game should work versus how it's actually playing out isn't helpful, and if anything refuses to acknowledge the changes of the times on how these changes are perverse and demanding the community to play one way while at the same time wagging the finger at the loose definition of what's okay or not.

Your entire point honestly boils down to an attempt at making rogues relevant by making everyone else useless and subsequently suffer without one. What's the final goal in that? Why even have chest bashing? Is it solely to grief people with now? Chest bashing breaking the contents of a chest isn't even in official D&D rules.

Making the other classes and pixies not have access to Rogue skills, is just like having other classes have special skills. You dont play a cleric to cast magic missles and hellballs, you dont play a wizard to use a sword and shield.

Why not restrict Rogue skills to rogues? Chest bashing does have consequence in DnD rules and always has. Unless of course you play with lets have everyong get a medal and ribbons for trying to play a game 5th Ed.

There have been breakage rules in the DM Guides since the very first edition. If you break a chest open, what are the chances the delicate glass vials inside dont break from the impact, and thus spill the contents that ruin scrolls or possible runic materials. The only thing that would be salvageable is the coins.

Its just common sense.

And making Rogue skills just for Rogues, doesnt make everyone else useless, it just puts their skillset on par with everyone else. The same way other skills are restricted to the classes that get them as intended and not because some people want to be aloof and not need anyone else.

Chest bashing penalties are not griefing, it's returning to the common sense way of playing.

[AstralUniverse]

a while back when familiars didnt quite qualify to unlock runic chests and knock scrolls didnt work on them either a lot of people argued that because runes are so important for any character, they shouldnt be gated behind having a rogue on the team, and then that argument won and here we are (excluding the period of time it was outright bugged and everyone could just bash).

So while the idea to make Rogues essential incentivizes grouping and all that, it also excludes the epic runic content away from people who arent very based socially for whatever reasons, and dont have a rogue, and it will also show in the runes average pricing climbing up to the millions again. This isnt table-top. There's world economy to consider here and it's been established years ago that content that's required for high end gear should be more available to everyone. That's the mind set that led us to just trivializing runic chests with knock scrolls, familairs and then bash. Just for a reminder.

[Atlus]

Unless of course you play with lets have everyong get a medal and ribbons for trying to play a game 5th Ed.

Well now I just think you were never speaking in good faith to begin with if you're going to be resorting to notions like that...

[Helsing]

Does this means we shall dip 1 rogue for the juicy tumble, OL and disable traps skills and relevel everytime we level up so we are always xx/1 rogue?

[AstralUniverse]

Does this means we shall dip 1 rogue for the juicy tumble, OL and disable traps skills and relevel everytime we level up so we are always xx/1 rogue?

Hell no, please dont do that unless you want -relevel also to be taken away from us.

[Slapstick]

This might have cause a bit more uproar than warranted, but I think it's useful to investigate why as a potential improvement area - given all the brouhaha.

Locks and traps vs. their respective skills is a circular and self-contained obstacle/solution with no gameplay value. Why put locks on chests? So players can use their open lock skill. Why have open lock skill? To open the locks that was put on the chests. It's as reduntant and circular as it is boring. The obstacle has no inherent value, it only serves as a vehicle to allow a solution to be provided, so the solution should have intrinsic value in some fashion (fun gameplay, player interaction, class fantasy fullfiment, etc). I've tried to collect my thoughts on the subject and then I'll slink back into lurk mode. Apologies for the lack of brevity.

There are several dimensions along which a challenge/solution can be either interesting or not. The solutions to the obstacle (which evidently isn't going away), can be several - but currently aren't very good.

Gameplay: Currently the item swapping and gear management is simply unwelcome and a bothersome nuisance. It's not worse than that, but it is that; and for no real rewards as the obstacle provides no inherent value. Another gameplay-based option seems unlikely but possible. It could perhaps be a strenght dc check vs the lock, or a knock + spellcraft dc check for wizards to allow for more varieties in gameplay solution, that doesn't rely on the dreaded gear swap solution.

Resources: There is no resource expenditure or management. There could be, if something was implemented for it. Be that through spells, crowbars, skeleton keys that must be crafted, or whatever. This could make it more interesting than the current gear swap solution, mostly because that particuler version of gameplay solution is so poor.

Player interaction: The only player interaction I see coming from this is having to be or bring the right build/skill for the job. Encouraging group play is a very good reason in itself, but ultimately this is circumvented by the gameplay-based solution. There will also be many many instances where this solution is unavailable, which is a real problem as the obstacle is a binary pass/fail for an end goal.

So we're stuck with the gameplay based solution unless new ideas come forth within resource or player interactions; or an altogether different gameplay based solution is offered. If some magic items themselves are enough to allow any chest to be pilfered, why not simplify it all to a single magic item?

The player interaction solution could be made more available by making the skills universal rather than class based, or making it possible to bring the challenge to the player rather than the player to the obstacle - for instance by making it possible to pick up the chests themselves. However, as long as the gameplay option exists, it will be used for ease of access if nothing else.

At the end of the day, it'll probably be back to inventory hell with potentially more skill dumps mandated. It's manageable, but it adds nothing but tedium.

[Ebonstar]

Does this means we shall dip 1 rogue for the juicy tumble, OL and disable traps skills and relevel everytime we level up so we are always xx/1 rogue?

you cannot do a one level dip anyhow 3 is the rule

[gryggrstrkssontreelover]

evilgron --> . o O [hmm today i will gatekeep them stinky martials harder*]


*rogues r cowardz not like manly 2HDers

[kinginyellow]

Welp, guess everyone needs a bard now. A bard, specifically. Since bard gets access to every skill in the game while also providing more party-wide utility than a rogue does.

Or just play spellsword and get the pixie familiar.

[Vangrave]

Dungeons & Dragons has never been a take the easy path you always win sort of game.

Arelith should not be that way either.

I think you must have played a different game if you think DnD is not about taking the easy path. DnD is a freeform game specifically so that you can take the easy path. It's almost the core of the game - things like the ten foot pole, mirrors, and stakes and mallet were several of the items that have literally, from the first edition, been meant for player (both rogues and non-rogues) use to find and avoid traps. Bashing things down has also been an expected part of the game for any group with a strong enough fighter.

Making the other classes and pixies not have access to Rogue skills, is just like having other classes have special skills. You dont play a cleric to cast magic missles and hellballs, you dont play a wizard to use a sword and shield.

Why not restrict Rogue skills to rogues? Chest bashing does have consequence in DnD rules and always has. Unless of course you play with lets have everyong get a medal and ribbons for trying to play a game 5th Ed.

There have been breakage rules in the DM Guides since the very first edition. If you break a chest open, what are the chances the delicate glass vials inside dont break from the impact, and thus spill the contents that ruin scrolls or possible runic materials. The only thing that would be salvageable is the coins.

Its just common sense.

And making Rogue skills just for Rogues, doesnt make everyone else useless, it just puts their skillset on par with everyone else. The same way other skills are restricted to the classes that get them as intended and not because some people want to be aloof and not need anyone else.

Chest bashing penalties are not griefing, it's returning to the common sense way of playing.

Again, the spell knock, bashing, and other alternative item based methods of unlocking have been in DnD for the entire time it's been a game and have always been an intended part of the experience. Rules for bashing are pretty specific and you do not break the contents of a chest by breaking the lock because in DnD you can select what you break since your character is a master of their weapon. In fact, there are pretty well delineated rules in DnD for breaking locks, for breaking barred doors, and even, if you can't break through a barred door, for breaking the door around the bar and slipping through the bottom.

Flexibility for player characters was almost literally the hallmark of 3e DnD, which this game is based on. Clerics can cast magic missile in 3e with a domain selection. Clerics can cast hellball the same way wizards can in 3e using epic spell seeds. One of the biggest most important characters in forgotten realms, Elminster, is a wizard that uses a sword.

The chest bashing change and moves to reduce this kind of tactical flexibility are a distinct movement *away* from how 3rd edition DnD works. In fact, if anything, they are a move toward the 5th edition that you seem to really dislike.

Lastly, rogues aren't even the ones that benefit the most from this change. It's bards. I think it's quite self evident why that's the case. This will do nothing for rogues in a party. It will simply make bards ever more desirable, and to be honest, they are already far too desirable.

[Nacht]

I think the update is good and makes sense as long as gold will dropped from smashed chests. Smashing chests should net you more loot than smashing any random barrel, but not as much as going through the effort of unlocking and disarming a chest properly.

It's strange that bards are the better chest openers. It's also strange that anybody can open pretty much any chest with a set of enchanted gear and a minimal skill investment. Perhaps raise the DCs of the highest quality chests out of that skill range, and give rogues a bonus to open lock so that they can be competitive with bard in this area. Rogue simply doesn't have access to the skill bonuses that bard does, so right now bard just seems to be the noticeably better lock picker.

There's probably other solutions. Just my thoughts towards this topic. Certainly not the end of the world either way.

[Helsing]

Does this means we shall dip 1 rogue for the juicy tumble, OL and disable traps skills and relevel everytime we level up so we are always xx/1 rogue?

you cannot do a one level dip anyhow 3 is the rule

you can if you always take rogue at last level, and whenever you level up, you do a -relevel

[ElevenOne]

Instead of discussing taking away / giving familiars to everyone, has it been considered to change areas a bit to have loot provided in different ways?

Why every area has the loot on a locked chest? How a dragon even stores stuff in a chest an adds a lock?

It would be amazing if, areas where revisited and gives loot on different ways, as an example:

Add unlocked chest but after a hard climb skill.
Add loot behind a heavy rock that has to be bashed or pushed.
Add loot behind an altar only religious character could solve.
Add loot behind a lore or spellcraft pushing some glowing runes.
Perhaps chest that self destroys if someone lacking the move silently skill gets close.

[Edens_Fall]

If I were to propose a "solution" or just spitball some ideas it would be to remove disable trap/open lock from the basin. Introduce a new consumable item called skeleton key that only works once or has 'x' charges. Crafted by artwork and smithing maybe. Rare but not too pricey materials, like silver and a few basic gems. Then if you don't have the skill you can buy your way through the problem, and rogues don't have to. Runic Skeleton Keys are needed for runic chests, which takes more rare materials to craft.

This item sort of exists already and is craftable (thieves tools). You still need a point in the skill though and they don't work on traps (where I do think it would be a great change if it did).

Let's not forget my favorite tool . . . Potions of Knock.

[Sandrow]

Disable followers or summons auto bash after a failure attempt plz. I can open the chest myself, please don't bash it!

[chris a gogo]

just use the voice command hold ground. then they do nothing when you fail the roll.

[kinginyellow]

I'm going to make a more serious post this time.

I don't understand this change.

This hurts every mundane except for rogue or bard. Bard doesn't need any more help, and rogue is still overshadowed by bard.

Casters with access to familiars still get to use pixie to bypass the class tax on getting gold and participating in the economy. I'm not even talking about runics, just, you can run places with chests your pixie can unlock and get enough gold to buy runics from someone else eventually. Meanwhile, runics will go up in price because the rarer materials are rare and are now locked behind a class tax.

How does this make the game better?

People who used to not take pixie to stand out and have a familiar that they actually use in RP are now more pressured to take pixie since they have an even bigger mechanical penalty for not doing so.

Any high level character who doesn't have a bard or rogue buddy online when they log on has no reason to run epic dungeons. They'll spend more resources running them than they have a chance to get, since now the odds they'll get a decent runic are 0% if they have no way to deal with locks.

And while I'm not going to say rogue is only valuable for its skills, there's more to the kit, it beccomes the most desireable part of the kit. Before, Rogues and Bards facilitated getting gold. They are now the -only way to get gold- outside of a couple of dungeons that I predict will become PVP hotspots because they are the defacto gold grind to go for now when no bards are online.

I don't mind making bashed chests spawn no loot, and make skills like open lock and disarm trap valuable that way, if alternative ways to make gold are given to the 80% of the class roster that has no way to interact with this system. Preferably, ways that don't involve excessive pvp for optimal grind spots (head grind in Spirits, book and scroll grind in Duergar, to give examples), because the majority of the gold is contained within one skill. Appraise for the lootables in Duergars, Leadership for head grinds.

And this is before open lock gear is taken into account. Having to lug around a second gear set purely to open locks because you took 1 point to be trained in the skill is incredibly cheesy, but a necessary evil given the current meta set by this patch. While arelith might be a RP server, you need to remember that if you make things overly difficult for people, rp will be thrown aside to favor mechanical advantage. It always has, and always will.

Edit: Just posting a reminder, that access to open lock, means access to loot table drops. Blades of the Elements, Mithril Dust, Beljurils, etc. And not just runics. All of these are incredibly valuable, and just finding one can mean a progression boost for a character that needed it since they now don't need to buy that item, or several runs worth of gold if you find a buyer. When I run Illithids I'm mostly running it for runics and Addy, but I have no reason to not check the chests and get a 60k+ bump in gold if I find dust.

[Bees in Space]

If the intention is to make people run runic dungeons in groups, then runic materials need to be something that can be fairly split up among the party. As it is, taking even just a lockpicker along means you only get a 50/50 shot at the loot, and that's assuming that they're someone you OOC trust not to pull the old "oh dang it's empty, somebody must've beat us to it" while they snag the loot for themselves.

Maybe turn the runic chests into an interactable that just spawns a random runic mat into the inventories of up to x number of characters within a certain range.

[Xerah]

Whether this is a bug fix or not, this was a year+ long "feature" that was eventually accepted as intended. It's not always about what's right or wrong in this case, it's just an unfun change. I understand that unfun changes need to happen, but when these come down the pipeline, it's probably best to see how this will come across to the player base and what can be done to ease tensions.

They are now the -only way to get gold-

Let's not go over the top here, this doesn't help anyone. The majority of the gold, as identified in this thread already, is from drops, jewellery, scrolls; chests might get you an additional ~10-20% (any more than that has to be put in a shop and is rarer). Yeah, it is some, but "only way" is way over the top.


Cards on the table, what is this going to change? (assuming lock DCs go way up as suggested; will even invested rogues be able to open these locks? And traps? A 45 search skill couldn't even find a low damage trap on a chest in a pre-epic area (I did a 2 minute AFK)! That is completely unintuitive in a world of infinite respawning traps)

• The cost of high end crafting materials is going to go way up (and there will be a minor to moderate inflation of other stuff due to less overall gold). We might get back to the times of 100-200k gold mithril dust/gems/runic material.
• Newer characters are going to suffer with the less gold/equipment from chests (the only ones who will actually use all the loot trash)
• Bards make out the best here, because of the classes with a kit to deal with these locks/traps (and more suited to hit higher DCs than even rogues thanks to bard songs), plus they are the most mechanically optimal only pushing more people to play the class.

I don't know if that's the goal of this, but that's really what we're looking at as a change. So, you guys know any good poems?

[Definately Not A Mimic]

This suggestion could be a horrible one and I've not just thought out the why yet as well may very possibly not even be mechanically doable..

Could there be a way to have the page of rogue gear carried apply to your skill without having to swap out all your items? I know that your inventory/keyring is scanned for player door locks. Could it be scanned and anything with + specific skill be added to your total?
Carrying 1/2 an inventory page of rogue gear and another 1/4 page of climb gear and another 1/4 of tools like shovel/mining pick/logging axe/lasso is already giving up a lot of space. Yes we've been given bags to help with inventory and they are beyond wonderful, but personally I still feel like I run out of room constantly as I'm most often the designated looter in any dungeon. Not having to swap that gear out, to take that time at each chest would be a huge quality of life and may ease the pain others are feeling.

I would suggest though that what skills count to that, or even perhaps what equipment types do, is carefully considered. For example, Open Lock and Disable Trap and Climb I would vote do count, Sail I would be on the fence about. Possibly no item physically held in hand (duel daggers) NOT count in since this is an easy swap?
Skills I would push NOT count unless on your gear are any that are used in fighting, examples discipline and intimidate or things like Hide/Move Silent/Spot/Listen. Those should have to be worn as they are not a utility skill

Enough rambling and probably not sounding clear

[kinginyellow]

Let's not go over the top here, this doesn't help anyone. The majority of the gold, as identified in this thread already, is from drops, jewellery, scrolls; chests might get you an additional ~10-20% (any more than that has to be put in a shop and is rarer). Yeah, it is some, but "only way" is way over the top.

Bard and Rogue are two of the classes with access to appraise. Before, not having appraise and selling vendor trash you got from chests could only account for maybe 5k or so of the gold you got, depending on the dungeon of course, while having a bard could mean another 10k from these items alone.

Now, you can only get these items with a rogue or bard present, they will also increase their value, they also have search which means a higher chance to get mithril dust, beljurils, etc, which, as you also posted, will also increase in value, making chests even more valuable.

Jewelry and scrolls only account for the majority of gold in dungeons where you don't have 5+ chests, and where there isn't a construct type enemy that spawns often to drop oil, cogs and gears. There's a reason I'm using duergars as an example. And even without access to the chests, its still one of the better dungeons to make gold in.

Then there's just the overall gut punch to the progression of new characters, which you aknowledge and agree with me with. I honestly agree with most of your post, you've identified what I identify as the core issues that this patch brings, but I put a lot more weight on the loot table than you do. 1 lucky run makes for more than 5. That's going to become 1 lucky run making for more than 20, runics aside, when inflation hits.

It also just devalues epic dungeons. Unless you're looking for addy specifically, if you're not a bard, or don't have one online, why even go there? The primary insentive to do epic dungeons as a level 30 character is one of the rarer runics. If you wanted to make gold, most if not all of the places I know that give you the most gold per run are level 20 areas, which can be solo'd by a level 30 at minimal risk.

I'm telling you that there are dungeons people right now mostly do as a part of their progression to level 30 that are going to become pvp hotspots in the next month.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

The issue, that people are pointing to, is gear swapping.

But that's a NWN thing, not even Arelith.

Search, Appraise, Leadership, Pick Lock, Disarm Trap, Sail, Heal, the list goes on and on.

Is it frustrating? Sure, but it's the same underlying reason that sorcerers don't need to carry certain scrolls - some characters require items to do so stuff that they can't otherwise do.

But gear-swapping, as I stated above is not just limited to locks and chests, and the solution, I am 100% sure isn't just to say 'You know what? let's just let people do everything it would allow anyway, that'll fix it!'

Sure, we could remove all skill bonuses from items, or (as we have in some cases) code it so only 'hard' ranks count, but is that really what people would want? Again, skill boneses on gear? That's a fundamental NWN/D&D thing, and not limited to Arelith.

As a lover of 3.x DnD (especially pathfinder) this is much more of an arelith thing than baseline NWN because of our custom enchanting system that allows use to add 20+ to 30+ plus on any skill in the game. We don't need to remove all plus skills from equipment, just some as enchanting options (like if sail dcs didn't assume we had maxed out sailing gear, I would probably be on the sea right now). I think we already do this for some skills like appraise (I could be wrong). But if it was just a few pre-made items that gave plus skill to things like sail, the equipment swapping would be minimized and more in line with normal neverwinter nights/dnd experiences. Some systems have to leave itnin place but isolated systems like sailing where the dcs are arbitrary and not involved in things like say ab vs discipline (etc) can afford to have those dcs lowered with no custom enchanting involved.

[Tarkus the dog]

i dont think that being rewarded for having disable trap/open lock is bad design at all ( otherwise there is no point to taking disable trap/open lock), but locking all the rewards behind traps/locks isn't a good design either.

having open lock/disable trap should mean more loot on top of what you already get for finishing a dungeon, the loot itself shouldn't be locked by that requirement.

just because NWN is an old game it doesn't mean that modern development shouldn't adapt to modern standards. the last game i played that gatekept loot was morrowind and that came out ages ago. a simple solution is to make it so that breaking the chest leaves behind 50% of the loot.

[AstralUniverse]

a simple solution is to make it so that breaking the chest leaves behind 50% of the loot.

Hey that's a pretty good idea... and maybe afterwards in the future divide loot into 2 categories of breakable and unbreakable, based on what it's actually made of. I like it a lot.

[I will never sleep]

having open lock/disable trap should mean more loot on top of what you already get for finishing a dungeon, the loot itself shouldn't be locked by that requirement.

This was already the case. Searching [Remains] did not trigger a search skill check for more items. Only opening the container did. If you were invested in ol/dt you were almost gauranteed to be invested in search as well, so. I could be wrong, but I do not remember Ever seeing the search thing pop up in the system chat as a serial chest basher.

Just fixing what isn't broken. That's all this fix/change is.