Early game comments

[preggy]

Hey there.

I've picked up Arelith again after a while and decided to run a new character.

There were two instances of seemingly harsh (And likely unintentional) mechanics while playing on Skal which I feel it is worth covering very breifly.

1. The rats.
The Rats you encounter in the very first combat area of Skal are insanely deadly for what should be an introduction to basic mechanics. The rats which spawn in this area fall into three categories of increasing danger: Basic rats which act as you would expect rats to, doing 1-2 damage to hit with a low AB and Giant rats and Dire Rats, which have Ab around +7 to +9 and hit for that same range of damage which at level three is incredibly imposing. Importantly, their natural weapons also count as magical for the purposes of overcoming damage reduction so Ghostly visage which is a spellcasters main defence at these low levels is mostly nullified.

While this area is a relative trifle for summoners, if you are a spellcaster without access to summons you can be quite easily taken out even in a single round upon either initially transitioning into the area or progressing through into the hayloft or basement, should a group have spawned in those areas.

Removing the magical nature of their natural weapons would go a long way to helping early game survivability for spellcasters but honestly scaling the difficulty of this area back to be more accessable by the level 3-4's its intended for might be wise.

2. Phylacteries at low Levels.
This was a bit of a rather meta experience within the Skal Troglodyte caves at the end of which is a boss which is sustained with a Phylactery. The upper level range for this writ is either level 9 or 10. The difficulty here is that players at this level simply dont have the damage output to destroy a phylactery easily. In our case, a for a group of 4 people it took us a solid 5 minutes to destroy the thing - a feat by itself which was only possible due to a warlock in our group, most members did 0-3 damage a round with their weapons. During this time we only survived because we ran the boss off to another section of the map and disengaged - a very OOC response to what should be an IC mechanic to work and play around.

You cannot fight the boss since the boss is both impossible to kill and immune to all forms of CC while under the effect of the phylactery and has considerably higher damage output and AB than all other encounters within that same dungeon which also make tanking an incredibly difficult feat.

The biggest issue here I think is the hardness (Damage reduction to physical damage) present on the phylactery placable which, as far as I am aware, is set so high as to be impactful for higher level quests where Phylacteries are more common and as a result is rather stifling for lower level groups. Would it be possible to consider a "Lesser Phylactery" spawn for these lower level quests to make them more easily destroyed and thus allow this challenge to be addressed without needing to spend 5-10 minutes hitting an inanimate object?

I will underscore this by saying that it is entirely fair and reasonable that this second issue might be compounded some by the fact that Skal has a much less healthy economy than the mainland and getting steel grade or equivalent equipment can be rather difficult so survivability and damage is likely to be lower, but i do still feel the feedback is warranted for similar level areas (The Orc Caves between the Arcane tower and Bendir is another example where this applies, for example.)

[Paint]

I hope my laconic response isn't too offputting, but as for the rats in Skal, you can acquire tools to deal with them as soon as you step off the boat, and I think a little problem-solving isn't necessarily a bad thing. I've soloed much of Skal's content with builds that were considerably weak starters -- including a wizard that didn't get access to summons. The starting enemies are a bit rough, but they're fine.

The uh, phylacteries however. Well, I wish there was some other way to deal with them. The corpse dancer's phylactery can take a pretty long time to get down, even in a group, if you don't have a strong strength character or someone with a lot of damage types stacked on them. Usually, this devolves into some form of kiting the boss around for three or four minutes while someone gnaws on the phylactery slowly.

[MRFTW]

The uh, phylacteries however. Well, I wish there was some other way to deal with them. The corpse dancer's phylactery can take a pretty long time to get down, even in a group, if you don't have a strong strength character or someone with a lot of damage types stacked on them. Usually, this devolves into some form of kiting the boss around for three or four minutes while someone gnaws on the phylactery slowly.

You'll be pleased to know that there is more than one way to destroy a phylactery.

[Paint]

You'll be pleased to know that there is more than one way to destroy a phylactery.

I -am- pleased to know that. Maybe I'll play around with that, then.

[-XXX-]

This is hardly a FOIG secret: Wail of the Banshee and Destruction spells are known to instantly destroy non-plot placables. It's how they are set up in vanilla NWN, so this has always been a thing.

[Amateur Hour]

This is hardly a FOIG secret: Wail of the Banshee and Destruction spells are known to instantly destroy non-plot placables. It's how they are set up in vanilla NWN, so this has always been a thing.

I think it's worth noting that Skal's troglodyte quest is intended for characters under level 11. Wail of the Banshee is available at level 17, and Destruction is available at level 13. There may be more than one way to skin this cat, but I don't know if "bring someone overleveled for the writ" should be considered a good one from a design perspective.

[preggy]

Thats pretty much my point of contention. Within the expected perameters of the encounter its a lot of time spent hitting a placable at low levels and either kiting a unkillable, unCCable boss, or finding a way to (very oocly) disengage from it completely since tanking is not a particularly viable option either.

And while not being able to completely out tank a boss is a very reasonable thing by itself but expecting a level 9 to tank it for 5-10 minutes it seems a bit excessive.

As I say, I think for this particular encounter and perhaps 2 others in the entire module simply lowering the total HP or the Hardness of the placable would make it much more approachable for the suggested level of the dungeon