The update of the Duergar Mines
Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2018 9:03 pm
I know this may be a work in progress, this is what we got thus far:
The duergar mines were silently updated a little time ago. I was thrilled to hear this, because this is one of the oldest places that I know in the module; something that both as a new player, and with the 4~ years I've been around, makes me say "man, this server is ancient". It's a place that has seen plenty of DM plots (though I don't know if any of them ever led to anything), and remains a looming threat in the horizon to consider.
It needed a makeup since time immemorial, but when I got to see what actually changed, a single question came to my mind:
"But why?"
In fact, that could be the name of the thread. So let's go over the components of this rather massive area.
The Duergar Mines is composed by no less than 8 different maps.
You could argue the entrance at the Ice Roads is the first map.
Then you have:
The Entrance, the Halls, the Library, The Forge, The Mines, The Flooded Passage, The "ice roads shortcut", and the hall of the Duergar King.
Now, the duergar mines have been always pretty annoying to navigate for a few reasons, that make going there more than once a little of a time consuming chore with no real reason for it. There's a lot of unnecessary back-and-forth'ing involved in these maps.
For example:
There's a lever puzzle in the Library, which is not really a puzzle. It has the same taste as filler in a series.
The Flooded Passage used to have enemies, and now it's just a very, very long square map with absolutely nothing in it that you have to walk through.
At the end of the dungeon, you can't turn back - instead you have a portal that server jumps you to the surface. This is something very annoying for light-sensitive races and any caster in general. Doing a small turn in this area leads you back to the Ice Roads in the Underdark, at least.
These are three things that I wanted to see addressed, but the recent change was only on the mobs. So I say "Okay, fine. Let's see what changed".
In the first levels of the Duergar Halls there are several orog and other orcish mobs that are constantly in battle with the duergar. The orogs are part of other places in the modules, but they come in their own variants. All good here.
The duergar, in the other hand, used to come in these variants:
Warriors, rogue, archer, cleric, mage, with occasional iron golems and huge iron golems spawning with them. All the duergar had about 9 of Damage Reduction, which made them pretty tough, and they used to Barbarian Rage and gain about 150~ extra health. Most of the enemies had some kind of autocast ability that made them pretty annoying, specially if that autocast was Stoneskin and Protection from Elements on top of their natural defenses. Most of these enemies had generally low AC, but considerable AB and a decent damage. A crit from a warrior could take about 90 of HP, so two crits in a row could be worrying for most characters.
The warriors had greataxes and generally the best HP pool about.
The rogues had two shortswords and crippling strike, if I remember correctly. They had little to no face-stab damage, but plenty of sneak attack dice. Additionally, on death they used to drop their weapons, which were masterly steel and a great source of income.
The archers were irrelevant. They could use a Called Shot every now and then, but their damage was on the floor and they only existed to fill ranks of spawns.
The clerics were generally dangerous, since they could cast a Finger of Death and other instadeath spells that were not nice.
The mages, if ignored, could start spamming several Meteor Swarm spells, and other lovely things like breaches. Spell breaches all the day.
The iron golems were not really much, but the Huge Iron Golem was immune to nearly all magic and pretty tough generally. They can also breath the noxious gas, which in two failures was instant death, but that was super rare to happen and you could always just bandage the poison away.
The peak battle was against the Duergar King, which always had a nice sum of duergar with him and a magma paraelemental. Those could prove scary if you were unprepared.
Now:
It seems the DR was generally removed. The autocast is gone. That's good. I had the feeling that their HP pools were lowered, but I have no real way of knowing. There's also the fact that all the barbarian rage abilities are also gone.
The warriors lost their greataxe, and now they are carrying scimitars with tower shield (what? Why?!).
On a crit they are dealing a frightening 36 of damage.
The rogues are using acid shortswords now, which don't drop on death. But otherwise seem the same other than the changes above (that's 700 less of gold per rogue killed, which I'm not really against. That was too good of a gold mine if you had the space to carry all the shortswords).
The clerics we barely got to see doing anything (spellswords are still pretty overpowered and mow through everything with ease).
The golems remain the same.
The mages... oh boy.
We were a party of 3, a spellsword, a druid, and a bard. In total we had a pool of about 900 of HP.
At some point of our run, we fought a group that had two duergar mages, which I mostly ignored for two rounds of combat. By the third, they started spamming Firebrands and Greater Missile Storm to the point the front fighters died, god-saved and survived with two-digit numbers of HP each. We were dumbfounded to say the least.
That means that just the two mages managed to deal about 1300 points of damage. There's something that went were wrong there, but at least we didn't stumble into any more IGMS spamming mages after that point. (This is my second 'what? why?!')
And to the last battle.
The duergar king was a pretty standard foe. Just a buffed up version of the normal duergar, and while the final battle was pretty short due to overbuffing, there is one thing that stands as the greatest 'why' of this thread: The duergar king was replaced by a Duergar Psion-king.
Now, psionic powers have always been a huge no-no in Arelith. We have the llithid, but that's their shtick, and even in that case illithids are extremely rare cases appearing about in three places in the whole module. It's something that is literally nowhere else; it's something that isn't mentioned or acknowledged directly as existing. We know it exists, but it has always been away from Arelith for many reasons (psionic roleplay being equal to metagaming, one of them).
And from one day to the other, we have this glaring boss that seems to ignore that notion.
So we have an area old as sin that needs a good update... and the update we see is a nerf, that seems to go against the lore, not only of the duergar themselves, but against the setting itself... that wasn't warranted, and doesn't actually fix any problems in the area.
Why did this happen, again?
The duergar mines were silently updated a little time ago. I was thrilled to hear this, because this is one of the oldest places that I know in the module; something that both as a new player, and with the 4~ years I've been around, makes me say "man, this server is ancient". It's a place that has seen plenty of DM plots (though I don't know if any of them ever led to anything), and remains a looming threat in the horizon to consider.
It needed a makeup since time immemorial, but when I got to see what actually changed, a single question came to my mind:
"But why?"
In fact, that could be the name of the thread. So let's go over the components of this rather massive area.
The Duergar Mines is composed by no less than 8 different maps.
You could argue the entrance at the Ice Roads is the first map.
Then you have:
The Entrance, the Halls, the Library, The Forge, The Mines, The Flooded Passage, The "ice roads shortcut", and the hall of the Duergar King.
Now, the duergar mines have been always pretty annoying to navigate for a few reasons, that make going there more than once a little of a time consuming chore with no real reason for it. There's a lot of unnecessary back-and-forth'ing involved in these maps.
For example:
There's a lever puzzle in the Library, which is not really a puzzle. It has the same taste as filler in a series.
The Flooded Passage used to have enemies, and now it's just a very, very long square map with absolutely nothing in it that you have to walk through.
At the end of the dungeon, you can't turn back - instead you have a portal that server jumps you to the surface. This is something very annoying for light-sensitive races and any caster in general. Doing a small turn in this area leads you back to the Ice Roads in the Underdark, at least.
These are three things that I wanted to see addressed, but the recent change was only on the mobs. So I say "Okay, fine. Let's see what changed".
In the first levels of the Duergar Halls there are several orog and other orcish mobs that are constantly in battle with the duergar. The orogs are part of other places in the modules, but they come in their own variants. All good here.
The duergar, in the other hand, used to come in these variants:
Warriors, rogue, archer, cleric, mage, with occasional iron golems and huge iron golems spawning with them. All the duergar had about 9 of Damage Reduction, which made them pretty tough, and they used to Barbarian Rage and gain about 150~ extra health. Most of the enemies had some kind of autocast ability that made them pretty annoying, specially if that autocast was Stoneskin and Protection from Elements on top of their natural defenses. Most of these enemies had generally low AC, but considerable AB and a decent damage. A crit from a warrior could take about 90 of HP, so two crits in a row could be worrying for most characters.
The warriors had greataxes and generally the best HP pool about.
The rogues had two shortswords and crippling strike, if I remember correctly. They had little to no face-stab damage, but plenty of sneak attack dice. Additionally, on death they used to drop their weapons, which were masterly steel and a great source of income.
The archers were irrelevant. They could use a Called Shot every now and then, but their damage was on the floor and they only existed to fill ranks of spawns.
The clerics were generally dangerous, since they could cast a Finger of Death and other instadeath spells that were not nice.
The mages, if ignored, could start spamming several Meteor Swarm spells, and other lovely things like breaches. Spell breaches all the day.
The iron golems were not really much, but the Huge Iron Golem was immune to nearly all magic and pretty tough generally. They can also breath the noxious gas, which in two failures was instant death, but that was super rare to happen and you could always just bandage the poison away.
The peak battle was against the Duergar King, which always had a nice sum of duergar with him and a magma paraelemental. Those could prove scary if you were unprepared.
Now:
It seems the DR was generally removed. The autocast is gone. That's good. I had the feeling that their HP pools were lowered, but I have no real way of knowing. There's also the fact that all the barbarian rage abilities are also gone.
The warriors lost their greataxe, and now they are carrying scimitars with tower shield (what? Why?!).
On a crit they are dealing a frightening 36 of damage.
The rogues are using acid shortswords now, which don't drop on death. But otherwise seem the same other than the changes above (that's 700 less of gold per rogue killed, which I'm not really against. That was too good of a gold mine if you had the space to carry all the shortswords).
The clerics we barely got to see doing anything (spellswords are still pretty overpowered and mow through everything with ease).
The golems remain the same.
The mages... oh boy.
We were a party of 3, a spellsword, a druid, and a bard. In total we had a pool of about 900 of HP.
At some point of our run, we fought a group that had two duergar mages, which I mostly ignored for two rounds of combat. By the third, they started spamming Firebrands and Greater Missile Storm to the point the front fighters died, god-saved and survived with two-digit numbers of HP each. We were dumbfounded to say the least.
That means that just the two mages managed to deal about 1300 points of damage. There's something that went were wrong there, but at least we didn't stumble into any more IGMS spamming mages after that point. (This is my second 'what? why?!')
And to the last battle.
The duergar king was a pretty standard foe. Just a buffed up version of the normal duergar, and while the final battle was pretty short due to overbuffing, there is one thing that stands as the greatest 'why' of this thread: The duergar king was replaced by a Duergar Psion-king.
Now, psionic powers have always been a huge no-no in Arelith. We have the llithid, but that's their shtick, and even in that case illithids are extremely rare cases appearing about in three places in the whole module. It's something that is literally nowhere else; it's something that isn't mentioned or acknowledged directly as existing. We know it exists, but it has always been away from Arelith for many reasons (psionic roleplay being equal to metagaming, one of them).
And from one day to the other, we have this glaring boss that seems to ignore that notion.
So we have an area old as sin that needs a good update... and the update we see is a nerf, that seems to go against the lore, not only of the duergar themselves, but against the setting itself... that wasn't warranted, and doesn't actually fix any problems in the area.
Why did this happen, again?