Demons and Demigods and Difficulty

I didn't know that. I did notice a slight increase in damage at higher levels though. At level 1 it was between 2 and 7, and at level 9 it was between 4 and 7 on average, so unless its pure chance, there is some increase in minimum damage, but no maximum damage improvement.
In earlier posts I mentioned enhanced spells, I meant empowered spells.

 

IIRC the check to surpass spell resistance is 1d20 + caster level + any spell penetration feats. Which means the spell's level isn't taken into account.

 

Having not fought the fight but having read some of the tactics used. Spoiler question.
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[Can the fight be won without crafting weapons and without invulnerable threat cheese with scather? Can you take a 20th level fighter without specialization in longsword but using the lamia +3 sword and the golden skull for summoning and win these fights? Sorry if I'm overstepping by having not actuallly having tried the content but I think the question of wheather or not a person could realisticly complete the encounter the first time they encounter it should be the baseline for difficulty level.
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Sorry I tried

Spoiler

brackets but haven't got it down yet.

 

I'm pretty sure this encounter is for folks that normally find very little challenge in most of what I would call the harder battles.

To have this fight beatable without a very well planned out party, expert choice of feats taken and a great deal of luck would remove the purpose this encounter serves.

If you lower the basket from 10ft to 8ft so everybody can dunk, how special would a dunk be?

 

Would this be kind of 'after' you best the new Arena challenges? i know that it is currently being pondered to be moved after the Zuggy encounter.

i have no idea how difficult it is to script the encounters in the Arena 'book of Heroes' quests ... but since the current 3 fights don't yield that much EXP (in my experience) for the level of difficulty ... maybe the book could have several tiers of fights? NOT for EXP rewards, but for pull-your-hair out increasingly DAMN difficult encounters?

Maybe new dream encounters appear after defeating current high level fights. as in each 'boss' in the game gets a MAXXED out version you can face in the Arena. Maybe you could even mix and match for your own personal dream/nightmare bout?

Defeated the Gremlich? the Slavers? how about both at once! I don't know

As in the book stays where it currently is roughly but as you clear more of the game ... more challenging 'dream fights' unlock. since it exists outside of time and space per-se for Verb. I don't know how exactly the player could be alerted to keep looking back at the book... Maybe a second book item, an 'enhanced' one appears later in the game in the chest and Brother Smith tells you you should read it again...???

Anyway, just wanted to say its a cool concept Gaear! :thumbsup:

 

I like that idea Gaear. The modders that have a storyline that they want to complete can have the finite game that most gamers like to "complete". The power gamers can have a challenge option that is built-in, and yet somehow different than using console commands to build challenging encounters.

 

i meant "dream encounter" as in the phrase, - a 'dream' or 'awesome' encounter that really brings the challenge - uh, not a dream sequence. I'm getting kinda confused why everyone keeps misunderstanding me?? lol

Maybe i got a bit wordy, but that was the excitement. Pretty much i was stating exactly that Gaear, what you just said - just a selector. Not a Plot device. Only thing would be it still used the "book" as an interface to choose ...

sorry for the misunderstandings...!!

 

Why not a sequence?

It could originate from Gundigoot at the Welcome Wench, who has heard most of your exploits since he did give you a room for free for as long as you stay.

At a certain point you could select him and choose to reminisce about battles you have fought and speculate about battles that would have been worse, or more challenging.

These fights could take place in the arena for no XP because they really don't happen.

 

Or, what Gaear said ...

I do like to hear Gundigoot talk though.

 

I have had a TREMENDOUS amount of fun fighting this battle. I didn't realize the fight was going to be immediate so I didn't have a chance to prepare, but the first attempt told me what I needed to know to beat this.

All characters were lvl 20, save for Meleny who hit 20 after the fight. The party consisted of a lvl 20 Bard wielding Scather, lvl 15 Barbarian/5 Fighter wielding Frostbrand, lvl 20 generalist Wizard, lvl 20 Bow wielding rogue, lvl 20 fist Monk, lvl 19 druid. Their stats were all pretty good because I made sure to have an 18 with all of them, along with one other stat at 15 or better. They were loaded on crafted items geared to increase their AC, attack rates for melee, and the ability to cast every encounter for spellcasters.

My wizard had the metamagic feat Quicken, which was important. I wish Meleny had it but I used her as a crafter. He also had the improved conjuration feats along with improved summons. He also had the spell penetration feats. His lvl 9 spells were all Summon Monster 9. He had several quickened stoneskins, quickened Enlarge Persons, quickened haste, and quickened true strikes, mirror images, and maximized Rays of Enfeeblements. Meleny had all her lvl 7 slots filled with the Heal Spell. This is important enough that should I run this encounter again, She'll have all her lvl 8 slots filled with it as well.

The key to my strategy was that a couple of the avatars would focus at least partially on summons, while the other two would constantly focus fire my scather wielding bard. In the first round, Enlarge person was cast by my mage followed by summon monster 9. I lucked out and placed it in front of one of the stupid avitars. The rest of the round and the next couple involved getting buffs on, prioritizing Enlarge Person. This is because Iuz doen't seem to have reach, while your enlarged person characters do. Thus, you can take a 5ft. step, and still get your full rate of attack, without worrying about Iuz's 10 attacks that are sure to come.

Meleny and my mage alternated between summoning elder earth elementals that were downed, and buffing/healing the party. The summoned creatures generally kept two of the Iuz's busy. The mage would also focus fire maximized rays of enfeeblement with quickened true strikes at the avatars that my party was not in the process of attacking. 2 successful hits was enough to neuter the an avatar as long as you avoided taking his 10 attacks a round. Sometimes, one of those Iuz's would attack my monk, who had ridiculous movement, so I had him run away.

The Barbarian and the bard would flank one of the Iuz's and ignore the other in terms of attack it. However, they were always careful not to be in range of either avatar at the start of the avatar's turn. When they could, the Bard would lead the Avatars with his 5-ft step then attack, and the barbarian would follow with a 5-ft step and attack, both getting full attack rates. If this was not possible to do without putting either character in range for taking an avatar's full rate of attack, repositioning took priority, and our full rate of attack was sacrificed.

By the time one of the avatars was downed, a second one had suffered 250 points of damage from scather retorts, and got dropped quickly afterwards. I suffered no casualties that fight.

 

I just fought the 4 St Cuth with a 6 CN. Party . I had thought I'd be fighting IUZ considering I just helped ST Cuth in war of the orb? surprise...

Barb 20, C/F 9/9, T/Wiz 11/9, Druid 20, C/Sorc 11/9, and Bard 19.

It was hard but I had not read any of the tips before - even thought I stumbled on some of them. Until that point the combats were getting fairly easy in the game. It was fun but a surprising jump in difficulty.

To summarize, I basically did what most did on this thread and provided meat for the avatars while Scather did all the work.

Firstly, though - I never buff with more than one stoneskin and don't rebuff until it's almost zero. And I never use multi-buffs of the same spell such as divine power, etc. Or use the protection spheres or meld into stone as they also seem to me be kind of an easy exploit. So buffing under fire is not too complicated.

That being said, I guess I did use a bit of an exploit even if I had not realized it before.

The C/Sorc had great charisma and was really fun for controlling undead and charming stuff like trolls and ettins.

So on the way to the dinner I charmed 4 trolls. It was close enough to Verbon.. charms last around a day.

I had never used the trolls to decoy before, but one of the avatars focused on them. So that left 3. And I was more than happy about this considering the tremendous damage he was doing.

My druid, bard and wiz used summons to keep the others occupied right from the start. As well as cleric spiritual weapons (which I'm feeling are a bit overpowered for a second level spell and started avoiding them in the later half of the game.) Must have summoned 30 + creatures. Including all the elemental gem summons. Stupid Balor scared my remaining troll away! Best demon was the air one that casts mirror image...it lasted maybe 3 rounds.

So I profited off the regenerating creature exploit which I had never really considered before. As well as the summon a creature a turn (even a weak one) to keep the uber avatar busy tactic. Athough I did get a surprise few times when they got ignored the summons and an avatar bee-lined to one of my chars! (who obviously cast dimension door or ran). The whole party almost lived through it but when the last avatar was almost dead he decided to attack and kill the healing druid as his death move...) I probably moved it a little to close to the action to heal the barb.
So 5 of 6 lived through the fight.

The ONLY one who could damage St cuth was the hasted barb with Scather (power atk at max), strength pretty high. I did not use the reach thing or the 5 step retreat so sometimes the barb took a beating; the cleric and druid used heals,cures, and reapplied stoneskins. And whatever else was available - improved invis, protection from good (which I had on scroll and had never used before that!), etc. Lot of bard music.
It irritated me at the time that most of my spells were anti-evil)

I had crafted some items but no burst stuff. No spells were effective against St. Cuth.
True strike could hit rarely but no damage.

Improved initiative saved my party in this battle as it did in most other combats.

I was considering to making another party ironman and evil and only using items that they find on kills. Yet, I don't think this fight would be winnable without SCATHER. That's a shame as the rest of the game would be challenging but not overkill. And the concept of a sword that always hits was starting to bother me ...

But then again, this is a battle with a GOD...so maybe the evil party will just have to face death as part of the game fun. Game is over at that point anyways.

Also, maybe regenerating creatures should die once they get past -1000 damage???? Then even stupid avatars would appear smarter tactically.