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Unfair Difficulty
(Work-In-Progress)

This mod will be my attempt to change how the main campaign is experienced. Mostly my changes will make things more difficult for the player, but I'm open to input as to what to try to include.

I'm going to separate the work on this mod into parts, where I focus on one aspect at a time.

Part One-
Healer's Bane


Part Two-
An Elementalist's Bane


Part Three-
A Summoner's Boon


WIP Version of the mod-
Current Version (Summoners Boon)-
http://www.mediafire.com/download/psenxjg30ab632n/UnfairDifficulty_Version3.zip

Old Versions-


Note: Further changes to this mod (and their download links) will be viewable further down in this topic. At some point I will be unable to edit this post with correct information due to the apparent timeout restriction.

Setting the cooldowns that high seems like overkill, honestly. Increasing cooldowns to 12/15/18 would be enough... even with 20 Intelligence to reduce those cooldowns (which is quite a bit), you'd be looking at 4/7/10 for each cooldown, which would definitely give the feeling of "you can only count on using this heal once per battle." Maybe twice for that Minor Heal, but again, you'd need really high Intelligence to even pull that off.

I'm also curious why you only picked on healing spells. For example, setting the cooldown on Flare/BlitzBolt/IceShard/PoisonDart to 4 (instead of 3) would make it so that you'd need 10 Intelligence (not 8) to get the cooldown to 1. This would mean that, until then, you'd have to alternate the elements of your attacks, such as alternating between Blitz Bolt and Ice Shard.

The concept of trying to set cooldowns so long that they span multiple battles doesn't really work, because all it does is add busywork to the player's regimen. For example, you might finish a battle, then go smoke a cigarette outside or something while your cooldowns refresh. The result is a more boring mod, not a more difficult one.

Well, at level 13 my backstabber with a shield had Poison, Earth, Air res slightly above 100%... Fire 75%, Water 85%, Tenebrium 65%... HP 600+, armor 100+, defence 130+... could easily kill any non-boss 16lvl monster one on one in combat (not with Charm in real-time with Ctrl, which also can be done) without any healing at all (including from Leech)...
Only late-game you say?;)

Not anymore... not with Part 2 of the mod -An Elementalist's Bane-, which I was in the middle of releasing as you posted this

I put the details of what's been changed so far in An Elementalist's Bane in the Opening Post (I also reduced the cooldowns for the healing spells, now noted in Part 1).

Let's just say that the amount of effort required to have a 100% Elemental resistances has increased.

Full disclosure- All changes made in this mod are fairly (read- completely) arbitrary on my part, so things might be a bit too Unfair.

Regarding what was asked earlier (why I focus on the healing spells rather than damage dealing spells), the answer is twofold- there are far fewer healing spells to overwrite, and because the overabundance of effectively infinite healing removed the tension from fights later on.

That being said, I'm not quite sure yet what Part 3 should entail. Any thoughts?

Some other spells might need adjusting. I'm also not sure if you've figured out how to adjust player talents, but those could use an overhaul in terms of effectiveness. Many of them are much more appealing or essential, while others are just completely lackluster. I'll post examples, but note I have no idea what's figured out/able to be adjusted at the moment. Just thoughts, so go with anything or nothing. They're intended on balance, for the most part, but be in line with your harder difficulty.

Thoughts:
-Invisibility spells (Invisibility, Make Invisible, Walk in Shadows) need a better detection rate (or longer cooldown), but maybe shouldn't be dismissed on any damage instance. Maybe a threshold of damage received, and an enemy perception check within a certain distance.
-Certain enemy-only spells should be made available to the player at some point. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Fire Rain. I'm sure there are others (that aren't too boss-specific, but even so could be a drop off of them).
-Charm spells (Rapture, Charming Touch) should have a shorter duration or lower chance to succeed. AI reacts to it way too much, as in the priority to hit that charmed target seems way too high.

Class-Specific:

a) Marksman

-Arrow Spray should only work at a certain range; too close, and it should not hit at all or be highly reduced.
-Treat Poisoning, Doctor, First Aid should make a character Immune to the statuses for 1-2 turns to make it more enticing to use, but have a higher chance to fail (not too high).
-Infect should be a cone AoE for enticement.
-Ranged Power Stance should have a bit higher damage ~30%, but a lower chance to hit (maybe ~25%) du to Marksman characters having high Dexterity.

b) Man-At-Arms
-Crushing Fist should have a lower (~25-50%) chance to knock down a target, but be a small AoE (smaller than Boulder Bash) and a bit higher damage (~10-15%) with a longer cooldown.
-Cure Wounds changed to a 2-3 round heal but a slightly lower cooldown.
-Divine Light should try to set burning instead of warm, but also heal a target for a small amount.
-Draw Blood should do piercing damage and hit for a bit less (10-15%).
-Encourage/Inspire should give flat percentages instead of stats. Encourage could be offensive (Crit/Chance to hit), while Inspire could be defensive (block, defense, resists). Would have to lower CD on Inspire.
-Flurry needs to hit 1 or 2 times less, but maybe cost 1-2 less AP.
-Whirlwind should do piercing damage.

c) Scoundrel: (haven't used much of these)
-Cloak and Dagger should create a smokescreen as you land, not as you leave. Or both.
-Lacerate should do ~75% weapon damage.
-Venomous Strike should do ~75% weapon damage.
-Trip should be a small AoE around the caster that knocks down friend/foe.

d) All Spells
-Normalize all Elemental summons. Make them all able to be summoned at the same level, lower their damage as well; give another spell (Fire->Burning Touch; Ice Elemental->Rain; Air Elemental->Shocking Touch; Earth Elemental->Fortify. Spider, Bloodswarm, etc. should get some too, but lower damage). Could do the same for other Summons, as well as add the Wolf, etc. to skills under certain
classes.
-Become Air should reduce Phys/Mag by 25% instead of Phys by 50%, and also make Immune to Earth spells but susceptible to electric damage (~25-50% increase).
-All shields should have an increased effect (ex: 20% chance to Electrify to 30-35%) but swap the resistance effects (-25 to -50, +50 to +25).
-Farseer should increase Crit as well (~10-15%) but cost a bit more.
-Lightning Strike should have a lower chance to stun, do less damage, but act as Ricochet does and have no cap on how many targets.
-Storm should strike 2-4 targets but have only a slightly smaller AoE. 10-20% less damage as well.
-Tornado should have a chance to knockdown/do minor damage to friend or foe.
-Boulder Bash should have a lower chance to knockdown (~20%); either that, or not create poison surface.
-Magical Poison Dart should act as Ricochet does, do less damage, but have the chance to poison.
-Small Fireball should probably have a smaller AoE. I mean, it's smal...
-Rain should create random smaller water surfaces (2-4) instead of one big one in the middle.
-Burn My Eyes should increase sight by a lot. Maybe 5-10, or 25%.

Talent overhauls are pretty much needed. I'll go through them and list possible fixes or adjustments soon (early talents are tough to change, will mark some with TBD meaning don't change or I'll think of something later).

-All Skilled Up - TBD.
-Anaconda - Increase damage with all single handed by 10% and an additional 25% on poisoned targets.
-Arrow Recovery - Changeto 7% x Expert Marksman level.
-Back-Stabber - Add: Chance to cripple (10% x Scoundrel level) and chance to Stun (5% x Scoundrel level).
-Bigger and Better - TBD.
-Bully - Decrease to 25-30%, but make it all status effects.
-Comeback Kid - Change to flat % to not die (~25%) but also heal up to around 1/4 or 1/2 HP).
-Courageous - TBD.
-Demon - Should gain fire resist (~25-50%) and become Immune to Burning.
-Elemental Affinity - AP cost should be reduced by more than 1 (to 2-4).
-Elemental Ranger - Inflict bonus elemental damage depending on top 2 resists.
-Escapist - TBD.
-Far Out Man - TBD.
-Five-Star Diner - Change double to triple or quadruple, but make potions less effective (~25-50%).
-Glass Cannon - Increases damage, speed, and crit by 25%, but lowers defence, resistances, and vitality by 30%.
-Guerrilla - TBD.
-Headstrong - Increase to 40%.
-Ice King - Change chance to chill changed to chance to Freeze. Immune to Freezing. Gain 25-50% Ice Resist.
-Know-it-All - TBD.
-Leech - Chance (7% x Man-At-Arms level) to heal on melee strike for half the damage dealt. Chance (7% x Scoundrel level) to sap target of 25% damage and increase your damage by 25% for 2 turns.)
-Light Stepper - TBD.
-Lightning Rod - Add chance to stun melee attackers, Air Resist, lower earth.
-Lone Wolf - No extra vitality or AP. Gets extra ability and stat point per level.
-My Precious - Decrease everyone's attitude toward you by 25 but increase luck by 1 and Sight/Hearing by 10%.
-Morning Person - TBD.
-Opportunist - TBD.
-Packmule - TBD.
-Pet Pal - TBD.
-Picture of Health - TBD.
-Politician - TBD.
-Quickdraw - TBD.
-Scientist - TBD
-Sidestep - 5% extra x Expert Marksman level to avoid hits.
-Sidewinder - Also increases movement by 25%.
-Speedcreeper - TBD.
-Stand Your Ground - Also adds air resist and 10% to block.
-Stench - Also increase poison resist by 2% x level.
-Thick Skin - No 5 extra base, add earth resist.
-Voluble Mage - Add immunity to cripple and weaken, as well as 15% to all resists.
-Walk if Off - TBD.
-Weather the Storm - TBD.
-Weatherproof - Become immune to weather effects as well. IE. Wet, Chill, Warm, etc.
-What a Rush - Decrease to 1, health below 50%.
-Zombie - Decrease poison resist by 10% per level as well as other effects.

Unfortunately, as far as we've been able to tell, Talents (and those Traits that rise through dialogue) are hard-coded into the game; we're not able to change how they work or add our own.

I might do a Skill overhaul of some sort, though there are limits to what I can (and will) do. The mod should as a whole make things more difficult for the player, or at the very least benefit the enemies more than the players. I'll probably add my AoE Healing Rain skill in as an additional high level healing spell that has the drawback of affecting enemies as well. Fire rain can be made available to the player too.

That's unfortunate. Hopefully Talents will be able to be changed in the future. I gave thoughts on them anyway, just in case.

As for spells, there are clearly some OP ones or ones that are just way too easy to use over others. Charm and invisibility can be. At one point I was wandering alone with my Wizard and accidentally stumbled upon a group of around 6-7 guys. I was high enough level to continuously use Invisibility, wait until it cooled down, use a spell, then use Invisibility in the same round to solo them. Without Lone Wolf.

Summons should be more for utility than damage, so adding spells to them while making them more elementy mixes it up. Giving EE defense, AE dodge, etc. or just utility spells. Lots of times they are summoned to buy time as well, especially early game. The other summons I've heard rumor of (scrolls only) should probably be added as skillbooks to certain classes. If you were daring, maybe even add custom spells for summons. IE. spider could summon spiderlings.

Healing Rain sounds fun against Zombies :x.

Hrm... Summons *are* quite handy, aren't they? Especially when they can be summoned consecutively after playing Decoy for a hit or two.

I think that I will replace the Summons with a version that has a longer cooldown, such that they too can only be summoned about once every fight. To balance it out I'll make them a bit more durable and add a few skills (prob. similiar to those their Elemental Lords from Hiberheim use).

I agree that Charm and Invisibility should have their cooldown increased. I'll probably have it line up with the Scoundrel versions in terms of cooldown (though increased a bit more for Invisibility due to how Int can lower it).

Let's see, what other skills are used often? I've heard that the Warriors can do crazy damage when buffed with certain Man-At-Arms skills.

I think I'll be calling the next Part "Skiller's Bane". Thanks for the suggestions

I am glad to see threads like these! Excited for the mods.

I wonder if you can't leave talents be but just increase the requirements to select/equip them, even put them out of reach if they aren't balanced. I don't think I will ever use Glass Cannon personally.

The hottest mod will be the one that makes the game flatrate harder, rather than different, and then separately does something to address the "Easier over time" issue.

Big Debuffs to select abilities is always going to be subjective. I wonder if small debuffs to many abilities could be an answer. It certainly gives a lot more tools for fine-tuning at any rate. Debuffing abilities and leaving consumables the same may also necessitate Crafting, possibly creating more immersion.

Crap I am in a hard spot, do I have any scrolls or potions that might keep us all alive until next turn?

Buffs like "+50% damage" seem pret-ty frickin' obnoxious. Would rather see 35%, or 25% which is increased to 50% if below x% hp.

Healing Rain seems to be a cool idea, but if an AoE is too strong perhaps it could be a difficult-to-craft scroll only, we can't have people spamming something like that!

So many fun ideas. I need to learn how to mod myself! Big respect for those folks that put big hours into their mods.

I wish talents weren't hard coded the way they are. I've tried changing the requirements by making my own Requirements.txt file- it didn't work. The effects can be worked around a little bit, but talents are going to have to remain the way that they are.

The aim of this mod is to make a playthrough harder while hopefully making the player consider different tactics compared to vanilla. This is the thinking behind my debuffs of the healing skills and the elemental resistances for the player.

By the game's very nature, a playthrough will always become easier over time as the player gets better gear, more skills, higher HP, etc etc. The boosts that enemies get late-game are limited to the fact that the fights had to be balanced around a player party of 4 characters, with all of the unknowns that entails.

I'll probably limit my changes to enemies with a simple mass buff to their base stats; ie +0 everything for Easy, +1 everything for Medium, and +2 everything for Hard. I don't know how I would be able to check if these buffs are actually applying ingame though.

Thats a good idea too. I wonder if you could make it multiplicative? That would scale more the way we are thinking.


Level 1 x 1.2 = enemies equivalent to level 1.2

Level 9 x 1.2 = enemies equivalent to level 10.8

Level 16 x 1.2 = enemies equiv. to level 19.2

/shrug

Another day, another progress update on the mod.

So I just finished getting the basic overrides for the 10 Summon spells that players are able to use (I'm not touching the Pet summons, there are too many and I don't think they matter that much). This means I got a modded skill entry into my mod's Stats folder and have adjusted the Skillbooks so that they point to my summon spells rather than the Vanilla ones.

I've applied these changes to all summons so far-


I'm not changing the availability of the Skillbooks even though the Skill level required for use is down (which should mean that you'll encounter the Earth Elemental book around 11-15 for example), since I don't want access to too many summons too early. I'm not planning on changing the scrolls right now either; one-shot effects to summon a Vanilla summon is fine.

Now I just need to change their stats and skills. I'm not too sure how Summon stats work given that they level up with you so I might not touch those too much. I could use some suggestions on skills though.

For reference, these are the ten summons-

Summons are ridiculous because there is no chance to fail. Every one of my characters has a way to summon. My Wizard has everything wizards can summon. My Tank has offspec Pyro so can summon a Fire Elemental. My 2Hand damage dealer has offspec Witchcraft, so can summon Undead Warriors. My Marksman has offspec Scoundrel, so can summon a Wind Up Toy. The fact that these can be out PLUS I can have something charmed completely refocuses AI attention. I don't know why their priority is so high. For instance, there is a fight near 2 trap doors with a Pyromancer and 2 or 3 fire elementals. Summoning a Fire Elemental, they ALL focus on it, and because it's fire-based, he survives and tanks ALL 5 turns before they even start on my characters. Maybe their resistance needs to be not 100% as well.

Man-At-Arms skills are pretty balanced for the most part. Flurry is a skill that hits about 4 times but has a long cooldown. Dust Devil/Whirlwind also have a long enough cooldown. Battering Ram as well, and its chance to knockdown isn't that high and it doesn't do a lot of damage. I listed how I thought they should change in general. Mixing up damage types may be a good idea so some are useless vs. certain enemies (ie. Undead).

Generally the Man-At-Arms skills should be pretty high damage considering you're in the fray of battle. They're all pretty useful, but none too OP (save for Flurry maybe at times). I'll go through some more to see if I think they need changing.

Thanks for trying to mod the game for a harder difficulty!

-Edit-

My thoughts on summons are above, though suggested skills are just off the top of my head. I think they should be more about utility and less about damage. Make them useful in certain situations.

-Fire Elemental can be about damage and path blocking. Firefly, Smokescreen, Small Fireball, and/or even Phoenix Dive or Explode/Self-Immolation. Fire Rain would be nice :P.
-Ice Elemental can be about healing. A couple healing spells and Rain. MAYBE even ice Wall, but that's pretty strong and I don't know how strong it would be from the elemenetal.
-Air Elemental can be about delay tactics. Make Invisible, Shocking Touch, Teleport.
-Earth Elemental can be about damage prevention/buffs. Blessed Earth, Earth Resistance Shield, Fortify.

As for other summons...
-Spider should be about slow and poison. Acid Breath, Midnight Oil, Magical Poison Dart.
-The Bloodswarm can be really annoying bugs. Infect, Nature's Curse, Mass Weakness, maybe give THEM Firefly instead since it's funny.
-Wolf should be a howling inspiration. Inspire, Encourage, Lower Resistances, maybe even Rage for itself.
-Undead Warrior can be a weak warrior. Draw Blood, Dust Devil.
-Armored Undead Warrior can be a better warrior. Battering Ram, Whirlwind, Flurry.

Also consider these summons start with a ton of AP, meaning they might be able to use 2 spells in one turn. With that in mind, they really shouldn't be allowed out that long IF they have such amazing utility. It should be like...2-3 turns maybe. If you go with a simpler approach, more turns is better I guess. Or if they're weak. If their fireball only hits for 100 at level 20, it's fine. Same with Ice Wall and such. I just don't know how it'll scale =/.

I present to you Part 3 of the Unfair Difficulty mod, "A Summoner's Boon"

What's changed-


Download link for Version 3-
http://www.mediafire.com/download/psenxjg30ab632n/UnfairDifficulty_Version3.zip

Disclaimer: I didn't do much testing beyond seeing that the Spider worked. The other summons may have something wrong with their skills, or the Skillbooks that summon them might not summon the correct version if I missed one of them.

Feedback would be appreciated on the drastic changes made by this part of the mod.

Edit:
As for what's currently planned for Part 3.5...

I'm not sure about increasing difficulty through the reduction of cooldowns. If AI can't be improved (AI in this game is too abusable), I think the next best route would be to provide the creatures with abilities that the player has no access to. It'd be very hard to balance without getting insta-gibbed but it'd make for a very interesting game.

Hmm, seems really interesting. Actually play-testing these will be tough since acquiring the skillbooks and starting a new game...haha. I hope you made sure their damage wasn't too high, xD. Love the utility though! Looks really fun. The rain ideas are nice, I hated seeing Blood and Fire rain and not being able to use them. I'm not sure how you mean to use them. I assume they apply a buff when a player is inside the AoE at the start of the 'rain's turn', and will only last for 1 turn per application of rain (non-stacking), even though the rain itself lasts 5 turns?

In terms of how they work, your ideas are solid. It'd be cool if they did half and half; as in, a [de]buff and area effect (especially if Healing Rain replaces regular Rain). Healing Rain could produce small puddles as well as heal (and still be wet I guess?). Fire Rain could Haste and create burning surfaces (Warm too). Blessed Rain could Fortify and also clear terrain effects (like Tornado I suppose). Foggy Rain could produce fog patches (steam I guess? Smokescreen would be a bit weird) and blind. Blood Rain could produce small puddles of blood and slow (Blood =/= Water :P). If they're set up this way, they can all be utilized both offensively and defensively, but also have drawbacks for both and become useful situationally.

I can't really playtest right now but will when I get a chance.

Question: When you replace these summons, do the enemy AI get these or do they retain the originals? I'm not sure on the connections, but since I assume you can't replace the original skills and only redirect the skillbooks to utilize your skills (from what I've read about the limitations), the enemies are stuck with the old summons. If that's the case, and the AI summons the old ones, that's unfortunate. Hopefully Larian allows for more soon when they come back from vacation.

Keep up the awesome work!

From what I understand about Rain effects (ie normal Rain), the Status effect is applied each turn refreshing its duration. The duration of the Status effect depends on how its defined in the Potion.txt file- I believe Wet is normally set for 5 turns.

Regarding the enemies getting the new skills; it would be too much work honestly for little payoff, and involve replacing Global character templates with one that points towards a Script that uses the new skill instead of the old one. I haven't worked out how to replace a Global character template yet, since those aren't like normal RootTemplates.

From what I have seen about the damage from summons, I think it scales with their level. My spider's Acid Breath listed low damage in its tooltip box when I tested it out.

Meh. Hopefully Larian allows editing main skills soon then, instead of making you create a new skill then having the path for skillbooks to those. If you could edit the main campaign and original files instead of having to copy everything and re-route it, things would be much, much simpler.

Longer term difficulty adjusting exists with the enemies, unfortunately. And, that takes a long time, adjusting (if/when given access to editing current enemies). A quick adjustment could be adding more or different enemies to certain encounters, or new encounters in different areas. From what I understand, you can only add things to the main campaign. Even something like mini bosses within certain encounters would be interesting. I only mention this to be in line with the harder difficulty.

This is down the road though, after spells are hashed out.

This is...exactly what i wanted to do as a part of my larger rebalance harder mod.
The specific changes may be different in a few details but... its exactly what i wanted to do.
Especially the summoning changes.

I so totally wanted to do that, only i have a few more tricks to add to it, if its possible.

I should really get into the editor else you will make my harder mod instead of me.



btw, you mention that :
To what exactly are these chances to hit penalties related to? Just general penalties set for difficulty mode?

Can you tell if there is any such penalty tied to levels? A difference of two or three levels between me and enemies creates really huge discrepancies in my chances to hit.




How about making them invisible in the list so that for the player they dont exist at all?

ChanceToHit is the stat that corresponds to how much of a boost (or penalty) your accuracy gets. The default difficulty settings changes the ChanceToHit depending on if you're in Easy or Hard for both players and enemies, using the very same Character.txt stat entries I'm using for a global change. Beyond that, certain skills can change this value too: Bless gives +30, Precision Stances add 25, Power stances give -15, etc etc. Those stat changes from the skills are described in the Potion.txt file. There is some sort of penalty tied to levels I believe (attacking an enemy 5 levels above you is tough), but I don't think that's moddable. The boosts I have mentioned above are flat % boosts independent of level.

I don't think I can touch the talents at all. When I tried to change the requirements via my mod there was 0 effect on their requirements ingame. Maybe this will change later, but for now I'm just leaving them be.