You can tell when you play this game it is trying hard to be D&D, without using the D&D rule set. Which I applaud because I like that someone has come outside the box a bit. I am enjoying the game and having fun but I still feel there are some fundamental flaws to the game which could be addressed if not for this game possibly the next one.

My first post was about how Tactician mode is completely imbalanced which lead me to keep a serious eye on my next play through on Classic because I got fed up of being one shot in every battle I got into in Tactician and restarted.

First issue: RNG

I am typically the type of person who doesn't much favor RNG and I like tactical games where I know what is going to happen. But D&D was a lot of fun because you never really knew what was going to happen. It added that flavor of mystery and realism.

Example:

A sword does 1d6 damage (1-6). That's a huge variance in damage. But this is explained by saying maybe your hit just grazes your opponent (1) or you landed a perfect shot (6). You never really knew what the outcome would be of your attacks and it added flavor to combat and a sense of mystery.

DDO using the D&D rule sets was quite fun and interesting. I got excited seeing really good damage numbers or making that awesome save by 1 point.

As you level up you find magic gear and you gain +1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 to your attack and damage. So even at high levels it would be 1d6+5 (6-11).

If you had a high str, say 20 points, that's another +10 to attack and damage. So 1d6+15 = 16-21 damage. That's still quite a big range, almost 30%. Add in spell effects like 1d6 fire damage on hit and you're looking at 17-27 damage. Now it's almost a 50% variance in damage.

You can see as you level up, get stronger and find better gear that variance is lessened but it's still there.

In this game weapons and spells have almost no RNG to them. My warriors sword does 269-311 damage. That variance is so low, only about a 20% difference, that you pretty much know exactly what is going to happen before you even attack. Someone has 500 health? it will take exactly 2 hits to kill him. No more no less. And it takes a bit of the flavor away from combat I think.

Spells are the same too. Almost no damage variance to them at all. If you meet a monster who casts fireball, it's going to hit you for that same 600 damage every single time he casts it no matter how many times you reload your game.

Spell effects also have no 'save' roll to them. In this game all you have to do is blow out your enemies armor and you get 100% chance to succeed to freeze, petrify, knock down, poison, burn etc...

I think that ends up making the game a bit crazy heavily dependent on CC. The entire game turns into whoever CC's first wins. Since wands do so little damage I've actually considered just putting 1h swords on my casters so they can use battering ram and battle stomp to have 4 characters spamming knockdown all day. I mean that sounds rather silly but incredibly stupidly effective.

Your first 2 chars leap into combat, remove opponents armor, your next battle stomps and knocks em all down. Then just rinse and repeat battle stomp with each of your 4 characters because even a caster with full intelligence has 95% accuracy with a 1H sword.. which I don't understand why accuracy of the weapon isn't dependent on the stat that is required to use them.

It's silly to think if there are 4 guys in front of you, and you blow out their magic armor in one turn all your rogue has to do is pop in and put Medusa Head on and it's 100% guaranteed 2 rounds of petrify on all of them. No save rolls, no chance to succeed... it just happens.

I think that's a major flaw and I would have preferred spell effects to have a base chance to succeed with lower probabilities against characters with higher stats. Have a higher str score = less likely to get knocked down/slowed. Have a high int score = less likely to be feared/charmed. Have a high con score = less likely to be petrified/frozen. Something along those lines. I mean you can fiddle with numbers and percentages to happen I just think there should be a way to possibly resist these effects both players and monsters.

Because of this I feel like combat is a bit predictable which actually ends up taking a bit of the fun away. You know exactly how much you're going to hit for, then know exactly which CC you're going to use, which leads to it working 100% of the time, then leads to your victory.

Second issue: Character/Item levels

Oh man. I like getting more powerful when I level up just as I'm sure anyone does. It gives a sense of purpose in gaining levels which is good. But I think Larian went over the top with how powerful gaining levels actually is.

When you gain a level you gain about 15% more life, spells deal about 15% more damage and weapons/armor gain 15-30% more armor and damage. This is an incredible amount of power over a very short period of time.

I started noticing the huge amounts of power differences in gear and took note of just how crazy it was. Let's do some quit comparisons.

Shields:
Level 11 LEGENDARY shield: 176 armor/126 spell armor (has a sweet mod to reflect 40% of damage as fire!)

What an awesome shield! So fun to play with.

Level 12: Rare shield: 200 armor/137 spell armor.

Hrm that's a pretty good increase, but meh not really enough to make me want to lose the 40% dmg reflect mod.

Level 12 Epic shield: 210 armor/147 spell armor.

Great. That's about 20% more armor which also means 20% more shield throw damage. So uh yah guess I have to dump the legendary shield for just an epic shield only 1 level higher.

Level 13 RARE shield: 280 armor/192 spell armor.

Holy crazy hell. That's almost another 30% increase in armor over the previous one. And it's only a blue shield. Just think about that for a second. A BLUE level 13 shield has 50% more armor values than a level 11 LEGENDARY shield. Like... lolwut?!

It seems almost a waste of gold to even be purchasing legendary items as you're just going to out level them in 1-2 levels since blues 2 levels higher have 50% more stats.

Now for sale at the shop:

Level 14 Epic shield: 374 armor / 262 spell armor.

Good god. That's a 33% increase in armor, which also means a 33% increase in shield throw damage! For just one level higher?

And it's 78% more armor over the shield I had just 2 levels ago. That's just....... just......

WHAT?! LOL!

My necromancer/summoner (2 warfare, 10 summoning, 3 necro) hits for 346-384 with bouncing shield... which hits TWO enemies... and he only does 206-228 with Mosquito Swarm with 27 intelligence.

LOLWUT?!

How about some weapon comparisons:

I got a sweet level 11 2H from a quest for my warrior: Unique 48-51 damage. And it gives a sweet source skill.

Level 13 Rare 2H: 62-71 damage.

Oh man. I find a blue 2H sword 2 levels later and it's already doing 30% more damage than a level 11 unique. Sad I have to dump that sword already.

Level 13 Legendary 2h: 69-76

Welp, another 10% damage boost. Gotta use it.

Level 14 Legendary 2H: 79-91 + 16-19 air

LOLWUT? What just happened? My current weapon (72.5 dps) is now obliterated by the one for sale (102.5 dps).

A legendary 2H axe just one level higher than my current Legendary 2H sword is almost 50% increase in damage? LOL!

Larian seriously... this is completely NUTS!

Level 14 Legendary 1H mace: 48-56 + 10-12 poison.

Like lol that mace does almost the same damage as my level 13 rare 2H sword.

I mean I could go on with armor too but it's the same story. The amount of power increase in stats is absolutely out of control if you ask me in how much stats change on gear even just one level higher.

This puts an immense amount of pressure on the player to upgrade gear. And with the absolutely pitifully low drop rates of gear in this game that isn't easy to do. In fact I may go as far to say it could be impossible to beat this game on Tactician or Honour modes without stealing gear/gold/skill books.

This isn't Diablo. We can't just go to an area, farm some mobs, go back to town, sell, go back out and farm more mobs. Each encounter is a set encounter and there's a limited amount of experience and gold we can earn.

Getting about maybe 8-10 encounters per level, with maybe 8-10 upgrades to gear (some gear you probably wont use) it makes it incredibly difficult to keep up with the power creep. The difficulty of this gets multiplied in Tactician mode because mobs have 50% more hp/armor/damage and if your gear isn't all up to par every single level you're probably going to get stomped into the ground.

I think this amount of power creep is a huge flaw and really should get toned down, a lot. I think a legendary piece of gear should at the very least buy you 2-3 levels of play especially since they're running me a good 3-5k gold a pop at my level. But knowing how fast they are going to get replaced it's just not worth buying them. I'd rather take the blue one for half the cost, with just a little less damage and upgraded 2 pieces of gear over the cost of 1.

I also noticed some areas seem to have a set level for the gear you can find in chests and barrels. I was level 13 going back somewhere and found a piece of gear in a box I didn't look in. It was level 10. So instantly I already know I don't care what the stats say it's vendor fodder. Which makes me a little sad.

This also meant when I killed that giant troll with 16,000 HP when I was level 13 I was super excited when I saw a legendary ring on him because he was level 18!

That ring has 279 magic armor on it which is now over half of the magic armor my rogue (540 total) has on her LOL!

One level 18 ring has more magic armor value than the rest of her entire gear set in full 12-14 finesse gear, amulet and ring.

Like really? Cmon guys that's not good balance.

I saw a 'mod' area in the game and figured I'd go see what mods are out there on nexusmods. There was a mod I saw that said it allowed you to increase your gear level for the cost of gold. I didn't really understand just how powerful that mod is till after I started looking at gear comparisons.

I mean just think if you find that awesome sword with the exact stats you're looking for like crit and life steal on it then level up once or twice that item is now all but worthless. I'm not using any mods but I understand why that mod was made now.

Don't get me wrong I still enjoy the game and am having fun. Mostly the story and the encounters though. Some of these side quests were incredibly well written and are extremely fun just to watch how they unravel. But I do feel the combat of the game could use some tweaking in regards to the points I made above.