I don't expect there to be 13 companions to be honest and if you set your expectations that high, prepare to be disappointed. I'd expect 7-8 at best. Sure I'd love to have more, but quality over quantity. Especially with 4 member party, 9 companions would mean at least 3 playthrough to see all of them.
Originally Posted by Vlad the Impaler
That's all well and good until your party takes its first casualty. Then things get a lot worse real fast when the party takes multiple casualties.
If the traps are that wimpy what is the point of even bothering with traps? Making rogues irrelevant is just spiteful. One of my two favorite characters to run is a rogue as a scout/sniper/pathfinder. So if one of my two favorite character types is unnecessary why should I bother with the game?
DnD 5E already has mechanics to reduce lethality in combat with death saves and mechanics. It's also a video game, so if things go bad, that's what quick save & load are for. Plus 5E characters are usually a bit more versatile than 2E, so not having a thief, mage or cleric doesn't cripple you entirely.
Why the hyperbole? Just because stepping into a trap with a tank doesn't instantly annihilate them, doesn't mean they need to be wimpy.
High number of different party configuration or permutations give you an illusion of diversity. Is a game with 120 configurations really more diverse than 252? Are you truly going to play this game through more than 120 times? Do these configuration actually play differently, or is there only couple true differences between them? No Man's Sky has infinite number of planets, does that mean infinite replayability? After 20-30, does the number really matter?
In BG1&2 you pretty much always ran at least 1 cleric, 1 mage, 1 thief, 1 tank. That makes the games play very samey. You have a thief to pick locks and traps 100% of the time. You have cleric to give you the same basic buffs 100% of the time. You have mage to haste you near 100% of the time. You have 1 frontline guy aggroing the enemies 100% of the time. You don't make any real compromises and have no weaknesses.
What hyperole? If traps are weak enough that a fighter can literally walk through an entire dungeon setting them all off without the fighter dying and without the traps being a threat to the party then why bother with traps at all? That's why I grew to hate coop play with other players doing D&D online. After more than a dozen attempts I gave up on the game because exactly the same thing happened every time - people had zero interest in teamwork or even a hint of roleplaying. Every time the other players just threw caution to the wind and zergged through setting off ever trap and killing everything in sight and opening every treasure chest before I could cautiously advance more than few rooms.
You do understand that a good rogue is useful for more than only finding and disarming traps, right? They can also be very effective in a scout/sniper/pathfinder role to do recon for the party to help develop a sound tactical plan, they can do flanking and backstabbing, they can snipe mages to interrupt spell casting. A mage that can never get off a spell is not a threat. A mage that dies from a backstab is not a threat. If rogues are not necessary then why bother with traps? Another way to effectively use a rogue after it has done enough Recon is to get aggro on the enemy can then draw them back to the party waiting in over-watch to ambush the attackers with enfilading fire before the fighters at point engage in melee. If rogues are not necessary for scouting and recon and flanking and backstabbing then it seems as though a lot of tactical nuance is not necessary, and that seems a lot like mind numbing hack and slash.
The party of four you describe has no redundancy to make up for losses/casualties during encounters. One fighter? I always had two because after getting above L6 or L7 losing at least one fighter to a spell becomes the norm. Losing both fighters isn't the norm, but even that happens some time. Then the pure cleric is the tank. One cleric? I always have a dual class C/M because losing the cleric to a spell gets common at the middle levels so the party needs the dual class character to maybe keep the party alive. One mage? Again, I always have that dual class C/M as backup for when the mage gets taken out of the fight.
My goal in every dungeon/encounter is to always use proper recon and tactics to survive without ever having to do a reload. If I have to reload then I've failed. I hate having to rely upon the save and reload copout. I prefer to have save & reload as the rare exception rather than the norm.
20-30? How about at least three or four or five? And you have the gall to accuse me of hyperbole. If its easy enough and tactics lite enough for four I don't have much confidence that replaying will be likely. Granted, a party of four makes that more likely than a "party" of one or two. That's why I never finished Morrowind, and never replayed Neverwinter Nights or Daggerdale - no party so not much use for tactics.
Last edited by Vlad the Impaler; 26/08/2002:32 PM.
