In my opinion, some specific encounters should reward you loot even if you solve the situation via dialogue, for example if you have to make a difficult skill check.
That XP part was good idea ... but i cant really figure how this should work.
Cant imagine any situation, dif.19 intimidation checks included ... where NPC should surender their gear, unless they are brainless stupids. :-/
Long rests need to be limited. Maybe by giving the player an item that is consumed upon taking a long rest. And these items are spread around the game world in such a way that the player can rest whenever they visit a new town or save place.
Once aggain, i cant quite imagine RP story behind such item ...
Except for silly items, like tent that will self destruct after use.
I still think that some "vitality", "energy", or simply "rested" metter, deplenishing by moving, or fighting ... shows you when your character are exhausted and need to rest (otherwise get disadvantage on everything for example) ... and preventing player to long-rest before that metter is, lets say at 30% ...
That should work quite fine.
And it also ensure that everyone will have +/- simmilar amount of rests, so your character will have much much, and once aggain much lesser risk to miss anything important in camp.
I know, that some people can, and will run in circle to exhaust themselves and long rest at will ... but hey, nobody ever find any unexploitable system.
Long rests need to progress the story and quests. An example: Long resting before solving the Druid grove encounter with the ritual, should solve the situation automatically. Long resting before killing the bugbear assasins next to the tiefling should make him kill the tiefling and then go hunt the next one.
I love the idea of forced long rest before important events!
Not sure how to implement it tho, but love it anyway! :3
The amount of short rests need to be increased to 2-3 inbetween long rests. This must happen to make sure characters like Warlocks have enough spell slots.
Once aggain problem that seem to be easily solved with "rested" metter ... you need to use your short rests before long rest ... your short rests will replenish you 20% of your rested metter. :P
The game throws WAY too many items at you. Because long rests can be used everywhere, I start every encounter with full HP and full spell slots. I am stockpiling huge amounts of scrolls which I do not need. And it makes all the classes feel less unique. Why even use a Wizard given the fact that we can find scrolls in almost every 5th container? Like in DOS2, special arrrows are also way too numerous. The players are stockpiling tons of food and options which are never used because long rests means you do not have to spend any ressources or items to heal.
Well, if you are stockpiling they certainly can feel overwhelming ...
But there is few things ...
1) Once Long Rest will be restricted (and i bet it will be, its just loosened for EA, so Larian can see where and when we use it) this situation will dramaticaly change.
2) As i understand it, reading the feedback here, every scroll should be (acording to e5) useable only for class that can also use such spell ... meaning that if you will stockpile huge amount of Wizard scrolls, they will work as additional spellslots for your wizards, and your wizards only! (And maybe Eldrich Knights, or Arcane Tricksters, not sure here). Simmilar to Cleric scrolls, etc. etc.
Wich should really solve this problem with uniqeness of certain classes, and since Long Rest will (and i bet it will) be restricted, i presume we will be happy for every single additional spell we will be able to use.
3) About arrows ... i dont think there is too much of them, if you are scrimping them, then you will have many ofc ... on the other hand, when you are using them regulary, for example with your dex. fighter, or dex. cleric, or dex. ranger, etc. ... basicaly anything except rogue, since sneak attack is in most situations a bit stronger and you cant use sneak attact with elemental arrow (yet) ... you can find out that there isnt as much as it semed, but their amount is quite OK, not too much to charish them as something extra extra extra rare, yet not so little so you use it to hunt rabits for fun.
This goes also for potions of animal speaking. Why would I ever pick an Eldtrich invocation to speak with animals if I can just use a potion for speaking with animals, of which I have atleast 5 at the End of EA. And apparently you can buy an unlimited amount from Volo in camp.
I presume it depends on if you are more in need of gold, or spellslots ...
Again, situation will change once Long Rest will be limited.
Here i would point out rather the fact that animal speaking potion is working until long rest ... wich with certain group setting can be potentialy almost infinitely ... on the other hands speak with animals spell works only since you keep concentration, and you dont get recast spell, when used as with other "speaking" spells (so far i found only one additional speaking spell, and it was speak with dead)
I would totally love to see that speak with animals spell to be used the same as speak with dead ...
HOWEVER, the magic Circlet from Lump the Enlightneed must be nerfed! 18 intelligence is way too powerful. Its so powerful in fact, once you know about its existence, you can make your entire build around it and dump intelligence.
In my opinion, nerfing this to 16 intelligence should happen atleast. 16 intelligence is achieved much easier at character creation, so this doesn't make a character whom you wanted to turn into a mage more powerful. But it will still help greatly on an Eldritch Knight for example.
Cant say i entirely disagree ... if this item will be nerfed i still can find some uses for it.
But i bet that in later game everyone who will try to exploit this fact and dump Int stat for their Wizard (or Int focused class in general), to use 18int crown, wil cry for every single other (and quite possibly stronger) artefact they will have to throw away.
Both Scorching ray granted by Circlet of blasting and Staff of Crones scale use hitchance based on intelligence modifier.
Because of this, a Warlock, who uses Charisma as their spellcasting hitchance modifier, has a much lower chance to hit with Scorching Ray and Ray of Sickness granted by these items.
Please adjust this, so that these items will use Charisma as their hitchance modifier when used by a Warlock. Otherwise Warlocks, which already have few spellslots, cannot make great use of these items. But Wizards, who have many more spellslots, can make great use out of these items and save spellslots.
I believe this is intentional ...
(Also i hit with my warlock quite often with Circled of Blasting ... and i dumped int completely)
And it (funny enough) was probably intended as save mechanics against the very next thing you are complaining about:
Overall, I am of the opinion that there are too many magic items. For example the Necklace for Misty Step and Circle for Scorching ray are incredibly powerful artifacts. However I can give my entire party artifacts like these, at level 4 already. I am extremely worried that we end up having characters fully decked out with artifacts in such a way that they get like 3 bonus spells to use. Again, this goes back to what I said earlier. This makes the classes feel less unique. You could have a peasant party with 10 in all stats and no proficiency in magic or anything but because of the sheer amount of arrows, scrolls, food, potions you can still play like a Wizard.
And it can be even worse ...
Since those items dont have any "internal spell slot" of its own, but more like working like "temporary spell slot per character" ...
So if you have for example Circlet of Blasting ... and you use it on your first character, you can after that simply take it off, give it to another character, and cast another Scorching Ray for free ...
Here i can see the real problem with magical artefacts ...
That, and the fact that some artefacts that are obtained from vendors reappear after long rest in their inventory, so you can buy them multiple times ... so potentialy, you can do whole fight with Scorching Rays only.
Back to previous quote once aggain:Sure, those two problems can be countered with using circlet to 18Int, and Staff of Crones at the same time ... so you have both additional spell, and also hit modifier ... but it once aggain needs at least two items, to get required effectivity ...
Personaly i think, this is a good system, and once artefacts will be indeed usable once per l/s rest ... and not once per l/s rest, per character ... it will work much better.
Feedback after raiding the grove. First of all, there need to be a couple hints as to who should be killed. The tieflings at the gate, the ones in the hollow. The player needs to Enter the room with Zevlor and the Druid cove. This should be market on the minimap since many players have struggled with finishing this quest, myself included.
Marks on minimap seem like good additional hints ...
But you see who you need to kill, since goblins with Minthara are attacking them, so all you need to do is stick to them.
They also should continue in killing once Tieflings are done, since in my experience they stayed in Zevlor's cave and i was allone against all druids.
The rewards for doing this are laughable and not worth it at all, compared to the items and artifacts you obtain by killing the Goblin leaders. You only kill a few refugees, but whats worse is you all of the traders you previously had access to.
And if you simply kill the goblin leaders, you gain very powerful items and keep the traders alive. This Questline needs to reward the player with powerful items aswell. Mintharra for example wears a necklace which allows you to use misty step. This is incredibly powerful. But you do not get this item by siding with the goblins.
The real problem at the moment is that you will loose the two in Goblin camp once goblins turn on you ... if that will be changed and Mithnaras (aka Goblins) betrayal will be not default, but optional outcome ... or even better, if Mintharas betrayal will not affect rest of the goblin camp (meaning she betray you on her own, not in behalf of whole camp) ... both sides will be perfectly ballanced in default end, and every other outcome will be just consequence of player bad decision (or missfortune in dicerolls).
But even without it, there is still enough traders in this game (unless you decide to kill them all, but in that case, its only your fault) to not worry about one, or two more or less.
For my evil Drow playtrough i lost every vendor, except that one in Myconid village, and he will suffice.
About artifacts of, litteraly every NPC ... not sure if all of them, but certainly most of them you can force NPC to trade with you ... wich also seem quite ridiculous, i admit that ... just saying that there is a way to get many of them, if not even all.
It works even with Arabela mother in moment when she, dont want to talk to you at all anymore, and are just sending you away ... if you click on trade button, she is forced to trade with you her pendant.
(Trade ... but more like Forced Trade button, is in down left corner)
So ... you have options to get (as far as i know) litteraly all artefacts, no matter who you sided with.
And even if you dont want to use this forced trade option ...
It seem only natural to me that you will get only artefacts of the oposite side than you side with ...
If you decide to help Tieflings, Zevlor also never decide to give you his gloves, wich are also quite sweet ...
If you decide to not kill druids, Kagha will also dont give you her neck ...
So ... if you were sugesting to add more interesting loot to Tieflings, and Druids, or just tredistribue those existing ones ... so even Evil route will have something interesting there ... i would agree, even if i think that there is some interesting items on both sides allready.
I suggest the following: The goblin leaders will hand you their powerful artifacts, the same as you would obtain by killing them, as a reward after raiding the grove. Mintharra gives you her magic items.
Simply ... nope.
This is just nonsence.
I get that you want those items, but this is completely out of everything we have seen so far.
Can you find one single reason for them to do that? Bcs i dont.
I could imagine some conversation between you and Minthara in camp like:
Intimidation check: Player: "You have nice neckage, and mace ... hand them over!" (dif. 19 at least :D)
Sucess: Minthara: "Here you go"
Failure: Minthara: "You can get them only over my dead body!"
Optional reactions: Player: "That was plan B." ... OR: Player "Nevermind then." > Minthara: "You should know better to threaten me ... GOBLINS! ATTACK!"
That seem fiting to characters.
But just giving you? Nah, thats just lazy man.
I asked myself "Why did I even do this?" I should have just defended the grove, killed the goblins, gotten a lot of nice items from them, not have Wyll leave my party and not have my companions dissaprove of me for siding with the Absolute. And I would have gotten much better rewards and not felt like an idiot. Just a day before,
goblins were covering in fear. This makes no sense to me.
Bcs you are thinking retrospectively ...
Our characters dont have that luxury ... ofc, if you cant find the reason to join Minthara, before you actualy join Minthara, you probably should not do that ... but if you do, and outome dont work for you as you expected, you are left with only regrets ... as your character should be, in the same situation.
So it seem acurate to me.
Part of serving the absolute and helping the goblins is power and authority. And now the game takes authority away from the player again. And every time you say "I side with the absolute" almost everyone in your party will dissaprove of you. It just does not feel rewarding!
Yeah ... you just need to decide between companions, and kinda everyone else.
Larian, you told us that 25% players chose to side with the goblins. If the goblin path had actually good rewards, I am sure there would be many more players siding withthem.
Possibly, probably, ...
But the question here is if they will side with goblins bcs that path will seem more interesting ... or just for the reward in the end.
Personaly i like very much that Larian kinda screewed us ... i bet that there will be some reward in the end, wich we didnt even seen so far. And righ now im not talking about whole game end, but only about Act1 ending.
Just the path is a little more thorny than we expect, and personaly i like it that way.
When I play evil, I expect it to be rewarding. I expect my character to become powerful, at any cost. I expect there to be slaves, servants and npcs who are afraid of me. I don't expect to just kill everyone. Playing evil is not about murdering everyone, there are many sides to it.
I would recomend to wait for whole goblin story to be revealed, before i start to concider if that was rewarding enough.
For example, the player should be able to side with the Shadow Druids.
Personaly i didnt try it yet, but i readed in one of others "evil path bad" topics here that someone manage to support them (not exactly sided but you get the idea) ... then they simply finish ritual of thorns, and Minthara is mad about being unable to attact the groove.
But as i say, its just rumor to me now.
Yeah, the main issue with an evil run is motivation. There isn't really any reason to side with the goblins besides fucking Minthara. The goblins turn on you if you help them, if you go to Priestess Gut about your worm, she turns on you and tries to kill you. If you talk to Rogzlin and don't pass a pursuasion check the Ilithid outs you and turns against you.
Once aggain you are rating retrospectively ...
That is your problem.
In the end, if you want to be evil, you have to kill men women and children for no reason and for no special personal gain.
But when you are helping Tieflings you have to kill goblin men, goblin women, and gobin children for no reason and for hanfull few coins.
The gobbos betraying you is both predictable and kind of nonsensical for this particular story. Regular goblins and drow? Yeah makes perfect sense. But goblins and drow united under the Absolute and taking orders from True Souls have no reason to turn on you (a True Soul) who actually butchered an entire druid grove to complete their mission.
I keep telling people "you dont see to their heads, you still dont know full story, even for first act" ... and yet, once uppon a time there is someone who just cames here, and starts talking about how someone else have no reason to do anything.
A better narrative arc would be to have two true souls at the grove. Have the drow be in the cage alive, and the girl gobbo be a true soul, dead in halsin's lab. When you talk to the imprisoned drow, you connect and he introduces you to the concept of true souls. He promises to take you to the gobbos where they will help you control your powers and grow strong, if you help him escape.
I dont see any difference here ... you just switched two characters for nothing.
From there you either kill him, leave him, or help him. He meets you outside the Blighted Village and joins the party as a pet (same way Halsin does) and will get you into the camp and past the goblins if you are terrible at social skills or don't want to use the tadpole for some reason. Otherwise things proceed normally and you meet the three leaders. With him returned, Minthara now knows where the druid grove is and sends you to kill Liam the prisoner.
I dont see here much difference ...
The only thing you added so far is kill prissoner ... wich seem pointless, even conciderable as act of mercy in fact. :-/
Meanwhile, Priestess Gut wont try to poison you and imprison you. She will promise to help you "harness your True Soul" but only after the Druid Grove is dealt with. If you do, she basically takes the place of Halsin in the story, directing you towards Moonrise Towers.
Once aggain i dont see much difference ...
You once aggain just switched Minthara with Gut ... and completely reworked Gut to do that. O_o
Next, if you decide to take out the druid grove, you can either lead the goblins right to them and kill everyone, or you can find some way to sneak back to camp and warn the tieflings to leave, possibly extorting them somehow. The druids stay and have to die however. Maybe you can use Liam to send a message to Zevlor and help him escape.
This isnt exactly bad idea ... but if i understand it corectly, Baldur's gate is on North-West from groove ... meaning straight over Goblin territory ...
Cant imagine how you want those refugees to go around the goblin army.
Reasons for giving the tieflings a chance to escape are simple. Either your character doesn't really care about them and removing them from the picture will make razing the grove easier. Or your character wants the goblin's help in controlling the tadpole, but doesn't want to kill a bunch of innocent refugees to do it. The druids so far are pretty shitty so killing them isn't so bad, but the tieflings haven't really wronged you at all.
I kinda like this idea ...
Would like it even more, if you could also warn, and help escape Druids and dont give a damn about Tieflings ...
So we have all outcomes present ...
On the other hand those options starts to create "noone getting harm" ways ... wich kinda negates this hard decision.
Wich i kinda like on this, no one cant save everyone ... not even human named David Hasselhoff ...
After the raid, things progress as normal. Priestess Gut inspects you and determines something is different about you (the Tadpole in her head is probably creating a mental blindspot preventing her from realizing you guys have brain worms). She determines that you need to go to Moonrise Towers to speak to so-and-so. Or to present yourself before the Absolute itself. Whatever Larian plans on having there.
Once aggain ... this dont actualy change anything ... it a little different conversation, but exactly the same can Minthara do for you, and she will if you roll your dices right. O_o
She can warn you that because your True Soul is damaged somehow that the Shadow Cursed areas might have unpredictable affects on you, and tell you to ask Minthara how to get there. Minthara can then set you on a path to the Underdark. The goblins then leave, being directed somewhere else. Maybe Minthara joins your camp in place of Halsin, or maybe you just lose that whole narrative thread for being a dick.
It sounds a bit overcombinated, since Minthara can provide you a way to go on the ground without being affraid of shadowcurse ...
I also dont seem much reasons for her to just stand in corner of your camp. :-/
And since we dont know yet what outcome will be there in Moonrise Towers, i would not start to change story before i see it.
