Hi !
First off I adore what you have done sofar in terms of having my decisions/fails/race/class have an effect on the story/NPCs, you have outdone yourself. I already have 110 hours played and I can't stop rerolling
It's hard to list any glaring problems since this is EA and some logic errors concerning quests and bugs concerning animations or quest updates are bound to happen.
Therefore it's hard to talk about the story and make any judgement sofar, so I will concentrate on combat interactions.
The only thing I would say about it is that the previous history in DnD, especially Avernus/Tieflings should be made more clearer, you can get a little info when entering the grove but imo it's not enough.
Now about combat
Atm it seems there are 2 ways about combat:
- scout ahead, unchain your party, put them in advantageous positions, engage dialogue with your skill-monkey and if combat starts, hope you don't get roflstomped.
- react "normal" and start a conversation, maybe fail a few checks or not, start combat and get DEFINITELY roflstomped.
There are a few good instances where the game/Larian warns you about coming dangers, e.g.
- encounter with the brains at the first beach (don't let them get near)
- the attack on the grove ( I hear shouting ahead)
- the grand entrance of the boulette on the ridge in the underdark before you cross the "combat-trigger" farther ahead
- perception check before entering the blighted village/goblin ambush
Don't get me wrong ,evil cheese from the GM(Larian) is fun and all but I think we are testing the normal difficulty here atm, so having complete knowledge of enemy spawns/abilities/resistances should not be needed.
When entering the Underdark after the Spiderqueen fight I got roflstomped by the minotaurs without any chance of reaction since the "flying down" cutscene broke the turn-based mode I initiated before jumping.
When my last party member reached the bottom all other 3 were already dead xD. Maybe make their patrol path a little more forgiving in this difficulty.
Since then I played it like DOS2 tactician mode (always stealth, always send the invisible imp ahead, always climb up for advantage, always prebuff the whole party before entering any new area/location, carry dozens of barrels with you, etc)
I enjoy that way of playing but I think it's a little bit too much atm for this standard/normal(?) difficulty.
If that gets solved by raising the levelcap (you could be lvl5 no problem before going down there) then disregard that.
I'm not sure if jumping should be able to disengage, enemy rogues having a disengage is okay but being able to attack in the same turn feels a little cheap. Maybe don't make disengage a bonus action ?
I think alot could be solved by tweaking the enemy AI more and not altering much about spells. Atm I can be sure that the enemy will always go for squishy characters ( lowestAC) first and concentrate on killing them permanently when downed.
So the best tactic for any fight is to let Gale die and wipe out any melees while the casters/ranged waste all their actions on him as well while somebody heals him up.
They also LOVE to run through attacks of opportunity which makes little sense. Maybe include the way initiative gets rolled in the combat log, atm it's not really clear.
It's a hard thing to tackle, I'm sure and I don't really wanna sacrifice the fun of having all those crazy interactions between shoving/jumping/surfaces/throwing etc.
About XP: atm it's more beneficial to kill as many ppl as possible to reach max level so you can tackle the harder areas, I hope in the final game it's balanced so anyone can reach the cap without much combat.
It's better to have too many quests/ways to get xp and have the completionists cry about being max so fast than punishing the diplomatic/steathy/merciful characters.
Damn, already a long post, I could go on for pages, so therefore something fun
Mol, I think we got trouble
https://imgur.com/a/a7SlTnhLove you,
Toni
