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Barrelmancy for the win!

Don't like it, don't use it. As Boromir would say...



Is it an exploit? No, I don't think so.

Is it cheating? Well, if you allow (solo) you are only cheating yourself, I don't see it as a problem.

Is it fun? Can be, absolutely. Who can't be impressed with the Goblin army walking into a clearly marked minefield and at the work to set up such a trap? I use the same 'exploit' to kill the Cambions on the Nautiloid and start the game at level 3. Just means I'm capped so much faster. Also means or at least suggests I've played through a few times and am playing with stuff while I wait for Act 2. It's also a way to find bugs and unexpected behaviour.

Could you get away with it in real time games? Could you heck.

Could you get away with it in tabletop gaming? Good luck with that.

Could Larian do better? Why yes, they can...

The mimic idea is fun, but won't stop barrelmancy, won't stop the above, or this:



What could liven up things would be:

Add appropriate levels of instability and volatility to them:

Nautiloid tanks are basically rocket fuel.
Oil is flammable, a barrel of oil is an impromptu bomb (though shrapnel damage is not applied to rolls)
Firewine is similar and seemingly more flammable and can be compared to brandy.
Gunpowder is (well can be) an explosive in it's own right.

Coding aside, the question here is cause and effect.
A tin of gunpowder poured on the floor will burn, but won't explode. In a tin, with a cord fuse, it's a bomb.
Drop a barrel of oil, it might split, but it won't explode, a steel barrel, leaking, causing a spark when you drop it, will.
You get the idea.

(I've worked in the chemival industry, I know a thing or two...)

So, carrying them should be fine.

Dropping them can be assumed to be placing them carefully. But arguably with nautiloid tanks, should be chance.

Getting knocked down, with carrying them, there should be a corresponding chance for them to shatter (covering you in flammable fuel) or even explode.

If you are knocked down into flames... BOOM.

If you are hit, whether a spell, a flaming arrow, again, BOOM.

That's carrying them.

Now, imagine you are in the Goblin camp and decide to strategically place 50 barrels of explosives... (Been there, down that, great fun!) If oyu are on good terms, no-one bats an eye.
Not even when you steal the Zhentarim's entire stash and drop it in front of them.

Now, all of this ignores encumbrance. So, add encumbrance

These barrels will be massively unwieldy. You could carry one, in both arms, you could roll or walk them. You could not stick a couple in a backpack, much less a couch.

So, first check would be, 'carry' - so a barrel in code terms would be treated as a two-handed weapon. (e.g. It shows you carrying (wielding) a barrel, but you can't attack with it).
You could not climb a ladder with it.
You could not leap with it.





Second then is, "OYE! What the bloody hell are you doing?" Because I am pretty such surrounding High Priestess Gut with barrels of gunpowder would be considered an aggressive act.


There are ways, and it would be great if Larian added them, sometime. But until then, have fun. Be creative. Blow shit up laugh

Last edited by Ackadia; 03/08/21 04:37 PM.
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This was a fun read, and I appreciate that you see both sides of it. I took most of your writing as being tongue-in-cheek, especially considering what happened to Boromir.

It doesn't beat the "escalating absurdities" argument put forth earlier.

I was thinking that Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime could maybe carry a single full barrel, if we created a leather and rope contraption that distributed the weight through his entire body. He would likely not be able to fight effectively that way (disadvantage to attack rolls), tire easily (1 level of exhaustion per day), and climbing ladders would not be possible, stealth would not be possible either.

The Nautaloid tanks alone look like half-kegs and would be a little easier to carry but still unwieldy strapped to your back. Again though I am fine with the current limitations.

Right now some people are cheesing past the current restrictions with the "Send to Camp" feature and the magic ability to move items from 1 inventory to another regardless of distance. I imagine this will get fixed at some point. So who cares.

Still, better than it was a month ago.

Last edited by Blackheifer; 03/08/21 04:26 PM.

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Originally Posted by Blackheifer
This was a fun read, and I appreciate that you see both sides of it ...

I was thinking that Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime could maybe carry a single full barrel, if we created a leather and rope contraption that distributed the weight through his entire body. He would likely not be able to fight effectively that way (disadvantage to attack rolls), tire easily (1 level of exhaustion per day), and climbing ladders would not be possible, stealth would not be possible either.

Yep, I corrected that and added a new video to emphasise the point.

You can indeed abuse the heck out of that 'send to camp' option. For arguments sake you can pretend you use a mage portal spell for items, but yes, it's silly.

They have better things to fix, but it should be on the 'to-do' somewhere.

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NO!!! MY BARRELS!!!!!!



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Originally Posted by Ackadia
Barrelmancy for the win!

Don't like it, don't use it. As Boromir would say...



Is it an exploit? No, I don't think so.

Is it cheating? Well, if you allow (solo) you are only cheating yourself, I don't see it as a problem.

Is it fun? Can be, absolutely. Who can't be impressed with the Goblin army walking into a clearly marked minefield and at the work to set up such a trap? I use the same 'exploit' to kill the Cambions on the Nautiloid and start the game at level 3. Just means I'm capped so much faster. Also means or at least suggests I've played through a few times and am playing with stuff while I wait for Act 2. It's also a way to find bugs and unexpected behaviour.

Could you get away with it in real time games? Could you heck.

Could you get away with it in tabletop gaming? Good luck with that.

Could Larian do better? Why yes, they can...

The mimic idea is fun, but won't stop barrelmancy, won't stop the above, or this:



What could liven up things would be:

Add appropriate levels of instability and volatility to them:

Nautiloid tanks are basically rocket fuel.
Oil is flammable, a barrel of oil is an impromptu bomb (though shrapnel damage is not applied to rolls)
Firewine is similar and seemingly more flammable and can be compared to brandy.
Gunpowder is (well can be) an explosive in it's own right.

Coding aside, the question here is cause and effect.
A tin of gunpowder poured on the floor will burn, but won't explode. In a tin, with a cord fuse, it's a bomb.
Drop a barrel of oil, it might split, but it won't explode, a steel barrel, leaking, causing a spark when you drop it, will.
You get the idea.

(I've worked in the chemival industry, I know a thing or two...)

So, carrying them should be fine.

Dropping them can be assumed to be placing them carefully. But arguably with nautiloid tanks, should be chance.

Getting knocked down, with carrying them, there should be a corresponding chance for them to shatter (covering you in flammable fuel) or even explode.

If you are knocked down into flames... BOOM.

If you are hit, whether a spell, a flaming arrow, again, BOOM.

That's carrying them.

Now, imagine you are in the Goblin camp and decide to strategically place 50 barrels of explosives... (Been there, down that, great fun!) If oyu are on good terms, no-one bats an eye.
Not even when you steal the Zhentarim's entire stash and drop it in front of them.

Now, all of this ignores encumbrance. So, add encumbrance

These barrels will be massively unwieldy. You could carry one, in both arms, you could roll or walk them. You could not stick a couple in a backpack, much less a couch.

So, first check would be, 'carry' - so a barrel in code terms would be treated as a two-handed weapon. (e.g. It shows you carrying (wielding) a barrel, but you can't attack with it).
You could not climb a ladder with it.
You could not leap with it.





Second then is, "OYE! What the bloody hell are you doing?" Because I am pretty such surrounding High Priestess Gut with barrels of gunpowder would be considered an aggressive act.


There are ways, and it would be great if Larian added them, sometime. But until then, have fun. Be creative. Blow shit up laugh

If “moving barrels” was done by rolling them around instead of carrying, drop and click and drag… Barrels would lose most of its problems, the quantity in some parts of the game would still be problematic and wouldnt stop people from abusing them, but it would at least restrict them to specific fights. Or at the very least make it much harder to bring it to certain areas due to elevation, gap and seperate “rooms”.

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As much as i dislike some aspects of pathfinder...

Thank fuck they dont have stupid shit like Barrelmancy

Could you imagine throwing 1000s of barrels stacking on top of each other to kill a Demonlord!? And of course slowly stacking them over static enemy is perfectly valid and realistic /s

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Im not sure whats more stupid in that video - the mobs "intelligently" walking into a mine field or they not dying after that explosion.

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100% agree ...
Both explosion damage AND radius should be incerased and everyone in wider radius should roll Constitution saving throw and get Bleeding effect from shrapnels, if failed. :P
Enemies should certainly keep their distance from Barrels, or try to explode them under enemy nose ...
As well as every fire damage should explode them if you had one in your inventory. :P

Lets make explosives the double edged blade they are suppose to be. >:]

Last edited by RagnarokCzD; 27/09/21 09:35 AM.

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This "fix" kind of misses the point. RAW like carry limits aren't the issue and if it's really faithful to D&D fairly easily bypassed (eg. Levitate, Tensor's Floating Disk). The more fundamental issue is why are there so many exploding barrels in the first place? It really makes no sense. In the setting they should be incredibly rare. In a setting where they weren't as rare it's still off by more than one factor of ten how many there are.

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Panda Warlord speaks true, the main problem is not carrying and throwing the barrels, it's their abundance. Not sure if Larian will do something about it or not.

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Honestly, I don't really mind that barrelmancy is a thing, didn't care much in DoS2, don't care too much here, though I do think there should be a way of severely limiting it. Best way I can think of personally is just make it something that one has to pretty much optimize/spec entirely into doing to make it even remotely feasible, insanely high strength requirement, heavy weight, that sort of thing. And while I wouldn't say I've ever felt this game in particular, or DoS2 was really built around the idea that you would abuse barrels, there's no doubting that they do take the possibility into account, considering stuff like Dallis/Bishop in Fort Joy, and the fact there is actual rewards and interactions for defeating them at that early juncture of the game. Takes significant set up of course, either with Deathfog barrel cheese, or other gratuitous use of barrels among other strategies, but really to me that's just fine as for those types of players who want to do something like that, the option exists.

The problem would be if they DO start balancing heavily around barrel use, rather than having it as an option that we'd have a major issue, which I wouldn't say is really a problem as of currently, and there is plenty of other sorts of "cheese" you can do to one shot particularly challenging fights among other things, like being able to kill the entire Githyanki patrol in just one turn as something like a rogue. Tons of set up, and no doubt a fair bit of trial and error, but that's just optimizing the systems in place really to give yourself the largest advantage possible, something that's pretty typical in almost any RPG I've played.

All that said though, I don't think its a major issue to see it heavily hampered, or nearly removed from the game in its current state, as overall I'd say it makes for a better experience overall, though completely removing it I feel would be just as harmful in the sense that it'd be actively removing a very real way of playing the game, even if its one that utterly exploits the systems in place.

All in all, I'm sure modders will manage to change this if there is enough of a demand to make it a more prevalent thing, so its largely a non-issue in the end, and is hardly going to put an end to cheesy and more exploit heavy styles of play.

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Well... The best way to really make barrelmancy a coherent part of the game could be to make our characters carry barrels in their hands and eventually move slower rather than putting them in their bags...

And when the AI see you carrying barrels in specific area (village, towns, grove, goblins camp,...), they talk to you like when you fail to steal something.

You can still put everything on fire but it becomes a coherent mechanic in the game's world and eventually a real combat strategy rather than a cheap exploitable mechanic just for the lolz.

Last edited by Maximuuus; 30/09/21 10:02 PM.

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Funny that you want full realism in mechanic you dont like ...
But not for the others. :-/


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I mean ... I won't ... but it's easy to say. wink
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Originally Posted by RagnarokCzD
Funny that you want full realism in mechanic you dont like ...
But not for the others. :-/
It's not just realism, but also a very obvious violation of the rules in the D&D universe. Even the strongest of adventurers is going to have ZERO chance of carrying around 10 barrels of explosive fluid equal to them in size and a half their weight in their backpack without any sort of assistance from magical means. To say that people are only arguing in favor of realism in a world with magic and monsters is disingenuous at best.

Beyond that, it's an issue of game mechanics. The commonality of explosive barrels and their like in this game basically shapes the game's default combat experience to be that of placing barrels and blowing them up to end an encounter as soon as it starts. It turns what would otherwise be a creative and proper RP solution for a difficult encounter into something you do for every big bad because there's so many barrels to spare.

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