Meanwhile Wargaming: If it has aircraft, it must be allowed to fly through a giant cloud of Flak to launch an attack at least three times before the squadron is shot down. Especially if you paid to get it.
Or Baldur's Gate 2 and Kensei/Mages, which was basically the same thing. You'd think they learned their lesson here rather than making a dedicated and literal tankmage in their next project.
The Arcane Warrior sub-spec let mages play like Warriors in terms of gear.
DA:O classes were Warriors, Rogues, and Mages. Their main stats were strength, dexterity, and magic respectively. There were other stats but they weren't as important. Class primary stats let them use gear specific to their role, so in order to use and wear the best warrior weapons and armour you needed higher STR numbers.
Unless you were a Mage that took the Arcane Warrior sub-spec, which let you do everything a Warrior could but based off your Magic stat.
literal Tankmage
I wasn't joking about this. It was a Mage in full plate, sword and board, that could still cast spells. While the most obvious examples would be things like Fireball or other very flash offensive spells the real OP picks were the buff and debuff toggles you could run making yourself even more resilient and anything near you worse.
This meant even GaxKang, the Baldur's Gate 2 Kangaxx homage, became trivial despite being classed as one of the hardest fights in DA:O.
Gaxkang (sometimes) outranks even the High Dragon under "Most Powerful Foe Slain" found in Heroic Accomplishments under Character Record.
And the Arcane Warrior literally just turns it into a boring hack and slash for however long it takes to chip away Gaxkang's hp pool because he's probably never going to manage to actually kill you.
Kensei/Mage in BG2 was a similar situation. A BG1 Fighter imported then specialised to a Kensei, or even just a fresh BG2 Kensei, who later dual classed to a mage at the right time would mean that when the Mage levels finally caught up to the Fighter/Kensei ones all the Kensei abilities which would work with a Mage would reactivate.
Considering that the Kensei was designed to fight without armour this worked extremely well with Mages who didn't wear actual armour. Robe of Vecna and other things would still be the best choices because it meant your Mage side still benefited immensely while letting you run around and stab/bludgeon things and be next to invincible while doing it.
Then you add on all the Mage spells you can still use. Mage Armour, Simulacrum, Lesser Contingency, Contingency, and more. The number of buffs you could fire off just before a fight meant your character status as a demi-god still understated how powerful you were. About the only things that could kill you would be extremely niche effects if you didn't completely plan for them since the class setup was just that OP it could easily solo the game if you wanted.
YMMV but several of the best weapons in BG2 and later ToB were the Flail of Ages, Mace of Disruption, and Crom Faeyr along with a few others. Pairing any of these with Belm or the Ninjato of the Scarlet Brotherhood on a high enough Warrior meant an absurd number of attacks per round and if you managed to get the Warrior epic Fears of Whirlwind or Greater Whirlwind you were Death Walking.
Flail of Ages was good since at +3 with its elemental bonuses you would waste various monsters which might have had immunities or needed special conditions to be killed, like Trolls. ToB could later upgrade this to +5 along with granting Free Action permanently, although I did find this a bit annoying since it meant no more Boots of Speed.
Crom Faeyr not only instant killed several monster types but set a character's STR to 25.
Mace of Disruption is +3 in BG2 and +5 in ToB and made all the vampires you fight in BG2 a cakewalk, similar to how the reflection shield made Beholders nuke themselves. While not as necessary in ToB it was still a great option for some characters/companions.
While there are many 2h options someone could go for the advantage of sword and board meant combinations such as the Mace of Disruption or the Shield of Balduran to ensure certain parts of the game wouldn't result in player death from overstacked vampire level drains or Beholder gaze spam.
Been playing through the Dark Souls trilogy for the first time this past year, and reading online is almost funny with how many people complain about how easy the game is now, yet they play a minmaxed character build with the most broken weapon in the game that completely invalidates just about every boss and enemy.
There is no reason to add damage for sneaking, an arrow does not gain penetrative power from having been launched from the shadows. Instead, it gains lethality from location of strike. Code your combat to include qualifiers to damage from whether an attack lands on armour, or on an exposed weakness. This has been my Ted Talk.
That adds a level of complexity in combat that can be very rewarding if it’s what you’re looking for in the game, but often pushes it more towards either randomness or physics simulator than most players desire. Especially in a game where the intention is to be a lot more general, like Skyrim; it’s possible to play as a mage and not even interact with a hypothetical complex system for what you describe. The intention of the stealth bonus is to provide a simpler path to exactly what you demand. The implication is that, striking from a hiding place, you are more easily able to hit vital points that would be difficult to target if your enemy were on guard.
The system may be overly simplified, perhaps, but your complaint misses the intention behind the system.
Yeah I think people sometimes forget that gameplay mechanics are abstractions of more complicated real world effects that would be difficult/boring to model. Not to say there isn't a place for extremely realistic simulations if that's what you're going for.
Meanwhile, Star Trek Online is like "it's not broken if it's pay-to-win".
Meanwhile Wargaming: If it has aircraft, it must be allowed to fly through a giant cloud of Flak to launch an attack at least three times before the squadron is shot down. Especially if you paid to get it.
Hello Dragon Age 1 and Arcane Warriors.
Or Baldur's Gate 2 and Kensei/Mages, which was basically the same thing. You'd think they learned their lesson here rather than making a dedicated and literal tankmage in their next project.
I remember that arcane warrior was broken but I don't remember why. Maybe I should replay it.
Also for BG2, Sorcerers were broken once you had the robe of vecna
The Arcane Warrior sub-spec let mages play like Warriors in terms of gear.
DA:O classes were Warriors, Rogues, and Mages. Their main stats were strength, dexterity, and magic respectively. There were other stats but they weren't as important. Class primary stats let them use gear specific to their role, so in order to use and wear the best warrior weapons and armour you needed higher STR numbers.
Unless you were a Mage that took the Arcane Warrior sub-spec, which let you do everything a Warrior could but based off your Magic stat.
I wasn't joking about this. It was a Mage in full plate, sword and board, that could still cast spells. While the most obvious examples would be things like Fireball or other very flash offensive spells the real OP picks were the buff and debuff toggles you could run making yourself even more resilient and anything near you worse.
This meant even GaxKang, the Baldur's Gate 2 Kangaxx homage, became trivial despite being classed as one of the hardest fights in DA:O.
And the Arcane Warrior literally just turns it into a boring hack and slash for however long it takes to chip away Gaxkang's hp pool because he's probably never going to manage to actually kill you.
Kensei/Mage in BG2 was a similar situation. A BG1 Fighter imported then specialised to a Kensei, or even just a fresh BG2 Kensei, who later dual classed to a mage at the right time would mean that when the Mage levels finally caught up to the Fighter/Kensei ones all the Kensei abilities which would work with a Mage would reactivate.
Considering that the Kensei was designed to fight without armour this worked extremely well with Mages who didn't wear actual armour. Robe of Vecna and other things would still be the best choices because it meant your Mage side still benefited immensely while letting you run around and stab/bludgeon things and be next to invincible while doing it.
Then you add on all the Mage spells you can still use. Mage Armour, Simulacrum, Lesser Contingency, Contingency, and more. The number of buffs you could fire off just before a fight meant your character status as a demi-god still understated how powerful you were. About the only things that could kill you would be extremely niche effects if you didn't completely plan for them since the class setup was just that OP it could easily solo the game if you wanted.
YMMV but several of the best weapons in BG2 and later ToB were the Flail of Ages, Mace of Disruption, and Crom Faeyr along with a few others. Pairing any of these with Belm or the Ninjato of the Scarlet Brotherhood on a high enough Warrior meant an absurd number of attacks per round and if you managed to get the Warrior epic Fears of Whirlwind or Greater Whirlwind you were Death Walking.
Flail of Ages was good since at +3 with its elemental bonuses you would waste various monsters which might have had immunities or needed special conditions to be killed, like Trolls. ToB could later upgrade this to +5 along with granting Free Action permanently, although I did find this a bit annoying since it meant no more Boots of Speed.
Crom Faeyr not only instant killed several monster types but set a character's STR to 25.
Mace of Disruption is +3 in BG2 and +5 in ToB and made all the vampires you fight in BG2 a cakewalk, similar to how the reflection shield made Beholders nuke themselves. While not as necessary in ToB it was still a great option for some characters/companions.
While there are many 2h options someone could go for the advantage of sword and board meant combinations such as the Mace of Disruption or the Shield of Balduran to ensure certain parts of the game wouldn't result in player death from overstacked vampire level drains or Beholder gaze spam.
When built right it essentially took no damage.
Been playing through the Dark Souls trilogy for the first time this past year, and reading online is almost funny with how many people complain about how easy the game is now, yet they play a minmaxed character build with the most broken weapon in the game that completely invalidates just about every boss and enemy.
To be fair, the only difficult souls game is whichever one you play first.
And the DLC for Dark Souls 2. Fuck that DLC lol
Try playing Skyrim as anything other than a sneak archer.
There is no reason to add damage for sneaking, an arrow does not gain penetrative power from having been launched from the shadows. Instead, it gains lethality from location of strike. Code your combat to include qualifiers to damage from whether an attack lands on armour, or on an exposed weakness. This has been my Ted Talk.
That adds a level of complexity in combat that can be very rewarding if it’s what you’re looking for in the game, but often pushes it more towards either randomness or physics simulator than most players desire. Especially in a game where the intention is to be a lot more general, like Skyrim; it’s possible to play as a mage and not even interact with a hypothetical complex system for what you describe. The intention of the stealth bonus is to provide a simpler path to exactly what you demand. The implication is that, striking from a hiding place, you are more easily able to hit vital points that would be difficult to target if your enemy were on guard.
The system may be overly simplified, perhaps, but your complaint misses the intention behind the system.
Yeah I think people sometimes forget that gameplay mechanics are abstractions of more complicated real world effects that would be difficult/boring to model. Not to say there isn't a place for extremely realistic simulations if that's what you're going for.
Exanima exists for a reason, but it also isn’t Skyrim for a reason.
......sorry whenever someone mentions broken weapons, I remember like PTSD BF3 USAS with frag rounds on metro........so much death...