Hey Xeno,Xenophon wrote: ↑Sun Aug 13, 2023 10:23 pmHey Honor, thanks for checking in. I had planned to post today anyway as we had a nice long session yesterday but you definitely help give me some talking points.
You've got a lot of sound observations there and most of them are spot on:
You're correct that the druid and cleric are able to now split the brunt of front lining while still keeping a lot of the utility in their kits. This was a pretty big game changers for how fights are being managed, although we've taken far less unnecessary fights this time around due to some better choices and much better rolls.
Our Necro player said they had done several campaigns with it and wanted to run it with this modified ruleset so we trusted them. It has gone very well for us. To your level point the game does go all the way to twelve and you can very easily hit five before the end of act one, opening a lot of power up for the classes fairly quickly.
I'm not entirely sure on arcane trickster yet but it seems good to me, although I'm uncertain if I just lucked into a few things that make that so. You're right that out of combat obviously feels nice: mage hand, charm, and disguise self have all been very useful so far. Although you can play combat centric you'd be surprised how many non-combat solutions you have available to you if you put in the effort for it. A CRPG could never fully capture the vast number of options that a human DM could grant you but so far we've been able to be quite creative. I'm sporting an amulet that grants me misty step and a bow that recovers a spent spell slot on crit that have allowed me to put in more combat work than I would have expected (pure luck, I've no idea what I'm doing). Couple that bow with an illithid power you pick up in the game that guarantees one critical hit per long rest (and thus at least one additional spell cast) and I'm feeling quite powerful. I've no idea about the power curve though and I'll be interested to see what the scaling feels like in the rest of the game. I opted for magic missile for that first wizard spell but I'm not sure if that was the right play and I've thought about swapping that for fog or find familiar.
All in all we are having a blast. Good company does that but I have to say this is one of the best video games I've ever played. There is an extreme attention to detail in the world that still catches me off guard at times. The story-telling and world building is well done and I've been insanely impressed with how impactful your choices feel. From the big things like which groups to help but also to the much smaller like which entrance to a town is your first or whether you pet a dog as you passed (yes really). The visuals are nice, the hits feel chunky, and it is obvious that Larian understands the table top world and manages to do a damn fine job translating that to the computer. I've mentioned liking some of their other titles but this one is a step above so far.
The only downside I'm seeing in our 4-party team is we are missing some additional interactions with the characters in the world that would normally join your party in a solo run. They'll join your camp and you can still gain access to their dialogue and fellowship but it isn't quite the same when they aren't regular members of your party. They feel a bit like tag-alongs. Just there to serve as story drivers and lore dumps.
Some additional highlights from last night with hopefully not any real spoilers:
- Opening a random door to a bugbear and ogre in a... compromising position. Hilarity-> quickly turns to a tougher fight than expected-> fades into the feeling that you just murdered two lovers just looking for something nice in a bleak world.
- Convincing three ogres to band together in the fight against a goblin camp with promise of a delicious meal, namely the dead goblins. Getting to watch those ogres hurl giant stones at goblins was very satisfying.
- Managing to successfully help both of a competing set of NPC groups, we had a narrow path for the "win-win-win" scenario and we were all really pleased when we pulled it off.
I'm curious how the campaign is going / went? Did you manage to get though the game without reloading a save point?