Alright, so the Underdark is a hostile place. That's cool, you should expect to face enemies wherever you go. But why, pray tell, does that only apply to PCs and not NPCs?

What I mean is that when I see a group of gnolls stand next to an umber hulk or an earth elemental like they were the best friends, it kinda ruins the immersion for me. I think the worst I've seen is goblins, kobolds, spiders and elementals hanging out together. It's like they all have this big conspiracy to kill any hapless PC that happens to go along their way.

If the phenomenon exists because it's difficult (or impossible) to script new factions without haks, I can understand that partially. But even if that's the case, changing the spawns a little bit to prevent silly situations like the ones mentioned would make things a lot more plausible.

It'd be really cool to be able to avoid the wrath of an umber hulk charging you by fleeing to a camp of goblins, for instance, instead of having them all come after you.

Creatures don't randomly spawn like that.

They can, however, be dragged together if they lose track of somebody that they're chasing, or spawn near another group of creatures.

NPCs fighting with each other (which can be seen in several areas, notably the Bowels of the Machine) also creates a huge amount of unnecessary lag, particularly when players aren't even nearby.

We have quite a few monster factions, but tend to reserve that for situations where it has plot significance (such as certain areas of Dunwarren, or the Sandy Canyon). Monsters fighting monsters does produce lag.

However, there are a lot of areas where some of the random spawns feel kind of slapped together. One of my projects will be going through all the UD wilderness areas and making better and more appropriate spawns, hopefully with less kobold + goblin + elemental hanging out.

This is more of a qeustion than a suggestion. When the dms make a plot. Do they tailor the npcs into a faction that way say a pc allies with that faction the npcs will be hostile to only those pcs whom have been set to an opossing faction?

Edit:

Since I was typing this in a hurry a minute ago I'll clarify a bit. Lets say pc paladin is fighting a cult of Cyric which consists of mostly npc's. Now lets say there is a priest of cyric whom is a pc. Is there any way that dms can make it so that the pc priest of cyric is'nt hostile to the npcs even though the pc paladin is? or do you just have to keep hostile npcs and pcs seperate all the time?

I've been told that multiple NPC factions is a very good thing. Very large factions cause a very large amount of lag apparently, especially if something happens to update that faction's settings toward another.

Just couple in something that basically turns off monster AI when a player isn't in the area.

I reported this a while ago to another server. More NPC factions actually reduces lag rather than raises it. I did some research into this from other people's testing and found that it's an exponential growth for the ammount of lag caused due to size of faction, because each faction member NPC communicates with every other one on the map, and actually cross module too sometimes. Multiple smaller hostile factions do significantly less "communicating" than one large one.

I'll see if I can dig it up later what I found.

Naga This is more of a qeustion than a suggestion. When the dms make a plot. Do they tailor the npcs into a faction that way say a pc allies with that faction the npcs will be hostile to only those pcs whom have been set to an opossing faction?

Edit:

Since I was typing this in a hurry a minute ago I'll clarify a bit. Lets say pc paladin is fighting a cult of Cyric which consists of mostly npc's. Now lets say there is a priest of cyric whom is a pc. Is there any way that dms can make it so that the pc priest of cyric is'nt hostile to the npcs even though the pc paladin is? or do you just have to keep hostile npcs and pcs seperate all the time?

I know Duffman's first character had that benefit when dealing with lizardmen. from what he said the dms fixed it so he was always neutral to lizardmen npc's. im pretty sure you'll need the dms to help you with that so APP away my friend!

I was curious if it could be done. Not really intending to play a character whom does such things (well I possibly could but I reckon most of my characters wil stick to pc conflicts with just other pcs most likely XD)

As far as I know, you can easily make a single PC non-hostile to a faction. However, that is a little laggy--much less if all monsters have their own factions though again.

I reported this a while ago to another server. More NPC factions actually reduces lag rather than raises it. I did some research into this from other people's testing and found that it's an exponential growth for the ammount of lag caused due to size of faction, because each faction member NPC communicates with every other one on the map, and actually cross module too sometimes. Multiple smaller hostile factions do significantly less "communicating" than one large one.

Yes, but when they're constantly fighting each other in random areas it creates lag.

And it's easily exploitable, people would just run monsters into other monsters and wait until they're at Near Death to finish them.

I doubt it would be that simple, Metro. A lot of the monsters have ranged attacks, and if they're right on your heels, you're provoking AoOs all the time. Also, whatever monster B you'd be leading monster A to would first attack you before retargetting to monster A. There are so many risk factors that it's doubtful this would lead into exploitation.

Besides, if there are some areas with so many different monsters (that would be hostile to each other realistically), shouldn't the variety per area be toned down? If they can't coexist in the same area, one or more of the factions should not be there in the first place. They'd get killed or driven away over time.

The constant action and increased spawning would make more lag. And Metro is right, it would be easily exploitable. I know because he's done it to me ingame before :evil: Its not too tough to mess with the factions. Say you have orcs and bugbears in the same cave. A mage summons an orc and has it attack a bugbear. Then you sit back and watch the chaos and clean up the riff raff. If you made the monsters hostile to one another this would happen all the time. You could get rich on sneaking around and picking the remains. I agree it would be neat, but I dont think it possible with engine/server restraints. But what the hell do I know

Anthee Besides, if there are some areas with so many different monsters (that would be hostile to each other realistically), shouldn't the variety per area be toned down? If they can't coexist in the same area, one or more of the factions should not be there in the first place. They'd get killed or driven away over time.

This is a good point and one that Howland addressed-- right now, a lot of our random spawns are of the "generic Underdark" variety, and can create spiders, earth elementals, kobolds, goblins, deep lizards, drow raiding parties, etc. Our random encounter system allows us to fine-tune the spawn points for each area, though, and so we can make certain regions be inhabited mostly by kobolds, or by goblins, or by elementals or lizards or other varieties of creature. This won't strictly prevent two types of creatures from meeting each other (while chasing a player, for example) but it should reduce the amount of times that a goblin group and a kobold group are spawned in the same area.