I was just in quite a frustrating situation where a party member accused me exploiting AI, and after talking it over with a DM I was told that sometimes retreat or hit and run tactics will be considered an exploit because AI cannot cope with them.

This was a quest where a mob of about 40 npcs are on a steep hill, many are spellcasters, and there may or may not be traps. One casts a spell that can and did do 100 damage instantly.

If you fight for awhile, get hurt and retreat down the hill, or retreat down the hill to get out of archer or spell fire, you get considered to be an exploiter because the AI apparently can't cope with you going down a slope.

It comes to a point where your expected to charge into that mass and all that can save you is popping inviz potions. Oh wait, thats an exploit too, because the AI may not realize they have to drink a See Inviz potion now.

Other party members had previously been shooting at the archers on that hill, this is clearly an exploit as well, because the AI spellcasters and archers don't know to get back out of range when badly hurt.

One of their spellcasters for some reason closed to melee, clearly we should've run away from it to give it casting room, because this is exploiting AI mistakes. Also it didn't cast Dispel, rather some other magics, clearly we should've dispelled ourselves to make up for that AI lack.

I'm a tad frustrated by all this, how far are we expected to bend over backwards to make sure the AI has a fair shot? The quest monsters outnumber and are often vastly stronger than any PC can hope to be, to me that is the factor that balances out the AI not always doing the tactical thing. A lot of the quest bosses, if played by a DM, can utterly destroy a party - if anything I've often seen the DMs hold back or seem to intentionally make mistakes because of this.

I won't be doing this quest anymore because I am expected to attack overwhelming odds without being able to retreat, but this AI issue is something that needs clarifying. The first time I ever did that quest, when I was a very low level and taken by the then experienced group of players, they did the same things I was.

There should be an ooc sign there : once you climb the hill you cannot go back or its an exploit.

This one hill is just one example of what seems to me a general murkiness or lack of awareness in this area, and one where desicions seem somewhat arbitrary.

For instance, is it an exploit to duck around a corner to break line of sight with a goblin archer? It comes running to the corner, rather than fans out to go around and get another angle. Are we therefore supposed to not dodge in this way? What about breaking line of sight to avoid spells? Do we need to stand and tkae that Fireball because the AI isn't smart enough to cast it anywhere but directly targetted on us? What about npc casters that tend to run forward, not away, when they're shot at?

Clearly some of the examples I've given are ludicrous and they were meant to be, to show that any of these could be considered exploits. I think the lines need to be clearly drawn therefore so that those who cheat, actually know they are, and where cheating is of a clear standard rather than varying from opinion to opinion. I certainly didn't believe anything I did was exploitive nor did others, yet others did, and it seems to be a general vagueness and difference of opinion in this murky issue of AI.

Walking back slowly breaks the AI and makes the monsters stop stupidly or target something else, for no apparent reason. That is an exploit. You'll also find that many monsters will keep attacking you when you drink an invisbility potion.

The OP quest example is a difficult quest and, even using such perceived exploits as duck around corners, retreat downhill, and close doors, lots of supplies are expended to survive until the end.

To me, the low XP and loot rewards of a scripted quest, compared to the high expenditure of supplies needed to survive, are reason enough to use these tactics, that others may find questionable.

When a DM runs a non-scripted quest, or adds spice to a scripted one, then it's up to the DM criteria to possess NPC to counter these tactics or penalize them, not rewarding the "exploiter" or even docking XP for really really lame behaviour like walking backwards.

But that's my opinion.

These things are pretty self-explanatory. If you do something, which makes the creature do something it wouldn't do, but the AI forces it to do, you're exploiting it. For example, a large group of NPC monsters. You use a bow to fire on one, but know the others won't follow because their reaction range isn't large enough, in order to have them come at you one at a time.

AI exploiting is a mixed-bag of agreeing and scolds (the latter more from DMs and overpowered Min-Maxed Half-Orcish Barbarians, mind you), but I believe a bit of everyone's ideas are right.

For instance, EfU (reportedly) uses a smarter AI than BioWare's, and being that you start as a level two munchkin in the fricken' Underdark, some exploits are used regularly-but you don't see a problem in that, no? I do.

Let's say your a wizard, and are too smart to be a pincushion for goblin arrows-exploit time! So, instead of being shot in the brain a few times, you run around a corner and burn some poor green sap that follows you. Maybe your some cunning rogue who's being casted at-exploit time! Move two inches to the left and the scintiliating sphere doesn't get you. Does roleplaying come into using exploits? I don't think so; exploiting is an obvious and patent use of metagaming.

Some things can't be avoided. When your low on health, you retreat around the corner so they can't see you (a natural reaction in real life war-or paintball), yet the opposing force follows you. Instead of taking this oppurtunity to pwn a single enemy, try to get your teammate's help. Other things like invisibility potions are also a bit stringy when it comes to solutions, but consider this;

-would a [Fill in Monster's Race Here] have a see invisibility potion or spell? -would it be smart enough to know/consider the fact that you've used an invisibility potion or spell?

I don't think much of you realize this, but the Underdark is The Jungle, baby,yet most of you party in twos or threes to explore some huge goblin camp to get all the tasty phat lewt and xps for yourself. Go ahead and exploit when you know DM's aren't around-it'll backfire on you someday.

Partying up in near-max groups[5-8] (with diverse classes, of course) with med-level characters will get you somewhere-without (easily avoidable) use of AI exploiting, and probably without spending much of your supplies.

Now, I'm just stating the obvious, and I'm not saying I'm a saint when it comes to exploiting and grouping, but still-try to use common sense and, er, uncommon sense to gauge if this or that would be exploiting.

~Ace

Retreating when you're getting whooped is not an exploit.

Things are generally considered exploits when it's an intentional, gregarious use of OOC mechanisms to benefit yourself, such as deliberately luring monsters in small groups, or camping on a transition and popping in/out repeatedly to deal with monsters, moonwalking away from an enemy that is trying to smash you to avoid an aoo, and so forth.

Use common sense, if what you're doing feels questionable, it probably is.

Retreating (when you're getting whooped) is not an exploit, it's a way of life!!

I think metro means "egregious" not "gregarious," by the way.

And yes, it doesn't sound like the OP example was actually an exploit (although I did not observe what happened).

I've a question related to the subject as a matter of fact.

As opposed to shooting an arrow from a long distance and then darting around a corner to draw out one monster at a time...

Is it an exploit to run in, throw an alchemist's fire on the ground to attract the attention of several monsters and then retreat to location X where your conditions for fighting are better?. This goes for other AoE means as well.

There's a lot of quests where it's outright suicide to just rush straight ahead and be the target of every spell or arrow or something, and I've found myself using that tactic a few times since I've considered it a bit more creative than the usual target practice with a ranged weapon.

Hi, I am the guy who called you on the exploit. What you were doing was rising a hill with thirty or forty mobs on it, popping your head up so one or two saw you, then running back down so only those few mobs would chase after you and attack you, allowing you to kill them with minimal effort. You then rinsed and repeated over and over and over. It is an exploit because lizardmen are intelligent. If two of their friends run off to fight, they wont just stand their sharpening their claws and chatting about the price of fish-sticks, they will come down the hill and mix it up.

This isn't WoW, where the best tactics are the ones that exploit AI the best. If you charged up the hill, and were genuinely messed up, and bailed, I wouldn’t have called you on it. There is no shame in running, but that is totally different to what you were doing, which was a cynical manipulation of AI to increase your survival odds. The fact you ran off the moment a DM arrived is testimony to the fact you were not interested in a fair fight.

Yes, there were other factors at play here. Your party was useless, and you were spending all your own loot doing all the work. I fully acknowledge that, but these are things you need to work out IC. They are not, in my eyes, a good reason to exploit.

AI is perfectly capable of coming downhill on its own if it wants to. However breasting the hill exposed me to X amount of archers and spellcasters.

Given those conditions, it makes no IC sense whatsoever to have an extended fight, on enemy (likely trapped) ground, being pelted by their archers and clerics. It does however make sense to fling a bomb, or kill one, and then retreat back behind the buildings before the wrath of the cleric/archer mob descends.

Had the Hill actually been a flat plain, my approach would've been no different. It isn't fair to me to have to carry a fight into the enemy ground, forfeiting all cover and exposed to all their archers, when in fact my fighter would never be that stupid.

Clearly you didn't notice the drown attack hit me, or the various casters targetting me, either, since you would prefer to imply (from your comfy perch near the rare out of harms way) that I was never in any danger and was purposefully luring in order to save supplies.

Only a moron rushes into a vast mob on their own ground with altars and probably traps, but this is what the Quest calls for because anything less than a sustained and suicidal rush may be considered an exploit.

As I said, I'll be avoiding this quest in future because the situation is completely lose-lose.

Other than this, it is a great quest and I hope a change that removes the hill may come up in future.

Oh, and kindly get your facts straight about "rushing off the moment a DM arrived" I fought the DM possessed priestess that was screaming about Moander until it went invisible, ran back up the hill, and healed itself. At that point I had only one Haste potion left and no support whatsoever from a useless team and the battle was clearly lost.

My character has no obligation to sacrifice herself against a vastly superior foe who has already nearly killed her in melee, and drained her resources.

Once again, that hill put me in an impossible predicament. Perhaps the only proper thing to do would've been a charge into their midst without yielding ground, but that is horrible tactics and most certainly suicidal.

Could it be that a group who has a good tactical location, such as on top of a hill would decide to stay there and wait for people to come and get them? Is it a given that the whole group would go down their well-protected hill to attack some lone figure?

I understand AI is tricky and exploiting is not the proper way to do things, but is there only one way to think the bad guys will act if they could?

Edit: I have never done this quest so I do not know the particulars of this area.

Agreeing with Joe,

I would take this time to note, that most intelligent creatures would weather such insignificant attacks and instead wait for you to come to them.

If you think it a tactical suicide, then perhaps you are right, and this should be the logical end to your quest. Not all battles can be won, nor should they all be fought. I like.. no rather I love the idea that there would be a point in time where its not merely the enemies individuals strength that makes one think twice about fighting them, but rather, their obvious familiarity to their... Home turf, that compels the apprehension in a group.

Perhaps... quests like these should have their ending optional. As in once you beat the "miny-boss" you -can- retreat for a proportional payment, even though the entire quest was not done.

Note: I have never done this quest.

Scenario : Hill with two ramps leading up it, each of which could accomodate 3-4 characters abreast (possible to bottleneck an enemy mob on, likely)

Various things of importance to the Npcs strewn about the hill.

Various npcs of almost all classes represented on the hill, many of which are archers or spellcasters, two of which are spellcasters of very high level. Fighting at range is advantageous to most of them.

Breasting the hill exposes one to a great amount of fire and spells. Breasting the hill, skirmishing a little and then running back down to heal or get out of line of fire ((killing, actually, rather than luring) seems to me definately the way to go here.

I attempted to make all the monsters rush me by throwing alchemists fire, and some of them just won't move (no, I wasn't throwing it for the grand one damage it causes). I would've preferred the mob came to me, but wasn't willing to rush onto unknown ground and get surrounded.

-Various monsters are on the edge and can be fired at. They will not move away or take shelter, nor will their comrades with bows come to aid them. (paradoxically scrappayeti seemed to have no qualms about the rest of the team sniping the npcs at the edge like this)

My approach of skirmishing to avoid the wrath of the full mob with spellcasters on their own ground (ie, running back and forth instead of fully committing) was said to be an exploit. If thats true, it places me in the position of having to just rush in and fully committ because that is the only non-exploitive path to take.

I hope this paints a clearer picture of what the situation was. If the npcs are all supposed to attack, it wasn't my fault they didn't, especially as our mage used fireballs and I used alchemist fire to try to draw a mass of them.

If they are stationed and will not leave their hill, then nothing is wrong with my approach.

I suppose Scrappayeti felt I should have rushed in and not backed off at all (while his character safely watched of course). My argument being that if thats the case, then this part of the quest is flawed in that it railroads people into a single course of action.

If the DMs agree that I was in the wrong, I hope they say so here, because more people than me consider that same approach I took to be acceptable and will continue using it. As I said before, these same hit and run tactics were used by the first group that ever took me on this quest. And in general, everytime I've been on this quest, people do end up running up and down the hill like that, whether to heal or because they'll get surrounded and pummeled with spells if they stay put.

You were in the wrong. I've watched you do this twice now on the Sslal'teesh quest, though haven't quite had the time to address it yet. What you were doing was exploiting. If it looks and feels like it might be an exploit, it probably is. I've watched you do this quest a few times, and nearly everytime you take the same course of action. I'd hoped that from our discussion yesterday things were clear, but apparently they are not.

The people that consider your approach correct are wrong. I understand that they will sympathize with you because they are your friends, and they may be newer to EFU, but that is just how things are here. Please adjust accordingly. If you do not feel comfortable doing our quests because they are simply too hard without certain exploits, no one is forcing you to quest.

Thanks for clearing and clarifying this for me, and whoever else; if its supposed to be done that way then I'll do it like that or leave it alone.

ebok wrote :

If you think it a tactical suicide, then perhaps you are right, and this should be the logical end to your quest. Not all battles can be won, nor should they all be fought

Just read this, and its my new motto, nothing wrong with surveying a mob and calling it a day then and there. In retrospect this is what should've happened in the first place.

Thanks everyone for the input.

Just two thoughts on this:

1) In this case: Defenders stuck in a well protected and advantageous position vs. attackers with inferior position but with the ability to move: this is a classical strategic situation. IRL on the attacker's side it is a perfectly viable solution to use harassment, hit and run and skirmish tactics in this case because that's the only thing which might work. Forcing the attacker party to make a frontal assult othewise it is exploit is forcing the players to do unrealistic things. This question, as everything is two-sided. Players should not exploit the AI/situation. And DMs/level designers should not set up such situations which can only be solved by a choice between stupidity or abuse. AI abusation should be considered when the scripts are planned. Reducing it is a joint task of DMs and players.

It is fine if the moral of the story is that you should not fight this fight, in this case the solution to exit the quest part way for some partial payment is perfect as it puts the lession through. But now this option is not existing, leaving the situation flawed.

2) In general: NWN basically favours 'tanks' of might and magic, giving much less for skirmisher type of chars, like rogues, bards, rangers. The usually overwhelming number of monsters on the quests also pushing the situation further in that direction. Including situations/quests which could favour those classes would be a great enhancement. But this again boils down to level designing.

And an afterthought: in general it would be good IMHO if longer and harder quest would have one or more premature exit points, so the party can give up, receiving partial XP and payment. This helps the players thinking more about the situation, giving them more options and strategies. Something like that exists in the Hoar quest, when you can decide to press forward but actively building it into the quest system and make it more common would be great I think. Of course not all quest are suitable for this, some of them 'make or break' situations, which are fine, especially the lower level and shorter quests. But those like the orog fortress, the ogres, the goblin fortress could benefit from those.

My 0.2 cent only, feel free to correct me. I tried to give some constructive criticsm, I hope I did not step onto anyone's toes.

I'll say that it is perfectly possible to do that quest and the hill situation with a good party and good tactics, without requiring any AI exploits. At least when I've done this quest, it was. It's hard, sure, but not impossible.

Having come in late on this (and am assuming someone else has said this already), retreat is fine, abusing the AI and/or transitions is not.

In other games like City of Heroes where you can snipe a single enemy and draw them away it's accepted and alright, but not here.

If someone shoots someone in your party, what is the first thing players do? Pull their weapons out and go find out where the arrow/stone/throwing axe/spell came from - as a group no less!

The Monster AI doesn't always do this, thus knowing this fact, it is abuseable. So try to use common sense.

Before you storm a hill that has defenders dug in, you need a battle plan. If you have support fire from your archers and spellcasters, and think your tanks can roll, go for it. If you win the battle, that's great, but you can not win every battle. Someone has to lose, and sometimes that is us. If you have no reinforcements and must retreat, however, don't expect payment for a job not completed. Instead, chalk it up to experience and be glad you live to try again.

My 2 cents.

I don't think Kaelle is upset about not being able to employ hit and run guerrilla tactics in the S'shalteesh quest.

It seems that the impression was given that there was deliberate cheating and exploitation of the AI, and that created some negative feelings.

I once had a DM dock me XP for doing the backward slide, and then told me I was cheating. Being a mechanics know-nothing, I didn't know why. The DM explained it makes it impossible to hit you, and then it made sense. But then I felt like crap because the DM implied I was doing something shady - intentionally.

A simple "don't do that, we don't like to see players do that because....." would probably be enough. I really didn't care about the XP hit, but I felt like I was being accused of cheating instead of ignorance.

Not sure if there is a list of exploits/no-nos handy for new players but there should be if there isn't.

Maybe it makes me/us sound like a wuss and a bleeding heart, but a first time warning seems adequate. Of course, they do it again - then you nail them.

Just my opinion.

We do have a similar system in place - Though, rather than offering an early exit point, we offer an extended and more difficult section to a few quests.