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This seems like a good idea to me.

It probably means it can't be done, but still.

Seriously. Chances are they went through the intro themselves, so they'd know perfectly well that it's a safer experience than going for a merry stroll through the corrupted countryside with a disoriented and weak stranger to the area tagging along, staring in horror at the hellish plant abominations that you seem to take in stride.

Really, 'safer'? Did I miss the excruciating danger part or something? I could see assisting someone on the Zig, but if they had the option to dream for a half-hour and wake up somewhere safer without the whole wandering dangerous areas bit, I'd want them to take it.

Full Damage Death effects shouldn't kill a PC outright, but instead drop them -6 HP, mortally wounded. On Subdual, it would leave them at +4 HP. This would mean a hit and run attack would leave the victim easily finished with a Magic Missile or melee attack, but allies *could* save them in the next 3 rounds if they were fast. It would make deathspells in DM encounters less of a bolt from the blue and more of an unexpected threat to respond to.

This right here seems pretty cool, if only for the dramatic potential. It might be hard to balance between 'time enough for some last emotes' and 'trivial for a buddy to come stabilize you' though.

I've never liked to rely on buffs to do my damage. It's probably why I'm not a great fighter, though. That said, taking the idea that dual wielding is a matter of buffs over base damage, and double weapons help with buff economy to heart, I'm going to try and figure out good reasons to go dual quarterstaff. Because I like them.

Most arcane casters never cared about weapon properties to start with, so they'll probably continue to be the premier holders of staff-related objects, if only for the spell slots. Rogues don't tend to rely on damage buffs when they've already got sneak, and dual weapons seem an iffy choice on a mid-AB class anyhow, even without the common ones leaving you with crazy penalties for lack of feats. Fighters have feats to spare for their style of choice, so the investment in a permanent +1d2/+1d5 buff to damage power is a bit more appealing. How much more I'm not too sure, but among the many options Fighters have, Two Weapon seems to be a bit of a wash to start with. As for Barbarians, that +4 strength seems to suit a two hander more than two weapons.

So where does that leave us? Divine casters? -2 to a middling AB again, but if anyone would appreciate buff conservation, it'd be a caster, right? Paladins? Monks got unarmed AB for quarterstaff in PnP, if I recall, but I don't think that's likely here. Bards don't need to worry about effectiveness, maybe they can pick up the slack? Rangers, of course, already get dual weapon feats, leaving them one feat away from that +1d2/+1d5 goodness.

Okay, so I can't really come up with a solid reason to go for Quarterstaff over other dual weapons in a mechanical sense besides the provided 'save buffs or a feat on what you would do anyhow'. So I'd argue people who want to use it as a signature weapon. Everyone's got their greatswords and greataxes, but great just isn't enough. You want awesome. And a quarterstaff is awesome. Beating your enemies with a stick is beyond great. But there's just one problem there. You can't beat your enemy with just any stick anymore. You can't figure out how to use the stick right without a slew of feats. If you found a better stick out somewhere else, then maybe you'd be better at swinging it. But every quest you spend searching for loot is a quest you're not awesome, and meanwhile Joe Fodderbuild over there is swinging his Stick: Bigger and Also Spiky Edition, and he doesn't need to go wandering around for one. It's just that much easier. And once you finally find your awesome stick, you may find it was built with spindly wizard wrists in mind, and doesn't actually help all that much, and actually does pretty lame damage. Of course, you're crazy, because sticks are awesome, but that's what the tiny imperfections staring at you every time you're awesome do. Drive you crazy.

Now, naturally, a DM will wander along, and see you being so awesome you threaten the fabric of reality itself, and with reverent hands they will craft you a stick befitting your awesomeness. And then you will go and find Joe Fodderbuild and smack him upside the head with it, just because you can. And then you'll do it again, because that's what dual weapons are for. But before that, you will start your life not using the weapon you want to use, and as weapons are a bit part of your character when you're fighting every ten minutes, you won't be able to play the character you want to play. Once you quest enough with that character, you will be permitted to find a proper stick, and then mostly you will be able to play who you wanted, being awesome all over the place and trying not to care that you'll have to rely on some DM intervention before you can stand up to the mechanical might of Joe Fodderbuild and his one stick wonder. You might even succeed, and become loved and accepted for what you really are. An awesome person who beats things with a stick.

Of course, you may know all the mechanical tricks of the trade to put up a fight. You might be too focused on role playing and plotting to care that you can't stand up to generic builds and crush quests. You might know just where to go to get a sweet staff loot, and you and your buddies can all go out and get you geared up in no time. But here's the thing: You weren't you. You weren't a GM-wowing god of plot, you weren't an elite crushbot or part of a ground-floor concept. You were Joe Everyplayer, and you just decided that it was too much effort for too little reward. All you wanted was to do cool things while trying something new, and like the Iron Will Lionheart paladin, you decided a few feats were a fair price to pay to make your character's signature trait a bit stronger.

In short, you aren't likely to see many quarterstaff focused builds. Even with perfect balance, there are lots of options, and many are much easier and provide more gratification. But some people will want them. And to those people, there are some problems with the current implementation. I think the process could be eased in two ways, maybe more.

One, give every staff Two Weapon Fighting and Ambidexterity. Vanilla, random wizard staff, random stick, all of them. Seriously, it's the simplest polearm there is. It shouldn't take longer to learn to manage a stick than it does to manage double swords, giant one handed axes and swords, shurikens, kukris, kamas, whips, and war scythes combined. And if there are plenty of loot staffs with the feats, there's no point in leaving it off of the shop staff selection. It's either OP or it's not.

Two, revert it. Because one might be too much work for too little reward.

I'd just wonder why it's not as effective as a pair of short swords.

Been away for a bit, but the siren song of EfU is interrupting recovery, so I'm on indefinite hiatus until things improve on this end. Looking forward to returning.

Nooooooo!

Wish I'd had more time to work with him... Ah well, it was a pleasure while it lasted. Looking forward to your next shot.

For a minute there I thought you mean 1.5x on ALL damage.

At any rate, I wanted to make a staff character about a month ago for the coolness factor, but I didn't want to give up the feats and stats for dual-wielding, or wander around without my weapon of choice until I found one kitted with the two feats I'd need to be able to swing an awesomestick around. Just to put that out there in the 'underused' debate.

And it might be worth pointing out that the change came in March 26th, 2010, according to the forum post. Just over 11 months ago.

I'm not really sure how separation and dispersal are supposed to assist against ranged combatants, except possibly dispersing their attention among multiple people, which takes a good bit of time and/or luck in NWN's system where archers are concerned. The items to do it with do exist, though I'm not sure of their range, as I have yet to procure any myself. But for the topic of this post, their effectiveness is moot. The issue that started this thread was that people were getting killed in the first round of engagement, which usually means the PC is busy moving and the arrows are en route by the time they stop to act. Whatever item or spell you'd want to use would be interrupted by pointy death that, in two case studies, was not averted by defensive buffing. It was no longer a question of reasonable tactics, preparation, or experience. It was a question of 'Can I manage a single action that will save me from dying on contact with the enemy?', and the answer turned out to be 'No'.

Neither is it a question of uniformly 'making the quest easier'. It's been repeatedly noted that once the initial salvos are over, it's fairly easy to mop up a mob of archers, between AoOs and target fragmenting. Changing some of the archers to hardened melee combatants able to hold the narrow pass PCs need to come down would seem to me a balancing factor, reducing the chance of instant death by ranged weapon, and making the later rounds a bit more than just running down defenseless, low-hp archers. There is free healing in the mine, after all, and it doesn't seem too much to ask that people have to use it, so long as they are allowed the chance.

First off, the whole claim to 'Well, if you were an experienced adventurer, you'd know you needed the means to counter that and shove it in your pack before going on random trips' confuses me. I mean, everyone comes to the Ziggurat at level two. Sometimes they're random farmers, sometimes they're 400 year old elf paladins. None of them are likely to stand up to your average NPC 'veteran'. I usually just assumed everyone had been thrust into the adventurer's life recently due to that. That, and I've had way too many 'oh, well, my veteran guy totally saw that coming' moments in tabletop to say it without wincing.

Second, and I suppose more relevantly, let's say you and your level 5 adventure buddies decided to test out your preparedness by having your group archer start lobbing arrows at you. If you're packing 29 AC, 50% concealment, and your friend is a 20 DEX Elf Fighter, the very top of the arrow-shooting game, he's going to have to roll about a 17 to hit you, and even then he'd miss half those shots with the concealment, giving him a one in ten shot at actually making contact, let alone doing enough damage to seriously hurt you, or keep up with your constant stream of healing. I would say, from an IC, 'seasoned adventurer' standpoint, that this is pretty well prepared, or at least enough that you aren't going to get killed in the time it takes your hand to reach that handy Invisibility potion on your belt.

Odd... I can only see them once I'm in front of the trap, and that's about the same point that they start plugging people full of arrows, in my experience... Of course, by 'people' it's usually just me. Everyone else stays in cover.

If there's a point that someone who's buffed to the gills and generally prepared runs into an encounter, and gets cut down before they can even have a shot to scramble back out of it, I think it's a good sign to tweak things. I don't think it's unreasonable for someone with 29 AC and Displacement to consider themselves at least somewhat prepared, and I'm not sure if metagaming the placement of enemies before you have any reasonable way to tell they're even there can be justified.

Come to think, that quest spot seems to cause a lot of metagaming, even in smaller groups. I see a lot of runs that have people going through most of the mine at a run, then suddenly stop behind cover until someone can manage to spot the trap, just because a trigger and a few unlucky rolls can mean anything from a few deaths to a wipe in a bigger group, even if you did decide that this was suddenly the best time to chug a half dozen potions.

I imagine it can lead to a lot of frustration, as once you get locked into a hail of arrows, there's not a lot more you can do but stare at the screen and wait to die. It's a gamble that can easily become a no-win situation and cost you a third of your EXP, plus the consumables you'd used. I think it might be better to ensure this spot gives players the chance to run away if things go too south, too fast, rather than leaving it as-is. In exchange, the melee capabilities of the encounter could do to be beefed up, as I've noticed that when the trap is passed over, and the archer spawns aren't too bad, the fight quickly becomes a cakewalk.

Backing out of this. Can't confirm an opening for it, I'm afraid.

Well, throughout my time here, I've always ended up at odds when I tried to get involved with player groups. After careful analysis by way of several grueling minutes of thought, my greatest foe is time. Time zones, in particular. So at this point, I figure it's time to stop being a sissy and attempt to form my own group. In all honesty, I haven't got a grand, unifying concept to get hold of everyone's attention yet. But in a day or two's thinking I know I'll be able to talk myself out of this, so I'm posting it now. That way, I'll have a handy reminder of my obligation.

First and foremost, I'm looking to gather a group that, y'know, is actually a group, with the whole going around and doing things together regularly aspect. To that end, I'm hoping for people in similar time slots to my own, which is to say, GMT -4 (EST), playing around 9pm-1am.

Second, I intend for this group to have an impact. Probably not a 'walk in loud and go out in a blaze of glory' sort of impact, but one that at least puts us on the map. I've spent plenty of time lurking about, and a bit as a minion, and I'd like to see that change. People in similar situations are welcome, as are impact-making veterans willing to deal with fools in action.

Third, I'm not in a rush. I'm willing to bet a lot of people are tied up in new groups and plots about now, and I'd like to get some serious planning in for this one. So I guess this is more of an open invitation for people with a desire to get in on the ground floor for once, or once more.

That seems to be about it. Send over a PM if you've got an interest, an idea, both, or pretty much anything else.


And if you see me in the future, do remind me that I'm not permitted to turn back anymore.