Luring

[Daemonic Daz]

Its quite simple really, just use common sense when fighting archers.

Theres going to be a time when a DM will be watching you and we can easily spot the differences between accidental and intentional luring.

[lovethesuit]

TBH Howland is a little played out. The gimmick has lost its edge. I think we should change the character so that it has more wacky catchphrases, something we can get the kids at home saying. See sir, I'm a traditionalist. I believe in word of mouth advertising. Howland's got it, but he hasn't quite got it, do you know what I'm sayin'?

[Damien]

TBH I think there should be allowance for some form of luring. All the quests on this server are difficult and can definatly be unforgiving to new comers. Running into the massive room on the Brood Hive quest would be a prime example of this >_>

[Halfbrood]

Some brutally uncaring gentleman once said "it's a steep learning curve."

Personally, I don't believe you need to be wtf good to successfully defeat some of the more difficult quests. Despite my persona, I'm actually quite shit at mechanics. I've defeated the Quest in Question (QIQ :)), on different characters with different strength parties, each time we've charged and defeated the QIQ. Everyone being a coward all the time is boring, just as everyone acting the badass all the time is.

I forget what I was writing about.

[PlayaCharacter]

Okay, about that duergar quest.

You go in, archers start hitting you, and you back off to plan what to do next.

While you're in the middle of talking with your mates, here comes said archers around the corner like a bunch of idiots, and you kill them, effectively reducing the size of the defending force by half.

Excuse me, but the PCs in that situation have done nothing lame, meta, weak, shallow, or any other adjective you can come up with. They have remained in character, they have done what makes perfect sense in a situation like that, and they have not broken any rule of the server. Expecting PCs to charge in a situation like that is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

There are situations that occasionally come up with the game engine where a player is confronted with the choice of doing something utterly out of character or taking some small advantage of a flaw in the engine. When faced with that choice, I am always going to remain in character.

It is unreasonable to expect a PC to suicide themselves because they triggered some unexpected design flaw. That kind of expectation adds nothing whatsoever to immersion, realism, fair play, or any other gaming virtue you care to name.

There is no way to avoid situations like this. They are a part of NWN.  In 99% of the cases where something like this comes up, we're talking about a net advantage of less than twenty hit points, so the best way to deal with them is to simply ignore them. We're here to play, not to get hung up on little ticky-picky problems that have next to zero impact on the overall balance of the server.

Dealing with a combat bug, more often than not, involves some minimum amount of communication. Unless the DMs want to turn on the Player Pause option, there is no way to satisfactorily handle these problems when they arise in combat without breaking immersion, stopping whatever is going on at the time, and communicating OOC about how best to move forward. That's just a pain in the ass, and it's simply not worth all the trouble.

If someone is trying to cheat the AI to the extent that they gain some advantage over others, it will be plainly obvious that they are doing so. In all other cases like this, please just trust the players' judgment. No one wants to feel like they're being second-guessed every time they come across a bug.

[Gippy]

I really think a lot of good points have been raised in this thread and will say that most of you have completely 100% the right idea about things. That said, if there is a case such as the duergar quest, where luring just happens -- send us a private bug report and we'll deal with it.

[SN]

Ladies and gentlemen, the Duergar Q has been changed, and has been changed in a magnificent way. No more luring the shit.
Good job, and stop whining please!

[VrudashHogshurd]

Never did the Duerger Q, but would like to mention that I often see on some quests the "archer solitude-ness-ish" tactic.
 
One stationary archer gets attacked and he fires back and the other stationary archers are picking their noses.  The party will then pick off one at a time.  Vrudash thinks this is lame-O.  Either the party should force them all to attack at once, make archers more aware of their surroundings or bring in gongs that some fool can hit that will sound the alert for the others.

[SkillFocuspwn]

My personal view of things, is that, if the AI cannot be fixed, there is no point complaining. I've heard numerous people argue that abusing the AI is in fact better than risking it, which I disagree strongly with.

Archers cannot really be fixed, so either charge them, or do not fight. You cannot say it is OOC to charge them when by far the most OOC option there is to actually reduce the archers to meat by walking behind a wall.

[Cruzel]

Just set it into the perception event for archers that they give a silent talk message and anytime the archers see something that is hostile and they start to attack, any nearby (within reasonable range) melee monster that is not already in combat will run in the direction they are shooting while nearby archers pick one of the players near the original PC and start firing away, once they hear the silent talk message.  They even have this in the SoU OC when you open certain chests, nearby stuff comes to attack you.

It isn't hard to do and would effectively create 'npc tactics' as mentioned somewhat above. Yay for no more luring and retarded monsters who just stand there as their friends are attacked.. >.>

You could also place 'cover' triggers in places susceptible to archer luring in any quest, and whenever a PC  enters these it signals any archer fixed on them to stop attacking.  This way the people who use the excuse "we were backing up to discuss tactics" can actually do so without having the hordes of fodder chasing after them 'accidentally'.

[derfo]

tactics: kill them

[Professor Death]

I applaud this attitude, Gippy.  That's a brilliant solution.  A lot of the potential abuses of luring could be repaired by simple mechanical fixes like the aforementioned barricade on the bridge.  If the idea is to have the archers stay back and let the melee spawns charge the interlopers on Duergar or any other quest, the problem might also be solved by one of the following (I've only rudimentarilly experimented in the toolset, but think these might work):
1. a placeable trigger that spawns some "guards" who are set with waypoints to walk toward the trigger point, and thus "encounter" the party that was attempting to lure.  This would simulate the archers spotting the advancing party and summoning aid from the others in the camp.  This might be a problem with sneak types, but is a workaround.  You could always claim the marching Duergar (or whoever) were just on patrol - like an old school wandering monster, which must now be avoided.
2. Restructure the encounter area.  Maybe the archers are on an island or a small elevation and cannot advance, yet the footmen CAN get through because they take a different route.  Make the island or rise accessible via a mini-transition, maybe one that's hard to get to - like Vrazdn, so charging is NOT the best tactic because you'll get shredded.

I am sure I am fully guilty of luring on many occasions, but to be honest, it's an accidental consequence of an IC action - if my mage is walking around and gets spotted, he's going to run.  Like hell he's going to charge a group!  Similarly, when he has consciously used a "lure" I make sure it's with non-intelligent beasts (like snakes on the snakes quest) - figuring they wouldn't be contacting each other.  

I think this has room for internal discussion amongst the DM staff.

I know the issues of spawns not being able to communicate with one another

My personal opinion is that certain quest designs encourage some sort of luring, perhaps the biggest example is the duergar quest, and I think that needs to be solved from a quest design standpoint. For example, simply placing a barrier down on the bridge will stop the crossbowmen from racing around a corner and being made into mince.

Deliberate luring, like Meldread mentions, of course is not appropriate. However some amount of luring is going to happen no matter what. In an ideal situation the AI would act and respond organically. It falls on both sides of the DM/PC line to minimize this unintentional luring.

Remember that we're all story tellers here. What sort of story are you telling when you say that the intelligent monsters ran around the corner with their bows out and got ripped to pieces because they saw you looking at them funny?

[The Crimson Magician]

or give archers weapons =]

[Underbard]

If we are going to start screwing with the AI of the monsters, perhaps we also need to deal with the "Oh so unhandy"..
 auto attack of PC's trying to get the hell back from said NPC's.  Doesn't make much sense to charge knowing full well if you need to drop back and heal, your PC will automatically attack everything that gets near him, pretty much ensuring your death if this becomes the case, and if you blindly charge archers, this will happen repeatedly.

[FleetingHeart]

If you're talking about Attacks of Opportunity, those are not going anywhere. It's hard coded behavior, though easy to work around.