Remove Beholder Quest in the Lowerdark

[tantrum]

I think everyone still fears beholders.  It's funny watching a crowd scatter when one approaches; even in the quest.

If I had to give my two cents on how to make terrifying cave more terrifying, I'd:

• Give the Beholders the "fly-in" animation and script that triggers after a PC crosses a certain point. I think that'd prevent darkness being casted on them before they have a chance to attack, and therefore making the quest much more challenging. Not sure how practical of an implementation that is, though.
• Give Beholders permanent Ultravision while within their lair.
• Make the final boss a Monstrous beholder instead of a Beholder Mage.
• If you keep the Beholder Mage, give it the Seers boss AI.
• Continue to spice Beholders. Anytime some basic tactics/ logic is applied to the quest by a DM, the quest becomes much more difficult.
• Casually remind players to not make dumb sendings.

I will say this: high fort does not equal auto victory in the beholders quest.

I think we're over estimating the number of people who have the fortitude, AC, and AB who can effectively solo a bunch of ogres while getting dispelled, hit with magic damage, and subjected to a no-save stun. What, truly, makes Beholders an "easy" quest is darkness. Fix that, and I think this will become much more difficult.

[Tala]

I'm quite enjoying this discussion. I've noticed something odd with the Beholders AI (something beyond the rays AI which I've tinkered before), and I wonder if it will make them better if I adjust it a bit. Taking into account all the posts and suggestions above I'll start with a test, and if it proves not broken towards completely useless / unbeatable, I'll probably add a few instances of them to the Beholders quest and have a group a few players test it for me.

Not sure if this will work out very well, but we'll see.

Beholders should be dangerous, and having a quest that not all PCs can do is totally fine, and should be quite an achievement for other PCs.
And as the post above says, don't make dumb sendings about "let's go kill beholders" (which I've seen lately). It's not really appropriate and personally speaking, it's a bit of a turnoff

[Letsplayforfun]

Removing any quest because some players spam/metagame it isn't the way to go.

To be the devil's advocate: it's perfectly normal for people to do quests for fun, xp, or whaver, and adapted to their lvl range. Spamming beholders, orogs, sahaguins or sand crypt is what you get for having lvl8-9-10 pcs strolling around the server. As much as I don't like seeing groups spamming those symbolic quests, this is initially a structural issue, not a player issue. Efu's lvl range makes supposedly scary monsters much less scary.

It becomes a player issue when the PCs turn back as soon as they know they'll be spiced, or abuse AI/ darkness because they can. A friendly reminder that they shouldn't do that is probably easier and less tedious than scripting anything.

We can also give beholders true sight and watch TPK happen again....

[Damien]

Removing the ability to use darkness would be pretty lame. I'm also not to sure what people are talking about really, as any time there is even the remotest spice on beholders people die and shit themselves.

The difficulty in trying to further balance beholders is they auto dispel, can do huge magic damage anyway and have death spells.

Leave as is and focus on making the server less stale via new quests, plots etc

This quest is so old it's stale no matter what. The same situation with seers too. They're like 8 years old...

[The Crimson Magician]

i believe it's been said that players are justified in leaving a quest when a dm becomes involved for one reason or another at their discretion

[zDark Shadowz]

As much as I don't like seeing groups spamming those symbolic quests, this is initially a structural issue, not a player issue. Efu's lvl range makes supposedly scary monsters much less scary.

It becomes a player issue when the PCs turn back as soon as they know they'll be spiced

Coming from multiple instances of IC experiences of DM spice I reserve the right to convince the party to turn around if it seems like we are incapable after going through a 30min rp'd march to get there, fully accept the quest is a failure after events indicate it is heading in that direction, spice or no spice and to come back another day when we are more sufficiently prepared to adapt for unknown challenges, and can reorganise everyone to assemble, without feeling judged as a player for my actions.

Risk normalisation is a condition that should not be punished. It's an actual legitimate condition humans are affected by that makes us forget of the expected  dangers if we repeat an activity, IG or IRL, and nothing bad happens.

DM spice is a touchy subject for those that have been on the (perceived) wrong end of it.

Sometimes Spice creates an interesting and worthwhile diversion. Other times it's unremovable and/or undetectable and/or undisarmable traps along a critical route, and it's no longer DM Spice but DM Spiking.

[Ironside]

Players have every right to turn down any opportunity that presents itself, this includes questing spice.

The last thing we should do is remove content from efu. The Beholder quest is completely fine as it is. It's not an easy encounter, and with some hiccups sits right at that peak of quest content that is actually well balanced.

It's not going to be removed.

However, if I see another punctuation-less, low-effort sending inviting people to "smash beholders" I will be deducting exp. We pride ourselves on maintaining high standards here, so I expect people to at least try.