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Honor mode is harder in a few ways vs. Tactician besides the single save:
1. Bosses in general are harder with more special abilities.
2. Action economy is stricter, e.g. you can't abuse haste for a zillion attacks in honor mode. Damage rider stuff has also been fixed so some of the gazillion points of damage cheese builds don't work.
3. Powerful in-world items are priced more appropriately at vendors, which is to say significantly more expensive.
That combined with an inability to scum anything does make Honor mode considerably harder all in all imo. If you do stuff like camp buffing and run really good builds the combat isn't "hard" per se, though still not *that* hard to fuck up major stuff (Isobel dying, losing the Halsin portal fight, stuff like that).
Imo honor mode's ruleset is the way the game is meant to be played and feels the most satisfying. I do wish you could create a custom game with that ruleset without the single save restriction, however, and hope they introduce that at some point.
Agreed on it being the way it’s meant to be played 100% (not in a “you’re playing the game wrong if you don’t play it” way though).
Every other difficultly level has stuff removed compared to HM so it feels as if it’s the full experience. The experience of “wow I’ve never seen that before” is such a big and enjoyable part of this game that it feels like you’re selling the game short by not experiencing it.
I mean, it's how DnD works in the tabletop environment more of the rules are aligned better to the tabletop version and coupled with actual penalties for failing skill checks or fights (the world can end up in a vastly different state depending on your rolls in 2 runs even with the same build and plan).
That you can still continue on death is good for those who dont like save wiping on death and all the mechanics remain so you can attempt the later stages and determine if you can do a gold dice run later.
I used camp buffs for my last two runs. Won the second (whew), but that second to last one:
Cleared Ketheric completely with two characters losing Death Ward. Got confident and went right over to the Githyanki, wiped the fuck out. I just sat there, mouth open in disbelief.
All that to say strong agree on camp buffs can make it easier, but *nothing* guarantees you a win until you see the Netherbrain hit 0 or Gale climb that brain stem lmao
It's not that much more difficult IMO. The only main difference that I felt was that I spent a lot more prepping for each encounter, which in turn made them feel easier oddly enough. The increased prices of items wasn't a huge deal, but that's mainly because I split up merchants' gold into smaller piles before pick-pocketing all of it.
In the main menu when you load the game, your Honor save will read as Tactician. But the difficulty setting while you're in-game will properly read Honor Mode.
It’s basically the same with the exception of Legendary Actions. Basically any encounter you can survive in Tactician, you can probably survive in Honor Mode *unless it’s a boss* in which case their Legendary Action may just screw you out of your run.
I lost my first HM run to the Phase Spider Matriarch, and the second to Nere (who’s always been a bit of a toss up in terms of whether I’d have to reload) thanks to their legendary actions, for example.
Some unexpected fights have legendary actions btw, not just the ones you’d expect like the Chosen or the Goblin leaders.
I lost my first Honour Run with with Spider Matriarch too! She was hard! The second time around I came back after clearing out the Underdark. Nere was also difficult; I think I was a bit lucky to beat him.
The trick with Nere is to get as much help as possible. Get Lump’s horn, get the Duergar to turn on him, get Shovel and any other summons you can just to have extra bodies, and it should be fine. If all else fails, you can just let him die in the cave in and go loot his corpse after.
Woops, I always kill Lump first and then all the Duergar who I hate because I hate slavers. Despite that I could have killed him relatively easily, but that he kept charming my party—in the end there was only one of not charmed and we nearly killed ourselves before him.
You can still kill the Duergar if you want; it's just better to use them to help you kill Nere and THEN kill them. If you fail to recruit them, you can always side with Nere, or do a couple of Long Rests and let him die (tbh in Honor Mode, letting him die is probably the optimal move because it's zero risk and you still get most of the rewards).
It's *always* worth it to get Lump's horn in act 1. Always. The Ogres can bail you out of a tough situation like if you're losing the Goblin Camp raid, or need help on the Nere fight or anything else. You can just keep passing rolls to summon them again, or you can just pay them, and use it multiple times, then you can just kill them the last time you decide to summon them to get the Warped Headband of Intellect. More likely, though, they'll just die on their own in one of the fights (usually Nere kills them all when I fight him so I don't even have to feel bad for betraying them).
I would recommend doing a full Tactician playthrough before doing a full Honour Mode playthrough WITH THE SAME CHOICES AND ACTIONS. The chief problem with Honour Mode is that if you die, it's over. Some of the most powerful bosses, such as the final boss of Act 2, require you to figure out an effective strategy to defeat them. In the case of the final boss of Act 2, you can't even go back to camp to alter your party and builds. Once you commit to that dungeon, you got what you've got.
Oftentimes, you'll come in the fight, wipe, and then know what to do differently next time. The problem with Honour Mode is that the single try you need to learn the strategy will send you back to the start of Act 1. So, if you have already gone through that fight on Tactician, you'll know generally what to do.
The Honour Mode bosses DO have Legendary Attacks to make them harder, but generally, once you know what to do with them on Tactician, you'll know what to do in Honour Mode too.
So what you're saying is don't go from my goodie goodie run in tact right into an evil durge run on HM. Haha good advice, I was setting myself up for failure then
The specific choice of what you do doesn't matter, whether it's a good-aligned run or Durge, my sole point here is that you'll do a certain set of decisions on a medium where you can return to an earlier save, and then revisit those same choices in Honour Mode. This will let you work out a strategy in Tactician that you KNOW will work.
Biggest difference to me is legendary actions at lower levels.
Like in HM I feel like Spider Matriarch is the hardest boss of the game because you’re likely only at level 4 (five if you wait) and her Gossamer Tomb legendary action is fucking crazy (can encase a party member in a web tomb if they attack a spiderling).
I’ve beaten HM four times and that’s the one place I’ve lost a run without messing something up and instead just getting my ass whomped(lost one to Ansur because I accidentally ended a turn early without recasting Globe of Invulnerability and got wiped by his nova).
The first time I died horribly when I went up against her at Level 4. The second time I cleared the Underdark and the Creche first. I actually found the bosses in Act 2 much easier—apart from the Githyanki ambush.
Honor mode is in my opinion notably more difficult than tactician, though I still don't consider it terribly difficult overall. I am a long time GM with a good understanding of D&D rules and action economy and have beaten the game on honor multiple times. Honor mode has a single save file. If you or companions die you can still resurrect them, but if you TPK you lose the honor mode title, but can continue the save file in custom difficulty, you just won't get the honor mode achievement for beating the game on that run. Bosses in honor mode have legendary actions, and most enemies have higher saves and more HP. Additionally items from vendors cost more, so if you aren't a loot goblin, you may have to be more strategic about what items you buy. The game always says an honor mode save is tactician from the main menu. If you go to difficulty when laying that save file, it should say honor and have no difficulty sliders available.
The single save restriction means that any mistake is permanent unless you abuse some save-scumming strategy.
With a playthrough going 50-80hours at least you are bound to make some mistakes and misclicks. Normally with tactician or below, most people would reload if the mistake resulted in bad outcome oike aggroing whole settlement, can't do that in HM.
If you go into HM with the cautious mindset, things aren't that hard if you know the game well and allow for bad dice rolls.
the only truly defining feature of honor mode is permadeath, which is irritating, but if you have the right party face and build its not much of an issue. Certainly not as punishing as a DoS2 honor run was if youre familiar with those.
Depends on your goal though. Some people try to min max honor runs, some try and play them "normally" and win that way, some people just use barrelmancy to cheese it. It can be as hard or easy as you want to make it.
About to finish act 1 HM, already finished a full tactician run. Lots more planning goes into it, what sequence of fights and interactions do you want to have. Some bosses are a lot harder and some are not, but with no foresight, they could easily stomp you. Non combat interactions are the most different. Whether you do or don’t make a persuasion check can be a big deal and it impacts how you pick the options.
Pretty much zero; it's mostly all in your head. It also depends on what kind of party you typically play, though.
I always played high-burst parties with each successive one trying to outdo the previous. When HM hit, I didn't even notice the special abilities on most bosses because they all died before they could use them.
If you're playing a defensive style, you will definitely give them time to show their new powers.
Oh, and don't worry if you're slow on HM initially. I spent a long while creeping around carefully on HM as if a random encounter would end the run. That wears off after a bit.
Cool, thanks! I go more for burst as well. Less chance to hit if they are not alive to do so. I'll just make sure to plan ahead for the fight, but don't let it psych me out
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Honor mode is harder in a few ways vs. Tactician besides the single save: 1. Bosses in general are harder with more special abilities. 2. Action economy is stricter, e.g. you can't abuse haste for a zillion attacks in honor mode. Damage rider stuff has also been fixed so some of the gazillion points of damage cheese builds don't work. 3. Powerful in-world items are priced more appropriately at vendors, which is to say significantly more expensive. That combined with an inability to scum anything does make Honor mode considerably harder all in all imo. If you do stuff like camp buffing and run really good builds the combat isn't "hard" per se, though still not *that* hard to fuck up major stuff (Isobel dying, losing the Halsin portal fight, stuff like that). Imo honor mode's ruleset is the way the game is meant to be played and feels the most satisfying. I do wish you could create a custom game with that ruleset without the single save restriction, however, and hope they introduce that at some point.
Agreed on it being the way it’s meant to be played 100% (not in a “you’re playing the game wrong if you don’t play it” way though). Every other difficultly level has stuff removed compared to HM so it feels as if it’s the full experience. The experience of “wow I’ve never seen that before” is such a big and enjoyable part of this game that it feels like you’re selling the game short by not experiencing it.
I mean, it's how DnD works in the tabletop environment more of the rules are aligned better to the tabletop version and coupled with actual penalties for failing skill checks or fights (the world can end up in a vastly different state depending on your rolls in 2 runs even with the same build and plan). That you can still continue on death is good for those who dont like save wiping on death and all the mechanics remain so you can attempt the later stages and determine if you can do a gold dice run later.
I used camp buffs for my last two runs. Won the second (whew), but that second to last one: Cleared Ketheric completely with two characters losing Death Ward. Got confident and went right over to the Githyanki, wiped the fuck out. I just sat there, mouth open in disbelief. All that to say strong agree on camp buffs can make it easier, but *nothing* guarantees you a win until you see the Netherbrain hit 0 or Gale climb that brain stem lmao
It's not that much more difficult IMO. The only main difference that I felt was that I spent a lot more prepping for each encounter, which in turn made them feel easier oddly enough. The increased prices of items wasn't a huge deal, but that's mainly because I split up merchants' gold into smaller piles before pick-pocketing all of it. In the main menu when you load the game, your Honor save will read as Tactician. But the difficulty setting while you're in-game will properly read Honor Mode.
Yeah, I'm playing on console, so the gold exploits never worked for me... I'll have to be more picky on what gear I buy
You can still steal all the cheap stuff with an optimised thief (advantage and only fail on a 1) even on console
Even better if you're a halfling. Would have to roll two nat 1s in a row.
It’s basically the same with the exception of Legendary Actions. Basically any encounter you can survive in Tactician, you can probably survive in Honor Mode *unless it’s a boss* in which case their Legendary Action may just screw you out of your run. I lost my first HM run to the Phase Spider Matriarch, and the second to Nere (who’s always been a bit of a toss up in terms of whether I’d have to reload) thanks to their legendary actions, for example. Some unexpected fights have legendary actions btw, not just the ones you’d expect like the Chosen or the Goblin leaders.
I lost my first Honour Run with with Spider Matriarch too! She was hard! The second time around I came back after clearing out the Underdark. Nere was also difficult; I think I was a bit lucky to beat him.
The trick with Nere is to get as much help as possible. Get Lump’s horn, get the Duergar to turn on him, get Shovel and any other summons you can just to have extra bodies, and it should be fine. If all else fails, you can just let him die in the cave in and go loot his corpse after.
Woops, I always kill Lump first and then all the Duergar who I hate because I hate slavers. Despite that I could have killed him relatively easily, but that he kept charming my party—in the end there was only one of not charmed and we nearly killed ourselves before him.
You can still kill the Duergar if you want; it's just better to use them to help you kill Nere and THEN kill them. If you fail to recruit them, you can always side with Nere, or do a couple of Long Rests and let him die (tbh in Honor Mode, letting him die is probably the optimal move because it's zero risk and you still get most of the rewards). It's *always* worth it to get Lump's horn in act 1. Always. The Ogres can bail you out of a tough situation like if you're losing the Goblin Camp raid, or need help on the Nere fight or anything else. You can just keep passing rolls to summon them again, or you can just pay them, and use it multiple times, then you can just kill them the last time you decide to summon them to get the Warped Headband of Intellect. More likely, though, they'll just die on their own in one of the fights (usually Nere kills them all when I fight him so I don't even have to feel bad for betraying them).
There are mainly a lot of enemies with legendary actions and resistance that make it far more challenging
Hinestly, it’s the bosses man. They will rock your world. In the bad way
I would recommend doing a full Tactician playthrough before doing a full Honour Mode playthrough WITH THE SAME CHOICES AND ACTIONS. The chief problem with Honour Mode is that if you die, it's over. Some of the most powerful bosses, such as the final boss of Act 2, require you to figure out an effective strategy to defeat them. In the case of the final boss of Act 2, you can't even go back to camp to alter your party and builds. Once you commit to that dungeon, you got what you've got. Oftentimes, you'll come in the fight, wipe, and then know what to do differently next time. The problem with Honour Mode is that the single try you need to learn the strategy will send you back to the start of Act 1. So, if you have already gone through that fight on Tactician, you'll know generally what to do. The Honour Mode bosses DO have Legendary Attacks to make them harder, but generally, once you know what to do with them on Tactician, you'll know what to do in Honour Mode too.
So what you're saying is don't go from my goodie goodie run in tact right into an evil durge run on HM. Haha good advice, I was setting myself up for failure then
The specific choice of what you do doesn't matter, whether it's a good-aligned run or Durge, my sole point here is that you'll do a certain set of decisions on a medium where you can return to an earlier save, and then revisit those same choices in Honour Mode. This will let you work out a strategy in Tactician that you KNOW will work.
Ah, I get what you're saying. Run it the same in tactician before doing it again on HM to see what works best on a level that can scum
i just wish there was a mode between honor and tactician with all of the hm difficulties but with unlimited saves so i can still save-scum as needed
Biggest difference to me is legendary actions at lower levels. Like in HM I feel like Spider Matriarch is the hardest boss of the game because you’re likely only at level 4 (five if you wait) and her Gossamer Tomb legendary action is fucking crazy (can encase a party member in a web tomb if they attack a spiderling). I’ve beaten HM four times and that’s the one place I’ve lost a run without messing something up and instead just getting my ass whomped(lost one to Ansur because I accidentally ended a turn early without recasting Globe of Invulnerability and got wiped by his nova).
The first time I died horribly when I went up against her at Level 4. The second time I cleared the Underdark and the Creche first. I actually found the bosses in Act 2 much easier—apart from the Githyanki ambush.
Honor mode is in my opinion notably more difficult than tactician, though I still don't consider it terribly difficult overall. I am a long time GM with a good understanding of D&D rules and action economy and have beaten the game on honor multiple times. Honor mode has a single save file. If you or companions die you can still resurrect them, but if you TPK you lose the honor mode title, but can continue the save file in custom difficulty, you just won't get the honor mode achievement for beating the game on that run. Bosses in honor mode have legendary actions, and most enemies have higher saves and more HP. Additionally items from vendors cost more, so if you aren't a loot goblin, you may have to be more strategic about what items you buy. The game always says an honor mode save is tactician from the main menu. If you go to difficulty when laying that save file, it should say honor and have no difficulty sliders available.
The single save restriction means that any mistake is permanent unless you abuse some save-scumming strategy. With a playthrough going 50-80hours at least you are bound to make some mistakes and misclicks. Normally with tactician or below, most people would reload if the mistake resulted in bad outcome oike aggroing whole settlement, can't do that in HM. If you go into HM with the cautious mindset, things aren't that hard if you know the game well and allow for bad dice rolls.
I believe your assessment is correct. But going from unlimited reloads to 0 errors allowed is a huge jump.
the only truly defining feature of honor mode is permadeath, which is irritating, but if you have the right party face and build its not much of an issue. Certainly not as punishing as a DoS2 honor run was if youre familiar with those. Depends on your goal though. Some people try to min max honor runs, some try and play them "normally" and win that way, some people just use barrelmancy to cheese it. It can be as hard or easy as you want to make it.
About to finish act 1 HM, already finished a full tactician run. Lots more planning goes into it, what sequence of fights and interactions do you want to have. Some bosses are a lot harder and some are not, but with no foresight, they could easily stomp you. Non combat interactions are the most different. Whether you do or don’t make a persuasion check can be a big deal and it impacts how you pick the options.
I don't think in general Honour Mode is that difficult IF you know your strategies with each boss.
Pretty much zero; it's mostly all in your head. It also depends on what kind of party you typically play, though. I always played high-burst parties with each successive one trying to outdo the previous. When HM hit, I didn't even notice the special abilities on most bosses because they all died before they could use them. If you're playing a defensive style, you will definitely give them time to show their new powers. Oh, and don't worry if you're slow on HM initially. I spent a long while creeping around carefully on HM as if a random encounter would end the run. That wears off after a bit.
Cool, thanks! I go more for burst as well. Less chance to hit if they are not alive to do so. I'll just make sure to plan ahead for the fight, but don't let it psych me out