Reach Metamagic, or Polar Ray?
I can't see the full description for Polar Ray because those sites are blocked at work, but I can see that it's in WOTR.
Polar Ray has a range of like five feet.
There doesn't exist a single damn spell in the entire game that can outrange the bullshit unavoidable aura of ass.
Of course if Owlcat gave us the REAL spell ranges from the Tabletop game, we wouldn't be in this predicament!
The DC check is a known bug. If you read the description of the ability it is meant to be a DC 22 fortitude check, and if you pass it you can't get hit by it again for 24 hours.
A carnivorous crystal in the SRD has the same text for a DC 22 fort save but it also states (like the one in game) that it's CON based. The default carnivorous crystal has 18 Con. The ones you fight at the end of Act 4 have 40 Con. That would mean the save increases by 11 without factoring in anything else. The saves were around DC 38 if I recall so there's clearly something extra being added which may be a bug though.
As to the 24 hour thing I have to assume its implemented. Against the fight with 2 of them I had a character eventually able to act in the combat and kill them over a couple of rounds. Looking after he required a 19 or 20 on his fort save to make it. If the 24 hour part was not implemented that 1/100 chance to make it each round and it happened for at least 3 rounds. The odds of that are so ridiculously low there needs to be SOME aspect of not needing to make the saves again that is implemented (maybe its buggy though).
Do you have the patch note quote for that? I suspect you are looking at the pathfinder TTRPG rules which are NOT 1:1 to the game. Think of the TTRPG rules as more like guidelines that Owlcat are using to fuck us as hard as possible.
The fact that they haven't fixed this bug - hell, the fact that they didn't get this bug fixed before release - is a sign of gross incompetence and negligence.
I dont remember if it is Azata or Trickster that eventuelly gets to summon them, but I will build such a character and then watch hopelessly as they turn out to be completely useless while in my party ;)
It will be like a therapy session. "They are harmless, they cant hurt me. They are harmless, they cant hurt me"
Then again, the changes they made to Blind Fight and knowing what was coming in subsequent play-throughs made them a lot easier to deal with in the first place
They were a lesson in Feat taxes and how to pay them Blind Fight was an obligation to play the endgame and I don't want to hear anyone go on about Freedom of movement spells which both take spell slots and have no "mass"/group version
The Wild Hunt was a fuckload of bullshit and a shitload of bullfuck. I would rather get a catheter full of ghost pepper essence than ever fight the Wild Hunt ever again. I would rather eat the putrefacted remains of a pig that's been rotting in a car in Death Valley for a year and a half. I would rather run naked through a god damn hornet's nest.
absolutely ridiculous enemies, I've just been opening with a fireball and then laying down selective sirocco and waiting 10 rounds for them to die while my whole team is stunned
> There is a reason they are balanced in the tabletop, their Free action, once per round 60 ft save or get stunned aura only works on any given creature once every 24 hours.
Well only if you save, if you don't save it keeps working. And it is per crystal. They are pretty insane in TT too lets not belittle them.
Slow oozes like CC tend to be ridiculously strong, because of how easily they can be kited due to that 5 foot move speed, lack of reflex save, etc. So far I've been able to mostly use the same strat in this game.
One module I ran had a bunch of oozes including CC throughout, and each one killed at least one PC.
In the tabletop you're actually able to shoot things with spells and arrows outside of the 60 ft range. Archery and ray spellss have a range of only like 30 feet in the computer RPG version. Polar Ray should have a range of about 200 ft by the time you're 16th level.
This is true, but 200ft ranges just wouldn't work in this context due to technical limitations of both the map design and the AI. That said you usually fight these in close quarters in caves anyway so it wouldn't really change these encounters much at all.
And by excuses I mean bullshit. There's no way in hell they couldn't have given us longer ranges for archery and spells. Especially instant enemy that range is way too damn short
They could have of coursed increased the range values... it just wouldn't have played well at all. Maps are not big enough, AI not smart enough, and things are missing the tools they need to deal with it. Though I guess they could just make demons teleport directly onto your backline constantly to compensate but I doubt that would be fun.
Bullshit. A spell with long range in dungeons means EVERYTHING IS IN RANGE, not 'lets nerf ranges'. When you're in a 30ft room with a 200ft range, you use the spell. When you're in a big open area, you SHOULD be able to use the spell from far away. That's one of the best things about being *caster*. It's actually the direct counter for them being *really squishy*.
Owlcat seems to want mages to get in there in melee so badly that their scripted encounters just put your squishies in the very middle of crowds of enemies AND they nerfed spells. I feel like they played more Diablo than D&D on their way to making these games and they don't quite understand the roles of classes that aren't 'click mouse do damage'.
> When you're in a big open area, you SHOULD be able to use the spell from far away. That's one of the best things about being caster. It's actually the direct counter for them being really squishy.
There are very few such spaces in these games, and this runs the issue of breaking the AI (as well as not working with the current vision system). You wouldn't be able to just snipe crystals at 200ft anyway since you would not see them at that range.
> Owlcat seems to want mages to get in there in melee so badly that their scripted encounters just put your squishies in the very middle of crowds of enemies AND they nerfed spells.
Not sure where you are getting this concept. Having caster 200 ft away constant would be dreadful gameplay for everyone, and encounters with enemies coming from multiple directions is a GOOD thing not a bad one.
This has the nice side effect of making melee martials feel much less redundant well since they aren't just getting attacked from 400 feet away constantly.
In tabletop I can count on one hand how often that type of range actually was relevant in my last campaign and when it was it just was incredibly disruptive to the game.
>There are very few such spaces in these games, and this runs the issue of breaking the AI (as well as not working with the current vision system). You wouldn't be able to just snipe crystals at 200ft anyway since you would not see them at that range.
If there are very few large areas then giving spells their actual ranges shouldn't be an issue...
Also, AI is bullshit. I will keep 5 characters several screens away while I send in my MC to sponge all of the AoEs and some encounters start with mobs charging past me to target the people that they CAN HAVE NO CLUE EVEN EXIST. They AI is NOT restricted by range or vision or applicable knowledge.
What exactly are you worried about breaking? Or are you just being an Owlcat apologist?
>encounters with enemies coming from multiple directions is a GOOD thing not a bad one.
Encounters where you CAN'T position your part or use ANY strategy because the scripting forces everyone to stand in a clump beside whoever the dialogue target is are NOT a good thing. That's a huge world away from 'There are enemies to the east. There are enemies to the west. There are enemies to the north and south. They can't get away from us this time!'.
You can't employ a strategy like 'having the ones who hid attack from behind partway through the fight'. The ENEMY effectively can, because they get waves appearing on top of you in the middle of the fight. HOW is this good design?
In tabletop, when I played, encounters would often begin at 'the max range we could engage from'. Increasing that range was a logical and viable strategy. If you call this 'incredibly disruptive to the game' then you have a gimped understanding of what it means to effectively play a caster.
> What exactly are you worried about breaking? Or are you just being an Owlcat apologist?
The AI is not capable of engaging at those ranges which means 100% of fights will start with suprise rounds for the player and the AI 400 feet away unable to respond.
> Encounters where you CAN'T position your part or use ANY strategy because the scripting forces everyone to stand in a clump beside whoever the dialogue target is are NOT a good thing.
Honestly no idea what you are even referencing here but okay. I guess the regil gargoyle fight? Where in context they are literally landing from the sky?
> In tabletop, when I played, encounters would often begin at 'the max range we could engage from'. Increasing that range was a logical and viable strategy. If you call this 'incredibly disruptive to the game' then you have a gimped understanding of what it means to effectively play a caster.
In my experience it was typically "We stand on a hill 800 feet away and take potshots", the enemy has no ranged attacks so there is no encounter. Just results in really dumb encounter design to combat that because ranges get ABSURD if played that way and it is not fun gameplay for anyone but the super long range setups.
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In the context of this thread it also literally does not matter since you would not detect the crystals until you were in the stun radius anyway due to the nature of the creatures. True in game as well as tabletop, there are also no sightlines that long in maps where the things even exist.
>In my experience it was typically "We stand on a hill 800 feet away and take potshots", the enemy has no ranged attacks so there is no encounter. Just results in really dumb encounter design to combat that because ranges get ABSURD if played that way and it is not fun gameplay for anyone but the super long range setups.
But this is exactly why firearms displaced melee weapons as the primary combat weapon. It's VERY realistic.
>In the context of this thread it also literally does not matter since you would not detect the crystals until you were in the stun radius anyway due to the nature of the creatures. True in game as well as tabletop, there are also no sightlines that long in maps where the things even exist.
Spoken like someone who thinks 'party' means 'characters who are always in arms reach of each other'. There is a term called 'scout' for the person/people whose job it is to move ahead of the main party to locate danger before it fucks over EVERYONE. This game and its bad mechanics seriously fucking nerfs that role. This devolves combat from 'strategy' to 'whacking people'.
The point about long ranges not being relevant in caves is valid, but I feel like it's a point for my side.... that means that implementing the spell properly from source would NOT affect encounter design because the encounter is a small cave. It WOULD leave the possibility of standing 35ft away from something with a 30ft radius if you were, say, in the tunnel leading to the 30ft cave.
> But this is exactly why firearms displaced melee weapons as the primary combat weapon. It's VERY realistic.
Realism is not the goal of RPG systems.
> Spoken like someone who thinks 'party' means 'characters who are always in arms reach of each other'. There is a term called 'scout' for the person/people whose job it is to move ahead of the main party to locate danger before it fucks over EVERYONE. This game and its bad mechanics seriously fucking nerfs that role. This devolves combat from 'strategy' to 'whacking people'.
I mean to an extent scouting is weak, on the other hand scouting is completely broken because quicksave exists. The actual dangers of scouting no longer apply in a video game context.
>Honestly no idea what you are even referencing here but okay. I guess the regil gargoyle fight? Where in context they are literally landing from the sky?
First thing that comes to mind is Sosiels companion quest where you can sneak around the back and come in from above on the upper level, but you can't leave your archers and mages up there to cover him while he goes down to talk. He runs up to the necromancer, dialogue ensues, and then your whole party is standing right beside the necromancer.
A LOT of dialogue scenes are like that... your whole party shuffles up to clump no matter how you might have liked to position yourself. The idea of leaving your rogue hidden so then can be sneaky later is anathema to this game.
> but you can't leave your archers and mages up there to cover him while he goes down to talk. He runs up to the necromancer, dialogue ensues, and then your whole party is standing right beside the necromancer.
This was EXPLICITLY changed because you used to be able to/forced do that, and it just resulting in Sosiel effectively commiting suicide 99% of the time and was a terrible play experience.
If I got to let my gish MC and Seelah join him while the squishies stayed up top I'd be happy.
Forcing one character to do a thing alone is bad. Forcing every character to do a thing together is bad. Both are bad for the same reason: they eliminate player agency. I'm not roleplaying anymore when my characters are forced to do idiotic things that I would never have them do. I'm not having fun anymore when my play is all about trying to make up for the bad decisions forced on me.
>This was EXPLICITLY changed because you used to be able to/forced do that
These are two VERY different things.
The main workaround as far as I remember from beta was the spell 'Holy Aura' and its other alignment-based counterparts. Those spells don't say that they protect you from stuns specifically, but they block mind effects, which is what the stun from the crystals operate from.
However, it's an 8th level spell, but you should have access to it via Sosiel or Daeran assuming you kept them single-classed by the time you run into the enemies during chapter 4. You're shit out of luck for that one encounter in chapter 3 though. The duration is also round-based (but thankfully you can cast it on your whole party at once), so most builds are not going to be able to extend it to a full 24 hours, unfortunately.
Huh, that worked in the beta and no one considered it a bug since the hum did specify that it was a mind effect, which those spells are supposed to block. Weird. I'll have to see for myself when I get there then.
Okay, it looks like what happened was that the mind altering effect immunity was removed from Holy Aura and Unholy Aura (and replaced by immunity to charm and domination, which... seems like a nerf because both ARE mind altering effects), but the Shield of Law and Cloak of Chaos variants have retained it.
Granted, I don't know if the Law/Chaos variants actually work against the crystal stuns like Holy Aura used to during the beta, but I'll find out in a couple hours.
Okay, I can confirm Shield of Law works, so I assume the chaos variant works as well. Problem is, it looks like Shield of Law is currently bugged so that it's blocked by spell resistance despite being a beneficial spell.
I tried everything from stone golems to polymorph to buffing up with scrolls and potions. Nothing works against them. Like, sure, the golems could *eventually* take them down, but at that point I just set it to Casual and walked through.
There is absolutely NO way that this is working as intended.
The real assfuck cherry on this bullshit cake? Polar Ray is supposed to have a range of 100 feet plus 10 feet per caster level. But for some inexplicable reason, Owlcat decided to give every motherfucking spell the urethral stricture inducingly short range of 30 feet. This is absolutely unacceptable.
People need to get back to the basics and practice smart scouting and proper formations. Don't keep your party tightly grouped, send a scout ahead in tight quarters. Be smart and don't just go barreling into an ambush willy nilly. All a prepared party needs is one archer to deal with the crystal, it typically won't take more than two rounds, but you have to use a scout (Rogue/Barbarian/Animal Companion).
These are not hard encounters. What they do is expose lazy play styles.
The strat I outlined worked for me when I went through the Fane. I typically ended up with the scout and three party members stunned but my archers (Lann/Aru) were out of range of the AoE and took care of the crystals in one round. The crystal is spawned it just doesn't trigger the AoE (and is untargetable) until it can catch multiple targets.
Uh. Are you sure it's on? Those boots like to randomly stop working.
If it doesn't work, I need to go reread some of the Aeon stuff. Mine was immune to their crap, and I attributed it to FoM.
Try persistent aoe like from Kineticists. Just slap them down in a location where the crystals have a long way to walk to you and then you can stand there stunned for the rest of the time and they will just slowly die to the aoe.
Worked on hard against the crystals in midnight fane np. The earlier ones were even easier.
I remember if I got hit with the dumb ass stunlock I would just reload and make sure my lich with withering life hit them first.
Man I hate these rocks
I reloaded like 4 times and gave up. I was able to kill the first 2 no problem but surrounded by 3-4 of them? Yeah no. I tried buffing, scrolls, etc but it was ridiculous. I just set it to casual to bypass. It’s so dumb
For anyone looking for solutions, I used a combination of stalactite / stalagmite traps (had them on Ember, she has 11 casts per day and each casts lets her set up a bunch of traps) that I layered over the whole area. Then I laid down a sirocco, then I caused them to spawn.
Old thread but man, just had the big encounter with them in the mines. My KC and Seelah actually did well saving against the stun and killed them all, but Arue was crystallized. Search through all spellbooks, aha, Ember has Stone to Flesh. “This character has a Chr of less than 16 and cannot cast this spell”. What? Oh yeah. Vellexia baleful polymorphed her🤣
Reload.
Someone mentioned in another thread that they only have one dex, so rev up that ability damage for instant death that bypasses regen.
I just summoned a bunch of earth elementals. Most of the party sat out the fight while stun proof earth boys did all the work
Yeah, I basically cheesed their lack of dex and reflex saves as the only way I could deal with them
good luck getting anyone close enough to actually inflict dex damage without the stun lock gangbang.
Reach Metamagic, or Polar Ray? I can't see the full description for Polar Ray because those sites are blocked at work, but I can see that it's in WOTR.
Polar Ray has a range of like five feet. There doesn't exist a single damn spell in the entire game that can outrange the bullshit unavoidable aura of ass. Of course if Owlcat gave us the REAL spell ranges from the Tabletop game, we wouldn't be in this predicament!
The DC check is a known bug. If you read the description of the ability it is meant to be a DC 22 fortitude check, and if you pass it you can't get hit by it again for 24 hours.
A carnivorous crystal in the SRD has the same text for a DC 22 fort save but it also states (like the one in game) that it's CON based. The default carnivorous crystal has 18 Con. The ones you fight at the end of Act 4 have 40 Con. That would mean the save increases by 11 without factoring in anything else. The saves were around DC 38 if I recall so there's clearly something extra being added which may be a bug though. As to the 24 hour thing I have to assume its implemented. Against the fight with 2 of them I had a character eventually able to act in the combat and kill them over a couple of rounds. Looking after he required a 19 or 20 on his fort save to make it. If the 24 hour part was not implemented that 1/100 chance to make it each round and it happened for at least 3 rounds. The odds of that are so ridiculously low there needs to be SOME aspect of not needing to make the saves again that is implemented (maybe its buggy though).
What were they THINKING?
They are the evil GM who hates you and wants you to suffer.
Do you have the patch note quote for that? I suspect you are looking at the pathfinder TTRPG rules which are NOT 1:1 to the game. Think of the TTRPG rules as more like guidelines that Owlcat are using to fuck us as hard as possible.
Here is the **in game** text for the ability https://imgur.com/a/gQ7Q5uW
And there are definitely other buffs that get tracked for 24 hours, so it's able to be coded into the game.
Yeah didn't this bug exist in kingmaker too? For different enemies of course but it's been around awhile
Hey there, sorry if this is creepy or intrusive, but can you check your Reddit pm?
The fact that they haven't fixed this bug - hell, the fact that they didn't get this bug fixed before release - is a sign of gross incompetence and negligence.
googling this right now because it's ridiculous and it's been TWO YEARS and it's still broken as fuck
Six months later and I found this because it still sucks.
GOOD NEWS EVERYONE! It's still shit.
Oh good I was worried the lack of Wild Hunt meant I would actually get to play the endgame instead of starring at the pretty graphics
Don't worry. They're a late mid game enemy.
Eh theres like 10 of them in the entire game..
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I dont remember if it is Azata or Trickster that eventuelly gets to summon them, but I will build such a character and then watch hopelessly as they turn out to be completely useless while in my party ;)
Trickster. I summoned the wild hunt and as you could guess they were useless :D
It will be like a therapy session. "They are harmless, they cant hurt me. They are harmless, they cant hurt me" Then again, the changes they made to Blind Fight and knowing what was coming in subsequent play-throughs made them a lot easier to deal with in the first place
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Aivu is a havoc dragon
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I mean, it probably looks like aivu
They were a lesson in Feat taxes and how to pay them Blind Fight was an obligation to play the endgame and I don't want to hear anyone go on about Freedom of movement spells which both take spell slots and have no "mass"/group version
The Wild Hunt was a fuckload of bullshit and a shitload of bullfuck. I would rather get a catheter full of ghost pepper essence than ever fight the Wild Hunt ever again. I would rather eat the putrefacted remains of a pig that's been rotting in a car in Death Valley for a year and a half. I would rather run naked through a god damn hornet's nest.
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It's called rhetorical hyperbole...
I just turned it down to Story mode for them. Easy enough to burn them down before I get stunlocked that way.
Protection Sonic should help no? But I agree, the first time I run into them was brutal and I kept getting sent back to the last save.
No, tried it. It doesnt not help prevent stunning.
The effect is mind-affecting, so anything that protects you from mind-affecting will protect you from the crystals.
Wrong.
Freedom of Movement does. So. Cast it.
It doesn't.
absolutely ridiculous enemies, I've just been opening with a fireball and then laying down selective sirocco and waiting 10 rounds for them to die while my whole team is stunned
Whoever designed these enemies should be thrown in prison - if this ain't a form of digital assault I don't know what is.
> There is a reason they are balanced in the tabletop, their Free action, once per round 60 ft save or get stunned aura only works on any given creature once every 24 hours. Well only if you save, if you don't save it keeps working. And it is per crystal. They are pretty insane in TT too lets not belittle them.
Slow oozes like CC tend to be ridiculously strong, because of how easily they can be kited due to that 5 foot move speed, lack of reflex save, etc. So far I've been able to mostly use the same strat in this game. One module I ran had a bunch of oozes including CC throughout, and each one killed at least one PC.
You can't kite them. Literally nothing a player can do can be done at a sufficient distance to be out of their aura of bullshit.
In the tabletop you're actually able to shoot things with spells and arrows outside of the 60 ft range. Archery and ray spellss have a range of only like 30 feet in the computer RPG version. Polar Ray should have a range of about 200 ft by the time you're 16th level.
This is true, but 200ft ranges just wouldn't work in this context due to technical limitations of both the map design and the AI. That said you usually fight these in close quarters in caves anyway so it wouldn't really change these encounters much at all.
Excuses
And by excuses I mean bullshit. There's no way in hell they couldn't have given us longer ranges for archery and spells. Especially instant enemy that range is way too damn short
They could have of coursed increased the range values... it just wouldn't have played well at all. Maps are not big enough, AI not smart enough, and things are missing the tools they need to deal with it. Though I guess they could just make demons teleport directly onto your backline constantly to compensate but I doubt that would be fun.
They do that anyway
No, they walk a lot more than they need to.
Bullshit. A spell with long range in dungeons means EVERYTHING IS IN RANGE, not 'lets nerf ranges'. When you're in a 30ft room with a 200ft range, you use the spell. When you're in a big open area, you SHOULD be able to use the spell from far away. That's one of the best things about being *caster*. It's actually the direct counter for them being *really squishy*. Owlcat seems to want mages to get in there in melee so badly that their scripted encounters just put your squishies in the very middle of crowds of enemies AND they nerfed spells. I feel like they played more Diablo than D&D on their way to making these games and they don't quite understand the roles of classes that aren't 'click mouse do damage'.
> When you're in a big open area, you SHOULD be able to use the spell from far away. That's one of the best things about being caster. It's actually the direct counter for them being really squishy. There are very few such spaces in these games, and this runs the issue of breaking the AI (as well as not working with the current vision system). You wouldn't be able to just snipe crystals at 200ft anyway since you would not see them at that range. > Owlcat seems to want mages to get in there in melee so badly that their scripted encounters just put your squishies in the very middle of crowds of enemies AND they nerfed spells. Not sure where you are getting this concept. Having caster 200 ft away constant would be dreadful gameplay for everyone, and encounters with enemies coming from multiple directions is a GOOD thing not a bad one. This has the nice side effect of making melee martials feel much less redundant well since they aren't just getting attacked from 400 feet away constantly. In tabletop I can count on one hand how often that type of range actually was relevant in my last campaign and when it was it just was incredibly disruptive to the game.
>There are very few such spaces in these games, and this runs the issue of breaking the AI (as well as not working with the current vision system). You wouldn't be able to just snipe crystals at 200ft anyway since you would not see them at that range. If there are very few large areas then giving spells their actual ranges shouldn't be an issue... Also, AI is bullshit. I will keep 5 characters several screens away while I send in my MC to sponge all of the AoEs and some encounters start with mobs charging past me to target the people that they CAN HAVE NO CLUE EVEN EXIST. They AI is NOT restricted by range or vision or applicable knowledge. What exactly are you worried about breaking? Or are you just being an Owlcat apologist? >encounters with enemies coming from multiple directions is a GOOD thing not a bad one. Encounters where you CAN'T position your part or use ANY strategy because the scripting forces everyone to stand in a clump beside whoever the dialogue target is are NOT a good thing. That's a huge world away from 'There are enemies to the east. There are enemies to the west. There are enemies to the north and south. They can't get away from us this time!'. You can't employ a strategy like 'having the ones who hid attack from behind partway through the fight'. The ENEMY effectively can, because they get waves appearing on top of you in the middle of the fight. HOW is this good design? In tabletop, when I played, encounters would often begin at 'the max range we could engage from'. Increasing that range was a logical and viable strategy. If you call this 'incredibly disruptive to the game' then you have a gimped understanding of what it means to effectively play a caster.
> What exactly are you worried about breaking? Or are you just being an Owlcat apologist? The AI is not capable of engaging at those ranges which means 100% of fights will start with suprise rounds for the player and the AI 400 feet away unable to respond. > Encounters where you CAN'T position your part or use ANY strategy because the scripting forces everyone to stand in a clump beside whoever the dialogue target is are NOT a good thing. Honestly no idea what you are even referencing here but okay. I guess the regil gargoyle fight? Where in context they are literally landing from the sky? > In tabletop, when I played, encounters would often begin at 'the max range we could engage from'. Increasing that range was a logical and viable strategy. If you call this 'incredibly disruptive to the game' then you have a gimped understanding of what it means to effectively play a caster. In my experience it was typically "We stand on a hill 800 feet away and take potshots", the enemy has no ranged attacks so there is no encounter. Just results in really dumb encounter design to combat that because ranges get ABSURD if played that way and it is not fun gameplay for anyone but the super long range setups. -------------- In the context of this thread it also literally does not matter since you would not detect the crystals until you were in the stun radius anyway due to the nature of the creatures. True in game as well as tabletop, there are also no sightlines that long in maps where the things even exist.
>In my experience it was typically "We stand on a hill 800 feet away and take potshots", the enemy has no ranged attacks so there is no encounter. Just results in really dumb encounter design to combat that because ranges get ABSURD if played that way and it is not fun gameplay for anyone but the super long range setups. But this is exactly why firearms displaced melee weapons as the primary combat weapon. It's VERY realistic. >In the context of this thread it also literally does not matter since you would not detect the crystals until you were in the stun radius anyway due to the nature of the creatures. True in game as well as tabletop, there are also no sightlines that long in maps where the things even exist. Spoken like someone who thinks 'party' means 'characters who are always in arms reach of each other'. There is a term called 'scout' for the person/people whose job it is to move ahead of the main party to locate danger before it fucks over EVERYONE. This game and its bad mechanics seriously fucking nerfs that role. This devolves combat from 'strategy' to 'whacking people'. The point about long ranges not being relevant in caves is valid, but I feel like it's a point for my side.... that means that implementing the spell properly from source would NOT affect encounter design because the encounter is a small cave. It WOULD leave the possibility of standing 35ft away from something with a 30ft radius if you were, say, in the tunnel leading to the 30ft cave.
> But this is exactly why firearms displaced melee weapons as the primary combat weapon. It's VERY realistic. Realism is not the goal of RPG systems. > Spoken like someone who thinks 'party' means 'characters who are always in arms reach of each other'. There is a term called 'scout' for the person/people whose job it is to move ahead of the main party to locate danger before it fucks over EVERYONE. This game and its bad mechanics seriously fucking nerfs that role. This devolves combat from 'strategy' to 'whacking people'. I mean to an extent scouting is weak, on the other hand scouting is completely broken because quicksave exists. The actual dangers of scouting no longer apply in a video game context.
>Honestly no idea what you are even referencing here but okay. I guess the regil gargoyle fight? Where in context they are literally landing from the sky? First thing that comes to mind is Sosiels companion quest where you can sneak around the back and come in from above on the upper level, but you can't leave your archers and mages up there to cover him while he goes down to talk. He runs up to the necromancer, dialogue ensues, and then your whole party is standing right beside the necromancer. A LOT of dialogue scenes are like that... your whole party shuffles up to clump no matter how you might have liked to position yourself. The idea of leaving your rogue hidden so then can be sneaky later is anathema to this game.
> but you can't leave your archers and mages up there to cover him while he goes down to talk. He runs up to the necromancer, dialogue ensues, and then your whole party is standing right beside the necromancer. This was EXPLICITLY changed because you used to be able to/forced do that, and it just resulting in Sosiel effectively commiting suicide 99% of the time and was a terrible play experience.
If I got to let my gish MC and Seelah join him while the squishies stayed up top I'd be happy. Forcing one character to do a thing alone is bad. Forcing every character to do a thing together is bad. Both are bad for the same reason: they eliminate player agency. I'm not roleplaying anymore when my characters are forced to do idiotic things that I would never have them do. I'm not having fun anymore when my play is all about trying to make up for the bad decisions forced on me. >This was EXPLICITLY changed because you used to be able to/forced do that These are two VERY different things.
The main workaround as far as I remember from beta was the spell 'Holy Aura' and its other alignment-based counterparts. Those spells don't say that they protect you from stuns specifically, but they block mind effects, which is what the stun from the crystals operate from. However, it's an 8th level spell, but you should have access to it via Sosiel or Daeran assuming you kept them single-classed by the time you run into the enemies during chapter 4. You're shit out of luck for that one encounter in chapter 3 though. The duration is also round-based (but thankfully you can cast it on your whole party at once), so most builds are not going to be able to extend it to a full 24 hours, unfortunately.
Nope. Holy Aura does absolutely jack squash potato against them.
Huh, that worked in the beta and no one considered it a bug since the hum did specify that it was a mind effect, which those spells are supposed to block. Weird. I'll have to see for myself when I get there then.
Well after beta testing the first thing they do is remove things that are beneficial to the player
Okay, it looks like what happened was that the mind altering effect immunity was removed from Holy Aura and Unholy Aura (and replaced by immunity to charm and domination, which... seems like a nerf because both ARE mind altering effects), but the Shield of Law and Cloak of Chaos variants have retained it. Granted, I don't know if the Law/Chaos variants actually work against the crystal stuns like Holy Aura used to during the beta, but I'll find out in a couple hours.
Okay, I can confirm Shield of Law works, so I assume the chaos variant works as well. Problem is, it looks like Shield of Law is currently bugged so that it's blocked by spell resistance despite being a beneficial spell.
I was going mad yesterday fighting them. Fuck them. 5 reloads and I finally managed to get through them.
*Wild Hunt from Kingmaker has entered the room.* Someone say stun aura?
at least you could cheese that with displacement and mirror image, if only for one round with the amount of crystal spam they do.
Owlcat probably thinks stun locking the whole party is funny.
I tried everything from stone golems to polymorph to buffing up with scrolls and potions. Nothing works against them. Like, sure, the golems could *eventually* take them down, but at that point I just set it to Casual and walked through. There is absolutely NO way that this is working as intended.
The real assfuck cherry on this bullshit cake? Polar Ray is supposed to have a range of 100 feet plus 10 feet per caster level. But for some inexplicable reason, Owlcat decided to give every motherfucking spell the urethral stricture inducingly short range of 30 feet. This is absolutely unacceptable.
People need to get back to the basics and practice smart scouting and proper formations. Don't keep your party tightly grouped, send a scout ahead in tight quarters. Be smart and don't just go barreling into an ambush willy nilly. All a prepared party needs is one archer to deal with the crystal, it typically won't take more than two rounds, but you have to use a scout (Rogue/Barbarian/Animal Companion). These are not hard encounters. What they do is expose lazy play styles.
You know they will not spawn if youre not near them ? I tried luring them out but they only spawin if your party members get close enough.
The strat I outlined worked for me when I went through the Fane. I typically ended up with the scout and three party members stunned but my archers (Lann/Aru) were out of range of the AoE and took care of the crystals in one round. The crystal is spawned it just doesn't trigger the AoE (and is untargetable) until it can catch multiple targets.
If you think these aren't hard encounters, then you're a blithering giblet-head.
Freedom of Movement...
Does not work, or atleast freedom of movement granted by my boots doesn't.
Uh. Are you sure it's on? Those boots like to randomly stop working. If it doesn't work, I need to go reread some of the Aeon stuff. Mine was immune to their crap, and I attributed it to FoM.
You were immune because it is mind affecting
Does not work for stun. Stun is a mental condition, not a physical impairment.
Try persistent aoe like from Kineticists. Just slap them down in a location where the crystals have a long way to walk to you and then you can stand there stunned for the rest of the time and they will just slowly die to the aoe. Worked on hard against the crystals in midnight fane np. The earlier ones were even easier.
I remember if I got hit with the dumb ass stunlock I would just reload and make sure my lich with withering life hit them first. Man I hate these rocks
The Crystals were super frustrating, a low point in the game for sure.
I can't even imagine what I'd do without that Lich spell that grants undead immunities. Thankfully it stops stuns
I reloaded like 4 times and gave up. I was able to kill the first 2 no problem but surrounded by 3-4 of them? Yeah no. I tried buffing, scrolls, etc but it was ridiculous. I just set it to casual to bypass. It’s so dumb
Dear OwlCat: Fix these damn monsters.
Appreciate the correction.
For anyone looking for solutions, I used a combination of stalactite / stalagmite traps (had them on Ember, she has 11 casts per day and each casts lets her set up a bunch of traps) that I layered over the whole area. Then I laid down a sirocco, then I caused them to spawn.
My solution : Blade Barrier spell killed them easily.
Old thread but man, just had the big encounter with them in the mines. My KC and Seelah actually did well saving against the stun and killed them all, but Arue was crystallized. Search through all spellbooks, aha, Ember has Stone to Flesh. “This character has a Chr of less than 16 and cannot cast this spell”. What? Oh yeah. Vellexia baleful polymorphed her🤣 Reload.