veloper said:
gim73 said:
hURR dURR dERP said:
Hiphophippo said:
gim73 said:
Really? You enjoyed NWN more than NWN 2? Without the expansions it's nigh on unplayable. Vanilla NWN is down there with Temple of Elemental Evil as one of the worst D&D games on the PC. NWN 2 was a HUGE step up by comparison.
Haha, really? I love opinions! I'm actually of the opinion that Elemental Evil is the best D&D game ever made. Well, other than Planescape but that game is pretty well on it's own plateau of awesome.
Gameplay-wise, I have to agree that ToEE is the best D&D game ever made. Story-wise... not so much.
I do prefer NWN2 over NWN1 in every single way except the multiplayer aspect, but as you said, lol opinions.
Ack, gameplay wise ToEE was HORRID. Pathing was the worst I have EVER seen it. Attacks of opportunity were so broken. One of the best strategies in that game was to stay where you were and let the enemy come to you, because going to them was just a recipe for disaster.
AoOs are in the rules.
You fault a D&D game for doing something from D&D correctly? This is something you should've expected from a turnbased 3.5E game.
But in many ways that is entirely the problem. They focused on doing it to the letter of the law that it just stopped making sense. Attacks of opportunity are such a DM's judgement thing that incorperating them into a video game is pure folley. Here are some examples:
A fighter and a mage are attacking your party. Seeing that the mage is a greater danger to your party, you foolhardidly run past him and attack the mage. The fighter is entitled to an attack of opportunity as you pass through his hit box.
Same fight, but now your rogue decides to tumble past the fighter and engage the mage. He makes the tumble check and the fighter is unable to take the attack of opportunity, even if he had the ability to take more than one attack of opportunity.
Now the mage is angry at you because you are attacking him, so he starts to cast a spell. You get an attack of opportunity while his defenses are down. You hit him, and he makes his concentration check and blasts you with a lightning bolt. OUCH!
After you dispactch the mage, you are fighting the fighter and he fumble your weapon. Rather than taking the attack of opportunity to pick up your longsword or taking a free action to draw your dagger, you choose to punch him in the face like your monk has been doing this whole time. Lacking unarmed combat proficiency, your attack invokes an attack of opportunity.
Fleeing an enemy always invokes an attack of opportunity. Firing off a missile weapon or a spell will invoke an attack of opportunity.
Closing into combat range should NEVER invoke an attack of opportunity if you are armed and ready for combat. Leaving a threatened area WILL invoke an attack of opportunity unless you are being covered by an ally engaging the target AND you make a 5 foot move defensively leaving the threatened area.
Yes, I will admit that in 3.0, the rulebook did say that moving INTO a threatened area invokes AoO, but this was a horrid mistake that was almost as broken as the haste = double spells per round fiasco. If you wanna applaud them for using the rules... Don't. It doesn't take a genius to see that all the rules are not actually GOOD. Let's not forget that Wizards of the Coast is just some upstart card company that made it big and bought out TSR, who had been doing this for 30 years. They took the d20 system and slapped the D&D name onto it, not really caring about the consequences. The result is that we needed 3.5e, because 3.0 was so broken that it couldn't be played well without modifying the rules (which long time D&D fans have been doing anyways for years). Now second edition had plenty of optional books, but for the most part Advanced dungeons and dragons has been the same since first editions rule wise, with a few classes changing over the years. You don't NEED an oriental adventures rulebook to play a chinese campeign, but it helps a bit. You can also play a game in the Dragonlance world without that sourcebook either. The first edition and second edition books are generally interchangable, but that is not true for third edition. Right away it is different, as the 2nd edition combat round is one minute and 3rd edition combat round lasts 10 seconds. That is one of the most distict differences, but not the only. Skills and feats were a pretty decent change that most people enjoy. Are all of them nessesary? Not really. Most of the time you can replace many of the skills with good roleplaying. I would much rather my players enact a clever plan to get past the guards than just say they are gonna use a bluff check. A character that dresses the part, shows off his scars and brandishes a huge bloodstained axe is gonna win an intimitate check WITHOUT any dice before I let some prettyboy bard with a bishounen face and a rapier try it with dice just because he has a high charisma score.
I can't tell you HOW many times ToEE has screwed me over with it's poor choice of rules lawyering and pathing. For one, the game ALWAYS takes an attack of opportunity on you whenever you close into combat range. Also, say you are in combat range with a target, and need a less than 5 foot step to attack. You click on the target, and half the time your guy will take some hideous path walking out of the enemies hit box, around some obstacles, past some other enemies and if he's still alive back into the enemy hit box where he takes another attack of opportunity. It's precisely that kinda crap that makes me loathe this game. In total, I have probably taken more damage from attacks of opportunity in this game than actual legitimate attacks. That should NEVER happen. If that actually happens in a real D&D game, you should probably stop letting your party of rogues use polearms to sneak attack a bunch of attacks of opportunity while they are hiding in the shadows, because your game is broken.
Icewind dale 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2 were not broken like this and they had awesome gameplay. I'm just saying that if I was stranded alone on a desert island with a cabin that had power, my computer and my D&D games, I would use Temple of Elemental Evil and Ruins of Myth Dranor as reflectors to get the attention of passing airplanes and ships.
