10 réponses à ce sujet

[TheLoneTerran]

Hello all, I did a search on this forum for threat but pulled up nothing but a yellow bar. eh?

Anyways, my question is how is threat handled in this game to let my fighter tank? I run in, taunt, and start attacking mobs but they'll randomly break away to attack someone else, such as my rogue or druid even though they're doing no dmg to it. A lot of times my druid gets overwhelmed and killed in the first opening seconds even though my fighter was first in the room, taunted, and has been attacking the bad guys. My druid walks in the room and bam, guys I've been hitting run after her and kill her even though she casted no spells. What am I doing wrong?

Also, a question about taunt, I'll be attacking, use the hotkey for taunt, but my fighter will not use it, instead opting to continue to auto attack. So I click off the auto attack, and taunt goes away too. When I try to recast taunt, my fighter will shout "attack me! over here!" or something to that effect, but the CD will not be used or it will be used and no one rolls for the save against it.

Am I just spoiled by WoW and DAO threat/taunt system or am I missing some critical D&D rule?
Thank you in advance for any help. It getting to the point where I only want a party of fighters so people can live longer than 4 seconds. XD

[MokahTGS]

I'm no expert but the AI may be targeting casters or weaker party members first as good monsters should. As far as I know, there is not an aggro meter in the game. The AI will go after whoever it is programmed to.

[TheLoneTerran]

Well, while it makes sense, it kind of puts a damper on using lower AC/HP characters. Least while I'm still so new to this game. After my sorceress and druid are both dead before I can do anything about it, for the billionth time, just want to stock up on fighters and pally's XD.

[Haplose]

In regard to "aggro control", positioning is king in NWN2.  If your fighter stands in a doorway and blocks it, monsters won't get trough. The same can be said about a narrow corridor, bridge and such.

The problem with the vanilla game is that party members and mobs don't occupy enough personal space for tactical combat and blocking (except some very narrow bottlenecks).
That's why I use NWN2 Creature Distance Tweaks v0.2 to make the combat more tactical. With this modification, you can more effectively block weaker party members by putting the more resilent ones in harm's way. Protective semi-circles by walls are very doable for example. Naturally it also makes charges to the back ranks of the enemies somewhat more difficult, especially if there are many of them.

Of course I also mostly play in puppet mode (actually semi-turn based mode of Tony_K's AI) and manually control everything. With AI enabled good positioning is much more difficult I guess. Though with use of hold position voice commands, a lot of pausing and move commands , should still be possible.

[manageri]

Well first of all, it seems your biggest problem is that your weaker characters get killed very fast. You have a sorcerer and druid so a mage armor, bark skin, and stone skin (there's plenty more good buffs but those are a good start) on everyone should make them pretty hard to kill by most enemies (as long as you keep an eye on their health and pop potions when necessary).

Regarding aggro, intelligent enemies will go for weaker party members (or at the very least they don't just attack whoever's closest, I don't know exactly how the AI picks targets). They are also more likely to change to targets who are in melee range than they are to chase someone far away. Of course you can't really control any of this as effectively if you play with assisted suicide artificial intelligence on so I also recommend everything Haplose said (puppet mode rocks).

You propably figured it out already from the responses but just in case, taunt has nothing to do with aggro in this game, it just lowers AC. Many of your other issues with it are bugs or crappy features. If your char is attacking when you hit the taunt button, you need to click the attack action away. There's also another bug/feature where if your character's taunt attempt was interupted for whatever reason (like the enemy running away from the range of it before it's completed), then the next taunt you do is instant, and this is propably what happened when you say your taunt just "went away". As for your char doing a taunt but no one making the save against it, this could be because the taunt was interupted without you noticing, or you were controlling another character when the taunt was finished in which case it's normal not to see the saving throws of enemies prompted by other characters.

[TheLoneTerran]

Thank you for the great responses. It looks like I'll be visiting that Mod list when I wake up tomorrow and get those recommended mods like the AI tweak and improved AI. So...puppet mode is king huh? I'll give that a shot. I like the idea of terrain playing a big part of combat, not something I considered too much, I figured Neeshka would just slip by a front line and vice versa. Qara casts Mage armor on everyone and both Qara and Sand use Stoneskin atm and Stoneskin has helped a bunch.



Thanks for the insight on Taunt, I'm going to try and be much more tactical than like in DAO where I can abuse taunt if I'm feeling lazy lol.



If you could also shed some insight on how you guys handle healing in this game. I was toting around the druid for a bit but since she had to go to near melee range to heal and because of the cooldown between spells, I felt I could get more out of the party by replacing her with a DPS and just kill the bad guys instead of healing. I was abusing potions for a while till I ran low and went to Sand's shop to restock and oops...can only buy 1 of each. Should I be relying on Healing Kits or Alch to keep up on potions? I searched through all my books and I don't have one that tells me how to craft a cure 'such and such' wound yet.



Sorry for the sort-of ramble, it's pushing 5am right now so I'm a bit foggy. Thanks again for any help!!

[Arkalezth]

As others have said, NWN2's Taunt has nothing to do with Dragon Age's Taunt.

Taunt

TheLoneTerran wrote...

If you could also shed some insight
on how you guys handle healing in this game. I was toting around the
druid for a bit but since she had to go to near melee range to heal and
because of the cooldown between spells, I felt I could get more out of
the party by replacing her with a DPS and just kill the bad guys instead
of healing. I was abusing potions for a while till I ran low and went
to Sand's shop to restock and oops...can only buy 1 of each. Should I be
relying on Healing Kits or Alch to keep up on potions? I searched
through all my books and I don't have one that tells me how to craft a
cure 'such and such' wound yet.

Since you're new to the game, I'd suggest to have a healer in your party. Potions aren't faster than spells, a round (6 seconds) is spent for both actions. Same for Healing Kits, though they can be used on another character (you can only use potions on yourself). IIRC, the merchant at Fort Locke has an infinite supply of them.

Modifié par Arkalezth, 28 janvier 2011 - 10:28 .

[Haplose]

Healing Kits tend to be better for healing then low-to-mid grade potions. Also cheaper to use then spells (spellslots are precious... unless you rest after every encounter). Especially if used by a character who put points in his/her Healing skill. They heal more, you can use them on another member of the party, get Healing skill bonus (and + bonus, since they come in +1 to +10 variety) and finally using them does not provoke attacks of opportunity from opponents in melle range (drinking a potion or casting a spell does provoke AoOs, so may actually prove harmfull/fatal - though you can prevent causing AoOs when you cast spells).

One you get to higher levels and start using Heal/Mass Heal/Greater Restoration spells and Heal potions, Healing Kits become less usefull - though still remain a very cost-effective solution, particularly for out-of-combat healing.

Modifié par Haplose, 28 janvier 2011 - 11:07 .

[dunniteowl]

Press the Space Bar at first -- A LOT! That's the pause function and it'll do two things for you:

Halt the action and give you time to size up the sitch; and

Make you realize that you don't have to watch in helpless morbid fascination as the enemy rends your weaker characters right before your very eyes. (Bummer, ain't it?)

Both of these are good things.



Additionally, You should learn to drag commands and other functions that the characters can use to the hot bar(s). This is important, because it's much faster to click the hotbar than to use the keyboard in many instances to get things done (especially calling back your idiot party members who will run off and attack well beyond your ability to percieve enemies) before your situation goes completely out of hand and forcing a (well deserved) frustration reload.



As to Healing. I swear by healing kits and the Plusser the better. I tend heavily towards a Paladin or Ranger lead character and I carry a healthy ration of healing kits. Healing potions can be good too, but those have to be evenly distributed to the party members because you can't give them to others or use them on others in combat, though they can opt to drink them on their own if they have them. So when you get them as loot, share the joy.

Healing kits, though, they tend to use on themselves and not share, so have some for each party member (sometimes they'll heal others and you can command another member to heal you) and make sure that the character you use as a lead has plenty to spare (cause the other guys tend to use them up before they've gotten too badly hurt and sort of "waste" their effective output.)

Healing is something I always spend points on. I'll do that before I ever place another point in that useless as an excuse for a feat/skill Parry and rightly so. Parry hardly works and healing kits always work, so putting more points into healing and forgetting about parry is a good thing IMO.



Other than that, take the time to figure this stuff out and don't be in a hurry. There are so many different ways to overcome the obstacles, even if all you are considering are the tactical differences in combat and how to apply your party strengths to best effect. Nuances come over time and there's sure to be plenty who agree as well as disagree with your methods. The best part of that is you can learn a lot about things simply be being here and asking questions. You might not always get what works for you from everyone, but you'll sure get a lot of advice from just about everyone.



Remember, whether it works for you or not, it's always given in the spirit of friendship.



dunniteowl

[TheLoneTerran]

These are great responses thank you! Guess I'll replace my sorceress friend with the druid then. I'll miss her dmg and mage armor. I'm at a point in the game where they keep forcing me to party with someone, on the third atm, so it's been throwing my dream team combo out of whack but I guess it'll force me to learn to play with new and perhaps better combination.



I'll go grab healing kits ASAP from Fort Locke. I'm also at a point where I'm not allowed to leave Neverwinter. Is the healing skill innate to all classes for just one point? If not, would you recommend taking a feat to make it a class skill?



You mentioned AoO when casting spells, Is there a negative for running around in defensive casting? My caster's have a high Concentration skill.



Thanks! =D

[Haplose]

I think that 1-2 party members with the healing skill are plenty enough. Particulaly if they aren't main frontliners and tend to stay in the back anyway - remember, healing kits can be used on other party members.



Regarding Defensive Casting - if you can pass the self-forced Concentration check everytime, then the only downside would be that you can use only one combat stance at a time. (Improved) Combat Expertise can be a much better pick for certain builds. It does cost two feats though, while Defensive Casting is always available freely.