NS city NPC's and how well they see.

Jaromaru · Post by **Jaromaru** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 10:53 am

Ok i get that there would be a certain amount of bias when it comes to the gaurds defenders and gaeles, given the fact that it is Never Summer the server. However..... There are not many places to go for exp once you hit lvl 19-22 unless you are a party in the ice giants. Now I have solo'ed NS city many times now and each time I do it seems the higher lvl i get in my hide and move silently the faster the gaurds come running and the easier it is for them to get me. It's like all of a sudden with no warrning they are immune to HIPS and there is no way around it unlees you want to run off map. And I HATE Doing that. So please can we make it a little more fun for the ones who are in NS City for the exp and not the relics. I get that they need high spot around the relic chamber but at the south wall they should be a little less alert.
But once again this is just my opinion.
Jaromaru Shadowbane
Shadow of Sleeth

P. Fricebottle · Post by **P. Fricebottle** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 10:57 am

At levels 19-22 you can go kill polar bear in wolves in Frostdale for decent xp or go for the gnolls. There are plenty of places to go to. As for the less alert guards at the south wall, I'd think they would be more alert because they're disconnected from the city, and they have to constantly defend from bandit and drow raids.

Jaromaru · Post by **Jaromaru** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 11:58 am

P. Fricebottle wrote:At levels 19-22 you can go kill polar bear in wolves in Frostdale for decent xp or go for the gnolls. There are plenty of places to go to. As for the less alert guards at the south wall, I'd think they would be more alert because they're disconnected from the city, and they have to constantly defend from bandit and drow raids.

At lvl 19 the wolves and bears give me less than 100 exp and the knolls do even less and you would think that an outpost would be LESS alert than a place where something valuble is stored..ummmm like a relic. Not at the place where someone can go get lost in the sewer. All i was saying is could we lower the spot on the aliance gaurds and defenders to make it more fun to hunt them. and no offence meant but if a wolf cant see or hear or smell me than what makes you think a human should be able too?

Ragefist · Post by **Ragefist** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 12:19 pm

I've never seen em spot anything, let alone PC's. Like most guards, they are worthless at guarding. Well, maybe with the exception of the guardians in AO, but that whole immune to KD, immune to everything BS is just a little bit of the fun that comes with having some higher-ups that really freaking love RDD's

.

Is it possible that it's the ghaels vectoring the guards in on you? They pop true sight, and they're usually my first target when I'm attacking NS guards at the lower levels, just so I can invis later and run if need be. I've not tried actual hide/move silent checks near them for quite some time, however, so maybe they are super beefed.

lordvan52681 · Post by **lordvan52681** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 12:20 pm

While I understand where you are coming from, you are basically saying that the weakest guards in the module need a nerf.... that is just plain idiocy. Im not saying youre an idiot, but I feel you have not thought this through. you hunt the NS guards because theyre the only ones that anyone can solo pre-epic (some builds can solo elsewhere, but everyone can solo NS), and you are saying that they arent easy enough... I believe you are AO, yes? Imagine if they removed TS from all the guards in Sleeth. There is no need to further nerf the weakest guards in this Mod, instead I say that if the southern outpost guards are tougher, the others should be upgraded to match.

Jaromaru · Post by **Jaromaru** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 12:50 pm

lordvan52681 wrote:While I understand where you are coming from, you are basically saying that the weakest guards in the module need a nerf.... that is just plain idiocy. Im not saying youre an idiot, but I feel you have not thought this through. you hunt the NS guards because theyre the only ones that anyone can solo pre-epic (some builds can solo elsewhere, but everyone can solo NS), and you are saying that they arent easy enough... I believe you are AO, yes? Imagine if they removed TS from all the guards in Sleeth. There is no need to further nerf the weakest guards in this Mod, instead I say that if the southern outpost guards are tougher, the others should be upgraded to match.

If you believe the NS gaurds are the weakest in the game you have not been here long. Have you never fought the circle gaurds? They are pathetic and even when they do see me I dissapear. All I was trying to point out is that IF a WOLF(Very highly tunned senses) Cant see me then what makes it possible for a human with no buffs on to be able to see me.
It just dosent make sense to me. I watch people sneaking around animals and things(Which by the way should totaly give someone away given there intense sense of smell) and no one notices but as soon as you get near the NS gaurds five more defenders show up in like 1 min and then the Galeles come in invisibly and wipe you with death magic. All im askin is to lower the spot on the NS defenders. And no the AO defenders hardly have to cast true seeing because no one ever attacks us and im not worried about them defending our relic cause they don't and if someone from NS city was hunting them and theye were getting spotted i would say its BECAUSE THEY AO GAURDS ARE HALF ANIMAL!!!!! not magic not elf just half plain old dragon. Dragons by lore and ledgend could actually smell magic on people so by your logic the dragons would pick off the mages using invisible more than they would for rouges using HIPS. you forget that the Alliance is only humans except thos stupid galels or whatever they are called and those are the ones who get the kills all the time cause they use death magic.
once agin not complaining, if nothing is done im sure ill find a way around them but it just dosent make sense that a human could spot me when a wolf couldnt.

lordvan52681 · Post by **lordvan52681** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 12:59 pm

youre ranting.

AO guards dont cast TS, they have it permanently. and not the watered down TS mages get, they have dragon TS. they see everything.

As for TC guards being weak, never played a hipser, wouldnt know how well they see, but you are basing an opinion on how well a guard is off of one build. whereas I am basing it off of several months playing nearly every build LA allows. TC has some of the hardest guards in this mod. If you think TC is weak, attack them with a caster. any caster. They will mord and slaughter you faster than youve ever seen outside a mel gibson flick.

LA has bar-none the weakest guards. ask anyone. you seem to be trying to get into the DCN, ask Disciple red. Hell, even Havock will agree with me on this one.

Once again, ill say that you are asking that the weakest guards get a nerf, and I have to strongly disagree.

Jaromaru · Post by **Jaromaru** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 1:09 pm

lordvan52681 wrote:youre ranting.

AO guards dont cast TS, they have it permanently. and not the watered down TS mages get, they have dragon TS. they see everything.

As for TC guards being weak, never played a hipser, wouldnt know how well they see, but you are basing an opinion on how well a guard is off of one build. whereas I am basing it off of several months playing nearly every build LA allows. TC has some of the hardest guards in this mod. If you think TC is weak, attack them with a caster. any caster. They will mord and slaughter you faster than youve ever seen outside a mel gibson flick.

LA has bar-none the weakest guards. ask anyone. you seem to be trying to get into the DCN, ask Disciple red. Hell, even Havock will agree with me on this one.

Once again, ill say that you are asking that the weakest guards get a nerf, and I have to strongly disagree.

NS Gaurds are not the weakest and you are not right in saying so. once again you missed the point. ok i'll type slower.......How is it possible for a NON-MAGIC human to have more finely tunned senses than say a wolf or bear or even a jaguar. Its not without being a PC char. elves fine they see everything. Dragons..once agian they smell magic. Humans should not have better spot than a wolf. They have the stupid Galels and half celestial defenders. Leave the great spot to them. Human gaurds with no magic should not see better than an animal. I mean if they could don't you think they would become defenders of the relic? no there are mosly Galeles and Half celestial warriors in there. If they are so weak why do they hit called shot everytime I fight them (and by the way my dicipline is like 24) or why can they hit 98 hp criticals on me. But wait they are so weak that an unarrmed halfling could kill them.....NOT. If you play as a TWO build char all the time like me you actually have to stratagize what you do. My rouge SD is all he will ever be. No third class here. so yeah i believe im right in asking that the gaurds be tunned a little more realisticly, I mean i enjoy hunting them none the less but hey, im not going anywhaere so why not ask?.
Once again Just my opinion
Jaromaru Shadowbane
Shadow of Sleeth

Celorn · Post by **Celorn** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 1:39 pm

Your argument is MOOT, you are comparing animals and guards, NOT guards and other guards!!!

LA guards are definately weaker than ALL other factions guards -- 3 factions have REAL true seeing guards (MA, TC and AO), the AO guards have greatswords and with different elemental damage bonuses! LA guards have piddly longswords i believe, and level13 armour! And other factions have mages/bards/clerics that BUFF the other guards making them even more effective.

If your shadowdancer build is weak, don't complain about the mobs, go and work on getting your character some more hide/ms, or else GET OUT OF MY CITY and go and fight some other things!

I agree separately about the animals though, animals (especially wolves) should have amped-up listen, wolves rely on their ears and nose mostly, their sense of smell is 100 times as powerful compared to humans (so since smell isn't a nwn skill, listen will have to do).

Jaromaru · Post by **Jaromaru** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:05 pm

Celorn wrote:Your argument is MOOT, you are comparing animals and guards, NOT guards and other guards!!!

LA guards are definately weaker than ALL other factions guards -- 3 factions have REAL true seeing guards (MA, TC and AO), the AO guards have greatswords and with different elemental damage bonuses! LA guards have piddly longswords i believe, and level13 armour! And other factions have mages/bards/clerics that BUFF the other guards making them even more effective.

If your shadowdancer build is weak, don't complain about the mobs, go and work on getting your character some more hide/ms, or else GET OUT OF MY CITY and go and fight some other things!

I agree separately about the animals though, animals (especially wolves) should have amped-up listen, wolves rely on their ears and nose mostly, their sense of smell is 100 times as powerful compared to humans (so since smell isn't a nwn skill, listen will have to do).

Nice of you to call my point moot and then agree with it. And yes they are animals and gaurds....however we fight them both for exp so they are all in one big pile as "Opponents". and how dare you call my build weak when you have probably never even played a Rouge SD char at all.
Try it....it's not easy. The third build always adds that extra little bonus people just can't seem to play without. You may say "Well your not high enough for a third build" on the contrary I was high enough for three builds at lvl 8. I just wont take one becuase it takes away from the challenge of the game. and once again you miss the point completly wheather they change it or not if you are sleeth and you want exp without risking the ice giants then your only real option is to kill 50 000 wolves or go through NS City killing gaurds. And frosdale gets borring after too long.
On a seperate note what lvl do you have to be to take out the forest walkers? Im lvl 20 now and i still cant hide from them and they do wicked damage too! just curious
Jaromaru Shadowbane
Shadow of Sleeth

lordvan52681 · Post by **lordvan52681** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:16 pm

Dude, im not even gonna continue arguing with you untill you open your eyes. You just asked Celorn (aka Jain), one of NS4's premier builders if they have ever played SD. Why not ask DD1 if he has ever played an evil character? Or ask MLoki if they have explored te RDD PrC. You need to stop and look around before you start saying stuff like that, because in one sentence you just showed that you are possibly the biggest NooB on this mod.

Celorn · Post by **Celorn** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:30 pm

Jaromaru wrote: Nice of you to call my point moot and then agree with it. And yes they are animals and gaurds....however we fight them both for exp so they are all in one big pile as "Opponents".

I was agreeing that animals and humans are not comparable! But in the grand scheme of things, sure animals should have better detections then the easily distractable humans, but OUR point is that NS can't do with having any more weakness added to our guards, the problem with NS4 is the lack of choice of mobs once you get near or at epic levels -- frostdale and sunken are about it really, or 'zons if you can handle the crits (10 RDD levels helps since you can waive all the fire damage!)

Jaromaru wrote: and how dare you call my build weak when you have probably never even played a Rouge SD char at all.
Try it....it's not easy.

Umm..... hello!!! Have you ever seen my J'ain??? She's a Monk/SD/Rogue and she can solo almost every NPC on the server (although some bosses take a while and aren't worth it) -- and even Drakmar is no match for her even without being able to HiPS from him.

Jaromaru wrote:The third build always adds that extra little bonus people just can't seem to play without. You may say "Well your not high enough for a third build" on the contrary I was high enough for three builds at lvl 8. I just wont take one becuase it takes away from the challenge of the game. and once again you miss the point completly wheather they change it or not if you are sleeth and you want exp without risking the ice giants then your only real option is to kill 50 000 wolves or go through NS City killing gaurds. And frosdale gets borring after too long.

Third build? you mean third class? i'm losing your point here... but still, you can take 3 classes, so why not use that advantage to it's fullest (unless you're looking at ECL AND multiclass penalties)? Again, try sunken, the mobs are in the low 20's there, so you should get some XP, I've taken a few builds to sunken at lvl16, especially SD-builds since they can hide from most of the NPCs there easily.

Jaromaru wrote:On a seperate note what lvl do you have to be to take out the forest walkers? Im lvl 20 now and i still cant hide from them and they do wicked damage too! just curious
Jaromaru Shadowbane
Shadow of Sleeth

There's no level limit to taking them out it's all about how strong your build is, and how well you play it -- J'ain had a little trouble at 20 (actually my first encounter with a walker had me dead in a nasty double-crit) in future encounters, I used a bow to soften them up and lure them to me 1 at a time first, then KD'd and stunning fisted them afterwards, and HiPS did work well enough to save me from most of their attacks.

Post by **TGPO** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:33 pm

Not to get into any kind of testostrone competition, rogue/SD isnt a close combat specialist. Your primary skill should be DEX and should be using a ranged weapon of your choice, getting in close with a character of this type, is just asking for a beat down.

As for animals and spot/listen ... well we could do this, however then the animals would end up with a CR well beyond any mid level character being able to combat. Face it animals are low level, non skilled place holders. If you insist that your fantasy also include what you percieve as reality, I would think that magic in itself would be stretching the limits of plausible deniability. These are skill that improve with level, and the players choice to spend the time sharpening those skills.

They are wisdom based skills, which some classes are more apt to excel at. Personally I do know people that are much more skilled in the woods using nothing more than their eyes than any animal that requires the use of its ears and nose. For both of those the wind has to be moving in the correct direction for even a chance. Most animals, wolfs included, vision is triggered by motion not observation.

If we can now move on past, animals are more attuned to spot than humans. They are better than YOU are, not better than someone who has trained in those attributes, in real life too. Using that, I'm not sure how many of us in real life would survive a low level melfs acid arrow, let alone IGMS, I do know that nearly all my characters can sustain several IGMS strikes where I wouldnt care to even try.

Lets keep this where it needs to be, a fantasy game with almost no connection to reality in any form. Imposing reality to any great extent would leave us with no characters past level 8 or 9.

Post by **DeputyDog** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:46 pm

LA guards are fodder. They are low paid grunts in armor. LA is also the most crowded faction so it should have lesser defense becuase they players should do it.

The guards are not balanced but that is the lay of the land.

Jaromaru · Post by **Jaromaru** » Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:47 pm

God you say you don't get one thing and all of a sudden your hated by everyone........NM then ill just keep pumping up my SD\Rouge till lvl 40 and see what happens.......by the way..when the hell did video games become about who could build the most uber build? I always thought D&D was about the adventure.......guess not then. whatever. if ya want to make it so that a fully lvled SD\Rouge falls prey to some dumbass with an uberbuild, your server, your rules. I guess ill just keep my two class honor to myself
P.S. Hey Lor, did ya ever stop and think that maybe I don't want to be the best build or most well known player. That maybe...just maybe, I have a life and this is a hobby that is fun for me....... Well was fun for me untill everyone figured out the uberbuild system. Now its all about who can make the most untouchable three class spell caster.

Oh when oh when will the two class server come to be?