TOPIC: "Magical Fire" - Can we do better?

Rob F wrote: Well it's kind of a no win for TD. On one hand they've got people not happy with Nightmare being so easy, so sounds like they decided to try and adjust on the fly to increase the difficulty and then they wind up with different people unhappy because their Tokens don't work. At least I'm guessing that's what happened. I think Nightmare should be a lot harder and if they need to "moisten" or "magical fire" everyone to make it more challenging then I say go for it.

IF this is the path chosen, please just call it eldritch. Do not add descriptive words. If it is unpreventable, call it eldritch.

As to wether it SHOULD be done: No, it shouldnt. Doing so is effectively banning a whole swath of tokens at higher levels of play. How do you think it would go over if grind allowed you to equip treasure enhancers, then without an official notice/warning you only get 1 treasure chip...'because everyone knows those tokens dont work in grind'...?
No, if DR tokens arent going to do anything at nightmare and epic, this needs to be explicitly stated. Also, please dont do it. Let DR work.

Fiddy wrote:

Rob F wrote: Well it's kind of a no win for TD. On one hand they've got people not happy with Nightmare being so easy, so sounds like they decided to try and adjust on the fly to increase the difficulty and then they wind up with different people unhappy because their Tokens don't work. At least I'm guessing that's what happened. I think Nightmare should be a lot harder and if they need to "moisten" or "magical fire" everyone to make it more challenging then I say go for it.

TD added Epic difficulty for those people that find Nightmare too easy. Telling people to play on Epic should be the answer if they find Nightmare too easy. Nightmare shouldn't be made more difficult just because some people are finding it too easy. Widening the gap between Hardcore and Nightmare impacts significantly more people.

Agreed, there are multiple stages when a player outgrows a difficulty. If people are feeling nitemare is too easy then they should try moving up if there is a consensus.

I would like to see a mixture of damage types across the dungeon / series. Let people feel rewarded for using their tokens and making the right decisions.

kurtreznor wrote: 1. Please NO! Do not simply increase the damage and assume the party will resist the difference. It is frustrating enough when certain events assume things like supreme ring, please dont do that in the dungeon too.

I disagree. Difficulties have to have some assumptions regarding the stats of a character such as at least X to hit, Y to damage and Z for an AC. The same goes for saves and resistances.

I also agree that modules should not nerf the tokens or else why should we spend out time and money collecting them.

The Fire damage should have been resist-able but the number should have been more than expected characters base on Nightmare.

A little birdy told me that maybe we might see some "guidelines" for each difficulty in the near future (e.g. monsters to hit will be in this range for Nightmare).

Ed

EDIT - I am completely fine with Nightmare monster doing AoE and saying it is 10 Fire AND 10 Eldritch if you want to make sure they take damage - just clearly state it is two different damages.

MasterED wrote:

kurtreznor wrote: 1. Please NO! Do not simply increase the damage and assume the party will resist the difference. It is frustrating enough when certain events assume things like supreme ring, please dont do that in the dungeon too.

I disagree. Difficulties have to have some assumptions regarding the stats of a character such as at least X to hit, Y to damage and Z for an AC. The same goes for saves and resistances.

I also agree that modules should not nerf the tokens or else why should we spend out time and money collecting them.

The Fire damage should have been resist-able but the number should have been more than expected characters base on Nightmare.

A little birdy told me that maybe we might see some "guidelines" for each difficulty in the near future (e.g. monsters to hit will be in this range for Nightmare).

Ed

I concur with Ed here - there should be some expectation for resistances at nightmare, especially when its telegraphed by the dungeon name / description AND by the items in the set. There was 13 fire resistance available just in the rares for this year - if Nightmare had assumed 10 fire resist, I don't think that would have been out of line. If you wanted to risk the run without fire resist, that is a valid option, but you should be prepared to heal some extra damage.

Split the damage, but be mindful.

DM: “You take 10 each Cold, Fire, Shock, and Electric. No save.”

People wearing SRoEC: “Whatever”

Everyone else: “AHHHHHH!”

Saying “Eldritch Fire, take 10 Fire and 10 Eldritch” feels more acceptable than “Mutant Fire, take 20 no resists” feels arbitrary and capricious.

@Fiddy - I agree 100%. Don’t make Nightmare harder, but make Epic as hard as you like.

Brad Mortensen wrote: Saying “Eldritch Fire, take 10 Fire and 10 Eldritch” feels more acceptable than “Mutant Fire, take 20 no resists” feels arbitrary and capricious.

+1

Also solves the confusion issue, which was IMO the biggest problem -- I shouldn't have to waste valuable time asking for a rules explanation of what kind of damage I just took. (I did because our group was killing things with time to spare, but I shouldn't have to)

Hershel wrote: You are correct.. partially. TD is based mostly on AD&D 1st edition, at least that is my understanding.

No, TD is based on D&D 3.5

Brad Mortensen wrote: Split the damage, but be mindful.

DM: “You take 10 each Cold, Fire, Shock, and Electric. No save.”

People wearing SRoEC: “Whatever”

Everyone else: “AHHHHHH!”

Saying “Eldritch Fire, take 10 Fire and 10 Eldritch” feels more acceptable than “Mutant Fire, take 20 no resists” feels arbitrary and capricious.

@Fiddy - I agree 100%. Don’t make Nightmare harder, but make Epic as hard as you like.

This.

Though I would also like a level in between Epic and Nightmare. I've heard many times 'you have Epic level gear'. And I do find Nightmare less than fully challenging. But that doesn't mitigate the facts that I'm a mediocre slider who would still like to contribute, and I don't want to die in room three.

Elf Wizard casting fireball is magical fire. Using that it works the same both ways. Does a creaturea immunity to fire work against fireball?

This makes no sense why would calling it "Magical Fire" make it not resistible. That's the entire point of Eldritch damage, just make it Eldritch.

Because I have a Kvothe's Bloodless which resists 4 from all missile & spell attacks. You call an attack magical, I assume its a spell of some kind and I resist 4.

You call an attack fire and I resist 10 fire damage due to the supreme ring. I even went to tokendb and looked up the token it clearly states "Cold, Fire, Shock, and/or Sonic damage inflicted upon the wearer is reduced by 10 and grants 3 points of Eldritch-based Retribution Damage." Either it is fire damage or its not, if it is fire damage it states it is reduced by 10. There are no exceptions or notes about only works on non-magical damage.

Call an attack Eldritch and I know I have to take the damage. The game has set types of damage that people are familiar with, use them and there will be little confusion.

MasterED wrote:

kurtreznor wrote: 1. Please NO! Do not simply increase the damage and assume the party will resist the difference. It is frustrating enough when certain events assume things like supreme ring, please dont do that in the dungeon too.

I disagree. Difficulties have to have some assumptions regarding the stats of a character such as at least X to hit, Y to damage and Z for an AC. The same goes for saves and resistances.

I also agree that modules should not nerf the tokens or else why should we spend out time and money collecting them.

The Fire damage should have been resist-able but the number should have been more than expected characters base on Nightmare.

A little birdy told me that maybe we might see some "guidelines" for each difficulty in the near future (e.g. monsters to hit will be in this range for Nightmare).

Ed

EDIT - I am completely fine with Nightmare monster doing AoE and saying it is 10 Fire AND 10 Eldritch if you want to make sure they take damage - just clearly state it is two different damages.

Of course nightmare will deal more damage than hardcore, but that should be the end of the difference. There shouldnt be an additional boost to damage because you assume players will resist damage. Doing that defeats DR tokens in the opposite way of making everything eldritch: instead of 'banned', DR becomes a requirement. The 'telegraphing fire damage' should be a REWARD for the players who equip fire reduction, not a PENALTY for those who dont.

I agree that Epic is the way to go if you need to feel more challenged in the dungeons. My issue is trying to get an Epic run arranged - especially at Gen Con. I'm not sure how many Epic runs happened over the past weekend, but I could not any Epic runs to do. I hope this is because Epic is relatively new and that we will see more Epic runs happening in the future.

Isn't that its own kind of answer about Epic? Epic runs may not be happening often because players don't often want to play Epic.

If Nightmare creeps into Epic difficulty because of us on the forums and the vast majority of folks don't want to play Epic (probably because they are not geared for it) then aren't we forcing them into a situation they don't want and will ultimately hurt our population?

Right now Nightmare allows Epic geared folks to play with the Hardcore masses that are a large chunk of GenCon crowd. If Nightmare ratcheted up too high to exclude those normal convention go-ers we may lose supporters of TD.

On topic - I heard Fire damage and assumed my 12 pt DR counted. The DM said nothing that contradicted that. That outcome made me happy about my build and my tokens. Ultimately isn't that what they want us to feel?