bear with me - i'm very excited

guarded compound spoilers

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my latest party is an assassin with Korgan, Viconia & Edwin - i'd never done the guarded compund but now i have [img]smile.gif[/img]

the best bit is that i didn't even plan to do it - we went in to have a look - we got spoken to and agreed to leave but the reception committee just left us to make our own way out so my assassin scouted around a bit - she triggered the summons (which i didn't expect) and ran like hell back to the party who then listened to the ensuing melee - she sneaked forward again when it went quiet and was spotted by the demon - viconia summoned skeleton warriors (she's the highest level at 15 btw) and basically korgan hacked him to bits with frostreaver

my next plan was for my assassin to sneak upstairs to get the lie of the land then go to an inn to rest, pick spells, sharpen traps etc. but the rest of the party followed her for some reason - as we were spotted we ran back downsatirs and were followed but the skeleton warriors were still there and we just beat them - i've nearly done it now i thought so went back upstairs and drew out the thief and beat her up before heading back to the mage - edwin breached all his protections and it was all done

slightly cowardly tactics of course for what's starting to look like a pretty solid party - oh, and i was spoiled on the traps, but hey

sorry to put you through that but no-one else would understand ;)

Nicely done, especially if you didn't know about that party. The first time i ever fought them i was killed several times before i tried to use the stairs to separate them. Even after that it took 2-3 attempts to finally bury them.

thanks for listening - to be fair i did at least know there was a party and my BG run-away-to-split-them-up skills are well-honed [img]smile.gif[/img]

was this the improved tactics version?

I've probably done the quest....but where is it?

no [img]smile.gif[/img] it was on core difficulty though! that's short for hardcore right?

Xzirox - temple district - CF fight

It was as I thaught.....I've done it

Thx for refreshing my memory Armen ;)

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Hear me out! I do not understand something.

The tactics mod prevents you from going downstairs to avoid usage of area-cheese. Tell me, what is the cheese? I'm walking around in a mansion, just wasted some demons and decided to check what's upstairs. I walk up the stairs and there are 5 goons standing around. They look pretty tough, so I head back down to plan a COA. What's so bad about that? Looks pretty roleplaying to me? What say you?
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I say that heading back downstairs, to retreat or to make them fight you on *your* ground, makes perfect sense. The only scenario in which it *wouldn't* make sense if you were somehow physically prevented from returning the way you came--such as you fell down a slippery slope, and there's no way you'd be able to climb back up with somebody shooting arrows and spells at you. That is certainly not the case here; You can see the stairs that you just came up--there they are, right there--but you can't go back down them....just because Weimer says so. So there is no valid roleplaying reason for not being able to retreat from Improved Guarded Compound....or Mae'Var....or the Lich in the Docks....or Abazigal....etc.

The powergaming reason that Weimer decided not to let players retreat is because
A) He didn't want players to be able to bring the fight downstairs, which would mean avoiding the Traps, not to mention possibly splitting up the 6 enemies, and
B) He didn't want parties to be able to show their pretty little heads upstairs, let the bad guys start casting spells, and then run back down again....repeating until all the bad guys's spells and buffs were gone.

But, in my opinion, he went about it all the wrong way. Instead of removing the perfectly vaild option of a tactical retreat, he should have simply scripted the bad guys not to follow the party downstairs, and if the party does retreat, the game automatically casts Rest on the bad guys and replenishes all their spells.

As long as your rest spell doesn't give them their hitpoints back as well, i see no reason why not.