It would obviously imbalance any future encounters against foes that rely on mind-affecting attacks. There are lots of spells and spell-like abilities that adversely affect the mind. Plus in general perma-immunities are imbalancing in that the player doesn't have to worry about negative status effects anymore. They can wipe their slots clean of ward spells, that are now covered by the gear, and instead fill them with offensive AoEs, and summons etc.
They have to sacrifice a gear slot for it tho, and it doesnt take away from the number of times they had to deal with mind affecting spells before they ever ran into the item itself. Also i dont see how it unbalances an encounter, creatures that have mind affecting abilities have plenty of other nasty surprises as well. Like, rpgs are about progression, eventually a player progresses past a certain challenge, and this opens the door to new challenges.
Besides, whos to say the item doesnt get destroyed, lost or dispelled? playing with a players over-reliance on magical items can make for great moments.
I'm not "anti-game changers".. I just would like to see a lil' more restraint in that respect, that's all. The Robe of Vecna and Shield of Balduran are examples of items no RPGs should have itemized, f.e.
Hah, i never actually used shield of balduran, always sold it. Vecnas robe wasnt in the vanilla game (my first couple playthroughs were without it, and i was playing an arcane caster), and yeah, it was the single best item for a spell caster, but then again, you had to be an arcane caster to take advantage of it.
There are six sources of perma-haste, heavily itemized haste potions and two different haste spells that can be spammed due to no rest restrictions. There are several sources of wards for the other negative status effects, too. I can't remember the last time I quaffed a potion in BG2...
I only remember 1 item with haste on demand and that was a sword you got at the end of the game if you picked the evil option which was blackrazor. All others were items with charges. You need to be a fighter class and be proficient with it for it to be worth using.
That's why I criticize their RPGs.
Thats stupid then, because you arent criticizing flaws.
Success in many of BG2's "hardcore" encounters is contingent on prior knowledge gained from reloads. If you can't see that, I'm surprised.
I guess? Thats the idea, lose the encounter, think of how to beat it, beat it. Why would this be a bad thing?
What I'm saying is, there is a more srs issue behind the joke, as there are with lots of jokes.
Its not a serious issue, just an inevitability when it comes to players and their characters. They meet someone that looks rich, they want what he has. Either way not every problem is worth solving, sawyer showed us that.
Kangaxx demi-lich encounter represents decadent design: 95% trial-and-error with a leftover 5% on-the-fly decision making, if that. Its illegal imprisonment spam, lack of phylactery and where is resides (a graveyard crypt in the middle of a city), is also pretty dumb.
Who cares? save/load mechanics, figure the encounter, fight it, beat it, move on. Thats fun! challenge. Not this "fair challenge" bullshit where you should be able to beat it on your first try. If you have save/load in your game use it.
You should be like me, and blush at yourself for bothering to beat an encounter with such embedded cheese, on both sides.
Why would i? its fun to cheese a cheeser. Not saying every encounter needs to be like this, but sometimes they can be fun, they certainly force the player out of their comfort zone when it comes to tactics.