I just finished DLC 2 (Through the Ashes, the low level thing) and had a great time with it on Hard and got through with everyone alive. I haven't looked that hard, but it seemed to me that most of the complaints about it are that it's too hard because your guys suck, but it seemed fine to me, so long as you have even a moderate idea of what you're doing and are not trying to do a multiple dip, comes online at level 19/20 sort of thing. I didn't even use cheesy classes and had no idea what the companions were, so my MC was a vanilla human rogue, which was completely redundant with the first companion you get.
It was fun in a low powered RP build sort of way and to give a different perspective than the way OTT power fantasy of the main campaign. It probably helps that I tend to prefer low level games (outside of the part where a Babau/Barbarian/etc. crits and one-shot explodes one of your characters from full health). It sucked in that pretty much all the good stuff I got was aimed at martials and was just vendor trash... in a game where there's not a lot to buy. Definitely gave a good sense of scrounging and trying to get by by your wits and the skin of your teeth, especially in the first half of it.
Yeah, that was the idea it's just that the execution was poor and in many places obviously unfinished.
I'm not sure I agree that the execution was poor. Unfinished, eh. Maybe. What is it you found missing? I thought it was fine for what it was and delivered a reasonable amount of content for the DLC's asking price even independently of the ludicrous value of the Pathfinder OCs.
It’s set-up is that you can use skills to bypass combat (which is why combat gives no EXP) but you really can’t, and there’s some foes of where that’s a big problem.
Designers *still* think that Bombs are answer to Swarms but they’re comically bad. Tough fights balensed around Statues working (but they don’t).
Only thing worse than forced grinding is forced grinding for no reward. It’s difference between Boggart Cave and Old Sycamore in P:K. At least Cave gave EXP.
Ah, so we just fundamentally disagree about what makes a design flaw.
Skills to avoid combat: eh, you often can. Certainly more often than I'd have figured, just sometimes you need to approach from unusual directions or otherwise use an indirect approach. Imo this is appropriate and fine. If you can just charge headlong into everything and choose either combat or no combat, I mean... whatever.
There's only like one swarm I can think of that's small enough to require energy (a spider swarm), the rest are rats that can be hit with weapons, though they're still a pain in the ass. You can get or find a lot of acid bottles and alchemist's fire around or just bow kite because there are a ton of areas to do this and that's been a time honoured tradition since the origins of RTWP. Like I say, my party sucked balls for dealing with swarms - I had to take them out with two rogues. Statues working? I never used any statues, though I did see a place or two where they would've been useful and after I was done I read about using them to get a certain achievement. Either way, you can lure things into kill zones - I did this once using a boulder though in retrospect I wish I'd have saved the boulder for a different fight, but it was reasonably useful for what I used it for anyway. I got a lot of use out of the environmental traps and the few times I didn't, I either specifically chose not to use them or had approached from the wrong direction and didn't feel like sneaking around to see if it could be approached from a different direction.
One thing I will say about the traps is that, certainly in the city, you have enough choice about which ways to go and ways to approach things that you can come at things from the side or behind and there's usually something you can do to thin out the herds.
Forced grinding? There's literally no grinding in the DLC. Using the alternative XP award system is great because it emphasizes that you're there to get through and survive not to murder hobo or zone clear (though you certainly can do that if you want or find it fun - I did) and it further reinforces that you're not the mythic heroes, you're just trying to save your own ass and maybe a few people along the way. Besides, had they chosen combat XP instead of alternative XP, you'd probably cap out at like level 2 instead of level 5. You've seen what kind of XP Owlcats hands out for combat, right?
Like I say, I had a great time and I appreciated the different approach. I didn't think it was poorly executed at all. I don't necessarily think your preferences would make it poorly executed either, but, for instance, with combat XP, I think they'd have to redesign the entire thing to anticipate people finishing at level 1 which would make it easy if you did level and then make the entire thing kind of an adventure game slog because you'd never level up or maybe like once.
They also had a nice gear progression from like theatre props -> broken trash real weapons -> slightly less broken trash real weapons -> real weapons -> masterwork weapons ->
maybe cold iron masterwork or +1 if you're lucky. Similarly no armour -> shit damaged armour -> shit armour / damaged good armour -> regular armour ->
maybe +1 armour. That was great, I've done things like that in tabletop and tend to appreciate where I see it come up (appropriately) in games and has been seen in various forms from BG1, PoR, JRPGs, etc.
