What's Wrong with DDO part 1

I said I'd talk about this in a latter post so here we go. This is also going on myDDO blog.

What's Wrong with DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online)? Part One:

Where to start? There's so much I'd change. First, DDO is based on the Third Edition/3.5 rules set of Dungeons and Dragons. For more information on this rule set, go to http://www.d20srd.org/

Those are the rules, free and legal via the OGL.

DDO is set in Eberron, a world that came about as a result of an open contest to submit world entries. I submitted two. Didn't even make runner up. Poor me. Eberron was pretty much designed to be a game world that took advantage of many of the aspects of D&D that maybe were less than logical in other game worlds, such as FR or Greyhawk.

So, as an MMORPG, I understand that some changes have to be made to accommodate this format as opposed to a table top pen and paper format. There are so many things they've done wrong, I'm just going to hit them as they come to mind. I will say if I ran my games like they run theirs, I'd not have any players left, and they would have beaten me before they left.

Blanket Immunities: In DDO, you have your "trash mobs". These are the common monsters you fight in adventures and slayer/wilderness areas. Then you have Orange-Names. These are amped up monsters. Still pretty killable but arbitrarily protected from long-term charms and the like. Next you have Red Names. Red Names are typically the end fight of an adventure though some may have multiple red-named creatures. From the DDO Wiki:

Red-named monsters:

• Are immune from negative level effects
• Are immune from instant kill spells and effects, such as vorpal weapons, banishing, Finger of Death, and the like
• Cannot be stunned, held, paralyzed or stopped by any similar effects or spells, such as Flesh to Stone, Web, and the like
• Are highly resistant to statistic-draining damage: Only 10 points of ability damage is counted and cannot be made helpless (or have any ability score reduced to zero)
• Are often highly resistant, if not immune, from specific elemental effects, such as fire or cold
• Often have specific damage reductions that require one or more weapon types in combination to bypasses the damage reduction (such as Silver and Pure Good weaponry against vampires)

Basically, the only way to beat red-names is through raw damage, most often melee. There's no good reason for these immunities other than what is effectively GM-fiat. It's like if I ran you through a module and at the big climax, kept telling you "No, that won't work" and you asked why, I'd respond with something like "Because I don't want it to, I want to screw you. It's bad DMing writ large, like every boss monster is the GM's pet creature that he doesn't actually want beaten so he gimps your abilities or cheats like crazy in the fight. But that's not all. After Red Names, you have the Purple Names. Again, from the wiki:

Many of the special abilities of red-named monsters apply to purple-named monsters. In addition, purple-named monsters:

• Are completely immune from any ability statistic damage or strength-draining spells such as Ray of Enfeeblement
• Cannot be slowed down by any effect or spell
• Can be affected by some de-buffing spells if the player can defeat the enemy's spell penetration
• Have True Seeing, so their attacks are not affected by concealment effects such as Blur. They aren't able to see through the concealment effects of a spell (the "fog" in Acid Fog, for instance)

Purple-named monsters are often colored as such to warn the player characters that this boss type cannot or should not be defeated until the players (and their party) complete a specific task(s) that either enables the players to damage the purple-named monster at all, or compels the monster to unlock a specific task that completes an objective.

Again, there is no good reason for these immunities. There is no attempt at an in-game explanation either. It's just a bad design and bad call. You'll note, it says they are immune to insta-kills such as vorpal. In the game, deathward and deathblock protects against vorpal weapons. From the SRD entry for Death Ward:

"The subject is immune to all death spells, magical death effects, energy drain, and any negative energy effects."

Now you'll note if you read the entry for vorpal, it isn't a death effect for the purposes of death ward. The spell should not protect you from a vorpal weapon. And yes, I think it's perfectly fine to vorpal the head right off of an end game big bad. Is it anti-climatic? No, it's a damned lucky shot. The lucky shot is one of the cornerstones of D&D combat. "But wait! There are so many vorpal weapons, those fights will be over too fast all the time!" Solution?  Remove vorpal from the random treasure generator. Immediately change all existing vorpal weapons to Sharpness weapons (a property that currently only exists on a couple of named weapons, while you can get a vorpal weapon in any level appropriate chest). Make vorpal weapons rare (and I mean rare) bound-to-account drops. There. Now your special bad guy wasn't killed with some random trash weapon.

Holds, Paralysis, and Stuns: First, by the SRD, a hold spell paralyzes the target. A paralyzed target is Helpless with Strength and Dexterity of 0. Helpless means he is subject to a coup de grace attempt – an instant kill strike.  A stunned creature drops held items, cannot take actions, loses his Dexterity bonus to AC, and takes an additional -2 AC penalty. A stunned creature is NOT Helpless and therefore not subject to a coup de grace.

In DDO, before Update 9, it worked as follows: Any hit against a Held creature was an automatically successful critical hit. No coup de grace though. Any hit against a Stunned creature was also an automatically successful critical strike. Unless he was stunned as a result of the sound burst spell, in which case, he just took no actions. A paralyzed creature was frozen in place, but you gained no extra damage against it. And by frozen in place, I mean it still moved all over the damn battlefield. So as you can see, this was already all screwed up. Maybe because they made paralyzing weapons amazingly common (solution? See vorpal weapons above).

Apparently, the developers decided this was a problem for Epic Content (you know, the content a majority of the player base will probably never deal with). Since in epic content, everything is already immune to most things, the most common tactic for trash mobs and such was to cast Mass Hold and the auto crit them to death. Being who they are, the developers decided to use a hammer to fix a problem that needed a scalpel. So with the most recent update, they applied the following solution to all content – epic and non-epic: No more automatic critical hits. Period. Doesn't matter if the target is held, stunned, or whatever. Now they take +50% damage. Which nerfed the hell out of weapons with special effects that processed on critical hits as well as some monk attacks. Solution? Go back to the rules in the books.

Special Critical Hit Effects: In DDO, you can get smiters (weapons that on a critical hit against a construct force it to make a saving throw or be destroyed), banishers (weapons that on a critical hit against outsiders force them to make saving throws or be effectively destroyed), and disruptors (weapons that on every hit force undead to make a saving throw or be destroyed). By the book rules, smiting is found on the mace of smiting (not as a random weapon property like it is in DDO), and destroys constructs on a critical hit (no save). Against outsiders, a critical hit with a mace of smiting deals *4 damage instead of a mace's normal *2. As far as I know, banishing isn't a weapon property in the books (unless it was released as non-open content in a book I don't have). And disruption is a random weapon property (blunt weapons only) that forces a save on every hit or the creature is destroyed.

Now in DDO, smiters and banishers were very useful when found on weapons like the khopesh, light repeating crossbow, and great crossbow because critical hits are easy to score with those weapons. All of those weapons also require you to burn a feat to use with proficiency.  As of update 9, they made changes to smiters, banishers, disruptors, and vorpal weapons. Now, with smiters, banishers, and disruptors, you have to roll a natural 20 and then confirm the attack roll like a critical hit. This is the same procedure used for vorpal weapons and is called a vorpal strike. Otherwise, they just deal additional damage against applicable targets. Again, forcing the game to a drawn-out melee play style. Actual vorpal weapons, and the other mentioned types now no longer have their normal effect if the target has more than 1000 hit points. In such a case, a successful vorpal strike simply deals +100 damage. Supposedly, to tie into this change, "Many creatures have had their immunities and resistances lowered or removed on Casual and Normal difficulty modes." Personally, I haven't noticed this yet.

Solution? Remove banishing as a weapon property. Return disruption as a weapon property for blunt weapons. Have smiting available only on the Mace of Smiting and make it a rare account bound drop.

You'll note that a lot of these changes were made to address issues the developers had with Epic Content (which, by the way, does NOT follow by-the-book epic rules) but was applied to the entire game. Which is stupid.

Stupid Creatures and Poor Compensation: DDO uses a spell point system (one of the arguments people like to use when defending the changes from pen and paper is that 3^rd edition doesn't use spell points so there! Ha! It doesn't have to be like the book game! They should go read Unearthed Arcana, full of official 3^rd edition optional and variant rules, including a spell point system). Anyway, in DDO, enemy spell casters have infinite spell points and the Quicken Spell feat (allows them to cast faster and you cannot interrupt the spell to stop it). In case you are wondering, no PCs do not have infinite spell points. Supposedly, this is to compensate for the enemy A.I. being stupid. If it had properly limited spell points, it would blow all its spells at you while you hid behind a wall before killing its spell-pointless sorry self. Now I don't know much about coding, but I can't help but think they could write some kind of detection code – if it sees you Yes, cast spell. If it doesn't see you NO, don't cast spell. As it stands, enemy spell casters will spam you with spells at a rate you cannot match and they'll do it forever. Additionally, while a PC is limited to one summoned creature at a time, enemy spellcasters do not appear to have this limitation. Which is just GM fiat BS. Solution? Rewrite the damned A.I.

Monologues: A staple of fiction – before you proceed to whip his butt, the bad guy gets to make a speech about blah blah blah. Typically, this happens because the bad guy has some kind of captive audience. In DDO, you just can't attack him while he's chatting away like he's at the Monday morning water cooler (do people still do that or do they just mess with their iPhones instead now?) I assume it has something to do with the developers either thinking we care about their story or something. All I know is in a pnp game, I typically have or allow the freedom to stab or shot the bad guy in the face A.S.A.P. If he wants to spend that time yapping, well, he deserves to get stabbed in the face.

I've actually had this happen to me once in a CoC game. I told the GM it was BS and if he did it again, I was done. It didn't happen again. Solution? Make the bad guys attackable while talking. If attacked, they stop talking and respond in kind.

Player Immunity to Players: Some of the best memories I have from gaming involve me setting other PCs on fire or getting set on fire. I cannot be held responsible if Joe Fighter didn't have the sense to move away when I yelled "fire in the hole!" and then proceeded to get burned by a fireball spell. But in DDO, characters are immune to the effects of their party members' spell (except for greased, which has been used for laughs often and by many). This means you can toss a fireball at the bad guy who is in melee with Hulking Hulkerson the Barbarian and Hulker doesn't have to worry about going home hairless and smelling of scorched flesh. This immunity also helped lead to the near dominance of one spell from the time a wizard got it until he picked up his 9^th level spells. That spell is wall of fire. You cast a WoF or two and then stand in it while the bad guys burn around you while you come out undamaged and smelling of roses and victory. If you want to mix it up a little, you combine WoF with Otto's Sphere of Dancing – a little disco scene that forces the enemies to dance in place. The combination should be known as Disco Inferno if it isn't already. Because of this, there have been several changes to Wall of Fire and wizards in an attempt to being the spell back into line. Solution? Clearly it is to let party members get hurt by party-cast spells. Cast an acid fog? Hulker better have his acid resistance cloak on then, shouldn't he? No, then he'll learn. Or he won't. Either way, it'll be amusing. Yes, this could lead to more PvP conflict and griefing. I'm okay with that and you should be too.

Well, that's part one. See you in part two.