Shattered Kingdoms

I really wanted to make this my sig, but it would not fit. QFf'nT

I agree that it would make more sense to have AI do anything it can to remove itself from the helpless situation. If you are engaged wit a foe you can not reach, walk away. I would even support the idea of NPCs that can cast word of recall, and then walk home if that is what is required to escape. If no escape is available, so be it, the NPC has been out smarted, and will die.

On a slightly separate issue, I'd like to see the default for aim be changed to upper instead of mid. I'm sure a lot of newbs don't realize that continueing to batter their armless foe does them no good. Changing the aim would make it less likely that a newb would slow down his leveling by continually cutting off the arms of his foes.

Basically, if some tactics that make a NPC 'helpless' and give xp are going to be removed, they all should.

For instance, spellcasting NPCs can only harm you via casting spells, interrupting their spellcasting with trip/bash should give you 0 xp for the duration of the lag.

If the NPC is a melee damaging NPC, and the fighter is wearing armor that deflects all damage from the NPC, they should be considered helpless since they can do no damage to the character.

Both are almost the exact same thing as warlock leveling, the second more closely though, and it's pretty lame that really only one class is getting the shaft out of this.

NPCs should have thought twice before leaving home without a ranged weapon.

They aren't helpless, they are dumb.

Yeah, mostly only warlocks get screwed on this, and with magma cling doing 0 damage these days, earthquake being useless with NPCs throwing weapons now, and this new helpless AI I am really confused why Warlock's have been getting nerf after nerf thrown at them while other classes that are more powerful stay the same...

Anyone?

Actually imo sorcs just got the biggest shaft. Warlocks can still stay behind elementals w/out concentration/mana cost with SS up and deal quite some dmg(wearing mithril also).

Changing to upper wouldn't be an advantage. If you kill a foe faster by cutting off his head, you are also cheating yourself of some of the available XP.

There's nothing actually new about this. It just got brought up in the forums now. For instance, Jardek has admitted that he managed to level his guy in a reasonable amount of time, and I'm nearly positive this was put in before he even made the character.

You can still gain XP from casting AoE spells as a warlock. There just has to be some possibility of danger involved. Otherwise its the same learning experience as casting the spell in an empty room.

I said it once and I will say it again. If SK is where Tactics and RP collide, why are tactics being removed?

Tactics got incapacitated in the collision.

Also, the RPers have giant tantrums when people that are smarter than them do better than they do.

D, between NPCs magically carrying around dozens of daggers, and this you are making it very very very difficult for anyone to use intelligence to level casters.

I heard from Eric a while ago that you were going to implement something in the AI that would make NPCs walk away if they were being damaged and unable to hit the target, which I understand; however, this is not the way to 'fix' pleveling.

I bet I can't even use the archery butts in Seawatch for XP on ANY class now, let alone warlocks.

New race and class combinations don't make up for this in the least.