The update of the Duergar Mines

[Iceborn]

I know this may be a work in progress, this is what we got thus far:

The duergar mines were silently updated a little time ago. I was thrilled to hear this, because this is one of the oldest places that I know in the module; something that both as a new player, and with the 4~ years I've been around, makes me say "man, this server is ancient". It's a place that has seen plenty of DM plots (though I don't know if any of them ever led to anything), and remains a looming threat in the horizon to consider.

It needed a makeup since time immemorial, but when I got to see what actually changed, a single question came to my mind:
"But why?"
In fact, that could be the name of the thread. So let's go over the components of this rather massive area.
The Duergar Mines is composed by no less than 8 different maps.
You could argue the entrance at the Ice Roads is the first map.
Then you have:
The Entrance, the Halls, the Library, The Forge, The Mines, The Flooded Passage, The "ice roads shortcut", and the hall of the Duergar King.

Now, the duergar mines have been always pretty annoying to navigate for a few reasons, that make going there more than once a little of a time consuming chore with no real reason for it. There's a lot of unnecessary back-and-forth'ing involved in these maps.
For example:
There's a lever puzzle in the Library, which is not really a puzzle. It has the same taste as filler in a series.
The Flooded Passage used to have enemies, and now it's just a very, very long square map with absolutely nothing in it that you have to walk through.
At the end of the dungeon, you can't turn back - instead you have a portal that server jumps you to the surface. This is something very annoying for light-sensitive races and any caster in general. Doing a small turn in this area leads you back to the Ice Roads in the Underdark, at least.

These are three things that I wanted to see addressed, but the recent change was only on the mobs. So I say "Okay, fine. Let's see what changed".

In the first levels of the Duergar Halls there are several orog and other orcish mobs that are constantly in battle with the duergar. The orogs are part of other places in the modules, but they come in their own variants. All good here.
The duergar, in the other hand, used to come in these variants:
Warriors, rogue, archer, cleric, mage, with occasional iron golems and huge iron golems spawning with them. All the duergar had about 9 of Damage Reduction, which made them pretty tough, and they used to Barbarian Rage and gain about 150~ extra health. Most of the enemies had some kind of autocast ability that made them pretty annoying, specially if that autocast was Stoneskin and Protection from Elements on top of their natural defenses. Most of these enemies had generally low AC, but considerable AB and a decent damage. A crit from a warrior could take about 90 of HP, so two crits in a row could be worrying for most characters.
The warriors had greataxes and generally the best HP pool about.
The rogues had two shortswords and crippling strike, if I remember correctly. They had little to no face-stab damage, but plenty of sneak attack dice. Additionally, on death they used to drop their weapons, which were masterly steel and a great source of income.
The archers were irrelevant. They could use a Called Shot every now and then, but their damage was on the floor and they only existed to fill ranks of spawns.
The clerics were generally dangerous, since they could cast a Finger of Death and other instadeath spells that were not nice.
The mages, if ignored, could start spamming several Meteor Swarm spells, and other lovely things like breaches. Spell breaches all the day.
The iron golems were not really much, but the Huge Iron Golem was immune to nearly all magic and pretty tough generally. They can also breath the noxious gas, which in two failures was instant death, but that was super rare to happen and you could always just bandage the poison away.

The peak battle was against the Duergar King, which always had a nice sum of duergar with him and a magma paraelemental. Those could prove scary if you were unprepared.


Now:
It seems the DR was generally removed. The autocast is gone. That's good. I had the feeling that their HP pools were lowered, but I have no real way of knowing. There's also the fact that all the barbarian rage abilities are also gone.
The warriors lost their greataxe, and now they are carrying scimitars with tower shield (what? Why?!).
On a crit they are dealing a frightening 36 of damage.
The rogues are using acid shortswords now, which don't drop on death. But otherwise seem the same other than the changes above (that's 700 less of gold per rogue killed, which I'm not really against. That was too good of a gold mine if you had the space to carry all the shortswords).
The clerics we barely got to see doing anything (spellswords are still pretty overpowered and mow through everything with ease).
The golems remain the same.
The mages... oh boy.
We were a party of 3, a spellsword, a druid, and a bard. In total we had a pool of about 900 of HP.
At some point of our run, we fought a group that had two duergar mages, which I mostly ignored for two rounds of combat. By the third, they started spamming Firebrands and Greater Missile Storm to the point the front fighters died, god-saved and survived with two-digit numbers of HP each. We were dumbfounded to say the least.
That means that just the two mages managed to deal about 1300 points of damage. There's something that went were wrong there, but at least we didn't stumble into any more IGMS spamming mages after that point. (This is my second 'what? why?!')

And to the last battle.
The duergar king was a pretty standard foe. Just a buffed up version of the normal duergar, and while the final battle was pretty short due to overbuffing, there is one thing that stands as the greatest 'why' of this thread: The duergar king was replaced by a Duergar Psion-king.

Now, psionic powers have always been a huge no-no in Arelith. We have the llithid, but that's their shtick, and even in that case illithids are extremely rare cases appearing about in three places in the whole module. It's something that is literally nowhere else; it's something that isn't mentioned or acknowledged directly as existing. We know it exists, but it has always been away from Arelith for many reasons (psionic roleplay being equal to metagaming, one of them).
And from one day to the other, we have this glaring boss that seems to ignore that notion.

So we have an area old as sin that needs a good update... and the update we see is a nerf, that seems to go against the lore, not only of the duergar themselves, but against the setting itself... that wasn't warranted, and doesn't actually fix any problems in the area.
Why did this happen, again?

[Cortex]

I'm pretty sure there was never any rule or shadow rule or anything against psionic mobs, the Underdark especially has plenty of mobs that are canonically psionic.

Changing areas also is far more work and is usually stuff directly overseen by Irongron, monster development is done on a much smaller scale and when the creature is done, it's as easy as copy and paste sometimes.

Also? Ignoring epic mages for two rounds is inviting death.

Small disclaimer, I didn't work on the duergar mobs.

[Lunargent]

Good post, I just have to add that the yuan-ti are psionic mobs now also.

[Cortex]

Good post, I just have to add that the yuan-ti are psionic mobs now also.

Who, I'll add, also have psionic potential!

[Dr_Hazard89]

Psionic damage is 'magical damage' and cannot be defended against mehcanically, right? Sorry, a little off-topic there.

But to get back on topic, I'm super glad to hear instant casting was removed from some mobs. I hate instant casting! If I am a thirtieth level pure caster and cannot even get myself a sequencer item with all the gold in Faerun, it really just bothers me that seemingly every NPC caster can. I've always felt it was just plain cheating, and artificial difficulty. If I get the jump on them, I get the jump on them. None of this "Tada! I have all the wards, ha-ha!" .. No. Damnit. I attacked you because you DIDN'T have the wards!

*Cough.* ...

Glad to hear it's gone. I hope this is a trend that continues!!

[Iceborn]

You are right.
The no-psion is something of my perception, and the general feel I got over playing in Arelith for this long.
There's plenty of psion-capable races, but, as said before, it's something that rarely, if ever, comes to question in the game.

And about the mages. I'm playing a mostly supporty bard, with three glorius attacks at epic levels, so it didn't overly matter which was my target. The spellsword of the party, however, was fixed on the mages, and consistently missed her attacks for far more than two rounds. It may have been RNGesus at it again.

[Cortex]

Would this SS, perhaps, also have skipped Blind Fight?

[afreshstart]

Well when I went there yesterday and died to a glorius lag spike,but I had no issues with mages. But I think warriors deal more damage now, consistently at least. And archers are no joke, they hit hard. I alos think enemies have lower discipline over all so KD is very helpful there.

[Irongron]

I'm not familar with a rework of the duergar mobs personally, I thought they hadn't been changed for many years. Will take a look when I get a chance.

[ActionReplay]

Mobs will bet updated always to give a nice change to things as these have been pretty untouched for, well, since forever. Give it a few tries to see if it pays off. Overall I think they are easier this time around just be careful with those mages; they were deadly before as well but you'll have an easier time to bring them down now as long as you don't ignore them.

[Hunter548]

Having talked to the designer of the mobs and from my own experience:

1) It sounds like your spellsword friend was studying too hard at the school of "Tank your ab and make sure concealment ruins your fun". Mages have very low ac and hp - they should crumble in melee to any decent threat.

2) The warriors/archers/rogues are all fairly good at damage now; The primary difference is the warriors don't have a marginal chance of taking grind trip from "going well" to "tpk" if spawned in number, and are generally more consistent and less spike-y. Both archers and rogues can no longer be 100% ignored as they were previously.

3) The golems were always mildly annoying, as a spawn that was significantly easier than their fellows, and worth less exp. Them spawning less, if intentional, is only an improvement. Differences/unpredictability between trips are good, the dungeon occasionally being a waste of time is not.

4) I 100% agree the layout is weird. The Library and main halls area could probably be changed so there's less crossing of previously-handled content. The new lockpick-only door on the foundry boss room also needs to go, since it turns the dungeon into a check of "Does your character know someone with open lock ranks or a pixie familiar? If no, have fun only doing 25% of the dungeon loser" check. Not exactly interesting for either variety of party.

[Irongron]

This really is such an old area, though it definitely has its charms.

I've not visited it since the spawns were reworked (not since I added the invading orogs) but I am glad the mobs were changed. It was far too easy before.

[Nitro]

There's plenty of psionic mobs around the servers so they're hardly uncommon. Brain beetles, yuan-ti, ahloons, illithids, duergar off the top of my head. It's really only an issue if a player claims to be one, but since mobs aren't going to start metagaming, it's really a non-issue.

[Dr_Hazard89]

There's plenty of psionic mobs around the servers so they're hardly uncommon. Brain beetles, yuan-ti, ahloons, illithids, duergar off the top of my head. It's really only an issue if a player claims to be one, but since mobs aren't going to start metagaming, it's really a non-issue.

Laurick metagames all the time >_>

[Durvayas]

What always confused me more about the duergar update was why the outside of the fortress was given the flair of a fortress under siege with lots of fixtures and fire, but the inside was completely untouched. I've always felt like the duergar of the fort would have put up some barricades, some ballista, SOME degree of defensive fortification if the fight has been at a standstill for so long.

That said, the general DR being removed is good, because it turned arcane archers into chumps doing 6-9 damage a shot. The autocast being gone is generally good, though I'm quizzical on why they use scimmys now(why not dwarven waraxe?). I like that the rogues and archers are more potent. Overall, the rebalancing is welcome, in my view.

I'm surprised at the change with the Duergar King, but duergar have always had psionic potential, given their racial history as thralls of the illithid. Its why they're immune to paralyze. It makes good sense that, with the duergar so far from the flayers and them being free now, the duergar would turn to whoever among them is best able to defend from the flayer threat in the future.

[Iceborn]

You two need to learn to do like the song and leeeeeet it goooo.
For that matter, the SS had Blindfight.

That aside, there's a lot of wasted potential in the duergar mines, but that requires a whole area overhaul, and this was just a tiny nudge. I'll give it a few more runs in due time, but the general gist I got was that the dungeon was, well, generally easier, the mages had an absurd damage potential (as opposed to just being a threat, they are a top priority threat on the risk of TPK), and that the warriors should go back to the axes.

[flower]

Already had the pleasure to discover changes myself, dieing twice to the fire spell spam dealing 156 dmg each time on my character twice in two rounds.


Duergar with scimitar...like, what? Why is a dwarf racial type wielding hilarious scimitar? I liked them more, when they were a real threath, dealing like 90 dmg on critical. But even if i discount that, DWARF AND SCIMITAR?


The mages are awful. Reflex DC 36 or 160 damage, wtih these spells going off in spammin waves like three in a row. Is this still early epic dungeon...? Pray to all gods your character knows if mages are 2+...

[Dr_Hazard89]

Already had the pleasure to discover changes myself, dieing twice to the fire spell spam dealing 156 dmg each time on my character twice in two rounds.


Duergar with scimitar...like, what? Why is a dwarf racial type wielding hilarious scimitar? I liked them more, when they were a real threath, dealing like 90 dmg on critical. But even if i discount that, DWARF AND SCIMITAR?


The mages are awful. Reflex DC 36 or 160 damage, wtih these spells going off in spammin waves like three in a row. Is this still early epic dungeon...? Pray to all gods your character knows if mages are 2+...

What spell are they casting? I'm too lazy to go check. Someone spoon feed me information, please.

[Xanos950]

Those duergar mages have like 0 concentration. They cant cast if you just keep attacking them, same with the clerics.

[Kalopsia]

Already had the pleasure to discover changes myself, dieing twice to the fire spell spam dealing 156 dmg each time on my character twice in two rounds.


Duergar with scimitar...like, what? Why is a dwarf racial type wielding hilarious scimitar? I liked them more, when they were a real threath, dealing like 90 dmg on critical. But even if i discount that, DWARF AND SCIMITAR? :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:


The mages are awful. Reflex DC 36 or 160 damage, wtih these spells going off in spammin waves like three in a row. Is this still early epic dungeon...? Pray to all gods your character knows if mages are 2+...

What spell are they casting? I'm too lazy to go check. Someone spoon feed me information, please.

Meteor Swarm, Horrid Wilting, IGMS. All hasted now.

That said, I’ve been there with my Feylock - and noticed that the will saves have been lowered to more reasonable levels now, which makes the area very manageable for the class.

In addition, I’ve noticed that basically any Duergar NPC is worth dominating now, as even Archers and Rogues have good damage potential (and can help with taking down mages)

TL;DR: I’m rather happy with the update. :)

[Dr_Hazard89]

Already had the pleasure to discover changes myself, dieing twice to the fire spell spam dealing 156 dmg each time on my character twice in two rounds.


Duergar with scimitar...like, what? Why is a dwarf racial type wielding hilarious scimitar? I liked them more, when they were a real threath, dealing like 90 dmg on critical. But even if i discount that, DWARF AND SCIMITAR?


The mages are awful. Reflex DC 36 or 160 damage, wtih these spells going off in spammin waves like three in a row. Is this still early epic dungeon...? Pray to all gods your character knows if mages are 2+...

What spell are they casting? I'm too lazy to go check. Someone spoon feed me information, please.

Meteor Swarm, Horrid Wilting, IGMS. All hasted now.

That said, I’ve been there with my Feylock - and noticed that the will saves have been lowered to more reasonable levels now, which makes the area very manageable for the class.

In addition, I’ve noticed that basically any Duergar NPC is worth dominating now, as even Archers and Rogues have good damage potential (and can help with taking down mages)

TL;DR: I’m rather happy with the update.

That sounds good, if I'm understanding correctly that they cast haste first and then the other spells.

[afreshstart]

It's still pretty doable at early epics imho, maybe not as easy while soloing with a build lacking UMD. You can use invisibility potions/stealth/darkness and kill mages before they can do anything.

[flower]

It's still pretty doable at early epics imho, maybe not as easy while soloing with a build lacking UMD. You can use invisibility potions/stealth/darkness and kill mages before they can do anything.

How do you kill two or three mages in one group by invis potion before they can do anything is a mystery for me.

[Kalopsia]

It's still pretty doable at early epics imho, maybe not as easy while soloing with a build lacking UMD. You can use invisibility potions/stealth/darkness and kill mages before they can do anything.

How do you kill two or three mages in one group by invis potion before they can do anything is a mystery for me.

The Mages don’t insta-buff if they’re being ambushed. It would take only one round to kill one of the two, and the other wouldn’t get to cast any offensive spells at that point (because they indeed cast Haste etc before beginning the dreaded Meteor Swarm spam)

And.. I’ve been to the area /many/ times now, but haven’t encountered three mages even once.

[flower]

I had been there with other one lvl 27 and we got several mages. After being burnt twice to death I figured druid has no ress spells lol.