Custom critters in very low level AE's

[Blackshear]

Is it just me, or are customs tougher than regular game enemies in very low level AE's (as in levels 1-10)?  I know how to create critters who only barely qualify for 100% XP at those levels, but I find they can easily overwhelm a party of beginner characters.  Minions aren't too bad, but LT's and bosses hit like a ton of bricks.

 

Has anyone else had this issue with their AEs?

[Clave Dark 5]

It's been a long time since I made an arc for that low, but yes, it is difficult.  

 

One good bit of advice I've seen, possibly from @ZamuelNow? was to skip using any armor and just assign them attacks; also a good idea to skip confuses, various other mezzes, etc.  You can also play around with giving them relatively few melee attacks and setting them for melee, and vice versa with ranged attacks - apparently they will favor their setting over the number of opposite type attacks? 

 

It's always a great big tinkering and experimentation project, nothing in the AE works right your first try, ha ha

[ZamuelNow]

30 minutes ago, Blackshear said:

Is it just me, or are customs tougher than regular game enemies in very low level AE's (as in levels 1-10)?  I know how to create critters who only barely qualify for 100% XP at those levels, but I find they can easily overwhelm a party of beginner characters.  Minions aren't too bad, but LT's and bosses hit like a ton of bricks.

 

Has anyone else had this issue with their AEs?

 

Out of curiosity, is this published yet?  Also, always remember to adjust the XP slider so it's giving values for lvl10 instead of the default (lvl 25?).  Also, remember you can customize some standard enemy color schemes.  My arc Consideration of Knowledge shows some examples but if yours is published we can stick our heads in and offer feedback.

[Defeat All Snakes]

Many archetype abilities have insane scaling in the AE, sometimes much higher than the preview numbers suggest, with Beam Rifle and Devices being notorious offenders. If you have concerns, it's almost always better to err on the side of caution and give your general mobs one, maybe two of the weakest attacks available to them. Sometimes I'll just give enemies Petless Mastermind attacks for flavor over punch.

[cranebump]

I always assume that people are running characters who are exemplared down, and probably IO’ed (with attunes). That said, I do try to test my arcs with characters to fit the level. I can certainly see, and have seen, that customs are definitely tougher than your average bear. I am certain I have some pain the ass ones in earlier arcs, but have hopefully more balanced ones on newer arcs. (Again…hopefully…):-)

 

[Police Woman]

I write a lot of low level arcs and I agree that custom characters are often too hard for characters under level 20 - especially when the arc has factions that are entirely custom characters. 

 

But custom characters are a big part of the fun of Mission Architect, so I try to use a few to give a story arc more flavor.  For a low level arc I'll try to make the custom character's powers fairly weak; avoid giving them two attack sets, or defensive powers giving high perception.  I also try to use a mix of custom characters and low level standard characters to make missions more balanced.

 

A technique I like to use is to make a custom character that's member of a standard enemy group, then treat the custom character as a "boss" objective, like this:

 

 

This spawns exactly 4 "Vahzilok Bride" enemies (and despite being a "Boss" objective they are still only "minion" difficulty); they're optional objectives, so the player doesn't have to track down every single one, but there's enough that the player will definitely see them.  They are surrounded by regular Vahzilok so the player character doesn't get overwhelmed by the custom characters.  This can also let you give your NPC fewer powers that award less than 100% xp without it being too noticeable, since the standard mobs will still award full xp.

 

Another trick I use is to construct a "custom group" out of mostly recolored/renamed standard NPCs, like this:

These Corrupted LARPers are actually a mix of Luddites, Warriors and Circle of Thorns.  Since they are canon NPCs, they are already balanced against their respective level ranges, and award full xp.  The major downside is that most NPCs are very recognizable as belonging to a particular faction, so it may be hard to get the exact look that you want by doing this.

 

Hope that helps, and happy architecting!

Edited 9 hours ago by Police Woman