ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hello

There's something i noticed that happens more often than i would like , getting in a battle with a monster (usually unique or elite) without being able to do anything to beat it and when you think it's reasonnably time to escape, you see that convenientely all your escape options are unavailable (some bad stun/bad status that just blocked all of them for many rounds etc..)

Then you die, sometime you're so frustrated by this situation that you're near to tell the Eidolon to end that character so you can start another (one of the main reason of my characters final death i must say).

But despite the frustration you may sometime decide to just go back and give another go to that damned monster despite you know he's back at full health and so will probably kill your character again and you're going to throw your PC through the window.

And then the very strange thing happen : you actually beat the monster in only a few rounds without any kind of difficulty.

As this has happened a lot of time with various characters i am really wondering why this can happen as it can't be coincidence considering how many time that exact situation occured : are the monsters stats re-rolled when you come back from asking the Eidolon ?

Nope. Either you get lucky or the boss got lucky when it defeated you.

It's odd, this situation has repeated itself so many times in my numerous characters that i really thought it was too much repetition for it being simple random luck favouring the enemy or the character.

But if it's so, luck has a much bigger influence in tome4 than i thought all that time, i'll then have to start collecting +luck items while playing with halflings to see where it leads.

Possible reason you did better: you passed your saves the second time. It's worth noting that stun severely reduces the damage you deal out, so it can have a significant impact on your killing speed. It sounds like you need to keep around a means of dealing with status on-hand; a wild infusion, something to buff your status resistances, or whatever.

Also, you might want to start keeping a closer eye on your status effects and escaping before things get critical. An item of psychportation can help since they don't get put on cooldown from what I recall.

Also, luck slightly buffs a few things like saves/dodges and isn't really worth stacking equipment for. It has strongest impact with the halfing talent that boosts your evasion based on your luck, but you can get pretty good impact with that by just taking the Lucky Day prodigy.

True. Luck in game is completely unrelated to the luck stat. It also has no impact on loot dropped or generated (another common misconception.)

Collecting +save items is more profitable, since it lets you save against more status ailments in the first place, reducing the need for you (not your character) to be lucky. Saves are often underestimated, even I still tend to do it after four winners.

Yeah, +saves are another good method of dealing with statuses. But you'll still want to keep a wild infusion on hand and use it to remove the nastier statuses that might land despite your saves. I've found an important key for winning is to have redundant methods for escaping, preventing and healing damage, and dealing with statuses. Enemy detection is nice, too, but it doesn't become crucial until higher difficulties.

Hmm, it could be the save indeed mixed with luck , i have several characters that won the game (though all being melee oriented, bulwark, berserker and cursed) but i noticed that usually i tend to make a priority for items that features +resistance and +stats instead of items that have +saves , and let my stats/talents being the actual source of the saves.
Served rather well my character that won the game.

I'll have to try with a new character and focus on +save items instead of the +res/+stats to see if it's helping really in lowering the amount of luck involved in the hard battles, because i think that's the problem, if lucky your save will prevent the bad status that cripple the escape options, but if not lucky, you'll never be able to escape and all your skills will be made unavailable when you need them the most.

But as usual difficult to balance with some class/race combo then as +save items will mean less +res and less +skills , so while it will protect on one side, it may mean recieving higher damages

Starting adjacent to many enemies with all your cooldowns reset is often a huge advantage. You don't have to run the gauntlet of ranged abilities to get into range.

I think you may also get an extra turn because you didn't lose initiative walking into LoS. Who gets to make the first stun attempt can be a really big swing in combat.

Ah yes thanks for mentionning that, i didn't thought about that one, as starting in melee range without having to approach (and getting bombarded with various kind of spells/abilities) gives you indeed some important advantage you didn't had before.

And full available talents that you may have already on cooldown (or blocked depending on the status you were affected by) during the approach.

That certainly played a big role in what i experienced so often.