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Is it possible for npc's to act as allies, and die?
vindo1783
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users Posts: 4 Arc User
I am trying to make a quest where you need to protect certain points from enemy rushes and want to use npc's to help players keep the rushes of enemies away from the point to protect. My questions are is there a way to make allies fight with you/for you, and have them lose enough health to die?
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Also, check out the FAQ thread that has manuals, and lots of video tutorials to help.
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?237862-FAQ-Foundry-Tips-Manuals-Tutorials-amp-Bugs
Can these die though? I've played with encounters and they just seem to wack at each other. If this is correct then what you can do is have the NPCs disappear when the attackers are dead and have one or two NPCs become visible and have some lying down to give the illusion that all are dead but a couple of survivors.
awesome! I did not know this. so basically create a dialogue NPC have them disappear and the guard appear and follow and protect?
I did exactly this in The Lanaar Legacy, and it works exactly like you want it to. Just keep in mind that this can be tricky to balance. Imagine this situation: You have three waves of enemies coming in. Each wave will appear after the previous one has been completely destroyed. The player has a set amount of guards to help him out. When creating the battle, you balance it with the expectation that the player will manage to keep at least some of the guards alive throughout the battle, but what happens if he doesn't? What if he's playing a rogue who can't really draw aggro from groups, and all the guards die in the first wave? The second and third wave could end up being impossible.
In The Lanaar Legacy, there's two waves that attack, each one consisting of two encounters stacked on top of each other. I know I've said this is a big no-no, but in this case it works because the player has allies to take some of the punishment while he deals with targets of opportunity. During playtesting I discovered that it was very much luck- and class-based whether or not the guards even survived the first encounter. When the second wave (consisting of a hard and a standard encounter) arrived, a high-level player without any guards to help him out wouldn't stand a chance to survive. He'd be slaughtered. This was a bit of a headache. One obvious solution was to have friendly reinforcements join the battle after the first wave was done, but this would cause the opposite problem: What if the player managed to keep ALL the guards alive in the first wave? The second would become a cakewalk.
Eventually I came to the natural (but hard to reach) conclusion that players who manage to keep his defensive lines intact should be rewarded for it, but players who didn't shouldn't be punished. I brought in reinforcements. Not only that, the reinforcements are more capable than the ones you have in the first wave, which means that even if you have to rely on them alone because the first group is gone, they'll still be able to hold their own.
It worked out very well in the end, but these are questions you need to ask yourself. Don't throw waves of enemies against the player with no way for him to replenish his resources (ie. friendly guards), because you risk making later waves impossible to beat.
Zovya and Tilt are awesome!
Huh. Sometimes it really helps to talk about things.
The Sins of the Father NW-DLN6BC8NX
A Name For Yourself NW-DRBWMCFL4
Click Here To Visit The Official Thread
The Sins of the Father NW-DLN6BC8NX
A Name For Yourself NW-DRBWMCFL4
Click Here To Visit The Official Thread
NW-DJ56XFK6G
My first installment in the Rise of Shadovar Campaign.