Tactician difficulty

[el pepe]

I have seen a few posts claiming tactician isn't that hard. What I don't understand is that if I fail a single check and start a fight the whole party is dead within the first turn. If I take the same fight with better positioning I can win but it takes a long time disengage to hide etc. Making a single mistake for me in tactician usually results in a wipe or having to use a ♥♥♥♥ ton of consumables and being even slightly out of position is enough to cause a wipe on big pulls.

What I want to know is what people are running for classes etc that is somehow making the instawipe scenario " not that hard " ? I enjoy the level of difficulty and every fight in combat can be won but I cant help but think the people who are calling tactician easy aren't actually playing it or are switching to normal for hard parts.

Its true that normal fights of like 5-7 mobs are easy and pretty routine but anything 10-12 starts getting gnarly and the amount of times Ive died from pulling 20 due to check fail is alot.

I killed the entire exterior of the goblin camp in 1 giant pull and it was at least 30 goblins and a big dude and it was hard af, how can people say that its easy?

[el pepe]

Originally posted by 把光荣属于俄罗斯:

you are in act 1. encounters are somwhat balanced until you hit lvl 4-5 where full faceroll mode starts. your melee now gets 2 attacks. Your mage gets fireball and also haste.

Now instead of 1 attack your melee can do it 4 times. + surge+ crit if fighter=6.

what thats broken, yeah im lvl 4 first zone

Originally posted by Ashy:

Positioning is huge in this game and not using it is handicapping yourself.

yeah from what ive seen so far the entire game is basically movement

[Elfie]

yeah from what ive seen so far the entire game is basically movement

Until level 5, it is about "survive and gain exp by any means possible", after lvl 5 its steamroll.

As soon as you get fireball on mages and understand how multiattack on fighters work the difficulty is basically no more.

[Cat]

Tactician is mostly hard early on before you get proper gear and your build comes online more, after that it becomes smooth sailing, I've been playing two games at once, one as a paladin on normal and another as a sorcerer on tactician, it's rough at times on the sorcerer, but she's not only more squishy but also has to deal with resources more, early game was the roughest and some enemies were outright killing my party in 2 turns, but once you get past that it was not much different from normal mode, just some enemies are stronger or have more health.

I don't use any cheese either, no stealth abuse, no barrelmancy or stuff of that nature, I just play to my class strength and try my best to use the party in a way that plays off each other. It really helps that sorcerer can twin cast haste however.

[把光荣属于俄罗斯]

+

Originally posted by Ronald Mcnoggin:

Originally posted by 把光荣属于俄罗斯:

you are in act 1. encounters are somwhat balanced until you hit lvl 4-5 where full faceroll mode starts. your melee now gets 2 attacks. Your mage gets fireball and also haste.

Now instead of 1 attack your melee can do it 4 times. + surge+ crit if fighter=6.

what thats broken, yeah im lvl 4 first zone

Originally posted by Ashy:

Positioning is huge in this game and not using it is handicapping yourself.

yeah from what ive seen so far the entire game is basically movement

+ i forgot to add that you also can get 2d illitid ability which is called luck of something - guarantee crit chance after ussual roll - after every long rest you literally can crit anyone once = boss.

bear in mind that you melee weapon bonus crit with everything youv got- so weapon damage gonna crit. 1-4d fire enchant also gonna crit. something like poison also gonna crit. Now imagine you have 2 melee that can hit 4-6 times with haste and also have that ability = gg.

just wait for lvl 5.

you also wont affect game ending/your look just by eating 2 illitid parasites.

[Terron]

I depend a lot on my mc (barbarian) and Laizel as fighter while buffing everyone with shadowheart (bless spell always. keep bless up) and then some magic missiles and stuff from gale. Honestly gale has been making the least impact for me in battles until he learned haste which is what I keep him around for now really lol. Haste and magic missile. The odd teleport too to high ground. This has got me through every battle pretty well. I have For the githanki bridge fight I made them all chase me up the ladder and pushed some of them off as well as summoned those 3 giant orcs to help.

[SickFish]

I died a lot early and really had to pick my battles. My MC monk still gets flatlined in a fair number of fights. But the Gith fighter has staying power with Heavy Armor Mastery, and I made the Tiefling Bear totem Barbarian. Between them they are really hard to kill and put out great damage the whole time. Level 4 is when fights stopped killing me all the time, and level 5 is when I could take fights at a disadvantage and still come out on top.

[totallyTim]

I don't actually think the game was meant to be played in Tactician mode, because 2/3 of spells are just not worth using due to their low chance to hit and low amount things that can be targeted with them.

I really like the fantasy of spells like Hold Person or Tasha's Hideous Laughter, but the only chance I actually got to use them was for "fun" when I was already winning and cleaning up. And even that felt like a waste of resources, because its usually a 60% chance the spells will do their job or you just lost a turn. You usually can't afford the latter on Tactician.

So the best strategy is the one which either lets you (or forces them) make multiple rolls for the cost of a single action, or just straight up works without rng. At the same time you want to make them waste their actions on things that don't kill you, like movement.

The only thing that I found that works reliably is running away into some sort of a chokepoint, dropping slows/blinds/silences behind you, making enemies walk through all that and not being able to hit you while you stand at the edge of your crap field and finishing them off before they reach you. You can use your STR characters or a Warlock to push enemies back if they get too close and use line of sight if they have multiple ranged options.

So basically only things like Spike Growth, Darkness, Hunger of Hadar, or similar for control and your big aoe hitters like Fireball, Wall of Fire, etc.
A well placed upcast Command spell can also come in handy if you get completely surrounded. It's actually ironic that Command is usually a superior version of CC compared to most other abilities since you can target more things earlier due to upcasts.

So that works really well. Too well actually, so it kinda trivialises fights. But the alternative is to pray to rng and/or chug speed potions.

Too bad everything else feels completely inferior to straight up damage. Enemies being dead is the best crowd control. Also you probably shouldn't bring a full healer like a Life Cleric. Enemies being dead is also the best form of healing. I respeced my Cleric to Light, so she's throwing out Fireballs after she casts Bless and Spiritual weapon. Some healing does come in handy if you can do it with a bonus Action and have extra healing trinkets, but the optimal way to heal is with throwing Healing potions outside of combat and short resting, because nothing will outheal 3 enemies focusing one of your party members.

If you still aren't able to win fights with that you can try thinning out the herd with something like Minor Illusion to lure enemies to ledges and pushing them off the cliff with your STR character while in stealth.

Regarding ambushes, a neat trick is to enter stealth once you see your party all failing perception checks and looking around the map for creatures. Most of them aren't invisible, so you can ambush them back.

While all of that feels kinda cheesy, I haven't found another way to beat content on Tactician, so I stick with that.

If I ever play this game again, it'll have to be with someone less experienced, on Balanced difficulty and letting them do most of the decisions, while I can roleplay as a class that can actually make use of most of their spells in some meaningful way without risking a wipe on every turn.

[Chroniver]

You can do certain things that make the game a lot easier and work very well in tactician like:

1) Don't always (actually almost never) take the direct path when you see a hard encounter coming up. There is usually an indirect path that allows you to get the high ground etc.

2) Engage the encounter with one stealthed character delinked with the rest of the party also in stealth. They will be surprised and you can then carefully move characters into the best positions.

3) Summoned creatures and weapons are also buffed in tactician and you can use them easily to distract a number of enemies while you kill the rest.

4) Make sure you utilize the action economy, one you get a few classes with extra attack you can snowball hard. Also potion of speed or potion of bloodlust can be huge.

In short: use the advantages that the game throws you.

[totallyTim]

Also for a small boost you can try redistributing your companions ability points and even yours if you clicked the auto button on creation.
A lot of them have odd values, which are useless. There is no difference for example between 16 or 17 INT, you you can stick to 16 and respec again later if you find some +1 gear. A wizard also probably doesn't need 10 STR which can be lowered to 8, which then maybe lets you stick 2-4 extra points of DEX that improves your AC, or even CON for extra Concentration interrupt resistance.

[Lucid]

Originally posted by ACS36:

Most of the difficulty is loaded into RNG and big swings. Other than that, there really isn't any challenge to the game and the difficulty settings are practically meaningless.

The differences between balanced and tactician are very minimal. You're talking about like 10% chance to be hit or miss. BAD luck can feel like difficulty in the game, but it really isn't.

Increasing to tactician doesn't do the following things.
-It does not Increase enemy HP
-It does not Increase the number of enemies you face
-It does not increase the level of enemies.
-It does not Increase AI competence, they still attack targets relatively randomly and won't focus fire the most vulnerable targets. Some people claim the AI focuses the more vulnerable party member but that's not the behavior I've witnessed.

then what does it do?

[AzureTheGamerKobold]

then your doing something wrong... I am personally walking all over Tactican without issues. Having the right build, the right tactics, and know how is pretty important. Just as an example ...and warning... spoilers below.

My Tempest Cleric/Storm Sorcerer, managed to one shot the Spectator boss in 1 turn ending the encounter before it ever started. All it took was a bottle of water, and a decent initiative.

Just be sure your respecing your companions, and at least fixing there ♥♥♥♥ stats distribution, and changing the classes when needed. don't be afraid to min/max a bit you'll probably need it on tactician. Knowing 5e helps alot...

[meleander]

Originally posted by Ronald Mcnoggin:

I have seen a few posts claiming tactician isn't that hard. What I don't understand is that if I fail a single check and start a fight the whole party is dead within the first turn. If I take the same fight with better positioning I can win but it takes a long time disengage to hide etc. Making a single mistake for me in tactician usually results in a wipe or having to use a ♥♥♥♥ ton of consumables and being even slightly out of position is enough to cause a wipe on big pulls.

What I want to know is what people are running for classes etc that is somehow making the instawipe scenario " not that hard " ? I enjoy the level of difficulty and every fight in combat can be won but I cant help but think the people who are calling tactician easy aren't actually playing it or are switching to normal for hard parts.

Its true that normal fights of like 5-7 mobs are easy and pretty routine but anything 10-12 starts getting gnarly and the amount of times Ive died from pulling 20 due to check fail is alot.

I killed the entire exterior of the goblin camp in 1 giant pull and it was at least 30 goblins and a big dude and it was hard af, how can people say that its easy?

Well because for some it is easy.

For me it is easy too, just tiresome and grindy - I run an assassin Drow + heavy crossbow, which means my Sneak attack deals between 11 to 35 damage per shot. And a shot agaisnt a surprised creature is always a critical hit. So image that I can deal to around 30 to 90 damage (so around 60 on average) before the enemy has a chance to move. And because I can hide every time I do Sneak Attack, it means I do around 20 damage per turn without any retaliation.

[Damphair]

It was definitely a challenge for my first playthrough, got a lot easier after act 2 though. Played as barb, shadowheart as trickster cleric (took me along while before i respecced) and swapped between gale/wyll and karlach as fighter and astorian. Now on my second playthrough I play as a bard and I'm acing through act 1, think it's just that I learned more about spells, advantage and positioning. And I'm not cheesing, I barely even start from stealth. I usually just run in with all my guys into a fight unless I fear that someone's gonna AoE us all down if they roll higher initiative.

If you're in a difficult fight and you feel like you're losing straight away, try doing what you can to stay in the fight as long as you can. Then when you re-load you're gonna have a much better plan for what ''not'' to do, and you will know what kinda spells your enemies have and their positioning.

[Scorpion]

In the immortal words of the Dark Souls crew.
Git gud

But seriously, if you find it frustrating then knock the difficulty down. No one is forcing you and your coming here to whine about it which makes you look like a doofus.

Also a lot of the advice here in this thread is right on, correct party comp of classes that work well together + some tactical thinking pretty much covers everything.

Im doing a normal run right now with a paladin 2hander oath of vengeance, the barbarian tiefling as my tank (she has a flail that heals her + a shield since my mc covers 2hander) backed up by shadowheart and gale. None of them are multiclassed.
At level 5 the game has gotten pretty faceroll.
Im looking forward to my next playthrough on tactician but am going to finish this first one as is, normal with no karmic dice and no save scumming.

TLDR: if you whine expect to be told to git gud ;) its the correct response

[meleander]

Originally posted by Scorpion:

In the immortal words of the Dark Souls crew.
Git gud

But seriously, if you find it frustrating then knock the difficulty down. No one is forcing you and your coming here to whine about it which makes you look like a doofus.

Also a lot of the advice here in this thread is right on, correct party comp of classes that work well together + some tactical thinking pretty much covers everything.

Im doing a normal run right now with a paladin 2hander oath of vengeance, the barbarian tiefling as my tank (she has a flail that heals her + a shield since my mc covers 2hander) backed up by shadowheart and gale. None of them are multiclassed.
At level 5 the game has gotten pretty faceroll.
Im looking forward to my next playthrough on tactician but am going to finish this first one as is, normal with no karmic dice and no save scumming.

TLDR: if you whine expect to be told to git gud ;) its the correct response

From my perspective people want to be good players, even when they are not.

So instead of thinking "gosh, I am a bad player if I can't beat normal difficulty", then prefer to defend their egos and think "I am a GODLY player, with a GODLY skills, EXPERIENCED, AWESOME, etc, but this games is just too hard, they need to make it easier, because I lose, and we know I can't, because I'm so AWESOME".