Class Challenges

[Alamara]

I'm looking to createst a few challenges for players in Diablo again. Basically, I want to have 2 or 3 for each class. A task for Sorcerer and a Warrior follow, but if anyone else has something to do that requires more manual and tactical skill than that of relentlessness, I'd love to hear them.

Sorcerer: Hardcore Naked Mage. Get a solo dot. (Perhaps 2dot or 3dot, as well. Thane's gotten pretty close, and he's the expert on this variant.) You may not use jewels to increase your magic to 255+. If your life ever becomes a problem, regarding the hp bug, immediately put on a Ring of the Life or Lion series. If it's still a problem, pause until you can find items that add more life. If you are at the point where you are being stunned, I'm prettty sure that a Cap of the Whale isn't going to do much of a difference with +3 AC. However, if you notice that your life drops below what it should be at, IE: you have 80 life, use two +60 rings of the Lion, and after an encounter find yourself at 100 life after having MS break, you lose. Also, when leaving a game, you must be in town. No exploiting "Quit Game" when your poor skills get yourself stunlocked.

Warrior: Hardcore Barbarian. Get a solo dot. For those of you who don't know the Barbarian variant, it means that you don't use any magic or any magical (or unique) equipment. IE: Full Plate Mail is fine, but a Cap of Strength isn't. Repair item is fine, but a Firebolt isn't. I know of four Barbarians who together got 3rd dots, but that task is nearly impossible. Perhaps allow Barbarians to play with each other to try for 2nd and 3rd dots? Again, no quitting except from town.

Rogue: I've been thinking on this one a lot, and the only thing that I can come up with is a Hardcore Plain Short Bow-Only Rogue, and that seems like it would be too easy even then to single dot. Perhaps get this variant 2 dots? That would be much more of a challenge because stun would be near impossible without loads of elixer pumping. Again, no quitting except from town.

Any: Cave-In Ironman. I still haven't heard of anyone winning the game this way, which leads me to believe that almost all Ironman victories came from the (ab)use of a Purifying Sping or Blood Fountain, which is pretty sad. For those of you who don't know the rules of Cave-In Ironman: http://p205.ezboard.com/fthedsfcommunityfr...opicID=11.topic

All of these characters should be played Legitimate (duh.), Purist and solo to a point. If you want to co-op with a friend, as long as he isn't stone cursing every other monster, it's fine. During a dot attempt, however, only the player should be present for levels 13-16. Basically, play the variant as it's intended, to provide the most challenge.

All of the aforementioned characters are Hardcore, meaning that once they die, they should be deleted and restarted. Again, feel free to provide more challenges to instill some life into this game. =)

(EDIT: Added Link.)

[Kay]

Well, my point is that if you are so bored of classic Diablo gameplay, try playing something else, don't be a hmm... hardcore pervert;)

[Griselda]

Well, my point is that if you are so bored of classic Diablo gameplay, try playing something else, don't be a hmm... hardcore pervert;)

Gameplay? I still really like classic Diablo's combat system. It's so clean and responsive. The problem is that the game in its regular form isn't too difficult. So, many of us need to add additional challenges to get the challenge we seek within the combat system we prefer.

I've recently gone back to playing a team non-variant game, team pure, 2 wars and 2 blue rogues. Our drops have been lousy enough that we're still feeling pretty gimpy, even at clvl 32. We just cleard Hell/Caves, but Hell will probably be a different story. So, it's not newsworthy stuff, and we're not breaking new ground, but it has been fun.:)

[Sekel]

Any: Cave-In Ironman. I still haven't heard of anyone winning the game this way, which leads me to believe that almost all Ironman victories came from the (ab)use of a Purifying Sping or Blood Fountain, which is pretty sad. For those of you who don't know the rules of Cave-In Ironman: http://p205.ezboard.com/fthedsfcommunityfr...opicID=11.topic

I know about 5 people who did it. 2 teams. Both games are still unfinished. And not played for months. Problem that you havent heard about winners of Cave-In IM is not about lack of winners, but because of lack of storytellers.

[Alamara]

I know that it's possible, I'd like to know if you think that is an equal challenge to a bow-only Rogue 2dotting, if you think some of the variant rules should be modified, or even better, any other challenging variants that you think are a near degree of difficulty. Make some up, it's not like there's an age limit of "new ideas" for Diablo.

Critiquing is great, but those are minor comments of mine that you are critiquing, not the main ideas of the variants.

[Merlinios]

Barbarian--clarify a little on the magic. Scrolls? Staves? Spells on scrolls which are not normally available as spells (and could thus be defined by a few as non-spells). If this is going to be a competition and not a friendly invitation to have some fun (not sure which way you're leaning yet) make sure everything is well-defined HERE, not in some long-lost literature that most aficionados know about, but the odd person out won't.

Rogue--Not a hell of a lot of experience here, so I'm not sure how much is possible nor what makes things difficult.
-Barbarian/Minimage choice at the beginning (Either all magic/no attacks or vice-versa)
-No hand slots (no weapon/shield--or alternatively, something like staves only), maybe restrict armor as well?

Well those dried up fast.

Mage--Seems alright, but you may want to implement a couple more as there are plenty of hard-to-start mage variants.
-Muscle Mage (breaking my own clarification rule for the sake of brevity, here)
-Live off the Land (harder than naked with bad book spawns)
-Spell restrictions (No Stone Curse, Fireball, Chain Lightning, etc.--get 3 dots)
-Alternative to spell restrictions; restrict magic schools--no Fire, etc.

Obviously all can be hardcore or not, depending on how difficult you want this. Just trying for some more diverse ideas here. Lemme know how easy/hard you want in comparison to these.

--me

Edit: and there's of course the Hardcore Beyond Naked Mage that we're all thinking about but no one has said out loud yet. I'm saying it.

[Alamara]

Barbarian--clarify a little on the magic. Scrolls? Staves? Spells on scrolls which are not normally available as spells (and could thus be defined by a few as non-spells). If this is going to be a competition and not a friendly invitation to have some fun (not sure which way you're leaning yet) make sure everything is well-defined HERE, not in some long-lost literature that most aficionados know about, but the odd person out won't.

Rogue--Not a hell of a lot of experience here, so I'm not sure how much is possible nor what makes things difficult.
-Barbarian/Minimage choice at the beginning (Either all magic/no attacks or vice-versa)
-No hand slots (no weapon/shield--or alternatively, something like staves only), maybe restrict armor as well?

Mage--Seems alright, but you may want to implement a couple more as there are plenty of hard-to-start mage variants.
-Muscle Mage (breaking my own clarification rule for the sake of brevity, here)
-Live off the Land (harder than naked with bad book spawns)
-Spell restrictions (No Stone Curse, Fireball, Chain Lightning, etc.--get 3 dots)
-Alternative to spell restrictions; restrict magic schools--no Fire, etc.

Obviously all can be hardcore or not, depending on how difficult you want this. Just trying for some more diverse ideas here. Lemme know how easy/hard you want in comparison to these.

--me

Edit: and there's of course the Hardcore Beyond Naked Mage that we're all thinking about but no one has said out loud yet. I'm saying it.

As for the Barbarian, I was thinking that TP/ID scrolls are legal, all others are not, and no staves are legal at all. To the matter of competition or fun, of course it could be either, but I think that the community is far too small for there to be a true tournament of sorts. Take a look at the IM tourney. =o

There's a few of your ideas that I like a lot, but I'll start by critiquing the ones that I don't. =D

For a Rogue, it's near impossible to use purely magic and stay a purist. You'd have to run around levels until you found bookcases, and would likely end up trapped in a room, (where you couldn't legally quit). To use no weapon seems like it would be a fun, but not so challenging variant. How well you did would really depend on the armor that you find (or take the time to find), directing the game away from skill-oriented gaming, towards purely time consuming play.

Restricting magic schools just makes the play take longer. Imagine a Sorcerer in hell/hell versus advocates. Has anyone really ever died to them because of the time/mana it takes to SC them? Also, this variant is very easy to start, given that you initially have two schools in any case.

HCBNM is pointless because it would essentially need to be supplied or would just end up exactly the same as a normal sorcerer. If I used, say a "Dull Mace" that I might have found, it would probably make it even easier, as I could see the AC from "Armor of Tears" being very useful early on.

Feel free to respond, I'm certainly not perfect in my theorying and may have missed something. I'll move on to the others that I see as playable, though:

An LOL Sorcerer is harder than naked for sure at first, but I imagine that you could get some 200 charges out of the starting staff, if recharged wisely. Still, I think that I'd need to test this or talk to someone experienced with it to know how hard it is in the later levels. This somewhat leans towards the playtime issue aforementioned, but not too much so, because of how challenging I believe it would be to start and finish.

Muscle Mage (if by that you mean no spells/staves.. again I'll extend the use of TP/ID scrolls as okay) is definitely a viable playstyle. I could see it being very challenging in the last levels. This one checks out for me even if not hardcore. Item recoveries could be quite some trouble without dying a few successive times. =D

Spell restrictions is good by me. After some though, I think that saying a Sorcerer can use page one and page two spells/scrolls only (yes, no mana shield), plus an added restriction of Stone Curse. That gives a spell choice of each type. This would very much require that he be skilled at melee enemy activation as well, and it would be pretty funny to almost recommend that a variant use Holy Bolt on Diablo. =p

I'd prefer to see all of these hardcore, just because it's rather easy to beat Diablo non-hardcore. I've done a 3@30 with a character that should have been far from able just by SC'ing and killing a few monsters every time I went down, and having some 150,000 gold stockpiled for potions.


Thanks for the input. =)

[Griselda]

For anybody who's interested, this is where you can find the rules for many of the Classic Diablo variants. That's not to say that you can't alter the rules to suit your desired challenge, but there's no need to reinvent the wheel if you're not interested in doing so.

[Nystul]

Warrior: BAR is a nice variant... simple, to the point, and very tactic oriented. You can forget about nightmare or hell difficulty with a hardcore-style BAR, in my opinion. It is certainly viable for normal difficulty, and if you completed the king's quest without the character dying at any point in his career that would be quite an accomplishment. But hell difficulty requires a team effort of 3-4 BARs, and I can't really imagine pulling it off without anyone dying. Nightmare 16 isn't much better, although the enemies at least don't hit you as hard.

Sorcerer: When I was at the point you are at, trying to invent a fine-tuned challenge to keep the game interesting, I invented the Geezer: http://realmsbeyond.net/diablo/vgeezer.html Of course, I have to plug my own variant any time I can. The rules are certainly more complicated than a BAR or NM, but they aren't that bad as variants go. I never envisioned playing a Geezer as a hardcore-style character. You would be playing on a razor's edge, but it might be viable. You could prevent one-hit kills from anyone except hell/hell Diablo.

I did try a Beyond Naked Geezer for a while. I would say that is plenty challenging. I was able to get 2 dots with that character, but found that hell spawn, soulburners, and advocates were almost impossible to kill on hell difficulty.

[Merlinios]

The point of the weaponless rogue was to elliminate both range and blocking. I suppose this will still be fairly easy if you find an appropriate plate. So restrict that, too, if necessary. Jewelry only? It's been a looong time since I hauled out a serious Rogue variant. And since my hard drive is dead at the moment (I keep meaning to get that fixed, but I usually just waste time here instead), I won't be testing any time soon.

Good call on straight-magic rogue limitations. You could inject a few solutions there, or simply say she's only allowed to pump magic, and once it's maxed, not allowed to use physical attacks (though that's a bit harsh for the triple immunes if you can make it that far).

Howsabout a sorceror who can only use scrolls and staff charges? I don't know how viable that is, but it'd make for some interesting play, and probably a stockpile of extra staves between games. Gonna have to ban Apocalypse as well. Soul burners would be fun. Rod of Onan interchanged with Staff of Stone Curse. And you can finally drink from those Cauldrons (I guess not if Mana Shield staves are legal.).

--me