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There are a few things on Holy head that raise concern for me so here we go.

1. The elves and drow don't seem to fight each other when in the same room which is always kind of weird ICly.

2. The drow priestesses seem to have code on them to heal themselves outside of the combat delay which kind of makes things a little unbalanced when you consider the types of spells the priestesses especially are capable of using. I heard from others that spells like dark bolt and sand storm aren't even in the game anymore for PCs which whether true or not isn't really the issue as such. Its more that the combination of an endless supply of stun+damage spell + no delay healing makes them hard to beat in a way player's can't do anything about without being tricky in some way.

I'd argue that removing the no delay heal and having the drow priestesses actually cast heal would make them just as hard, but in a way that PCs have a non tricky way of dealing with.

If the two sides were constantly battling one another then who would you fight when you showed up? The majority of NPCs would be dead upon a PC's arrival. The two sides will fight now to a limited degree, but it is limited in order to keep the area useful.

I would be interested to hear the general consensus on your second point. I have never felt that these mobiles were particularly challenging above and beyond the general challenge of the area.

2. The drow priestesses seem to have code on them to heal themselves outside of the combat delay which kind of makes things a little unbalanced when you consider the types of spells the priestesses especially are capable of using. I heard from others that spells like dark bolt and sand storm aren't even in the game anymore for PCs which whether true or not isn't really the issue as such. Its more that the combination of an endless supply of stun+damage spell + no delay healing makes them hard to beat in a way player's can't do anything about without being tricky in some way.

I would think that, from an IC perspektive, only capable and somewhat powerful priestesses are sent up to lead invading armies like those on Holyhead, their abilities seem in accordance with that. The number of priestesses is quite transparent, too. Considering the general level of difficulty of the area, I do not think the priestesses are above that. They can be dealt with by applying a bit of a tactic of engaging them in combat first of all other mobs, since they are the biggest danger. The Darkbolts they cast can really hurt, but personally I did not have many troubles engaging them alone with my paladin. Though, if an area is too tough for a single PC, one can always bring friends.

Harroghty wrote:
I would be interested to hear the general consensus on your second point. I have never felt that these mobiles were particularly challenging above and beyond the general challenge of the area.

I would have to agree, they are a good challenge, but not overly so for the area. As long as you are prepared and do a little thinking before hand, they are manageable.

It might just be easier to put elves in their own region of the area and drow in the other and keep them apart. Drow on the surface invasion or otherwise is speculative, they come out of the Underdark in parties and are mobile, therefore elves would only venture now and then into regions of issue and not live in them.

yeah, i was hoping the elves and drow would just be kept seperate to be honest.

My issue with the out of combat healing is probably just a personal quirk of preferring to play on a level playing field even againstNPCs I guess. And Like I said previous, remming that particular code and having them just cast heal would probably make them harder. So ease isn't my issue either.

If I could chime in on issue #1, I feel it's a stylistic choice in area design.

There are "active" areas, and "passive" areas in mud design.

Most areas are passive in that the creatures live there and the adventurer comes to them. Howling Peak, Rat Hill, etc.

Holyhead is an example of an active area in that there is something going on. There is a raid happening. The drow don't live there ... they've shown up to raid.

From an immersion perspective, active areas are more difficult for the player to suspend disbelief over time. Consider the standing joke of the merchant prisoners in Howling Peak. Haven't we all pretty much said "You got captured AGAIN?" or "Look, more merchants have been captured." We come up with our own IC explanations why those guys are still there after having been freed thousands of times.

In addition, you have the technical concerns of mobs fighting mobs without player presence. CPU cycles to track combat would be consumed which would benefit nobody. Plus, when you show up to fight ... one side or the other has killed all the mobs so you'd be waiting for zone reset and then racing to get as many kills as possible before the other NPC mobs did it.

I like the priestess' as is - because the more they heal the more fat exp I get. I mean. Because of Aramil's very good point!

The elves vs drow thing is kind of a cosmetic fuss, those kind of get my goat. There's better things for our builders to do. If they did something like set the elf's long to "An elf is defending from drow here" then cosmetic fussing would complain there's no drow there. Imagination is a huge part of playing on a roleplay MUD and that fact seems to be super forgotten in suggestions lately.