Super Mutant DT

[JaxFirehart]

@Kainschylde have you fought any of the behemoths in TTW? Maybe 500 is too much of a nerf, but the Legendary Deathclaw is 1000HP 15DT, and the Deathclaw Alpha Male is 750HP 15DT. So the behemoth, as it sits, is twice as durable as a LEGENDARY Deathclaw. Now that I look at it, though, the behemoth only does 33 damage... that's ridiculously low.

If I drop the behemoth down to 750 and 20DT plus boost its damage to like 100, it puts it on par with the LEgendary for durability and a standard deathclaw for damage.

I'm doing it, will keep it optional for the time being.

[WizardOfAtlantis]

Shouldn't a behemoth do more damage than a (at least a normal) deathclaw? It's, like, maybe two times (or more) a deathclaw's size and armed with a fire hydrant mace. A fire-hydrant-mace. :O

The fallout wikia nv has a deathclaw at 125 dmg and an alpha male at 300. I know the deathclaw hand is magical and mystical, but....a fire hydrant mace...

Or maybe you could give the fire hydrant mace armor piercing capabilities? That would be historically accurate, from a mace point of view. Maces were very effective against all forms of armor because the force penetrated. Blows like that would cave in plate armor, pass right through chainmail (or equivalents), and deal much more damage to armor-wearing opponents than a bladed weapon would (like a deathclaw's claw). When swords were used against armored opponents, the gaps in the armor were sought out because the armor itself (even chain, with a gambeson/padding) was good at stopping the blow, especially plate-based armors. Swords were often used in two-hands with a hand reinforcing the point, and used like a short stabbing spear because they were so ineffective against plate.

So, if the Behemoth could have armor piercing capabilities, that might balance its attack out, imo. Is that possible? Too much of a change?

[JaxFirehart]

Actually giving it armor piercing might be a pain in the ass, and honestly, the only reason I'm not suggesting boosting its damage to ridiculous levels is because that might ruin FO3 gameplay.

[TrickyVein]

Isn't it safe to assume that if a behemoth connects a blow with the PC - whether if it's with a fire-hydrant or not - then the player is killed, dead? It doesn't matter what armor you're wearing. Would you really expect to come out of the other side of a melee fight with a behemoth alive??? Is that reasonable? Vanilla Fallout 3 gameplay doesn't include a-lot of hand-to-hand smackdowns with behemoths. And when it does, you can expect that you're gonna die.

I did notice how much increased health the behemoths have when a direct hit with the fat man didn't even make a dent in it's health-bar. Seemed a tad ridiculous when I went to GNR.

Broken steel added unreasonably tough enemies. The albino radscorpion. The overlord and the ghoul reaver - at some point, enemies that are too difficult to kill, when it defies logic that even a mini-nuke doesn't do enough damage to take one out - it just makes the game not fun. The player's expectation is trashed. These enemies aren't uncommon either for higher-level players.

Right now, I feel like the vault 87 super mutants's DT is almost exactly where it should be, considering New Vegas's gameplay and not vanilla Fallout 3 gameplay - but the player doesn't encounter Mariposa and 2nd gen SMs in the Mojave with nearly the same frequency as they do the vault 87 SMs in the CW. 

The justification for using the same stats for both kinds of supermutants doesn't take this into account.

[Risewild]

I still have not that much problems with SM in DC I mean they do kill me sometimes but not that much... Well I do agree that punching things in FNV is overpowered and I do punch things but I also just send my RL-3 ahead to attract the enemy attention and then I close by and punch it to a red gruesome pulp.

But I do agree that having to empty several magazines with your weapon just to kill a normal SM is annoying, Jax idea seems quite balanced to me.

I usually fail in terms of balancing the game so I really have no good ideas to help with sorry.

[sesom]

I know that balance discussions are endless and I try to avoid them as much as I can.

Ok here my opinion on the muties. The balance in FO3 is different then in NV because muties are there a common monster. While you in NV  don't find much of them you get the full dose of mutie power in FO3. This is something that has to be taken account when balancing the mod.

Form my experience is in TTW killing mutants about 2 to 3 times harder then in vanilla FO3. It was slightly to much for my taste. Slightly. Not so with the Behemoths they felt about the same. I have to admit I don't let this guys near me and don't get any damage of them in my playthroughs. But my opinion is that the Deathclaw is still the ultimate  Fallout monster and it should be.

Sure TTW is FO3 under the NV engine and should be considered as expansion to NV but I think the normal mutants (not Behemoths) are a bit to hard for the intended balance of the game.

[JaxFirehart]

Sesom, your reasoning is the same as mine, though I would still like to tweak the Behemoths, I agree they felt the same.

[plumjuice]

"There are more of them so make them weaker" doesn't feel right to me. If they are to be weakened (and it should still be only ever so slightly imo) it would sit better in my mind if there was a more in-depth explanation.

Not to say I don't now have issues trying to get to GNR at say level 5 or whatever, but to be perfectly honest, I felt that SM's were painfully weak in F03. I always felt the game pitted you against SM's, especially a behemoth, far too early, even more so when all the brotherhood ever talks about is how tough they were. Even with FWE, I remember easily dealing with the handfull of SM's when you first meet Sarah Lyons, and was bemused at the whole "Lucky we were here to save you, huh?" thing.

[Her Imperious Condescention]

All I have to say for that is to pay attention to lore, and if you feel the need to, nerf with caution; after all, the Brotherhood has a hard time with them, and I don't expect the PC to just plow through them when he first meets them. But if I tried to nerf those frankensteins, here's how I'd do it:

[collapsed title=Super Mutant Stats]

Super Mutant:

• 
  Health: 100 (keep it as it is)


• 
  DT: 15 --> 10

Super Mutant Brute:

• 
  Health: 260 --> 150


• 
  DT: 15 --> 12

Super Mutant Master:

• 
  Health: 350 --> 225


• 
  DT: 15 (keep it as it is)

Super Mutant Overlord:

• 
  Health: 800 --> 350


• 
  DT: 15 --> 18-20

Super Mutant Behemoth:

• 
  Health: 2000 --> 1200 (behemoths should be able to at least take a mininuke and live)


• 
  DT: 15 --> 20-25

[/collapsed]

Just dropping my 2 cents.

[JaxFirehart]

I agree, using the excuse "there are more of them" isn't the best excuse. It truly is the only reason why they need a nerf, though. The fact that they are rarely encountered in NV means they didn't need to be balanced with lowbies in mind. Now I agree, the brotherhood talks about them like they are scary shit, and they were in the original games as well, but Vault 87 and Mariposa are different experiments. Both use FEV and both create super mutants, but who knows what differences there may be? Consider this: Marcus, from FO2, is at least a hundred years old in FNV and he is described as elderly in FO2, so we can assume he is older still, but he is still just a normal sized super mutant, not an overlord or behemoth. This highlights a key difference between Mariposa Super Mutants and V87 Super Mutants, the V87 ones may start out weaker, but they also never really stop growing.