The Purple Worm

One thing that makes the purple worm a real hassle to fight is the "whack-a-mole" flow of the fight. For melee fighters and ranged archers, it's often difficult to get anything beyond the first flurry of a round out before it pops back into the ground. And for casters, it's a headache when line of sight is constantly being broken in such a rapid manner.

If possible though, I think it may be better to have a slight delay between it getting attacked and it popping into the ground and back out.

Perhaps a 6 second delay? It's a HUGE creature after all, I don't see it being particularly quick or agile.

I actually have an opposite problem with the purple worm. For me the purple is a truly terrible beast to fight. However, because of the "whack-a-mole" aspect, it is more of a nuisance than a threat, especially to even a moderately capable fighter. I have never, with any character, been struck by a purple worm and that is a travesty.

Just my input.

I'm a little confused... you seem to be describing the same problem with the worm as I mentioned it... What am I missing that makes your view opposite?

It was late and I had beer...perhaps not my most eloquent post. In rereading your post, I think I must have been keying in on the notion of the Purple Worm as a "hassle", which i reject. I guess i merely wanted to make it clear that the worm should not be on a delay so that fighters could get off a spell or a full round of attacks, but rather so that it could do something truly terrible...like swallow one's overconfident arse whole!

See, I look at it from the entirely opposite view: every other creature in Aenea stands on the ground and lets to whack at them at your leisure. Here's a unique creature that's kind of a pain because it usually won't sit still. That's the beauty and challenge of the worm, to me.

I remember my first time seeing it, I nearly pooped my pants. It was awesome!

I agree that the worm's ability to pop up on you is a great change up its just that it almost NEVER bothers to attack you. Purple worm fights usually go as follows: purple worm pops up, PC attacks purple worm, PW flees into the ground like the gopher in Caddy Shack (except that the Caddy Shack gopher always wins and the PW almost never does). Then rinse and repeat until the worm is just so much bait for your fishing armada.

I see both sides.

In order for ranged PCs to not get frustrated with it (which I often do), it needs to stay above ground for at the least the end of the round on which it is struck.

In order for the worm to actually be effective offensively it also needs to stay above ground to attack and swallow PCs.

If all it is doing is rapid-fire borrowing and then popping up, its just a drawn out, irritating, unchallenging fight.

Ranged will have an advantage if they stick and move, yes, but the thing is colossal, it shouldbt be able to borrow/popup instantly, it should take at least a few seconds for something that big to borrow back down.

And if it stays above ground till the end of the round, while melee will get more whacks in, the worm will also be able to attack and swallow.

I think a 6 second delay makes the most sense, and may add the threat of this creature back.

I had a swarm of summoned creatures and it didn't even get the chance to eat one of them with all of the continuous attacking.

My suggestion would be to allow it to actually "walk" across the ground. It would solve the problem and also make it a seriously xangerous creature, as I believe the intention was.

I never really got the burrowing thing anyway... I mean, why can't it just push the ground out of the way to get to it's target rather than burrowing to it?

Well, allowing it to walk would look really silly... its too big to do so at any rate of speed, and it is presumably not fully exposed even when its head is above ground, so with half or more of its body underground, there is simply too much earth to push out of the way... for all its size, even the worm is not that strong. Add to that, that if it were pushing the earth out of the way, it would be moving too slow to actually be a threat, it would be creating incredibly deep trenches all over the place as well.

I think burrowing looks better, and makes much more sense.

And well, it' is a worm... big honking one, but still. Never seen a worm go sideways.

It's supposed to come crashing up from underneath to getcha. The problems with NWN is it's not easy to implement that by default.

The way has it implemented now is pretty damn good... it's just a tad too fast, leading to the 'whack-a-mole' thing.

If it were slowed down to actually be up outa ground and biting/swallowing, it would be great (for both sides of the issue.... for characters, they'd have a chance to actually wack it, especially when a party's involved, and for the worm, it would actually have a chance to eat the characters)

Another thing is, if there are available targets in melee, the worm should not burrow when struck from range. At least not 100% of the time. Maybe there could be a 20% chance or so.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll be looking into this fella sometime tonight.