Posted June 09, 2016
dtgreene: IMO, the problem isn't really the shield; it's more the fact that they populated an entire cave with just one enemy type, and that enemy type happens to be weak against that particular shield.
It wouldn't seem so unbalanced if the following changes were made:
1. Beholder caves don't *just* contain beholders. Put other monsters in there.
2. Beholders should have attacks that *aren't* their reflectable rays.
3. The shield's AC bonus be made lower, so you would have to accept a lower AC if you want the shield's protection.
4. The shield made cursed, so you would have to cast a Remove Curse spell to remove it. (Really, the game seems to have a lack of cursed items that are actually worth equipping; contrast this with Wizardry 8, which has many cursed items that are actually rather tempting (and actually worth using).)
Yes, good suggestions; I'm not really familiar with D&D lore though...do beholders actually get along with other monsters? Do they have servants? It wouldn't seem so unbalanced if the following changes were made:
1. Beholder caves don't *just* contain beholders. Put other monsters in there.
2. Beholders should have attacks that *aren't* their reflectable rays.
3. The shield's AC bonus be made lower, so you would have to accept a lower AC if you want the shield's protection.
4. The shield made cursed, so you would have to cast a Remove Curse spell to remove it. (Really, the game seems to have a lack of cursed items that are actually worth equipping; contrast this with Wizardry 8, which has many cursed items that are actually rather tempting (and actually worth using).)
Not sure if lower AC bonus would have that much of an effect, after all you can easily switch to a shield with high ac bonus if you fight against dangerous melee opponents, so you'd have to give beholders a powerful melee attack as well (do they have that in D&D?).
But those beholder caves (iirc there are two in the game) really aren't that great...either a breeze with that overpowered shield, or extremely difficult. I usually did only the important quest-related stuff in them, killed the beholders that were in the way for that and left the rest alone.
Another item I really disliked is the cloak of mirroring...that one was laughably overpowered as well.