>>5880357Having mocked dnd systems, I should say I did complete the Aielund saga, the entirely free and fanmade user huge full campaign expansion for the old Bioware Neverwinter Nights game. It is the most cliched stereotypical dnd formula ever (yes the aliens and flying cities come out) and of course in the end you become a planeswalker demigod, which is usually the narrative I hate most in rpgs lol
There was one fight which I thought was extremely well designed. You can see it in the "Southern Slopes" section of the walkthrough here
https://lilura1.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-aielund-saga-act-three-part-v.htmland again here
https://lilura1.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-aielund-saga-act-three-part-vii.html though the screenshots do not really convey what is happening.
When you first traverse this area (it is re-done in a sort of ice / snow tileset for the updated Enhanced Edition of the game) there are a band of halfling archers, they are not too strong but are really annoying, there is some clever game scripting that means they shoot you once or twice with their shortbows and then run away, then stop and repeat, fleeing and shooting back making you chase them down the snowy mountains.
I did not think much of this encounter, it was a minor nuisance as it is hard to kill those hit-and-run halfling archers. I just remembered the tileset was really pretty, the snow mountains led down to an ice ravine with a single wooden log fallen tree bridge across a chasm as a chokepoint
Later on in the endgame section of this 3rd Chapter out of 4, the city is under siege and you are desperately rushing back to bring reinforcements.
The Invincible EVIL ONE chases you out of the desert, back to the snow mountain pass where you were harassed by those annoying guerilla halfling archers.
Across that same wooden bridge snow chasm, he nonstop spams waves of magic resistant golems and flying siege engines (they get catapulted over your lines of defense, spawning in your back lines where you are vulnerable and unprotected).
It is a huge fight and seems impossible all your hopeless npc siege engineer and mounted knight supports and archers get slaughtered in the first 30 seconds...
But suddenly, I remembered the early annoying halfling fight. Wasn't that just a pointless encounter? But the idea was it was foreshadowing, showing you what to do; you need now to turn the tactics of the enemy back against them... you need to lead those invincible golems on a merry chase up the mountain, just like the halflings did to you, showering them with arrows and spells all along the way. Defense in depth... elastic defense! It is like tactical warfare!
None of this is explicitly mentioned in that walkthrough, but I thought it was really clever. In fact (as I believe was intended) you can just run away from the huge assault wave back to the besieged castle. But I used those hit and run tactics on the enemy, and killed them all
