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@Steve - Nope shara cave is not filled with rogues it is filled with fighters with +6 weapons crazy high damage and very high ACs. Dont get me wrong if one of them was able to make its saves against the caster combos it would cut that caster down in one round. But very very few times can they save vs all the combo spell sets and then most of the time the caster is already hasted and has a invisi/GS/some escape spell ready. When a fight goes bad for a fighter class... well it is harder to get away when you are knee deep in bad guy.

Also you are way way off on your nerfed statement about mages. I am saying dont touch them just make some of the bad guys resistance to quick magical demise. Make some them so that you have to get dirty to kill them.

18? :p

@steve only in the low to mid levels are there really places that fighters can solo. What we are talking about is high level areas. It is in high level areas that the balance issue really shows itself. I thought this was made clear already. So to recap, in the low to mid level areas the power gap bewteen melee classes and caster classes is not very wide. At high levels is when the power gap gets very wide.

So make areas for high level melee artists are able to solo at, no need to punish the casters if they have been able to solo some places for now.
And to be clear, it is never without danger when a caster solos, low HP, low AC. Even one stunning fist from say a desert giant of Dregar is fatal.

So make new areas, OR make some areas more doable for warriors.

And no, Chakar can't solo the screeching keepers, he'll die if he tries to.
Sure, he can take some of them down with say a power word DC 32, but most of them survive, and the casters of theirs? no way he could kill them with any spells or swords.

What stinks is that fighters had the dead magic area near thunder peaks, and then because a fighter could do what a caster could...seemed things changed. Maybe there was another reason, but the word on the street was that the change came because fighters were soloing the area.

In my opnion this is not a low magic world by any means.

In a world where a mage has a choice of if they want to go off on their own, or with a big group, either way, they will be able to find something they can kill, so if a caster really wants to (not necessarily a mage, most casters though) they can achieve level 30, with little problems going out on their own soloing.

A fighter, could not get to 30 in the same amount of time, no way, it's impossible, theres no instant death magic for fighters, and fighters cannot travel without a party, due to having to get involved up close and taking damage, they need magic for the weapons to do much, and a healer usually, among other spells etc.
After epic levels, and where fighters could once go, with or without a group, has completely been changed, so that casters must be taken along too.

A level 30 fighter....who has seen a level 30 fighter go solo for exp recently? Well I can find one spot to get 64 exp a kill. But spending 20mins going through an area for about 1200 exp, does not really motivate me at all.
Not to mention theres still a risk of dying for that measly amount.

I guess what I'm basically saying is, a caster can get to level 30 on their own, no way a fighter could do that anymore. And once at those levels, good luck taking your fighter off to solo, anywhere.

As Jrizz stated, low magic item world, but far off from being a low magic world - give us something to dig our swords + axes into. please.

Well I really like what Dorg did with the Trollocs in this last update. They are still harder then heck but they are more spread out and the new fighter ones are a great addition.

I'm glad you like them, though I didn't add anything. I just tweaked what already existed.

But as to fighters soloing the peaks, well as I was a GM during the hey day of the peaks I will say that they were heavily abused by a number of players.

I was playing alot with my fighter during this time and was soloing this area. I don't see how this is abusing though. This was the only place I could soloing without instantly dying or get zero XP for my efforts. Spellcasters can soloing in all of the rest of the world and they are doing so. Is that abusing?

The fighters that was soloing the area did it because there were the only place they could go. Ofcourse id rather go in a group and mostly I did that. Also the most fun places is in the existing magic areas. However when no mages/clerics are around the option were crafting, sit on a bench, go to areas that gives zero xp or soloing the thunderpeaks.

I can see the point of thinking... hey! that fighter are soloing that area all day long. Well he had no other place to go to so atleast he had one area that he could have some fun in.

Also Thunderpeaks was an awesome place to go to and Kudos to Agaetis for that :-)

Sorry to disagree with you on this one but the peaks got tweaked due to a huge multi week multi GM quest event.

Well... it got tweaked several times.  Basically, whenever one of my areas saw someone, or a lot of someones, soloing it - an argument was made to make it harder.

Sometimes I'd present the argument when I thought I'd made an honest mistake - and I did make mistakes, in both directions.  Sometime I'd not add in an AC factor, etc etc.

The peaks got serious heat after the first two weeks for the multitude of players rolling through there.  A few of us argued that it was good for the server.  A lot argued that it was imbalanced.  After a while I will honestly admit that I simply jumped on the bandwagon and said whatever, and made it the same rhythm as everything else.  And that's fast paced, high magic mobs... which will *always* require spells.  Heck, I even ended up going in there to place bludgeoning DR on everything just to stop one single monk soloist.

Was it one person ruining it for everyone?  I honestly don't think it was... anymore that then a group of people limiting an entire population for the balance of one.  It's always been like this.  And I think that it's been a difficult road for Layo in that regard.  So much attention has always put towards making sure things are tempered - so much attention is put towards *every single player*.... and this is a blessing and a curse.  I've never seen another server where the DMs felt such an urge and, seriously... a peer-pressured responsibility to check on every player in such a way.  And the intent behind this shows phenomenal management and standards... you're supposed to be making sure that everyone has fair attention from the team, you're supposed to making sure everyone has a fair shot at getting involved in mini or major plot, you're supposed to be making sure that everyone gets some guidance through example and leadership.  And this manifests itself in several ways.  One is that the playerbase ends up having an extremely high status quo in regard to quality of playstyle and roleplay.  The standards are basically guided every hour of every day.  On other servers which maintain a lax 'whatever' mentality in regard to the quality of their playerbase... they let the shooting anti-stars disrupt the tempo and fade away, they never involve them on plots, and they basically keep an adventuring company while the rest of the server reads up on the plots.  And on the plus side, you get balance and a server layout that is set for what they deem is the right way to play.  On the down side you get people running around without a wink of atmosphere to them, and they're twenty times the level of where the adventuring company is.  One issue that Layo has found in such a profound sense of motherly 'tending to the flock'... is that staff members allow themselves full exposure to all the highs and lows instead of just ignoring the lows.  This really does manifest itself as people end up taking personal offense to things they feel harm what they've contributed to and tried to build.

Which way is better or worse?  Heck... if I knew then I'd have had more luck with my own server years ago.  I will say that the way that this has manifested itself on Layo in regard to balance is perhaps an extreme to avoid later down the road.  Things ended up overbalanced, and we ended up creating our own pace... and it was way way overshot.  I mean... things are *hard* on Layo.  And it has really streamlined a certain kind of group.  There's no odd pairings of the random classes... it's the same requirement of 'oh, you want to go to this place with the CNR?... yeah, you need the x, y, and z... and then all the randoms pairings are basically left to latch onto x,y, and z for anything that has received the full service scrutiny for balance.

Do you end up with a better playerbase under this general model of motherly oversight though?  Sure.  So heck if I know what's better or worse.

But on the dead magic... my contention for a long time was that no matter how easy, or how soloed, the peaks were, the pace was so impressively slow compared to other areas, where haste and mass-effect spells were basically requisite for travel and thus added a huge multiplier to pace of progression, and where there were mobs of 8 instead of small groups of two or three... that it really wasn't changing the tempo of progression at all.  The prevailing opinion disagreed.

Hope this wasn't too trollish.  

On other servers which maintain a lax 'whatever' mentality in regard to the quality of their playerbase... they let the shooting anti-stars disrupt the tempo and fade away, they never involve them on plots,

I have seen this in action and it works. The power players/ grinders are just kept out of the factions, guilds, plots, item auctions, and ignored in most interactions. They top out and either leave the server or start new PCs and try to get involved instead of grinding.