Originally Posted by
Wyrmcast
Well, coming from a standpoint of having played DK1, the boulders in vanilla DKII seem ridiculously weak. I recall them having trouble knocking out a single Black Knight. In DK1 they didn't even just knock out enemies, they instantly killed them. And I remember them killing many enemies at a time. I don't really want them to be that powerful again, but I don't see a problem if they can KO a few creatures. It's not like you can't drop imps to save the incapacitated creatures before they actually die.
I really don't think the boulder is superior to other traps, like the fireburst/spike trap/gas trap. It's easy to drop an imp and waste a boulder trap for nothing, effectively wasting 1500 gold of the enemy. The boulder is only effective when locked behind doors, and even then I think it's possible to pull away the attacking creatures if you're fast - or at least almost all of them - which means the boulder either does no damage, or only part of what it could (depending on player skill). I think boulders are only really a problem, if you have huge clumps of creatures massed up in a tunnel attacking a door with a boulder behind it. Skillful players should be able to defeat boulders easily in most situations, in my opinion.
Not to mention, you can knock down the reinforced walls, to the side of the door with the boulder behind it, with imps. Then use an imp to set off the boulder, and completely waste the boulder. So the boulders are only ever truly obnoxious if they're behind doors imbedded in impenetrable rock, which would sort of be more of a map design problem, if anything, I think.
About the Lord of the Lands and other bosses getting smashed by boulders. Maybe preliminary hero attack parties could advance on the dungeons first before the boss parties arrive, absorbing the boulders before the main boss arrives? Just a thought. I think this problem already existed in DK1.