Are you ready for the ultimate challenge?

What makes Beyond Naked Characters the Ultimate Challenge - Difficulty Setting
No, this is not what you think; it goes beyond Normal, Nightmare or Hell games. Among other player definable difficulty settings (Vit pump, item Twink, Skills choice), the most potent game altering setting is the use of Mercenaries and/or Minions. The ability to hire/cast a meat shield, who when properly equipped is almost un-killable, makes many heavily restricted builds possible.

Imagine playing naked with a restricted set of skills, no mercenary or minions. The fact that you are naked with no one to help you also forces you to distribute your stat points differently than your cookie cutter naked builds. To top it off, every monster in the game becomes a minion of an aura enchanted boss, and, your everyday aura enchanted boss becomes a double enchanted boss.

This variant requires high level of tactics and skill. It requires tight cooperation with your teammate(s) – your hostiled partner(s) who is out to hurt you. If you are ready for the Ultimate challenge… if you are ready to go Beyond, read on…

Welcome to the Beyond Naked Characters BN(X)!

TAGS – BN(x)
BNAmz – Amazon
BNAsn – Assassin
BNB – Barbarian
BND – Druid
BNN – Necromancer
BNP- Paladin
BNS – Sorceress

RULES - The rules are simple.
Naked - Naked means naked, no items equipped (see WEAPONS for exceptions), and no charms in inventory.

Beyond Naked - means you have to play with at least one partner, in hostile mode. Each of the players must use at least one skill that harms their partners, whether it is an always-on aura, or a curse, or a duration skill (such as Thunder Storm, Plague Javelin) that hurts partners.

What is Beyond Naked (BN)?
In Classic Diablo, there are cursed items a character can wear that would hinder a character’s abilities. These cursed items can take away some or all your mana, your hit points, minus all attributes, or add to the damage taken, etc. Essentially, you are better off naked, you are Beyond Naked when you use these items. CD BNs pride themselves on the “best” cursed items they can find.

D2 BNs will pride themselves on the partners they travel with! Although there are no cursed items in Diablo2 (and expansions), Classic Diablo BNs can never go as far Beyond as D2 BNs can. In fact, D2 BNs can be too cursed to be playable. For example, a BNS running Thunder Storm (although very low slvl TS would be acceptable with high lvl chars), or casting Iron Maiden with melee BNs in party. It is of major concern how much curse is too cursed.

WEAPONS
In Classic Diablo, BNMs are not allowed any non-cursed items whatsoever since they are magic users. BNRs and BNWs are allowed to use any weapons because they depend on weapons for dishing out damage…

A BN(x) would have to decide at birth if it is going to be Melee or Range class. Melee includes anyone who has to make direct contact to deal out damage. All others are considered as Range.

Ranger
Bow users - are allowed all bows. Druids would have to decide to use the bow for melee or range, but not both.
Throwers - are allowed all throwing weapons. If you use throwing weapons for melee, then you are a meleer and throwing is not allowed.
All other Rangers – No items allowed, period.

Meleer – No items allowed other than your chosen weapon type at birth. Meleer has to decide on its major attack skill and stick with his weapon type of choice.
Smiters - are allowed to use all shields.
Kick Asn - are allowed all boots
All other melee class can use all weapons.

Why the distinction for the bow users and throwers? I am thinking that melee class BNs should be allowed to use plain non-magical shields. Your opinions would be appreciated.

Although BNs can mix and match with other BNs, it is preferred to prearrange a team and decide on the skills/curses each players should use, to avoid duplicated curses and to avoid doing too much combined damage to partners. It is recommended that all BNs should have multiple curses of different strengths (if possible) so it can integrate into any BN team more seamlessly.

ACCEPTABLE PRACTICES
Curse may be turned off when there is no monster in sight.
Party up for quest bosses (before killing blow)
Party up for super unique bosses for exp sharing (before killing blow)
Letting the lower clvl BN make the killing blow for exp.
Wearing a broken belt to hold more drinks is acceptable. This variant is not a test of drinking from inventory skill.
Certain minion will be allowed for traffic control, which will be discussed under each class.

BASIC PVP INFO
When attacking other players, all damage of attacks and spells are cut in half. Minions do 1/4 damage except for Skeletons which do more damage. Some spells are special cased, such as Paladin Thorns, which will only do 1/10th the damage against other players. The duration of poison, cold, are not affected unless the player has equipment that relates to those elemental attacks.

Valkyries, Hirelings, Skeletons, and Golems will attack other players when Hostile. Minion's damage will be cut in half when attacking other players.

This covers the general objectives for D2 BN(x). As always, comments will be much appreciated.

KingOfPain

PS: This has been long over due so I thought I would break this in parts and hope to be making individual posts covering each of the seven classes as to their role in Beyond Nakedness as I find the time. Please feel free to add to the sub threads, even before I do. TIA

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