Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

DM Winter wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 1:09 am Quick bump to this post. NH 100% RCRs will become officially unavailable come March 1st (This next tuesday). If you've been putting it off, do understand that after that date you'll not be entitled to the RCR, so if you intend to take it, do so within the next couple of days!

If you're unsure how to contact a DM regarding it, the easiest way is to find one online and ask them! (can use the "/d MESSAGE" to speak directly with DMs, if there's one online). Tomorrow (sunday) is a good bet that there'll be some DMs online.

I'll be out of town the next few days up until the night of March 1st, so in the early morning (EST) of March 2nd I'll be online just to handle any last RCRs, will stay online until about 11 EST.

Thank you, i will try my best to finish my barbarian NH 100% RCR by then and find any DM online

Rhifox wrote: ↑Tue Mar 08, 2022 1:40 am In the next patch, the Order of the Bow Initiate class is going to be revamped to fix its longstanding bugs. Because the old system was rather complicated and hard to understand (both from a player perspective, but especially from a coding one), this work is not an attempt at fixing what came before but instead reworking the class as a whole. The new version of the class is all about a small number of high damage bow attacks, aimed at bypassing enemy DR and other missile protection.

Patch Notes for Order of the Bow Initiate Revamp

* Ranged Precision is changing to a combat style mode. Ranged Precision reduces your total attacks to 2 (before Rapid Shot/Haste) but increases your damage per shot by 1d6 at level 1 and for every odd OOBI level, ending at 5d6 at OOBI 9.

* Instead of Sharp Shooting, Blind Fight is given for free at level 6.

* Sharp Shooting is moved to level 10. Sharp Shooting fires a single arrow that, if it hits, negates enemy DR for the next 3 rounds. In addition, Sharp Shooting removes any missile protection effects the enemy might have, such as Storm Avatar. Sharp Shooting can be used 3 times per day.

* OOBI has high Reflex and Will saves, rather than Fort and Reflex. This is more accurate to pnp and the lore of the class.

* OOBI no longer gives Hide and Survival as class skills.

* Bow initiate features only work with shortbows and longbows.

Sharp Shooting can be used 3 times per day.

One question, how do you decide which ability gets x times per day uses or a timer?

mrm3ntalist wrote: ↑Thu Mar 10, 2022 10:55 amOne question, how do you decide which ability gets x times per day uses or a timer?

Personally, there's a few things I consider.

1. Is this ability very strong if it can be spammed?

2. What effect does this ability have when used? If you only had one use of this ability, would it justify that use by being gamechanging?

3. How long do the effects last? Could this ability be up constantly because of its duration if it had multiple uses/a short cooldown?

4. DnD is built around Vancian mechanics, limited uses of things per day. Cooldowns, while nice, should be rare.


In the case of sharpshooting, one use per day or a cooldown felt bad because an enemy could just recast Storm Avatar (the main thing it was balanced around defeating) and you'd be screwed. So it needed to be able to be cast multiple times repeatedly if you want to not have your capstone class feature to be easily nullified by someone with more slots/consumables to spend.

On the other hand, now that it also negates DR (this aspect came later, to give it a broader application than just pvp), that could be too strong for being able to be spammed a lot.

So in this case, 3 rounds is a middle ground. I could see dropping down to 2, or maybe giving it a short cooldown (eg 30 seconds) and reducing the DR negation to 1-2 rounds.

eh, I'm often for cooldowns, but not if it's also dispelling wards that have to be re-cast.

Decent revamp.

It would be nice if you could add the old NWN1 Called Shot for this class...

Tsidkenu wrote: ↑Mon Mar 14, 2022 6:02 am Decent revamp.

It would be nice if you could add the old NWN1 Called Shot for this class...

This would be possible to make now that we have attack roll functions. I'll look into it.

Potion, misc and ammunition icons should finally be live next update.

Sorry for the delay!
As a note, all of the plant icons above, as well as the new food icons, were added to the potion selection, and all the potion selection was shared with the misc stackable. It results in both of these categories having the same selection, but this selection is huge.

That is great news!
Perhaps it might be appropriate to consider a "Next/back 50" option

Kitunenotsume wrote: ↑Wed Mar 16, 2022 5:32 pm That is great news!
Perhaps it might be appropriate to consider a "Next/back 50" option

Or a "skip to X" option...

Here is something I've been thinking about/working out, related to Northander Hewing and the recent changes. I know I missed out on the free 100% RCR, but I couldn't reach a secure opinion until I had enough Levels in my NH + Polymorphing PC. Here is what I'm seeing:

Northlander Hewing and Polymorph Use
It is important to make a careful calculation of APR and DMG output, in order to determine if Northlander Hewing is really worth the cost, because it only gives a Polymorphing build 50% STR dmg.

Take for example the Shifter form Owlbear, that at maximum can have 36 STR (Base STR 23 + lvl 20 Shifter (+10 STR increase) +3 STR item/buff). At 50% reduction, that is +6 dmg (STR 36 = 13 modifier/2). At max 6 APR build, reduced to 2/3 by Northlander Hewing, your 4 attacks will gain in total only 24 dmg when using NH. Thus, if the builds average DMG is 24 or above WITHOUT NH active, then likely that 5th or 6th attack hitting will net your build an equal amount of DMG that one gains in the entire Round using NH. However, the more Attacks Per Round a Build has, you 1) have more chances of landing a Critical; 2) any On Hit effects have a greater percentage of landing. In this example, should the average DMG be FAR HIGHER than 24 per hit, it makes NOT using NH even more of a sound decision. Because one must also weigh the loss of -2 AC. Lastly, if the build doesn’t even reach 6 APR in the plan, then NH is definitely not worth it, because 3 APR is too few to add up the DMG per round gained by additional attacks.

From this arm chair analysis, using NH is only beneficial to a build plan when combined with Combat Expertise/ICE. Then, the build can balance out the AC loss, which is a serious issue with Shapes because of general low AC except 1-2 outliers. And, this is also just a analysis of a highest STR form, where there are many far lower STR forms that have weapon dmg differences that “make up” for a reliance on pure STR. Those too can be argued to be more efficient builds now again without NH, since the dmg isn’t reduced.

Also from this analysis, if say the NH 50% nerf was rounded up for DMG, maybe that extra 1 point of DMG would be enough to make it feel like a true gain, by taking NH if you build is a Polymorpher/Shifter/Wild Shaper.

I am not arguing that NH wasn’t overturned before, and essentially was a “always take it” Feat for any Build using STR as main source for DMG. But after the nerf to 50%, while I absolutely agree it warranted being tuned down, 50% is imho too much. Or, the AC malus needs to be removed, now. Or, the 2/3 APR reduction need to be tuned or removed (perhaps just remove 1 attack?).

I know this is coming late to the game, but nothing should be set in stone, if the argument to change it again is sound.

So…is my argument sound? Hahaha?

From the player side of things I thinks perhaps removing or even halving the AC penalty would be a nice compromise for removing such a large chunk of damage. Maybe lessen the sting a bit. Or perhaps instead of 50% dmg it could do 66% or 75% and drop AC penalty to 1. Just to meet in the middle. Some idle thoughts

Yeah NH + ICE is ridiculous. An alternative approach was to make NH a proper "mode" and thus not able to be used with ICE at all. This is where it landed instead, though.

We ran the numbers and there were a bunch of charts and spread sheets, etc. I don't have those handy, but basically in almost every case for content on our server you were seeing a very high damage boost for a single pre-epic feat, which doesn't make a lot of sense.

An always on feat giving 10-30% bonus damage for a single pre-epic feat with no other feat prereqs allowing huge synergy with ICE was simply over tuned and limited design space for future martial feats.

Also, wrt shapeshift forms. I think there's a bug regarding not being able to make your claws bypass certain DR types (which I think is the more relevant complaint). It's possible that may be fixed in the future (alongside possibly new feats or item properties with those feats).

Ewe wrote: ↑Mon Mar 21, 2022 11:49 am Also, wrt shapeshift forms. I think there's a bug regarding not being able to make your claws bypass certain DR types (which I think is the more relevant complaint). It's possible that may be fixed in the future (alongside possibly new feats or item properties with those feats).

While this bug you mention maybe a factor, what I was pointing out is that the changes for Polymorphers arguably make NH not worth it, at least definitely not at the end of a Builds leveling, when overall STR+ combined with APR.