What did you do to us poor fighter builds ?

[Steve]

Weapons with On Hit Dispel enhancements?

More Items with Spell Resistance?

Adamantine weapons?

Dead Magic zones?

The two ways to deal with magic are: a) counter with magic; b) remove magic. Grossly inflating magic throughout or just on the top tier—as we're seeing now—will not work. It just keeps making magic all-the-more-necessary.

Pretty much: if the new paradigm is there is no way possible for a lvl 30 Fighter to take on a lvl 30 Mage*, then a serious rebalancing should be done. Otherwise, in terms of power—which I know most Players play with this in mind...especially those on QC ( sorry guys/gals, it is true!)—you are FORCED to play using magic.

And that shouldn't be the general understanding for BGTSCC.

*- look, i know that a lvl 30 mage should wipe the floor with a lvl 30 Fighter, IF THAT MAGE IS FULLY BUFFED! But otherwise, the Fighter should be able to put down the mage in the first round.

[MopKnight]

As always, I am a fan of bringing characters down to within a modest reach of the common denominator. Inflating abilities over and over results in a power race which then results in systems which originally worked fine, creaking and then breaking under the strain.

Throwing more and more feats at melee classes won't work. They are already flooded with feats.

[Theodore01]

Just make fighter-types able to prevail on there own, at least in some places.
A fighter should not need umd at all and still be useful

- Add Dead magic zones. !
- Lower the dispel spam.
- Places without casters or casters with quite different spellbooks (like only buffs/heals/...)
- Add good melee weapons with +spell failure to prevent gishes/casters from using them.
Is there a way to code it, that class-specific items stay class-specific ?

[Invoker]

You're going to do all those things, Steve, and still:

-) A proper mage will dominate PvE, because that's all PvP crap.

-) They will also kill you in PvP regardless.

Then, we're back to the forums to cry unfair towards mages.

We should be far more reasonable with the issue at hand. It's not complicated, but it's LONG: it would require the spells to be toned down to their original damage (and the Epic ones with only one use/day), and the Mobs on the server completely overhauled to make sure an unbuffed lvl 30 fighter can deal with a good 60% of them without issues.

As long as we go about trying to bring casters "in line" (as in, some got their asses kicked one time too many in PvP) with non magical melees, you're in for disappointment. Not to mention it's not even the way it should EVER be in your beloved PnP.

It amuses me just HOW MANY posts are about PvP these days, many times from people claiming they "don't care" about levels, or power.

[thids]

Does every rag-tag goblin, orc or giant tribe HAVE to have dispellers? I mean I'm all for dispel working as it should, but covering 90% of the PvE with dispel spawns is over the top.

[DM Pun Pun]

Yes. My already very powerful wizard has been rebalanced to "Godmode Enabled".

I suppose I can always test this theory.

[Seymor]

What? Melee classes are now complaining they have to go without displacement and haste?

The real impact of the dispel changes is a well equipped fighter loses:
1 extra attack (from haste) [Makes duelist and the epic feat which gives haste more valuable]
3 ac (2 from improved mage armor, 1 from haste)
Displacement / Mirror Image [Makes epic displacement more valuable]
Some amount of HP equivalent (From stoneskin) [Makes constitution more valuable]
Any immunities that can be cast from scroll/wand

I think that is all melee classes have "lost". People with +0 Mithril Armor will lose more because improved mage armor benefitted them more, but this is not a bad thing. This is also the crowd that will complain the loudest, because they have to significantly reshuffle gear in order to be less reliant on buffs they can no longer provide themselves.

Melee fighters with a splash of magic might lose more, because they lose their own buffs. I thought this was the kind of character we were trying to avoid though?

As far as mage vs fighter balance, Robin could be taken out by a level 10-15 Fighter without being able to do anything if he doesn't prepare in some way (putting on full plate armor would be enough to stop this). He's level 27. If we wanted to actually balance the mage vs fighter dynamic, we should look at how those two classes fight against each other and balance those spells. Bigby's just got nerfed.

I have recently rolled a fighter who is upto level 12, with no magic. My only complaint, most of the areas which were difficult on my wizards are now trivial. Robin was killing goblins at level 17, my barbarian is killing them at level 12. Wizards aren't going into places and soloing them anymore than fighters are. The gishes get dispelled and the casters have no sustained damage.

[MopKnight]

Eh, there's nothing wrong with someone feeling their character can't hold their own in PvP conflict. It seems a large number of people think that should be a primary means of conflict resolution and who are we to disagree.

My main problem with any outward scaling issues is that it makes the presence of that class disruptive. The sudden unannounced presence of a powerbuilt melee character with UMD infinite and/or a high level wizard effectively distorts anything you were planning to throw at said party. This isn't an issue in PNP - as a DM you just tell them they aren't building any bloody wizards or drop rocks on them at level 2.

With any permanent world, you have to take into account character permanence. This isn't just one encounter. Its hundreds. If not thousands. And it's not just one PvP situation. It's every PvE encounter, every DM event, every PvP encounter, stacking up over hundreds if not thousands of hours. Half of our PvP rules are effectively intended on allowing characters to save face against the ridiculous power gradients that can exist even between even level characters. The other half are intended on preventing those gradients from being constantly revealed. PvE is balanced to a modest denominator but this is not true of DM events.

Simply put, the PnP rules were never intended for this kind of environment. Most of this servers most spectacular characters would have died a very, very long time ago, likely ignoble deaths to some kobold at level 3. We therefore have to adjust them. Significantly.

Balancing this server has more in common with World of Warcraft than it does with DnD.

[CptAmyrica]

Balance among classes on a PW isn't a question of who wins in PvP. Rather, it's a question of "What is this class intended to do, does it do it better than the other classes that are not thematically geared toward this role, and is this class able to engage the content on the server?"

Casters gain more power as levels go higher because there's too much ground to make up between what the mundane classes can do and what weaknesses can be shored up with gear. My highest level PC here is 7, so I don't have the experience to comment on high-level content. When you're looking at mundane builds, when they're supported by caster buffs, are the mundane characters a superior resource against the PvE content, or are they roughly equivalent to (or less capable than) magic builds?

[Boddynock]

The problem with every other NPC baddy being a dispeller isn't that they can dispell, it's that the AI are 100% metagamiers. Even if the buff id invisible, like BUll's Str, they know you have it and try to dispell it. This being the case, I think simply lowering the number of mobs who can dispell overall would be the best compromise. Full CL casters are still harder to dispell than dip casters, but the dip casters/umd users don't have thier efforts reduced to utter uselessness because everything has a dispell.

Dip casters/umd users should be afraid of being dispelled, but it shouldn't be so ubiquitous that you simply know 100% your buffs are worthless so why bother with them at all?

On another note, before this gets addressed, you can metagame the metagaming NPCs by putting up your now useless short buffs that you dont really need and they will 100% waste a round to dispell it off you.

[DM Pun Pun]

Well I look at it this way. when you get to the higher level content, now Gishes(not all wizards, because wizards can't generally solo for long periods of time unless they are Gishes, due to finite number of spells) will have trouble keeping their buffs unless they sacrifice damage to make their caster level higher. In addition, melee classes that relied on buffs for protection will now have issues keeping those protective buffs on themselves for the same issue.

However, if they combine their forces and the wizard gives buffs to the fighter in their party... together they are an unstoppable killing machine!!!

[Theodore01]

don't forget that there are times with only ~15-20 people online and the world is growing bigger and bigger.

[CommanderKrieg]

TEAMWORK: The joys of fighters telling me, "SHUT UP AND BUFF ME MAGE! DONT PREPARE SPELLS FOR YOURSELF I NEED YOUR BUFFS SO WE CAN GET XP! I CAN DO MORE DAMAGE THAN YOU!"

MFW

[thids]

What? Melee classes are now complaining they have to go without displacement and haste?

The real impact of the dispel changes is a well equipped fighter loses:
1 extra attack (from haste) [Makes duelist and the epic feat which gives haste more valuable]
3 ac (2 from improved mage armor, 1 from haste)
Displacement / Mirror Image [Makes epic displacement more valuable]
Some amount of HP equivalent (From stoneskin) [Makes constitution more valuable]
Any immunities that can be cast from scroll/wand

I think that is all melee classes have "lost". People with +0 Mithril Armor will lose more because improved mage armor benefitted them more, but this is not a bad thing. This is also the crowd that will complain the loudest, because they have to significantly reshuffle gear in order to be less reliant on buffs they can no longer provide themselves.

Melee fighters with a splash of magic might lose more, because they lose their own buffs. I thought this was the kind of character we were trying to avoid though?

As far as mage vs fighter balance, Robin could be taken out by a level 10-15 Fighter without being able to do anything if he doesn't prepare in some way (putting on full plate armor would be enough to stop this). He's level 27. If we wanted to actually balance the mage vs fighter dynamic, we should look at how those two classes fight against each other and balance those spells. Bigby's just got nerfed.

I have recently rolled a fighter who is upto level 12, with no magic. My only complaint, most of the areas which were difficult on my wizards are now trivial. Robin was killing goblins at level 17, my barbarian is killing them at level 12. Wizards aren't going into places and soloing them anymore than fighters are. The gishes get dispelled and the casters have no sustained damage.

I like it how you conveniently forgot one of the most powerful wands a pure melee umd user can have for pve, mirror image. I would hardly say they "just" lost that.


I'm currently playing an EDM build, which is basically a pure melee until level 29. I'm too cheap to waste wands for the purpose of obtaining xp. I have a +4 deflection ring, a +4 tower shield and +4 AC bracers, everything else is +3 (which should be the norm, because dumping several million gold to get "up to standards" is not a realistic expectation). I got from level ~21 to 28 by doing quests and occasionally going around adventuring/looting in a party where I was afforded buffs. If it wasn't for that I would have just stuck to questing, because having to pay gold in order to gain meager amounts of xp is just a preposterous situation for me. I'm investing my time into this, do I have to sink gold into it as well? Gold which I need to accumulate so I could dump several million into +4 items? I could of course use divine shield to boost my AC by 7 for 7 rounds (or 5-6 for the majority of epic levels), but I think I'd get an aneurysm at this point every time I'd have to spend an entire round casting it. It's a wasted feat on anyone below 30 charisma, I sort of regret taking it. The only use I can see for it is before boss fights. Still, that ability, even if it was instant cast and more useful, is not something in the arsenal of a proper pure melee build. I'm gonna get to 30 eventually, questing. But there's no chance in hell I'll ever even consider making a pure melee build on this server.

You're going to sit there and tell me how "pure melee's" have it easy? Even after getting into this "casters vs fighters" discussion with you on IRC several times over the last few years, I'm still not sure if you are serious or just trolling.



In any case, IMO the proper way to move forward with these changes is not to revert to the old state, but make the environment such so that melee classes can handle it without relying heavily on UMD.

[chad878262]

In any case, IMO the proper way to move forward with these changes is not to revert to the old state, but make the environment such so that melee classes can handle it without relying heavily on UMD.

Very good statement.