Cosmopolitan feats

[The Whistler]

I just put Cosmo: UMD into a new Build, because, like...I like to Role-play using lots of magic stuff.

But if the Staff remove the mechanical boosting version of the Cosmo Feats AND NOT also Elixirs....

The staff always does what the staff wants, there's no need for this whataboutism.

[mrm3ntalist]

Alright, it's 82 instead of 83. Still good enough!
(63 is the total, not the gear bonus itself)

The more items with spot you equip. the more you gimp the build in other stats ( AC, Saves,hp ). No character will walk around with GH, Owls and C/C active all the time. That is why if you care about spotting you find a way to max the skill. In the past you multiclass, nowadays you can just take a feat.

[Tazzers]

Cosmopolitan feats have nothing to do with detection, as you need 0 UMD to use potions/elixirs (Greater heroism, Owl's insight etc), only 10 to use wands (C/C, Amplify etc) and 13 to equip any possible gear. Also, the spotter is at the advantage by default, since they roll 1d20 and the sneak doesn't.

Are elixirs of owl's insight overpowered? I think they are, but it's an entirely different topic.

Not uncommon for a dedicated sneak to get into the mid to high 90s on hide, high 80s for move silently.

I think you’d need some innate points in spot to see that as IIRC skill boosts from gear/potions maxes at 50. Assume you can get a bare minimum of +5 wisdom bonus from owls insight elixirs you’d still need 25 points or so to hit 80.

So I think it is a valid issue to discuss in that regard.

As well to note the d20 is irrelevant as 80 spot allows you to roll until you hit the hidden characters mod that cant exceeded 100 thus giving the spotter advantage.

[EasternCheesE]

Well, the thing is. We don't have control over sneak/spot rolls. It's hardcoded in engine.

[Tazzers]

Well, the thing is. We don't have control over sneak/spot rolls. It's hardcoded in the engine.

I was not trying to insinuate that mechanic was a fault of the server team. More so it's a fact of life resulting in a 95 hide seeing no benefit vs the lower mod of 80 spot giving the Rouge characters a disadvantage to start. Allowing everyone another way to get a higher spot with the cosmopolitan feats hurt's the rouges with no added options to combat this.
Sorry if that came off as a criticism of the server team that was no my intent.

[EasternCheesE]

Well, the thing is. We don't have control over sneak/spot rolls. It's hardcoded in the engine.

I was not trying to insinuate that mechanic was a fault of the server team. More so it's a fact of life resulting in a 95 hide seeing no benefit vs the lower mod of 80 spot giving the Rouge characters a disadvantage to start. Allowing everyone another way to get a higher spot with the cosmopolitan feats hurt's the rouges with no added options to combat this.
Sorry if that came off as a criticism of the server team that was no my intent.

Yeah, it was a big and hot discussion about what exact cosmo feats should be available. At first, we wanted to only add "RP-only" feats for it thus it couldn't affect combat, but then, the final decision was made to make them all possible. Sadly, the ship has already sailed and people did pick those feats thus we can't just make them unavailable without making major disadvantage for those who make new PCs. I believe, at some point, we will need to revise available gear as there are quite a lot of balance issues. For example, nobody ever needs to level open lock as 99% of server chests can be opened with investing 1 into open lock and getting rest with UMD and gear. It's just a single example while many more do exist. I hope the moment we revise gear policy happens this year, though, it's a really challenging and complex topic to discuss and unifying gear is a thing that will bring a lot of heated discussion and player reactions even though, i believe, it's needed.

[The Whistler]

Yeah, it was a big and hot discussion about what exact cosmo feats should be available. At first, we wanted to only add "RP-only" feats for it thus it couldn't affect combat, but then, the final decision was made to make them all possible. Sadly, the ship has already sailed and people did pick those feats thus we can't just make them unavailable without making major disadvantage for those who make new PCs. I believe, at some point, we will need to revise available gear as there are quite a lot of balance issues. For example, nobody ever needs to level open lock as 99% of server chests can be opened with investing 1 into open lock and getting rest with UMD and gear. It's just a single example while many more do exist. I hope the moment we revise gear policy happens this year, though, it's a really challenging and complex topic to discuss and unifying gear is a thing that will bring a lot of heated discussion and player reactions even though, i believe, it's needed.

Grandfathered characters have already been a thing ever since the 19 wis requirement for hierophant was retroactively implemented

[DaloLorn]

Funnily enough, it should be fairly easy to mechanically implement a method of blocking grandfathered PCs from entering the world... which seems to imply they're not seen as too big a problem by the devs yet.

[Antras89]

If you mean casters have skills from spell to help them to detect sneak characters it's quite joke xD casters with 0 points for spot got maybe +10 from spells and maybe z bit more. When build for hide and sneak go insane high. Spells like glitter dust or others who are not implemented are for help to detect hidden ones but sure cosmopolitan feats.. Are not so good in my opinion. They are maybe quite good for make op build.. With umu and others (hate umu.. It kill classes difrence..)

[Tazzers]

I used to main a fighter with 8 wisdom and 16 umd, he had 63 passive spot just from the gear avaliable at the shops. Greater heroism gets it to 67, owl's insight to 73, C/C to 83, letting you detect anyone sooner or later. With enough dedication and free time, you can find ranger elixirs that add +7 on top.

Playing some typical rogue, it's harder since you need to invest into sneak gear, and most of it doesn't provide spot scores (unless you have some grandfathered op items, of course). But even there you can swap gear, using sneak gear in combat and spot gear in conversations. It's a lot of bother to do, at least for me, but I know some people who care to do it.

Gear and spell bonuses to skill cap at 50. IIRC, you can't have 63 from gear and spells no matter what you do, it will only account 50 points and no more.

Alright, it's 82 instead of 83. Still good enough!
(63 is the total, not the gear bonus itself)

A Mod of 80 allows you to see anyone not getting 80 on a roll meaning most people will need to take spot as a skill to see a maxed rouge

[athornforyourheart]

Just wanting to add since this is the conversation.... that 2 players so far have quit this server because of these feats (just from what I know) .... more so because of this "spot" issue.


As a fellow staff member who creates content for a game that I rarely play these days myself, my best advice. FIX THIS. Listen to your players and take in the feedback and hope that players who left will come back. Every year this servers dies a little - no reason to make it worse.

Naturally, players who are benefiting from this will defend it (easy spot with less work), and obviously players who feel cheated by it will be vocal as well. Please try and survey who is really losing here.

[The Whistler]

Yep, honestly changes made these past 2-3 years have made me long for the days of m3ntalist's and Invoker's QC racket. Something I never thought I would ever do.

[Blaze]

Honestly, the cosmo UMD ruined the game even more in my opinion, not only the CL 30 elixir were a problem, now everyone is able to read scrolls and have such a vast arsenal to make any caster shiver

EDIT: is it possible to remove the 1d20 roll? In this way, those who have invested more in hide/ms and spot/listen will actually ''win''. The craziest thing is that using search mode, there is a dice roll every second

[JustAnotherGuy]

is it possible to remove the 1d20 roll? In this way, those who have invested more in hide/ms and spot/listen will actually ''win''. The craziest thing is that using search mode, there is a dice roll every second

As a "spotter", I'd be somewhat ok with this, as long as it was made sure there were an equal way to get both sneak and spotting up with equal effort.

In other words, I'm very, very heavily invested in spot. All my gear is BiS for spot. I could optimize only a few more points out of it is all. And without temporary things like clairvoyance, I can only get spot to about 85-86 max. But I've had players of sneaks boast a hide skill of the 100 cap. Which means that as things stand right now, sneaks would always win.

As it is with the current implementation, a spotter of 81+ will eventually see any sneak. But to get there requires a LOT of investment. Background feats, regular feats, obviously the skill points. And then wearing gear that is not optimized for anything other than spotting. So I actually think that it's ok as it is right now. Sneaks have a counter. If we took that away without adjusting many things, heavily invested sneaks would have no counter at all.

[Tanlaus]

Outside of the addition of cosmopolitan feats the stealth/spot paradigm hasn’t really had complaints for a long time now. I don’t know that it needs a big change in terms of dice rolls or skill caps.