Game Balance

[Young Werther]

bab sir. Not ab. No potion can help anymore.

Well my cleric/commoner can't self buff anymore.

[Steve]

Well, there you have it: a Cleric/commoner build is now completely (do-me) in terms of getting self-buffed to 30 BAB so it can solo the Balor on Friday nights.

Let's return to pure vanilla NWN2, and kumbaya for the next 10 years of BGTSCC, and never ever ever look to see a single (do-me) change ever (do-me) again.

I'm sure that will please everyone, because really, taking away 30 BAB self-buffed from a Cleric/Commoner is just the last (do-me) straw when it comes down to affect on the Playerbase.

My God, what will we all do now, but weep.

[Young Werther]

Well, there you have it: a Cleric/commoner build is now completely (do-me) in terms of getting self-buffed to 30 BAB so it can solo the Balor on Friday nights.

Let's return to pure vanilla NWN2, and kumbaya for the next 10 years of BGTSCC, and never ever ever look to see a single (do-me) change ever (do-me) again.

I'm sure that will please everyone, because really, taking away 30 BAB self-buffed from a Cleric/Commoner is just the last (do-me) straw when it comes down to affect on the Playerbase.

My God, what will we all do now, but weep.

Now we just need a horde of commoners with their pitchforks out bard in tow ready to sing legionaries march to march on the Dukes!

But in all serious the gripe I have is mostly what I said with some class builds not being viable anymore in my eyes.

YOLO 11 monk/darkfire/cleric dual-wielder (low CL), picking up frost mage on cleric (low bab), or techsmith of Gond (low bab).

[Okan]

Definitely, if in a quick timeframe after a drought of changes a number of "fixes" go in that irk the playerbase because a) we're not told why, exactly b) the playerbase just generally feel they're unwarranted, it can APPEAR to be too much.

I think slow steps are best, myself, in this environment/community, in order to give everyone time to digest.

But by the numbers, the changes do not hamper a fun/good/baseline experience with combat/mechanics for the Server.

If anything, the changes make it MORE CHALLENGING an experience, across the board. Is that not good?!!

Because mechanical challenges can be fun, and they can also sit parallel to fun role-play, both engaging but not disturbing each other.

Nonetheless, if anyone could show concretely how the Divine Power change, for example, now makes it impossible to do something MECHANICALLY that could be done before, I'd welcome that and greatly hope that the Devs, along with QC, would examine the change as it causes this impossibility, in order to again, certify that the change should stay.

For me, as long as I know that the Devs/QC are always willing to retract a change that goes wrong, I for one am willing to give their decision a try (thinking that Staff has best intentions).

Fair?

As some protesters for the recent balance changes overreact a little bit in my opinion, I think saying that it doesn't change the way you play is undermining the impact of these nerfs. They are here to make somethings impossible to be done prior to the changes, that is the primary reason for any balancing attempts. Otherwise, they are meaningless changes.

One other thing to consider is the length of justifications our characters have to do with any changes in their mechanical prowess. MMOs have it an easier time in that regard as their players don't have any obligation for that. But in a roleplay environment where we act as living characters, If you want to keep yourself immersed, I believe you need a reason why your god does not grant you the ability once they did, or why your voice is not powerful enough to do the healing that it had in the past, or why suddenly you are sluggish and get hit more often.

Now I know some would welcome such thing as an opportunity to explore different facets of their character -I suspect that you, Steve, are amongst them- but to others will see it a forceful change on their character that they have not asked for. Which, in my opinion, is the stem of the very passionate arguments happening on the boards.

[Steve]

Okan, I couldn't agree with you more, in regard to how custom changes DO affect Role-play of Characters.

Which is why, so long ago, I actually brought it up, on the Forum...to very near zero response:

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=64056

So it goes to show that the way the Changes are implemented DO have to be done better, both in the OOC communication of "why," and the Role-play "how" effect.

[chad878262]

Yep, Sacred Fist took a huge dip in usefulness. M20/C3/SF7 is pointless now and even M6/C10/H4/SF10 (or whatever, I forget what the correct split was) was never that popular.

Mind you, that doesn't mean they are pointless, it just means that the thing that made them fun (nova DP casting) is no longer valuable. For the one build they were always the weaker build due to too little damage (only 16 monk/sacred fist levels) while the other no longer gains any real benefit from divine power and is thus it is ALWAYS better to just go straight Monk. So I guess Sacred Fist is now an RP only PRC...

[Deathgrowl]

Yep, Sacred Fist took a huge dip in usefulness. M20/C3/SF7 is pointless now and even M6/C10/H4/SF10 (or whatever, I forget what the correct split was) was never that popular.

Mind you, that doesn't mean they are pointless, it just means that the thing that made them fun (nova DP casting) is no longer valuable. For the one build they were always the weaker build due to too little damage (only 16 monk/sacred fist levels) while the other no longer gains any real benefit from divine power and is thus it is ALWAYS better to just go straight Monk. So I guess Sacred Fist is now an RP only PRC...

Chad, I can't tell if you're being serious or not, but if you are, are you sure you've thought this through? Straight monk has medium bab. SF has high bab. Cleric3/monk20/sf7 will therefore get higher bab than straight monk. SF even gets 3 dodge AC, and straight monk would get only 2 from 21-30. And then there's the cleric's domains, which can be useful, free feats. Heal and spellcraft skills are nice to have access to as well, not to mention by dipping into cleric, you can cast any cleric scroll without UMD.

So before you even take spellcasting into consideration, cleric3/monk20/sf7 is better than straight monk unless you're going for spell resistance or you insist that 3d10 is so much better than 3d8 that the rest of what I just mentioned isn't worth it.

[Steve]

So I guess Sacred Fist is now an RP only PRC...

Cleric 7 / Sacred Fist 10 / Monk 3 / Hierophant 10

I loves me some RP build of THAT!

[Okan]

Yep, Sacred Fist took a huge dip in usefulness. M20/C3/SF7 is pointless now and even M6/C10/H4/SF10 (or whatever, I forget what the correct split was) was never that popular.

Mind you, that doesn't mean they are pointless, it just means that the thing that made them fun (nova DP casting) is no longer valuable. For the one build they were always the weaker build due to too little damage (only 16 monk/sacred fist levels) while the other no longer gains any real benefit from divine power and is thus it is ALWAYS better to just go straight Monk. So I guess Sacred Fist is now an RP only PRC...

Chad, I can't tell if you're being serious or not, but if you are, are you sure you've thought this through? Straight monk has medium bab. SF has high bab. Cleric3/monk20/sf7 will therefore get higher bab than straight monk. SF even gets 3 dodge AC, and straight monk would get only 2 from 21-30. And then there's the cleric's domains, which can be useful, free feats. Heal and spellcraft skills are nice to have access to as well, not to mention by dipping into cleric, you can cast any cleric scroll without UMD.

So before you even take spellcasting into consideration, cleric3/monk20/sf7 is better than straight monk unless you're going for spell resistance or you insist that 3d10 is so much better than 3d8 that the rest of what I just mentioned isn't worth it.

I don't see anything in Chad's post about comparing SF to full monks, it is about SF monks prior to the change and SF monks after the change. From what I understand the recent Divine Power nerf is to make the 8 BAB gain to 8 AB gain for Cleric/FvS. For intuitive SF monk its +3/+4 AB from 6 BAB.

Also about the 30 Monk/Intuitive SF monk comparison, what SF get better than pure monk are low-level low CL cleric spells, a small burst in the form of Sacred Flames once per rest and most importantly Divine Power. If you are building for efficiency one of your domains will be Strenght Domain for earlier Divine Power, it makes a huge difference, so I'd say your domain choices are somewhat limited as well. It also doesn't get the +3 ac as you get that at SF 10, so only +2 Ac.

Pure monk has better reflex saves (+5, I don't think is a number that is irrelevant), 2 extra epic feats, 1 more pre-epic feat(2 if you think about practices spellcaster), 10 more spell resistance, better unarmed damage(which translates to 3 more damage per attack on average, definitely not irrelevant at all), more stunning fists and I believe longer duration Fiery Fist. I haven't personally tested Monk of the long Death but going full 30 monks allows you to get those nice bonuses while still retaining all monk abilities.

[chad878262]

Yep, Sacred Fist took a huge dip in usefulness. M20/C3/SF7 is pointless now and even M6/C10/H4/SF10 (or whatever, I forget what the correct split was) was never that popular.

Mind you, that doesn't mean they are pointless, it just means that the thing that made them fun (nova DP casting) is no longer valuable. For the one build they were always the weaker build due to too little damage (only 16 monk/sacred fist levels) while the other no longer gains any real benefit from divine power and is thus it is ALWAYS better to just go straight Monk. So I guess Sacred Fist is now an RP only PRC...

Chad, I can't tell if you're being serious or not, but if you are, are you sure you've thought this through? Straight monk has medium bab. SF has high bab. Cleric3/monk20/sf7 will therefore get higher bab than straight monk. SF even gets 3 dodge AC, and straight monk would get only 2 from 21-30. And then there's the cleric's domains, which can be useful, free feats. Heal and spellcraft skills are nice to have access to as well, not to mention by dipping into cleric, you can cast any cleric scroll without UMD.

So before you even take spellcasting into consideration, cleric3/monk20/sf7 is better than straight monk unless you're going for spell resistance or you insist that 3d10 is so much better than 3d8 that the rest of what I just mentioned isn't worth it.

Partially joking. Spell Resistance loss isn't worth the cleric spells and what you get from Sacred Fist isn't really worth the feat. SF only get's 2 dodge AC unless you go the full 10 levels. You basically get +2 BAB, +1 AC and spells that have low caster level for the cost of 10 spell resistance (30 instead of 40) and a little damage. Sacred Flames is only 1/day so not really useful. Finally you take Combat Casting and maybe practiced caster (but probably not I would say). Simply put the reason people played it was divine power, though you might still have folks that roll with Monk/Cleric/Hierophant/Sacred Fist focusing more on being a caster with a bit of monkish RP.

In any case, If the Wiki is accurate than it's still no big deal, but someone said on discord that it is Caster Level/4 + 1 as opposed to Hit Dice/4 +1 which is a major difference in this case. Regardless if the goal was to reduce the power level of FvS powerbuilds then the change failed to do that while hurting other builds which is a bit silly. The point isn't really that they are "RP only" that is obviously going to far and a bit sarcastic, the point is that the change hurts something that is perfectly fine while having no impact on the builds that the change was supposed to impact. So I would say the change itself was poorly thought through by any involved in that decision process. Probably because it started with the change instead of starting with what the desired impact was. "nerf fvs" is very different than "nerf divine power" and in the discussion of nerfing divine power the discussion should have been 'what builds are we looking to negatively impact'. That does not appear to have been discussed because the spell does nearly exactly the same thing for Favored Soul, which has always been the hot button discussion for nerfing divine power. *shrug* is what it is, but if anyone is thinking this somehow will reduce or change the dynamic of favored souls then they are mistaken...very little impact to them.

[Ewe]

The original posted formula was inaccurate. Valefort later corrected it on page four of the original coming soon post:

https://www.bgtscc.net/viewtopic.php?f= ... 60#p865995

The true DP formula is:

1 + min(floor(HD/4), floor(CL/4))

where min(x,y) = lower of x and y
and floor(x) = drop the decimal off x to just get a whole number, e.g. floor(7.5) = 7
HD = hit dice (total character level)
CL = divine caster level

So if you have a weak CL your DP AB bonus will be low.

The HD part simply caps the bonus based on your HD (in the event somehow you get a CL bigger than your HD).

[cosmic ray]

I wonder whether there is an "end-game" state, as it were, that those in charge of "balancing" this server have in mind which this latest set of nerfs is but one of many building blocks to; or whether the notion is that, whenever one or more nerfs are decided upon, the immediate result is virtually as close to the best that can be done as humanly possible and that there is no more need for nerfing, at least until someone else yells "Eureka!" once more and the nerfing starts all over again.

If the former, then it follows that it should be possible to ask of those people, namely the ones balancing the game on this server, what the desired end-state is and how far they believe we are from it, and that they should therefore be able to answer with relative accuracy, at least as far as what they consider the big picture to be at the moment.

If the latter, then God help us I, for one, feel perhaps more than a little jarred.

[The Whistler]

I'd like to echo the point made by previous posters that the DP nerf will seriously impact build variety. it will hit the builds at the top of the food chain, sure, but it will absolutely gut the more flavorful splits that utilize stealth to get around the dispel issue

the CL fix homogenized the build pool by a lot already. I think this change is a step in the wrong direction

[Calen]

Going to miss divine power a bit in its current form, booted up an old build of mine.
10 DD 3 SD 4 cleric 13 rogue ,it's not very powerful but incredibly fun to RP and play.
As I've mentioned earlier, I rather would let things be as they are and buff the weaker classes.
Explained earlier why removing the 3/20 rule would balance things a bit more.

[Max Hatchet]

Buffing many things rather than nerfing a single thing makes no sense in terms of the amount of work required