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

Probably because I loathe the class?

everyone does but how you gonna get boss loot or sacred fist with uber ab

EDM Bard, of course.

Vogar Eol wrote:1. Word of Faith doesn't automatically blind, but now has a will save.

In PnP, a blinded character can still swing his sword and overcome the 50% miss chance. In NWN2, anything that is not immune to blindness becomes a sitting duck.

Vogar Eol wrote:2. Battletide is half as effective a buff as vanilla, and the debuff now has a will save. No free extra attack. One argument for this (along with haste) was Divine Power.

Oh yes, 30 BAB and 7 attacks per round - not to mention that the stock NWN2 version granted +3 AB, +2 Damage, and +1 Dodge AC.

Vogar Eol wrote:3. Time Domain removed. One argument on why this was needed was Divine Power.

The other was Premonition, since '30/Adamantine' damage reduction on a server with +2 EB iron weapons at best, was generating great amounts of PvP related butt hurt.

Vogar Eol wrote:4. Regeneration changes and Greater Restoration Changes.

For divine casters to be challenged, bosses and even some regular mobs had to dish large amounts of damage to overcome Regeneration, which made it a quite a bit harder for anyone without the said spell. Regeneration was used as burst healing - same as Greater Restoration. A boss threw a Vampiric Feast, others started to quaff potions of heal while divine casters just healed up - a single spell and back to full health.

Vogar Eol wrote:5. Nightshield removed (was more useful for divines, but also hurt arcanes)

This spell grants +3 saves and immunity to magic missile. On top of the high save progressions, +6 from Superior Resistance, +6 against spells from spellcraft, and nigh endless list of other sources of save increases - is this spell really needed? Also, just do a few loot runs and you are bound to find some item with immunity against magic missile.

Vogar Eol wrote:6. Living Undeath removed.

A level two spell with a long duration and it basically grants critical hit immunity without a negative of any kind.

Vogar Eol wrote:7. Casting Resurrection is no longer a one round action.

Really? I do not see such change listed down anywhere.

Vogar Eol wrote:8. Conviction no longer stacks with other resistance line of spells.

Just play a noncaster, and have a look at the saves they get. High saves in itself are a form of almost immunity, which means that for clerics to be hit by mob spells, you have to raise the difficulty checks so high that everyone else will be crippled without a chance. Remember the loaded dices this game has?

Hey as long as I get a free RcR for any changes that effect me I don't really care.

The proposed change would not hit the class FvS harder then clerics, paladins or spirit shaman.

It would hurt various minmaxer builds arguably designed to exploit design flaws, regardless of caster class opted for in making the build.

Another way of doing something similar vs boosted casterbuilds would be to disallow item stat bonuses from supporting spell levels not reached with the base stat.


Removing a few races, limiting others to certain alignments and removing a few classes probably would drop some of the feelings of unfairness.
However, it would also limit what we are allowed to play.

As much as I find some uses of races and classes distasteful, if it were up to me id rather let everyone play whatever they want as long as possible. For the good of all.

/M

Storm Munin wrote:The proposed change would not hit the class FvS harder then clerics, paladins or spirit shaman.

Spirit shaman don't get divine power. They use the druid spell list, and actually doesn't have a single spell to increase bab or ab (except bulls).

Comments Only, did you even read my full post for the purpose of my listing? At no point did I debate any of those things. Do you disagree with my statements that those eight things happened?

Edit: If there is one thing that needs a magnifying glass in this game, it's Expose Weakness. Every power build takes it, caster or melee, if at all possible. It stacks with itself, and leads to 3 level dips for no other reason than to acquire it. Why not talk about making it a full round action, having its duration equal the the Dex modifier to a max of five, double the cooldown to 12 seconds, or even add a requirement for 27 Spot. There are broken things out there deserving of witch hunts.

Vogar Eol wrote:Edit: If there is one thing that needs a magnifying glass in this game, it's Expose Weakness. Every power build takes it, caster or melee, if at all possible. It stacks with itself, and leads to 3 level dips for no other reason than to acquire it. Why not talk about making it a full round action, having its duration equal the the Dex modifier to a max of five, double the cooldown to 12 seconds, or even add a requirement for 27 Spot. There are broken things out there deserving of witch hunts.

A caster takes expose? That isn't very good, with this server's changes. You get one auto-hit, but the AC debuff is really what is good about expose and triggers only on a real hit. One free hit is meaningless, decreasing AC means that both you and your party will be able to land more hits in future rounds. Much more useful. Doubling the cooldown would be fine, it wouldn't impact party functionality too much.

However, back to the topic at hand. Making it +AB instead of +BAB is a good idea. Here is another couple:

--It sets your BAB to the higher of your cleric or FvS level. (treating your cleric/FvS levels as fighter levels for BAB, but not your other levels)
--It caps off at setting your BAB at 20 or 25.

Are you going to hand out a free 100% RCR?

My guess is not, because it will be deemed "not that drastic". All these changes add up over time, and I personally just lost eight levels because I got tired of all the previous Spell changes.

The reason I bring up Expose Weakness is not because I want it changed. It's because on CERTAIN builds it's extremely powerful. Divine Power on a 5 Cleric / 25 Fighter doesn't do much of anything, and so is weak in some cases too. Both Divine Power and Exposed Weakness are taken when needed or if it's possible to do so.

If Divine Power was nerfed, would a 100% RCR be provided? Very doubtful, even if closely examined case-by-case. If Expose Weakness was nerfed, would a 100% RCR be provided? Probably, because of the out rage of many long term players. I just can't see the hundreds of active characters with Exposed Weakness being told to take it like a man, and shown to the 50% RCR.

We looked at expose weakness. Changes would require a custom feat which introduces all kinds of problems. (Breaks stealth being the main one, as I recall)

For the auto hit, yes.

Vogar Eol wrote:Comments Only, did you even read my full post for the purpose of my listing? At no point did I debate any of those things. Do you disagree with my statements that those eight things happened?

Yes, I did. But did you read my very first post in this topic? At the very end of it I asked:

What would be the end result of such a change? What would warrant it in the first place? Is there a net good to be gained or is it just going ruffle feathers?

Now, you brought up some past changes to the server and I saw it as an opportunity to point out how some of those changes can be argued to have brought a net good to the server.

So what net good would be generated by lowering the duration of Divine Power?

• My own cleric is in no way a melee based powerhouse, but it can get the job done with Divine Power lingering long after the fight. So what would actually be different with this suggested change? My cleric does not have Divine Power active when he walks onwards in search of the next mob of monster?
• I collect a mob of monsters to pummel to death underneath my high DC Storm of Vengeance. Even without storm of Vengeance, would melee clerics/favored souls behave any differently?
• In other words, this suggested change is nothing more than cosmetic in its nature. Would mere cosmetics warrant the use of developer's time, QC's for bug testing, and the backlash that follows from any change to the status quo?
• I suppose some would be momentarily happy to have gotten clerics/favored souls nerfed, until the day week later when they realise that nothing has actually changed.

So what net good would be generated by changing Divine Power's BAB to AB?

• Any Cleric 6/Bard 4/Frostmage 10/Hierophant 10 will only have BAB of 18. So there will be some Cleric/Favored Soul builds that will be limited to just 4 attacks per round. They can be very annoyed.
• But Frostmage is the exception here as other divine spellcasting progression PRCs will offer either medium or high BAB progression and therefore reaching BAB of 21 is an easy feat for most multiclassed cleric or favored soul builds. (Thaumaturge could be combined with a high BAB progression PRC, for example.)
• Even BAB 26 is not an impossibility. For example a Cleric 16/War Priest 4/Sacred Fist 10 can achieve it while maintaining caster level of 30. A Cleric 12/War Priest 4/Hospitaler 10/Hierophant 4 is an another build that can do the same. There is nothing preventing these two builds from focusing on strength alone or going for Epic Divine Might. You might even consider Dragonslayer PRC as one of the possible multiclass options.
• Thus you could make the argument that if BAB were changed to AB, melee clerics and favored souls would have a reason to go for these 'rarely used' HIGH BAB divine PRCs. Where as currently they can just go for minimal multiclassing for a few select perks and still have enough levels in their main class to get some Epic Bonus feats.
• This change would generate an actual change on the server - and as a result: many players would want free 100% RCRs. But we have to acknowledge something, as long as your character's alignment was not chaotic, you can get one or two Great Ability epic feats from Hospitaler - and in that regard not much will have changed.
• Thus even with this change, while some divine characters will be nerfed, the ones that you actually wish to see nerfed will not be. (Well, I suppose EDM Favored Souls will not be able to get both caster level 30 and BAB of 26, but are they really going to miss their sixth attack at lowest BAB?)
• So the question is, would this change produce a net good that overcomes the backlash it will create in the process?

//// Personally I do not really care either way.

Vogar Eol wrote:Edit: If there is one thing that needs a magnifying glass in this game, it's Expose Weakness. Every power build takes it, caster or melee, if at all possible. It stacks with itself, and leads to 3 level dips for no other reason than to acquire it. Why not talk about making it a full round action, having its duration equal the the Dex modifier to a max of five, double the cooldown to 12 seconds, or even add a requirement for 27 Spot. There are broken things out there deserving of witch hunts.

Ah, Expose Weakness. The problem with this feat is caused by nothing more than its easy to meet qualification requirements. There is an easy fix though, make it require Improved Evasion. In otherwords, to get it, you would need Rogue 10, Monk 9, or Shadowdancer 10. Thus the entire Expose Weakness problem is solved, and we haven't screwed things all that much for the high dexterity Rogues, Monks, and Shadowdancers.

Oh, I can already imagine the reaction.



So let us look at the net good of the change. Because divine power houses or crit-hit-monsters no longer have it without a considerable class investment - the number of player characters with it will decrease and therefore mob and boss ACs could be lowered for betterment of all. Now, it does not mean that you would not have non-casting strength based melee builds going for Expose Weakness, they would be just doing it at the expense of damage output and loss of AB from feats and BAB alike.

So perhaps it could be worth it to hand out all those free 100% RCRs! But that might require a topic of its own.

Comments Only wrote:

Vogar Eol wrote:Comments Only, did you even read my full post for the purpose of my listing? At no point did I debate any of those things. Do you disagree with my statements that those eight things happened?

Yes, I did. But did you read my very first post in this topic? At the very end of it I asked:

What would be the end result of such a change? What would warrant it in the first place? Is there a net good to be gained or is it just going ruffle feathers?

Now, you brought up some past changes to the server and I saw it as an opportunity to point out how some of those changes can be argued to have brought a net good to the server.

So what net good would be generated by lowering the duration of Divine Power?

• My own cleric is in no way a melee based powerhouse, but it can get the job done with Divine Power lingering long after the fight. So what would actually be different with this suggested change? My cleric does not have Divine Power active when he walks onwards in search of the next mob of monster?
• I collect a mob of monsters to pummel to death underneath my high DC Storm of Vengeance. Even without storm of Vengeance, would melee clerics/favored souls behave any differently?
• In other words, this suggested change is nothing more than cosmetic in its nature. Would mere cosmetics warrant the use of developer's time, QC's for bug testing, and the backlash that follows from any change to the status quo?
• I suppose some would be momentarily happy to have gotten clerics/favored souls nerfed, until the day week later when they realise that nothing has actually changed.

So what net good would be generated by changing Divine Power's BAB to AB?

• Any Cleric 6/Bard 4/Frostmage 10/Hierophant 10 will only have BAB of 18. So there will be some Cleric/Favored Soul builds that will be limited to just 4 attacks per round. They can be very annoyed.
• But Frostmage is the exception here as other divine spellcasting progression PRCs will offer either medium or high BAB progression and therefore reaching BAB of 21 is an easy feat for most multiclassed cleric or favored soul builds. (Thaumaturge could be combined with a high BAB progression PRC, for example.)
• Even BAB 26 is not an impossibility. For example a Cleric 16/War Priest 4/Sacred Fist 10 can achieve it while maintaining caster level of 30. A Cleric 12/War Priest 4/Hospitaler 10/Hierophant 4 is an another build that can do the same. There is nothing preventing these two builds from focusing on strength alone or going for Epic Divine Might. You might even consider Dragonslayer PRC as one of the possible multiclass options.
• Thus you could make the argument that if BAB were changed to AB, melee clerics and favored souls would have a reason to go for these 'rarely used' HIGH BAB divine PRCs. Where as currently they can just go for minimal multiclassing for a few select perks and still have enough levels in their main class to get some Epic Bonus feats.
• This change would generate an actual change on the server - and as a result: many players would want free 100% RCRs. But we have to acknowledge something, as long as your character's alignment was not chaotic, you can get one or two Great Ability epic feats from Hospitaler - and in that regard not much will have changed.
• Thus even with this change, while some divine characters will be nerfed, the ones that you actually wish to see nerfed will not be. (Well, I suppose EDM Favored Souls will not be able to get both caster level 30 and BAB of 26, but are they really going to miss their sixth attack at lowest BAB?)
• So the question is, would this change produce a net good that overcomes the backlash it will create in the process?

//// Personally I do not really care either way.

Vogar Eol wrote:Edit: If there is one thing that needs a magnifying glass in this game, it's Expose Weakness. Every power build takes it, caster or melee, if at all possible. It stacks with itself, and leads to 3 level dips for no other reason than to acquire it. Why not talk about making it a full round action, having its duration equal the the Dex modifier to a max of five, double the cooldown to 12 seconds, or even add a requirement for 27 Spot. There are broken things out there deserving of witch hunts.

Ah, Expose Weakness. The problem with this feat is caused by nothing more than its easy to meet qualification requirements. There is an easy fix though, make it require Improved Evasion. In otherwords, to get it, you would need Rogue 10, Monk 9, or Shadowdancer 10. Thus the entire Expose Weakness problem is solved, and we haven't screwed things all that much for the high dexterity Rogues, Monks, and Shadowdancers.

Oh, I can already imagine the reaction.



So let us look at the net good of the change. Because divine power houses or crit-hit-monsters no longer have it without a considerable class investment - the number of player characters with it will decrease and therefore mob and boss ACs could be lowered for betterment of all. Now, it does not mean that you would not have non-casting strength based melee builds going for Expose Weakness, they would be just doing it at the expense of damage output and loss of AB from feats and BAB alike.

So perhaps it could be worth it to hand out all those free 100% RCRs! But that might require a topic of its own.

Your first post was inflammatory so it was ignored.

100% RCR or not doing things like this limits builds and pidgeon holes the players into even less variety of builds you obviously can not see that. For every PB you eliminate a new PB of the server is created and thusly we continue the plan. You keep coming at FvS and Clerics like they can SOLO THE BALOR NAKED and they can not...........Meanwhile the STR EDM BARD sits back and laughs.

Calodan wrote:Meanwhile the STR EDM BARD sits back and laughs.

Sonic immunity, couple of Mords, and AoE silence tends to be more than enough to silence those naked laughing bards. (And turn them to goo.) But if you do any of that, it will make bard players very unhappy because their characters will be quite literally - useless.