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

Just my opinion, but taking the forms does not make you evil. You do not take on the alignment of the forms. Now, you may have some IC issues if people come upon you in those forms, but that is all part of the fun!

• Polymorph and Shapechange are getting new shapes and they will be scaled by spell focus in transmutation.
• Baleful Polymorph is a save or die spell, as far as i can tell.
• Flesh to Stone is a save or die spell that is very hard to defend against.
• Disintegrate is one of the best single target damage spells.
• Extract Water Elemental is a good damage spell that can give a free summon

Transmutation excels at single target killing, and has those awesome shapechanging spells to boot. What more does that school need? With the changes already in the pipeline I think this school is in a very good place. Plenty of power and lots of RP and coolness factor.

chad878262 wrote:Just my opinion, but taking the forms does not make you evil. You do not take on the alignment of the forms. Now, you may have some IC issues if people come upon you in those forms, but that is all part of the fun!

No, but why would a good aligned wizard willingly take the form of an obviously evil creature such as a nightwalker or horned devil when they could (lorewise at least) take the shape of a cuatl or celestial, both good aligned beings?

That's the point.

But currently they can't take those forms... It's great that they are going to get some love, but in the meanwhile a player is asking about what to do right now. I was simply explaining that as it stands now those other forms are really the only ones that can be used mechanically and do well in PvE. Once there are more/different options than GREAT, but until then, you gotta play with what is mechanically available in game.

Deathgrowl wrote:

chad878262 wrote:Just my opinion, but taking the forms does not make you evil. You do not take on the alignment of the forms. Now, you may have some IC issues if people come upon you in those forms, but that is all part of the fun!

No, but why would a good aligned wizard willingly take the form of an obviously evil creature such as a nightwalker or horned devil when they could (lorewise at least) take the shape of a cuatl or celestial, both good aligned beings?

That's the point.

"You can become just about anything you are familiar with."
- It is what reads under the PnP Shapechange spell description. A goodly aligned wizard might have only ran into said evil creatures, and therefore only be familiar with the said shapes.

Also, only shapes that are available right now.

dedude wrote:

• Polymorph and Shapechange are getting new shapes and they will be scaled by spell focus in transmutation.
• Baleful Polymorph is a save or die spell, as far as i can tell.
• Flesh to Stone is a save or die spell that is very hard to defend against.
• Disintegrate is one of the best single target damage spells.
• Extract Water Elemental is a good damage spell that can give a free summon

Transmutation excels at single target killing, and has those awesome shapechanging spells to boot. What more does that school need? With the changes already in the pipeline I think this school is in a very good place. Plenty of power and lots of RP and coolness factor.

That's very fair, but one thing to note. I believe in Karond's caster guide it said extract water elemental wasn't very good.

Karond wrote:Extract Water Elemental: This spell does inferior damage. It tries to make up for it by promising to give you a bad summon if you kill something with the spell. Yeah, don't take that deal.

EDIT: Also, concerning baleful polymorph: I have used it, but sometimes it seems to bug and makes the enemy you morph temporarily invulnerable. I've used it on enemies only to have them take 0 damage for a good minute or two after the cast.

But baleful polymorph is an even lower level spell than flesh to stone. So is it even that useful as a save or die? I heard you want to aim for a DC 40 or higher for 9th level spells, but how useful are lower level save or die spells?


Also, does spell focus transmutation etc increase the DC required to halve the damage from disintegrate? I'm assuming so.

Babuguuscooties wrote:Also, does spell focus transmutation etc increase the DC required to halve the damage from disintegrate? I'm assuming so.

Yep.

I reposted your issues with baleful poly in the dev forum. It is a new custom spell, so bugs can happen.

Extract water elemental is a level 6 spell, deals 22d6 (11d6 if target makes the save) damage on this server. (Druid and Wizard spell lists.)

It is an okay spell for a Druid, but druids lack other offensive Transmutation spells and therefore getting spell focus is unoptimal. Not to mention that in stock NWN2 the summon created tended to be pretty weak, and also unsummon your far superior summon.

As for wizards in general, they have access to another level 6 Transmutation spell, one called Disintegrate and that deals up to 40d6 (5d6 if target makes the save) points of damage.

Comments Only wrote:Extract water elemental is a level 6 spell, deals 22d6 (11d6 if target makes the save) damage on this server. (Druid and Wizard spell lists.)

It is an okay spell for a Druid, but druids lack other offensive Transmutation spells and therefore getting spell focus is unoptimal. Not to mention that in stock NWN2 the summon created tended to be pretty weak, and also unsummon your far superior summon.

As for wizards in general, they have access to another level 6 Transmutation spell, one called Disintegrate and that deals up to 40d6 (5d6 if target makes the save) points of damage.

Explains why Karond said what he did. I didn't doubt him, he has not lead me astray yet with his awesome caster guide!

dedude wrote:

Babuguuscooties wrote:Also, does spell focus transmutation etc increase the DC required to halve the damage from disintegrate? I'm assuming so.

Yep.

I reposted your issues with baleful poly in the dev forum. It is a new custom spell, so bugs can happen.

Thanks man, appreciate that. I'm learning to appreciate Transmutation more and more as this discussion continues. Very interested to see the changes to Shapechange if and when they come about.