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

There are a lot of threads, and a lot is being said, so it's understandably difficult to keep track of everything. However, this much is perhaps worth repeating:

NOTHING IS ABSOLUTELY STRONG OR WEAK. Everything has to be related to the gaming environment you are in. Take your mages to a server where every other mob has CL 30+ Mordenkainen's Disjunction and everyone casting anything will have problems.

I played every sort of character in several servers, and In BGTSCC, I leveled a lot of character types, from melees without UMD to skill-focused sneaks to pure clerics with STR 10 and high WIS, to every sort of wizard under the sun.

Everything that has a sensible build is fine in this respect. The problem is HOW fine. You can level to 30 visiting, say...five farming areas in total. Every class can pick five areas where it has no issues. You just need the right equipment, and your lvl 30 Swashbuckler will own all those non-crit immune enemies (you avoid the crit-immunes, of course), while your low CL gish still thrives in the epic areas where dispels are rare, or nonexistent.

In my opinion, however, balance is to be more or less ok in every area BUT the handful that directly counter your character concept, mechanically. To "be ok" means not to get killed the moment your party needs to go for lunch.

Currently, that isn't the case. It wasn't before the update, for sure, but now the amount of classes that can travel through areas safely is greatly reduced, if anything.

And this isn't a matter of PnP accuracy, either: Clerics and Wizards can STILL be stronger than pure fighter Bob (sorry Bob...), but you can create a good 60% of the areas with Bob himself in mind ("Reasonable Build X"), instead of trying to offer challenges to the top builds in every dungeon.

TL;DR: Bringing all the classes to the same power level is not only wrong and inaccurate NWN2 and D&D-wise, but it would also take away diversity and fun. It's just bad.

The solution is to modify the environment so that every reasonable build can thrive in at least a rough half of the appropriate CR areas. And that has to be done BEFORE touching the classes and/or key mechanics so massively.

The whole server was balanced for the ways things were. Recent changes, including "bug fixes" have changed that. Clearly what needs to happen now is that the server needs re-balancing. It would be nice, while doing that, if the whole "It's all about the AC, stupid" metric could be fixed as well.

As has been said, this is not PnP. In PnP there is always a DM to ensure that the challenge is balanced to the party. And how often do you get to level 30 in PnP?

What seems to have been forgotten in this change is that the overriding consideration should be that it ought to be fun for all play styles.

So, what are the new main builds going to be, now? With the changes there of course will be a swing in the "standard" builds people will rely on. Will it now be pure casters or HIPSing casters and melee builds that just go pure str that shoot for the quick knockdown while the caster is dispeling their wand/scroll buffs and trying to then cast invis or HIPS away?

Just kind of curious to see what direction people will go, especially melee builds.

sweetlikesplenda wrote:So, what are the new main builds going to be, now? With the changes there of course will be a swing in the "standard" builds people will rely on. Will it now be pure casters or HIPSing casters and melee builds that just go pure str that shoot for the quick knockdown while the caster is dispeling their wand/scroll buffs and trying to then cast invis or HIPS away?

Just kind of curious to see what direction people will go, especially melee builds.

The builds that are mainly affected by the dispels are those that multiclassed with more that 4 levels of non spell progression PRCs - and of course umd users. Basically builds such as EDM FSs with rogue, or armored casters will need to drop something to raise their CL.

Idk what people will levitate towards, but all this talk about dispels and fighters made me want to bring back my sun elf bard.

I WONDER HOW I'LL DO IN THE EPICS GUYS.

Thids wrote:Idk what people will levitate towards, but all this talk about dispels and fighters made me want to bring back my sun elf bard.

I WONDER HOW I'LL DO IN THE EPICS GUYS.

Not well, amplify got a nerf.

mrm3ntalist wrote:

Thids wrote:Idk what people will levitate towards, but all this talk about dispels and fighters made me want to bring back my sun elf bard.

I WONDER HOW I'LL DO IN THE EPICS GUYS.

Not well, amplify got a nerf.

Yep, and if you were thinking about rerolling arcane caster, dang! Bigby Nerf = how will you ever get to Beregost and back for the Maltz quest on your epic wizard now?

There's only one escape from this nightmare: start a bard/sorcerer, and cross-class DM!

#inb4 nerf

The builds that are mainly affected by the dispels are those that multiclassed with more that 4 levels of non spell progression PRCs - and of course umd users. Basically builds such as EDM FSs with rogue, or armored casters will need to drop something to raise their CL.

It is more builds than that! Let us consider that the dispel fix will make ANY build with less than 30CL get dispelled around 60% of the time you are effectively eliminating more than just PBs. So we will for sure see more PURE builds and that will be it! This dispel fix does HURT variety and I think QC has TRICKED themselves into believing it did not.........I still love the fixes though not like Kory had to have weapon master as a FS......and now I was fine with just going 4 Rogue and gained Uncanny dodge and with the new pommel strike feat I can trigger another 2d6 damage in sneak attack to add to the CRIT Wands of Flame Weapon and Holy Sword which will elevate my damage to around 150 on a CRIT just like before.....Oh and now my PB is actually better with 30CL so now can not be dispelled AND I have Improved Knockdown with 30STR when I cast Divine Power........What did I lose in the new build? NOTHING just RP Flavor actually or VARIETY of build. EDM is worthless now with Holy Sword wands that can crit for LG PCs, and since Holy damage no longer stacks it is pretty much better to avoid a EDM build unless you are EVIL......

Calodan wrote:

The builds that are mainly affected by the dispels are those that multiclassed with more that 4 levels of non spell progression PRCs - and of course umd users. Basically builds such as EDM FSs with rogue, or armored casters will need to drop something to raise their CL.

It is more builds than that! Let us consider that the dispel fix will make ANY build with less than 30CL get dispelled around 60% of the time you are effectively eliminating more than just PBs. So we will for sure see more PURE builds and that will be it! This dispel fix does HURT variety and I think QC has TRICKED themselves into believing it did not.........I still love the fixes though not like Kory had to have weapon master as a FS......and now I was fine with just going 4 Rogue and gained Uncanny dodge and with the new pommel strike feat I can trigger another 2d6 damage in sneak attack to add to the CRIT Wands of Flame Weapon and Holy Sword which will elevate my damage to around 150 on a CRIT just like before.....Oh and now my PB is actually better with 30CL so now can not be dispelled AND I have Improved Knockdown with 30STR when I cast Divine Power........What did I lose in the new build? NOTHING just RP Flavor actually or VARIETY of build. EDM is worthless now with Holy Sword wands that can crit for LG PCs, and since Holy damage no longer stacks it is pretty much better to avoid a EDM build unless you are EVIL......

Your old build would do more damage than what you currently do. it just gets dispelled more

Calodan wrote:Let us consider that the dispel fix will make ANY build with less than 30CL get dispelled around 60% of the time you are effectively eliminating more than just PBs.

This is the facts of how often you'll be dispelled. If you're a CL 28 character facing a CL30 dispeller, then it's exactly 60% of the time.

note the flame weapon / holy weapon multiplying on a crit should not be happening and will hopefully get fixed so I wouldn't hang your damage on those types continuing to work as they do in the current fashion.

You know honestly I think I am just overthinking this and opening my keyboard mouth too much......I had to wait forever to RCR my PC and have been spending waaaaay too much time here on the forum as opposed to getting IG and just having funz.

In no way am I TRYING to be a malcontent because I do like what is happening but personally feel some of the changes did hamper some things a bit but as others are pointing out it is just the few of us with PBs that are whiny crybabies about it. Will adjust and look forward to having fun and RPing instead of just whining and complaining about nothing really....