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

This has been sitting in my head for some time, so i'd like to compose a list of class/PrC abilities that are limited to N/day use and their duration.
As you all know, some of abilities are cooldown based and some are N/day based. I feel it's not good to have things non-uniform especially since such disparity can be seen between pretty similar abilities of different classes. It's basically a thing nobody overviewed in general scope, so many things are left unattended.
I myself feel that every feat that has N/day uses, should receive a cooldown. Some powerful feats may have this cooldown on like 20-30 minutes, some less powerful ones can become 1/minute and so on. Let's discuss and make a list of these abilities that are very underused with N/day duration that may start to shine with n/cooldown.

I will stick to format:
1) Class/PrC/Race name, ability name.
2) Number of uses/ duration.
3) Why it's low or unreasonable.
4) Suggestion.

No need to stick to the style i added, just please make sure you have all 4 points covered in your suggestion thus it's easy to identify and discuss.

List:
1) Arcane trickster, impromptu sneak attack. 3/day with AT 10. This feat is subpar to feint in all means (it only allows for 1 sneak attack per use of ability, not a whole round of them), it can't be spammed like feint as well. My suggestion is making it no cooldown, 30-60 sec charge regen.
2) Arcane trickster, pilfer magic. 3/day with AT 10. This is a very good utility feat and it's good even with 3/day only. Though, to make things uniform, i suggest making it no cooldown, 3/day, 10 min per charge regen.
3) No class, Combat focus feats. 1 charge, 3,5 min cooldown. This one is quite underpowered as taking 4 feats to make it maximum gives person: +4 will saves, Fast healing 4, 20% concealment, know HP of surrounding enemies. While it may sound cool, only fast healing is a good concept of these. Combat strike gives up all these bonuses in exchange for 4 ab and 4 dmg for the duration left. Suggestion:
Reduce the fast healing, extend the duration to 2 minutes, set the initial cooldown to 5 minutes, reduce cooldown by 30 seconds per extra combat focus feat taken or increase the duration by same 30 seconds per combat focus feat taken. Thus, it's either 2 min duration with 3,5 min cooldown or 3,5 min duration with 5 min cooldown.
4) Racial SLAs. Drow dancing light, tiefling darkness and so on. change it from n/day to n/day, cooldown/no cooldown (depending on ability power), charge regen in 5-10 min based on ability.
5) Paladin/DC/Hospitaler (Proposed by JIRI, description by me). Lay on hands. 1/day. The feat itself is good, but single healing per rest timer just changes nothing in gameplay. It is used and will be used, but it just substitutes one of many ways to heal oneself and 1 use per day makes it "save it for a situation that may not happen". I suggest 1/day, 10 minute charge regen.
6) Blackguard, DC, paladin, cleric. Smite. (Proposed by Bobthehero, description by me) 5/day max. These are several smite-related feats. For blackguard, it goes with Smite good with 3/day use. Being able to use them more than 3-5 times a day will make such classes/PrCs to be more flavored around their abilities. My proposition is leaving the use/day, no cooldown, 10 min charge regen.
7) Dervish. Devish dance. Currently, it's 5/day with no cooldown per use at devish lvl 10. I suggest same n/day progression, no CD between uses (having it's cooldown equal to "fatigue" time would be more realistical though when it applies), 10 min/charge regen.

As of ability cooldowns, charges, i see several mechanics revolving around then. My terminology may be a bit hacky, but i hope it's easy to understand:
charge regen = if charges even refill back. Say, 3/day ability with 10 minute regen means that 1 use of it is refunded after 10 min cooldown.
use cooldown = the delay between ability can be used again, is not related to charge regen.
So, some abilities can have:
1) no use cooldown, no charge regen. EG. pilfer magic, improptu sneak attack. One has n/day and that's it.
2) use cooldown, no charge regen. EG. epic spells like hellball. 3/day, 5 minutes between uses, no regen.
3) no use cooldown, charge regen. EG. monk ki feats to some extent. They offer limited regen though. In my proposition, i basically mean this option by default if not defined specifically.
4) use cooldown, charge regen. I don't think we have such feats (at least, i dunno about them).

Please add your thoughts in comments, i will include them into list mentioning the author as well so we have a comprehensive list of feats.
After we get a list of such abilities, i will make a discussion with staff to see if DM and Dev team agree to make changes to all or some of them.

How about racial SLAs? I think genasi are the only ones with cooldowns for their racials...

DaloLorn wrote: ↑Sat Oct 30, 2021 5:48 am How about racial SLAs? I think genasi are the only ones with cooldowns for their racials...

Good point, racial SLAs can be included as well, i corrected the post

Lay on hands, make it on larger cool down than once a day

JIŘÍ wrote: ↑Sat Oct 30, 2021 5:59 am Lay on hands, make it on larger cool down than once a day

Just to clarify. It's Divine champion's ability and it heals (divine champion + paladin) level * cha mod. What cooldown duration do you suggest?

EasternCheesE wrote: ↑Sat Oct 30, 2021 6:13 am

JIŘÍ wrote: ↑Sat Oct 30, 2021 5:59 am Lay on hands, make it on larger cool down than once a day

Just to clarify. It's Divine champion's ability and it heals (divine champion + paladin) level * cha mod. What cooldown duration do you suggest?

Actually, it's DC/Paladin/Hospitaller, and it heals (DC + Paladin + Hospitaller) levels * CHA modifier. With that in mind, I would suggest no less than 10 minutes per casting, possibly more.

DaloLorn wrote: ↑Sat Oct 30, 2021 6:17 am

EasternCheesE wrote: ↑Sat Oct 30, 2021 6:13 am

JIŘÍ wrote: ↑Sat Oct 30, 2021 5:59 am Lay on hands, make it on larger cool down than once a day

Just to clarify. It's Divine champion's ability and it heals (divine champion + paladin) level * cha mod. What cooldown duration do you suggest?

Actually, it's DC/Paladin/Hospitaller, and it heals (DC + Paladin + Hospitaller) levels * CHA modifier. With that in mind, I would suggest no less than 10 minutes per casting, possibly more.

https://wiki.bgtscc.net/index.php?title=Lay_on_Hands. I guess you know how to edit wiki to add these classes as well as i dunno how to add proper class references

As of ability power, it hardly can go over 300 hp in general assuming some PC for some reason has 10 cha mod. So, it's basically 30 * cha mod, more like 150-210 hp healed with regular build. I'd myself say 5 minutes (as regen item + fast healing 1 will regen 30 HP/minute and they are passive). Though, things can be approached slowly, so it won't hurt to start with longer cooldowns and see how it goes.

There are some N/day feats, like Dervish Dance, that are fantastic to be able to use one after another with no penalty or cooldown (at lvl 9 Dervish).

I'd argue that it would be a negative adjustment for this ability in particular, if it was changed to Cooldown X minutes between use.

Steve wrote: ↑Sat Oct 30, 2021 7:11 am There are some N/day feats, like Dervish Dance, that are fantastic to be able to use one after another with no penalty or cooldown (at lvl 9 Dervish).

I'd argue that it would be a negative adjustment for this ability in particular, if it was changed to Cooldown X minutes between use.

We've recently started having feats which recovered charges while still allowing you to use multiple charges in rapid succession. I think Shadow Daze or Shadow Jump works like that now.

EC's suggested making Arcane Trickster's feats work like that. Dervish Dance could operate on the same principle.

That would actually be pretty neat for Use/Day abilities Dalo. I like that idea alot.

Use/day is a defining part of Dungeons & Dragons. Cooldowns is for MMOs. Please don't make this more like an MMO.

Deathgrowl wrote: ↑Sat Oct 30, 2021 8:22 am Use/day is a defining part of Dungeons & Dragons. Cooldowns is for MMOs. Please don't make this more like an MMO.

Dungeons and dragons doesn't also use "15 fights in 30 minutes" scenarios often. And since many abilities do already have cooldown instead of use/day, i simply want to uniform things.
To clarify. It's not a petition to "make all these as cooldown". It's a suggestion to DM and Dev team to consider to revise the number of abilities that don't have cooldown while many others do.

Uses per day should be tailored to the average number of encounters per day. Dnd is balanced around a specific number of encounters (and stats) . If we don't use cooldowns, then uses per day or strength of the ability should be tuned up to match our number and strength of encounters.

I, for one, really love Awaken Blood beingon a cooldown, because it's a meh ability offensively but very few thematic, and it being on a CD ensures I actually use it, which I almost never do for use per day abilities because they're either too strong or too weak to just use up on random low level encounters.

There's also plenty of abilities that are too strong to be use per day (where they can be spammed) but too weak to be once per day. These are the best abilities for cooldowns.

EasternCheesE wrote: ↑Sat Oct 30, 2021 8:38 am

Deathgrowl wrote: ↑Sat Oct 30, 2021 8:22 am Use/day is a defining part of Dungeons & Dragons. Cooldowns is for MMOs. Please don't make this more like an MMO.

Dungeons and dragons doesn't also use "15 fights in 30 minutes" scenarios often. And since many abilities do already have cooldown instead of use/day, i simply want to uniform things.
To clarify. It's not a petition to "make all these as cooldown". It's a suggestion to DM and Dev team to consider to revise the number of abilities that don't have cooldown while many others do.

Server design problem, not ability design problem.

If you are going to argue for more cooldowns and less use/day stuff by pointing out that it's 15 fights in 30 minutes, you need to argue the same for the classes that are literally built around use/day stuff, such as non-warlock casters. That, though, would be a monumental mistake.

In my view, there should be fewer cooldown based abilities, not more.

Sorry to respectfully disagree, but it's not necessarily a server design problem. It's a PnP vs Computer RPG difference problem. And if you want proof of this, go read up on why bioware designed the resting system as they did back in nwn1, which nwn2 adopted.

One of the reasons was because in PnP if you need to go back to the tavern and rest for 8 hours and return to the dungeon, the DM can simply fast forward it unless he has a reason not to. In nwn games you'd actually have to physically walk back and forth. Just clearing a warehouse of crooks in the nwn2 act 1 would require you to return to sand after every set of enemies. It's simply not fun in a computer game. In pnp this same situation would be resolved with a single encounter and perhaps the boss fight. hardly any rest between them. NwN2 in it's original form expects the player to field rest as often as it can.

It's a good goal to expect RP of the caliber one would find at an actual table. i often think these persistent servers actually have alot more RP because you are not limited to a weekly 4 hour session. you have ample opportunities to develop characters in extraordinary ways. I support and like this aspect.

But to expect game systems designed for tabletop and it's designs and expectations and hoping it will seamlessly translate well to nwn2 is simply not going to work. Only way that would work was if every single player had a pocket DM for every second of game time, which is obviously not possible. A large part of nwn2, BGTSCC or otherwise, revolves around you RPing with other players or tackling the "mmo" like spawns and automated encounters. And for those, the PnP system simply breaks down.

That said if nothing changes I can perfectly live with it. But it is definitely my understanding that pure PnP replica is ill suited for a CRPG built like nwn1 and 2 has been, specially when you are dealing with tens of individual players and occasional DMs instead of the DM + Party paradigm of the Tabletop version.