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

elloes,

i have a paladin character, level 29 total, 26 paladin levels and 3 anointed knight levels, with practiced spell caster feat (Divinate Paladin Class Kit). Paladins are full casters on BG, meaning if i cast a level 4 paladin spell (divine retribution), the DC of the spell should be:

Spell save DC: 10 (base) + 4 (spell level) + 3 (epic caster progression levels 23, 26 and 29) and +3 (WIS mod): so DC 20 will save.

the spells description states:
"You invoke the holy words quickly and your weapon flashes a holy or unholy radiance. Through Divinely granted insight you know that your following attacks will hit their mark. The target must perform a wisdom adjusted saving throw against the spell's save DC + 2. The target's wisdom modifier is subtracted from the total DC (negative modifiers are added). If the target succeeds his will-save nothing happens. If the will save fails then you shall land critical blows. You can cast this spell even when it's not your round; However, your must mind interrupting your own attacks"

# I understand the above to mean that the DC of the spell increases by +2, for a total of DC: 22 (will save) for my character.
# the DC is then modified by the opponents WIS, if opponent has WIS:15 (+2), the DC of the spell is reduced to a DC 20 will save.
# if the opponent has a WIS: 7 (-2), the DC of the spell is increased to DC 24 will save.
# if my character were to drink a potion of owls insigt, WIS would bump to 24 (+7 modifier), meaning a DC bump to DC 26 will save, modified by opponents WIS modifier, which is something that actually might be useful for a paladin, blackguard, innate etc.

Problem1: the DC seems to be the same, all the time, no matter which opponent i attack, its always set at 15, which is wrong. it looks to me like it takes 10 (base) adds +2 from the spell and adds +3 (WIS) for DC 15 total, which inaccurate. DC 15 makes the spell utterly useless, and it is a level 4 spell, which is the highest spell level available to paladins.

Problem2: when the spell feat rarely succeeds, the attacks, when they hit, get the "critical hit" floating message, but i do NOT inflict critical damage, just normal damage.

i hope you guys can find a way to fix this.

Potential additional problems: the spell feats blessed strike, burning strike and disrupting strike also seem to have spell save DC´s that are compeltely wrong, but i have not looked into them as thoroughly, might be a good idea, as they are underwhelming to say the least.

Honestly, these PC-cloning spells are so janky i'd just recommend not using them until we rework them completely.
And, given your bugreport, i will raise a topic of remaking them because 6 seconds of crits is not easy to implement without writing parallalel damage logic and applying it separately. Looking at spell code, it's all spaghetti of functions we'd rather prefer to never use because they try to emulate too much of game calculations and they fail at some point.

elloes,

i understand, a rework seems reasonable given the spaghetti code you speak of, the PC-cloning solution(s) seems very clanky.

i do have a couple additional things i would like to add, hopefully it can help:
# when the spell Divine Retribution has been memorized in the characters spell book, the spell description states i can use the ability as a "feat", in the quickbar, with a 2 minute cooldown. problem is, even when using it as a "feat" the toon still has to spend 1 round casting the spell (with a concentration check that you can fail), 6 full seconds as far as i can tell, instead of the ability just immediately working when you press the button. this is very similar to how the barbarians rages used to work, you had to "cast" rage, spending a full round doing so, instead of it being a free or immediate action. Basically you give up a whole round of attacks as far as i can tell, without the benefit of turning the follow up attacks into crits that do full crit damage in the upcoming round.

i wrote:
"Problem2: when the spell feat rarely succeeds, the attacks, when they hit, get the "critical hit" floating message, but i do NOT inflict critical damage, just normal damage."

# after more testing i have to modify the statement above; SOME of the attacks do not inflict critcal damage, some do inflict critical damage, but not all damage types the character inflicts with their attacks, like divine damage for example, is included in the calculation, it is left out completely.

# i have a cleric, a morning lord, with 32 caster levels (also hierophant), able to bump caster levels to CL 40 with advanced divine spell power, he also has epic spell focus evocation, meaning he has reignite evocation ability/feat. with the 7th level evocation spell righteous smite (an evocation spell), i should be able to use righteous smite every single round of combat, but i cannot. this due to the "feat" being cast (1 round), and "cast" again (another round) when reigniting, it is too slow, but the ability/spell also suffers from the same problems that divine retribution has, as well as the other "PC-cloning spells" seem to suffer from, like wrongly calculated spell save DC.

i appreciate you raising the topic of reworking these spells, cheers

This spell doesn’t seem to exist for a Paladin in 3.5 PnP, but does exist as a Cleric lvl 5 spell with all sorts of difference in mechanics!

https://dndtools.net/spells/complete-ch ... tion--586/

Would it be more interesting if this spell simply and temporarily granted Improved Critical feat for whatever weapon the Paladin would wield at the time of casting?

elloes,

arcane casters like bards, wizards, sorcerers and some devine casters like clerics get access to keen edge or weapon of impact at spell level 3, which gives the weapon the "keen" property, which is equivalent to the improved critical feat. also, paladins get weapon of the deity, a level 3 paladin spell, which gives up to +5 eb and the keen property if 20+ paladin caster levels, which is way better than just keen / improved critical.

therefore, changing the divine restribution, a 4th level paladin spell, to just give the improved critical feat would be underwhelming, bad actually, for a 4th level paladin spell. my two cents.