My personnal thoughts on NS4 characters

[Thanos]

Thanks for posting your vision on how you want to make this mod. I think you guys as the developers have a lot of hard choices ahead that a lot of people won't be happy with. I support whatever nerfs/class skill removals you have to do to make the mod more balanced. I don't think you will ever get complete balance but you can remove/change some easy tactics/class combos/spells/feats that unbalance the game.

Like other people have said in this thread DnD was never meant to be a PvP game. You always had a party and a DM to control the action.

You want constructive solutions. I have some things that if you did would go a long way to balancing the mod.

1. remove hips if it can't be fixed get rid of the SD class.
2. remove the sorc class. THis will be the hardest class to balance in a PvP setting. Save yourself the headach and just remove it and see what happens.
3. remove cheese class combos that every player that plays would take. For example 19 sorc/1 pally. There is no downside to taking 1 pally level as it is. Its a huge upside. Any sorc would be out of its mind to not take 1 pally level. In pnp DnD the DM could put restriction on such a class because of its alignment. Like your not allowed to cast some spells because they wouldn't be paladin like. But in NWN there is no restrictions.
4. Prc classes like RDD and Pale master are meant to be played with caster classes. When they are played with caster classes they aren't as powerfull as when played with a fighter or monk.
5. Remove full heal potions from vendors.
6. Summons creature spells should be nerfed and classes like clerics should have different summons then mages. Cleric summons should be weaker.

If you did those things it would go a long way to improve balance.

[Alexiagold]

Should every fighter be running around with a scythe or halberd just because it does 2 types of damage and is two handed? Maybe it takes less hits for you because you're a scythe master.......

Actually scythes are bugged they only do slash damage, I've tested.

but first of all sctyhes are bull in this game, they're probably the least practical weapon and are the only ones with such a massive crit range

There are quite a few weapons with x4 crit range in a WM, the difference of x4 and x5 ain't much, expecially since those giants take 3 damage from a normal hit from my slash based scythe damage. And actually Hydro's WM rapier takes out the ginats way faster than my scyther. I went scyther because I think the mage whiners needed to see that a fighter could way out damage any mage, any day of the week. I've had crits over 200 actual damage to mobs MY LEVEL and HIGHER. That's faster killing than FoD, if I get 2 crits in one round, or the FoD fails to kill. Considering I'm level 13 and mages don't get FoD till 14 (sorc) I'd say that you fighters need to get up off your NS3 builds and learn to play again.

Still waiting for you to tell me how your sorc handles 6 CR 17 Giants at level 8, and kills them in 1 spell. Still...

[Æ]

no, I haven't seen the animations thing, sounds cool... I'll check that out, thanks }: )

[TGPO]

Thanks for that link, I had lost track of that when I did a wipe not to long ago. Those anims gave real life to my fav NS3 character. Halfling rogue/SD/WM dual wielding Kukris. Good stuff there.

[Chimaira]

You could kill them at lvl 12 with your fighter, I could kill them at lvl 8 with my sorc. Not to mention they die in 1 spell most of the time, your fighter needs a rough 12-13 hits to kill one. Thats at least 3 rounds.

Prove it.

err? Prove what? That you need at least 3 rounds to kill a giant? Because if you mean you need less to kill a giant in melee with a fighter then I certainly dont believe you. If you mean proof by how my sorcerer can kill a giant at lvl 8 with phant...Easy.
Giants have 17 fort at most, the will is 11 I believe.
My sorc at lvl 8 started with 18 charisma(since I dont want to pick 7 charisma feats in epic to max my charisma, I need that 1 feat for epic mage armor. +1 from stats at lvl 4, +1 from stats at lvl 8, which means 20 base charisma. +1 from charisma cloak, +5 from eagles splendour, thats 26 charisma right there. 10 +4(phant is lvl 4) +8(charisma) +4 (greater spell focus illusion) = DC 26. Wow so if that giant rolls a 9 he saves, funny how they roll more 5s then 10s. Altho I have experienced a few times where 1 of the buggers rolled a 20 5 times in a row. Best strategy then is invis, rest, try again and usually they died the first or the second time then.

[Alexiagold]

Hrm I swear you said 6 of them. Seems to me at level 8 you don't get 6 castings let alone the 12 or so you'll actually need if they truely roll random saves. And now I bet you'll say, well I just invs and go rest. In response to that, the despawn/rest time you waste is all the time my figher needed to kill all 6 and move onto the next group.

Oh, and my fighter didn't take 2 feats into a spell I'll never use again. Or maybe you'll take wierd with 2 saves over wail with 1? FoD is also not illusion. So yea you wasted 2 feats just to make use of your 1 spell at level 8 to kill likely slow and a MUCH higher risk than my WM.

[RunarSterk]

And runar, nobody here is saying something about the ability pts on items, as long as they go up to about +8...

There's gonna be +8 ability gear? I thought.. well, I guess I thought there wasn't going to be stuff like that available.

[Chimaira]

Thanks for posting your vision on how you want to make this mod. I think you guys as the developers have a lot of hard choices ahead that a lot of people won't be happy with. I support whatever nerfs/class skill removals you have to do to make the mod more balanced. I don't think you will ever get complete balance but you can remove/change some easy tactics/class combos/spells/feats that unbalance the game.

Like other people have said in this thread DnD was never meant to be a PvP game. You always had a party and a DM to control the action.

You want constructive solutions. I have some things that if you did would go a long way to balancing the mod.

1. remove hips if it can't be fixed get rid of the SD class.
2. remove the sorc class. THis will be the hardest class to balance in a PvP setting. Save yourself the headach and just remove it and see what happens.
3. remove cheese class combos that every player that plays would take. For example 19 sorc/1 pally. There is no downside to taking 1 pally level as it is. Its a huge upside. Any sorc would be out of its mind to not take 1 pally level. In pnp DnD the DM could put restriction on such a class because of its alignment. Like your not allowed to cast some spells because they wouldn't be paladin like. But in NWN there is no restrictions.
4. Prc classes like RDD and Pale master are meant to be played with caster classes. When they are played with caster classes they aren't as powerfull as when played with a fighter or monk.
5. Remove full heal potions from vendors.
6. Summons creature spells should be nerfed and classes like clerics should have different summons then mages. Cleric summons should be weaker.

If you did those things it would go a long way to improve balance.

1 + 2: Banning classes is a sign of weak balance. If HiPS cant be fixed, then you might aswell just make items that counter it and give monsters high spot/listen. Ban sorc class...This class is only as unbalanced as the devs make it themselves. Clerics are stronger then sorcs overall since a cleric has the ability to stand a chance vs everything. Domain spells go through spell immunity, and if thats "fixed" (heck divine spells should go through mantles altogether) then a cleric always has the ability to melee with the spell buffs and decent BAB progression. If everything had lvl 9 spell immune, what would sorcs use? Shades? lol. Ban sorcs, then you might aswell ban clerics, and bards, and druids, and paladins, and shifters, and every other class thats capable of destroying most chars without trouble with the right build. Its much better to start with items.
3: Agreed. You can for instance make sorcerer/paladins unable to use necromancy spells. Or you can just make it something like a lvl 5 paladin ability, that WOULD mean the sorc had to sacrefice quite a bit for those saves.
4: Only true for the RDD, and I prefer to go Bard/RDD which makes use of the +2 to cha for casting and +8 to strength to make up for the Bards weakling BAB. People can go Fighter 28/2 Bard/10 RDD as much as they want, my bard is much more effective and a fighter would always be better off as a WM or DD. PMs are effective as both casters and melee. Making them stronger with caster classes is only going to cause more imbalance(like make the PM lvls count as a caster lvl). The only good fix would be the requirement of the ability to actually cast spells. So a fighter with 8 cha and 1 bard lvl cant go RDD unless hes actually able to cast lvl 3 arcane spells(which he isnt with 1 bard lvl and 8 cha). Same for the PM, but changes otherwise would only be stupid and/or imbalancing.
5: Heal is nerfed. It heals 150 HP now at lvl 15, and i doubt those potions are lvl 15. Even if they are, 150 HP isnt insane.
6: Nice way to nerf clerics, but its best to get to the root of the problem: Bugged Ab raising spells.

[Chimaira]

Hrm I swear you said 6 of them. Seems to me at level 8 you don't get 6 castings let alone the 12 or so you'll actually need if they truely roll random saves. And now I bet you'll say, well I just invs and go rest. In response to that, the despawn/rest time you waste is all the time my figher needed to kill all 6 and move onto the next group.

Oh, and my fighter didn't take 2 feats into a spell I'll never use again. Or maybe you'll take wierd with 2 saves over wail with 1? FoD is also not illusion. So yea you wasted 2 feats just to make use of your 1 spell at level 8 to kill likely slow and a MUCH higher risk than my WM.

Your fighter took Improved critical and weapon focus im assuming. See if you can put that to use when fighting a PM with 40% slashing immunity and 10/- slashing resist. You can hit all you want but you wont damage. Well except the occasional 2-5 dmg. Why would I need higher DC for FoD? Why would I need higher DC for wail? Doesnt matter to me if I have a DC 30 FoD or a DC 36 FoD since everything will die anyway in 1-2 casts unless they have death ward or are undead. I got plenty of regular feats, making it MUCH easier to lvl is a feat well spent, what else would I pick? Omfg Great fortitude?! Early on focusses matter alot, later on when most of the DC will be coming from charisma and spell level, they arent that incredibly hot.

[Thanos]

Thanks for posting your vision on how you want to make this mod. I think you guys as the developers have a lot of hard choices ahead that a lot of people won't be happy with. I support whatever nerfs/class skill removals you have to do to make the mod more balanced. I don't think you will ever get complete balance but you can remove/change some easy tactics/class combos/spells/feats that unbalance the game.

Like other people have said in this thread DnD was never meant to be a PvP game. You always had a party and a DM to control the action.

You want constructive solutions. I have some things that if you did would go a long way to balancing the mod.

1. remove hips if it can't be fixed get rid of the SD class.
2. remove the sorc class. THis will be the hardest class to balance in a PvP setting. Save yourself the headach and just remove it and see what happens.
3. remove cheese class combos that every player that plays would take. For example 19 sorc/1 pally. There is no downside to taking 1 pally level as it is. Its a huge upside. Any sorc would be out of its mind to not take 1 pally level. In pnp DnD the DM could put restriction on such a class because of its alignment. Like your not allowed to cast some spells because they wouldn't be paladin like. But in NWN there is no restrictions.
4. Prc classes like RDD and Pale master are meant to be played with caster classes. When they are played with caster classes they aren't as powerfull as when played with a fighter or monk.
5. Remove full heal potions from vendors.
6. Summons creature spells should be nerfed and classes like clerics should have different summons then mages. Cleric summons should be weaker.

If you did those things it would go a long way to improve balance.

1 + 2: Banning classes is a sign of weak balance. If HiPS cant be fixed, then you might aswell just make items that counter it and give monsters high spot/listen. Ban sorc class...This class is only as unbalanced as the devs make it themselves. Clerics are stronger then sorcs overall since a cleric has the ability to stand a chance vs everything. Domain spells go through spell immunity, and if thats "fixed" (heck divine spells should go through mantles altogether) then a cleric always has the ability to melee with the spell buffs and decent BAB progression. If everything had lvl 9 spell immune, what would sorcs use? Shades? lol. Ban sorcs, then you might aswell ban clerics, and bards, and druids, and paladins, and shifters, and every other class thats capable of destroying most chars without trouble with the right build. Its much better to start with items.
3: Agreed. You can for instance make sorcerer/paladins unable to use necromancy spells. Or you can just make it something like a lvl 5 paladin ability, that WOULD mean the sorc had to sacrefice quite a bit for those saves.
4: Only true for the RDD, and I prefer to go Bard/RDD which makes use of the +2 to cha for casting and +8 to strength to make up for the Bards weakling BAB. People can go Fighter 28/2 Bard/10 RDD as much as they want, my bard is much more effective and a fighter would always be better off as a WM or DD. PMs are effective as both casters and melee. Making them stronger with caster classes is only going to cause more imbalance(like make the PM lvls count as a caster lvl). The only good fix would be the requirement of the ability to actually cast spells. So a fighter with 8 cha and 1 bard lvl cant go RDD unless hes actually able to cast lvl 3 arcane spells(which he isnt with 1 bard lvl and 8 cha). Same for the PM, but changes otherwise would only be stupid and/or imbalancing.
5: Heal is nerfed. It heals 150 HP now at lvl 15, and i doubt those potions are lvl 15. Even if they are, 150 HP isnt insane.
6: Nice way to nerf clerics, but its best to get to the root of the problem: Bugged Ab raising spells.

Lets look at some of my other combos like a fighter/palemaster or a fighter/RDD. We both know that palemaster and RDD are not for fighter classes in the PnP game. They are for wizards and sorc.

Its rather simple why they aren't. Traditionally fighters have the best ac/hps/str/physical attack. So your going to allow fighters to be palemaster which give them more ac, take less damage and have more immunities. Thats going to make them wrecking machines. Where a mage traditionally has lowest ac/hps/str/attack. A mage is going to be harder to kill. Not a wrecking machine. The upside for fighter is way higher than mages.

RDD give +8 str +4 ac +2 con at level 10. Once again you are increasing the class that already has the best with ability that would go on the class with the lowest. Those abilities added to a fighter is 10x more powerfull then when added to a Sorc.

[Æ]

RDD abilities added to a STR/CHR based bard is more dangerous than adding them to a fighter

KD or iron horn, song, curse song, taunt.... simple matter to chop him up with improved crits (which you may notice is a RDD feat... why would a mage need that?) and a good sword with all that stuff and decent spell casting as a bard........ and bard is one of the required classes for RDD

As for pale master... read the loading screen: "A monk/palemaster is a dangerous combination"

I'm not necessarily disagreeing that maybe these combinations may be overpowered and need nerfing (like maybe a certain spell casting level could be needed for RDD, like PM, so you can't get it with just one level of bard... but even in that case if 3rd level casting was needed for RDD you could get it with 3 mage levels like fighter/PM's do... though in both cases you're sacrificing the chance to take a tumble class as fighter/PM, or utilize the bard class for fighter/RDD/bard for tumble and get 8 more AC at level 40 with maxed tumble for 4 natural AC as RDD or 2 natural AC per level as PM, so lvl 10 is 4ac, lvl 12 6 ac) I honestly don't kow how I feel about it... I DO know that saying PM and RDD were just intended for mages is a poor argument though...

Winged warriors look pretty damn cool though }: )

[Thanos]

RDD abilities added to a STR/CHR based bard is more dangerous than adding them to a fighter

DO know that saying PM and RDD were just intended for mages is a poor argument though...

Winged warriors look pretty damn cool though }: )

Ask anyone who plays the PnP game. They are. You don't find RDD in a fighters handbook. You find it in a spellcasting handbook. I don't have the book in front of me but I think a bard RDD in PnP game is not allowed either. Bioware took some liberties with rules trying to make the game more mass appeal.



1. DnD was never balanced to be PvP.
2. Converting PnP rules to the computer creates balances issues and bugs.
3. DnD is meant to have a DM. In a computer game all you have is a set of engine mechanics that players can abuse where a DM in PnP game would just say wait a sec...and maybe some bad things would happen.
4. Bioware couldn't and didn't try to balance the game for PvP or people cheating exploiting game mechanics. If some wants to cheat in single player let them it ruins their gameplay. Someone cheats in multiplayer game go play with someone else or your friends. NS4 is a whole differnt animal.

I respect your opinion and if the game was PvE most of the issues with balance wouldn't be a big deal. NS4 is first and foremost a PvP mod with PvE. So you have to consider class balance and unbalances.

[Æ]

this is NWN, not PnP... argument void

there have to be different rules for a computer game sometimes, it works differently... comparing the two too much leads questions like, why can't I climb this fence or tree? why can't I jump over this little hole? why can't I blow this wall down with a fireball? why can't my RDD fly?

and how do you explain the loading screen?

how do you explain RDD getting improved crit?

why can a bard be an RDD? they're more melee than magic.

And why should anyone but the most dedicated warrior be a weapon master? Let's make that just for fighter }: P Personally I like the mix and match... why can't a fighter be half dragon in a dragon realm or undead in a city full of necromancers? makes thing's interesting and more varied... and since I"m constantly told that this mod is all about character abilities and my fighter can't have the gear he needs to compete, I think fighters shoud be able to take on these prestige classes to give them more "character abilities" since that's what NS4 is all about.

We're talking epic characters... if you wer sitting face to face with a DM you could set out to become a lich or a deathknight at epic levels if you wanted to and your DM was creative enough with his setting and dealing with player choices and plot lines

If we're going to compare this with real D&D, where's the long plot lines catered to each character? can't do it, it's a game and there's to much to improvise.. The real D&D rules arguments, though sometimes valid, dont' always apply. NOt only is this not regular D&D, it's not regular NWN, it's neversummer........ and I don't even think we should be so quick to let go of everything from NS3 that made it a success... it was partially a success because you could pretty much make whatever character you wanted

Furthermore, it makes me sick the way everyone uses NS3 as an example of how much things can suck... we all seemed to love it before NS4, I know I did... And I see people who used to proudly say NS3 is the best, my server's the best, now saying NS3 sucked in so many ways... I see alot of pretense and fake people or people who can't make up their minds.

[DrakhanValane]

Part of the D&D 3.5 Req for the Dragon Disciple: "Spellcasting: Ability to cast arcane spells without preparation."