Looking at the sorcerer on Arelith.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

With the way things are currently, all of those debuffs (if saved) won't put the enemy into critical shape. When crit potions heal 180 HP per round, you're going to struggle to keep damage on an opponent that they won't just shrug off the next round. It's even worse if they have heal potions that go for 240 HP per round.

Just summon an Astral Deva and keep spamming Empowered Black Tentacles and Maximixed Greater Missile Storm at them. When you have 65 AC with concealment and saves in the 40's you don't have to worry about much. The moment they fail a save against the tentacles they will be paralyzed and the Deva will hack them to pieces. Sorcs can beat even some of the strongest builds in PVP. They really aren't that bad off.

[-XXX-]

What's the deva going to do against all those AC70 divine dex builds?

[Hazard]

With the way things are currently, all of those debuffs (if saved) won't put the enemy into critical shape. When crit potions heal 180 HP per round, you're going to struggle to keep damage on an opponent that they won't just shrug off the next round. It's even worse if they have heal potions that go for 240 HP per round.

Yeah, good point. I had forgotten about the potion buff entirely. That's totally a huge nerf to mages.

[Aradin]

I feel like you should only be able to down a potion once every 2 rounds, personally. Both for balance and also for the logic of some dude just sitting in combat tossing back barrels of magic juice. When does his stomach burst? When does he have to pee??

[Anime Sword Fighter]

have persuade interact with disguises somehow. maybe add the bonus against npcs to see through disguise for exiles? idk.

[Drowboy]

When you have 65 AC with concealment and saves in the 40's you don't have to worry about much.

who wants to tell'm

[Hunter548]

With the way things are currently, all of those debuffs (if saved) won't put the enemy into critical shape. When crit potions heal 180 HP per round, you're going to struggle to keep damage on an opponent that they won't just shrug off the next round. It's even worse if they have heal potions that go for 240 HP per round.

310. Heal potions are 155 per potion, two potions a round.



Nerfing potions would help with this some but affects a lot of other stuff. Returning timestop to where it was a year ago - 80 lore to use a scroll, immune to physical damage if above 50% HP, full damage from non-physical sources - would go a long way to solve this problem too, though. It'd also help with the dex-div problem. Most of those builds are running 12, 10 or even 8 con because all you really need is to get above 400-420 hp when you've got 75 spooled up AC + e-dodge in expertise and 60 with just daily buffs. That's a significantly bigger issue if a mage can drop you if you take more than 20-40 damage without healing.

[-XXX-]

Gee... it would almost appear that the decision to steer away from the concept of infinicasters in favor of the classical vancian pen and paper approach was literally the exact opposite of what a PW like this might have needed...

[Hunter548]

Gee... it would almost appear that the decision to steer away from the concept of infinicasters in favor of the classical vancian pen and paper approach was literally the exact opposite of what a PW like this might have needed...

Infinicasters are more lopsidedly unbalanced though. It's not like these problems sprang out of infinicasters being removed; mages as a whole were mostly fine, a bit on the too-weak side before timestop was gutted.

Hell, casters on arelith right now basically play like infinicasters did. Cast buffs. Summon something. Cast haste, cast mords. Read a book or watch netflix otherwise.

[Hazard]

Gee... it would almost appear that the decision to steer away from the concept of infinicasters in favor of the classical vancian pen and paper approach was literally the exact opposite of what a PW like this might have needed...

Infinicasters are more lopsidedly unbalanced though. It's not like these problems sprang out of infinicasters being removed; mages as a whole were mostly fine, a bit on the too-weak side before timestop was gutted.

Hell, casters on arelith right now basically play like infinicasters did. Cast buffs. Summon something. Cast haste, cast mords. Read a book or watch netflix otherwise.

Better be a long Snuggybear book.

[mjones3]

Gee... it would almost appear that the decision to steer away from the concept of infinicasters in favor of the classical vancian pen and paper approach was literally the exact opposite of what a PW like this might have needed...

If you are looking at the weave master class for your example of infini caster you will be sorely disappointed in their output for damage or in pvp. In PVE they have lots of strength, especially as buffers/hasters. But in PvP you will likely only ever get 1 spell off, maybe more if you have scrolls. There is no timestop IGMS spam for them, there is no spam in general, they have a severe disadvantage.

To just give them infinite spells with no CD is most definitely not the answer either. In current PvE they do amazingly well with infinite summons, buffs, darkness, and invisibility there is almost 0 threat to a player as one.

[-XXX-]

With the way things are currently, all of those debuffs (if saved) won't put the enemy into critical shape. When crit potions heal 180 HP per round, you're going to struggle to keep damage on an opponent that they won't just shrug off the next round. It's even worse if they have heal potions that go for 240 HP per round.

Well, the above statement is quite valid and it clearly also implies that the ~limited~ damage output of a mage can be undone simply by widely available potions (that the character will most likely have more of in their inventory than the sum total of all spellslots available to the mage).

I've never bought into the argument that infini casters were too strong. Any melee character is essentially an infini caster as there's no limit to the number of attacks that they can make. Sure, range is an issue, but they can perform at quadruple efficiency once they get there. Furthermore, archers get to make what... 4 or 5 attacks per round (rapid shot) from even a longer distance and while yes, they are indeed limited by ammo, they'll likely come equipped with thousands of arrows, so that isn't really a factor either.
The infinite summons being OP argument is invalid, just look at the Blacguard class for reference.

The only arguably "problematic" infini caster build back in the day was the old Favored Soul, especially when combined with the Pale Master class (which was nerfed to its grave since then - pun fully intended), but that was mostly because of their ridiculous AC and infinite self-healing potential... personally, I see very little difference between that and how the current divine dex builds stocked with healing potions play out. Seems like we've gone full circle here.

[Hazard]

With the way things are currently, all of those debuffs (if saved) won't put the enemy into critical shape. When crit potions heal 180 HP per round, you're going to struggle to keep damage on an opponent that they won't just shrug off the next round. It's even worse if they have heal potions that go for 240 HP per round.

Well, the above statement is quite valid and it clearly also implies that the ~limited~ damage output of a mage can be undone simply by widely available potions (that the character will most likely have more of in their inventory than the sum total of all spellslots available to the mage).

I've never bought into the argument that infini casters were too strong. Any melee character is essentially an infini caster as there's no limit to the number of attacks that they can make. Sure, range is an issue, but they can perform at quadruple efficiency once they get there. Furthermore, archers get to make what... 4 or 5 attacks per round (rapid shot) from even a longer distance and while yes, they are indeed limited by ammo, they'll likely come equipped with thousands of arrows, so that isn't really a factor either.
The infinite summons being OP argument is invalid, just look at the Blacguard class for reference.

The only arguably "problematic" infini caster build back in the day was the old Favored Soul, especially when combined with the Pale Master class (which was nerfed to its grave since then - pun fully intended), but that was mostly because of their ridiculous AC and infinite self-healing potential... personally, I see very little difference between that and how the current divine dex builds stocked with healing potions play out. Seems like we've gone full circle here.

Strongly agree.

[Nitro]

Old favoured soul was problematic but not for the issue you mentioned. The healing it could output was 'ok' at best. It couldn't burst heal, only save itself or others from using kits over long grinding sessions. The issue with infinicasters as they were introduced wasn't mechanical power at all. Both favoured souls and weave masters were quite weak. FS gave up their strongest class feature (bard song) for being able to become an infinite buff/healbot, and WM's gave up any and all burst potential for the same.

What made them problematic was that they trivialized all the PvE content on the server. Dungeons weren't designed for parties to have short duration buffs up 24/7, for every adventurer to live in a haze of permanent haste. The solution at first from the devs was to introduce more dispelling creatures, but that just made trying to buff a party as a non-infinite caster impossible as every 2nd encounter saw all party buffs stripped.

When it came to PvP, both weave masters and favoured souls were a lot weaker than their base classes. PvP on Arelith usually happens in spans of less than 1 minute meaning that you'd be lucky if you could get off two high level spells in the same encounter while the nonpathed caster ruined you with missile storms.

So overall they were 'problematic' rather than overpowered and underpowered because they completely trivialized vast portions of server content, which made it impossible to balance for both their presence and traditional casters. And swapping to them entirely was never a solution because they were next to useless in player conflict so that would have been a universal nerf.

So if infinicasting is ever to return, it can't be in the cooldown-based form that it once was because it just can't work alongside traditional vancian casting. Even warlocks, our current infinicasting stepchild of a class has gone through so many reworks, updates, nerfs and buffs to put it in a semi-reasonable state that isn't outrageously overpowered or underpowered.

[-XXX-]

I agree, I wasn't advocating the return of infini casters in their previous iteration.
What I was getting at is the point of vancian spellcasting as a concept being obsolete (especially in the context of a PW).

What we might have needed was a better transition to infini casting rather than conservatively sticking to an old dysfuncional concept.
It's something that often gets outlined whenever balance issues like this pop up.
I think that the DEV team had the right idea back in the day and I feel sad about their decision to abandon it for something that doesn't really seem to quite work anymore.

Vancian spellcasting works great for PnP sessions and single player games (especially at lower character levels).
Infini casting seems better for online multiplayer game experience. It's also one of the main reasons why WOTC overhauled spellcasting in their latter D&D versions - they wanted a game system that would appear more viable to be picked up by MMORPG game developers, so that they could get more out of their IP (and even though their execution might have left a lot to be desired, they certainly were onto something in their general idea IMO).

The point about X-class making PvE trivial is frankly moot as tackling the PvE content of this server with any of the PvP optimized builds can be a rather trivial excercise in general (even solo).
If anything, infini casters enabled players with weak and suboptimally built characters to team up and experience the server's PvE content to its fullest. How's that a bad thing?

(admittedly, this whole thread of argumentation might seem a little offtopic, but cosidering how the OP was calling for more extra spellslots on items ...is it really?)

[Nitro]

There is a difference between "being able to do" and "completely trivializing". We have some notion that PvE balance is at least somewhat important, otherwise we wouldn't even bother with it and just give everyone XP and loot for free after all.

I don't disagree about moving away from vancian style spellcasting, it's an old, outdated and clunky system. However it would be a monstrously large project to redesign basically every facet of the server to accomodate for all spellcasters being replaced with some new form of infinicaster. Every dungeon, every area heck even other classes would have to be looked at because such a huge change would impact pretty much everything. So the amount of work to make it work at all is a considerable risk when we don't even know if it would actually pay off.

[-XXX-]

Pretty much all the spells that supposedly "completely trivialized" PvE content are wandable/scribable. Even right now, any character capable of using them can emulate a "weave master buff bot" by stuffing their backpack full with wands before they go adventuring.
The PvE argument against infini casters is simply invalid, it never was THE issue.

TBH with the state of class balance as it is, i am convinced that you could have simply given all mages infinite castings of whatever spells they know without any further changes and... nothing dramatic would have happened.


As for implementation... infini spellcasting code is there. We do have spells and abilities that get infinite uses unlike their versions in vanilla NWN. Some spells might need addressing on individual basis should they prove to be too good when spammed (*cough* IGMS *cough*), but I do think that it'd have been much less work than it might have appeared.

...and who knows? Maybe we'd finally see someone to actually cast a fireball on occassion...

[Ork]

That's not necessarily true. The one change to revert that would fix this issue is the timestop change. Reverting back to no physical damage above 50% hp would return mage kill pressure, and provide a distinct counter to dex builds that rely on dodge ac to reach those high 70s AC. With the reversion, you'll start to see people wanting CON again to outlive the mage assault - which means they'll have fewer stat points for CHA.

[Airport Proximity Jesus]

Sorcerers also have access to true flame if that hasn't been mentioned already. And normal sorcerers are complete nonsense when it comes to counterspelling people.

[-XXX-]

Sorcerers also have access to true flame if that hasn't been mentioned already. And normal sorcerers are complete nonsense when it comes to counterspelling people.

What are you trying to say?

The true Flame path equals playing Arelith on hardmode. The downsides of the path vastly outweight its very niche utility - it's pretty much unviable for PvP and solo PvE. The only area in which it excells is PvE in a party ...at which point it tends to be somewhat redundant and unnecessary. The concept is great, however its current form makes it a borderline pointless path IMO.

Counterspelling can be very powerful, but it also has a very narrow application (especially in the context of PvP dominated by melee meta). It outright doesn't work against a considerable portion of the spellcasting PvE content an it also has many counters that can result in a catastrophic loss of priceless tempo for the counterspeller in PvP.
Furthermore, even activating the counterspelling mode is a rather awkward and unintuitive ordeal that demands quite a bit of micromanagement skill from the player.

[Diegovog]

Anyone who played both wizards and sorcerers can see the vast difference even when trying make a viable build. As sorcerer you are forced to start at 16int and probably won't even be able to get utility skills such as bluff and leadership. You're stuck to concentration, spellcraft, discipline, tumble and have to choose between heal, bluff, detection and in the case of shadowmage sorc is ten times worse since they need hide/ms.

There are also feats, you're feat starved if you go power attack/divine shield and will probably only have two spell foci and choose between empower and maximize. And since the pot buff you sort of have to go maximize if you want to ever kill anyone with IGMS. This means if you go high DC you will only have two schools you can really be good at. And if you go AC sorc then you need still spell pre epic (along with power attack and divine shield) as well as epic auto still 1 for the extra ac on greensteel.

Gearwise isnt as bad. It's just wizards also have better. If lantanese rings could be enchanted before runing it would be great but otherwise you cant afford lantanese in endgame gear. No decent staves for sorcerers too.

Also leveling sorcerers have it harder, they will always take 1 extra level for that higher summoning circle. And when they go for the pala or bg pre epic they go even further behind. Being effectively 4 levels behind in summons.

Buuut in pvp sorcs will beat wizards solely because of counterspell/spell mantles. Wizards can't keep it with them. But against everything else a smart wizard player can do better.

I think sorcerers can easily get out of hand if not balanced properly so I'm not too keen on offering suggestions other than the timestop damage when people are below 50%hp to be able to actually finish a potion chugger or kit spammer.

[Airport Proximity Jesus]

Sorcerers also have access to true flame if that hasn't been mentioned already. And normal sorcerers are complete nonsense when it comes to counterspelling people.

What are you trying to say?

The true Flame path equals playing Arelith on hardmode. The downsides of the path vastly outweight its very niche utility - it's pretty much unviable for PvP and solo PvE. The only area in which it excells is PvE in a party ...at which point it tends to be somewhat redundant and unnecessary. The concept is great, however its current form makes it a borderline pointless path IMO.

Counterspelling can be very powerful, but it also has a very narrow application (especially in the context of PvP dominated by melee meta). It outright doesn't work against a considerable portion of the spellcasting PvE content an it also has many counters that can result in a catastrophic loss of priceless tempo for the counterspeller in PvP.
Furthermore, even activating the counterspelling mode is a rather awkward and unintuitive ordeal that demands quite a bit of micromanagement skill from the player.

No, trueflame is at a complete loss when it comes to versatility but wizard really doesn't have anything comparable. It's different and zany and interesting and thats good. And I'd say that any group with a TF on hand and a strong frontline will trivialize most content- but it's true they're big screaming targets in pvp. Still, fun, zany and weird.

I'm just counting a couple of neat nifty strengths/options for sorcerer that wizard doesnt have. Whether or not counterspelling is as jenk as it is doesnt mean that when given the opportunity to do it, sorcerers dont massively outperform wizards at it.

Also every other cool thing sorcerers have has been brought up in thread already lol

[AstralUniverse]

And this is where nerfing timestop got us. shocker.

[mjones3]

Timestop got nerfed not only for casters. Timestop got nerfed for melee as well and it was very much needed. Timestop and get off 6-8 attacks as a rogue monk with crippling strike and 14d6 sneak attacks, or 5-6 attacks as a barb WM where you fear them and then get off 90-300 damage a hit.

Anyone thinking the timestop nerf buffed melee over casters forgets how easy it is/was to use scrolls as a melee.

[Diegovog]

The timestop meta was unquestionably the worst pvp era of Arelith, we are just discussing means of making sorcerer more viable than it is now.