Standard Fear Aura Is Too Much

[The Rambling Midget]

Right now, all mobs, no matter how weak or strong, use the same flat penalty for a failed fear save, which is high enough to completely cripple a character for up to several minutes. It's worse than ten negative levels, which is significant. This makes sense for bosses like Dragons and Liches, which can be assumed to be utterly horrifying or even using a type of mind magic that bypasses a character's mental faculties.

Too often, (nearly always) fear checks are failed because of a 1 rolled on top of a base save that should make failure otherwise impossible, against NPCs of lower power that spam the effect. Again, failing a save against a boss of some sort could reasonably incur the current large penalties, but suffering these penalties for failing a save against a creature many levels lower than your PC is like collapsing into a catatonic state because someone walked around a corner when you weren't expecting it.

Even the lowest lesser fear aura penalty is enough to turn an evenly matched battle.

[The Rambling Midget]

I came to post about this, and when I was writing out the post title, it autocompleted, so I guess I'll make this an annual thing.

It's still too much, and, I would argue, really bad for the server. Slapping on a penalty which, in most cases, means that your only options are to run or die, when your character rolled a one on a save they can't otherwise fail, and may in actuality be able to double or triple, is just one more issue that encourages players to minmax, dump saves that won't help anyway, and run protection spells 24/7, instead of building a balanced character.

If it wasn't so crippling, fear could be added to a lot more NPCs and add a new dynamic that rewards character balance. As it is right now, it often serves as a simple "Keep Out" sign for certain areas.

In the previous post, I said that standard fear aura makes sense for bosses, but I don't feel that way anymore. If you've built your character to be highly resistant to fear, you deserve the benefits a lot more than someone who dipped Paladin.

[Gouge Away]

I think, in general, disabling effects last WAY too long when affecting PCs. It would be a lot more interesting if they were more reliable and effective for a few rounds but didn't completely take a character out of commission for multiple turns.

That also might be a completely different game though.

[Ork]

It would make sense to change disabling effects significantly. Turns/rounds are not a good measure as even 30 rounds becomes 5 minutes long. 5 minutes is an atrociously long time in any sort of conflict. Even 1 minute is too long. I'd love an alternative to disabling effects which would allow us also to tweak saving throws, ..etc.

A more elegant system might have a flat rate of time + bonuses for a feat line or epic caster levels. In later editions of D&D, negative effects could be rolled against every turn in order to break out of the malus.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

what if fear was generic - 2 on bunch of stuff, lasted 5 rounds, but a new save was made every round and was cumulative?

So peak fear would be - 10 for constantly failing saving throws.

You can tweak the cumulative negatives according to the enemy.

[Lexx]

Part of this is why spells like mindblank of varying degrees are your friend.

Otherwise I like Orks suggestion. It would be a way of scaling without nuking usefulness to casters who rely on such effects themselves with regular fear and the like.

[jomonog]

Never understood why remove fear doesnt work. Isnt that what it is supposed to do?

[Skibbles]

In later editions of D&D, negative effects could be rolled against every turn in order to break out of the malus.

This would be so cool if it could somehow be put into NwNs fussy engine.

Saves and magic are so obnoxiously binary in NWN. Every spell/effect is all or nothing, with very few exceptions (who really cares about a few d6 of damage for a failed finger of death), causing everyone to desperately corner the saving throw market and for good reason - it never feels good to get one shot by a spell whether it's death magic or a paralysis that lasts 5 minutes while everything clobber you to death.

Of course, on the other hand, making a save every few rounds to break out would only make save meta even stronger and mages even more gimped.

As far as fear goes I don't mind the debuff, because you can still control your character instead of auto-running to the nearest corner and waiting to die, but it does last for a long time - usually long after the creature is dead and presumably less scary for it.

Also remove fear does work, but it has to be cast by someone else.

[Gouge Away]

Spells like Stinking Cloud check every round. It's not out of the question.

Bringing the duration way down would be great but there's another angle to this, most spells just aren't worth casting because saves are so high. But saves have to be high because failing any spell that takes you out of the game for more than a few rounds means you're probably dead.

So not only would I like to see fear, hold etc have much shorter duration I would like them to be much more able to succeed and/or have a small effect making casting them worth it even if they didn't. So for example hold person would see its DC upped and cause a slow effect or 1 APR loss the next round even if the target made the save BUT in exchange if the target fails the save they're only taken out of the fight for a couple of rounds.

Basically It would just be really cool if casters had a lot more tricks up their sleeve to affect a fight by tossing around lower level control spells. There's just not really room in the meta for those now except in mid-level pve or with feylocks who can cast them endlessly fishing for failed saves.

[Drowble Oh Seven]

Hard agree with what Gouge said. I've been playing around in the Bramble Woods lately, and that DC20 hammer of the gods on the bugbear shaman is murder to a solitary character. Similarly, the touch attack knockdown on the blood moon boss. Failing a save wouldn't be such a problem if the effect didn't amount to being given a mandatory time out to make a cup of tea while you watch your HP pool slowly whittle away.

[-XXX-]

The ideas presented here would render CC spells and abilities virtually useless. PCs use them too.

May I suggest looking at clarity potions as a viable solutoon instead?

[Drowble Oh Seven]

... You're not wrong.

I do agree thoroughly with Skibbles that less binary magic would be wonderful - Though with the wild variation in saves various PC builds pick up over 30 levels, I can't begin to imagine how it would be done.

[Ork]

A change to debuff spells would also require a change to saves. If I can make a save every round, my overall saves need to be lower. A change to how we stack saves on arelith would have to go hand in hand to allow these spells to be useful.

However! While a pc might currently use hold person- you don't need that up for 5 lovely minutes.

[The Rambling Midget]

Spell DCs would need to sit around 10ish higher than average saves, and both would need to shift from there in a way that gives equal advantages for equal commitments. Then, instead of all or nothing holds and instakills, you end up with fairly reliable impediments that alter the balance of a battle. Spell slots might also need a boost to account for the increased necessity of multiple castings.

It would be a lot of work, and a lot of testing.

[Shadowy Reality]

I think Peppermint had a sketch of a suggestion very similar to this at some point, it looked cool.
I think at some point something will have to be done, between high saves and flat immunities it is hard to target saves. Persistent AOE do alright due to the lack of spellcraft.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

-10 AB and AC is a bit ridiculous for something that lasts so long. If it lasted a couple of rounds then went away it would be fine. But it usually lasts for the entire duration of the battle and anyone who fails a saving throw is pretty much useless for the rest of the encounter. I seriously hate to play anything without a paladin dip because of it.

I also think people really overestimate how many people actually have decent saves. Most people are running around with saves in the upper teens and lower to mid 20's. Only a small handful of divine builds get saves in the 30's without 5%'ing all their gear, which very few people actually bother to do. Take a group of random people to fight the dragon bosses if you don't believe me, 9/10 players will spend the entire fight on their back being knocked down by the DC 40 wing buffet. If we balance saves around the 3-4 people on surface who actually play a divine class it's going to be really hard on everyone else.

[-XXX-]

-10 AB and AC is a bit ridiculous

...as opposed to the vanilla state effect? Not in the slightest.
The above is a fairly recent change when considering the entire server run time.
How easy do we need this game to become before all sense of achievement is lost and adventure related RP devolves into a boring comparation of participation trophies?

[The Rambling Midget]

How easy do we need this game to become before all sense of achievement is lost and adventure related RP devolves into a boring comparation of participation trophies?

You're leaving out context. -10 makes sense if you bomb a save, but it's ridiculous to get that for randomly rolling a one on a save you shouldn't be able to fail in the first place.

[-XXX-]

Auto fail and auto success are the core mechanics of the game.
Same argument could be made about that orc spawn rolling a lucky 20 crit with that greataxe - "he shouldn't have hit my AC 60+"
Well, tough luck I say, if only there was a potion to prevent greataxe criticals...

[The Rambling Midget]

Auto fail and auto success are the core mechanics of the game.
Same argument could be made about that orc spawn rolling a lucky 20 crit with that greataxe - "he shouldn't have hit my AC 60+"
Well, tough luck I say, if only there was a potion to prevent greataxe criticals...

Even that requires a second lucky roll to confirm the crit. The effects are also easily dismissed by a healing potion. In most cases, fear completely removes a character from a fight. There's no comparison at all.

[-XXX-]

Even that requires a second lucky roll to confirm the crit. The effects are also easily dismissed by a healing potion. In most cases, fear completely removes a character from a fight. There's no comparison at all.

On the contrary - clarity potions, mind blank scrolls, remove fear wand... there's plenty ways both to remedy it and even to prevent it from happening in the first place.
...and if all that still isn't good enough for you, play a paladin.

[The Rambling Midget]

On the contrary - clarity potions, mind blank scrolls, remove fear wand... there's plenty ways both to remedy it and even to prevent it from happening in the first place.
...and if all that still isn't good enough for you, play a paladin.

Did you read the rest of the thread? I'm trying to advocate for making those less of a crutch and balancing things out so that characters will rely on saves instead of 24/7 immunity, and introducing some counterplay...

Those things aren't good enough for me, because I want there to be variability. Right now, it's binary. That's boring and bad.

[-XXX-]

Did you read the rest of the thread? I'm trying to advocate for making those less of a crutch and balancing things out so that characters will rely on saves instead of 24/7 immunity, and introducing some counterplay...

Those things aren't good enough for me, because I want there to be variability. Right now, it's binary. That's boring and bad.

Yes I did. Did you read the arguments presented how much would have to be changed, tweaked and balanced before that were even possible? (oh wait, you probably would have as you made them yourself).

Maybe instead of proposing convoluted fixes to non-issues, try appreciating what we're actually dealing with here - it's ~FEAR~, it's supposed to make your character run away from combat instead of continuing the fight merely complaining about some mildly inconvenient debuff.

[The Rambling Midget]

Did you read the arguments presented how much would have to be changed, tweaked and balanced before that were even possible?

I never said anything about it being an easy transition. Please don't try to turn this thread into a flame war.

[chris a gogo]

I honestly can't remember as im playing a mage not a melee at the moment but doesn't lesser restoration potion remove the -10 ab?