Class skills

[Durvayas]

Only real way to make UMD less absolutely critically nescessary is to expand upon the catalogue of magic items and potions, so that builds that do not have UMD are as viable as builds that do.

There is still so very much that UMD builds can do with wands and scrolls, that non UMD simply cannot. The server is hypergeared for UMD, and the economy of it is also slanted in that direction heavily.

But if you could get all your needed buffs with potions, you might be less convinced to dump rogue or bard for the UMD dump. The obvious step is to expand the potion crafting catalogue and/or slash the cost of creating magical potions, to make them more economically viable.

[Aren]

...The obvious step is to expand the potion crafting catalogue and/or slash the cost of creating magical potions, to make them more economically viable.

Looking at you Freedom of Movement Potions (6000 gold each).

[Adam Antium]

"The server is hypergeared for UMD"

No, D&D is hyper-geared for UMD. You want to use crazy magical doodads like wands and scrolls but not have casting classes, or wield items you normally wouldn't be allowed to? UMD.

We already have more potions available via crafting than vanilla and more than any other server I've played (notably I've never played the Ravenloft server), but you can't Mord's someone with a potion, you can't timestop with a potion, you can't mass haste with a potion, etc. etc. etc...

I don't see UMD as needing a nerf. It seems appropriate. Is there a significant problem with people who want to be top-tier typically needing to incorporate UMD, a good skill, into their build? Is this any different than people making optimized builds in the first place, really? Is there an issue with certain skills being more universally desirable, also?

I play a front-line character with 18 INT, because I use a ton of skills. This allows me to have an unusual presence in parties and combat, and also opens some interesting RP opportunities (because I splashed a few points in Persuade among other things, since I had a few spare skillpoints). There are several more skills than just UMD, Tumble, and Discipline that are useful, even universally so - how about concentration, taunt, heal, detection skills, search, and lore? Taunt and concentration are self-explanatory, though casters don't need/want taunt usually. Heal is self-explanatory, as are detection skills. Search lets you find more and better loot and lore helps identify stuff, understand languages, and find more books in bookshelves. All of those are very useful to characters who have more than the bare minimum in skillpoints, and all of that is missed out on if you're a low-skillpoint build. There are more niche uses of other skills as well.

I don't understand wanting all skills to be equally mechanically useful from a combat perspective (since that's what we're talking about with discipline, UMD, and tumble). That doesn't reflect real-life, I don't even know how it would work, and the person who suggested making Persuade essentially "as desirable" as UMD doesn't even know how that would work. Not to be a dick, but I don't know how to discuss something like that. I don't know what "make persuade as desirable as UMD mechanically" means.

I do know that we already have more potions than anybody can shake a stick at via crafting and brew potion (if brew potion needs to have adjusted prices, that's another matter), and there are many options for items with spells that don't require UMD unlike scrolls/wands, but you need to be aware of them and build for them sometimes. For instance, the Elder Dream gives you barkskin. There's a shield with Lesser Spell Breach 2/day you can use. There are some options. But if you want to run around disjunctioning and timestopping everybody, you're gonna need to spend 15 skillpoints. Some builds actually don't want tumble. Some builds don't want or need UMD. Some builds don't use discipline because they have too much to gain from levels in classes that don't have discipline. That is fine. As always, multiclassing and spending skillpoints is a balancing act of giving up something good to receive something good. There is no free lunch.

[A Mystery Clock]

What if I told you that opening up all skills to every class won't limit powergamers at all and will just change what builds are op

Such a massive upset to server balance accomplishes nothing.

Quoted. It'd also make builds in general a lot more restrictive and less fun to play.

I also agree that this is a forum-created problem that isn't actually a problem. Lots and lots of people, also, would keep on grinding silently even after level 30 just because they're introverted, or maybe consider solo/silent grinding relaxing. Or will grind silently pre-30 because they think grinding is boring, and they want to get it out of the way as quickly as possible.

As for the problem itself, it sounds more like "hey, some people aren't RPing on a RP server" than "there's a problem with skill banking".

The solution is quite easy. Go level up with someone else. It's a huge server. I've seen way more people who RP while leveling than powerleveling ghost trains- and both have their place.

[Adam Antium]

I agree with Mystery Clock. Another thing I'd like to note though, is that if your writ-grinding-thing is more of a rush, that's not necessarily a problem either. Honestly it's just annoying when people want to walk through Minmir Giants and chat every 5 steps causing buffs to wear off every floor.

There's a sweet spot between "having fun with the video game" and "being a good RPer." Everybody has their own tastes in that regard. I feel that's a good conversation to have, not changing the entire skill system because some people aren't RPing their skills/classes well.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

The problem is not skilldumping or otherwise.

The problem is the innate and unequivocal power of Discipline, Tumble, and UMD.

I think solutions should be geared towards making other "insignificant" skills suddenly very more significant. Players need choices.

I don't know if it's all possible, but what if Persuade just made someone think for a second that they might not want to 30 dump dip into Tumble?

Idk how, but just imagine. The problem of NWN always has been its concentration of power in 25% of its content. We should seek new distribution, not redistribution. The latter I think is just a bandaid solution.

This isn't actually a solution.

Discipline (substitute your OP skill of choice here) doesn't suddenly become less important because lore/persuade/whatever becomes hyper strong. Discipline would still be super important, you just would be even stronger if you had enough skill points for discipline and [whatever skill], you get a sizable buff. Rogues, wizards, rangers, bards, etc all become stronger in comparison to other classes.

There's a limit to how much skill-starved classes can move skill points around. A skill has to be pretty brokenly powerful to make the risk of being knocked down (or giving up 6 ac, or whatever) worth it in trade off - broken enough that the classes that can afford both would be too strong.

Doing backflips or whatever the new skill lets you do is all well and good, but there comes a certain point when you're giving up basic functionality for it. WMs and similar builds are already pretty close to max'd out for skill points - between discipline, heal, tumble, some UMD, spellcraft and a detect skill, they already don't have room for much or anything else.



Also, for the record: UMD is not that strong anymore. Sure, it's always good to have to make capping your stats easier but with recent crafting additions (Potions of Deathward/Freedom, the spell breach shield) you can survive without it. The biggest thing you get from it nowadays is scrolls - specifically Word of Faith (To deal with summons) and Mordenkainen's Disjunction (to dispel/breach people). Timestop's a trick of yester-year; I've yet to see a melee character use it in a way that wasn't just lighting money on fire since the change to damage immunity a year+ ago.

It's still worth having, and going without is a lot more work for the same result (So whatever skill you're picking up had better be extremely valuable, and probably isn't), but you can survive without it.

Yeah, that's true. I always forget about that. Adding more power to different skills just makes skill-starved builds worse, and skill-junky builds even better.

I don't know what the solution is then.

...I just would like to see skills have more of an impact. Sure, if you want to take Persuade, that's great, I just wish you got rewarded for it. Because of the writ system, the server has basically cried out that the form of progression is completing writs, and writs are based on combat, which inherently biases everyone to be *good* at combat.

Maybe there should be non-combat writs (i don't know how) that mean other characters can play to their strengths.

Idk. I'm spitballing.

[Adam Antium]

Considering that levels are literally your progression as a combat-capable adventurer, I view the idea of progression through mastering the art of being persuasive (for instance) with a few grains of salt.

We're playing adventurers. In D&D.

Some progression happens without literal battle, that's RPR and adventuring exp. But the rest of the time? We're playing D&D.

If combat and danger and power isn't important to you, why do you want to level up at all? Why not RP a peasant who is just better than average at being persuasive, and doesn't progress quickly or at all into the higher levels? (You still would level up eventually from RPR/adventuring exp, but it would be ponderously slow if that was your sole source of progression)

[Durvayas]

"The server is hypergeared for UMD"

No, D&D is hyper-geared for UMD. You want to use crazy magical doodads like wands and scrolls but not have casting classes, or wield items you normally wouldn't be allowed to? UMD.

We already have more potions available via crafting than vanilla and more than any other server I've played (notably I've never played the Ravenloft server), but you can't Mord's someone with a potion, you can't timestop with a potion, you can't mass haste with a potion, etc. etc. etc...

If you've played on servers like ravenloft or EFU, I think you'll find that arelith's catalogue of consumables is woefully under par. Consumables =/= potion. They can be 1/day items, or one charge magic items. The potential is limitless. The real challenge is introducing them to the module without bulldozing the settled economy. They need to be cheap enough to produce without being prohibitive (like freedom potions that cost as much each as a wand does), but not so cheap as to destroy demand for their equivalent wands or scrolls.

[Zavandar]

They absolutely need to be prohibitive. That's the cost of not getting umd

There are often very large power spikes for forsaking your umd dip and if things are made even easier then that just shifts the meta. It doesn't "fix" it.

Which I've said a few times now

This is an imagined problem that doesn't need a solution. "Solutions" would just make things different. The "problems" wouldn't be fixed.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I have to ask why you think a shift in the Meta is such a bad thing? I don't really think about arelith in terms of meta so maybe I am missing something, but the games I do play that involve worrying about the meta the meta shifts all the time to keep the game fresh and people seem pretty happy with that. Why is that different here?

[Sea Shanties]

A shift in this meta that would mean 2/3 of existing characters would either have to rebuild or would exist outside of the new meta (probably with a lot more power than new characters) is not something easily undertaken, especially when it's far from universal opinion that there even is a problem that needs solving or if there is, how to do it.

You might overestimate how much change people playing a nearly 20 year old game really want. New classes and spells and stuff sure, making it a whole new thing? I don't know.

[Adam Antium]

We aren't a game that's being professionally maintained 24/7.

We're run by volunteers who have jobs and lives outside of this, and frankly I don't want to stress them over stuff like "I want the meta to be shifted because I'm bored" if that's not already in the works, because that's a MASSIVE undertaking for a system as complex as D&D/NwN/Arelith. It takes years of developing and playtesting such systems from professionals, and they don't even get it right all the time.

The meta does shift, incrementally. Monk was superbuffed, the meta shifted. It was nerfed, meta shifted. New spells and abilities have been added, meta is shifting again, and playtesting is shifting it even further (i.e. away from mages being superpowered monsters quite as much lol).


Shifting the meta's fine, but it is a gargantuan task and the propositions of messing with skills to a large degree to upend many popular and top-tier builds just for the sake of changing but not "fixing" something, is something I can't say I care about, compared to other things we could be doing like introducing all-new abilities, fixing actually broken or unbalanced things that cause issues, adding new content and areas and such, or whatever else the devs have on their plate like bug fixes.


Regarding the EFU/consumables comments, I have played on EFU a bit (not recently though), the server has a ton of fun mechanics, definitely. Lots of good items and consumables.

EFU is also a max level 10 server where permadeath is common and if you have access to 4th level spells you're a big deal just for surviving that long.

I don't think their environment regarding UMD/consumables balance is directly translatable to a server like Arelith which is, by comparison, galaxy-level magic, without permadeath, with level 30s and multiclassing abound, etc. etc....

More consumables and clickies would be, as a general rule, fine, but I have to ask what you want to add so badly that you think is Bogarted by UMD. If you want to add a Mord's clicky that requires no UMD and isn't outrageously, OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive and rare (I'm talking over 1 million gold here for that level of power that requires no character investment), I'm going to flip my table, lol. It's all a matter of specifics when it comes to "we want more consumables and clickies that don't require UMD."

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Well, I was just asking without any advocacy in either direction, but I might still be confused on your answers. It sounds like you are saying any change that makes other classes stronger will inherently weaken what already exists, and that the goal of getting the game to a point where a wider variety of options is viable plays second fiddle to some player worried about their legacy character's power level. Did I get your main points right?

[Adam Antium]

"the goal of getting the game to a point where a wider variety of options is viable plays second fiddle to some player worried about their legacy character's power level. Did I get your main points right?"

No, not at all. That is a disingenuous and loaded way of examining this, sorry.

The goal of making huge changes to all classes and the entire balance structure of the server, to simply change things "for change's sake," without actually adding any content (i.e. just giving discipline/tumble/umd to all classes, or taking them away from certain classes, etc. etc.) is bad. Why? Because of the things discussed in the preceeding posts and because it would require rebalancing the entire server from the ground up. It would take literal years. There would still be broken builds who are more optimized than you, but now the difference wouldn't be UMD, it would be "look how many classes with synergy I can stack because I no longer need to take 3 levels of a skilldump class!" Do you want to see fighter/barbarian/wm on a server where tumble/UMD aren't important enough to build for, or where they aren't exclusive to other classes?

Something being good and therefore enjoyed by a large portion of players, doesn't mean it's something that needs changing. There are always, 100% of the time, going to be some such things. In fact, if you powered UMD way down for some reason, or gave it to all classes, or something along these lines, you'd have 23 fighter/7 WM's running around, bypassing +5 damage reduction for free, with hardly no downside. You'd just be making "some player's legacy character's power level" even higher. Heaven forbid we do something similar with Tumble and give everybody tumble, as has also been suggested in this thread.... Just hand cookie cutters +5 weapons and call it a day. Great.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I didn't mean it to be loaded, I was just trying to get in as much as I read in as short a point as possible.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I also don't think UMD is overpowered, and while I would be for more mundane consumables to help non umd characters and a slight hike in the dcs of higher level scrolls so its not just the arbitrary "get to 15", I don't think the game is broken because currently everyone has to get umd. As someone said in this thread above, its already rather close to a point where umd is not that important to fighter classes as is, could just use a slight bump up imo.

I just didn't get why people were so concerned about "the meta", so I wanted to ask why. Thanks for the answers.

[Adam Antium]

...having a system that encourages people to hold off on their character development or character concept until they are level 30ish and have all of the skills they wanted to have in order to roleplay their character concept to the fullest extent. For example; wanting to play a stealthy warrior type, but waiting until level 26 Fighter / 3 Rogue to dump points into Hide/MS and actually roleplaying being stealthy, something they haven't done their entire career. Such a player is encouraged to grind until level 30 as fast as they can and roleplay as little as possible until their concept can finally come to fruition.

Putting aside the topic of skill dumping, I'm interested in point bring made here, because I think it's really well made. People do (or at least I have) dreamt up concepts that require that skill dump later; that won't be the character they have envisioned until sometimes high epic levels.

I can't answer the question of whether that is because I don't know how to create a successful concept (someone at the beginning of their journey rather than the height of their power), or because the classes of D&D are too rigid. I am reasonably confident though, that neither allowing universal class skills (it really is a significant supercharge to many classes, a few of which would likely entirely dominate), nor capping skill dumps would fix it.

Do I like the idea of more customizable classes to allow for more individual concepts? Definitely, but I would be far from qualified to tackle the huge amount of mechanical balance issues that would crop up in an open-ended system, and I wouldn't want it to go too far - the D&D classes as they are currently conceived, are an inspiration to fantasy roleplay every bit as much as the D&D races.

So, we can try to do more to allow more flexible concepts, within the class system, but won't be suddenly opening up all skills to everyone, it would have knock-on requirements that would have rebalancing the classes, items and spawns for the next 5 years or more (and likely making a number of wrong turns and backtracking as we go). Remember this isnt just about balancing the level 30 loadouts, but every step along the way.

The bolded portion is something I wanna briefly comment on - there's a Star Wars server, called Legends Of The Republic (LOR), that does exactly this. There are no classes, you start with a background that gives you a small passive bonus in some area, and then your entire stats and skills and abilities are completely open-ended and determined by what you do in the game. Using any ability gives exp in that ability and lets you increase your level in it. You have a maximum number of levels you can put in any skill (not NwN skill, they made up their own skill system), so while it's open ended, you can't do EVERYTHING.


And it's awful to balance. It is, in fact, almost impossible to suitably balance, because of how modular and open-ended it is.


At some point I had a cyborg assassin character with 90 DEX and could kill anybody and anything on the server in one flurry. I had like 70 AB and 80 AC. It's vastly different now, but it's unbelievably hard to suitably balance, and that server has literally the most active development people I've ever seen on it (including Mithreas, for quite a good chunk of the server's initial release). It was getting work done on it almost daily, and it took more than half a year to get balance even SORT OF under control, because it's unbelievably complicated for such a system.


Please never do this system for Arelith. Lol