Hexblade

[the grim yeeter]

3 seconds is half a round.

Yes. That's what I just said: 1.5 flurries.

[...] and feels odd to have abilities that work on smaller time unit than round.

Why? That doesn't make sense at all.

[NauVaseline]

I know. However the game is sorta round based, despite being quasi-realtime, and feels odd to have abilities that work on smaller time unit than round.

Wait til you find out what Haste does to abilities

[Void]

Yes. That's what I just said: 1.5 flurries.

[...] and feels odd to have abilities that work on smaller time unit than round.

Why? That doesn't make sense at all.

Because the game isn't a realtime first person shooter. Your actions are largley queued in 6 second periods. Except movement. Having something that does not follow the pattern feels very odd as it breaks away from the scheme used by the majority of the game. Minimum duration of a spell is also one round.

6 second duration and six second cooldown afterwards would make more sense if being unable to heal is so troublesome.

[the grim yeeter]

Because the game isn't a realtime first person shooter. Your actions are largley queued in 6 second periods. Except movement. Having something that does not follow the pattern feels very odd as it breaks away from the scheme used by the majority of the game. Minimum duration of a spell is also one round.

What? But the durations of any effect, spell, ability or character's combat round all occur independently of each other. The duration of CoW isn't in any way linked to in which timepoint the affected target is within their own round (if they are in combat or have any actions lined up at all, in the first place). Furthermore, me clicking my mouse or pressing keyboard buttons doesn't happen in steps of 6 seconds either. It's absolute nonsense to structure the duration of every single effect in steps of 6 seconds, especially for the "arguments" you mentioned. And the game originally doesn't do this either: look at flurries (2 seconds), Time Stop (9 seconds), True Strike (9 seconds), and so on.

[Void]

I feel that it shouldn't be 3 round, and duration should be either six or nothing.
This applies to other abilities with non-standard durations, by the way.

[Shadowy Reality]

Nice contest.

With that said, is there any other ability in the game that has a cooldown that is not in the usual metric? Rounds, Turns, Hours? We don't split those units, ever, in any other ability as far as I know. I can't think of one, this is why Void is saying this is an outlier, which to me it also seems like it is.

[TimeAdept]

Nice contest.

With that said, is there any other ability in the game that has a cooldown that is not in the usual metric? Rounds, Turns, Hours? We don't split those units, ever, in any other ability as far as I know. I can't think of one, this is why Void is saying this is an outlier, which to me it also seems like it is.

Spellsword imbue cooldowns

Being an outlier doesn't mean it can't be done when it allows for more granular find tuning and balance of effects

Don't needlessly restrict yourself

[the grim yeeter]

With that said, is there any other ability in the game that has a cooldown that is not in the usual metric? Rounds, Turns, Hours? We don't split those units, ever, in any other ability as far as I know. I can't think of one, this is why Void is saying this is an outlier, which to me it also seems like it is.

Regardless of whether there are more abilities out there that don't, why would that by itself be an argument in the first place? "It's mostly done like this, therefore we should keep doing it like this"?. If there's a good reason to keep durations and cooldowns in steps of rounds as much as possible, then I'd love to hear it. But I haven't heard an argument for it yet, other than an appeal to tradition, which is a flawed argument in itself.

TimeAdept worded it well.

[Ork]

It'd be wise to just ignore consistently incorrect people in mechanic discussions.

[Void]

Nice contest.

With that said, is there any other ability in the game that has a cooldown that is not in the usual metric? Rounds, Turns, Hours? We don't split those units, ever, in any other ability as far as I know. I can't think of one, this is why Void is saying this is an outlier, which to me it also seems like it is.

Some homebrewed cusrtom arelith stuff has weird cooldown times, which is probably something that is best addressed at some point.

Holy sword has two second cooldown to imitate triggeringg once per flurry,
Earthquake knocks down people for 3 seconds.

And that's the only thing I could find. Everything else seems to be using either rounds, turns, hours, or multiple of six seconds which is a round.

[Xerah]

Things also happen in flurry's, which are 2 seconds. It's actually a fundamental way NWN works. It's weird to say there is nothing shorter than a round when these are how combat works.

[Void]

Things also happen in flurry's, which ...

Try making your first attack coincide with enemy's second flurry. First attack of the second flurry. Or with your ally's second flurry. Or cast fireball at exact same moment when enemy fires fifth attack out of six.

[Shadowy Reality]

There is nothing inherently wrong with trying to make things consistent, ability cooldowns are almost universally in rounds (multiples of 6 seconds), and while we could fine-tune them to be 4.45 seconds, maybe that fine-tunning isn't worth the inconsistency it brings.

This is to say that the concern Void has in this case is perfectly valid. But as has been mentioned, there are a few other things that work in a half a round timer, so this is not as big of an outlier as it seemed.

It'd be wise to just ignore consistently incorrect people in mechanic discussions.

[the grim yeeter]

There is nothing inherently wrong with trying to make things consistent, ability cooldowns are almost universally in rounds (multiples of 6 seconds), and while we could fine-tune them to be 4.45 seconds, maybe that fine-tunning isn't worth the inconsistency it brings.

Why not? If that fine-tuning would result in a more balanced game, then what would be wrong with it? Unnecessary inconsistency could be considered undesirable in certain cases, sure, but in this case it would have a point. In fact, "maintaining consistence" (whatever it is that makes you crave this so much) in this case would enable a broken ability to exist.

[Dr. B]

Why is the hexblade restricted to evil when in 3.5 it's open to any non-good alignment?

[Baron Saturday]

A good point was made earlier about remove curse/mojo, and how by the time they apply and you can take another action, the CoW is already gone.

[DM Rex]

As a friendly reminder. Please focus on mechanics, not thematics in this thread.
Please stick to points and address ideas, not attack each other.
If you cannot abide by this, abstain from posting in the thread further.

Thank you.

[Void]

To re-state earlier, I feel that 3 second duration makes ability an outlier as it does not conform to durations usually being featured in rounds.

If the idea was to give breathing room, then knockdown approach could be used.
Knockdown appraoch means 1 round duration followed by 1 round of immunity to the ability.

[magistrasa]

I'd like to see CoW go back to a full round, but instead of a flat No Heals Allowed, change healing to a 30-50% reduction or something, and let G.Resto override it. (Or follow what my other suggestions were, but I'm just throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks.)

I very much like that there's a healing reduction ability in the game. I've always felt like there should be. Looking forward to how it changes the old tired PvP dynamics. Personally my hope is that spells and poisons and other abilities with minor healing debuffs are added sometime in the future. Or at least that if these tools aren't given to players, that we'll see them used in PvE to really spice things up. That said, I do prefer prolonged debuffs with noticeable-but-not-overpowering effects, rather than a single-round-duration potion eater.

[dallion43]

Does curse of worms has a coldown? Or it is renewable 3 seconds?

Does -6/8 to skills stack with bard song? Is it removable by: restore/PDK/etc?
This is the biggest issue hex introduced, imho.

Couldn't test the two above properly, thanks.

[Hunter548]

Some input on the newest hexblade update


Curse of Worms' duration is (to an extent) irrelevant. As long as the hexblade can reliably hit whoever they're fighting, the difference between a three second lockout of healing with no cooldown, and a six second lockout of healing with no cooldown is largely academic. It being purgable is also largely irrelevant in this case: As long as it can be instantly reapplied, forever, purging it is largely a waste of time too; if you try to reactively purge it right now, by the time you drink the potion the original application's duration will already be over. As mentioned earlier, if they can just instantly reapply it then there's not much point to purging it anyways.

Curse of Worms desperately needs a save, a cooldown on proc like spellsword imbues, or both. Making it a % reduction to healing would also be way healthier than a total block.

Their spellbook confuses me. From the AB, the hex and curse abilities, the class seems obviously designed to be a gish sort of setup; a little casting, mostly for self-buffing, and melee. I don't understand, then, why their most useful spells are being removed. As it stands currently, their spellbook is largely vestigial and ignorable. DC spells aren't going to be useful on any sort of hybrid caster because the DC just isn't that high; you won't have much more than 10-11 ability modifier, your spells don't get above level four and you almost certainly aren't spending feats on spell focuses. As it stands currently, their spellbook seems almost like an afterthought, an ignorable bonus rather than an important part of the class. The zoo buffs and mage armor ish are the only parts of their spellbook really worth casting; assassins are more active casters.

Their spellbook really feels like an afterthought thrown in on the basis of "why not" at this point.

[YEET]

This idea is probably trash, but I did play the class on the PGCC and it all felt very...simple, you cast a spell, you swing ya sword.

So I was thinking perhaps, along with people wanting more progression with the class, since yes it takes forever to fire up. That your curse is customizable in a menu, much like warlock blasts are. Say as you level up you unlock slots on your curse, level 6 you get 1 slot and can pick from curses: a, b, and c. Then as you level up you can mix and match whenever, going to go fight things that have fire immune? Change off that fire curse and switch over to something else. This would allow the hexblade to sort of manipulating their character to the situation at hand.

Of course also as you level up you get better curses to apply, and perhaps some of the stronger ones (Such as draining and ac reduction) Take more than 1 slot on your blade.

This is all just an idea but it would enable people to mix and match their character much more enjoyably instead of currently where you would do the same thing for 3-4 levels at a time.

[Imperatrix]

Curse of Worms really should just die. Regardless of whether it's given a save or not, there's no reason to add something that so completely changes the dynamic of how combat operates. If we're really set on it existing then it should be a % reduction. There should also be some kind of significantly noticeable visual indicator that the debuff is present.

Curse of draining also needs a save regardless of the new cooldown. NEB being a 'counter' doesn't really stop people from using abilities as anyone who has been breached into a death domain Harm can attest. I recognise that this is a level 28 ability which precludes breach wands, but I've found more than enough breach rods either in chests or for sale to meet all my PvP needs.

The % damage debuffs are also huge. 1% vulnerability per Hexblade level is massive, especially in group pvp. These could be reduced to following a 1% / 3 level formula or something similar and still be useful pickups.

And to echo Hunter, now that their useful spells are taken away their spellbook looks like something that I wouldn't care to use. No one is going to be building a hexblade for spell DCs, so anything with a DC is little more than flavour (which is admittedly more or less the case in p&p from what I recall.)

Regarding the class design in general, I don't really like how the Hexblade's debuffing is split between the Hex ability and the Curse Weapon ability. The debuffing would be a lot easier to balance if it were all tied to the Hex ability, which is single target and on a cooldown. The Curse Weapon ability just seems derivative of the spellsword's imbue which has plenty of issues itself, whereas the Hex is the thing that is actually unique and thematic with the class. I'd prefer if Curse Weapon was no more than a Bless Weapon/Blade Thirst equivalent and focus were put on Hex being their defining ability.

[CosmicOrderV]

Seems like most folks are on the same page.

Something I find myself wondering, is why damage scales by flat values, instead of dice rolls. It would be a lot more appealing if, instead, weapon curse feats gave a solid dice count.

Might make a 7 dip more worthwhile, if instead of a +1 that scaled up to 30, it was just a one time 2d6, for example. Heck, even 2d4. Never got any stronger in level. Levels just gave you more feats, and therefore more 2d6 sources. Stagger the scaling instead of making it linear.

Seven level dip for a solid 2d6 of damage, BAB, and a fun (but weak) little hex? Probably not worth it compared to most other classes, but at least it's passable. As opposed to a whole 7 levels invested into a class, just to get -1 skills, +1 damage and some BAB. That sucks.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

Their spellbook confuses me. From the AB, the hex and curse abilities, the class seems obviously designed to be a gish sort of setup; a little casting, mostly for self-buffing, and melee. I don't understand, then, why their most useful spells are being removed. As it stands currently, their spellbook is largely vestigial and ignorable. DC spells aren't going to be useful on any sort of hybrid caster because the DC just isn't that high; you won't have much more than 10-11 ability modifier, your spells don't get above level four and you almost certainly aren't spending feats on spell focuses. As it stands currently, their spellbook seems almost like an afterthought, an ignorable bonus rather than an important part of the class. The zoo buffs and mage armor ish are the only parts of their spellbook really worth casting; assassins are more active casters.

Their spellbook really feels like an afterthought thrown in on the basis of "why not" at this point.

The magical identity of the Hexblade does indeed look weird. It seems to be straddling the line of "full melee, quarter caster" of ranger/paladin, but has stuff like Ice Storm which is very much a caster-y. And almost like a bard.

I'd rather see a focused, and lean spellbook if we keep the Full BAB progression. I don't think they should get all the zoos like they did before (Rangers don' t get the full array, and neither do Paladins.). They should get just enough to get by - arguably they should cap out at Improved Invisibility and Haste being their 4th level slots, as being the 'capstone' spells. Also getting GMW seems like a lot.

Or, and what I think would be more interesting is if we:
- give hexblade levels 1-6 and progression like a bard
- drop BAB down to 3/4
- focus a lot on enchantment and necromancy spells (along with some buffs)
- give them access to ESF: Enchantment and ESF: Necromancy

Or something like that. Overall, I think their spellcasting identity needs to fit either squarely into being more like a Ranger/Paladin (and thus more lean), or open it up more to be a hex-y, curse-y spellbook with way more variety and purpose.

If we did the latter, I think it would be a great opportunity to turn Hexes and Curses into Class Abilities and giving them a universal save DC like other class DCs. In this sense, you can link hexblade levels and charisma modifiers to both the efficacy of their spellbook and the efficacy of their hexes/curses.

A very interesting 'option' for a hexblade player could be if they want to focus more on CHA, or more on DEX.