Aesthetics

[FurnishMyFlatForCheap]

I think this topic should be prefaced with an acknowledgment/ reminder that the good people who bring us this game are volunteers who owe me/you nothing whatsoever.

Aesthetics.

I was reading a different post and the aesthetics of weapons was mentioned which got me thinking on this topic in general, “there’s far too many glowy swords” or something to this effect. I’d agree with this sentiment which is not a takeaway from all the work that goes into creating them. They’re awesome, the avernus(?) sword is amazing, but it’s also fairly common to see some glowing sword of some kind.

Spell VFX would be the same thing. Shield, Globe, Mantle, P.F.S, Spell resist etc. Everyone is a Christmas tree at all times just going about the world, Which is fine some of these characters are antagonists or important, what have you and rightly want to be protected as they peruse your wares, but do we need to be reminded at all times?

If you read into any pvp discussion it’s just an assumption that you will be Mordsx2 or dispelled/breached so do we need so many visual ques?

Like shield. It’s in a potion, it’s the most basic thing to have but I find myself not putting it on myself because I don’t want to go shopping in a bubble.

Are the visual ques a nice QoL to remind myself to reapply my shield? For sure. But I don’t mind having to think about an extra step if it means the people who feel the need to run through the entire spell book to go about business as usual aren’t as jarringly apparent.

And I got off topic on my own topic. The weapons, I’m not sure what to say about them, they look great but it would be nice to just have the more mundane looking varieties be the norm.

Thoughts?

[Peacewhisper]

Since the Avernus sword was mentioned, just thought I'd chime in as someone who's been around a few years now. Even before a lot of the newer weapons with special vfx were added, anyone could always slap one of the stronger permanent essences on a sword and end up with a flaming sword, a sword dripping with acid, a sword with lightning coursing down the blade, etc. There's also always been Holy Sword, Bless Weapon, Blade Thirst, etc. Different variations of spellsword also existed. So glowing swords are hardly anything new. If you don't want a glowing sword, you can always use a divine essence and refrain from using any spells or class features that make them glow.

Forgotten Realms and Arelith by extension are high magic, high fantasy settings. There are dragons, there are ships that can fly in space, there are squid headed brain eating aliens living underground. I understand there's a large camp of people who want their D&D to be low magic, mundane, dark and gritty and realistic. You might find your dark and gritty but if you want realism or less powerful less sparkly magic then you're probably going to be disappointed looking for that in the Forgotten Realms. We're talking about a setting where the Gods are real and will perform miracles if you ask them, where nerds can throw fireballs and big muscled up guys in loin cloths can bench press 6000 lbs.

[Security_Blanket]

I'm not a fan of too much flash either, but I think a lot of the spell visuals have been untouched so other players can see those buffs are there in order to dispel them. I'd certainly love to see some of them (like Premonition) changed to something less gaudy at least.

This all comes down to preference I suppose, some people like one extreme and another prefers the opposite extreme, but that's where the happy balance is suppose to come in. Is Arelith in the middle of those two extremes? I don't think damask weapons compare to any of the locked weapons so in that regard at least it pays to be flashy.

[AstralUniverse]

I definitely agree.

Too flashy.

Too many unique visuals results in none of them looking particularly unique. Just glowing and needlessly adding extra weight on the performance of the game.

Back in my day having glowing eyes as a monk was super based. Having divine visual on your sword as a paladin was super based.
Today - nothing is based anymore. Today it is based to be simple, with a weapon without any visuals.

[MissEvelyn]

Agreed.

Yes, the Forgotten Realms is High-Magic, but it seems that people are forgetting that none of these spells - save for the 'skin' spells and spells that specifically say so - have sparkles around them in D&D 3.5.

Just as a few examples:

Shield creates an invisible, tower shield-sized mobile disk of force that hovers in front of you. It negates magic missile attacks directed at you. The disk also provides a +4 shield bonus to AC. This bonus applies against incorporeal touch attacks, since it is a force effect. The shield has no armor check penalty or arcane spell failure chance. Unlike with a normal tower shield, you can’t use the shield spell for cover.

The creature gains spell resistance equal to 12 + your caster level.

[AstralUniverse]

PnP is irrelevant. These spells have visuals for balance reasons in a computer game.

[Waldo52]

I'll chime in here and say I think the aesthetics of the game with regards to warding are abysmal.

Granted, the action servers tend to be worse. Barkskin shows, everyone has wings and permahasted characters run everywhere at full speed.

But this is a role playing server. I'd like to really take in the look of my character and the characters around me. I can't do that with any serious warding beyond zoo spells and the like. It's truly immersion breaking seeing stoneskin regularly and having our characters surrounded by bizarrely multicolored visuals. At times it feels like a Medieval Marvel movie.

These problems come from the base game so I'm not blaming the team, but I think improvements can be made. I think it's hilarious how a fight in the Skal grainery looks so much cooler than an epic level brawl.

[Peacewhisper]

At times it feels like a Medieval Marvel movie.

Because that's basically what Forgotten Realms is. Again, I understand there's a HUGE camp of people who would prefer that FR be more grounded in reality, less fantastical, etc. But that's not what it is. You're basically popping in an Avengers DVD and wondering why its not Citizen Kane and why its all of a sudden in color.

I'll also say this. You can definitely play a mundane character and use very little magic or glowy vfx and still be effective. Nobody wants to do that though, everybody has to slap at least 4 levels of loremaster on their epic barbarians because of course their epic barbarians have to be able to cast all the same high level spells as an epic wizard so they have every possible advantage in PVP.

People are going to do what gives them an advantage in PVE or PVP. Stuff like Premonition is way too good for people to not use when its as easy as dipping three or four levels into a class. Right now not only are we watching The Avengers, but Tony Stark gave Hulkbuster armor to the whole team and to the bad guys as well. Everyone uses the same glowy wards because they can. Not only that, a Fighter/Weapon Master/Loremaster will cast their spells at a higher CL than a 27 wizard/3 specialist.

The problem isn't vfx, the problem is magic is way too accessible to characters calling themselves mundanes. Everyone wants to play Naruto or Sasuke but nobody wants to play Rock Lee because we all know what Gaara did to him. Imagine how differently that scene would have played out if Rock Lee just pulled a scroll of magic plot armor out of his pocket. If Rock Lee could just pull out a scroll of Sharingan or Nine-Tails-Demon-Roids and basically do every jutsu the show wouldn't even be called Naruto, it would be called Rock Lee. When mundanes can cast level 9 wizard spells why even have wizards?

[Cthuletta]

FR is a very high magic setting, so having big flashy spells and VFXs and such I would think are expected.
It's probably a bit out of the norm to walk through a city and see a dozen+ people warded to the teeth in the world setting like you see on Arelith, buuuut it is what it is. I haven't put much thought into it one way or the other until this topic was brought up since it's a fairly common thing in pretty much every NWN server I've played on save one where it was a different setting where magic is kinda taboo.

That said, I personally hate the lag it brings. That's a platform thing, though. I'd be on board with some visuals being removed for that alone.

[Rei_Jin]

Emerges from lurking

I think a good middle ground is that the visuals on "wards" on characters, both PCs and NPCs disappear, and instead that when one examines a PC or NPC that if you make the Spellcraft check for the relevant spells, you get a readout in your chat-log of the visible buffs they have on them.

There's no reason why Johnny the Fighter should be able to discern the effect a specific set of colours represents without any training, experience, or investment in gear, especially as (per source material, rather than NWN) spellcasters are able to change the visual effects of a spell to personalise them.

Rather than it being a flat DC though, I would set it up so that the initial Spellcraft check tells you how many "wards" they have (ie, things that can be breached), and then the DCs increase to ID each ward one after the other... so DC 10+ number of wards might tell you how many wards they have, then DC 15+ spell level for the first spell in the Breach order, 20+ spell level for the second spell, 25+ spell level for the third, and so on. The order would be based on the breach order, as per the Wiki listing (damage shields first, then spell mantles, then Iron Guts, etc.). For those not familiar with the Breach List, you can find it here: https://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Breach_List

Same thing could apply with Lore checks; make a successful Lore check to know strengths or weaknesses about a race you are examining... like red dragons are weak to cold damage but immune to fire, drow are resistant to magic but vulnerable to sunlight, etc. Increasing DCs to learn more, as per the Spellcraft checks for wards, it could enable you to discern that someone has martial training (5+ levels in a max AB class), or a connection to the weave (5+ levels in a full spellcaster class), and so on. There are many options as to what sort of feedback could be provided.

It would cut down on visual lag, and encourage folk to invest in these skills.

I am not sure how "doable" this is, but to me it is an elegant solution.

[Xarge VI]

I'm inclined to agree. It would be much more pleasant to visit city centers during peak hours if most of the buffs were invisible and instead visible through examination.

It doesn't matter to me if I play on a good computer or a bad one the light show makes me disoriented and difficult to focus on rp. Which is one of the reasons I avoid those areas.

Important things like premonition can still have very low spellcraft/Lore check by how widely known piece of a mage's arsenal they are.

[chris a gogo]

The visual is needed because it's a computer game and having to examine ten people to see what buffs they have rather than just seeing at a glance sounds painful rather than making the game better.

Personally I don't put visual wards on when in in a city with the exception of sight spells, but I wouldn't want them removed to make way for a far more annoying system.

[silverpheonix]

NWN is a homebrew RTS. The visual indicators are necessary, to an extent, to see at a glance what you could in tabletop ask five questions to the DM about.

Tabletop you can take three minutes to decide what you're doing in a round.

[Peacewhisper]

As others have pointed out, we need the visuals for tactical reasons. Large scale PVP would be virtually impossible if I had to stop, examine, and scroll past 8-9 paragraphs for every single person I wanted to potentially target with a Mord's. By the time I finished scrolling my character would most likely be dead.

Instead, I think we should cut back on the availability of high level wards for mundane/martial characters. Why is every fighter, barbarian, and paladin, walking around with premonition in casual settings? When PVP is about to happen, its pretty common to see your mundane friends start busting out level 7-9 scrolls and ward themselves to the teeth. Its understandable a wizard or spellsword or battle cleric would be a glowing beacon of sparkly wards. When everybody is though it gets to be too much.

Personally, I wish we would just cap scrolls at level 6. There is a cap for wands, there should be one for scrolls too. It will put an end to the time stop + mord's spam meta we are seeing now, if you want a mord's or a time stop you'll have to actually bring a wizard friend, as you should. It's beyond dumb seeing these folks with 800 hp that deal 200 dmg crits get access to all the same high level spells the typical 300 hp wizard does. Yeah, it might hurt loremasters, but I thought the whole point of loremageddon was to put an end to mundanes spamming high level magic scrolls, not to enable it.

Mundanes would still be able to use some high level spells with their mord's gems and greater spell mantle rods. But they wouldn't be able to just walk around with stacks of 100 of them anymore. The only other solution I can think of is to put a cooldown on mundanes using any scrolls over level 6. Like a 5 minute cooldown, similar to a RDD's breath weapon. Casting a level 9 spell should take a lot of exertion from someone who's never even been to Hogwarts.

[Security_Blanket]

Instead, I think we should cut back on the availability of high level wards for mundane/martial characters. Why is every fighter, barbarian, and paladin, walking around with premonition in casual settings? When PVP is about to happen, its pretty common to see your mundane friends start busting out level 7-9 scrolls and ward themselves to the teeth. Its understandable a wizard or spellsword or battle cleric would be a glowing beacon of sparkly wards. When everybody is though it gets to be too much.

Right now I think most topics about magic are at risk of getting derailed until something is done about the overpowered muggles, whatever people can decide on what the root issue is.

Personally, I wish we would just cap scrolls at level 6. There is a cap for wands, there should be one for scrolls too. It will put an end to the time stop + mord's spam meta we are seeing now, if you want a mord's or a time stop you'll have to actually bring a wizard friend, as you should. It's beyond dumb seeing these folks with 800 hp that deal 200 dmg crits get access to all the same high level spells the typical 300 hp wizard does. Yeah, it might hurt loremasters, but I thought the whole point of loremageddon was to put an end to mundanes spamming high level magic scrolls, not to enable it.

Mundanes would still be able to use some high level spells with their mord's gems and greater spell mantle rods. But they wouldn't be able to just walk around with stacks of 100 of them anymore. The only other solution I can think of is to put a time limit on mundanes using any scrolls over level 6. Like a 5 minute time limit, similar to a RDD's breath weapon. Casting a level 9 spell should take a lot of exertion from someone who's never even been to Hogwarts.

I wish levels were capped at 20 and the best you could get on a weapon is +1 and some change. But it's not my server, Arelith isn't my vision. While trying to stay on topic about weapon visuals, it would just be nice to have the option for those of us less interested in the magical glamour. I don't even just dislike the visuals on my weapon, I don't like the sound effects, but if I want to play competitively well then I have little choice.

[Peacewhisper]

I don't even just dislike the visuals on my weapon, I don't like the sound effects, but if I want to play competitively well then I have little choice.

There are a few mundane builds you could play and slap a divine or positive essence on your weapon to achieve what you want. Rogue/Fighter/WM is still a very deadly build that can get +5 weapons with no visuals. Unfortunately there are only a few builds that can really achieve this without settling for a +3 or +4 weapon. It would definitely be nice if there were more ways to play a mundane competitively. +5 weapons would not be such a necessity if everyone didn't walk around with premonition. Again, it circles back to the muggles having access to too much magic. When we can't beat them, we're forced to join them, which is why we've seen visuals from wards and weapons steadily increase over time to the point there are more people with glowing swords and premonition than without.

[FurnishMyFlatForCheap]

As others have pointed out, we need the visuals for tactical reasons. Large scale PVP would be virtually impossible if I had to stop, examine, and scroll past 8-9 paragraphs for every single person I wanted to potentially target with a Mord's. By the time I finished scrolling my character would most likely be dead.

Instead, I think we should cut back on the availability of high level wards for mundane/martial characters. Why is every fighter, barbarian, and paladin, walking around with premonition in casual settings? When PVP is about to happen, its pretty common to see your mundane friends start busting out level 7-9 scrolls and ward themselves to the teeth. Its understandable a wizard or spellsword or battle cleric would be a glowing beacon of sparkly wards. When everybody is though it gets to be too much.

Personally, I wish we would just cap scrolls at level 6. There is a cap for wands, there should be one for scrolls too. It will put an end to the time stop + mord's spam meta we are seeing now, if you want a mord's or a time stop you'll have to actually bring a wizard friend, as you should. It's beyond dumb seeing these folks with 800 hp that deal 200 dmg crits get access to all the same high level spells the typical 300 hp wizard does. Yeah, it might hurt loremasters, but I thought the whole point of loremageddon was to put an end to mundanes spamming high level magic scrolls, not to enable it.

Mundanes would still be able to use some high level spells with their mord's gems and greater spell mantle rods. But they wouldn't be able to just walk around with stacks of 100 of them anymore. The only other solution I can think of is to put a cooldown on mundanes using any scrolls over level 6. Like a 5 minute cooldown, similar to a RDD's breath weapon. Casting a level 9 spell should take a lot of exertion from someone who's never even been to Hogwarts.

So I’d agree with you about access to magic for mundane characters, but that is a separate thread.

And it would seem maybe I didn’t explain myself well enough or something, but my point was yes I understand visual ques are needed for pvp. BUT do we need a visual que for clairvoyance?
Do we reaaaly need one for shield? There’s quite a few spells we could do without visual ques as you are going to open your pvp playbook with breaches/dispels anyway. No need to investigate the player this is a given behaviour you all claim to do. Mordsx2 at start.

I’m not advocating for a one or the other high magic or no magic as you had made it seem was my point. Yes forgotten realms has lots of magic and is cool.

Can we also just have slightly less visuals at all times.

Slightly less was my point. No more shield bubble. Premo a less intrusive visual (it’s like the top of the breach list anyway) Things like this. So we can exist in forgotten realms and also have just I dunno a cleaner looking aesthetic.

[Exordius]

Less vfx would reduce lag, potentially by alot if enough were removed or at least scaled down.

[chris a gogo]

Well just in regards to shield yes you need a the visual que so you don't waste a missile storm on a level 1 spell that can completely negate it.

[perseid]

I agree with some of the sentiment but not all of it. I think characters have gotten a bit goofy in terms of how warded many are but I think this is because of the prevalence of hybrid and infinicasters rather than because of magical accessibility for example. Where do I disagree though is about the visual cues. Yes, in a lot of fights you're going to be breach heavily if your opponent is a spellcaster. As a spellcaster player though I rely on those visual cues a lot. If I don't see Freedom of Movement or a Mantle for example you are probably not even that big of an issue so I'm more likely to use some kind of area denial spell or item instead of breaching you in that case for example. Maybe not every spell needs visuals, but a lot of them Like Imp Invis, Predator, Shield, Wraithstride, FoM, See Invis, True Seeing, etc. all have massive implications if your opponent lacks them or uses an item to gain them and being able to recognize that at a glance is actually a fairly big deal imo.

[Preserver]

Perhaps I'm being a tad excessive here, but...

I agree with some of the sentiment but not all of it. I think characters have gotten a bit goofy in terms of how warded many are but I think this is because of the prevalence of hybrid and infinicasters rather than because of magical accessibility for example. Where do I disagree though is about the visual cues. Yes, in a lot of fights you're going to be breach heavily if your opponent is a spellcaster. As a spellcaster player though I rely on those visual cues a lot. If I don't see Freedom of Movement or a Mantle for example you are probably not even that big of an issue so I'm more likely to use some kind of area denial spell or item instead of breaching you in that case for example. Maybe not every spell needs visuals, but a lot of them Like Imp Invis, Predator, Shield, Wraithstride, FoM, See Invis, True Seeing, etc. all have massive implications if your opponent lacks them or uses an item to gain them and being able to recognize that at a glance is actually a fairly big deal imo.

... is this necessarily wrong?
There are definitely a few buffs and wards that do require a visible effect - Stoneskin is the first that comes to mind, for example. Yet is it really necessary to make, for example, Premonition visible? It makes little sense on a purely narrative standpoint, and therefore visibility is merely based on the assumption that we expect PvP to always be fair and balanced not merely around purely mechanical factors, but also on how we can assess the threat level of our opponent?

This is perhaps the wrong thread to start climbing this hill, but I think making threat-assessment of wards immediate does not make engagement in PvP more interesting.

[MissEvelyn]

I agree with some of the sentiment but not all of it. I think characters have gotten a bit goofy in terms of how warded many are but I think this is because of the prevalence of hybrid and infinicasters rather than because of magical accessibility for example. Where do I disagree though is about the visual cues. Yes, in a lot of fights you're going to be breach heavily if your opponent is a spellcaster. As a spellcaster player though I rely on those visual cues a lot. If I don't see Freedom of Movement or a Mantle for example you are probably not even that big of an issue so I'm more likely to use some kind of area denial spell or item instead of breaching you in that case for example. Maybe not every spell needs visuals, but a lot of them Like Imp Invis, Predator, Shield, Wraithstride, FoM, See Invis, True Seeing, etc. all have massive implications if your opponent lacks them or uses an item to gain them and being able to recognize that at a glance is actually a fairly big deal imo.

From a caster's perspective, it's indeed important to know what effects are affecting your opponent. Including, even, your own spells, because knowing whether they failed or succeeded a saving throw against something like Charm Person is, in D&D at least, not an automatic given.

In both Forgotten Realms novels AND tabletop D&D, Detect Magic is used to determine what spells and magical effects are currently affecting a creature.

What if we simply did the following:

• Add the spell Detect Magic into the game. Most casters, both divine and arcane, would have access to this spell. Wands, scrolls, and potions for the rest.
• Remove all most visual cues from wards and debuffs. Only characters with an active casting of Detect Magic on them can see the buffs and debuff. Everyone else has a clean screen.

That way, it becomes more of a player/character choice whether to tolerate all the visual cues or not, while still leaving the PvP min-maxers with an option to continue to... well, min-max (with Detect Magic).

[chris a gogo]

Add fun not tedium.

[Peacewhisper]

What if we simply did the following:

• Add the spell Detect Magic into the game. Most casters, both divine and arcane, would have access to this spell. Wands, scrolls, and potions for the rest.
• Remove all most visual cues from wards and debuffs. Only characters with an active casting of Detect Magic on them can see the buffs and debuff. Everyone else has a clean screen.

That way, it becomes more of a player/character choice whether to tolerate all the visual cues or not, while still leaving the PvP min-maxers with an option to continue to... well, min-max (with Detect Magic).

This is actually a genius idea. Though I don't know how it would actually affect the server load or how technically feasible it is. It makes sense that only those with magical ability would be able to sense or detect magic. Of course mundanes who cared could probably still do it with scrolls or wands but maybe we could make higher level wards require a certain cl or spellcraft to detect or just make it a class feature rather than a spell so that only actual casters get access to it. I wouldn't be surprised if this just created more of a load for the server to deal with though, I don't think the visuals themselves are 100% of the problem when it comes to server lag during big events.

[Griefmaker]

What if we simply did the following:

• Add the spell Detect Magic into the game. Most casters, both divine and arcane, would have access to this spell. Wands, scrolls, and potions for the rest.
• Remove all most visual cues from wards and debuffs. Only characters with an active casting of Detect Magic on them can see the buffs and debuff. Everyone else has a clean screen.

That way, it becomes more of a player/character choice whether to tolerate all the visual cues or not, while still leaving the PvP min-maxers with an option to continue to... well, min-max (with Detect Magic).

This is actually a genius idea. Though I don't know how it would actually affect the server load or how technically feasible it is. It makes sense that only those with magical ability would be able to sense or detect magic. Of course mundanes who cared could probably still do it with scrolls or wands but maybe we could make higher level wards require a certain cl or spellcraft to detect or just make it a class feature rather than a spell so that only actual casters get access to it. I wouldn't be surprised if this just created more of a load for the server to deal with though, I don't think the visuals themselves are 100% of the problem when it comes to server lag during big events.

I kind of love this idea too.

I also think it is pretty silly that everyone and their brother (magical and mundane) has every single ward available too and usually feels the need to have them up.