Feedback on DC casters and saves on the server

[Hazard]

Also, there's one important bit that I sort of omitted there - the title of a great warrior feels like something that should be earned - both in an RP environment as much as in a moba-style one.

Otherwise, what's stopping everyone from just "being a great warrior"? If everyone becomes a great warrior, noone gets to be...

Not a serious answer, but ..
The description of the feats you start getting after level 20 put you near god-like levels of ability.

[Kalopsia]

Also, there's one important bit that I sort of omitted there - the title of a great warrior feels like something that should be earned - both in an RP environment as much as in a moba-style one.

Otherwise, what's stopping everyone from just "being a great warrior"? If everyone becomes a great warrior, noone gets to be...

The description of the feats you start getting after level 20 put you near god-like levels of ability.

In the past, the server administration has specified that Arelith levels don't equal the same amount of levels in 3.5 lore. This was done to avoid having to limit players to a fraction of the content offered by NWN.

So the levels displayed on your character sheet and the flavor text of epic vanilla NWN feats should not be taken at face value.

[LovelyLightningWitch]

There's another point that comes to my mind whenever this comes up that I rarely see discussed and that's the roleplaying aspect.
How much /should/ player skill matter when we aren't supposed to be playing as ourselves, but roleplaying as characters. If little Jimmy's warrior is 'a great warrior' but he's not particularly good at keeping up with the moba-style of the game, does that mean his characters will only ever be as weak/powerful as he is willing to invest time into learning to PvP competitively?

Don't get me wrong I love skill based games. Mordhau and Starcraft and AOE2 are some of my biggest addictions outside of NWN, but when I come to roleplaying servers, playerskill and rotating PVP meta is one of the farthest things from what I have in mind to expect to have to deal with.

This I feel is a very strong bit that's forgotten.

By making the game rely entirely on player skill rather than character skill, are we not in essence preventing players from playing character archetypes they are not very compatible with in terms of their OOC skill?

Someone with low reflexes, perhaps a bad internet connection (or simply geographical limitations due to ping) will, if we decide "Only player skill matters", never get to be that master swordsperson as they cannot pull it off in PvP (even tho in PvE, they manage just fine if not excellently!).

Or less explicitly, someone whose second language is English and they are still working towards that coveted C2 level by roleplaying... Should they NOT play bards as their rhymes aren't better than passing the "<<DC: 10 (perform)>> <<routine performance.>> <<Trying to earn money by playing in public is essentially begging. You can earn 1d10 cp/day.>>" minimum DC, and thus getting any perform higher than 5 pointless for their RP?

Or a rather frequent case that comes up in P&P: An average human (most of us have 9-12 in int score, maybe a few of us who work as researchers or sth got 14) playing a character with int in the low 20s. A maze or puzzle comes up. Their character with low 20s int should be able to solve the maze/puzzle far faster and easier than even the 14 int person who is part of the mensa. Should only people who work as researchers in meatspace play as wizards/swashbucklers?


And in case of PvP... How is it that a character with 12 int, 8 wisdom can whip up a better tactical approach than the 22 int/12 wis swashbuckler? Is it really fair that a character's perception/reputation depends on player skill rather than character skill?

Also, there's one important bit that I sort of omitted there - the title of a great warrior feels like something that should be earned - both in an RP environment as much as in a moba-style one.

Otherwise, what's stopping everyone from just "being a great warrior"? If everyone becomes a great warrior, noone gets to be...

In light of my reply to the first quote:

Should it be the PLAYER achieving the title of Great Warrior (Through action/moba mechanics), or should it be the character?

Personally, I feel it should be the character otherwise there's no way anyone could ever play anything but a level 5 commoner at best. Maybe a level 2 fighter or wizard or cleric for those who worked similar jobs out of game.

Like, expecting people to know the lore of the setting, their class, race etc. is fair in my book. Anyone can do that, the knowledge is freely available through various digital means.

But beyond that, and an honest effort... should a player's own difficulties limit what they can play?

Also, there's one important bit that I sort of omitted there - the title of a great warrior feels like something that should be earned - both in an RP environment as much as in a moba-style one.

Otherwise, what's stopping everyone from just "being a great warrior"? If everyone becomes a great warrior, noone gets to be...

The description of the feats you start getting after level 20 put you near god-like levels of ability.

In the past, the server administration has specified that Arelith levels don't equal the same amount of levels in 3.5 lore. This was done to avoid having to limit players to a fraction of the content offered by NWN.

So the levels displayed on your character sheet and the flavor text of epic vanilla NWN feats should not be taken at face value.

Thing is though, you don't need level 30s to be a "Great/superhuman warrior" in D&D or FR. Having ability scores above 14 alone makes you quite exceptional and powerful (just look at this table for what 14+ strength allows (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/carryingCapacity.htm).

A level 10 fighter will easily pass as one of the masters of their art, dominating most of the people who make up the professional armies of the Realms with ease at 1 on 1 combat. (For us, going by the typical approach servers get, we can say our equivalent may be a level 15 or 20 fighter).

For wizards/clerics, this is even more extreme. Consider PhB's note on what settlement level you need to visit to have a guaranteed to find someone capable of a certain level of magic.

In addition, not every town or village has a spellcaster of sufficient level to cast any spell. In general, you must travel to a small town (or larger settlement) to be reasonably assured of finding a spellcaster capable of casting 1st-level spells, a large town for 2ndlevel spells, a small city for 3rd- or 4th-level spells, a large city for 5th- or 6th-level spells, and a metropolis for 7th- or 8th-level spells.

Even a metropolis isn’t guaranteed to have a local spellcaster able to cast 9th-level spells, so seeking out such a caster may become an adventure itself. (The Dungeon Master’s Guide has more information on settlement sizes and demographics.)

By this, a level 17 pure class wizard/cleric is a rarity, and anyone who plays as such has all the rights to RP being a master of either the Art or the Power. But don't even need that. Considering you need a large city for 5th/6th, a level 11 (or maybe 17/22 in our case) could easily be justified in RPing being a great wizard, no?

[AstralUniverse]

Perfect imbalance (that "boring" rock-paper-scissors) and variance (you know... all the dice rolls) serve in games to remove the skill gap between skill oriented players and more casually minded ones.

Remove it and you'll end up with ...chess. Chess is a great game, but one of its downsides is that the better chess player beats the less skilled opponent each time every single time. This can result in the casual player losing interest in the game before long.


The team's activity over the past 4 years hints at a strong emphasis on skill over variance (especially with regards to PvP) and there's been a very tangible power creep both in new custom classes and gear. While I understand that this serves mainly to incentivize players into character rotation, but there's a certain threshold to the speed with which players can sift through new characters while still sustaining RP in a meaningful way.

Furthermore there's a wealth of evidence from other games (tabletop, online - just games in general) that the above is a detrimental game design direction that eventually results in the loss of the game's audience.

Interestingly said, and I mostly agree with you. The thing is, I wouldnt say that "perfect imbalance" is good old Starcraft, that game was actually perfectly balanced, until it was intentionally imbalanced for the sake of change and innovation that was sorely needed after the game was cracked inside out for a decade and there was no longer room for innovation. But it's still rock-paper-scissors unlike real perfect imbalance state which exists in games with more races, items, classes, etc etc.. (like League, Dota, WoW, etc etc). for reference, we were at Starcraft tier of server balance back just before lore-update which was intentionally throwing everything towards 'perfect imbalance'.

While losing to a DC based spell can be very tilting, the mechanic is also a double edged sword (if your target makes the save, you rarely recover from the loss of tempo and usually get roflstomped shortly after).
Furthermore, it is a high variance mechanic that serves to remove the difference of skill/gear/build factors. It might seem counter-intuitive to allow a casual player to beat a supperior opponent in this fashion, but elements like these are important to keep that player engaged and interested in the game.

Except it is no longer a double-edged sword on Arelith. You could argue that if Timestop allowed physical damage and if Chain-KDing was still an option - then maybe I could see DC spells being more deadly, but you dont really instantly lose the fight against the fighter if you failed your DC spells in the same way that someone is insta-dead if they fail against your DC spells.

[Talexis]

Ok Papi J, I have been avoiding his thread but now I am just going to call you out. I did not make this thread to complain about my favoured soul. I have played on this server for a long time and have played a lot of DC caster builds. I was offering my feedback on how I felt the current state of saves are for DC casters.

I made 2 suggestions 1 was to make them partial saves where if the save was within a certain number of the DC, the other is to give a boost to saves a bit because I believe a high DC mage shouldn't always be rolling for 1s.

You seem to only focus on one of my suggestions and turn to belittling instead of just talking of the points. So that alone makes all your points to me invalid. Maybe you should learn to openly discuss things without attacking people.

No I am not wanting to be a pvp god, I wanted to open up discussion about something I saw as an issue on the server. I also think that all death spells should be changed to just high damage spells in pvp but this thread isn't about that. Also not every save spell is a death spell.

[Ork]

If you're looking for rollplay, go to tabletop.

[-XXX-]

If you're looking for rollplay, go to tabletop.

Do you usually roleplay out your PvP encounters or are you intentionally trolling?

[LovelyLightningWitch]

If you're looking for rollplay, go to tabletop.

Roleplay is heavily reliant on the character's statistics. Otherwise it's little more than a campfire make believe. I advise looking up the Gamist-Narrativist-Simulationist triad, and note that simulationism requires a heavy statistics support. Despite your conflation, claiming that a desire for stats to represent and justify roleplay, is gamist (i.e: "Rollplay") and presenting it as a disparaging remark, definitions remain.

[Curve]

ex·cit·ing
/ikˈsīdiNG/
adjective
causing great enthusiasm and eagerness.
"an exciting discussion about the science of roleplay vs rollplay"

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

...Except it is no longer a double-edged sword on Arelith. You could argue that if Timestop allowed physical damage and if Chain-KDing was still an option - then maybe I could see DC spells being more deadly, but you dont really instantly lose the fight against the fighter if you failed your DC spells in the same way that someone is insta-dead if they fail against your DC spells.

I wanted to address this particular line of thought since it seems relevant.

It's true that KD is on cooldown and people can't timestop gank you with a scroll and a bunch of sneak attacks now.

However, should you land your DC spell (let's for the sake of argument assume the enemy has a deathward, so we'll look at the not-quite-instakills; holds, blinds, and general disablers) in the first place, -pray is right there, which can quickly be followed up by a scroll of the appropriate ward to prevent re-occurrence.

The last time I checked, you can't pray out of a KD.

Although you can pray away the damage, that's not going to help you if you're stuck in melee range with someone that can KD you every 12 seconds unless they're a really weak striker and do low enough damage for you to reliably pass the con check to resume casting your spells.

I guess my point is, when your win condition is a DC spell, it can be -prayed out of and nullified with item use. When your win condition involves KD'ing a DC caster and swinging for the fences, -pray for the caster is at best an extra heal potion in a fight that's tactically been lost already.

As a result, I don't think that DC spells should need numbers quite so high to hit - DC 40+ spells could reliably affect a number of gods outside their divine immunities and SR. I'd much rather see spells like Wail, FoD, Destruction, and Phantasmal Killer given a (Vanilla) Harm-like treatment (allows a follow-up -pray to counter in emergencies). While I think it's thematically cool to be able to actually insta-kill someone with a scream, I think actual instant death spells are probably about as fun to lose to as Devastating Critical, which despite being able to be countered with high fortitude, was turned off for a reason, and it would ease off some of the stress of the dilemma about DC spells and allow some other tweaks to be made.

Edit: For bonus points, make this change only affect the spell versus actual players, and let death spells still wipe appropriate PvE enemies.

[AstralUniverse]

I guess my point is, when your win condition is a DC spell, it can be -prayed out of and nullified with item use. When your win condition involves KD'ing a DC caster and swinging for the fences, -pray for the caster is at best an extra heal potion in a fight that's tactically been lost already.

Your argument is very... I think Hyperbolic is the word?

Anyway, I could argue that a Mage can pray while taking hits during KD on the ground, heal back to full instead of dying and then use GS and regain momentum. Also, death spells cannot be Prayed against because you're dead. So as you can see Pray is equally useful to both sides and shouldnt even be a part of this argument. Another thing, and this one has been explained in length many times before, DC spells should never and will never be your win condition. It's a pretty boring game if it worked that way. DC spells are something you catch people off-guard with, if they are ungeared (maybe they are wearing their Spot or Lore gear and their saves are situationally crap), and if you guess right on what their low save is. That's not your win condition. We dont balance the server around that mindset and thank god for that.

[-XXX-]

Anyway, I could argue that a Mage can pray while taking hits during KD on the ground, heal back to full instead of dying and then use GS and regain momentum.

That's not a realistic play pattern. The mage would just provoke an attack of opportunity, fail the concentration check and die after the GS gets disrupted (assuming they have enough hp to even last up until that point).

I see your point though. On paper it seems like there are still many variables that offer outs for the mage in the aformentioned situation. In practice... not so much. Getting KDed as a mage is about as interactive and fun as being force fed an Implosion and failing the save.

DC spells should never and will never be your win condition.

OK. This thread alone could serve as evidence that DC spells just don't work as such anyway.
That being said, I wonder what ~is~ supposed to be the win condition then?

[Zavandar]

I would like to introduce you to a mechanic called defensive casting. Another called having health. And a third called having discipline.

Being kd'd isnt a death sentence. Failing an implosion is.

[AstralUniverse]

I wonder what ~is~ supposed to be the win condition then?

Without getting too much into nostalgy, the funny thing is I learned so much from you XXX in our time together when I played a necromancer so I actually give you some credit for my mileage in pvp with that one. I pvped a lot on that character and I won most of my pvps with DC spells. *shrugs* What can I say, except what I keep saying in different threads that DC spells are fine and that people almost always (except ya know, div cot lol) have a low save.

There's also a plethora of saveless situational stuff that you should use strategically - that's what makes this game dynamic and not a binary boring 4 seconds fights of "roll or die vs roll or chain kd and die" like it used to be. No thank you. On my sorc I always had the important stuff forward, and the DC spells not even assigned to any hot-key. The important stuff for my build was... uh... Incendiary Cloud, Negative energy burst, Cloudkill... Hellball + Greater ruin...and maybe I forget something. Obviously maximized IGMS, mummy dust (to be fair, mummies had Wof back then, it was epic), dracolich, usual stuff.

[Hazard]

I think godly saves are more a problem in PvE.
Some things are just pumped to ridiculously high levels, across all three saves. I think in PvE a monster should always have 'some' weakness to exploit, otherwise it's sort of just a gatekeeper to only allow in powerbuilds or a group big enough to brute force past it.

[Beard Master Flex]

I think godly saves are more a problem in PvE.
Some things are just pumped to ridiculously high levels, across all three saves. I think in PvE a monster should always have 'some' weakness to exploit, otherwise it's sort of just a gatekeeper to only allow in powerbuilds or a group big enough to brute force past it.

I agree with this. I've never really used any spells on any of my casters that weren't buffs or spells guaranteed to work. There are some really cool spells, especially some of the new ones like Burst of Glacial Wrath... what a cool spell... but why would I ever choose that over an extra Mass Heal or Storm of Vengeance, spells that are guaranteed to make some sort of an impact no matter the dungeon, no matter the situation.

PVP is totally fine as it is, but there is far less at stake with PVE and I think that should be a little more flexibility. It'd still probably be a poorer use of a spell slot but at least it would be cool for that encounter instead of a waste of 6 seconds.

[-XXX-]

I wonder what ~is~ supposed to be the win condition then?

Without getting too much into nostalgy, the funny thing is I learned so much from you XXX in our time together when I played a necromancer so I actually give you some credit for my mileage in pvp with that one. I pvped a lot on that character and I won most of my pvps with DC spells. *shrugs* What can I say, except what I keep saying in different threads that DC spells are fine and that people almost always (except ya know, div cot lol) have a low save.

There's also a plethora of saveless situational stuff that you should use strategically - that's what makes this game dynamic and not a binary boring 4 seconds fights of "roll or die vs roll or chain kd and die" like it used to be. No thank you. On my sorc I always had the important stuff forward, and the DC spells not even assigned to any hot-key. The important stuff for my build was... uh... Incendiary Cloud, Negative energy burst, Cloudkill... Hellball + Greater ruin...and maybe I forget something. Obviously maximized IGMS, mummy dust (to be fair, mummies had Wof back then, it was epic), dracolich, usual stuff.

Well, that's the thing... we experienced some power creep since then (both in gear and builds). The mundane builds just became... better. At the same time the spell lists didn't keep up.

Hence why I asked - what is supposed to be the "win condition for spellcasters?"

- DC based spells? CC spells with a DC get negated by -prays and several other abilities already and therefore have never been very reliable. That means we're pretty much talking mostly about those few instant death spells that are there - okay, the argument here's that it's not fun and that's why they're supposed to be the underdog vs. saves. I do not fully agree with it, but it is a valid argument.
Is it possible to win a PvP encounter with these? Yes! It also usually hints at either extreme luck or the spellcaster having picked a fight with an underlevelled and/or undergeared character who's below their weight class.

- "fishing" DC spells? These are persistent AoE spells with a DC. They are usually lower casting lvl and have lower DC - hence why I called them "fishing" spells - they are fishing for that roll of a 1 on the opponent's part.
These are tempo and/or area controlling elements like grease or stinking cloud that are forcing the opponent to keep their toon mobile. The effectiveness of fishing spells put aside, melee builds are often moving already - in a direct line toward the caster, which makes these spells more of a tempo tool viable against other spellcasters (when they're moving they're not casting) rather than mundane builds.

- summons? They've remained more or less the same (EDK getting even nerfed considerably) for quite some time now. At the same time mundane builds are sporting better stats, so those dust summons often end up only scraping the paint on their AC. Gate appears to be the most viable pet ATM and even that one rarely turns out to be more than a nuisance.

- direct damage spells? Many of the more potent direct damage spells allow a reflex save and can be completely negated by improved evasion.
More importantly: a maxed IGMS deals 120 damage. A heal potion restores 120 hp. I do not believe that further commentary is needed here.

- damage shields/walls? These are really good! But at the same time they are pretty passive - you can't ~make~ the opponent walk into that wall of ice/fire and sit there, same as you can't make them just kill themselves against your damage shield.
The tempo gained by making them walk around the wall(s) or breach the damage shield rarely results an actual advantage once we consider the tempo investment in the form of casting the spell(s).

- situational saveless spells. Here I'd put spells that actually attack the ~player~ ...or to be more precise, their ability to interpret the ongoing IG situation. This would include stuff like darkness and/or spells that cause blindness etc. These are amazing controlling elements that can result in a big tempo gain, but I wouldn't call them a win condition - even that incendiary cloud is a blind spell first and a mediocre damage dealer second.


Up until recently had I been asked the question about a spellcaster's win condition, I'd have answered "a combination of all of the above".
But I feel like the situation is a little bit different ATM. Many builds when properly geared can outright ignore and/or effortlessly overcome a lot of what a spellcaster is throwing at them, so they don't really get worn down by the added effect of these fractional attacks.
The vancian reality of spell lists even means that the long game does not favor spellcasters either - when it comes to that, they can be outattritionned too.

That's why I'm genuinely asking - "what's supposed to be the win condition here?" How's a spellcaster supposed to close up the fight?

[chris a gogo]

DC casters suck in pvp on this server and have done so for quite awhile now, in PVM they are fine i played a wizard as a disabler last year that routinely controlled the battle field making every encounter easy due to the CC spells, some epic area's are a problem but that is generally due to the spawn types rather than the saves.
Ive recently played a true flame that also made epic area's fairly easy due to disabling spells.

As to the question of how does a mage end a fight it's fairly simple they run away after casting time stop because there is almost no way to beat a fully geared div dip, you will always run out of spells before they run out of heal pots.

Peace out.

[AstralUniverse]

XXX, I've answered you based on how I played my Sorc and what worked for me. DC spells were fine. Buying time with saveless CC was also fine. Summons are far from useless and.. fine. There was no change to saves since then. Obviously there's a lot of skill involved and there are players who would dunk me regardless of what their build is, and those kind of players normally say the DC vs saves paradigm is in a balanced spot as well. I find that it's really hard to heal IGMS with heal potions when you're also eating a hellball, GR and you're frozen in time for half of it. Given that you've already forced out the enemy's Pray, etc etc. It's a lot of damage nuke, and wild mages have even stronger nuke combos.