Cost of Mundane vs Caster

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godhand-
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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by godhand- » Wed May 31, 2023 5:39 am

Xerah wrote:
Wed May 31, 2023 4:57 am
godhand- wrote:
Wed May 31, 2023 4:13 am

Leveling to 20 is both incredibly easy and not at all what the issue is. I knew this discussion was going to completely ignore and derail the actual 3x issue that’s been stated from the devs team with these antidotal tales of ease.

I fail to see how i derailed the thread. When the opening premise is vague and loosely alluding to the cost of adamantine, its leaves the discourse open ended and open to interpretation. I would suggest being more specific with your communications if you want a thread to stay on "topic.

The opening statement is exceptionally vague in terms of contex

From what we've been told elsewhere by members of the development is that the cost of a mundane is 3x that of a caster character (they have done the calculations).

How are we defining what the "cost" is?
Is it the cost of operating at level 30 post-gearing?
Is it the cost of gearing a full set of end-game gear?
Is it the cost of gearing during levelling?

How did the devs do the calculations? These "calculations" are equally anectodal as my "tale of ease" at this point without being provided as context.

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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by Paint » Wed May 31, 2023 5:48 am

Casters eventually have to go through the same 5% & masterwork rune gearing hell as mundanes when they hit 30 if they want to perform at their best. And if your caster didn't, congratulations! You don't know what we're talking about, and you can go sit down. It's fine.

What Casters -don't- have to do -- for the most part -- is continuously fork over huge gobs of cash for consumables, sometimes player made, which is a fluctuating market and which the prices are never -quite set- in order to participate in PVE /and/ PVP. Almost all consumable use on a caster is optional.

Except for FoM and NEP. Only way to get those on wizards and sorcs are consumables. Sucks, but. Eh. As someone who's ran several mundanes to 30, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than paying for FoM, Haste, NEP, Barkskin, Zoobuffs, Bless Weapon, Death Ward, Improved Invisibility, Shield, Mage Armor,(Though both have reusable equipment that helps cut that cost.) Skleens, Healing Pots or Kits.(Though arcane casters do still have to buy some form of healing.) Situational stuff like Clarity and LMB...

You wanna stay in Improved Invisibility for more than 7 minutes? One of the most useful buffs? Yeah. Get ready to pony up 700 gold for every additional seven minutes.

Want FoM or NEP for a decent price? Better hope you got UMD on your build, or you're gonna be paying out the nose, because the scrolls are expensive and the potions are -miserable- to make.

Most casters have most of these spells covered on their spell list, or function just fine without them in the majority of situations right now. I use zoo pots on my wizard, but only because I want those spell slots. I'm fully aware that if I didn't, I wouldn't have to. My spell comp cost is pretty negligible, too, as most situations in PVE don't call for 7-9th level spells.

Anyways, I hate it. I wasn't around when loremageddon was implemented, but now I'm starting to think that the idea of letting a whole bunch of classes have full access to a suite of buffs and spells that they wouldn't normally have access to by throwing money at it has had the balance effect of making it -miserable- and -necessary- for mundanes to fork over huge sums of cash, rather than having class progression designed around -not- having those essential buffs.

You think it's miserable when the two charges of a runic sequence you use got wasted because a server crashed? Imagine the 5k a fighter spends every time they want to go do a difficult dungeon.

It's a dumb design paradigm, and I'll say it again: Balancing classes between convenience and power and saying that it has to be this way is. Just. Not. Not good, man. It's just dumb. It leaves a lot of people feeling like their class sucks for no good reason, and a lot of other people performing a cost analysis every time they so much as breathe at an adventure.

In conclusion, down with the economy, viva la revolution.


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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by Babylon System is the Vampire » Wed May 31, 2023 7:48 am

Xerah wrote:
Wed May 31, 2023 4:57 am

I knew this discussion was going to completely ignore and derail the actual 3x issue that’s been stated from the devs team with these antidotal tales of ease.

While I am definitely on your side on the point that it is more expensive to level a mundane, I've been wondering where this number came from myself since your OP. It in itself sounds antidotal, since there's no data to back it up being presented. Just saying it feels like a toothpaste commercial saying "4 out of 5 dentists agree Colgate is the best toothpaste for long term tooth heath" which sounds great until you realize that its five dentists getting paid by Colgate and one of them actually chose Crest.

My point being, you can't just toss out a random number and expect people to take it seriously compared to their own experience. If this was an actual examination of the costs that was done by a group of devs, let's see the actual data.


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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by -XXX- » Wed May 31, 2023 2:22 pm

I wouldn't be surprised if the 3x was a hyperbole, but it's true that the spot of getting from lvl 20-30 can be a little more rough for mundanes (1), which could be alleviated with more powerful class-specific hirable henchmen.

Once most mundane builds reach max lvl and get their hands on BiS gear, they can outperform casters in both PvP and PvE.


(1) which also happens to be the same spot where summoner builds first get their hands on Conduit/MDust, which makes the contrast that much more glaring by comparison.


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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by Xerah » Wed May 31, 2023 2:49 pm

The number came from the dev team on discord where they did the calculations and have no need to lie about it.

Image

This doesn't even consider the cost of consumables, which are probably quite higher for melee than caster and even higher when you can't use wands.

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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by Svrtr » Wed May 31, 2023 3:44 pm

Yea sincra mentioned the game has systems that can track it, and on average across multiple characters the cost to get to 30 between buffs, consumables, and gears the average mundane has to spend x3. Not through theoretical calculations but actual tracked values


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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by AstralUniverse » Wed May 31, 2023 5:07 pm

I dont understand how we've reached x3 either. I would believe it even if it was said to be x10. The fact is on mundane I need consumables and mid-game gear and on a caster I level naked to 30 with just a lesser arcane sequencer for the summons. I dont even know how that translates to x3.

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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by I will never sleep » Thu Jun 01, 2023 2:03 am

Paint wrote:
Wed May 31, 2023 5:48 am

What Casters -don't- have to do -- for the most part -- is continuously fork over huge gobs of cash for consumables, sometimes player made, which is a fluctuating market and which the prices are never -quite set- in order to participate in PVE /and/ PVP. Almost all consumable use on a caster is optional.

Except for FoM and NEP. Only way to get those on wizards and sorcs are consumables. Sucks, but. Eh. As someone who's ran several mundanes to 30, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than paying for FoM, Haste, NEP, Barkskin, Zoobuffs, Bless Weapon, Death Ward, Improved Invisibility, Shield, Mage Armor,(Though both have reusable equipment that helps cut that cost.) Skleens, Healing Pots or Kits.(Though arcane casters do still have to buy some form of healing.) Situational stuff like Clarity and LMB...

You wanna stay in Improved Invisibility for more than 7 minutes? One of the most useful buffs? Yeah. Get ready to pony up 700 gold for every additional seven minutes.

Want FoM or NEP for a decent price? Better hope you got UMD on your build, or you're gonna be paying out the nose, because the scrolls are expensive and the potions are -miserable- to make.

...

Anyways, I hate it. I wasn't around when loremageddon was implemented, but now I'm starting to think that the idea of letting a whole bunch of classes have full access to a suite of buffs and spells that they wouldn't normally have access to by throwing money at it has had the balance effect of making it -miserable- and -necessary- for mundanes to fork over huge sums of cash, rather than having class progression designed around -not- having those essential buffs.

You think it's miserable when the two charges of a runic sequence you use got wasted because a server crashed? Imagine the 5k a fighter spends every time they want to go do a difficult dungeon.

It's a dumb design paradigm, and I'll say it again: Balancing classes between convenience and power and saying that it has to be this way is. Just. Not. Not good, man. It's just dumb. It leaves a lot of people feeling like their class sucks for no good reason, and a lot of other people performing a cost analysis every time they so much as breathe at an adventure.

In conclusion, down with the economy, viva la revolution.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I think it is largely a massive amount of growing pain from Arelith being balanced around consumables rather than magical items. And the change to make "mundane" dispellable cl 30 exacerbated this, and the massive need for them.

In vanilla nwn your potions are cast at ENTIRELY cl3, and most of your staying power comes from items. But on Arelith this is not the case, and genuinely? Leaves a lot of classes feeling incredibly samey. It's really no wonder why spellsword is the most popular class in the game, for what it is. Because what it does do, is cut out a LOAD of tedium and potionmaxxing your inventory and you can just... play the game. Crazy.

Invokers and warlocks, too. Bards. You play just a stock weapon master or a vancian caster these days, you begin to feel just how dated you are and what you give up for Big Damage (that ultimately doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things (or a big Nothing. In the case of the casters).

Last edited by I will never sleep on Thu Jun 01, 2023 5:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by Hazard » Thu Jun 01, 2023 4:17 am

Paint wrote:
Wed May 31, 2023 5:48 am

Casters eventually have to go through the same 5% & masterwork rune gearing hell as mundanes when they hit 30 if they want to perform at their best. And if your caster didn't, congratulations! You don't know what we're talking about, and you can go sit down. It's fine.

What Casters -don't- have to do -- for the most part -- is continuously fork over huge gobs of cash for consumables, sometimes player made, which is a fluctuating market and which the prices are never -quite set- in order to participate in PVE /and/ PVP. Almost all consumable use on a caster is optional.

Except for FoM and NEP. Only way to get those on wizards and sorcs are consumables. Sucks, but. Eh. As someone who's ran several mundanes to 30, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than paying for FoM, Haste, NEP, Barkskin, Zoobuffs, Bless Weapon, Death Ward, Improved Invisibility, Shield, Mage Armor,(Though both have reusable equipment that helps cut that cost.) Skleens, Healing Pots or Kits.(Though arcane casters do still have to buy some form of healing.) Situational stuff like Clarity and LMB...

You wanna stay in Improved Invisibility for more than 7 minutes? One of the most useful buffs? Yeah. Get ready to pony up 700 gold for every additional seven minutes.

Want FoM or NEP for a decent price? Better hope you got UMD on your build, or you're gonna be paying out the nose, because the scrolls are expensive and the potions are -miserable- to make.

Most casters have most of these spells covered on their spell list, or function just fine without them in the majority of situations right now. I use zoo pots on my wizard, but only because I want those spell slots. I'm fully aware that if I didn't, I wouldn't have to. My spell comp cost is pretty negligible, too, as most situations in PVE don't call for 7-9th level spells.

Anyways, I hate it. I wasn't around when loremageddon was implemented, but now I'm starting to think that the idea of letting a whole bunch of classes have full access to a suite of buffs and spells that they wouldn't normally have access to by throwing money at it has had the balance effect of making it -miserable- and -necessary- for mundanes to fork over huge sums of cash, rather than having class progression designed around -not- having those essential buffs.

You think it's miserable when the two charges of a runic sequence you use got wasted because a server crashed? Imagine the 5k a fighter spends every time they want to go do a difficult dungeon.

It's a dumb design paradigm, and I'll say it again: Balancing classes between convenience and power and saying that it has to be this way is. Just. Not. Not good, man. It's just dumb. It leaves a lot of people feeling like their class sucks for no good reason, and a lot of other people performing a cost analysis every time they so much as breathe at an adventure.

In conclusion, down with the economy, viva la revolution.

This is a good post.


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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by PowerWord Rage » Thu Jun 01, 2023 4:18 am

I'll have pinpoint out that potion are still casted at their respective level as similiar to vanilla NWN, so are scrolls for the matter.
If you're referring to dispel CL on mundane, nothing has been changed from original vanilla NWN either.

The only thing that changed, is the time factor whereby per hour lasted longer IRL than it used to be.

Edit : Regarding loremaggedon, I'm actually in favor of it.
It's good to have more places to spend coins and it gives more drive to keep making coins for mundane.
It does make scribe scroll more worthwhile and makes scrolls even more precious than it used to be rather than peddler's trash most of the time.
I personally think loremaggedon pros far outweighs the cons but, it's something esle to debate about and i doubt that those who like or dislike can ever agree with each other on this matter.


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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by I will never sleep » Thu Jun 01, 2023 5:48 am

PowerWord Rage wrote:
Thu Jun 01, 2023 4:18 am

I'll have pinpoint out that potion are still casted at their respective level as similiar to vanilla NWN, so are scrolls for the matter.
If you're referring to dispel CL on mundane, nothing has been changed from original vanilla NWN either.

The only thing that changed, is the time factor whereby per hour lasted longer IRL than it used to be.

Ok. You are right. The thing I was thinking of was a bug fix.

Dispel Changes (Aniel)

  • Mundane characters now correctly have their total level as their dispel resistance for effects they create. A character is considered mundane when their caster level is 6 or less.

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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by -XXX- » Thu Jun 01, 2023 7:43 am

Loremageddon has nothing to do with this.

We've had potions, scrolls and wands before - the only thing that loremageddon did was giving certain builds access to consumables that they couldn't have even used before. The whole notion that loremageddon somehow caused any of this is very flawed.


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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by AnselHoenheim » Thu Jun 01, 2023 9:00 am

The thing is, Loremaggedon does not exist anymore because of the increased skills, the implementation of Loremaster, and the implementation of grimoires which do the same exact thing that was before loremaggedon, giving access to mundane to 7th, 8th, and 9th level spells with very little cost for the build.


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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by MRFTW » Sat Jun 03, 2023 9:07 am

Let sequencers work on people and not just summons


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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by D4wN » Wed Jun 07, 2023 10:41 am

Every server reset or crash costs me a fortune :cry:

But yeah, nr 1 cost for mundies is consumables. Especially if you're a high profile target or a guard etc. you have to constantly walk around with basic wards. I spend so much gold just keeping myself warded and I can never participate in arena bouts/training because of how expensive it is.

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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by Ork » Fri Jun 09, 2023 2:33 am

I'm playing a character currently with access to summons. I am L17. I have nearly 200,000 in my bank and I'm grinding with the chain mail he spawned with. I then look at my paladin, not even a mundane but doesn't utilize summons and does need gear to clear PvE content, and I can barely keep 10,000g in my bank.

Solutions I think that would help:
• Reduce the crafting points by a factor of 4 for steel, msteel and mithril gear. This stuff should be dirt cheap. If you want mithril to be special, change the name but +2 AC is needed for mundanes to clear content.
• no more special vendors that sell potions that are needed/extremely useful for pve. give us NEP, shield pots, and skleens at most vendors and decrease their cost.
• increase the caster level duration of all player made potions in increments and make the highest duration the cost sink while giving players cheaper options for shorter durations (i.e. a lesser displacer beast cloak that is cheaper to make w/ the 7 minute duration invisibility and a greater displacer beast cloak that is costly to make but lasts 30 minutes.)
• Reduce the cost of wand & potion making by a factor of 4.

I don't think these things need to be a money sink, and instead pivot that to end gear, runes, etc.


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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by Power Word, Haste » Fri Jun 09, 2023 4:24 am

Ork wrote:
Fri Jun 09, 2023 2:33 am

Solutions I think that would help:
• Reduce the crafting points by a factor of 4 for steel, msteel and mithril gear. This stuff should be dirt cheap. If you want mithril to be special, change the name but +2 AC is needed for mundanes to clear content.
• no more special vendors that sell potions that are needed/extremely useful for pve. give us NEP, shield pots, and skleens at most vendors and decrease their cost.
• increase the caster level duration of all player made potions in increments and make the highest duration the cost sink while giving players cheaper options for shorter durations (i.e. a lesser displacer beast cloak that is cheaper to make w/ the 7 minute duration invisibility and a greater displacer beast cloak that is costly to make but lasts 30 minutes.)
• Reduce the cost of wand & potion making by a factor of 4.

Particularly the part about giving long duration buffs from costly items. I don't know any other NWN server that makes people use copious amounts of small duration consumables for their buffs at all stages of the game. Many use items, like haste boots, but I actually prefer the limited item buff properties on Arelith. Simply upping the duration on the basic essential buffs and then having end game crafts (preferably just a small item, 1x1, 1x2 because having to play tetris with OLDT gear, sail gear, everything else I need is awful) for long duration improved invisibility, freedom etc would go a very long way to making a melee not feel extraordinarily tedious to run.


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Re: Cost of Mundane vs Caster

Post by A Ray of Sunshine » Fri Jun 09, 2023 8:55 am

Extending the duration of low level buffs, reducing the crafting cost of low level items (especially the insanity that is masterly steel..) and sharply cutting the cost of wand/potion brewing are all primo ideas.

Some other servers change extend the duration of buffs by adding an extra time unit of the next tier up. So for example:
Turn/Level buffs become 1 Hour + Turns/Level
Round/Level buffs become 1 Turn + Rounds/Level (with a few exceptions of course, because some things should remain strictly rounds/level)

I'm not saying we should do that exactly, but it would be an example of a way to reduce the amount of potion chugging required at low levels. Similarly, just making low caster level variants of potions dirt cheap at vendors, or creating cheap Brooch-Of-Shielding style magical items that can cast extremely low CL buffs x times/day may be worth exploring.


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