Lore, Scrolls and You.

[Aren]

Hello.
I am wondering how people feel about the 80 lore requirement for using 9th level scrolls? Do you think it's fair? Do you think it's over-tuned investment-wise? Has it made significant changes to your IG experience and how so?

[Nobs]

Think its great

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

I think requiring a lore of 80 for you to use a 9th level scroll is way nicer than making it so that magical bonuses to skills from items don't stack, giving you a lower DC, and letting everyone else on the server watch and cringe as the spell mishap that should happen kills you.

The UMD and Lore system are my two biggest gripes about NWN when translated to an online environment. They work fine for a single-player game, because the campaigns aren't dynamic enough without a live DM to justify 10 different knowledge skills, and almost everything that isn't a caster, bard, or rogue will multiclass rogue or bard at some point in its career.

I've been in favor of switching things over to the 3.0/3.5 standard for quite some time, but for some reason I can't fathom, everyone balks. UMD is not a class-locked skill- it should be cross-class capable. Make using a scroll or wand trigger an actual roll for a UMD check.

You can then institute the default DC's for UMD for scroll-reading, with the proper mishap chance (the spell backfires or in some other way goes horribly wrong, which we already have a system half-baked in for in wild-surges; something similar could be applied to miscast scrolls.) Maybe pull UMD off of the basin and lower UMD requirements across the board to something still suitably high (which PnP also has tables for, but must adjust for the ability to stack stat bonus on gear), so you don't have the system trivialized by end-game basin gear across the board.

Done- everyone can read scrolls (just like now, and just like in PnP), but if you try to read something outside of your grasp (like say, a timestop, when you aren't a mage) then awful things can happen to you- which IMO makes plenty of narrative, thematic sense, and achieves the desired separation of powers more effectively, IMO. It also still allows for that occasional Hail Mary moment to be epic when it succeeds.

[White_935]

I love the changes, and i love that not everyone and their grandmother is a part-time rogue (Rogue DIP).


This actually changes, and also enabled alot of non-rogue builds.. thus changing the dynamics on the server.. also it's nice that now every fight isn't about who has the most time-stop scrolls on their side.

[MissEvelyn]

I love the change and it makes so much more sense tying the ability to use powerful magic scrolls to Lore.

[Ork]

also it's nice that now every fight isn't about who has the most time-stop scrolls on their side.

That was never the meta. It's still a disappointment, but I'm at least happy my fighter isn't gimped without spells until epics.

No mords is no fun, but here we are. We go from requiring people to use UMD, to requiring people to all have fat, ludicrous lore. It's still a skill tax that everyone is going to invest in.

[Nitro]

I think it's horrible to be honest. Having to power-invest into Lore just to be able to get someone with a Mord's is a lot more painful than building for UMD. And if anything timestops are more powerful for those who can cast them now because it's very unlikely someone will counter you with a scroll timestop of their own.

If the Lore amounts required weren't so ridiculously high it wouldn't be as painful.

[Wuthering]

I love the changes, and i love that not everyone and their grandmother is a part-time rogue (Rogue DIP).

This actually changes, and also enabled alot of non-rogue builds.. thus changing the dynamics on the server.. also it's nice that now every fight isn't about who has the most time-stop scrolls on their side.

I mostly agree but think rogues (and maybe bards) as the definitive UMD class should get some sort of bonus towards using scrolls. Like your rogue level is added to lore for the scroll use calculation.

[Anime Sword Fighter]

Give UMD to all classes

[Nobs]

I like it how it is atm.

Wizards are wizards again now and not every fighter and his mom run around with level 9 spells.

Its great dont change a thing!

[Might-N-Magic]

Things were fine the way they were.
Now ridiculous, broken trash like Time Stop and PvP-neccessary stuff like Mord's are only in the hands of wizards and people willing to go to 80 Lore... ugh.

As if mages needed the bottlenecking.

[Aren]

I love the change and it makes so much more sense tying the ability to use powerful magic scrolls to Lore.

Sure. But do you think 80 lore is too much to be able to read a 9th level scroll? With a 16 int, and 33 skill points into lore, you'd need to have lore in almost all gear slots (+14), 2 +5 lore rings (10), +5 lore helmet, skill focus lore, epic skill focus lore and +4 int from fox's cunning.

In my humble opinion that's way too steep a cost, just to be able to deal with Clerics, Mages, Druids and Spellswords.

[Aren]

also it's nice that now every fight isn't about who has the most time-stop scrolls on their side.

That was never the meta. It's still a disappointment, but I'm at least happy my fighter isn't gimped without spells until epics.

No mords is no fun, but here we are. We go from requiring people to use UMD, to requiring people to all have fat, ludicrous lore. It's still a skill tax that everyone is going to invest in.

I tend to agree here, IF we're strictly speaking in terms of PvP combat (which arguably is what balance should revolve around).

[Aren]

Give UMD to all classes

Sorry, but I fail to see how this has anything to do with the current discussion. Could you perhaps elaborate?

[Aren]

I like it how it is atm.

Wizards are wizards again now and not every fighter and his mom run around with level 9 spells.

Its great dont change a thing!

Well I do think it does change things. Because you have no reliable way to deal with fully buffed casters.

[JustMonika]

I like it how it is atm.

Wizards are wizards again now and not every fighter and his mom run around with level 9 spells.

Its great dont change a thing!

Well I do think it does change things. Because you have no reliable way to deal with fully buffed casters.

There are items that let you cast stuff for no Lore or UMD at all! Explore. Trade! Profit!
Or don't PvP!

Or be a mage!

[Aren]

I like it how it is atm.

Wizards are wizards again now and not every fighter and his mom run around with level 9 spells.

Its great dont change a thing!

Well I do think it does change things. Because you have no reliable way to deal with fully buffed casters.

There are items that let you cast stuff for no Lore or UMD at all! Explore. Trade! Profit!
Or don't PvP!

Or be a mage!

Yes. I know. Hence my emphasis on reliable.

[LichBait]

I'll preface this by noting that my main character directly benefited from this change.

I'm not too much of a fan of the change. It makes certain classes overtuned, and kind of further shoehorns viability in competitive stuff to less builds. I don't have any way to measure the class spread, but I've noticed a rise in the amount of wizards/spellswords lately, and a decrease in more mundane builds. (Could be wrong though). 80 Lore is kind of a crazy big requirement. Wizards were still wizards when other people could use UMD scrolls, the only thing it did was slaughter the scroll market, which kind of took away from some hedge mage interactions too. All it did for no-lore people is shift the magic waving from reading a paper to waving a stick. The high magic ability is still there, just less readily available.

IMO I think turning on the vanilla NWN scroll UMD requirement would've been a better way to go if people wanted a skill tax requirement. Making it an actual UMD roll:

You must make a DC check of 25 + the level of the spell to cast a spell from a scroll if the difficulty mode of the game is set to Hardcore or higher.

[Shadowy Reality]

When this issue is brought up, everyone that has something to say against, is usually due to the lack of access to Mords scroll.

And I might be missing something, but what does Mords offer that a wand of lesser breach does not? The answer seems to be lowering SR and attempting to dispel.

Now correct me if I am wrong, but the dispel aspect of Mord's was mostly irrelevant, as it could not actually dispel anything against anyone with a decent CL. So the question really is why that -10 SR is so important. I don't get it. If you are playing a melee you don't need to lower anyone's SR. If you are playing a mage you can cast Mords yourself.

With that asides UMD is still attainable as ever. Only really Mords and Timestop to a lesser degree are missed with the change.

[LichBait]

Mords allows for 6 breachable spells to be removed at once vs 2 from a lesser breach wand. It will take 3 rounds of breaching to remove what one scroll of mords can do, and the dispel chance for lower CL builds was a small factor. Also.. mords can breach 2 each from a mob in one round. That's the main difference.

Edit: The -10 SR was a big factor in the counter play against EDK too, though those things did get a big ol' nerf recently. Additionally, premonition, acid sheath scrolls, spell mantle scrolls, WoF scrolls, Mind Blank Scrolls are also missed. (Admittedly the lower level ones don't need the whole 80 lore.)

[Shadowy Reality]

Mords allows for 6 breachable spells to be removed at once vs 2 from a lesser breach wand. It will take 3 rounds of breaching to remove what one scroll of mords can do, and the dispel chance for lower CL builds was a small factor. Also.. mords can breach 2 each from a mob in one round. That's the main difference.

Edit: The -10 SR was a big factor in the counter play against EDK too, though those things did get a big ol' nerf recently. Additionally, premonition, acid sheath scrolls, spell mantle scrolls, WoF scrolls, Mind Blank Scrolls are also missed. (Admittedly the lower level ones don't need the whole 80 lore.)

Badly misread the description, entirely right. 6 for single target, 2 for area of effect. It does make a difference. But I am unconvinced it is as bad as it is made to be. Premonition is on top of the breach list, the next that could be very useful would be the spell shields, which are not very high on the list and will indeed make any melee very sad.

The scrolls you mention can mostly be replaced or ignored. You dont have access to it, but neither do other melees, so it is irrelevant.

[LichBait]

Mind Blank and Spell Mantle were counter plays for melees vs magic users. Now the magic users do not have to waste half a round, or a round at worst to remove those buffs. Not to mention WoF for summon removal.

[Shadowy Reality]

Lesser mind blank requires 25 Lore, that is far from hard to attain if the regular clarity potion will not do. I give it to you that WoF could easily remove summons, although it could also be argued that it did it too easily.

[LichBait]

That's fair, yeah. I'm not saying it's impossible, or the end of the world. I just dislike that it's an extra skill tax, in a place where you already need so many other skills to remain competitive in the combat realm. (Heaven forbid you actually want to invest in a social skill like bluff or persuade). It seems an arbitrary shift meant to encourage mage flavor, but removed the incentive for greater class diversity since to be competitive against the classes that /do/ have these tools you need to play into that extra tax when skills are already stretched thin. (The glib "just play a mage" is thrown around a bit, and it seems people are just playing a mage. Heh.)

It's just strange to me that Use Magic Device cannot... use a magical device. Perhaps if mages could craft rods then that new "Wizards should only read wizard scrolls" flavor can be retained and the tools to make counter play viable could be readily available.

[Irongron]

Hello.
I am wondering how people feel about the 80 lore requirement for using 9th level scrolls? Do you think it's fair? Do you think it's over-tuned investment-wise? Has it made significant changes to your IG experience and how so?

I don't really see a purpose of this thread, other than to rekindle a deeply divisive issue which has long since been laid to rest, and one which you yourself very publicly quit the server over at the time, and have already expressed some strong opinions, including, once again, in how you chose to phrase the above question.

Keseah will be put on ice for the time being.

These new updates are making me question the direction in which the server is headed, and I won't be spending my precious time investing in something that may or may not come crashing down in a few weeks.

Good luck to you all.

I'm glad you didn't leave, of course, and that the server didn't come 'crashing down', and in fact has since increased in player numbers. I doubt that is either because of the lore update, or in spite of it, but it is nevertheless very popular with some, and equally unpopular with others - it is also here to stay, and was made with a great deal of forethought. There is little to be gained by once again rehashing the arguements made only three months ago.

I'm locking this thread, because I intentionally or not, I think this thread will only serve to re-open old wounds, and because we have already had this discussion, as a community, at length. It's done.