Dispel

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

I get why it is, though I wish mundanes topped out a little lower than 30, so a standard level 26 or 27 cleric or mage with dip and a fighter drinking a potion were equal instead of the fighter having the advantage. Then a pure class caster would also have a little leg up, more so if they took ED:Abj.

That would make more sense. But typically mundanes buffs that need to resist dispels are the likes of essential stat buffs that help top off their build. I would support either direction. Essentially mundanes dont need said 'nerf' so its not worth devs time to - 3 off their character level.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

This is never going to happen for balance reasons.

it would be great to see shadow dancer caster levels for shadowmage work for resisting dispells though.

They do!

And...

... I really cant wait for this bug to be behind us so we can play rangers, paladins, divine bards and spellswords with 21 CL again.

Unless something goes wrong, maybe Soon.

i wasnt able to test before your very recent update, but it seems my build can work now! thankyou!

[Anomandaris]

I really don't understand

Thankful you don't have to understand. This is just the way the world is or magic is on Arelith. If you're looking for IC justifications, make one up.

Pretty much this. A lot of what's going on around here is balanced around the platform - a game from 2001 that reflects d&d in a very poor way (I mean, you cant even jump here). That's what we've been working with. That's what we got. Lore is great for content, but not for sever balance. This fact needs to sink.

In a world where items always react to full character level and spell casts always react to class level, there's pretty much the same balance table we have now, but with so soooo many more viable builds in game.

Sure, I get that. The statement however was not just about IC justification, but also OOC. I don't see how defaulting to CL 30 is "balanced" when "warded" mundanes are already extremely powerful. It'd be far more reasonable to put the CL more around 25-28 (more in line with server average for casters).

Why does a mundane need a higher dispel resist than an epic mage? I imagine it would be very easy to make it (Character Level - X),

[Archnon]

Thankful you don't have to understand. This is just the way the world is or magic is on Arelith. If you're looking for IC justifications, make one up.

Pretty much this. A lot of what's going on around here is balanced around the platform - a game from 2001 that reflects d&d in a very poor way (I mean, you cant even jump here). That's what we've been working with. That's what we got. Lore is great for content, but not for sever balance. This fact needs to sink.

In a world where items always react to full character level and spell casts always react to class level, there's pretty much the same balance table we have now, but with so soooo many more viable builds in game.

Sure, I get that. The statement however was not just about IC justification, but also OOC. I don't see how defaulting to CL 30 is "balanced" when "warded" mundanes are already extremely powerful. It'd be far more reasonable to put the CL more around 25-28 (more in line with server average for casters).

Why does a mundane need a higher dispel resist than an epic mage? I imagine it would be very easy to make it (Character Level - X),

Hate to agree with Jordenk but I do here. I think it would be good to have CL-4. 26 is a common CL for a single dip mage and would even that out. You could also do something like make it dependent on a skill, like CL-5 +1/6 points hard concentration. Then mundanes could make an investment to get full CL

[AstralUniverse]

From Aniel
=========
Dispels
-------
Class level and ability score checks are removed from dispels. Once again they will use a character's total level for their dispel resistance, or if that character has casted a spell from a spell slot it will use their appropriate caster level instead versus dispels until a server reset occurs.

First of all, thanks for your hard work and the relentless attempts to work around this bug.

That said, we're still standing in the same place as before. This change does help some builds, such as mundane divine bards/hexblades which might forgo casting but still want their high charisma. other than that (heavy paladins and rangers, spellswords etc) not so much. But thanks again, it's better than nothing for sure.

[Aniel]

For reasons not worth going into, because they've been addressed plenty of times before, there are no plans on changing it in ways described in this thread. To put it bluntly, they're all very poor ideas that would only serve to damage the server's balance in its current state.

First of all, thanks for your hard work and the relentless attempts to work around this bug.

That said, we're still standing in the same place as before. This change does help some builds, such as mundane divine bards/hexblades which might forgo casting but still want their high charisma. other than that (heavy paladins and rangers, spellswords etc) not so much. But thanks again, it's better than nothing for sure.

This should be exactly back to where we started before the bug was a thing in the first place. All implications of this are intentional.

[jomonog]

No offense, but i'm yet to be convinced by any of the replies I've received so far that my idea is inherently a "poor idea" that would dramatically hurt game balance, so I guess I'll just have to take your word for it (and happy to do so, youre the devs!)

[AstralUniverse]

For reasons not worth going into, because they've been addressed plenty of times before, there are no plans on changing it in ways described in this thread. To put it bluntly, they're all very poor ideas that would only serve to damage the server's balance in its current state.

First of all, thanks for your hard work and the relentless attempts to work around this bug.

That said, we're still standing in the same place as before. This change does help some builds, such as mundane divine bards/hexblades which might forgo casting but still want their high charisma. other than that (heavy paladins and rangers, spellswords etc) not so much. But thanks again, it's better than nothing for sure.

This should be exactly back to where we started before the bug was a thing in the first place. All implications of this are intentional.

Before this bug was a thing, items always took full character level and spells always took caster level. so a caster could use their spells but their potions/wands worked for them same way it works for mundane characters. It was awesome. That's how it was when I leveled a spellsword which had below the curve CL all the way to epics and almost never got dispelled until the bug. To clarify, it could be worse, and I'm thankful. I recall days where if you cast a single spell from your book, all your items would take the item's CL which is by far the worst option of all, so at least we're not there but we're not bug-free either.

[Might-N-Magic]

Is this supposed to be happening now? Everything that hits me with any dispel now, woosh, everything gone.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

Is this supposed to be happening now? Everything that hits me with any dispel now, woosh, everything gone.

What ratio of caster class and stat?

[Might-N-Magic]

No caster levels, mundane character, level 30.
Just curious if this is how it should work or not.
Somehow having to reuse wands and potions over 10 times each just to get through a dungeon seems a poor choice.

[Ork]

Put that in the bug forums, dawg. That looks scary!

[CNS]

Just adding some figures to the discussion so people can be clear.



Each ward on a level 30 mundane is 4 times less likely to be dispelled than a level 27/3 caster when mords is cast by a 27/3 caster.

1 in every 20 wards will be dispelled vs 1 in every 5. Which is quite a disparity.

A 30 mundane is also twice as less likely to be dispelled as a 27/3 caster who took the Abj: Defense feat against that same 27/3 standard mage casting mords.

Everything else on that looks about right to my eyes, but that particular bit seems a tiny bit over tuned.

[Theter]

So a barbarian drinking pots is basically immune to dispels by anyone else who did not spent 3 feat specifically for this. Here lies your balance. Impressive.

[Drowboy]

This was how it worked from the games release to March of this year when beamdog screwed it up.

Also, given the lore change, it's not like most mundanes are rocking any self buffs over level four.

Sky not falling, people dealt with it before and will deal with it fine now.

[Anomandaris]

This was how it worked from the games release to March of this year when beamdog screwed it up.

Also, given the lore change, it's not like most mundanes are rocking any self buffs over level four.

Sky not falling, people dealt with it before and will deal with it fine now.

It's very easy to hit 35 lore + and in fact part of the whole idea of this was to not lock scrolls behind UMD as it is a less available class skill. So in fact the inverse is true, in that self-buffs are now available to a wider range of PCs. Most of the more useful buffs (except perhaps premonition and shadow shield and a couple others) are in circle 5/6 and below. So the above two posts about the difficulty for a lvl 27/3 to dispel a barbarian is definitely a concern. Again, coming from someone who has a mundane PC as a main and as an alt a mage w/ abj. So... I'm in a fine place personally I just really can't see how this is actually balanced.

[AstralUniverse]

So a barbarian drinking pots is basically immune to dispels by anyone else who did not spent 3 feat specifically for this. Here lies your balance. Impressive.

Lmao.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

This discussion has caused me to more seriously consider the opinion of mundanes having CL to resist dispel = character level - x being one day worth the effort to code. But its not a hill I will die over right now.

[dallion43]

Lets not forget that lvl 30 mundane can be any of a very broad number of builds. The fact that they have the best mord resist is one of those builds advantages. Taking this away from many mundane builds will cripple them to unusable relativly easily.
26/4 and 27/3 builds are sacrifacing mord resistance for a reason. They get plenty of toys as a trade in. Most mundane builds don't.

Barbrian/wm build is not your average lvl 30 mundane build by a long shot, post lore.

Most of the newly available to non umd mundanes 1-7 lvl relevant wards are in the breach list.
Not to mention the mundane builds and builds that don't use their SB had umd on 90% of them prior to lore change. So the amout of wards available didn't really change on those. One could say they lost easy accsess to spells above lvl 7 and got 3 more lvls to their main classes or an alternative on most of them.

[jomonog]

Just jumping in as a reminder I began this thread not to suggest reducing mundane character level to resist dispel to less than 30 (i think this is a bad idea by the way for balance). I'd rather see ALL characters harder to dispel so all get the benefit of CL 30 at character level 30. At least that kind of makes sense, if you are a more powerful character then its harder to strip away your magic buffs. I dont think it would break game balance, it would just mean there are more viable builds and you don't have wierdness like 20 bard or 20 cleric builds being better off buffing with wands than from their spellbook. Spellsword and ranger doesnt really care too much about dispel anyway so I'm not sure they get SOO much better, but if they did maybe that's because the extra cookies they currently get maybe need a bit of a look at anyway for game balance reasons.

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

This was how it worked from the games release to March of this year when beamdog screwed it up.

Also, given the lore change, it's not like most mundanes are rocking any self buffs over level four.

Sky not falling, people dealt with it before and will deal with it fine now.

I love how everyone keeps treating Beamdog's intentional fix to non-casters using the item caster levels like it was an unintentional coding slip-up on their part.

Can anyone explain the consistency in logic behind "we don't want people that aren't casters running around casting everything like they're 9th level meta-theurges, Lore 85," and "mundanes need to be dispel-proof, even though casters have to go pure and take arcane defense: abjuration to say the same?"

I accept that getting dispelled can make PvE harder- I don't accept that that's such an earth-shattering revelation that this inconsistency is worthwhile. Last I checked, mobs barely dispelled anymore, and because there was such a huge outcry against dispelling in the first place, they do it so infrequently and predictably that even a voice-commanded low level summon can be used to successfully bait out an entire encounter's worth of dispels.

I won't get into how I feel about balancing for PvP, at the expense of logic, in a game that's meant to be balanced on a standard of groups of players vs. monsters for the millionth time- I will say that I think PvE or PvP, the logic of mechanical function should be consistent. A mundane can drink potions- but a level 30 caster should probably be able to dispel those potions with ease, because they're potions, not mages.

Yes- I still feel this way even if I'm playing my archer, who also runs lore for scrolls in addition to guzzling potions like an alcoholic with a bottle of wine. I don't think I should have my cake and eat it too, on any character archetype.

[Aniel]

I love how everyone keeps treating Beamdog's intentional fix to non-casters using the item caster levels like it was an unintentional coding slip-up on their part.

That's because it was.

Can anyone explain the consistency in logic behind "we don't want people that aren't casters running around casting everything like they're 9th level meta-theurges, Lore 85," and "mundanes need to be dispel-proof, even though casters have to go pure and take arcane defense: abjuration to say the same?"

80 lore, and not everyone agrees with this change. The point regardless was build diversity. Mundanes being easily dispelled destroys any and all illusions of class diversity.

I accept that getting dispelled can make PvE harder- I don't accept that that's such an earth-shattering revelation that this inconsistency is worthwhile. Last I checked, mobs barely dispelled anymore, and because there was such a huge outcry against dispelling in the first place, they do it so infrequently and predictably that even a voice-commanded low level summon can be used to successfully bait out an entire encounter's worth of dispels.

Mobs cast dispels. They end up doing it pretty regularly.

I won't get into how I feel about balancing for PvP, at the expense of logic, in a game that's meant to be balanced on a standard of groups of players vs. monsters for the millionth time- I will say that I think PvE or PvP, the logic of mechanical function should be consistent. A mundane can drink potions- but a level 30 caster should probably be able to dispel those potions with ease, because they're potions, not mages.

I think any wizard that casts any spell on someone should instantly kill them if they aren't a wizard. We'd be true to lore then at last.

[AstralUniverse]

I love how everyone keeps treating Beamdog's intentional fix to non-casters using the item caster levels like it was an unintentional coding slip-up on their part.

They intended to make items work on mundane CL at all times, regardless if the character has spellbook, casts or whatever.

It did work like that for a little while until they broke it in the following update on their end.

Our devs made it so items react to caster CL if the character is caster, and mundane CL if the character is mundane because otherwise items would always use item's CL which is way more game breaking. I'm thankful.

But in the short while things ACTUALLY worked as intended it was really awesome and 21 cl builds were viable but not op because their own spells, those spells would in fact have 21 cl which is low. For example if they'd to cast haste from their own spellbook for it's longer duration (even more extended) or divine favor, those spells could be easily dispelled by 27 cl mages with no abjur focus, but the target would keep their core buffs such as bull's/cat's, bark, shield and they would still be able to function and use haste potions etc. It was really balance at it's peek.