Dispel change

[jomonog]

I understood from earlier threads that it was not going to change. But changing resist formula to use 11 and not 12 is a 5% across the board increase in power to dispel. I know this is what base nwn uses but Arelith dont use base nwn for calculating CL on mords or greater dispel (its massively increased from 16 to 22).

Unless the reason for the change is to deliberately make dispel more powerful, can we also change the CL on mords and greater dispel to 21 instead of 22 to compensate for the decrease to resist?

[Bunnysmack]

While it is true that Greater Dispel and Mords have an arelith-assisted boost to the final dispel CL, it is also true that dispel resistance (particularly to mundane PCs and Pale Masters) has also been substantially bolstered in Arelith as well.

As it stood prior to this tweak, it was all but pointless to prepare Greater Dispel magic against a mundane level 30 unless the caster has abjuration feats, because the caster will be throwing away a 6th circle spell, and a round of casting time, in order to have a 5% chance of removing their various wards. Now, that 5% chance is rolled against all their wards, but even if they have 20 wards on their person, the law of averages says the caster would have only removed one of the offending spells as the reward for their efforts.

Regardless of why the recent change was implemented, I personally think it is a good update. Gives a DnD staple spell some much needed reinvigoration, when, at present, the meta has had people using Breach as a replacement for dispel in nine out of ten situations (not counting Mords, because that is both Dispel AND Breach, but it takes up a 9th circle slot to accomplish that feat).

Also, props to the team for making it a small adjustment. When it comes to game balancing tweaks, I think it's always best to make gradual adjustments for any factor that involves opposed rolls.

[Drowboy]

Arelith didn't boost anything how arelith dispel res works is in line with how it's worked for the duration of nwns existence

[andthenthatwasthat]

...it is also true that dispel resistance (particularly to mundane PCs and Pale Masters) has also been substantially bolstered in Arelith as well.

What do you mean by dispel resistance specific to Pale Masters? That their PM levels count as full caster levels for the purpose of resisting dispels?

[Scurvy Cur]

The nutshell timeline explanation is as follows:

1) In 1.69, dispels were Dispel CL + d20 vs Target Effect CL + 11, ties to the target (this was often written as CL +d20 vs CL +12, because ties to the non-rolling party is a bit of an oddity; if you tie a target's AC, you hit. If you tie a DC target, you make the save. If you tie a skill check DC, you pass, etc., but mathematically they were equivalent). A CL 22 (focusless) mords/gdispel would remove CL 30 effects 5% of the time: a 20 would dispel, a 19 would not.

2) When beamdog released EE, dispels were Dispel CL + d20 vs Target Effect CL + 11, ties to the dispeller. Beamdog viewed the above behavior, for better or worse, as a bug. Under the new state of affairs, a CL 22 focusless mords would remove CL 30 effects 10% of the time. A 19 would dispel, an 18 would not.

3) Then beamdog broke everything about the dispel code, and we had a couple of months where mundanes dispelled at CL 0.

Aniel emergency patched dispelling like 84502 times, but the intent, afaik, was always to get back to where things were before beamdog broke things (state 2, not state 1).

4) Aniel's quasi-final patch gets us back to a dispel system that resembles 2, but the formula has inadvertently reverted to state 1. This was caught eventually, and has now been fixed. We're at state 2 now, as was initially intended.

Any decision to revert further to state 1 should not be accomplished by accidental default, as was done, but rather by conscious decision that dispels in their present form are too potent.

As a mechanical aside: This is a very careful decision to have to make. The difference of a point or two either way has a huge impact on any class for which dispels are a core mechanic. I can fully understand why the team would want to avoid changing things by accident. This update is best viewed as correcting an accidental and unintended nerf to dispels.

Arelith didn't boost anything how arelith dispel res works is in line with how it's worked for the duration of nwns existence

True for mundanes, not true for pale masters. PM needed a hell of a lot of fixing on the CL front. For the longest time, PM levels would count at half rate towards spells per day, but would do fuckall for CL. So a Wiz 11/PM 16/Bard 3 build would cast and dispel at CL 11, but would have spells per day as a level 19 wizard. Vanilla NWN still works that way, afaik, and Arelith's solution to the issue is very much custom.

[jomonog]

Interesting hearing the history. It seems to me though the cap of CL 22 on mords and greater dispel was selected deliberately orignially so that it would work out to a 5% chance of dispel against CL 30.

Changing that to a 10% chance is a pretty big swing in favour of dispel which has significant build implications for pretty much every build.

I'm assuming that has been done deliberately because the team considered that dispel was not powerful enough as it stood in the current meta. Perhaps there are two many 21 level spellswords running around..

[Bunnysmack]

The nutshell timeline explanation is as follows:

1) In 1.69, dispels were Dispel CL + d20 vs Target Effect CL + 11, ties to the target (this was often written as CL +d20 vs CL +12, because ties to the non-rolling party is a bit of an oddity; if you tie a target's AC, you hit. If you tie a DC target, you make the save. If you tie a skill check DC, you pass, etc., but mathematically they were equivalent). A CL 22 (focusless) mords/gdispel would remove CL 30 effects 5% of the time: a 20 would dispel, a 30 would not.

2) When beamdog released EE, dispels were Dispel CL + d20 vs Target Effect CL + 11, ties to the dispeller. Beamdog viewed the above behavior, for better or worse, as a bug. Under the new state of affairs, a CL 22 focusless mords would remove CL 30 effects 10% of the time. A 19 would dispel, an 18 would not.

3) Then beamdog broke everything about the dispel code, and we had a couple of months where mundanes dispelled at CL 0.

Aniel emergency patched dispelling like 84502 times, but the intent, afaik, was always to get back to where things were before beamdog broke things (state 2, not state 1).

4) Aniel's quasi-final patch gets us back to a dispel system that resembles 2, but the formula has inadvertently reverted to state 1. This was caught eventually, and has now been fixed. We're at state 2 now, as was initially intended.

Any decision to revert further to state 1 should not be accomplished by accidental default, as was done, but rather by conscious decision that dispels in their present form are too potent.

As a mechanical aside: This is a very careful decision to have to make. The difference of a point or two either way has a huge impact on any class for which dispels are a core mechanic. I can fully understand why the team would want to avoid changing things by accident. This update is best viewed as correcting an accidental and unintended nerf to dispels.

Arelith didn't boost anything how arelith dispel res works is in line with how it's worked for the duration of nwns existence

True for mundanes, not true for pale masters. PM needed a hell of a lot of fixing on the CL front. For the longest time, PM levels would count at half rate towards spells per day, but would do fuckall for CL. So a Wiz 11/PM 16/Bard 3 build would cast and dispel at CL 11, but would have spells per day as a level 19 wizard. Vanilla NWN still works that way, afaik, and Arelith's solution to the issue is very much custom.

+1

Thanks for a more in depth explanation both about the change and correcting the misconceptions I had about the state of Arelith vs. Vanilla. Pretty much answered all the questions I had about the recent update!

[Aniel]

Scurvy covered it pretty well. Essentially, from EE's release up until mundanes had 0 CL, the base dispel resistance was 11. This is essentially a correction of an unintended dispel nerf.

[jomonog]

Thanks for the explanation. I understand why its being changed now based on the history of things.

I suspect based on the sentiments expressed so far I might be in the minority, but I still think the correct outcome for game design would still be, leaving aside focii and other feats, for the base highest level dispel CL to have a 5% chance to dispel the base highest level dispel resistance.

That is, whether the x is 11 or 12, x should be equal to the highest level dispel + 20 - highest level resistance. I believe thats the reason why the highest level dispel for mords and greater dispel was set at 22 originally (when the formulae effectively used x as 12). If x is changing to 11 then the highest level dispel should also change to 21 to maintain the correct balance.

Just because Beamdog may have gone and cooked the code at some point, Im not sure that is in itself a compelling reason for the same outcome to be replicated on Arelith now. In particular, going from 12 to 11 is a significant change from the current state of things to many builds. For example, with this change level 30 mundanes now have twice as much chance of being dispelled by mords or greater dispel. Its not simply a bug fix, its potentially quite a significant shift in the meta.

[Bunnysmack]

Just because Beamdog may have gone and cooked the code at some point, Im not sure that is in itself a compelling reason for the same outcome to be replicated on Arelith now. In particular, going from 12 to 11 is a significant change from the current state of things to many builds. For example, with this change level 30 mundanes now have twice as much chance of being dispelled by mords or greater dispel. Its not simply a bug fix, its potentially quite a significant shift in the meta.

I can understand your concern, but while the change is significant, it is not an overly dramatic shift. The end result is that now, for every ten wards targetted, one ward is likely to be stripped (instead of averaging 1 in 20).

Considering the caster needs at least 22 caster levels to pull that off (not counting abj feats), that doesn't really seem like an unreasonable result.

Lastly, keep in mind that the fact that dispel results are extremely random is a boon for the defender, not the attacker. As an example, let's say the caster really needs to employ their Mind Fog+Castigation combo, and they throw a Greater Dispel in the hopes that the ward they strip is clarity. They have a 10% chance that they remove the offending mindward, but, instead, they might just as easily strip the Eagle's Splendor that the defender was using a moment ago to slightly supplement their disguise checks. It might be super helpful to throw a 10% effectiveness dispel, it might also dispel nothing at all, and it might manage to only remove a ward or two that are of trivial consequence. Spending time throwing the dispel is still a bit of a gamble.