Invisible Blade Balance Thread

[Dr. B]

Eviscerate seems overpowered. The damage needs to be toned down, because it does very high damage for a touch attack. Maybe 2d4 instead of 3d6?

I don't think any of the other abilities are overpowered (some may argue Arcane Bleed is--I will debate those people if they want to do so), but I do think the class should keep its prerequisites, and perhaps have some additional prerequisites that make it harder to open up to pretty much the entire gamut of melee builds. 27/3 Hexblade/IB, 21/6/3 Paladin/Ftr/IB, Ranger. Barbarian, Divine Champion, you name it--I'm not against these builds being possible, but they should have to invest something. In the class's current state, you get a very nice suite of abilities for no investment.

[Duchess Says]

I was going to post this in Q&A but some things I can't figure out..

1. It only takes 7 BAB, no other requirements at all now?

2. Do the bleeds stack with sneak attack or are they separate?

3. Do the bleeds now happen with any melee that lands at all? Before it was only if you would have sneak attacked..

4. Is it even worth taking on a low strength rogue type who it seemed to be catered to before as melee touch attack is str based?

5. It’s not live on the PGCC, right? I can’t take it, still seems to have old requirements

I reserve the right to follow up with more. Thank you

[Dr. B]

I was going to post this in Q&A but some things I can't figure out..

1. It only takes 7 BAB, no other requirements at all now?

Correct.

2. Do the bleeds stack with sneak attack or are they separate?

Separate.

3. Do the bleeds now happen with any melee that lands at all? Before it was only if you would have sneak attacked..

Any melee.

4. Is it even worth taking on a low strength rogue type who it seemed to be catered to before as melee touch attack is str based?

Yes. Touch attacks bypass a lot of AC sources. Although it will be a lot more offensive on high str builds.

5. It’s not live on the PGCC, right? I can’t take it, still seems to have old requirements

The new abilities are live, but the requirements are still there. However, I would strongly urge the devs not to loosen the requirements at this time. Thematically, I think sleight-of-hand is an appropriate requirement and actually think it should require more ranks. I would also suggest, in addition to keeping dodge, adding another feat requirement that isn't mobility (because this makes it too easy to multiclass with SB and SD)--perhaps skill focus: sleight-of-hand, perhaps lightning reflexes, or something along those lines.

[Cagus]

Well, I would rename the class, so it cease to be misleading.

Invisible blade
"Arelith Invisible Blades are deadly rogues who prefer to use light blades in combat. "

Now as OP remarked, you want this as a dip on high ab, strength melee basher (Preferably with a lot of attacks).

There is no real gain to take it on rogue or hider.
Has nothing to do with original class concept.

[Dr. B]

Actually, there is an advantage to taking it as a dexer, especially if you have very high AB and low damage. You can accumulate bleed stacks on an opponent then give them the poke of death with eviscerate. I'm not sure how much is possible, but the most damage I've been able to produce with it so far was 686.

[kinginyellow]

I can see something like Ranger 11/ 3 IB / Assassin 16 having fairly good success. You even get the +4 daggers that way. Probably not the best thing you can come up with but just something I'm thinking about that probably would work without theorycrafting very hard.

[Dr. B]

I've been toying with Swash/Assassin/IB and it's quite strong. I think much stronger builds are possible though.

[Tarkus the dog]

anything-that's-hard-to-kill-and-gets-decent-AB/ 3 IB

In general, those 3 points in IB is all the damage you need, which is problematic.

[kinginyellow]

anything-that's-hard-to-kill-and-gets-decent-AB/ 3 IB

In general, those 3 points in IB is all the damage you need, which is problematic.

Well yes, but honestly the problem is how powerful really the ability is as well for a 3 level investment.

We're literally adding a Tera/Wow skill into NWN.

Apply enough stacks and you can do your big dps move to consume them all and do big damage.

I don't know how well that fits the design of DnD. And it honestly hurts STR builds once more more than it does Dexers. It in fact benefits dexers because once more were giving people abilities that give them damage, making it so STR is unecessary. People are saying this would work well on a STR build chassis. It would, but you don't need damage. It gives you all the damage you need. You just need to reliably hit enough to stack enough wounds so you can eviscerate and nuke someone from full HP.

Guess who's going to get hit all the time in PVP, especially now that we've given up on giving STR AC and are giving them damage immunity instead :^)

I don't think the 3 level investment is the problem so much as the abilities are.

[Dr. B]

I think they're both a problem. I still think Eviscerate and bleed should at least do respectable damage, even if they clearly need to be capped in some way. But I don't see why they shouldn't require an investment of some sort. Presumably the point of IB is that it gives you additional sources of damage. Even if it gets balanced out, 3 levels with no prereqs makes it too easy to access that extra damage.

Honestly, I like the new abilities, they just need to be toned down and harder to access. Nerf Eviscerate (maybe make it 2d4 instead of 3d6?), bring it back to 5 levels (with the abilities landing on 1, 3, and 5) and restore the original prerequisites.

[Flower Power]

Guess who's going to get hit all the time in PVP, especially now that we've given up on giving STR AC and are giving them damage immunity instead :^)

The sad thing is that STR builds don't need AC or damage immunity.

They just need the ability to render DEX builds flatfooted, either through feats or consumables. Which they used to have.

Literally just - giving them ways to FF DEX-builds would give them parity again. That's all that needs doing.

[Skibbles]

Is bleed damage still completely removed with any healing kit or spell? (Or I think it was the kit only now that I think about it, and maybe regen).

Might want to consider that an actual bladed weapon needs to be used as well, and maybe focus:bladed would be a prereq.

I can envision another rise of quarterstaff monk/ib with this combo which seems a bit too silly for me.

[garrbear758]

Is bleed damage still completely removed with any healing kit or spell? (Or I think it was the kit only now that I think about it, and maybe regen).

Might want to consider that an actual bladed weapon needs to be used as well, and maybe focus:bladed would be a prereq.

I can envision another rise of quarterstaff monk/ib with this combo which seems a bit too silly for me.

It requires a dagger, short sword, or kukri, none of which are monk weapons. They are also weapons where a large weapon will get a +4 (short sword) or +8 (other 2) ab when using disarm. And yes, that is ab, not just the disarm check.
Bleed will be removable by resto.

[Skibbles]

Alas I stand corrected. Thank you!

To recap, for clarity, bleed will no longer be healed by kits? When you say healed by resto are we talking about the middle variant or will lesser restoration work as well?

Will bleed sourced from monsters follow this change too?

[garrbear758]

Alas I stand corrected. Thank you!

To recap, for clarity, bleed will no longer be healed by kits? When you say healed by resto are we talking about the middle variant or will lesser restoration work as well?

Will bleed sourced from monsters follow this change too?

Still healed by kits at a 55 DC which will probably come down a bit. No on lesser resto

[Skibbles]

Thanks for unpacking it. I agree 55 may be a bit too steep when one is presumably not taking 20 to heal their bleed stack in a fight, but I leave that to better minds.

[garrbear758]

Thanks for unpacking it. I agree 55 may be a bit too steep when one is presumably not taking 20 to heal their bleed stack in a fight, but I leave that to better minds.

It’s about a 50% chance with 33 points and +10 kits, which is probably a bit much. The goal was to reward investment in heal and make it more relevant after the other potions got buffed, but a full investment should probably just guarantee success.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Thanks for unpacking it. I agree 55 may be a bit too steep when one is presumably not taking 20 to heal their bleed stack in a fight, but I leave that to better minds.

It’s about a 50% chance with 33 points and +10 kits, which is probably a bit much. The goal was to reward investment in heal and make it more relevant after the other potions got buffed, but a full investment should probably just guarantee success.

I haven't done a deep dive on this yet, but the first thing I noticed was "wow thats a high heal dc." But after thinking about it some more, if a single easy to obtain restoration scroll can erase two rounds of work by the IB, it's probably fine as is. It does require an investment in lore, but you would be crazy to have no umd for the wand and no lore for a level four scroll anyways, so it shouldn't be an issue. Maybe drop it down to 50 for the true lunatics that take heal over lore these days, so this way its 34 min (8 wisdom with a potion) +10 healing kits making it a 70% chance of successful healing.

As for the actual class, well, again this is without a deep dive but it seems playable now which is a plus. It might be too easy to get, but giving up a div dip or a monk dip on some builds will be a real choice likely. Flavor wise though, similar to the lore master changes, it gets a big fat F and this would have been much better as feats you can pick over calling it a class. You're obviously smarter then I am when it comes to balance, I was certain the loremaster change was going to break things and it didn't, and I truly do appreciate the time and effort you put into the server so I can enjoy something new every few months in a 20 year old game. I just wish you were a bit more concerned with flavor then you seem to be, since that matters more to something like 75% of the player base.

That being said, and this is going to be controversial me thinks, I don't blame you for the obsession with balance. Its an after effect of the pvp rules, where it tries to set up a pseudo samurai situation where both sides are ready to fight before you start fighting. The gank has always been the great pvp equalizer of rp servers, where a well planned attack can allow fun builds to topple a mechanical beast. It comes with its own issues, and I'm not advocating an outright change here, but it does shift the balance back to roleplay over mechanical power and probably deserves an honest discussion. I get that has little to do with the thread, but I have been looking for a chance to slip that point in somewhere for months and this is the first chance I got

[Dr. B]

So when this gets nerfed (and it will) please consider this change:

Restore the prerequisites, make it 5 levels, make the abilities fall on 1,3,5, reduce Eviscerate Damage to 2d6.

[Arigard]

After playing with this for a while. I can't see how it can stay this way. It's just too powerful. Builds that yesterday had a trade off of a lack of damage for high AC/Defense and other benefits suddenly are being provided massive damage for very little investment. You can easily pull 150-250 dmg frequently on builds that otherwise would have nowhere near the damage.

Another issue I see with IB mainly is how it will scale in groups. It's not hard to see IBs popping out 300-400 damage after a short period (And that's on top of the other damage they can do from base attacks/crits/sneaks etc).

What happens when a group has two, or three IBs all attacking the same targets at once? We start to get into the realm where after a couple of rounds we're seeing 1000 dmg + burst magical damage hitting if things are being coordinated.

I think the highest someone was speaking about achieving on a solo PC was around the high 600 dmg mark. I don't really see a justification for ever having burst damage that can hit (especially not for 3 levels).

Even heavy smite builds must focus their entire 30 levels on building towards that kind of damage and then it's only against specific alignments. I just can't see how this can stay in its current state.

Also keep in mind because this is magical dmg it invalidates entire class investments. - EDR builds, Palemasters, Champion of Torm DR. Druid forms, Dwarven Defender defense against sneaks. All of these heavy investments are entirely bypassed by 3 levels.

[AstralUniverse]

I like this class. I have no doubt some numbers will need tweaking but it looks good. The fact it rewards STR with that melee touch attack roll and yet doesnt work with any monk weapons seems cool. I do think however it may slightly look took good with swashbucklers, rangers, now hexblades, and really any class that can go dex base and have high ab. Its a pure boost of damage for little investment and we can squeeze it very easily into even melee PM builds and other abominations no one wants to see thriving.

[Rico_scorpion]

So when this gets nerfed (and it will) please consider this change:

Restore the prerequisites, make it 5 levels, make the abilities fall on 1,3,5, reduce Eviscerate Damage to 2d6.

Let's agree to disagree there. The class needs to remain attractive to ever become a legit choice compared to monk dip or divine dip. I agree that at least one prerequisite would be good here, but all of them, plus the constraints on weapon type, plus 5 levels, and we're back to "no, monk/divine, thank you". The numbers must be tweaked down sure, but if there is a huge gatekeeping to get the class, it won't see much use and the meta won't budge.

More generally:

Also, please do not nerf the bleed damage in itself. The danger of the class is in eviscerate, not taking 5 rounds to eventually do 30 bonus damages/round. If it gets nerf, it will feel like the old IB, where the signature move/playstyle/boon was trivial. The bleed needs to do decent damage to ever be relevant in a fight. If you apply a lot of bleed, it means you hit a lot, and if you hit a lot, then the bleed is just a cherry on top and that's not what made you win the fight in the first place, it's just a "win more". If you don't hit a lot, you don't build any bleed damage. So for both these reasons, keeping a "decent damage" on the bleed is not detrimental to the game.

[Cagus]

It requires a dagger, short sword, or kukri, none of which are monk weapons

This is not noted in the update.
If there is written 'rework' I expect nothing from before applies.

Also consider adding wakizashi as another IB weapon. This could make this weapon usable again.

[Anomandaris]

Arcane Bleed, level 2: Upon a successful melee touch attack the target is breached of up to 4 spell effects. In addition the target sustains 20% spell failure and a -5 penalty to the skills Lore and Use Magic Device for 5 rounds. This ability has a 3 minute cooldown.

--

This is way overtuned. You're negating most peoples ability to even use wands and essential scrolls, instituting a 20% spell fail AND breaching up to 4 spell effects all in one touch attack with NO save? That's insanely overpowered.

The arcane spell failure and skill debuff needs a check, concentration or discipline or something for starters.
&
The breach should probably operate like a lesser spell breach instead of a greater spell breach. However, this is a secondary concern if the above one is managed properly it would still make this scary but not terrifyingly overpowered.

However, as it is a GSB + a saveless ASF and skill debuff is crazy. And it's 5 rounds too!

Add in the rest of the IB kit, like a slow and bleed dmg + eviscerate, along with the fact it's a 3 lvl dip on a build that even without all that is already going to wreck you as a caster if it gets close. No way...

[Aren]

After playing with this for a while. I can't see how it can stay this way. It's just too powerful. Builds that yesterday had a trade off of a lack of damage for high AC/Defense and other benefits suddenly are being provided massive damage for very little investment. You can easily pull 150-250 dmg frequently on builds that otherwise would have nowhere near the damage.

Another issue I see with IB mainly is how it will scale in groups. It's not hard to see IBs popping out 300-400 damage after a short period (And that's on top of the other damage they can do from base attacks/crits/sneaks etc).

What happens when a group has two, or three IBs all attacking the same targets at once? We start to get into the realm where after a couple of rounds we're seeing 1000 dmg + burst magical damage hitting if things are being coordinated.

I think the highest someone was speaking about achieving on a solo PC was around the high 600 dmg mark. I don't really see a justification for ever having burst damage that can hit (especially not for 3 levels).

Even heavy smite builds must focus their entire 30 levels on building towards that kind of damage and then it's only against specific alignments. I just can't see how this can stay in its current state.

Also keep in mind because this is magical dmg it invalidates entire class investments. - EDR builds, Palemasters, Champion of Torm DR. Druid forms, Dwarven Defender defense against sneaks. All of these heavy investments are entirely bypassed by 3 levels.

I am in hard agreement here.