Invisible Blade Balance Thread

[magistrasa]

Cap the amount of bleed stacks Eviscerate triggers. Lower the CD if you have to. Doing that kind of massive damage on a single click is a problem.

Change the class to 5 levels. Make it an investment that requires at least something that resembles sacrifice.

Give it a spellcraft skill requirement before access. It's clearly a class with a magical bent, and now we all have the skill points for martial characters to risk cross-classing. Depending on the build, it could mean the difference between taking the class at level 8 or 18.

Tone down Arcane Bleed. It does too many things with no saves or checks to counter it.

I think Arcane Bleed on a conceptual level was a stroke of brilliance though. Framing the class around the concept of a mage-killer would really give it a unique identity, and there's plenty of other ideas that can be explored along that vein. Spellcraft skill bonuses, spell resistance, some manner of ability that silences a target - I could easily come up with more if I'd managed to get more than 4 hours of sleep. The concept would excite and inspire roleplay builds, and the abilities would be unique and useful enough to tempt power builders. I disagree that the class needs to stand toe to toe with monk or divine dips (particularly as not every build will even have access to them), because it's in our variety and diversity that we find the most unique and compelling characters. I think there's enough ideas to draw from along this line of thinking to make it a full 10-level prestige class.

[Nitro]

The fact that any melee class can with a 3 level dip just get infinitely stacking bleed on attacks without any cap or investment is a bit concerning. It's an easy way for low-damage livelord builds to build up a lot of damage over time.

[Rico_scorpion]

Just an idea: keep eviscerate at 3d6, cap max amount of simultaneous bleed stack to the soft strength modifier (or *2/*3/*4 the hard str modifier). That line of thinking would fix the "i put everything in defense and bank on 3 levels to get all my damages", fixes the insane eviscerate damages (would be between 100 and 200 at max stack depending on your str), and that makes it a class with a very tight action economy: arcane breach, the slow, and eviscerate are three full round actions. If you need to eviscerate every 2-4 rounds, you spend a LOT of time not attacking/applying bleeds for damage burst that is way below IGMS spam.

[magistrasa]

cap max amount of simultaneous bleed stack to the soft strength modifier

Or lean into Intelligence and make its saves and caps all based on that. Another easy way to keep the craziness down is to make its effectiveness dependant on multiple attributes. Mind you, spellswords would still be able to kill God with it, but that's fine because I want to play a spellsword so I don't care.

[Definately Not A Mimic]

I know I'm one of the few who used this class before because everyone thought it was a waste. The two things I enjoyed about the class both went away. Losing the fun quirks of it to gain damage is fine, for me it isn't why I took the class to begin with, I liked the flavor of it, the point of it feeling like 'dirty fighting'.

All that said, I agree there needs to be more restriction to take this class. It is to easily a dip that most any build can make use of. Hopefully if the slight-of-hand requirement is put back in place you'll consider adding back in the Uncanny Feint. It was the only reason to have that skill in there and it was a fun little thing that worked great in PvE but didn't make a huge difference in PvP.

Lastly, I hope once all the tweeking is done that another relvl will be offered to adjust to the requirements. Sort of hope this is done on a case by case basis though.

[Quidix]

Suggestions:
[1] Reduce Heal DC to 45
[2] Cap eviscerate damage at 100
[3] Add eviscerate cooldown of 30 seconds
[4] Arcane blade add a save mechanic
[5] Arcane blade make the duration 3 rounds

[kinginyellow]

Made an IB today on PGCC to prove a point. Made an over the knee no real planning into it Hexblade 21 / 6 fighter / 3 IB. Realized later I could've gone Hexblade 17/ Palemaster 10 / 3 IB. Damage doesn't matter on this build. I was poking my friend's Minotaur Barb/WM for 16-ish damage per hit while he'd hit me for 40 (but I attack more often and have higher AC, meaning I hit more.) We both were injured at around the same point in time, then I hit eviscerate and nuked him for 400 damage instantly killing him.

The only thing he could've done differently was using pray to get rid of bleed stacks, and using a damage shield. But using a damage shield meant wasting a round using a scroll that I could rip off with arcane bleed (which stacks with hex for reducing skill usage and might've made him unable to use the scroll again afterwards).

Yeah, IB is pretty broken right now. And there's really only one thing that makes me more upset about it.




I play NWN to get away from things like this, but here we are.

[Rico_scorpion]

I play NWN to get away from things like this

I don't get it, provided it's properly balanced, classes don't have to please everyone, having different playstyles/gimmicks is healthy. You can play a crapload of other classes that I'm sure cater to your more traditional-NWN tastes, and that's okay.

Anyway to each their own. I just wanted to state explicitly that I really support the attempt to bring proven new ways of playing classes into this old video game. A dev reading this could feel disheartened to have spent hours working on it just to have that work dismissed non nonchalantly. So hey, whether i'm in the silent minority or silent majority, here's a thank of a player to the work on IB and the innovation behind it. Keep it up devs!

[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.

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.

Except that divine requires investing in charisma. And if those classes offer two much for too little investment they need to be toned down. Giving people imbalanced abilities for no investment is not the solution.

[kinginyellow]

I play NWN to get away from things like this

I don't get it, provided it's properly balanced, classes don't have to please everyone, having different playstyles/gimmicks is healthy. You can play a crapload of other classes that I'm sure cater to your more traditional-NWN tastes, and that's okay.

Anyway to each their own. I just wanted to state explicitly that I really support the attempt to bring proven new ways of playing classes into this old video game. A dev reading this could feel disheartened to have spent hours working on it just to have that work dismissed non nonchalantly. So hey, whether i'm in the silent minority or silent majority, here's a thank of a player to the work on IB and the innovation behind it. Keep it up devs!

You're misunderstanding my point.

A class is being frontloaded with damage with no real stat or mechanical investment from the base system we're playing on (DnD 3.0).

Arelith has done its fair share of turning it into more of a MMO but has also stuck to a lot of the roots of this system.

This goes completely against it. There's a reason you don't give free, unconditional damage. (You could say eviscerate still has the condition of needing bleed stacks, but you will apply those freely so long as you -hit-).

In DnD 3.0, 3.5 and even in Pathfinder, at higher levels, dex is a broken stat because it governs both ac and ab for the characters that use it. The only balance that they get slapped with is terrible damage, or damage that requires conditionals (sneak attack, death attack). Even their super high AC tends to be balanced by combat maneuvers, which we don't have. Our Disarm and Knockdown targets AC first, and then Discipline.

I know that this class is going to get nerfed (and thank god) because in its current state you can use it as a tumble dump that also gives you free damage on any dex build.

Edit: I'll even go a step further. You were saying that this should be an alternative to the div dip or the monk dip. This is an alternative to the rogue dip, instead.

If you're a Paladin 23/4 Fighter / 3 Rogue. You can now be a 23 Paladin / 4 Fighter / 3 IB. UMD is nice but you can use divine wands. You don't need breach wands because you have a breach on a cooldown. (And there's also items on server that just chuck mords at people for more free breach if you need more.) This doesn't make divine builds less appealing. It becomes a part of divine dex builds.

[Dr. B]

Edit: I'll even go a step further. You were saying that this should be an alternative to the div dip or the monk dip. This is an alternative to the rogue dip, instead.

If you're a Paladin 23/4 Fighter / 3 Rogue. You can now be a 23 Paladin / 4 Fighter / 3 IB. UMD is nice but you can use divine wands. You don't need breach wands because you have a breach on a cooldown. (And there's also items on server that just chuck mords at people for more free breach if you need more.) This doesn't make divine builds less appealing. It becomes a part of divine dex builds.

This.

[Rico_scorpion]

You're misunderstanding my point.

A class is being frontloaded with damage with no real stat or mechanical investment from the base system we're playing on (DnD 3.0).

Arelith has done its fair share of turning it into more of a MMO but has also stuck to a lot of the roots of this system.

This goes completely against it. There's a reason you don't give free, unconditional damage. (You could say eviscerate still has the condition of needing bleed stacks, but you will apply those freely so long as you -hit-).

First, apologies if I misunderstood your point. I took it as a "jab" at the developer for adding a combo mechanic. Which felt unfair/disrespectful for the dev. So, sorry if you didn't mean that

Second, I don't disagree with you at all. But I draw a thick line between "it's not balanced" (adding a cap, making it scale off something, etc, adding a heftier prerequisite cost, lowering the numbers, etc), and the spirit of the class. In terms of spirit, I personally really enjoy the attempt at shaking things up in terms of playstyle (combo skill). Are the numbers off? Of course. Is the entry cost too low? Probably a little (however let me say again that if you are too heavy handed in gating it, it doesn't really open anything up as a dip alternative).

And thirdly, so okay, let's say it's not meant to compete with div dip or monk dip (which is already a stretch, the choice is there, we can't ignore it, even if they scale off another stat to work, this is hardly a deterent in runeworld), if you only make it only compete with rogue/bard for tumbledip, then yes you need to nerf the whole class into the ground in comparison, and we end up with another boring tumble dip. The problems with dots/bleed damage is that if numbers are too low, it's purely cosmetic (due to the short lenght of battles). All I'm trying to avoid is an overreaction that would lead to IB being back to the state pre-revamp. And honestly at that point I would rather prefer something OP with an hefty entry cost/multiple skill-stat scaling, rather than a teethless rogue/bard dip competitor.

Also, disclaimer: Not that I want to "shy away" from that discussion, I'll make this my last post in this thread otherwise I'm starting to get spammy/don't want to hijack it. Peace.

[kinginyellow]

And thirdly, so okay, let's say it's not meant to compete with div dip or monk dip (which is already a stretch, the choice is there, we can't ignore it, even if they scale off another stat to work, this is hardly a deterent in runeworld), if you only make it only compete with rogue/bard for tumbledip, then yes you need to nerf the whole class into the ground in comparison, and we end up with another boring tumble dip. The problems with dots/bleed damage is that if numbers are too low, it's purely cosmetic (due to the short lenght of battles). All I'm trying to avoid is an overreaction that would lead to IB being back to the state pre-revamp. And honestly at that point I would rather prefer something OP with an hefty entry cost/multiple skill-stat scaling, rather than a teethless rogue/bard dip competitor.

I wouldn't be against the burst that I could achieve in PGCC being achievable live if it needed something like a 16 level investment.

The problem is that as is you can fit this ability into any class composition even if it doesn't need it.

Rogue 24 Paladin 3 Invisible Blade 3 can work. Not having weapon specialization isn't a problem. Because so long as you apply bleed stacks you can deal damage, and divine might can help you deal weapon damage to ensure you actually apply bleeds. (I assume dealing no damage means the bleed doesn't even apply just like crippling strike). You also get the rogue bonuses which apply to the weapon IB uses (daggers, kukris, shortswords).

17 Hexblade 10 Palemaster 3 IB is another example. Immune to Crits/Sneaks Dex build with damage that bypasses any resistances (Hexblade Curse Weapon) in order to apply bleeds. So long as you can build enough stacks before what you're fighting kills you you're going to win by burst with just a 3 level investment. Everything else is just setup to make that 3 level investment shine. You could probably even take more palemaster to get epic mage armor maybe. I literally cooked this over my knee.

I would even say that the 23 Paladin 4 Fighter 3 Rogue strength paladin can swap out rogue for IB and keep its strength modifier. You lose UMD and 1d6 sneak attack (and uncanny dodge but as a STR build you don't really care too much for that even if you're wearing chainmail of the holy knight let's be honest here), and get infinitely stacking bleeds and the ability to burst someone for 300 damage.

You said earlier you wouldn't mind if it scaled with a stat for a cap. That's a possible way to balance it. Here I show my bias as a pathfinder player. I believe the best thing to balance anything is through level investment. Just make IB a 10 levels Prestige Class. Spread these abilities out. Have them scale with class level rather than character level if they have DCs, and for the love of god give Arcane Bleed a DC. Also, make it so the bleed only applies if the target suffers PHYSICAL DAMAGE and cap maximum bleed and eviscerate damage to class investment.

[Drowboy]

I'd just cap bleed stacks to dex mod or something and then take a look at likelihood of getting x stacks vs how many d6s eviscerate does.

On the topic of using this on x or y build, as of testing yesterday you needed to be in light armor or vesture with either two shortsword/kukri/dagger or an empty offhand. So, maybe not great for most strength builds.

[Waldo52]

I wrote a response before but I must not have clicked submit...


I think the numbers might be off with this class but in spirit it's cool, and there's nothing here that can't be rebalanced. There's an interesting mathematical quirk of the class, intended or not:

Most "deep rogue" type builds involve around 24 levels in rogue because access to the best rogue grenades and a rogue feat at this level serve as a sort of capstone to the class.

Additionally said builds require two things that can only be attained through multiclassing- +16 BaB by level 20 and a discipline dump at 29 or 30.

Invisible blade is an odd bird because despite being full BaB it cannot get a rogue up to+16 because it's only a 3 level class. You'll need to take a level in a third class, say fighter or ranger or weapon master by 20. Because Arelith requires any new class be taken 3 levels at a time, this locks you into a minimum of 6 levels in non-rogue classes by the early twenties. If you want that level 29 or 30 discipline dump, you NEED to take a seventh level in a non rogue class. This ensures your rogue level will never surpass 23 and effectively bars you from flashbangs, generally lowers the DCs of your grenades and prevents you from taking a level 24 rogue feat.

In other words, while Invisible Blade seems at first glance like a straight up buff and a no-brainer it seriously blocks rogues from taking certain very serious goodies if they're trying to play somewhat optimally. I'm pretty terrible with numbers and haven't tried the new IB so I can't say if this thing needs a nerf or not, but at the very least the dev team is on the right track.

There's this cool new way for roguish characters to do damage, and I like that. Keep it balanced against the utility of flashbangs and better sneak attack damage and we're good.

[Curve]

The class is not limited to rogues.

[Waldo52]

The class is not limited to rogues.

True. It's easy to forget this in the early stages of these updates because of the flavor of the class.

IB does seem powerful as a dip for other types of characters looking for a tumble dump, but I wonder if it's more egregious than a monk. Flurry of blows and wisdom to AC might look a little ridiculous if it was introduced today for the first time.

[Anomandaris]

Made an IB today on PGCC to prove a point. Made an over the knee no real planning into it Hexblade 21 / 6 fighter / 3 IB. Realized later I could've gone Hexblade 17/ Palemaster 10 / 3 IB. Damage doesn't matter on this build. I was poking my friend's Minotaur Barb/WM for 16-ish damage per hit while he'd hit me for 40 (but I attack more often and have higher AC, meaning I hit more.) We both were injured at around the same point in time, then I hit eviscerate and nuked him for 400 damage instantly killing him.

The only thing he could've done differently was using pray to get rid of bleed stacks, and using a damage shield. But using a damage shield meant wasting a round using a scroll that I could rip off with arcane bleed (which stacks with hex for reducing skill usage and might've made him unable to use the scroll again afterwards).

Yeah, IB is pretty broken right now. And there's really only one thing that makes me more upset about it.




I play NWN to get away from things like this, but here we are.

Generally agree. I'd like to see this remain a "DND Sandbox" at least loosely and not overdo LOL, WOW or HOTS inspirations. That said, there's not anything necessarily wrong with the idea of bleed dmg and a finishing skill like this. There's some cool home brew and mechanics around bleed dmg etc. There's a lot of home brew here on Arelith, that's great. That said, Arelith is still is a DND setting, and I'd be mindful of what we draw from other PvP, MOBA and non RP driven MMO games. There's a reason we're still playing THIS game so many years later and keep coming back to it. There is also a TON of existing mechanics and lore from the DND setting that can be brought into Arelith before directly sourcing straight PvP games.

As another said, it's about implementation. It took like 1 hour of this being released "in the wild" for a bunch of people to completely break it in a half a dozen ways. While some have commented on monk or div dips as powerful, they are more defensive oriented and have at least some scaling investment requirements, granting AC through scaling wisdom (and a few other goodies of course), or saves (again scaling off of and ability score, charisma) plus a fear (now class lvl scaling) and a heal (ability score & class level scaling). IB On the other hand:
-It has no real pre-requisites
-Only requires a 3 lvl dip
-It does crazy direct damage with no ability score OR class level scaling
-It has GSB on cooldown
-I has slow on CD
-I has arcane spell failure & no use wand/scroll debuff on CD

And as cool as it is thematically to have a "mage-hunter class" there are already tons of ways to do that mechanically. And adding a bunch of abilities that basically turn ANY character into a build that can punt an epic mage like a small puppy (not to mention one shot a lot of other builds) is not balanced or necessary. Besides the setting, this is more of the issue of pulling stuff in from other games. You end up with a 3 lvl dip that makes any arcane caster it encounters:
-Unable to cast reliably
-Unable to kite reliably
-Get 1 shot by eviscerate

I really hope this gets reigned in quickly and we're more careful in the future about adding new abilities like this which just completely break a bunch of already mechanically powerful builds.

[Dr. B]

Suggestions:

[2] Cap eviscerate damage at 100

I actually like it doing more damage, otherwise it doesn't do anything a gonne can't already do, in some cases better.

[garrbear758]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! Here’s what we are probably doing (subject to change without notice):

Lower heal dc by 20
Allow resto to clear
Change bleed to slashing damage
Require dual wielding to use bleed or eviscerate
Change bleed damage to hard int
Change eviscerate to (hard int)d4

IBs will get another, optional relevel.

[Definately Not A Mimic]

I really wish you would reconsider making this build require duel wielding. Those who built for it in the first place, playing the 'broken class' no one else wanted, were not build or designed for duel wielding. Very honestly I could be speaking only for myself on this one, but adding in that requirement seems to contradict what it originally was.

Nerf the damage, to be honest it is obviously broken there and really never took it in the first place as a damage dealing class. Maybe I'm completely wrong about what the IB class was supposed to be like but with those requirements it feels like that went out the window completely.

Keeping the requirements to specific weapons would keep a lot of people from dipping this for sheer power. Keeping a feat requirement, great, but duel wield is a three feat investment iirc. And skill locking it was even fine since that skill was used by the class for a special bit of flare that for some reason was done away with.

I thought when this was discussed a month or so back that it needed a little bit of umph to beef it up that it was tweaking bleed to make it worth using, not scraping the entire thing of its original flavor.

Really really wish you would reconsider some of these things.

[Anomandaris]

Dual wield requirement does seem arbitrary. It's also not just the dmg on this class that's an issue. The ASF & skill debuffs need an opposing check. Arcane bleed is way too powerful.

[kinginyellow]

Dual wield requirement does seem arbitrary. It's also not just the dmg on this class that's an issue. The ASF & skill debuffs need an opposing check. Arcane bleed is way too powerful.

Without dual weild being a requirement it is easier to achieve higher AC values to just build a really tanky guy that relies on stacking bleeds to eviscerate with. (Parry = 6 Shield AC, or Spellsword which gets free shield AC from just being spellsword)

Consider that one of the classes I mention above, if the change to damage becomes xd4 based on hard int (as suggested) would be a natural synergy with IB and what you'd replace a rogue dip with for tumble (Spellsword).

[Sigmar Revenge]

Lower heal dc by 20 - So everyone can clear it off, giving openings from using heal kits.

Allow resto to clear it - Here is my issue, id say this or above, not both. It would be really hard to make use of Eviscerate cuz anyone with half-brain would throw resto every now and then, after noticing u are IB.

Change bleed to slashing damage - Im fine with that, so investing in DI at least makes sense.

Require dual wielding to use bleed or eviscerate - This I dont really like, cuts out spirit of the class for me or better to say, overall aesthetic. Id like to have a choice, either single weapon or dual wielding, giving more build variety too.

Change bleed damage to hard int - Seems okay, so now you need to actually invest in something to gain something.

Change eviscerate to (hard int)d4 - This one depends on how Bleeding Stacks removal gonna fare. I feel it would be almost useless with resto being able to remove all stacks. Damage being dependant on hard int is okay, again you need to invest in something.

[garrbear758]

It’s really not arbitrary when this class requires it in nwn2 and pnp.