Discussion: Custom saving throws

[Yvesza]

But if you're max and they're max why should you get to win the fight using a bad strategy? You agree the tactic isn't good but then argue it's a problem the mage doesn't have a good chance to win using this tactic. Hmm.

You're suggesting that there's another way. This is a rogue with a standard build versus a mage who has invested all they have into casting spells, there are no alternatives. Testing saves was a viable strategy before, now it's entirely dead and the fix has a myriad of problems that I've pointed out in my previous posts.

Casters currently just die if anyone so much as glances at them, there's no way to prevent people from running towards them and just hitting them over the head. We had solutions to this and ways to avoid it without outright killing people but the changes have left mages utterly toothless outside of saveless spells.

[ReverentBlade]

You're both saying the same damn thing from different points of view. The tactic is bad. That's the point. He is illustrating that the update did not add a good tactic. It does not function -even- given ideal situations that will never actually happen.

[Kalthariam]

Martials continue to rule the world.

That's what all this boils down to, casters are nearly useless except for buffing and supporting martials and having martials do all the heavy lifting.

Casters aren't scary, now they are even less scary, next they'll probably try to nerf conjurations (Again), the only thing spellcasters have left to remain relevant in PvE content.

[Helsing]

Martials continue to rule the world.

That's what all this boils down to, casters are nearly useless except for buffing and supporting martials and having martials do all the heavy lifting.

Casters aren't scary, now they are even less scary, next they'll probably try to nerf conjurations (Again), the only thing spellcasters have left to remain relevant in PvE content.

Man… exaggerating in each thread is not funny.

[Oridnia_Lives]

But if you're max and they're max why should you get to win the fight using a bad strategy? You agree the tactic isn't good but then argue it's a problem the mage doesn't have a good chance to win using this tactic. Hmm.

You're suggesting that there's another way. This is a rogue with a standard build versus a mage who has invested all they have into casting spells, there are no alternatives. Testing saves was a viable strategy before, now it's entirely dead and the fix has a myriad of problems that I've pointed out in my previous posts.

Casters currently just die if anyone so much as glances at them, there's no way to prevent people from running towards them and just hitting them over the head. We had solutions to this and ways to avoid it without outright killing people but the changes have left mages utterly toothless outside of saveless spells.

But the save you're "testing" is for the insta win.

People are talking about martials but their insta win chance, dev crit, was removed.

[Yvesza]

But the save you're "testing" is for the insta win.

People are talking about martials but their insta win chance, dev crit, was removed.

This is for save or dies as an extreme example, yes. No one wants save or dies to be viable but this is truly all that works in the current system, save vs control leads to a prayer, which clears the spell that controls the person *and* clears the save debuff.

What would you chose, given the choice? A 20% chance to kill someone outright, or a 20% chance to paralyze them, knowing it will be removed and you'll need to do it twice?

Having no methods to keep people from instantly killing you as a caster leads to unhealthy shotgun playstyles that actively go against everything everyone tends to find fun, fights are over in nine to twelve seconds. Prior to this persistent AoE effects and clenching fist kept people in check, it was difficult to chase a caster perpetually because a breach effect left you vulnerable to a stun. That's gone now, we're at 27 round stuns or bust, the old save vs one round stuns are gone.

[Exordius]

Martials continue to rule the world.

That does seem to be the way this is going sadly yes. Casters will soon be extinct at this rate.

[Naghast]

To throw in my two cents:

Part of me is sad bc currently DC spells are just, not that great. Even with save draining, 35 save is still rather respectable. Which, combined with all the immunity ward consumables, makes said dc's hard to land.

Other part of me remembers i literally stopped using dc spells on my wizard bc everyone i fought in an actual, serious battle, had stupidly high saves all across the board, so it was just better to use spells that do their job even on passed save, or are saveless.

So... I wasn't really that affected. Despite being a mage.

@edit
And for the record, i despise instant deaths.
Both in form of save or suck spells

And in form of a weaponmaster dealing 430 damage in split second (flurry into whirlwind on a scimitar)

But that's a whole different can of worms.

[-XXX-]

There's like what... 7 distinct instant death spells in total? Perhaps removing/altering those might have been a more straightforward approach than trying to balance things around them.

Though I do not know what to make out of this entire topic, since DC 78 discipline checks are also a thing.

[TurningLeaf]

These feedbacks always evolve into suggestions it seems, my own would be to move damage shields back down the breach list for PvP purposes only. Keep the anti-stacking though.

[Cagus]

These feedbacks always evolve into suggestions it seems...

It is called "offering solution".

[Edens_Fall]

These feedbacks always evolve into suggestions it seems, my own would be to move damage shields back down the breach list for PvP purposes only. Keep the anti-stacking though.

I rather like this idea as well.

[Naghast]

Oh if by damage shields you mean acid sheath

That would soooooooo cuck martial melee mundanes who can't cast mords. (So not spellsword)

And martial-caster hybrids (so spellsword) would get boosted a fair bit.

[TurningLeaf]

Oh if by damage shields you mean acid sheath

That would soooooooo cuck martial melee mundanes who can't cast mords. (So not spellsword)

And martial-caster hybrids (so spellsword) would get boosted a fair bit.

Specifically for Mestil's there is a good amount of counterplay for a melee, the crafted ankheg items can give 10 flat acid immunity plus shave 2/3 off the remaining acid damage.

[Power Word, Haste]

Hello,

I'd like to revisit this topic, as it has been over a month with these changes and I believe the consequences have been absolutely ruinous for the caster builds that used these spells as strong offensive tools in their arsenal. After the change, every level 30 character that has done its due diligence in getting gear (and I don't mean just all 5% things) will be able to pass the saves on these spells almost all the time without the need for immunity spells, outside of nat 1's and the cases of classes like rogues which have low saves. Even the lower saves classes with some extra effort can usually hit 37 in all 3 saving throws, so I am making my post with this in mind.

I'd like to talk about their design, and why I believe they were actually some of the most balanced spells in the game. The ones I will be talking of in this post are mind fog, storm of vengeance, stonehold, evard's + daltim's + kyristan's tentacles, grease + web and their more powerful shadow variants, Bigby's clenched fist and the epic spell focus abjuration ward (I believe this one uses spellcraft now?).

First, let's look at the effects of these spells on a failed saving throw:

Mind Fog: Will save vs 1d6 Round Stun, and -2d6 will saving throw decrease (half if the victim succeeds, spell lasts 1/2 CL rounds)
Storm of Vengeance: Reflex save vs stunned for 2 rounds, 6d6 electrical damage, 3d6 acid damage (Lasts for 10 rounds)
Stonehold: 1d6 Round Paralyze, not party friendly. (Lasts CL rounds)
Evard's: 1d6 + 4 Bludgeoning Damage per tentacle (able to be empowered), fortitude save vs 1 round paralyze (lower DC spell, mostly used for damage, this spell was nerfed recently in that aspect as well. Not party friendly. (Lasts 1/2 CL rounds)
Daltim's: 1d10 + 5 fire damage, can be empowered. Fortitude save vs 1 round of paralyze, not party friendly. (Also affected by the tentacle damage nerf, lasts 1/2 CL rounds).
Kyristan's: 1d4 +1 Negative damage, and a 1d3 level drain + paralyze for one round. Not party friendly. (Lasts 1/2 CL rounds)
Grease: Knocked down for 1 round, 50% movement speed decrease, not party friendly (Freedom blocks the MS decrease but not the falling, lasts 2 + 1/3 CL rounds)
Web: Entangled for spell duration, but the victim can take actions while entangled, those who succeed are slowed. Not party friendly. (Lasts CL rounds)
Bigby's: Fortitude save every round vs 1 round stun, the victim takes 1d8 + 11 force damage per round regardless. This spell cannot be removed once cast on the target. (Lasts CL rounds)
Epic Spell Focus: Abjuration's Ward: Smallest aoe here by far, will save vs 1 round paralyze with some decreased movement speed after the paralysis. (lasts for an extreme duration, hour(s)+?)

Note here about bigby's clenched fist (commonly known as bigby 8), is that it was very overpowered, but not for the reason of its effect or DC. It cannot be removed by any means other than waiting out the duration. Pray, greater restoration, what have you - just did nothing. This spell, once cast, keeps people trapped in combat for 27 rounds (54 rounds extended) and you will have to make saves against its effects *every single round,* though counterable by freedom and clarity/blank.

You'll notice that save for web, which is a full duration entangle (meaning you can free yourself immediately), the failed save effects of these spells don't actually last that long. You can fail multiple saves in a row sometimes, but you can also pray + drink Freedom of Movement or Clarity to counteract all of these except grease if you are chainstunned, which is something I have had to do quite a number of times myself, though usually saves are decent enough where you won't be stuck for too long outside of unlucky rolls. These spells have extremely accessible counterplay in either/or freedom of movement potions, mind blank, lesser mind blank, or clarity spells. Freedom of movement is breachable, but easy to reapply. Mind blank is easily breachable. Lesser mind blank is the second hardest spell to breach, at #26 out of 27 (https://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Breach_List). Clarity is not breachable, and lasts 42 seconds from a potion. These spells and their accessible, though breachable, counterplay struck a very nice balance with me, as without spellcraft you had a very good chance to land these spells on one or more people, giving you a nice effect, but the victim had not instantly lost as if you used, say, a mass hold monster (CL rounds paralyze) or death spell. It felt very engaging.

Next, let's look at the classes hit hardest by this nerf.

Wizard: In my opinion, as someone who has mained a wizard for almost a year now and has had a large share of PvP encounters in all manner of number and happening, this was the final nail in the coffin. Even for the optimal wizard specialist, enchantment, this class has been neutered by the loss of its toolset. The last things it has going for it are mords (usable by other classes, or they use greater dispelling), and the overpowered mass hasted summons of planar conduit/mummy dust with sequencers applied. Before, it had one edge over sorcerer (though still overall weaker) in that it could take various spell foci such as illusion, enchantment, conjuration, or evocation (or all 4!) etc and be able to build a spellbook that took advantage over all of these spell schools and powerful aoe CC spells at once due to the fact they are not limited to a meager 3 different spells per circle like the sorcerer is. This has been taken away from them now, and sorcerer is just better by all metrics in terms of combat. I also did not mention IGMS here because yes while it is nice damage, the wizard spellbook is crammed already as it is and after slotting the essentials (time stop, 2-3 mords, 1 other spell such as mass hold monster) is only able to prep 1-2 maximized IGMS, maybe 2-3 empowered (a lot worse than maximized), and the non-metamagic version is just pathetic.

Caster Cleric/Favored Soul: The loss of storm of vengeance is just crippling. For offense, it was their best spell, hands down. It is somewhat usable now still, but it is nowhere near the same strength. Cleric got hit worse than favored soul here, as they had a plethora of domains that would let them access various spells on the above list I made that they would not have otherwise, and which Favored Soul is unable to get at all. Earth could give them stonehold, some would give web, one gave shadow conjurations for grease and web, mind domain gave mind fog, etc. All of these are bad now, so the caster cleric is very sad. Now these classes just buff their friends, try to Harm, and abuse overpowered summons as their forms of offense instead of being able to weave in varied and often deity-thematic spells to good effect in combat. For those looking to be strong with these classes, they should play melee variants of both, and not consider the caster side of it.

Caster Shaman: This class really has access to it all. Storm of vengeance, stonehold, shadow conjurations, mind fog. It is only limited by the amount of feats it can take, so two different shamans might not be the same at all. One could be conjuration, illusion, and enchantment while another focuses on conjuration, necromancy, and transmutation, all having strengths and weaknesses. It's a very FeelsGood class in this regard, and it is unfortunate that the caster variant falls short in its offensive capabilities after the nerf. Similar to the cleric, they now want to buff their friends, attempt to Harm, and try to abuse the current state of summons to attack targets, albeit having mass haste they are much better at the latter than the cleric classes.

All in all, these classes have had not only some or a lot of their viability shot by the spell changes, but the nerf makes for far less interesting gameplay. As I mentioned at the top, using the spells pre-nerf was very engaging, as it had you and your opponent many times going back and forth as they reacted to these spells, and you threw an offensive spell or tried to remove their immunity, and it kept the flow of things up. Now, you dispel them, spam the most disabling spell you have at them while hoping they fail the save or your summons kill them before they can run at you and hit you hard. The save lowering mechanic only promotes this sort of play, and I find it extremely uninteresting and unfun. Yes, you could have done this sort of play before, but it is often times unreliable due to immunity spells and whatnot, and now it is *your only option* against anyone with firing neurons. Honorable mention as well to the fact that wizard doesn't even have enough spellslots to make good use the mechanic at all, and the duration is far too low.

Thank you for taking the time to read all of this post, and I hope it promotes some more discussion on the topic.

[Yvesza]

I'll be honest and say that you very much did hit the nail on the head, all of the old spells that ignored spellcraft were shorter duration and far more fair than the selection of spells that casters must use now. I've entirely given up playing my caster despite them being by far my favourite character because the only truly viable method of playing them is extremely unfun for everyone involved.

To have much of any chance in PvP I have to timestop, then cast three level 8 or 9 spells back to back. My build? One ESF and four great charismas to get something vaguely in the shape of functional. I've had to give up the flavour and fun in order to squeeze out every last DC I possibly could in the face of the absurdly high saves that still plague casters.

Being hit by a high level spell and held for 27 rounds is very far from fun, we can all agree to that fact (Despite there being a myriad of ways to prevent it and even, to be cured of these effects with merely a wave of a wand from a friend).

To have much of any chance in PvP I have to timestop, then cast three level 8 or 9 spells back to back. My build? One ESF and four great charismas to get something vaguely in the shape of a functional build. I've had to give up the flavour and fun in order to squeeze out every last DC I possibly could in the face of the absurdly high saves that still plague casters. I dislike it, immensely. What I had before was frankly far more enjoyable to play and far less polarizing. I don't -want- to be reduced to shotgun timestop gameplay but that really is all that's left.

Being hit by a high level spell and held for 27 rounds is very far from fun, we can all agree to that fact (Despite there being a myriad of ways to prevent it and even, to be cured of these effects with merely a wave of a wand from a friend). All of the spells that were mentioned above, all had very short durations (Often a single round on a lower roll).

- Clarity (42 Seconds unbreachable mind immunity)
- Mind Blank (As mentioned above, #26/#27 on the breach list)
- Freedom of Movement (Avaliable in potion & wand form, prevents most control spells from working)

All of these can also be cast on others, in the event that someone does fail a save.

The update didn't really have much of an effect in PvE, casters are more or less still going to be entirely haste & summon minions here.

On average, casters are now far more binary. Characters that haven't built saves are now going to be instantly killed or paralyzed since the spells of choice are all higher level and the longest possible duration or highest possible immediate effect.
Failing a save now effectively uses up your prayer, or kills you outright... Rarely, given how easy it is to build very, very high saves. Prior to this, failing a save would eat a single round and you'd continue to roll saves effectively every round for a majority of the most common spells.

What did casters gain? Not much honestly, I tried so hard to interact with this update but It's very much exasperated the issue casters face while on surface level trying to look like an improvement. There are still too many hoops and the numbers far too conservative to really be a fix.

This is before we get to the list of spells that have "fake" descriptors that count purely to make characters able to resist or become immune to them, without actually interacting with save reductions.

To summerize, casters didn't really gain anything from the update. There's no truly meaningful way to interact with the systems put into place to help them, saves remain too high, the number of usable spells dropped sharply and anything with a save that is less than level 7+ is largely dead weight. Nothing really changed for the better, there's no more choices to be made. The number of truly usable builds fell sharply and casters as a whole were shuffled into a supporting role to martials, rather than being able to stand on their own. The only exception to that is summoning, which conduit is desperately in need of readjustment.

Also warlocks can't ever reach DC's high enough to ever beat saves reduced to their absolute maximum.

[Vangrave]

I agree pretty wholeheartedly. The DC changes have been allowed to sit for a while now, and it's clear that the ability to ignore spellcraft was the only reason these spellcraft ignoring spells were ever worth using. Said spells were also the only reason memorized casters were worth using. What's the point of using caster other than an invoker or sorc/fs now? I also agree caster clerics and shamans are in a bit of trouble as well since they were balanced around having these spellcraft ignoring spells.


The entire problem circles back to spell design in dnd and how said spells were implemented in NWN. The numbers for spells in DnD are dependent on a number of things that aren't true on Arelith - they assume that HP rolls aren't maximized (in fact, many monsters have literally 5x the HP they have in dnd), they assume that save gear can't stack, they assume that casters are able to fly out of melee range and make use of mirror images, and, most importantly, they don't scale into epic levels *because there is an entire spell system* created for epic casters. In NWN, casters past 20 are literally missing an entire spell circle - the epic spells. So *of course* nothing is going to be balanced properly and is going to be incredibly reliant on summons and spells like IGMS, which doesn't exist in PnP and was created so that casters could actually do something against enemies with a thousand immunities.

This increasing over reliance on a small number of spells has created a massive imbalance between prepared and spontaneous casters. Prepared casters have fewer spell slots, no tactical flexibility, and the strategic flexibility they have (swapping spells) is pointless because there aren't any spells that are worth slotting to make use of it. The DC reduction on cast buff that was supposed to help is not only too weak, but again, because it's reliant on casting extra high level spells, it favors the spontaneous classes, which are already better off to begin with.

What DC spells are there that you want to use over a level 8 or 9 instant kill? They just don't exist right now. You can't even buff your summon beyond using mass zoo spells. So what's the point of having 3/4 of the spellbook? What's the point of having four spell focuses when your best strategy is to take a single epic focus and then 4 great ints?

I've seen a lot of changes over the past couple years get made for "consistency", but the balance aspect of the decisions are getting completely ignored. Because of the d20 system, a small change of a few AB or DC or saves can make something go from useful to nearly worthless. Remove 2 AB from someone sitting at 48 ab and depending on the opponent you've cut their damage down to 1/3 of what it was before. Likewise, remove a couple of DC from a spell and you make it so it's just not worth casting.

Basically, prepared casters, and wizards in particular, need one off spells that are worth casting from a book as opposed to a scroll or item that are not an instant win, but create some kind of threat. This change and the tentacle change basically removed nearly every single one of those spells from consideration. It also made casters extremely vulnerable to melee attacks - there is no longer an opportunity cost for a melee character to simply run at the caster, as there is no danger of being caught in various ground effects.

Wizards are more or less mordes and conduit bots now. I don't think that's engaging or healthy for the game. It's also not balanced.

[Morgy]

Strongly agree the change has hurt casters when they were already unfavourable in PvP. I would rarely bother with DC spells before, but now they are just generally wasted slots.

[Hazard]

Strongly agreeing with, Vangrave, Morgy, Yvesza, PowerWordHaste, etc. All spot on.
Playing a caster that prepares their spells feels like I'm playing a trial version of the game while other people run around with real casters.

[Helsing]

Martials continue to rule the world.

That does seem to be the way this is going sadly yes. Casters will soon be extinct at this rate.

The fact is that I still see a lot casters in the game as they are easy to gear and chill to play with. Only a small percentage of ppls are PvP zealots so don’t think this change will impact the whole group in game.

And in final, devs have the metrics about each class’s proportion so they know it.

[-XXX-]

Playing a caster that prepares their spells feels like I'm playing a trial version of the game while other people run around with real casters.

Real casters use axe magic.

[Hazard]

Playing a caster that prepares their spells feels like I'm playing a trial version of the game while other people run around with real casters.

Real casters use axe magic.

Damnit. All I brought was this stupid staff.

[Power Word, Haste]

Will we get any developer comment or insight on this issue? It’s affecting a lot of people’s characters, assuming they haven’t already moved on due to these changes.