The Wizard Specialist Review (ALL OF THEM)

[Inordinate]

This post is a prelude to what I called Spellmageddon 3.0, but I wanted to get this part out because I will likely never finish reviewing every single spell for updates to finish my dissertation on the state of Sorcerer/Wizard in general. That and if I post a super large thread with a ton of content it's going to be ignored by everyone anyway.

Reference: https://wiki.nwnarelith.com/Wizard#Specialists
Thread about feedback on Wiz & Sorc in general: viewtopic.php?f=37&t=42909

I will be assuming ESF in the chosen school is taken for balance suggestions. In alphabetical order:

Review As They Are For Context

Abjuration

• Passive Bonus: Tacking on -1 to spells breached on you because the CL bonus is rendered irrelevant as a pure class feels tacked on. It doesn’t feel impactful at all and may as well not even be there. Having to wait until level 20 to even see part of the passive when every other passive has it much earlier is absurd.

• GSF/ESF Bonuses: Nothing to say here, both are nice.

• Signature Spells: Globe of Invulnerability only lasts rounds/level, so your average 27/3 will have it wear off before they can cast EITHER Globe again OR Greater Dispel.

• Shield spell Force DR: ESF already grants effective immunity to IGMS, so the extra 4 reduction only applies to five spells, two of which are solely from one class:

Bigby’s Clenched Fist, which is already reduced to 1d7 before Spec
Bigby’s Crushing Hand, which is already reduced to 2d6 before Spec
Elemental Annihilation averages 124 damage (assuming min 70% focus).
Elemental Hammer averages 60 damage (assuming min 50% focus).
Epic Spell: Elemental Meteor (Earth only), averages 30 for the force component.

Conjuration

• Passive Bonus: Nothing negative to say here. Most people take GSF: Conj early if they are going to at all, so the innate increase means you could put it off a little bit if you wanted to. With the sequencer change the extra stats might feel more impactful since most people will grab Arcane to get the concealment.

• GSF Bonus: No chance of hostile summons nullifies needing to worry about the vs. Alignment spells. This conversation totally depends on how good the different alignment streams of the Planar spells are - presently the Deva is absurdly strong with its out-the-gate WoF so evil specialist wizards might care. The innate spell resistance is nice, scales well, 27/3 will end up with 28 which is enough to make a difference sometimes.

• ESF Bonus: Auto-Haste is a huge deal. This is the reason you go Conj Spec. The RNG chances of Mono Elementals or double T6 Conduits is cool but RNG dictating whether or not your capstone has a big effect feels bad.

• Signature Spells: Acid Fog is certainly useful for the slow effect, Stinking Cloud at level 15 checking against a Fort save is likely hit-or-miss for usefulness against mobs in PvE, especially as a low circle spell.

Divination

• Passive Bonus: Even an extra round is a big deal.

• GSF Bonus: Longer duration is very useful, especially extended.

• ESF Bonus: The discussion about Scry could go on for ages. A configurable duration depending on what you’re observing is impactful. Actually defining exactly what it means for your scry being harder to detect would be helpful here, the vagueness is frustrating. Premonition becoming +7 is a big deal, but the advent of weapons and class features that push even basic Rogue/Fighter builds to +7 makes this less and less relevant as time goes on (judging from the trend in development the last couple of years).

• Signature Spell: TS on a 3 minute cooldown infinitely is pretty big. Feeblemind is potent against Arcane casters, but in a world of DCs being increasingly irrelevant this one is pretty niche.

Enchantment

• Passive Bonus: This is hard to justify as it entirely depends on the quality of mobs you are dominating. This can make a meh mob into a good one but great mobs into powerhouses.

• GSF Bonus: The duration increase is great for augmenting existing summon capability. They become summons at that point as long as you aren’t changing servers.

• ESF Bonus: This is why Enchantment Spec is the best of all the choices and what makes it overwhelmingly popular. Giving everyone around you 2 AB is huge in a meta where shifts in AB and AC by 1 or 2 makes a big difference on how something feels and you do it on a 3 minute CD. +4 to skills on top of that is chefs kiss. If the ESF bonuses were all at this level they would certainly all feel impactful.

• Signature Spells: Already mentioned Good Hope, Crushing Despair feels bad to use because it’s a cone with a low DC and mobs are usually chunked too quickly for it to be a big deal while bosses usually resist it.

Evocation

• Passive Bonus: 1 extra missile per target adds up, especially when one of the spells affected is a signature spell. This is nice on paper but you’ll have to peep logs to tell if someone drops another missile in a volley of 20.

• GSF Bonus: Extra to DCs is always appreciated, but DC spells are generally always saved against most opponents in PvP. Negligible at best.

• ESF Bonus: This feels like it would be a big deal, and if you had the number of casts a Sorcerer did I feel like this would be a bigger deal. Wizard’s limited spell slots means this isn’t as impactful as it could be.

• Signature Spells: Free IGMS or Bigby’s… sort of addresses the problem with ESF’s impact, every 3 minutes you have a source of free damage.

• Please see Pain(t)'s thread here for a more in-depth look. They did an excellent job breaking down the problem with Evo, especially contrasted to Invoker/Sorc.

Illusion

• Passive Bonus: for a 27/3, a +9 to Bluff/Perform is useful if you’re disguising as you don’t get a big bonus from high CHA. Without other classes high bluff makes you a one-trick disguiser.

• GSF Bonus: Everything else about illusionist basically forces you to invest in bluff/perform to make use of the features, so the free mimic is essentially worthless. A bonus to hidden skill checks you can never actually validate doesn’t feel impactful at all (the irony is not lost on me). Invis from 1 to 3 rounds/level is alright, but doesn’t impact the concealment duration of Imp. Invis so it’s very niche.

• ESF Bonus: A longer invisibility duration again, same issue. The extra concealment percentage doesn’t feel impactful at all. Mathematically 5% feels like a big nothing burger.

• Signature Spells: Nightmare makes non-sleeping targets unable to rest (for some amount of time). If they aren’t sleeping it does 0 damage. Phantasmal Killer at least can cause instant death but otherwise deals damage as a baseline.

Necromancy

• Passive Bonus: +2 to UCL lets Necromancy Specialists come online earlier with some streams, but the fact it is completely irrelevant at 17 wizard (or somehow by 21 with Mummy Dust) feels bad. This and other aspects of Necromancy forcing Specialists to be UNDEAD ALL THE TIME ignores the non-summoning part of the Spell School.

• GSF Bonus: Even better numbers added onto Undead summons than non-Spec. The larger body-count streams really make this one shine. That + spell resistance makes them viable.

• ESF: As with Conj, RNG on a capstone ability feels bad even if it’s appreciably stronger.

• Signature Spell: A strong save-or-die/guaranteed damage spell or an anti-undead clearing tool on 3 minute cooldown is pretty good.

Transmutation

• Passive Bonus: auto-maxed zoo spells are pretty good. Saves a spellcast and some mid-level circle spell picks. The fact that mundane characters actively don’t want you casting on them because the dispel CL is lower makes this less useful.

• GSF Bonus: Builds on the passive, useful. Same problem with the passive.

• ESF Bonus: Tenser’s Transformation is a trap on a typical 27/3 wizard. I will refer to Paint's thread that goes into far more detail than I ever could. The fact none of the feedback has been taken into consideration after over a year is painful.

My FEEDBACK (not a suggestion) for adjusting each one:

The goal with these suggested improvements is to bring all of the School Specialists in line. The baseline I am drawing from is Enchantment, as it is above and beyond the best of all of the selections. These suggestions are focused solely on the Specialists themselves, not the mechanics they may modify or interact with. That will be its own section.

Abjuration

• The passive bonus should improve the duration of Globes and Mantles, signaling their improved strength with a modified visual effect (combination frost shield-like effect on the outline of the mantle, cast them both to see what I mean).

• This passive would make one of the signature spells much more impactful as a side effect.

• Passively give the ESF bonus to the elemental damage shields, so that ESF makes the shield x2 the original amount.

• A level 10 Wizard already gets AD: Abj for free, so they innately already get +2 CL vs Dispels. Reduce the number of breached effects by 2 at 20 instead of further increasing CL.

• Additional spells using force that are more prevalent than very niche use cases would make the Force DR more impactful.

• Make them permanently immune from being scried with ESF.

• As with other spell schools, could greatly benefit from getting the Necro treatment in more options to pick from at every spell level.

Conjuration

• They are a master of summons, this should be THE summoner archetype.

• Remove the Mono RNG, make it 100%

• Remove the Tier 6 RNG, make it 100%

• Replace Stinking Cloud with Flame Arrow.

• As with other spell schools, could greatly benefit from getting the Necro treatment in more options to pick from at every spell level.

Divination

• The only real point of contention is Premonition, which gets devalued the more accessible +7 weapons become for classes. I think the balance team needs to revise weapons first before anything here should be looked at.

• Perhaps immunity to Darkness? Perma See Invis? These I am less confident about, they begin to tread into Warlock territory too much.

• As with other spell schools, could greatly benefit from getting the Necro treatment in more options to pick from at every spell level.

Enchantment

• Prevent Crushing Despair from affecting allies.

• Every spell in this book for W/S is save-or-suck. Less binary options for spell selections would work well here, similar to how Mind Fog still reduces saves by half on success.

Evocation

• Automatically Empowering Evo spells with ESF would certainly make Evo Wizards very powerful (duh). Evo wizards trading summon power in the current meta to be more like Sorcerers at the cost of raw output of casts seems reasonable to me.

• The bonus to DCs should be increased to +2, for a grand total of +3 passively.

Illusion

• Replace Nightmare or make it affect people that are awake.

• (Greater maybe?) Shadow Conjuration or Shadow Evocation would be very flavorful, definitely would set Illusionists apart if they had multiple additional spells as a part of their signature options because of them.

• Having those spells have different visuals would further set them apart.

• Change the concealment portion of Imp Invis to also have the improved duration

• Alternatively, provide them with the Greater Invisibility feature from Eldritch Veil.

Necromancy

• Remove the RNG from Mummy Dust, make it a 100% chance

• Overall I dislike the massive overdependence of being a corpse-animating character with this specialty. Presently there is an issue with Necro Spec wizard and heavy Pale Master investment that needs to be looked at, but Necro Spec should do more to differentiate itself from Pale Master.

• This is a big one, but making negative energy spells change to entropy in the same way Path of the Defiler does could be very interesting, especially since there are several spells not on the Cleric list that would still benefit.

Transmutation

• I defer to the thread I linked about Transmutation Spec.

• Perhaps adding Barkskin as a spell option?

• As with other spell schools, could greatly benefit from getting the Necro treatment in more options to pick from at every spell level.

Alright cool, the rest of my big google doc will come around eventually.

[AskRyze]

This is very well thought out and someone's needed to say that sor/wiz needed help for a while. Thank you for putting this forward.

[Ascended Mage]

I think that there is more issue than just half-useful bonuses from schools. Personally, I hate that necromancy one forces character to use animation spells to use half of bonuses. Others ones are meh but acceptable tiny bonuses.

Also it is important to mention that not all picked schools are balance with their opposed schools. Few are just super powerful with little downsides(illusion and enchanment) and all others making a lot of pain.

And last nail that makes playing for wizard feeling pain - it is others classes who spams spells when wizard have to hope for 5% from their dweeb cantrips. I think there already someone suggested to make buff similar what clerics get from divine favour spell. Having chance refresh spell based on their level. But not all spells equal. Some very powerful, some not.

I speak mostly from pve perspective. I am not old arelith vet to add anything how that affects pvp really. I would assume that in long shot infinity-casters would be more powerful in pvp than current wizard.

Also spell components. Lol. Lmao even.

[Waldo52]

I agree with your assessment of necromancy.

Wizards (and necromancers in general) can choose to focus on offensive spells over summoning, but there's no mechanical incentive to do so. I think it would be cool to see more support for a necro non summoner play style.

[Flower Power]

You forgot the actual superpower of Illusion specialization: you lose out on basically nothing by taking it. The Enchantment spells in vanilla that really hurt to lose access to are, on Arelith, all shifted to Abjuration and Transmutation. Losing out on Mind Fog is a bit of a bummer for setting people up in PvP, but 99% of what you'll be able to accomplish with Mindfog is blocked by ubiquitous mindblank spells anyways.

Even with its rather mechanically lackluster Arelith-specific cookies, Illusion specialization is still absurdly powerful for this reason. There's practically no reason not to be an Illusion specialist.

[magistrasa]

Not gonna lie, seeing so many of these threads through the years and seeing so few of them actually taken into consideration by developers has me kind of burnt out when it comes to posting feedback - but out of respect for OP's well-considered post, I'll at least supplement the point being made here with my own experiences.

I've only played an Abjuration specialist, and I chose it almost specifically because I hate the summoner play style and wanted to try something different. Turns out, eschewing summons on a Wizard makes the class frankly unplayable in PvE. Even if you're running writs with a companion, I've had people comment sarcastically, IC and OOC, about the apparent uselessness of my character once the hastes run dry (we're officially RP-lite when using your backline position to provide entertaining commentary no longer justifies your presence on a team). It's disheartening to be quite literally reduced to a haste bot, but with the ever increasing length of dungeons, I just don't have the spell slots to do much of anything else with myself. And the spell component tax on the buffs I use to keep myself alive if I get attacked means I literally can't afford to rest and recover spells. No conjuration and no necromancy means you have nothing to do for a majority of the leveling experience. God help you if you try to solo. The shadows from the Shades spell line help with their IKD, but mobs with their inflated HP pools make them damage sponges, and 3 flimsy shadows with +1 magic damage weapons and +1d6 sneak attack versus an average group size of 4-5 means you lose more often than you win. And the worst part is, falling back on Shades means you're still just standing behind your summons again, which defeats the whole point of my taking the specialization to begin with. I thought the wide variety of new spells added to the server would make the non-summoner a viable playstyle, but I couldn't have been more mistaken, as the server's gradual power creep seemingly makes summons more necessary than ever.

PvP isn't something that often comes up for me with the sorts of characters I play, so I haven't field tested its performance there, but I suspect that I would do fairly decent in that realm. I can't drop a Deva or Planar Conduit on anyone, so I probably wouldn't win in most 1v1 scenarios, but that's the price I pay for not playing a necromancer. Then again, the loss of Cloudkill means that even if I had necromancy it may not do me much good in this era of absurd saves.

Beyond that, I can corroborate pretty much everything about OP's assessment. I pretty much never used Globe because of the CD on the signature spell. Honestly the lengthy CD discourages me from using my signature spells even in the occasions where it might be useful, and I would much rather they be limitlessly infinicast (or at least have one infinicast option outside the GSF spell). If you don't want the signature spells to be spammable, maybe choose different spells.

Here's where I'll leave my obligatory pseudo-suggestion: An improved Banishment/Dismissal might be cool for Abjuration specialists, if only out of spite. "If I can't have summons, NO ONE CAN HAVE SUMMONS."

The class identity of a Wizard is tethered to Conjuration like an anchor that drags it into the abyss. It's the necessary evil that all Wizards take upon themselves simply to survive. As a result, ot hasn't been fun to play a Wizard in a long, long time - because more often than not, you're playing the summon, not the Wizard. And it gets less fun with every new class or mechanic introduced that serves to further cannibalize the Wizard's identity. What does a Wizard provide to roleplay that can't be fulfilled by a Loremaster? What can a Wizard provide to combat that a Spellsword, or Warlock, or Invoker doesn't already do better? What is the point of the Specialist option when you're almost always going to be better known for another ESF option you took to survive the world's perils? An Abjurer who animates the dead is just another Necromancer. An Abjurer who dominates their enemies is just another Enchanter. The people who knew my character as an Abjurer only knew that because I explicitly told them I'm an Abjuration specialist. (They still called me an Illusionist because of my Color Spray spam.)

I'm sure someone's instinctual response to this post is going to be to say, "Summons are a key component of the Wizard kit, it's how they're SUPPOSED to be played!" Well, to that I say this: Show me Gandalf's summon. Tell me the part of King Arthur's legend where Merlin saved Camelot using his epic summons. Elminster didn't get sent straight to Hell because his summoning skills were too hot to handle. Wizards have always been kickass magicians who cast crazy spells and learn all the world's hidden secrets and do battle against ancient evils while talking shit about their enemy's whore mother. If there's any class that's generally associated with binding violent extraplanar beings to their service, it's the warlock - and Arelith's warlock gets to live out that class fantasy while ALSO being a better and cooler wizard than wizards. I refuse to believe that there's simply no way to make wizards fun or that they can't be divorced from their summon reliance. We've managed it for plenty of other classes, and God knows this server isn't the least bit reluctant to gut a class and reshape it into something new and unrecognizable.

In conclusion, I hope the team will strongly consider the merits of deleting Loremaster from the server. Thank you for your time. Legalize nuclear bombs.

[-XXX-]

Show me Gandalf's summon.

OK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6x_EEtSdJI
Sure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3I8I_i8Syw

Elminster didn't get sent straight to Hell because his summoning skills were too hot to handle.

Why not instead reference another famous wizard who doesn't have straight up cheat mode enabled by Mystra herself: https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki ... hful_hound

[Eira]

Show me Gandalf's summon.

OK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6x_EEtSdJI
Sure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3I8I_i8Syw

Neither of those did PvE for him as he stood there blankly.

Vastly, I agree. I play without conj foci at all as a specialist wizard, and unless you are with a party who knows how to focus on one enemy at a time and keep them off of you as you blast signature spells and cantrips, summons are how you fight things without spending half the time frantically backpedaling as your enemy beelines towards you. I didn't even need any foci to solo with summons. Pop a sequencer on them, tap them with a cure wand every so often, and you can snooze away.

I will say, the few times I did have a party and didn't use summons at all, it was incredibly fun, but then again all my spell slots were also dedicated to party buffs except for my 10 casts of magic missile to use sparingly.

Part of this experience was why I made a suggestion to give specialists some more flexibility with their chosen school, to give them spontaneous casting similar to a healer cleric's cure spells, for their specialty. So sure, maybe I have a bunch of buffs slotted up, but if an evoker needed to cast 5 fireballs when the time is desperate, they could.

The entire reason for the sequencer changes as stated was to give casters some more use for their spellbook instead of "buff the summon, stand behind them"

But what is there left? Buff the party, stand behind them. Use an aggressive spell, if that party isn't watching (or if an inexperienced player), then you're swarmed by enemies.

If we make DC spells stronger and more useable for various debuffs, crowd control, etc, then that also benefits the infinite casters who can yeet 20 of those out in a row, instead of helping the ones who can only do 5.

The cantrips change has helped, but I also wish that my signature spell had more use. And since I don't have an conj foci or evo foci, my gsf spells are limited to minor buffs or cone spells that either affect my own party or draw 5 enemies towards me instead of just one.

I don't have any perfect answers for it; I just wish that when it came to wanting to make the limited classes stronger, we didn't have to think about how it would make the infinite classes overpowered.

#removeDCspellsfrominfinicasters

There was an idea floated through discord about adjusting DC spells so their effect was based on by how much the save was failed. There are already spells like that; it seems far preferable to the current identity of "either they roll a 1 or you just made them angrier"

I should also add that for an illusionist, Nightmare is completely useless, as Sleep is an enchantment spell. So it seemed an odd choice to give them, unless it's for the niche circumstance of working with someone else who can cast enchantment and uses sleep often. But I feel like that shouldn't be an instance to build a signature spell around.

[-XXX-]

Show me Gandalf's summon.

OK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6x_EEtSdJI
Sure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3I8I_i8Syw

Neither of those did PvE for him as he stood there blankly.

True, he was technically climbing up a tree while staring blankly

To stay on topic though, vancian arcanists in general are in a bad spot - hence the need for powerful summons to carry them through PVE.
While I appreciate the time and effort the team put into the specialist wizards, I've always considered those a failure - in most cases the perks offered don't really make up for the sacrifice of an entire spell school.
This is further exacerbated by the fact that powerful pets are mainly provided by one of two spell schools = an optimally built wizard needs access to either necro or conju (with the former introducing some serious RP implications).

The only way I see this arcanist pet addiction go away is by finally putting the entire vancian spellcasting concept behind us for good.
Then again, we've already entered an era where we get infinicasters with access to equally good (if not better) pets, so I dunno how to untie this knot TBH.

[Beary Nice]

I am playing an Abjuration specialist currently and I cannot say that I agree that it's weak, nor would I agree in general that you're helpless or useless when you "run out of hastes". The +1 to CL at 20 is invaluable for making slightly more varied builds; the extra two spells breached is wonderful.

This is more feedback for Specialist Wizards in general -

Spellbound Wands have been a godsend; you can bring along several that can be maximized with the proper build. Burning Hands if the enemies don't have Evasion, Flame Arrow for those enemies with mantles, etc. Not only that, people seem to be neglecting the dearth of useful spells in their spellbook, as well as the broad spectrum of useful mundane items to keep enemies corralled into AoEs. People seem to forget too that some enemies have specific weaknesses, or that there are cases for making more niche spellbooks or bringing extra scrolls, potions, or wands to a dungeon. You have always been able to drink a potion of, or use a wand of your opposed school, or use grimoires that hold the spells.

I cannot say for a second that I have had difficulty soloing anything as a specialist but the most high tier dungeons (that I would bring others along for anyway) without summons by putting Darkness down, throwing acid bombs, having a spellbook full of varied AoE magic, and being mindful of my positioning.

This is not to be confrontational, but it seems like people have grown accustomed to the "power creep" of some new or newly redesigned classes, or they expect to speed clear dungeons as quickly as possible with a book full of hastes and a WM friend, and don't consider the many options available to them.

Wizard is fine where it is - sure, you'll never clear a dungeon as quickly as some classes, but the mindset of players hoping to do just that is what I feel needs to change.

Specialists are optional, and for me, the trade-off I made is and was absolutely worth it. If there are changes to be made, then in my opinion Transmutation is, admittedly, lacklustre; the same with Conjuration and Illusion.

Evocation has a niche, Divination could use some minor changes to how it interacts with Premonition as it relies on a spell at the top of the breach list.

Necromancy is fulfilling its purpose without going the route of PM, in my opinion, and has some interesting interactions. Abjuration as it is is absolutely fine and needs neither buffs nor nerfs.

[MissEvelyn]

The fact that mundane characters actively don’t want you casting on them because the dispel CL is lower makes this less useful.

This shouldn't even be a thing. Why is it such a big issue if casters were to get Dispel CLs based on Hit Dice rather than on caster levels, like mundanes do?

This shouldn't be a thing, because one, it's uniquely NWN and not a D&D rule. And secondly, people using OOC knowledge to somehow suggest that their store-bought potions protect against dispels better than an arch-wizard's magic is not something that should be occurring on a Roleplay server.

[Inordinate]

The fact that mundane characters actively don’t want you casting on them because the dispel CL is lower makes this less useful.

This shouldn't even be a thing. Why is it such a big issue if casters were to get Dispel CLs based on Hit Dice rather than on caster levels, like mundanes do?

This shouldn't be a thing, because one, it's uniquely NWN and not a D&D rule. And secondly, people using OOC knowledge to somehow suggest that their store-bought potions protect against dispels better than an arch-wizard's magic is not something that should be occurring on a Roleplay server.

It's a consequence of making mundanes not be completely destroyed by even non-abjuration focused mages by a single dispel since the default NWN behavior is far, far worse. For reference to anyone unaware, the difference between a CL 27 buff and a CL 30 buff (in the case of mundanes) is a 15% chance difference for removing a buff; 25% to 10% for a caster with no abjuration foci, 40 to 25 for ESF. Most people assume (rightly so) a dispeller will have ESF Abj, so that 15% is rather huge.

I don't even know if buffs cast on other people can have the caster's CL be counted for dispels against that target, but assuming it could I don't see why this can't be the case, either.

[-XXX-]

What's the argument against replacing caster level with flat character level for all builds anyway?

[Paint]

What's the argument against replacing caster level with flat character level for all builds anyway?

This would be sick, but hypothetically you could some pretty weird stuff that could be tough to balance is all. Dipping to get x spell on your spell list on a character that's normally a full martial so you can just go ham with it. Is there anything that comes to mind? Not right now. I feel like AA is a horrific testbed for exactly what you're talking about because it's so easy to preserve CL on it.

Additionally, it sort of represents a level of knowledge? Someone who has ten levels in wizard should not be casting spells as well as someone who has thirty levels in wizard, even if that level thirty wizard and that level ten wizard are casting the exact same spell.

[-XXX-]

This would be sick, but hypothetically you could some pretty weird stuff that could be tough to balance is all. Dipping to get x spell on your spell list on a character that's normally a full martial so you can just go ham with it. Is there anything that comes to mind? Not right now. I feel like AA is a horrific testbed for exactly what you're talking about because it's so easy to preserve CL on it.

I'm not really seeing this, hence me asking. The most oppressive thing I can imagine is a melee build dipping warlock for getting infinite maxed out withering rays, which while impressive still pales in comparison to what melee builds can normally do when going all in on their primary gimmick.

Additionally, it sort of represents a level of knowledge? Someone who has ten levels in wizard should not be casting spells as well as someone who has thirty levels in wizard, even if that level thirty wizard and that level ten wizard are casting the exact same spell.

The flavor argument referencing the depth of arcane knowledge kinda becomes moot once we acknowledge that mundanes with 0 magical skill are getting their full character level vs dispels already.

[Flower Power]

What's the argument against replacing caster level with flat character level for all builds anyway?

This would be sick, but hypothetically you could some pretty weird stuff that could be tough to balance is all. Dipping to get x spell on your spell list on a character that's normally a full martial so you can just go ham with it. Is there anything that comes to mind? Not right now. I feel like AA is a horrific testbed for exactly what you're talking about because it's so easy to preserve CL on it.

Additionally, it sort of represents a level of knowledge? Someone who has ten levels in wizard should not be casting spells as well as someone who has thirty levels in wizard, even if that level thirty wizard and that level ten wizard are casting the exact same spell.

The weird interactions I could see would be things like dipping 3 Druid on builds that don't completely crater WIS for +5 Natural Armor, Faerie Fire and long duration +4 MS/+14 Hide to get a real annoying steroid on a cornersneaker (with cornersneaking already being one of the most powerful things you can do in PvP) - or a 3 Cleric dip instead for +6 AB/+5 DMG from Divine Favor + Aid, plus bumping your Deflection AC up to +5 from Shield of Faith (30 minute duration) and picking up +5 Natural Armor as well from Barkskin via Domain and a +1d10 Sonic essence from Deafening Clang (infinite use with certain domains, iirc.)

Or every 3 Bard dip (and there's a lot of classes that already take a 3 Bard dip) getting 1h30m of +20 Listen.

[MissEvelyn]

What's the argument against replacing caster level with flat character level for all builds anyway?

This would be sick, but hypothetically you could some pretty weird stuff that could be tough to balance is all. Dipping to get x spell on your spell list on a character that's normally a full martial so you can just go ham with it. Is there anything that comes to mind? Not right now. I feel like AA is a horrific testbed for exactly what you're talking about because it's so easy to preserve CL on it.

Additionally, it sort of represents a level of knowledge? Someone who has ten levels in wizard should not be casting spells as well as someone who has thirty levels in wizard, even if that level thirty wizard and that level ten wizard are casting the exact same spell.

The weird interactions I could see would be things like dipping 3 Druid on builds that don't completely crater WIS for +5 Natural Armor, Faerie Fire and long duration +4 MS/+14 Hide to get a real annoying steroid on a cornersneaker (with cornersneaking already being one of the most powerful things you can do in PvP) - or a 3 Cleric dip instead for +6 AB/+5 DMG from Divine Favor + Aid, plus bumping your Deflection AC up to +5 from Shield of Faith (30 minute duration) and picking up +5 Natural Armor as well from Barkskin via Domain and a +1d10 Sonic essence from Deafening Clang (infinite use with certain domains, iirc.)

Or every 3 Bard dip (and there's a lot of classes that already take a 3 Bard dip) getting 1h30m of +20 Listen.

It would only be the Dispel CL, not the duration or scaling potency of the spell, that would be based on Hit Dice, so a spell like Deafening Clang, while still difficult to dispel, at Cleric 3 it would only do 1d4 damage.

And some domain powers already require very heavy cleric investment before you can even use them. Example is my level 16 death cleric can't use the Death Power's Deathless Master Touch just yet.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

garrbear once made a good point about dispel CL being tied to HD that convinced me... it would be the return of some particularly difficult to balance combinations... such as builds with 15 cleric I guess was his example... but I know there was others...

[Anomandaris]

The fact that mundane characters actively don’t want you casting on them because the dispel CL is lower makes this less useful.

This shouldn't even be a thing. Why is it such a big issue if casters were to get Dispel CLs based on Hit Dice rather than on caster levels, like mundanes do?

This shouldn't be a thing, because one, it's uniquely NWN and not a D&D rule. And secondly, people using OOC knowledge to somehow suggest that their store-bought potions protect against dispels better than an arch-wizard's magic is not something that should be occurring on a Roleplay server.

This, 1000 times this. The fact this has continued as is besides being an absurd imbalance in favor of mundanes is also a jarringly nonsensical solution from an IC/setting standpoint.

[Flower Power]

This would be sick, but hypothetically you could some pretty weird stuff that could be tough to balance is all. Dipping to get x spell on your spell list on a character that's normally a full martial so you can just go ham with it. Is there anything that comes to mind? Not right now. I feel like AA is a horrific testbed for exactly what you're talking about because it's so easy to preserve CL on it.

Additionally, it sort of represents a level of knowledge? Someone who has ten levels in wizard should not be casting spells as well as someone who has thirty levels in wizard, even if that level thirty wizard and that level ten wizard are casting the exact same spell.

The weird interactions I could see would be things like dipping 3 Druid on builds that don't completely crater WIS for +5 Natural Armor, Faerie Fire and long duration +4 MS/+14 Hide to get a real annoying steroid on a cornersneaker (with cornersneaking already being one of the most powerful things you can do in PvP) - or a 3 Cleric dip instead for +6 AB/+5 DMG from Divine Favor + Aid, plus bumping your Deflection AC up to +5 from Shield of Faith (30 minute duration) and picking up +5 Natural Armor as well from Barkskin via Domain and a +1d10 Sonic essence from Deafening Clang (infinite use with certain domains, iirc.)

Or every 3 Bard dip (and there's a lot of classes that already take a 3 Bard dip) getting 1h30m of +20 Listen.

It would only be the Dispel CL, not the duration or scaling potency of the spell, that would be based on Hit Dice, so a spell like Deafening Clang, while still difficult to dispel, at Cleric 3 it would only do 1d4 damage.

And some domain powers already require very heavy cleric investment before you can even use them. Example is my level 16 death cleric can't use the Death Power's Deathless Master Touch just yet.

"What if everyone got full Dispel CL" was not the hypothetical under discussion - XXX was talking about warlock dips getting maxed out infinicast Withering Ray, after all. Full Dispel CL for everyone would frankly be fine, and would be a nice QoL change that would free up non-Cleric casters to have interesting build diversity at the cost of epic feats and capstone features.

Everything I mentioned about a 3 Cleric dip can be done with a 3 Cleric dip. Forge gets infinicast Deafening Clang at Cleric 2. Plant gives access to Barkskin as a L3 spell - and you can cast L3 spells as a L3 cleric by just equipping any item that grants a L3 spellslot. Divine Favor and Aid are just core cleric spells. Equip a second L3 spellslot item and you can slap on prayer to improve that loadout to +7 AB/+6 DMG, +5 Deflection/Natural Armor with an infinite temporary essence.

tl;dr - full CL vs. Dispel progression for everyone good and fine. Full CL for everyone, terrible decision.

[Eyeliner]

I think allowing specialists with conjuration as a blocked school to still cast summon I-IX could go a long way towards making them more playable.

[AstralUniverse]

What's the argument against replacing caster level with flat character level for all builds anyway?

Historically speaking, things like bard wm or cleric wm.

[Power Word, Haste]

Easy, just make divine favor/divine power require 2/3 cleric level.

[Ork]

Easy, just make divine favor/divine power require 2/3 cleric level.

21 cleric, 5 wm, 4 fighter. Not so easy.

[MissEvelyn]

Why not equalize it for everyone, then? Like this example:

Your highest class level contributes 1:1 towards Dispel CL.
Characters who multi-class take a penalty to their overall Dispel CL. The second-highest class contributes 1/2 class levels towards Dispel CL.
The last class contributes only 1/3 class levels towards Dispel CL.

Numbers could be tweaked for balance, of course, and I imagine Dispel CL bonuses would need to be reduced or removed.