Specialist Wizards

[Scylon]

Not totally true. They are decoupled from summoning higher tier monsters, however they get the extra die roll on HP, AB etc.

If I am a dedicated summoner I want the burger and fries mate.

[Anomandaris]

IMO Abj is way overpowered. It's very easy to drop Conj, take necro as a summoning school and have an almost undispellable, group AOE 4x breach machine with full capacity as a wizard in every other way.

I would really like to see some RP flavor/utility items added to school specialization rather than a pure focus on mechanical power & balance.

Also enchantment is still awful given you have to sacrifice illusion and 2x Dominate is buggy. Plus domination of monsters is meh to begin with given the power of available conj/necro summons out there. For this to be really interesting there needs to be some better bonuses like DC boost on enchant spells, more passive bonuses to social skills, more gold from merchants or something else interesting. I don't see a compelling reason to ever go enchantment specialist.

[xanrael]

I've actually rolled up an enchanter and pretty happy with it. Good Hope is excellent with solid bonuses all around fit for a party or solo as you're looking at 100% uptime on +5 saves/skills and +2 attack/damage for you and your friends by level 30 (assuming you multiclassed into a class with leadership like bard). Heck your basic summons beat out a generalist thanks to Good Hope. You basically have half of a pocket bard while still having 9th/epic level spellcasting.

As far as dominate goes, it takes up a different slot than summons and dominate person will be "free" soonish so it doesn't cost you anything to use it. Even if you don't want to keep it every 3 minutes can just tag a mob in the pack and disable it and potentially occupy whatever decides to beat on it as opposed to a PC and let it die. Bonus points if you dominate a glass cannon or something with an annoying ability and make the AI suffer.

While you can't drop a few Weirds on a pack of mobs/PCs anymore, you can cover improved invis (wand) and shadow shield (probably take 2 to 3 wands or other items depending upon your multiclass) taken NWN base specialization doesn't prevent using wands etc, only scrolls.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Also enchantment is still awful given you have to sacrifice illusion and 2x Dominate is buggy. Plus domination of monsters is meh to begin with given the power of available conj/necro summons out there. For this to be really interesting there needs to be some better bonuses like DC boost on enchant spells, more passive bonuses to social skills, more gold from merchants or something else interesting. I don't see a compelling reason to ever go enchantment specialist.

the 2x dominate is still buggy, and that is an issue, but I made one to mess around with anyways because it looks like a ton of fun in PVE. I keep thinking about pvp though, in particular on the spot pvp..."Hold on, let me go out on a boat for an hour real fast and get some of them Dagon Worshipers and then we can throw down!" doesn't seem realistic to me

Adding some way to steal another caster's summons might help that though...

[Anomandaris]

Also enchantment is still awful given you have to sacrifice illusion and 2x Dominate is buggy. Plus domination of monsters is meh to begin with given the power of available conj/necro summons out there. For this to be really interesting there needs to be some better bonuses like DC boost on enchant spells, more passive bonuses to social skills, more gold from merchants or something else interesting. I don't see a compelling reason to ever go enchantment specialist.

the 2x dominate is still buggy, and that is an issue, but I made one to mess around with anyways because it looks like a ton of fun in PVE. I keep thinking about pvp though, in particular on the spot pvp..."Hold on, let me go out on a boat for an hour real fast and get some of them Dagon Worshipers and then we can throw down!" doesn't seem realistic to me

Adding some way to steal another caster's summons might help that though...

That's a really interesting idea. Or negate/confuse somehow...I mean I love mind fog + weird but I've always seen illusion & enchant as a hand in hand thing and needing SM to hit the 40-41+ DCs to make it even worthwhile casting.

[Xerah]

The whole point is that you give up things to be a specialist. If all you want to do is cast mind fog then weird, then the generalist option is still there.

Not all of these need to appeal to every single player. They just need some boons to make it more equally appealing to players than a generalist, wild mage, or shadow mage.

I'm pretty happy with where enchantment is to be honest, and I'm glad to hear xanrael's experiences. Hopefully, I'll be able to work in a fix for double dominate in the shorter term.

I'm hoping to push the previously mentioned changes live this weekend; should get some testing time.

[Scylon]

Question:

The enchantment bonus for enchantment GSF is hours on your domination. This sort of messes a bit with what it already did which is 2+1 hour per 3.

I was thinking would it be possible to get some additional DC upgrades for easier captures and at ESF just auto drop the creatures into the henchmen slot? (that might actually bypass the issue with the bug also).

[xanrael]

Personally I'm less in favor of that for 3 reasons from my own experience so far playing an enchanter.

1. Especially leveling up having the extra duration is nice and see it more of a QOL thing than anything else, the main power comes from the power boost to dominates and the Good Hope/Crushing Despair spells.

2. With Good Hope you're expected to dump 30ish points into leadership so locking yourself out of henchmen devalues half the skill. Otherwise I'd probably agree with you. If this wouldn't because this henchman count has been changed then makes sense to me, though I know this has been brought up multiple times pre-leadership and hasn't been done so I assume there is another underlying reason.

3. You can already reach pretty crazy "save or lose" DCs and have a variety of ways to lower saving throws or even just retry dominates from relative safety against mobs. Boosting their save DC further would likely be a PvP buff which I don't think they need.

Edit: I'll add that personally I'd rather see the proposed go in as is, then see how it plays out over the next month and then make some tweaks as opposed to give more significant buffs where there is a good chance some big swings will need to be made with a nerf bat.

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

Hopefully, I'll be able to work in a fix for double dominate in the shorter term.

In a rare instance of possibly having enough underlying knowledge to help out - may I suggest that a specialist enchanter's dominates fill henchmen slots (only) rather than dominate slots, with one slot allowed for each spell foci(hereafter SF) feat? So if the enchanter has ESF, 3 henchman slots, filled with dominated creatures. (Henchman slots can be increased module-side.)

I don't know how many total 'pets' they're intended to be able to have right now, but scale appropriately to design, and do away with the shenanigans of having it fill different styles of associate slots entirely, since I'd guess that's where the mix-up is.

It's possible that fixing whatever's in there might be more elegant and less time-consuming than my idea, and if that's the case please don't feel guilty about ignoring my shot in the dark at being helpful.

[Amnesy]

After spending some time as a specialist enchanter I would prefer as the pinnacle of the class to have an ability to mark 1 dominated creature as a permanent thrall that could be saved as a henchman and stored, aka soft version of thrallherd PrC (being able to summon/call it cross-server as long as it is not slain or replaced).

There are so many bugs with double domination so far, as well as clunky commanding that it probably would be best to have one.

[Scylon]

I have noticed dominate person didn't make the cut for the enchantment wizard spell. What was the reasons behind that? Seemed like the perfect choice for the class whos deal is enchantment.

[Kalopsia]

I have noticed dominate person didn't make the cut for the enchantment wizard spell. What was the reasons behind that? Seemed like the perfect choice for the class whos deal is enchantment.

The reason, to my knowledge, was that the current dominate bug would have allowed epic enchantment specialists to control a virtually infinite amount of creatures given enough time.

[Scylon]

Got a source for that? Last I heard in this forum was it was going to be the 2nd spell. Also there was talk about looking into fixing the bugs, though that was a "If I can".

[Shrouded Wanderer]

Alright i waited a few days for the HiPs conversation to die down a bit.


WoF on mummy dust, in my opinion, needs to stay or dread mummies in general need to have a power increase.


WoF is a powerful tool necros had to counter enemy necros as well as a clutch blind and made an important distinction between choosing mummies or vampires for situations

The AI will be screwed up regardless if WoF is there and there are other summons that also cast WoF that get to keep WoF?

I get the idea. But mummies need soemthing else to make them competetive with vampires or they will never be used. And having a chance to spawn 2 dread mummies as a specialist is not enough of a benefit to nerf all mummy dust users.

[Security_Blanket]

WoF on mummy dust, in my opinion, needs to stay or dread mummies in general need to have a power increase.

This could probably use its own thread, that being said I do agree. Removing it on the basis of AI being silly with it makes no sense if you're going to keep any targeting spell on other NPCs. Why was the mummy targeted for this change and not the Greater Planar Binding or Gate Celestials? If the WoF was the issue then remove it from all summons in place of a self-buff maybe to avoid any AI targeting issues.

[Gwenneth_Corvain]

Are the specialist features limited to only the wizard spellbook?

Specifically: Would an Evoker(3) / Trueflame Sorcerer 27 get spell-componentless level-9 spells on infinicast or was this prevented?

[Xerah]

My experience with mummy dust is certainly the opposite of what you're saying. Why did I do it on the mummies? Because that's what I was working on. It takes more time to do it on oodles of other creatures. A lot of these cooldown abilities have been removed actually because of AI issues.

And no, you can not dip these specialists to get all the bonuses. There are level checks and there are checking if you cast a wizard spell.

[Anomandaris]

My experience with mummy dust is certainly the opposite of what you're saying. Why did I do it on the mummies? Because that's what I was working on. It takes more time to do it on oodles of other creatures. A lot of these cooldown abilities have been removed actually because of AI issues.

And no, you can not dip these specialists to get all the bonuses. There are level checks and there are checking if you cast a wizard spell.

Fwiw every necromancer I’ve played and talked to pretty much exclusively uses vamps for pvp and mummies for pve for a number of reasons. This change doesn’t make mummies much less useful for pve really and they were never great for pvp.

[Xerah]

Feel free to make a new thread to discuss that but personally, I'd like to see almost every casting ability on summons removed.

[Anomandaris]

Feel free to make a new thread to discuss that but personally, I'd like to see almost every casting ability on summons removed.

What I meant and didn't phrase well is I don't think removing WoF removes the value delivered in niche that mummies are used for presently, that being PvE dr shield wall bots.

[Bunnysmack]

Feel free to make a new thread to discuss that but personally, I'd like to see almost every casting ability on summons removed.

I'm curious about this comment, largely because I've personally had a lot of user error and frustration in trying to properly deploy summons that have casting abilities: What's the mindset from a dev perspective on wanting to remove the abilities? Is it AI problems? Glitches?

Not a judgement based post, purely one trying to understand game mechanics and system limitations better

[Xerah]

Feel free to make a new thread to discuss that but personally, I'd like to see almost every casting ability on summons removed.

I'm curious about this comment, largely because I've personally had a lot of user error and frustration in trying to properly deploy summons that have casting abilities: What's the mindset from a dev perspective on wanting to remove the abilities? Is it AI problems? Glitches?

Not a judgement based post, purely one trying to understand game mechanics and system limitations better

Yeah, some people in this thread have said it's a huge nerf and summons having casting stuff isn't a problem. My experience is similar to yours.

[Brandon Steel]

I’m not entirely sure if this is a thing yet because I’ve yet to get to that level but I have to assume that being a necro/palemaster bars you from getting the level 15 bonus for necro school if you go to 16 for the dracolich spell. I have to assume that’s the trade off for dipping into it mechanically but from a RP perspective it’s a little odd that someone is so dedicated to necromancy that they basically turn themselves undead yet aren’t qualified for the focus to get those spells.

[Xerah]

It's not odd at all. Your dedication to necromancy is different.

A PM is actively trying to change their body.

A necromancer is studying undead and the spell school.

The goal is not to stack everything on PM or make things redundant.

[Brandon Steel]

It's not odd at all. Your dedication to necromancy is different.

A PM is actively trying to change their body.

A necromancer is studying undead and the spell school.

The goal is not to stack everything on PM or make things redundant.

Pretty much everything I’ve read regarding pale master’s regards them as people who have studied and been dedicated to necromancy and undeath to such an extent that they begin to turn themselves undead because of their great understanding of the school, allowing them to do it capably. It commonly refers to pale masters as the masters of necromancy. For me it really doesn’t make sense, but I guess it can be viewed that they’re more focused on the undead and raising corpses through necromancy than the other arcane aspects of it. I would just have to assume you would have to have an extreme knowledge of the school to even be able to get to a point where you can basically become undead yourself.