Arelith

Feels like some excessive complication of the current mechanics. Sometimes less is more.

I didn't read through 6 pages of posts, just the original, and I'm in full support of it. Lowered overall saves, increased DCs, and a change to CC spells to prevent stunlocking? I'm in full support, and I primarily main DC-based casters even in this high saves meta. It just sounds more fun and balanced.

Regnant Phoenix wrote: Fri Mar 28, 2025 4:52 pm

I didn't read through 6 pages of posts, just the original, and I'm in full support of it. Lowered overall saves, increased DCs, and a change to CC spells to prevent stunlocking? I'm in full support, and I primarily main DC-based casters even in this high saves meta. It just sounds more fun and balanced.

NPCs only. Not in PvP.

PvE only is still not great IMO:

(1) It's overengineered and overcomplicated. Like the above poster is said, less is more.

(2) CC spam isn't really an issue for a prepared party in PvE? PvE is already not the most challenging thing ever in most instances, why lower the difficulty further and make things less engaging? It's def not the worst PvE I've experienced in a PW, in-fact it's pretty up there - doing small-man parties on content like the Bastille, RDI, and the EV Island Tree is quite fun.

I highly suggest a community poll for a change of this impact. Perhaps socialize the poll so that a decent number of folks can give their feedback.

I don't know that the DCs of the spells even need to be addressed but the how long they last. If you get stunned/confused/feared/whatever then cap the time in which players are disabled by NPC spells. The "Tenacity" approach seems needlessly complicated.

I like the removing of immunity spells in favour of spells being less devastating in trade, but casters don't actually need many rounds to absolutely destroy someone, just 3 rounds of cc will likely win the fight for the proper caster, or atleast stack nearly the whole fight in their favor.
Just 3 rounds of CC is 6 spells cast on the defenseless character, it is very unlikely the character can recover.

I'd rather remove most of the dice rolling from the duration of cc. Crowd control and luck aren't a fun combination. I'd prefer seeing more static CC durations with saves only used to avoid it, rather than rolling dice to see if it lasts 10 rounds or 1.

I think most of the cc types would need to be changed to ones that can be recovered from by use of potions or spells of your own and something like a paralyze would need to be a risky move, like a melee touch spell. Sleep would also be very healthy kind of CC as you only get time to prepare from it, but can't just absolutely devastate someone, as they wake up if you harm them. The less harmful the cc type, the more generous it can be in dc and duration. Sleep even has some cool spells to go with it that could be balanced around easier, as nightmare wouldn't wake the target up and so on. Make sleep good.

A good caster player is already a very difficult thing to deal with, and adding cc they can rely on as the -first- move in the fight sounds a little devastating. These aren't characters that are low ac and vulnerable when caught. They can be difficult to catch, potentially good ac and they set a clock on you as blackfire kills you if you don't catch them in time. Heck, make blackfire burn away cc to make casters have to pick between CC or blackfire. Though, blackfire is -both- at the moment which is a bit much at times for some characters.

Maybe some reliable curses to bring saves down, increase CC durations or cause immunities to not work for a limited time, would make it so casters can't just attempt paralyzing you right at the start of combat as their epic summon starts killing you while they also cast several harms or what have you in those 2-3 rounds before tenacity does enough to work. Not being able to rely on CC as the first spell in a fight and low durations of cc on players is healthy. Making casters work for CC a bit is good and gives melee a chance in a theoretical world with less saves.

Could standardize things to casting distance, spell circle and cc type.

The more devastating the CC type, the closer you need to be to cast it. While something like sleep doesn't need as much risk and could be cast at a longer distance.
Spell circle could break it up a bit like some 9th circle spell could be special in that you can attempt a paralyze with less risk.
And requiring spell focus investment to really CC someone for longer would take away some of the damage potential. Like locking most paralyzes behind an epic spell focus. Warlocks wouldn't even get it.
Like if someone with no investment into cc schools whatsoever could just throw reliable fight winning 3 round cc on someone along with their esf: necromancy blackfire and follow it up with everything else with no counterplay, but to roll dice gooder, doesn't sound fun.

A fight could play out where the caster starts by attepting to first curse/prep their enemy, then start going for sleep, once sleep succeeds they could use that to attempt a more riskier type of cc and if succesful they deserve their fight winning burst as their enemy should have had plenty chance to prepare against it, -pray or catch the caster. Or mix it up in any manner of ways. Like if the fighter uses their -pray to break away from the sleep, they'd be at risk of being slept again from distance. The wise fighter would wait for the sleep to turn into a more dangerous CC and then break out of that with pray. It'd be more involved for both parties.

Literal Actual Bugbear wrote: Sat Mar 29, 2025 4:38 pm

Heck, make blackfire burn away cc to make casters have to pick between CC or blackfire. Though, blackfire is -both- at the moment which is a bit much at times.

Maybe some reliable curses to bring saves down, increase CC durations or cause immunities to not work for a limited time, would make it so casters can't just attempt paralyzing you right at the start of combat as their epic summon starts killing you while they also cast several harms or what have you in those 2-3 rounds before tenacity does enough to work. Not being able to rely on CC as the first spell in a fight and low durations of cc on players is healthy. Making casters work for CC a bit is good and gives melee a chance in a theoretical world with less saves.

Could standardize things to casting distance, spell circle and cc type.

The more devastating the CC type, the closer you need to be to cast it. While something like sleep doesn't need as much risk and could be cast at a longer distance.
Spell circle could break it up a bit like some 9th circle spell could be special in that you can attempt a paralyze with less risk.
And requiring spell focus investment to really CC someone for longer would take away some of the damage potential.
Like if someone with no investment into cc schools whatsoever could just throw reliable fight winning 3 round cc on someone along with their esf: necromancy blackfire and follow it up with everything else with no counterplay, but to roll dice gooder, doesn't sound fun.

Without fixing concentration being close to CC someone is a nonstarter. If you are casting an interruptible spell anywhere within melee range, chances are it’s not going to go off.

Even currently with long duration cc, this scenario of being cc’d and black fired is perfectly fine and has counter play.

Round one you have been Mords’d, and then black fired. You are than hit with mass hold monster and are paralyzed for several minutes (let’s pretend it worked), they’re now casting some other damage spell for their second action of the second round and you’re burning down to half hp. But…Pray is an instant action. You are now back to full health and no longer CC’d. Hit that dirt cheap grimoire you can carry a handful of for mantle or shadow shield, congratulations that second nasty spell just bounced right off. You are now sprinting at said mage, who now needs to run to not get squished, and also breach you to attempt another spell. Perhaps they cast another mords, they go to re-blackfire you, but you hit the grimoire again, and it bounces off. Congratulations you have now used five of the mage’s possibly six or seven level nine spell slots. You are now in control of the fight, purely because they don’t have enough gas in the tank to really threaten you through the greater resto scroll and stack of healing potions in your inventory, and 500+ hp pool.

Hellball and timestop layered in give the mage a chance to get a window where you have not reapplied mantle or healed through, hence “combo mage.” But not only does the mage need to execute this 4 round combo perfectly against a player who knows what they’re doing, but it’s not even guaranteed to work if they do, and then you’re quite literally done, time to run away. You only get one time stop and one hell ball, so you better hope you use it properly.

If you made high-level damage spells mutually exclusive with cc, it would be a hard Nerf to casters.

And realistically unless you’re running a pale master with auto still or divine sorcerer, your AC is going to be in the low to mid 50s. With a AB numbers sitting at 48 to low 50s, the idea of mage survivability against auto attacks is dubious (especially because everyone can pierce premonition; for some reason, the whole server needed +5 weapons as a standard). Oh yeah, and it’s still the only two glasses with D4 hit points, even though cleric, invoker, warlock casters have as much or more kill pressure, they get more health for “reasons.”

Anomandaris wrote: Sat Mar 29, 2025 6:02 pm

Literal Actual Bugbear wrote: Sat Mar 29, 2025 4:38 pm

Could standardize things to casting distance, spell circle and cc type.

Without fixing concentration being close to CC someone is a nonstarter. If you are casting an interruptible spell anywhere within melee range, chances are it’s not going to go off.

For sure, I think concentration needs some help honestly, reaching reasonable concentration is nuts and being slapped out of a cast isn't fun either, could literally give epic casters just a straight up +30 concentration and they'd still risk being slapped out of it.
And this is thinking in a world where saves would be addressed too, and the requirement of spell focuses in my example would only be for the more devastating types of CC, such as being able to paralyze with a longer casting range. Just being dazed can possibly take 2 rounds away from someone who hasn't memorized their entire battleplan, one to be like oh heck, wheres my anti daze button, and the next to consume it. While the esf: enchantment version would take away the enemy's chance to recover from it with consumables and will force out the -pray.
In a world where you could actually more consistently land these CC's, seeing the -pray come off is your win condition as CC caster. Now do it again and you likely won.

And enemy can burn their -pray for the wrong thing too, like if they burn it for a mere sleep (if they were made viable), it'd be very bad news for the fighter.

And there's nothing preventing you from taking two epic spell focuses given the right build to fit them.

If it was a bad system, that didn't translate well to a persistent world... I don't think people would have put up with it, nor picked it up after 20 years. D20 has it's flaws, but having played Pathfinder 2e recently, even there certain spells are effectively save or suck, in that anything but a failure isn't worth my using it vs other options. Likewise legally distinct magic missile(IGMS) remains a staple, whether it's called force bolts or not.

In my opinion as a sub optimal vancian caster enjoyer , less is more when it comes to reworking a whole system just because. We removed scrolls from UMD to make it harder for "mundanes" to use top tier spells. Then introduced it back with books later anyway. Potions, consumables, and grenades have made it easier than ever to mimic things a mage used to have to do. As a Wizard/Sorc I might as well throw acid bombs too rather than using a slot for it. Changing systems like this always has unforeseen consequences that won't be played out on paper. It's not necessary, it won't feel like the familiar nwn nor D&D 3-3.5ish we have enjoyed all these years. Not everyone(Including the many that don't use these forums) likes learning a whole new system like it's a new season of LoL.

And before the new crafting system is live this shouldn't even be on the books, until we see how saves and equipment play out in a live sandbox. If as Xerah suggested it would be even more difficult to isolate the root cause of X or Y being too strong or too weak. Coupled with the fact that historically huge changes like this are rarely if ever backtracked on after the many hours it would take to rewrite 100's of spells? I wouldn't want to play a caster anymore.

Scurvy made a good point, in that the problem spells or very dead ones should be looked at instead to be made more fun or viable. Over reinventing a whole to wheel. It's bad enough how NPC's and mobs sometimes teleport out of your AOE spells directly on top of you, thus wasting your AOE cast. Something I have not seen mentioned, but clouds and AoE's that have a 1 round effect and then you are immune to for any time afterward would be the same thing- it would make them suck. I do not think anyone playing a caster here enjoys when NPC's do it, why would they enjoy a PC WM being able to do it by design(hit sprint run at caster to bonk)?

Lastly, a system like this would be further unintuitive and difficult to gauge when we already have a silly system that lowers saves when someone succeeds by -2 down to a floor. Giving casters that can spam a spell a leg up on those that cannot. Keeping track of what someone's saves are at in a scrolling chat log is nigh impossible.
An example of which is implosion(Which in Vanilla NWN had a +3 DC)... reintroduced with a +2 to DC from a cleric path that lets you cast it at DC 42/41 depending on spellslot(Sadly you have ruined my dreams of 5 Great wisdom for DC 45) WITH a refresh of 15-35%. So I can build something survivable and throw Implosion to lower your save to from your 8th and 9th slots(36 is I think the floor?) until it works. A spell with no counter aside from one on the breach list that no one really uses, and ignores Death Ward.

P.S. different effects on NPC vs PC sounds like both a maintenance nightmare, and a bad design choice by default if you need an exception for every spell against NPC vs PC. NPCs are also less likely to get a speedy update to their +52 saves(or trash ones in some cases), so the dungeons people actually visit will also be affected by what players actually want to deal with.