Climb skill

[Gouge Away]

I think there's an issue that climbing is a solo endeavor, if one person in the party can climb that doesn't help anyone else so you'll likely just skip that aspect of the dungeon.

If climb skill is going to be another thing using precious skill points and these climbing points will be more common maybe an expert climber should be able to assist others with the climb at penalty? Like if you're crazy enough to have 33 ranks and even epic climb you can help the clunky 8 dex cleric get there too? Otherwise it's mildly useful novelty for solo exploration and maybe small groups of similarly built highly skilled dex types but seems like a traditionally mixed group of characters will just be ignoring them.

[Archnon]

Also, I'm guessing that horses are a no-go and being mounted blocks climbing. That may already be true though. I really don't playride based characters but it is something to think about throwing these locations into the wild.

[Borin Drakkmurl]

I think there's an issue that climbing is a solo endeavor, if one person in the party can climb that doesn't help anyone else so you'll likely just skip that aspect of the dungeon.

If climb skill is going to be another thing using precious skill points and these climbing points will be more common maybe an expert climber should be able to assist others with the climb at penalty? Like if you're crazy enough to have 33 ranks and even epic climb you can help the clunky 8 dex cleric get there too? Otherwise it's mildly useful novelty for solo exploration and maybe small groups of similarly built highly skilled dex types but seems like a traditionally mixed group of characters will just be ignoring them.

We used to be able to help each other climb. If apparently the system itself has not be changed drasticaly, as I understand, then that should still be the case.

[Might-N-Magic]

Does this mean this project is dead?
viewtopic.php?f=37&t=25828&hilit=secondary+skills

I'll also absolutely look at increasing points for skill starved characters, and offer rebuilds when that happens. Right now though? It is still too soon. There are still 3 more skills I wish looked at first.

Please no. Skill utility is a cornerstone of class-balance as much as being able to cast spells or hit for 200+ damage crits. Doing this just means everyone can do everything and being skill-monkey classes with 6-8 skill points meaning nothing when wizards, clerics, and fighters all can buy everything needed to utterly min/max.

We don't need to see paladins, weaponmasters, sorcerers, and clerics with discipline/listen/spot/tumble/spellcraft/umd/and lore unless those guys are point-buying deep into INT.

Heartily agree with this.
The skill distribution among the classes seems, at least in view, to be quite alright.

I think we should keep the min/max possibilities to a bare minimum and not to enhance it by giving more skills to Paladins, Fighters and Clerics.

It's just one thing that annoys me with posts going "GIB ME MOAR SKILL POINT."
There's four basic cornerstones to class balance: Martial Prowess, Divine Magic, Arcane Magic, and Skill Monkey. Each class is some mix of these because no one guy is supposed to be the guy who has everything. Messing with that, ruins the dynamics of balance. Clerics aren't supposed to be masters of disguise and uber stealth detectors anymore than Rogues can open a spellbook and memorize timestops.

[redhawx]

Does this mean this project is dead?
viewtopic.php?f=37&t=25828&hilit=secondary+skills



Please no. Skill utility is a cornerstone of class-balance as much as being able to cast spells or hit for 200+ damage crits. Doing this just means everyone can do everything and being skill-monkey classes with 6-8 skill points meaning nothing when wizards, clerics, and fighters all can buy everything needed to utterly min/max.

We don't need to see paladins, weaponmasters, sorcerers, and clerics with discipline/listen/spot/tumble/spellcraft/umd/and lore unless those guys are point-buying deep into INT.

Heartily agree with this.
The skill distribution among the classes seems, at least in view, to be quite alright.

I think we should keep the min/max possibilities to a bare minimum and not to enhance it by giving more skills to Paladins, Fighters and Clerics.

It's just one thing that annoys me with posts going "GIB ME MOAR SKILL POINT."
There's four basic cornerstones to class balance: Martial Prowess, Divine Magic, Arcane Magic, and Skill Monkey. Each class is some mix of these because no one guy is supposed to be the guy who has everything. Messing with that, ruins the dynamics of balance. Clerics aren't supposed to be masters of disguise and uber stealth detectors anymore than Rogues can open a spellbook and memorize timestops.

While that would be true in Pen and Paper to make everyone in a party relevant. Consider that each mage got pocket warriors in Arelith that last Hours instead of turns per Level so rather then a summon for a encounter you have them for a dungeon. And that a mage can have a pocket rogue too (fey-familiar) and that a Fighter got two-skillpoints per level.
A fighter surely fall within those that is usually in DnD known to be good climbers?

But when you have two skillpoints per level, maybe 4 with some INT mod and there is this many skills to spread them over you will problaby see more wizards that is skilled at climbing then Fighters. Because when they take that epic level dip with all those skillpoints built up due to their high int they can afford the extra skills. The dynamic of that balance you mention has been messed with for long already. In the base game of NWN aswell as on Arelith. Rogues gaining more attack bonus. Monks gaining more attack bonus etc to mention two changes. This is also another edge for humans with the additional skillpoint per level that will make it even harder to justify playing something else.

[AskRyze]

Messing with that, ruins the dynamics of balance. Clerics aren't supposed to be masters of disguise and uber stealth detectors anymore than Rogues can open a spellbook and memorize timestops.

You know, the irony of this all is that rogues have the best access to lore/umd on the server, especially with a loremaster dip - arguably one of the best non-caster casters around. Moreover, I would say that apart from a specifically dedicated build that Cleric is one of the stronger detector builds around and one of the better sneaks, given trickery domain power and their vast array of skills. Plus, as mentioned before, cleric's ability to just spit out a dragon whenever they feel like actually engaging in combat.

The balance is shot already. If this were tabletop, it'd be different. This is NWN, not tabletop. The base game of NWN was made with a certain amount of skills in mind. The number of useful and usable skills is going up. The amount of skill points you gain access to should go up, or some alternate method to access certain 'secondary' skills should be made.

[Ryan1017]

+1 to what's already been said. Skill monkey builds aren't really a thing that's mechanically viable, which means there is less interest in playing them. Pretty much every optimal build is just forced to take certain skills because you're much less effective without them. Sure you could *choose* not to take something like lore, tumble or discipline for something like climb, but why would you? Climb is waaaaay too situational to be lumped in with those other very important skills that are getting used on a constant basis. You could level from 1 to 30 without seeing more than one climb check.

Adding more skills, and then adding support to them in new/existing modules isn't really going to encourage builds to actually take them unless the value/reward is amazing. It reminds me of discussions about the Derro Writ where the solution was "just don't it." I really would not like climb to be something that is just a binary barrier to entry, where if you don't have the skill, you just turn around and leave. That's disappointing.

If climb is going to be added as a more prevalent skill, I would really like to see it more as a way to get extra rewards/treasure or used as a shortcut. Maybe give access to some secret areas.

[Archnon]

I mean, there are lots of ways around this problem if the team is interested. The most obvious is to introduce a spell. Someone in Discord mentioned Air Walk (https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Air_walk). If you do that, then you can introduce either a crafted rope that grants x uses of airwalk and breaks or an alchemy potion for airwalk, or even just good old fashioned wands and scrolls. The idea would be that there is still a check there and if you are prepared for it, even without investment in a skill, you could still make it. I mean, you could even make airwalk add +20 or +30 to climb. Something so that it would make most basic content accessible, but you might still need a dex/str/skill investment to get to the really cool stuff. It is a cleric/druid spell too so it might benefit skill starve clerics. Adding in the crafted rope or alchemy potion would create a market and help out mundane characters. That is just one idea.

[Itikar]

If we are looking for a spell for climbing then spider climb can get us covered:

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/spiderClimb.htm

More in general, Neverwinter Nights has always lacked in spells that provided utility, like air walk, water breathing, tongues, locate object, create food, etc.

[Xerah]

Let's be honest here, very few people are going to use those extra skill points for putting points into climb.

I do like the athletics and acrobatics idea though

[Nitro]

Let's be honest here, very few people are going to use those extra skill points for putting points into climb.

Yeah I can't ever see myself putting points in climb to be honest. I'd rather do a dump in appraise than put any points in a skill as situational as climb. Chances are I'll just eat the inventory tax and carry around an extra set of gear enchanted for climb when I want to do a dungeon/area locked behind it.

[msterswrdsmn]

My two cents as climbing is now

Offhand, this isn't a skill you would want to max as it is right now. As of now, I know of maybe 2 dungeons (technically 4 but 3 of them are in one area with the same theme) and 1 path that are locked with a climb check. Both have the possibility of getting some nice resources, but they're not very popular compared to say, the sibayad orcs (one requires a special key as well). Every other climb point to my knowledge is a shortcut or something that can just be ignored altogether.

Most of the checks i've seen are either "yep, we can do this in a few tries" or "Ha, no, thats never happening". Not a lot of middle ground.

I wouldn't recommend going crazy with locking things behind climb points. Even with gear, there isn't a lot of reason to invest heavily in climb. You might get access to a few extra areas or shortcuts...and thats it. Theres no other benefit aside from interacting with climbing points, which you might not even come across unless you're going out of your way to an area with one.

[Dreams]

I know that this is slowly going to be normalised, like being forced to take a series of other skills, but I'm frustrated that this is yet another skill that I need to worry about. I say this after trying to build a generalist rogue that specifically takes a higher INT score and focuses on trying to be able to 'do the rogue things' for a group.

As more and more skills get added, the skill points of base classes will no longer cut it. I understand we're going to look at that in future. It just sucks for the meantime.

[Gouge Away]

Yeah that's about how I feel. If I'm a non-human rogue with 16 int I'm already making compromises. If more skills are added there ought to be a few more skill points to play with. These numbers aren't set in stone anyway or some exact science we can't mess with.. NWN default skill points is just what some guys in an office in 2000 decided it should be.

But mainly I just don't want more skill options for things that should just be ability checks. A 38 dex, level 30 action hero rogue should be able to climb a rope without investing in skill points or carrying a second set of gear- that's what they do! If these abilities get more niche it starts to feel just way to specific, I'd much rather see an "acrobatics" catch all like mentioned above for special cases like the occasional climbing spot or tightrope or running long jump or whatever.

[Hunter548]

Does this mean this project is dead?
viewtopic.php?f=37&t=25828&hilit=secondary+skills



Please no. Skill utility is a cornerstone of class-balance as much as being able to cast spells or hit for 200+ damage crits. Doing this just means everyone can do everything and being skill-monkey classes with 6-8 skill points meaning nothing when wizards, clerics, and fighters all can buy everything needed to utterly min/max.

We don't need to see paladins, weaponmasters, sorcerers, and clerics with discipline/listen/spot/tumble/spellcraft/umd/and lore unless those guys are point-buying deep into INT.

Heartily agree with this.
The skill distribution among the classes seems, at least in view, to be quite alright.

I think we should keep the min/max possibilities to a bare minimum and not to enhance it by giving more skills to Paladins, Fighters and Clerics.

It's just one thing that annoys me with posts going "GIB ME MOAR SKILL POINT."
There's four basic cornerstones to class balance: Martial Prowess, Divine Magic, Arcane Magic, and Skill Monkey. Each class is some mix of these because no one guy is supposed to be the guy who has everything. Messing with that, ruins the dynamics of balance. Clerics aren't supposed to be masters of disguise and uber stealth detectors anymore than Rogues can open a spellbook and memorize timestops.

This is only really the case if you assume each class can do one, and each of the four is just as valuable. As it stands currently, bards, rangers, and rogues are unequivocally the best classes for martial prowess (And the best base classes in general, honestly), while arcane magic has basically two good non-buff spells for non-warlocks: mord's, and mass haste. Unpathed wizards might as well not even exist.

[Might-N-Magic]

This is only really the case if you assume each class can do one, and each of the four is just as valuable. As it stands currently, bards, rangers, and rogues are unequivocally the best classes for martial prowess (And the best base classes in general, honestly), while arcane magic has basically two good non-buff spells for non-warlocks: mord's, and mass haste. Unpathed wizards might as well not even exist.

No, each class is some mixture of these things and yes, each of these things is just as valuable - just in different situations. Skill monkeys admittedly are not as useful in a dungeon setting, but thrive in intrigue while arcanists are the best battlefield controllers hands down. Your take shows a lack of understanding of party/character roles if you're sitting there as a wizard throwing out fireballs and death spells and being disappointed in your class when your all or nothing save or die spells fail - you fail at wizarding.

About the only way I'd advocate an increase in skill points for all classes is if more than one skill was introduced that was a staple must-have to play. Climb isn't one. Let's face it, almost no one will buy climb. Climb is just going to be a shortcut everyone can live without and right now we've already got fighters and clerics buying elective skills without hardship. Wizards already have too many skillpoints by dint of having a ton of INT and skill-dumping, not to mention almost every single one of them having a full classed pocket rogue for free (for some reason, still).

[Irongron]

But mainly I just don't want more skill options for things that should just be ability checks. A 38 dex, level 30 action hero rogue should be able to climb a rope without investing in skill points or carrying a second set of gear- that's what they do! If these abilities get more niche it starts to feel just way to specific, I'd much rather see an "acrobatics" catch all like mentioned above for special cases like the occasional climbing spot or tightrope or running long jump or whatever.

Arelith has very few difficult Climb spots currently, I suspect a character with the stats you suggest could easily pass them all. The only difference is that now a handful of classes don't get +1 per level, but far more crucially - those characters that were previously entirely unable to pass climb checks, and had no real way to improve the ability, now can. No investment at all, be it by ranks, or by items was possible, and this was not a design approach I liked as I continue to add more climb locations.

And this was an existing system, replacing it with disc would have made all climb checks immediately defunct in the majority of cases.

The +1 per level wasn't great either (at least at this stage). Why? Well, let's imagine I want to add a difficult climb spot up to an open window (something possible on some new building tiles), or up a city wall. Now I want to make it a challenge, but not impossible if a mid level character is determined to make it. A DC 45 climb then? Well here is the thing: at 45 it's going to require a decent 'acrobat/burglar' style character, or a heavily invested regular PC. Now if we have that +1 per level, and I want to make it equally challenging (at mid level) then that DC 45 needs to be 65, and the result? ONLY those characters, and NOBODY ELSE will be able to make the climb. That's just poor design, and I do not wish to gate difficult climbs behind only a handful of classes.

The way it is right now, those that previously could climb most spots on the isle likely still can, while those that couldn't, now finally have a means to do so, without it being a hard yes/no calculation that they can never reasonably overcome, and if I'm going to keep using this system in area building that is an absolute necessity.

Finally. I'm using this for shortcuts, a hidden area or two, grabbing an otherwise hard to reach resource. Finding a dungeon, like one of the Sibayad tombs where climbing is a necessity to continue, will continue to be a rare thing.

Oh, and my own view on skill points? It's the lower end I feel will need a boost, not the higher, as we continue to add utility to less popular skills (which we have done a good job of) we are indirectly buffing those classes with the ability to invest, and we are fast moving to the point where 14 int is an absolute must, and 16 is ideal. I've always liked diversity on the server, and right now a 10 int character is just going to miss out on way too many features.

My favourite tabletop RPG has a group of investment stats, those that can contribute skill points, such as constitution, self discipline AND intelligence, and it really makes sense; high int characters being the best at learning climb, hide etc, makes very little sense to me. I'm not sure what the change would be, but off the top of my head, right now I would do the following - Con, Str, Dex, Wis and INT can be used to calculate skill point bonuses, but each have different caps. Say, most STR, DEX or Wis can grant is +1, Con +2 and INT uncapped. Whichever of those stats has the highest base is used for the calculation.

[Ork]

Also consider removing the INT requirement from expertise. I know that might bork a few things, but beyond skillpoints that feat is the primary reason to invest in INT for non-wizards.

[TooManyPotatoes]

You're gonna see a lot more half-orcs. Might even become the meta.

Climb will be fine.

Let's leave this topic alone so irongron can focus on other things!

[a shrouded figure]

I agree with Ork. I know it would require some investigation as to “meta” nonsense, but requiring 13 int on ever melee has always bugged me a bit. Lousy expertise....

How has no one noticed that the island is rampant with genius orcs?

[Itikar]

It is not exactly what Irongron mentioned above, but if the skill point crunch is to be addressed, I think I would really like a system where multiple stats, with caps, contribute to the skill point pool of a character, instead than just intelligence.

[Hunter548]

This is only really the case if you assume each class can do one, and each of the four is just as valuable. As it stands currently, bards, rangers, and rogues are unequivocally the best classes for martial prowess (And the best base classes in general, honestly), while arcane magic has basically two good non-buff spells for non-warlocks: mord's, and mass haste. Unpathed wizards might as well not even exist.

No, each class is some mixture of these things and yes, each of these things is just as valuable - just in different situations. Skill monkeys admittedly are not as useful in a dungeon setting, but thrive in intrigue while arcanists are the best battlefield controllers hands down. Your take shows a lack of understanding of party/character roles if you're sitting there as a wizard throwing out fireballs and death spells and being disappointed in your class when your all or nothing save or die spells fail - you fail at wizarding.

I'd love to hear what specific spells you think a wizard should be casting.

[Ork]

For WM, they are still required to have +13 INT for whirlwind.

[AstralUniverse]

More skill points just means more "eating the cake and leaving it whole" for clerics and detection, sorcs and disguise, warlocks and stealth, etc etc. I cant see it leading to a healthy direction.

The existence of Climb as a skill just means another inventory page or half-page out of our economy (as it will be dedicated to climb gear).

Just why.

[Skibbles]

This update was puzzling. It's like an anti-QOL patch.

I think this is going to go the way of the Wyvern transport in the UD: ultimately not worth the trouble, and then promptly forgotten thereafter.

What could have been something cool, used regularly, instead gathering dust because there's no joy in gear shuffling for an arbitrary skill that has a single application. Especially if you're a caster who loses half their spells just to make one check, and therefore also pays a 20% rest tax.

Just like with the Wyverns I'm really not looking forward to needing to create a full set of gear for a whole party to make a single skill check, immediately dumping it, then having to make it all *again* later when I need to make that one little check.

In our currently longstanding human/INT meta I simply don't see this as anything other than an inventory juggling chore in the face of over half a dozen must-have skills, just as many must-have gear sets/items, continually diminishing inventory space, and still trying to fit a few pieces of loot.

I'd have preferred climbing to be removed entirely rather than cemented further. It already seemed out of place, clunky, and niche.