Arelith

Xerah wrote: Fri Oct 18, 2019 11:19 pm There will always be changes to balance. Why build any character if your view is that maybe things won't be as optimal a day from now?

I know you meant that ironically/rhetorically, but its actually a good question. Not all change is good and there is even something to be said for the pacing of change. In a non-expert, anecdotal way, consider caring for a precious potted plant. If you left it in the same dirt year after year, its nourishment will dry up and it will die. If you change the dirt daily, you will damage the roots and the constant stress will kill it.

If we were running vanilla nwn, we might be guilty of the former. Lately, we sound a bit too much like the latter. People actually are actually holding off on new characters and relevels at the moment, waiting to see if the dust ever settles. My "hyperbolic" suggestion above, though clearly not serious, was more to say, "can we just please /stop/ changing long-established mechanics...at least for awhile"?

Arelith is a precious, precious potted plant.

Edit: Okay, same thought, pithier, and a sound bite. You win Nau.

NauVaseline wrote: Change is good, only when the changes are good, lets be clear on that. Change for the sake of change is how we got mumble rap

i will say that all these new spells are great and all but the sheer height of everyone who gears half optimally's saves prevents me from seriously considering any of them (or the rest of my mage kit beyond god-frigging-damned IGMS and, formerly, summons), so i'm not thrilled about this change

Kuma wrote: Sat Oct 19, 2019 12:21 am i will say that all these new spells are great and all but the sheer height of everyone who gears half optimally's saves prevents me from seriously considering any of them (or the rest of my mage kit beyond god-frigging-damned IGMS and, formerly, summons), so i'm not thrilled about this change

So much this, I have been saying this for so long. It is nigh impossible to use DC spells in Arelith.
Every one says casters are broken, but they refer to very specific combos which are mostly saveless. That is literally all casters can do offensively.

You get +10 from items, +5 from Spellcraft, + 5 from epic, at least +6 base (if you dont multiclass and that is your low save), that's 26 right there. If you consider multiclasses and high saves and stats you will find that it is so very easy to reach high 30s even without Divine Grace.

That is a big issue with NWN in general. Anything that is save based is useless. Nice if you want to feel like a god killing low level trash, but in a leveled area even PvE mobs saves are too high to waste a spell. Let a lone a geared player.


Not sure what the answer is here. Make them to hard to save, Mages are going to be really powerful, to low and we are in the place we are now when its a summon/saveless cluster.

Frankly i'm "okay" with saves being so reachably high on PCs, I think if it was like a 50/50 to just 1 shot people with death spells then that'd make mages even more broken than people think they are now, lol.
And not everyone has those saves either, there are plenty of popular builds out there with at least one terribly low save.

At the end of the day not everyone has mental high saves, and even 26 is pretty low when you can pump your DC to 36-40, and anyone that does get crazy high saves like in the mid 30's to the 40's generally had to give up something else for it, so yea i'm okay with that.

What I dislike so much on Arelith is NPCs having mental high saves, now with that being said I have noticed that a few (maybe more than I've personally noticed) encounters, enemies, etc etc, have had their saves lowered a bit which is good to see happening, i'd just like to see it happen to more, and faster.
For example I remember a while back if I went into Duergars on a mage pretty much everything in there had mid to high 30's as their saves vs spells and it was insane, these big beefy warrior duergar with a +36 will save just made no sense to me, but nowadays i'm fairly certain that is being addressed, thankfully. At least I hope it is...

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Regarding saves.

Since the devs seem to be able to do so much with spells now...

How about adding secondary effects to spells? Different ways to go about this, but just an example.

Take Wail of the Banshee. Circle 9 spell. Right now, you choose between it and Max IGMS. On one hand, you have a sure-thing 120 dmg.

On the other hand, you have a save or die, period. If they have a good fort save, its almost certainly useless. If they have Death Ward, Shadow Shield, etc it is useless.

How about this?

Fail the save: Die
Pass the save by less than 5: Fear
Pass the save by 5 or more: Sickness -3 to AB and AC.

Just a general idea. I didnt think through the specific details much.

Edit: deleted, owing to player deleting their original comment. Cheers.

I'm very okay with DC being easily reached by high level players. It was so bad back when there were a bunch of clerics maximizing their implosion builds with that +3 DC bonus and building/gearing well wasn't part of the server's culture.

Arienette wrote: Sat Oct 19, 2019 3:03 am Regarding saves.

Since the devs seem to be able to do so much with spells now...

How about adding secondary effects to spells? Different ways to go about this, but just an example.

Take Wail of the Banshee. Circle 9 spell. Right now, you choose between it and Max IGMS. On one hand, you have a sure-thing 120 dmg.

On the other hand, you have a save or die, period. If they have a good fort save, its almost certainly useless. If they have Death Ward, Shadow Shield, etc it is useless.

How about this?

Fail the save: Die
Pass the save by less than 5: Fear
Pass the save by 5 or more: Sickness -3 to AB and AC.

Just a general idea. I didnt think through the specific details much.

Something like this could go a long way. On a succesful save apply a debuff or lesser version of the maximum effect. There are so many “save or die” effects in NWN’s spell matrix and they are sooo unfun if DCs reign supreme but it is also exceptionally dissatisfying to just disgregard most of the spells with a save because “meh, everyone has evasion”, “meh fishing for 1s” etc.

Well... basically, except that shadow dragon is weaker(he has HiPS, but please... it has awfully low hide with it's size, and lack of sneak attack, if the idea was to make the dragon look more.. shady.) than every single one, and gold being bugged because of lack of any weapon and my unability to summon the dracolich, all dragons seems so... the same, except their different resistances. Just look at those dragons summoned by 26 lvl mage without conj focus.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... /smoki.png

A lvl 27 mage with the foci will have +5? more ab and +4 more damage a hit.

+4 AB, +3 AC, +3 dmg, +72 HP (if dragons are d12), +1 STR, +3 to all saves

Wrips wrote: Sat Oct 19, 2019 7:22 pm +4 AB, +3 AC, +3 dmg, +72 HP (if dragons are d12), +1 STR, +3 to all saves

Is that per level?

+1 ab /damage etc for each of the three focus feats. And +1 ab and +1 str at 27 bumping the str of the dragons (Red, gold, and shadow dragons up one modifier. So total of +5 ab +4 damage (+4/+3 ab/damage for the other dragons screenshotted that dont end up on an even str score) ontop of other perks.

The following is a epic focus 26 Wiz.

Gate(devil) vs Dragon(red)

Devil:

AC- 41
HP- 419
SR- 22
AB- 36
Damage- 20 - 56 + 2-16 acid + 1-6 divine +1-6 negative
Crit- 15-20 x3

saves- F25 R16 W24

VS Dragon (red)

AC- 43
HP- 462
SR- 32
AB- 41
Damage- 31 - 38
Crit- 17-20 x3

saves- F26 R21 W23


In a nutshell. Gate devil hits harder, crits harder and more often. Dragon hits more often, has TS and last longer (less when you start giving everyone the power to just dismiss it).

A gear golem might actually out perform a dragon, but I'd have to see ones stats for real to say so as I'm stating that on the wiki. Balor as well might out perform a dragon cause of higher DC, slightly higher base damage, damage reflection and he explodes on death. Also it has a couple of spells, but they might hinder more then help.

So basically this spell just uses up a feat instead of a spell slot now due to its comparable stats with Gate?

Perhaps they should up the duration of it to offset its drop in usefulness.

Gillesbreton wrote: Tue Oct 22, 2019 3:39 pm So basically this spell just uses up a feat instead of a spell slot now due to its comparable stats with Gate?

Perhaps they should up the duration of it to offset its drop in usefulness.

I'd agree with that, however everyone is screaming for the ability to just use mords and banish on it. And due to it's size it's not overly useful in PvE cause it gets stuck in doors. Good for bosses though but that is a short thing not long term. It will likely die long before the duration ended.