Inclusive Update Feedback

[Peppermint]

No lead in. Raw feedback. Separating this one from the UMD thread.

Let's break this down:

I. Weapon Changes

1. Light Hammer buffed. Fine, but please nerf the Gnome hammer to compensate.
2. Light Flail nerfed to small size. Disarms now more problematic. Remains unviable as a finessable weapon due to inability to dual-wield.
3. Heavy Flail buffed to 3d6, resulting in the highest base damage in the game. Better than all other two-handed weapons, with the possible exception of:
4. Falchions added, functionally scythes as a martial-tier weapon. Weapon diversity greatly reduced.
5. Greatsword vs. Greataxe numbers adjusted for no benefit. Greataxes go to 3d4 (instead of 1d12), putting them 0.5 damage ahead of Greatswords rather than 0.5 damage behind. Balance paradigm does not shift; just needless changes, possibly confusing new players.
6. Naginatas added, enabling the Monk/WM niche once again, despite having removed katana synergy before for precisely that reason. Now has +2 AB, too!
7. Wakizashi potential buff to Monks, Spellswords, and Casters. Hard to say without details.
8. Addition of the Heavy Mace, Maul, Light Pick, Heavy Pick, and Sai is fine.

Net changes:
- Weak weapons nerfed
- Some decent weapons overbuffed
- Diversity significantly reduced
- Needless changes added to confuse new players
- Monk/WMs re-enabled less than one month after removal

II. Lore & UMD

1. Using high level scrolls now prohibitively expensive for most classes. Summons, Greater Sanctuary, and Timestop no longer have ready counters.
2. HiPS also significantly buffed due to True Seeing scrolls being less accessible.
3. Tactical options for mundane classes narrowed down to "point and click" (only slight hyperbole).
4. Many player merchants lose hundreds of thousands of gold overnight (i.e. scroll demand plummets).
5. UMD requirements buffed by 5. Utterly meaningless as a balancing tool. Only serves to confuse new players.
6. Class tier list shifts to look something like this:

Code: Select all

S-Tier: Caster PM, Druid, Fiendlock
A-Tier: Battlecleric , Caster Cleric, Wizard, Sorc, Spellsword, Shadow Mage, Bard
B-Tier: Divine Archer, Shadowdancer, Melee Ranger, Paladin, Ranged Ranger, Arcane Archer
C-Tier: Weaponmaster, Rogue, Assassin, Monk
D-Tier: Barbarian
F-Tier: Shifter

(Classes with spells or divine defenses will remain competitive.)

On a smaller note:

7. Lore more prevalent on classes with oodles of skill points. Life harder for pirates.

Net changes:
- Non-caster, non-divine classes universally dumpstered
- Mundane classes deprived of tactical complexity
- Three years of balance thrown in the toilet to satisfy artistic whims
- Needless "got'cha" added for new players
- Don't play a pirate!

III. Feat Changes

- Knockdown moves from drifting out of meta (due to recent discipline inflation) to being downright unreliable. Another buff to low discipline builds (read: casters).
- Pure Healers now immune to Knockdown for all intents and purposes (Knockdown cooldown into -respite into sanctuary renders Knockdown completely ineffective.)
- All casters can consider dropping ESF: Discipline for another epic spell now.
- Direction of Disarm is largely fine.

Net changes:
- Massive nerf to a feat that didn't need it in the current meta
- Casters significantly buffed
- Disarm is a step in the right direction

IV. New Classes

1. Commoner and Specialist added, encouraging "social" roleplay at the expense of adventure and intrigue.

Net changes:
- Social roleplay styles encouraged
- Complete reversal of Arelith's previous commitment to keeping PCs active and doing things

V. Class Changes

1. Knight now scales with Persuade as well when casting "Fear". Not a balance issue, but thematically problematic.
2. Paladin slightly nerfed.

Net changes:
- Thematic issues aside, nothing significant.
- Caveat: I haven't explored Harper Scout options yet.

VI. Spell Changes

1. Avascular unnerfed, restoring mages to god-king status. (Despite the spell having been in a good spot before this update.) One hit is brutal; two is almost certain death. Also thousands of damage to mobs.
2. Iceberg deals IGMS tier damage in an AoE and disables. Yikes.
3. Freeze is fine provided it can be immunized against.
4. Disrupting Hand is useless (i.e. Concentration tends to hard outscale spell DCs), Sound Lance is useless (i.e. Fireball-tier damage on a single target), Finger of Agony is useless (i.e. lackluster damage and lackluster disabler in one lousy package).

Net changes:
- Mages gain a couple ridiculous options, including the return of (more or less) unnerfed Avascular.
- Freeze is OK.
- Other spells need help.

VII. Summary

Good Stuff:
- A handful of balanced new weapons.
- Good direction for Disarm.
- Freeze an interesting new spell.

Bad Stuff:
- The complete, and utter destruction of three years of balance.
- A worrying push toward socialet roleplay on a server that ought to encourage activity and conflict.
- Everything else. Really. Everything else.

How did we even get here?

[Adam Antium]

I agree on the entire post, nothing to add.

[ltlukoziuz]

Likewise. The rods hopefully will bandaid the problem, but it would have been so much better if the update process was:

* Sunday: Gain Rods and weapons
* Monday: Gain more Rods in loot matrix (whatever you want to fill out)
* Wed+: Goodbye UMD

Instead, now it's a complete black-out and then 'Here, have some candy back'

[Memelord]

Excuse me, Commoner is precious and amazing and don't you dare touch it. Commoners actually have an excellent skill package to be a supporting member of an adventuring team - not a frontliner or damage dealer, sure, but more than capable of making meaningful contributions that make them worth having around.

Everything else is largely hot trash, though.

[Liareth]

This update is season 8 of HBO's Game of Thrones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udnxdslsP5o Rhaegal is PvP balance

... on a more serious note, I agree with most of your post.

IV. New Classes

1. Commoner and Specialist added, encouraging "social" roleplay at the expense of adventure and intrigue.

Net changes:
- Social roleplay styles encouraged
- Complete reversal of Arelith's previous commitment to keeping PCs active and doing things

I disagree with this point. I like the addition of commoner. Not everybody can be a "mover and shaker". Every leader needs followers. The server would be dysfunctional and exhausting if everyone was a god-tier player. As long as social RP doesn't become the primary focus of the server then I think the commoner class is a nice means of progression for characters who are primarily social.

[Test Drive]

I'm looking forward to playing my commoner with 13 in each stat at level 30, that will take me 80 6 hour days till 30.

[Peppermint]

I disagree with this point.

Woman, I will fight you. Message me in Discord. I will counter your argument to death.

[Seekeepeek]

i don't see much point playing a mundane if you need to spend hours/months finding the rare loot items that replace scrolls. it just sound unfun to me. i like the disarm and radiant heart fixes tho. beside that... just tired of the needless constant tinkering by now.

[Opustus]

Meh, I think the server changes are undermined by sheer hyperbole. Veteran players are considering these changes only from their elitist, parochial viewpoint and are forgetting that there is a portion of the community who aren't sticklers for balance and still can enjoy the game. Also, big changes launch test times for balancing, so I wouldn't be overly concerned with things being out of whack e.g. 3d6 heavy flail damage.

1) Weapon categorisations: Awesome! We get to play characters who can wield multiple different weapons effectively. I love love love love this. I hate being wed to a single weapon. I'm sure many agree. It's interesting for both gameplay and as a style deet.

2) Commoner/Specialist: This doesn't take anything away from anyone, it just introduces a new way of playing for people who aren't interested in PvM/PvP. I can't see anything wrong with this; saying that it takes away from conflict is equating conflict with PvP. Also, to the best of my knowledge, Commoners and Specialists can be killed in PvP, they just won't be able to defend themselves. If anything, this should create a new dynamic of "PvP" classes having to protect the commoners, who might be elected for office in settlements.

3) Lore / UMD tweak: UMD is still very important for wands, that effectively amounts to QoL and actual buffs, like getting +4 AC from Barkskin instead of +3 as a potion. Further, I absolutely love that UMD is nerfed and made less of a must-have. This changes things up in a game environment that has been stale forever. I'm happy to see the dynamic of breach and WoF spam dynamic of PvP deceased. Things like Summon Creature IX for early levelling cheese is effectively disabled, jollygood!

Further, despite balance problems, I am excited that the role of mages has been further defined as the casters to which powerful spells are restricted.

4) KD change seems to give a free pass to people who don't care about maxing Discipline in their builds and gear. It no longer is "death or boost Disc", but you might actually survive a single burst of damage without having to dip into a Disc class or gear thoroughly with Disc. It's just less punitive to casual players; it's a great change.

[Adam Antium]

I disagree with this point.

Woman, I will fight you. Message me in Discord. I will counter your argument to death.

"commoner is fun and ur dumb"

Honestly I skipped over the part where you say commoner is not the best. It might not be -most- people's cup of tea, but having a couple of commoners who are basically the gods of crafting on the server wouldn't be a bad thing. Would be a fun alternative for some people.

[Peppermint]

I'm not going to die on that hill. I disagree with the addition, but that's the least of my concerns.

[monkeywithstick]

On the whole, and after some reflection my feelings are mixed so in Peppermint’s order:

I) I agree, some of this seems a little nonsensical. If we want to encourage more weapon diversity that’s great, but that will not be achieved by changing the optimal 2-h weapon choice from greatsword to Heavy flail and Falchion, this only moves the problem. I am expecting some of these numbers to change.

II) I like this in principle. Thematically a caster/mundane differentiation is great. BUT what we see here is not so much a differentiation as a power gap. Whatever caster balances were/are being planned, I cannot help but feel they should have been released concurrently.

The option to spec to Lore 80 for a specialist mage hunter type build is interesting.

Boring gameplay for mundane classes is not a great look either I’m a big fan of 4e dnd where everyone, martial classes inclusive get limited use abilities, really mixes up the RP of “I hit it with my sword the same way I did for the last 20 rounds of combat” that 3e really fell into, also allowed distinctive combat styles, but I digress.

III) Discipline as an auto-include in every build was bad for balance by most standards. It was a band-aid, BUT it was a necessary band-aid given how NWN works. KD being useless is no better. I wonder where this lands called shot in the meta?

IV) I like these classes. Unless they are somehow more potent than combat based classes, I don’t think I agree this is encouraging social RP at the expense of other things. A commoner will take a long time to level with no combat XP, and there is a check/balance on this in that they are unlikely to be able to survive a combat character deciding to mince them. Some players will play them, some players already play social/political characters with the current class system and once they hit 30 and no longer need combat XP, this surely is no different.

V) I have no strong feelings on this at all

VI) See earlier comments about caster balance pass needed. Not sure additional options for mages can ever be anything other than a buff for them. Bad spells won’t be used, good spells simply replace others in spellbooks/innate selections.


I like in principle the move towards less versatile, one build fixes all setups. However this needed to be either introduced more gradually or more completely: the caster ascendancy is obvious even from the patch notes.

It might, if we are fortunate, encourage more group play, there have been plenty of people complaining that forming parties has been much harder of late and that group dungeon runs are fun. I agree with this, but right now, unless casters are balanced this is a very one sided solution. Mundanes need casters to help them (for PvM or PvP) Casters don’t on the whole need mundanes (especially with a pixie to replace the rogue).
Relying on the charity of the players of casters for any significant amount of time is not great.
It also leaves some of those mundanes with limited time needing to adjust to soloing in much lower level climes than they might be used to.

[time_limited]

Contrary to the posters above from the first look I quite like those updates

I. Weapon Changes

I really like the weapon category feats. If my character finds a more powerful or more fitting weapon to use now it can switch to it without the feeling of wasted feats.

Also additional new weapons - that's great opens up different character concepts.

In Overall great change

II. Lore & UMD

Needing LORE to be able to use Scrolls sound much more reasonable to UMD.. Also LORE is available to almost every character I think so it actually is a buff in available character concepts - sweet.

As for the LORE level requirement - I never understood why a specialist fighter should be able to use the most powerful abjuration in Arelith (Mords scroll)... Will it have repercussions in PVP possibly yes, but if I read this right DEV team wil introduce items which can alleviate it.

4. Many player merchants lose hundreds of thousands of gold overnight (i.e. scroll demand plummets).
Make Rods partially craft able and allow to charge them through scrolls or direct casts- problem solved, everyone gains.

I don't understand why language understanding was cut down from LORE though.


III. Feat Changes

Knockdowned with a Cool down - "Yes Please". Finally I can have characters which do not need the "obligatory" discipline skill dump. Knockdown becomes more of a tactical move instead of a spam on every attack button this is great.

3 rounds maybe a little too much though maybe make it 18s with Knockdown and 12s with Improved Knockdown? There are those rings of Ram which give Knockdown - a learned character should be able to use it more effectively and allow for more frequent usage on target? Don't know if that's possible though

Disarm change looks great, just maybe add a progression through the Improved disarm feat as well?

In Overall - great change again

IV. New Classes

"Doing Things" also means organization and plot lines for factions/cities which usually affect much more players then a typical dungeon run.

I'm kinda concerned only with the fact that the specialist commoner combo will make crafting too easy /too fast - but.. It can always be RPed to hire such characters.

So in Overall - Yes I like this as well

V. Class Changes

Can't say.. I don't play those classes

VI. Spell Changes

I agree with Peppermint on those

VII. Summary

I find this update to be quite a positive one actually. It opens up a lot of possible character concepts, removes the Discipline-or-Die approach.

I like the LORE approach to scrolls and UMD to Wands - makes the character have to choose between them in most cases. The only scrolls truly affected by this are lvl8/9 and possibly 7 spells, all others seem to be in easy reach for characters.

In Overall the update looks to be a positive one instead of "sky is falling" approach and if Rods will be craftable/findable in chest it may become something exciting to look for at the end of a dungeon.

[Ecthelion]

Make Rods partially craft able and allow to charge them through scrolls or direct casts- problem solved, everyone gains.

I'll be honest, you completly lost me there. I don't get what the point of the whole thing is if you do this. We'd be replacing scrolls (Craftable) 'gated' under UMD, by rods (Craftable aswell) , 'gated' under nothing ? Wh-What ?

Not saying it is better to have rods gated by the grinding process though, this'd be mostly horrific.

Meh, I think the server changes are undermined by sheer hyperbole. Veteran players are considering these changes only from their elitist, parochial viewpoint and are forgetting that there is a portion of the community who aren't sticklers for balance and still can enjoy the game.

I see where this comes from, although it sounds really cheap in a lot of ways. Of course veterant players are considering the impact on high-level PvP because this actually happens often. Moreover, I'm not sure how this UMD change is supposed to be better for the rest of the community either. It's probably more detrimental to both levelling and fun (of using consummables) than anything.
I don't think veterant players are despising the newer members of the community at all, and I don't think it's right to imply that either.

Apologies for the editing time, it's a bit hellish on the phone.

[ActionReplay]

I'll only respond to the spell changes since that's all I had a hand in:

Avascular unnerfed, restoring mages to god-king status. (Despite the spell having been in a good spot before this update.) One hit is brutal; two is almost certain death. Also thousands of damage to mobs.

Avascular Mass:
Reasoning, with its nerf it was worse than Harm despite being 1-2 Circles higher. It's still capped at 10 / Caster Level for damage, seems its implied by the response here that cap was removed due to the mention of thousands of damage to mobs. This is not true. It can, at most, do 300 Damage; again this is a condition based on the Current HP of a target.

Iceberg deals IGMS tier damage in an AoE and disables.

Iceberg:
Its damage is within line of other Level 9 spells, like Burst of Glacial Wrath and even less so than Meteor Swarm with its 30d8 damage (Also in an AoE). It has save for the the crowdcontrol and a FoM will bypass it completley.

Disrupting Hand is useless (i.e. Concentration tends to hard outscale spell DCs), Sound Lance is useless (i.e. Fireball-tier damage on a single target), Finger of Agony is useless (i.e. lackluster damage and lackluster disabler in one lousy package).

I like the addition of Disrupting Hand, this is a unique spell and forces the target caster to always make a Concentration check for all their spells. It may not be so useful in late game but I see use for this in mid-game. We could potentially increase the save DC with focuses.

Sound Lance is an alternative damage source to Fireball, though it has d8 rather than d6, but not in AoE. We could add a save here to deafen the target as well or have it burst in a smaller AoE on impact.

Finger of Agony, we can boost this one.

[magistrasa]

I'm not currently active in Arelith due to a mixture of reasons, but I l've been lurking on the site despite the tragedy of my distance - and I gotta say, this update has me excited for what the server will look like when I'm finally able to make my return in a couple months. Largely because I expect everything will have settled and all the changes will be balanced once more by the time I'm back in the saddle. (I feel for the rest of you who have to push through the growing pains.)

It feels like this update was geared largely towards encouraging build diversity. Discipline and UMD are no longer a requirement to survive on the server, weapon feats taken in groups seems like a fantastic way to open up more situational options, and commoners are added to give players more agency in what directions they can take their RP.

That last point especially is something I feel strongly about, due to a specific but significant concern on my part. I feel like slave roleplay has always suffered from the fact that after a certain point, there's no reason why a slave can't free themselves, and it absolutely affects the way people treat these powerbuilt monsters wearing a meaningless collar - if this changes the culture around slave RP, that'll be fantastic for the Underdark as a whole. How it affects the economy, however, remains to be seen. Lots of adventurers have to keep a side-hustle to keep the gold flowing, and if commoners and specialists come to overshadow their crafting enterprises...Well, I dunno what'll happen, I never really did much crafting.

It does absolutely feel like wizards have it way too good right now. They have the skill and INT to get astronomically high Lore nigh effortlessly, and with UMD and Discipline no longer so necessary, pure 30 Wizards are likely to become much more common. I don't know how wizards might be toned down fairly so that they're not so easily able to do basically whatever they want.

Moreover, Rogues are really hurt by these changes. Knockdown spam is the only way they stand a chance in most encounters, UMD was the bread and butter of the class, and their weapon feats are a big feature that is now rendered redundant by the weapon feat grouping. I'm hoping they get put high on the priority list for future buffing, because I don't know how they're going to survive when all the tools that made them resemble viability have been smacked out of the meta.

All-in-all, I have high hopes, and high excitement. I never enjoyed combat in NWN - I found the system clunky, the options narrow, and the margin of error slim and unforgiving to the inexperienced. I am, however, well aware that this isn't an opinion shared by all, and I completely sympathize with the people who feel blindsided by these dramatic changes. But I wholeheartedly believe it's going to result in change for the better.

[Subutai]

Make Rods partially craft able and allow to charge them through scrolls or direct casts- problem solved, everyone gains.

I'll be honest, you completly lost me there. I don't get what the point of the whole thing is if you do this. We'd be replacing scrolls (Craftable) 'gated' under UMD, by rods (Craftable aswell) , 'gated' under nothing ? Wh-What ?

Not saying it is better to have rods gated by the grinding process though, this'd be mostly horrific.

This is why the changes on the whole don't make any sense to me. The reason mundanes took UMD in the first place was for self-buffing wands + Mords/WoF/TS scrolls. Now, they can still use the wands for self buffing, but can't realistically use the scrolls (except arguably WoF). This creates a gigantic power gap between mundanes and casters.

To rectify this power gap, rods are being added that will, allegedly, do the same thing, and allow mundanes to use Mords/WoF/TS from an item. If they're craftable, they just become the new scrolls and it's basically equivalent to no changes (if there are enough decent ones for buffing, too, maybe people scrap UMD and have 15 points to put elsewhere, who knows). If they're not craftable, people are basically stuck circle grinding to get their rods, and we just see more issues with people grinding (or god-forbid, reset rushing) dungeons for loot just to be PvP-viable.

Honestly, the best I see this update doing is making a few builds that previously required bard/rogue dips for UMD, but not for Tumble, becoming more powerful because they don't need UMD (or Discipline), while builds that need the Tumble AC basically gain nothing (aside from potentially 15 skill points).

I really don't see a way for this to turn out that doesn't result in more powerful pure casters, more powerful high-AC builds, and less powerful low-AC builds, since they won't be able to compete with their still-mandatory rogue/bard dips for tumble.

[Peppermint]

Avascular Mass:
Reasoning, with its nerf it was worse than Harm despite being 1-2 Circles higher.

Untrue.

Avascular Mass is ranged. Harm is not.

A mage can breach negative immunity with a single action. A cleric cannot.

A mage can chain Avascular Mass with spells like Timestop, Cloudkill, and IGMS for burst. A cleric cannot.

Scenario. Our mage breaches a target and then casts Timestop -> Hellball -> Avascular -> IGMS (Hellball Lands) -> IGMS.

We'll assume 500 hit points for "average" and a CL of 27.

The target is flatfooted for most of this time. Provided our Avascular hits (quite plausible), that's an unavoidable 630 damage on average.

That's a lot. And that's ignoring a few factors, too:

- Avascular is also a disabler.
- This is not the most efficient Timestop combo. Cloudkill and Greater Ruin make it far more effective.
- Avascular scales harder against high hit point targets (e.g. Barbarians, Warlocks, Druids--and targets in PvE), and should be cast twice against these to almost quarter their hit points. Assuming two casts against a 600 hit point target, our total damage jumps to 695!

The spell was in a good place before. It was good for Spellswords and good against flatfooted targets (where touch AC becomes negligible). It is now busted.

Iceberg:
Its damage is within line of other Level 9 spells, like Burst of Glacial Wrath and even less so than Meteor Swarm with its 30d8 damage (Also in an AoE). It has save for the the crowdcontrol and a FoM will bypass it completley.

Given that Meteor Swarm does not have a zone where targets receive no save for reflex damage, Iceberg is much better. You can guarantee ~90 damage a cast while threatening probable death on a failed save (due to flatfootedness and momentum swing).

Bear in mind that mages have Greater Sanctuary and Timestop to ensure they're positioned next to their target when they begin casting. During a Timestop, retaliation is not even possible.

Moreover, bear in mind that a failed saving throw against Meteor Swarm represents a lot of damage; a failed saving throw against Iceberg represents a lot of damage and a huge shift in momentum. Removing the effect requires half a round, freeing up the mage to cast another spell (which could indeed be a Meteor Swarm). That's free damage and three seconds spent flatfooted. In a lot of scenarios, this is almost certain death. Doubly so in group play.

Allowing a reflex save for half in all cases would be a good step in the right direction.

(Edited lots because I suck at math.)

[Anomandaris]

Nerf the Svirf hammer?! Blasphamy... why don't you take the little joy my poor Svirfneblin has and just stomp all over it why don't you?!

I think the Svirf is not where it needs to be, and in light of the "whole package" you get playing the race, another multiplier on crit isn't going to lead to a massive influx of God Tier Svirfneblin taking over the UD by strong arming the Drow matrons with their light hammers of doom....

[Archnon]

Can I be the first to say that I don't really like the commoner class. It is basically a giant nerf to the economy of Arelith!

These characters will be able to craft high level things at cheaper rates than pretty much any other character. Honestly, in my opinion, this lends itself to characters/factions insuring that at least one player is sitting on a Commoner/Expert alt that they leave on and not really RPing to build up the experience. Then this character is used to fill the faction shop and the money divided out amongst the players that gather supplies.

This is the birth of a pure crafting alt system and the faction system will be used to launder the money and supplies over to main characters. Main characters will have little to no reason to craft in order to compete with the army of alts which will strip away a huge chunk of the RP associated with every character. There are those that are going to RP this character well but it is ripe with the potential for abuse. I mean, if you want crafted materials to be that easily available, sell them in PC shops.

You could try and circumvent some of this by:
1.) 1 character per faction per player.
2.) Consider it a DM gated thing to be a commoner.
3.) limit the skill points that a commoner can get, or make it an epic class only (+10 crafting skill points) if it is true that they are getting skill points assigned to the 6 crafts and not crafting points.

However, in the end, in 3 months the server will be dominated by non-rped crafting alts that churn out materials and gear. Hello cheap gear, goodbye reason to craft if you are an adventurer.


*Edited*
Yes, there will be no more svirfenblin now than there were before. The Grotto is already empty. Not to mention that I don't know of a single active Svirf that can even make those hammers anymore!

[Subutai]

Honestly, I really think that CP could use a cap. Right now, if you combine Gift of Crafting + 66 total points in Craft Weapon/Armor, that meant the max number of CP possible was 50 + 10 + 66/2 = 93 CP. Now, a commoner with Gift of Crafting will get 50 + 10 + 33 Craft Mastery + 60 from Commoner ability at 30 = 153 CP.

That's an absolutely gigantic amount of CP. 93 CP was already high, but took a huge investment, even for a Wizard, to get that high. 153 is more than 3 times higher than the default.

I think a better solution would be to cap CP, maybe separately for Commoner and for non-Commoner, rather than letting Commoners run around crafting 3x more than most people.

Maybe +20 max from Craft Mastery, and 100 CP max total?

Code: Select all

ADVENTURER:
Default: 50 CP
w/ Gift of Crafting: 60 CP
w/ 20 Craft Mastery: 70 CP
w/ Craft Mastery and Gift of Crafting: 80 CP

COMMONER:
Default: 80 CP
w/ Gift of Crafting: 90 CP
w/ 20 Craft Mastery: 100 CP
w/ Craft Mastery and Gift of Crafting: 100 CP

ETA: The tricky thing here is that by combining Craft Weapons and Craft armor into a single skill that gives +1 CP per point, it now means that for characters with the extra skillpoints, they can put 33 points into one skill for +33 CP, instead of 66 into two skills. Since the nerfs to KD will arguably make Disarm more common, melee characters will still want to max out Discipline, and since many/most of those builds are lower int/lower skill point characters, they don't really benefit. They still don't have the SP needed to invest in Crafting Mastery.

On the other hand, high int/skill point characters, wizards in particular, benefit tremendously by the fact that Discipline isn't really required for them anymore, and they now only need to invest 33 points. That means they can easily just move 33 points from Discipline to Crafting Mastery for a cool +33 CP. Combine that with +10 from Gift of Crafting, and pretty much every single wizard ends up at 93 CP.

This effectively means that we're sitting at 3 distinct tiers of CP.

Most adventurers have 50-60 CP, wizards almost all have 83-93, and all commoners have 143-153. This puts anyone but wizards and commoners in an almost-useless position, crafting-wise, since it will take them 1/3 longer than wizards to craft anything, and 3x longer to craft anything than commoners. That's without factoring in mastery rolls, which by virtue of their functionality, will extend commoner's CP much, much farther than people at 50 CP.

I understand that commoners need something to balance out their combat uselessness, but the sheer amount of CP they have access to seems like it has the potential to really shift Arelith into a commoners vs. adventurers situation, where anyone playing an adventurer is more or less barred from participating in the crafting economy due to the ability of commoners to craft so much more for so much less.

Without being able to craft much, adventurers would be essentially restricted to filling their shops selling found items, which would mean that instead of logging in to do a quick CP dump and start RPing, adventurers would have to spend vastly more time grinding, which isn't terribly conducive to RP.

That's probably on the extreme end of possibilities for what could happen, I'll grant, but I do think that 3x more CP for all commoners, and 33% more CP for all mages makes CP very cheap for some, and significantly diminishes the value for everyone else.

[Nitro]

A level 30 commoner also gets 120 points to distribute into crafts, 130 with the gift.

That's enough to max out to the absolute top high end of two crafts with some ancillary points in a third, or enough to put 30 points in four crafts and 10 in a 5th to be able to produce almost everything on the server, and every single craftable consumable.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

Good luck getting a commoner to lvl 30 as a faction alt. Unless you enjoy being a commoner pleb, you are better off making another characterrer who can level up much faster to get the other craft.

I think the whole point of rhe commoner is lower leveled characters/commoners can contribute to the crafting world (especially if they do say mark of destiny to reinforce being some casual pleb). An epic commoner would take a serious amount of effort to achieve and by no means could be some casual crafting alt any more than just making multiple alts who are actaully capable of gathering their own resources.

[Kalopsia]

Commoners would still require a lot of materials to actually craft things, and many of them would have to be collected by adventurers due to the risks involved. I'm not saying the CP numbers should not be looked at, but I think this aspect is worth mentioning too.

[JubJub]

Exactly a commoner is going to have to develop trade networks.

Most the changes seem ok to me.

I think 18 seconds of KD immune is too much, maybe put KD on a 10 second timer, but to make someone totally immune is crazy.
Loss of scrolls is going to hurt some, casters right now do seem to have a big advantage, but I am always excited when new loot is added to the game.