Arelith

Hey!

So I've been playing the crap out of the PDK (Valiant) class, and wanted to give my feelings on it.

Overall:

- My player experience and feel is to be both a cheerleader, a babysitter and a protector. That feeling works well, so that alone is a huge success from the designer behind it.

- The "spammable" abilities don't feel overpowered, make you do stuff in combat, but are clearly useful (aside from 1, more on that later). Balance seems right between uptime and down time of these abilities (there's one exception).

- Captain obvious: class is underpowered in solo compared to the investment, but given that's not meant to be played solo... that's a moot point.

- All in all it has been fun, I felt it was on the spot most of the time, a new way of playing, and most importantly the game design mechanics feel thematically connected to the fantasy and make you feel like you are indeed a protector, so yes, congratz!

A few suggestions / points where I feel it's not quite perfect just yet:

- Fear: takes a full turn, big cooldown (if not vanguard), effects completely negligible if not vanguard, and just barely interesting if vanguard. What's worse is that to have reliable CD you need skill investment.
- Oath of wrath: very sweet ability. The built-in taunt really makes you feel like you can save someone's butt from far away, but the high cooldown makes it so you really wait for big reasons to use it, rather than really use it when you should (eternal opportunity cost problem that all gamers know with consumables). I would advise reducing the cooldown to 2 or 1.5 turns. If you feel the side effect from path will make it overpowered, then i would advise decoupling the taunt from oath of wrath, to allow for better manipulation of the battlefield. Maybe add a taunt that has relatively low cooldown, but also only lenght a handful of rounds not a turn. Note: and no, -guard is not a replacement for a taunt, there's many configurations where -guard can't do anything for you, hence the ranged-taunt.
- Range of final stand: the "huging" range make it somewhat useless in a group config, or to help someone not hugging you when they most need it, by the time you get closer, and take your round casting, the guy has a fair chance of dieing. Would advise bumping large area to colossal. I'm speaking from the perspective of a valiant. Now of course a colossal one round immobilize from a vanguard can be very strong, but then again vanguards seem (on paper, haven't tested) to have the short end of the stick. Buffs last from mob to mob, debuffs die with the mob, so i just don't see the vanguards being competitive aside from bossfight scenario, which is super niche.... so bumping final stand's area wouldn't be a problem for vanguards, and kill two birds with one stone (or contribute to).
- Last but not least: scaling. I fear scaling to be pretty meh, as a valiant at least. While for most things you can do it will shift to "awesome boost!" to "decent boost!", i feel final stand is the biggest offender. The scaling of it, even more as a valiant, is really bad. I would advise an overhaul of how the heal and/or the regen is calculated. Maybe the regen could use character level (as you're already 10 pdk to get to it), for the heal, % health means that it gets more and more negligible for high con/HD characters, I would shift that to a flat value (=1d8 per missing xxx life (10?15?20?)).

Here you go! Congratz again on the PDK, when it first came out i was like "urgh... sounds boring", but played in duo/group it's very much fun!

Cheers, hope that helped.

PDK seems like a tricky class to rebalance - making sure that it is relevant at 30 without being overpowered at 13 being the core issue.

That said, I do think Last Stand could use a scaling tweak! Currently, 1d8/level + 1d8/5% missing health caps out at 29d8 (assuming it's timed perfectly), 130 HP on average, or 195 to the PDK's ward. This is extremely powerful at level 15 when that's basically a full heal, but falls off sharply as levels increase. I could see an argument for a change to (spitballing) 2% to 4% max HP/PDK level + 1d8/missing 5% health, which I think would provide a healing baseline that stays relevant regardless of level.

Regarding Last Stand range, I'm divided. On the one hand, group combat in NWN can get pretty hectic and pathing is still not NWN's strong point, making getting in range (and staying in range for the round it takes Last Stand to activate) kinda tricky. On the other, just increasing the AoE might be too much of a buff. Maybe increase the AoE, but cap the number of people who can be healed? Could be a hard cap or scaling cap, but should prioritize party members with lowest HP %.

For changes to other PDK abilities, what I'd love to see is feats that improve or alter them, similar to a Bard's lasting inspiration. This would allow PDK abilities to continue to improve beyond 10 class levels, while requiring further investment so that's it's not just a straight buff. I'll try and pop some ideas for PDK feats in here once I've had some time to brainstorm!

It solos very nicely when you do rogue 4 (or bard) knight 10 blackgaurd 16

malcolm_mountainslayer wrote: Thu Apr 23, 2020 5:18 pm It solos very nicely when you do rogue 4 (or bard) knight 10 blackgaurd 16

Very true, I'm doing that currently.

ive been playing a 4 rogue/10 pdk protector/ 16 cot.

Loving it so far and as you say the feeling you get from the class, as you support a party, is really great.

The fear skill is the most negligible by far. A small change increasing its duration would make it slighty better IMO, to two turns for example.

As PDK protector, the inspire courage with the equivalent of restoration for everyone around you every 1.5 minutes is kinda OP, and i love it.

I think if anything were to change about PDK;

I'd like to see them take what currently exists tripartite, and make it unified. The three separate paths are ranked, in my opinion, as Vanguard, Valiant, and Protector.

I don't mean disrespect to the designer; but Vanguard is the clear winner, Valiant is situational alright, and Protector is not great (its nice but doesn't stand alone). I think if they just took some of the pros out of all of them it'd be easier to balance / tweak later.



The above are the current divisions.

Unified PDK Idea:
Heroic Shield: Works exactly as it does currently.

Rallying Cry: Works as Valiant. +3 AB / DMG based on Charisma but at least 1 AB, 1 DMG, +2 extra dmg for ward. Cooldown should begin at 3 Turns at 1, 2 turns at 4, 1.5 turns at 6.

Inspire Courage: Works like Protector on Ward; ie your ward gets malus removed like a resto spell - but only your ward. Saves bonus should last 1 turn a level, to a maximum of 10 turns (10 minutes).

Fear: Should work as Vanguard. Cooldown should go to to 2 turns at level 6

Oath of Wrath: As valiant.

Final Stand: I think it should be a combination between Valiant / Protector. Probably as Valiant, and then at level 10 it does Protector abilities too.

I think in addition to this; as its called Knight there should be some sort of bonus to those who take ride. I know Cavalier exists but it focuses specifically in mounted combat and has its own special things - but its called Knight! Maybe it could have summon mount as well IF you have the Mounted Combat feat, and maybe something else if you're both a PDK and a Cavalier.

Edit: also the "FEAR" ability incurs AOOs. Maybe give the feat a different function so it doesn't do a cast animation? Alternatively give it a badass taunt animation or something.

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As to OP:

I agree the class's abilities that are "radius based" need increased. My own fantasies about the class disregarded, I think you highlight some of the "issues". It kind of scales weird and probably is one of the things that might need scaled up.

Except for the Vanguard "final stand". That needs to go; you actually root people to the ground and force them into flatfoot. It's kind of stupid.

Would it be possible to change the Fear spellcast animation to something else? The Knight abilities are described as Exceptional, ie. Neither magical nor mundane. The spellcast animation seems *strange*.

Edit -- I did not see Cowboy had made the same point. What he said.

The taunt animation would look cool. Not sure if it's good tho because afaik it takes a full round, while casting spells is affected by haste and can take half round.

We have no plans at all to revisit this class.

As an aside it is still one of my favourites, the team making it did an excellent job, and after many years of it being a 'dead class' on Arelith I'm still thrilled to see it live.

Sorry to lock again, but I'd rather our dev team could concentrate on approved suggestions and currently live projects. We are still rather stretched right now.