Arelith

Hello! I wanted to talk a little about about a recent addition in the form of negative weight items, namely.

Bead of Gravity (-10lbs, 1x1)
Orb of Gravity (-50lbs, 2x2)
Sphere of Gravity (-120lbs, 3x3)

Honestly these items are suprising, I like most people assumed they were too good to be true and they'd either be nerfed heavily or removed (They came out on April first).

They appear to be here to stay and so, I wanted to make a post about them.

Ultimately I and many other people love them, they allow people with lower strength to play the game without constantly wrestling with storage to keep their weight to a minimum and generally, improve the game. They're a huge quality of life benefit, but they have caused some issues.

Namely, Crippling strike and Negative Energy Burst both are significantly weakened by the existence of these items. It's entirely possible to mitigate both the feat and the spell nearly if not entirely by reducing your weight to below 33lbs. It was technically possible before if you carried basically nothing, but functionally impossible given how consumable driven Arelith is.

Now we're seeing people carrying several of these orbs and falling far into the hundreds of lbs into the minuses and making the feat and spell very niche in their use.

That seems to be it really, I'm not sure if there's any other angles to look at with these orbs right now. They're a great addition but it feels like there was a slight oversight with regards to their balance. Thank you!

I think it's worth remembering that STR reduction is also DPS reduction (casters aside), which I wouldn't consider "niche" by any stretch. If you've been using these abilities solely to punish pack mules in PvP, then yeah you're going to have a harder time successfully doing so. But I'm tempted to think that's overall going to be a change for the better.

That said, I do think the weight reduction on these items is a bit much. But that might be because I've never played a character with more than 9 STR and I just want future generations to suffer in the same way I have suffered.

magistrasa wrote: Thu Apr 06, 2023 5:52 pm

I think it's worth remembering that STR reduction is also DPS reduction (casters aside), which I wouldn't consider "niche" by any stretch. If you've been using these abilities solely to punish pack mules in PvP, then yeah you're going to have a harder time successfully doing so. But I'm tempted to think that's overall going to be a change for the better.

That said, I do think the weight reduction on these items is a bit much. But that might be because I've never played a character with more than 9 STR and I just want future generations to suffer in the same way I have suffered.

That's the main purpose of crippling strike. This makes it a bit of a wasted feat. Best case scenario you lower someone's ab a little bit (damage negligible) and they drink a free pot to fix it, assuming they were for some reason not already immune or just choose to ignore it.

On the plus side, rogues are very feat starved and it's just one less feat they need.

Removing encumberance from a roleplaying perspective seems weird to me, and yet another step into themepark mmo territory. I can't help but wonder if a dev is playing a low str char. Seems a very odd and poorly thought out change, longterm. A year or two from now everyone is going to be carrying around these orbs to carry whatever they want and ignore their character sheet.

Why don't we just allow bags of holding at this point?

With so much item bloat that even storage is redundant, I'm sorry, but this is simply an outstanding change.

IIRC bag of holdings caused some serious lag issues on a server with as many people as Arelith.

I don't think the orbs push into MMO themepark territory because of exactly what you're arguing: bags of holding exist in lore.

On the OP's point, I certainly agree. It makes crippling strike incredibly niche as it solely now exists to combat STR characters. However, I think a perspective of imagining this feat never existed until the orbs came out would do us justice.

The feat is still spectacular: forces a certain buff, forces a loss in action ecomony to remove, and still is great in PvE.

The fact the orbs can't be stacked and take up inventory space feels like enough drawback. Though, I do think the orbs should each be increased by 1x1.

These orbs are awesome.

Neb and crip strike are fine. Lowering strength to get move speed reduction was always a niche side effect at best. It was always about the damage (less so) and -ab (moreso) against str build.

How were these not a practical joke?

I am perfectly fine with crippling strike and NEB losing some of their potency. They're both still pretty potent in the right hands, as they can reduce AB and damage significantly, and there are a plethora of other ways to reduce movement speed that don't rely on either tactic, so they're not exactly the go-to.

And if you're wondering, FoM is actually one higher on the breach list than NEP is, so you'll probably end up having to breach FoM while or when you breach NEP anyways. Just use some acid bombs or something.

Whosdis wrote: Thu Apr 06, 2023 7:24 pm

With so much item bloat that even storage is redundant, I'm sorry, but this is simply an outstanding change.

This, this indeed.

Mattamue wrote: Thu Apr 06, 2023 7:37 pm

Lowering strength to get move speed reduction was always a niche side effect at best. It was always about the damage (less so) and -ab (moreso) against str build.

If we're talking about base game NWN? Sure.

That hasn't been true on Arelith for a long while now. Inventory/carry bloat has been established for quite some time and catching people without NEProtection for slows, specifically dexers and arcane casters, has been an established tactic for as long as I can remember even pre 1.69

A. I really like the items as a server friendly version of bags of holding.
B. I can understand the value of the tactic of dropping an enemy's strength. One of my first PC's perma-deaths on another server a decade+ ago was due in large part to this exact tactic and I considered it a smart play by the enemy.

Perhaps a compromise would be that they're unique. I dunno if that's possible to enforce per item or if they instead could apply a property to something that's already one-of-a-kind like the character widget that stores all your gift/path information.

Resident crippling strike enjoyer reporting in. If the orbs are made unique - such that you can have X of each (one of the two larger ones, 2-3 of the small ones) - then it's fine: just an extra 200 carrying capacity. People will acclimate to their new weight level, and it'll still be possible to catch someone with a lot of carry weight just the same as ever. I don't think the increased carry weight for low strength characters that Arelith gave everyone is a nerf to the strength drain abilities, because people simply settled at their new normal carrying capacity and played around it instead. I like the fact that they make it possible for a well-optimized character to be immunized against the strength drain effect through careful monitoring of their carry weight.

It's only if this allows an infinite tradeoff of 1 inventory square for between 10 and _13.5 pounds of carrying capacity that it invalidates crippling strike.

Crippling strike causing encumbrance was never the intention of the ability, and honestly gave the feat heightened power it didn't deserve/merit.

Ppl seem to forget that neb/crippling strike also lower discipline (easier time KD'ing someone) and make the target more vulnerable to iron horn.

Unpopular opinion. Make the orbs work like ioun stones. Can only have one at a time, and it can be dispelled.

Ork wrote: Fri Apr 07, 2023 1:56 am

Crippling strike causing encumbrance was never the intention of the ability, and honestly gave the feat heightened power it didn't deserve/merit.

No, it was intentional. Strength determines carry capacity, and any ability that lowers strength will by intentional design lower carry capacity.

Hazard wrote: Sun Apr 09, 2023 10:08 am

Ork wrote: Fri Apr 07, 2023 1:56 am

Crippling strike causing encumbrance was never the intention of the ability, and honestly gave the feat heightened power it didn't deserve/merit.

No, it was intentional. Strength determines carry capacity, and any ability that lowers strength will by intentional design lower carry capacity.

Then why did Arelith increase the vanilla carry capacity defaults? It seems clear to me that Devs understand it's nigh impossible to play any PC with 8 Strength of below solely on what you can carry, it's just needlessly oppressive.

Then why did Arelith increase the vanilla carry capacity defaults? It seems clear to me that Devs understand it's nigh impossible to play any PC with 8 Strength of below solely on what you can carry, it's just needlessly oppressive.

IIRC.
This was before we had citizen storage, so you had to carry everything.

Hazard wrote: Sun Apr 09, 2023 10:08 am

Ork wrote: Fri Apr 07, 2023 1:56 am

Crippling strike causing encumbrance was never the intention of the ability, and honestly gave the feat heightened power it didn't deserve/merit.

No, it was intentional. Strength determines carry capacity, and any ability that lowers strength will by intentional design lower carry capacity.

Crippling strike has not changed from vanilla since Arelith was created. The use of crippling strike in vanilla was never intended to cause encumbrance. The feat stands alone from that functionality as vanilla. Any change that reduces carrying capacity isn't harming the intention of crippling strike since it was never intended to have that ability.

Ork wrote: Sun Apr 09, 2023 2:01 pm

Hazard wrote: Sun Apr 09, 2023 10:08 am

Ork wrote: Fri Apr 07, 2023 1:56 am

Crippling strike causing encumbrance was never the intention of the ability, and honestly gave the feat heightened power it didn't deserve/merit.

No, it was intentional. Strength determines carry capacity, and any ability that lowers strength will by intentional design lower carry capacity.

Crippling strike has not changed from vanilla since Arelith was created. The use of crippling strike in vanilla was never intended to cause encumbrance. The feat stands alone from that functionality as vanilla. Any change that reduces carrying capacity isn't harming the intention of crippling strike since it was never intended to have that ability.

In Arelith even tho the feat was never reworked from vanilla, it's still balanced around what it has been doing in Arelith, and things who have access to this feat were balanced around what it does in Arelith, so saying that it was never the intention of the ability, when it's what this ability has been known for in Arelith in the past two decades almost is a weird way to see things imo.

It is a fact that this ability was greatly nerfed by these new items, for better or worse. The question we should really ask is how powerful and nerf-worthy this ability has been, and given the fact it's still vanilla after almost two decades, imma go and say it didnt need this nerf and could use a bit of a tweak in compensation or it's effectively meaningless against anything not strength based.

Actually, all of the above also applies to NEB which is also entirely vanilla in this regard.