More magic unfriendly Enemies

[Swipht]

Rings that powerfull would get abused I think. imagine Stone body or tortoise shell with no movement penalty? But I see what your getting at..

There is a crafting recipe for Ring of freedom of movement. I believe I've met one player that had mentioned to me that he had all the components for it. I don't mean to be rude but I've only suggested an item that is already in game.

I'm not saying lets give immunities to everything out there. I chose fear because a lot of players don't use fear spells in abundance. Mostly specific npc's such as the crypts in valley road. I would never desire a player to be immune to all mind effect spells. Goblins/gnolls/ogres don't use fear. Necro, and keep also I've seen a lack of fear. However the alterinitive to that would be a higher save vs fear, and we can call it a compromise.

Lilene you must be the luckiest player out there. Best I've seen since I've gotten out of viridale is scrolls of some sort that's no use to Thud. Never 1-2 items every run. Perhaps 1 item every two weeks, but split among 3-5 players for our typical keep run, what are the odds that you'll get it?

Nezzer I totally agree. A there isn't enough miners B I don't see a progressive steps up from location to location, and gems are really rare. In short it needs to be fixed in the very least. If you don't read the huge paragraph below I wont hold it against you... Just my rant and brainstorm.

Could maybe just limit the number of buffs on a target, period. Feasibly, there's only so much magic that can be applied to a living being before things start to get muddled.

The mobs are hard enough, seriously stop trying to nerf the players who have a difficult time already. Why are we nerfing things? Seriously you're cutting out pure melee by doing this. "Oh lets run with two clerics, and a mage. Your spells run out the next person buffs the party, their spells run out the next person buff the party. We don't need the fighter with ac of a stone fortress who can't buff us." Lets limit the number of buffs and now you got "Okay what does everyone want?" The fighters "Well... I could use some more damage stuff to keep up with the casters in that respect, but I also need the defense because we got crap for gear." The caster "Great. . . You get nerfed by proxy" Next thing you know Thud will be fighting goblins again. The way to fix this isn't nerfing. . . It's bringing the crippled classes up to speed SLOWLY so you don't accidentally uber munchkin them then have to adjust down, over shoot and fine tune things. Introduce things slowly see what needs to be improved to make the class effect.

Sorry. . . Had a hour and a half of sleep today. Just realized I Went on and on.

[nezzerscape]

Gear it nice and a must to try to come close to (yet never reaching) a caster. The last straw for me was a grand adventure storming the citadel. Elandra, the damage machine she could be, spent it cowering in the corner. Yes I have read about spending feats to make on more resilient, bla bla bla, but would end up with a nerf melee toon, one that can not put out the damage and still only survive a few of the spells cast on them…

I got tired of sitting at the campfire waiting to be buffed to go do what a melee toon is meant for. I truly think that all members of a party should be useful but after level 8 I see no use for a melee based toon. Sorry I can only RP a leach for so long before calling it.

Nez

And besides when was the last time you have heard…
“I would not be caught dead in _____ with out a fighter by my side”

[Twisted-Indoctrine]

I will say the rep grind is a little too grindy. "I just took on an entire enemy fortress." - "Here's 15 rep, guy!"

"I managed to save up 10,000 gold. A small fortune, well and again more than most people ever see and the equal to the entire horde, short of that monstrous holy avenger, of Firkraag the Elder red Dragon located in Amn's back country. Now I'm donating/investing it all to the good of our cause." "Here's 480 rep, guy." "Serious? I probably could have bought a few well crafted items out of that if by some miracle I could track down unfatigued enchanters and smiths, can I have that money back?" "No.'

It works out to about 400,000 gold or 10,000 runs of the veritas banner, or 20,000 of the mosdale orc one as a randomly selected alternative. The point is it's going to net you probably more hours than there are in a year to do it this way. There's no repeatable rep quests, events are rare in some cases (Never seen an event for the Exigo syndicate in my entire time for example).

Much as I would like the game to step away from half hour buff cycles which bore the living hell out of me and are about as fun to RP as watching paint dry, if that's going to happen the loot is going to have to loosen up a bit in terms of availability - whether it's faction options or crafting options doesn't really matter.

One of the key things about making the server less magic reliant is going to be increasing the gear accessibility to sort of bridge some of the lost ground. And there's merit to it as well, if areas are made more dangerous it's only natural that they SHOULD be more rewarding, or you've simply removed any reason to go to them and things simply become repeats of safe areas let's go to argyle... let's go to argyle... let's go to argyle.

Still I won't say the problem is entirely resultant of the staff. There's nothing stopping a bunch of players from generating a group together, and covering all their bases from the get go - which is not only extremely successful generally but a lot of fun when its done right. It also exponentially increases a group's spending power if they're willing and trusting of eachother enough to freely pool and exchange resources with one another. Not that it's going to make leveling a rogue any less tedious given the five hundred million billion things immune to sneak attack between them and the next level, and it has little to do with the endless buff cycles, but still it'd be a marked improvement having a group to rely on rather than finding one by the fire all the time.

In the end I'm still for less magic (and yes, subsequently nerfing encounters that are designed with A TON of magic in mind) in an effort to stream line sit and wait "buffs, buffs, buffs, buffs, buffs, buffs, buffs, buffs... okay and we are go- ohh right, buffs buffs. Okay good to go" time spent standing around doing nothing. But there definitely has to be a middle ground, I freely admit magic can't simply be changed without changing the area designs that expect its presence - some stuff will need to be nerfed - no more like 50+ AC bad guys running around because those numbers aren't going to be reachable. Which wouldn't be a bad thing either, suspending disbelief that there's a horde of like 45 or more AC dudes with all sorts of crazy numbers and powerful weapons at their disposal just standing around in a forest waiting for adventurers to wander along and kill them gets a little hard sometimes.

As long as the balance is met in bringing down the emphasis on magic I don't perceive any problems and in fact only see life getting better for the low magic character because perhaps just maybe his or her natural AB and AC and such are more desired because so and so can no longer buff and buff and buff and buff and buff and buff and buff himself until he surpasses anything the classes literally designed for fighting can ever do because of the sheer scaling with level power of magic combined with the lack of gearing options for the low magic dudes.

[Thief Of Navarre]

Im sure my next suggestion is covering ground we have already crossed in sundren...

Making it take longer to get to the tougher higher xp yeilding mofos with no rest areas would introduce an element of risk/reward (anyone played demon souls?) not only for the melee toons but for the casters because they would have to be more frugal with their buffs and perhaps carry some utility magic instead. Necropolis is a good example of this; the enemies outside are fairly tough and resilient yet they dont hit too hard while the more squidgy magic slinging heart of the catacombs is full of heavy hitting spells and the like.

[Intrepid42]

If we're discussing ways of helping melee types...

Don't forget to consider Brew Potion costs. They have already been reduced a LOT from default NWN2, which is really really great. But cutting them back a little bit further may help fighters without replacing the routine "buff-buff" by a routine "chug-chug".

Create Wand may be similar, but I can't comment from experience.

Lothoir has already posted a handy-dandy price list, which matchs my more limited in-game experience.

http://www.sundren.org/forum/showthread.php?t=15190

About 35 to 75 stags brew cost per Level 1 potion, 300 to 550 stags for a Level 3 spell potion. The 550 stag ones tend to be the potions that come with a CL 15 or so spell effect.

Magic potion bottles cost a reasonable 6 stags from the Exigo Faction store. There are no other costs or ingredients involved other than gold and bottles. The price varies per brew attempt by a small amount based on a d20 Appraise roll (which is rather nifty).

As consumables, they have the advantage of not creating a long-term issue if you "over-shoot" the mark and make them too available.

I suggest cutting back the cost of Level 3 potions by about 25%, if you can differentiate by spell level. They would still be much more expensive than the sell price in the Exigo faction store with 6 ranks of Appraise.

To myself, Level 1 potions seem cost-effective for prudent use at the current cost.

[Lilene Jora]

Swipht. I am not the luckiest player ever. I am trying to agree with you, in a sense. I'm not talking about the Viridale. You won't get squat there. I'm saying to reliably get random drop gear that's usually weak enough in power level to be useful to someone in the viridale, you need a probably 3 level 20's to run the areas in question. It's not very rewarding.

[ThePaganKing]

My character Elric can create wands and just about any wand, but you have to be careful, some spells are inexpensive to make, some are extemely expensive -stoneskin cost 20k stags to make.

Also, you have to have at least 10 or more (if I remember) UMD to be able to use wands, not everyone can use wands.

[GholaMan]

Hi guys. I am new around here and i have yet to be able to play multiplayer for NWN2 due to issues i am having with the game. So really i have no idea what the server is like except what i have seen you guys talk about. But i have roleplayed online since middle school and i am now 25, played DnD and other table top roleplaying. And i have been a DM for 6-7 years, so what i am going to do is throw out some ideas for you guys the players and the DM's with working NWN2 to feed off of.

Pretty much the issue is the non casting players feel like they are not as usefull as their magic using counter parts. And there is a complaint about buff/grind buff/grind. I have both made and played in campains in PnP and NWN that were low magic settings. So i'll list some examples of things that woked well and other things that didn't turn out like they were planned.

A huge thing for any spellcasters is rest, in the PnP it takes 8 hours of uninterrupted rest for a human spellcaster; divine or arcane to get his spells back. It also takes spell components for almost any spell even the low level ones. These two things are very usefull for low magic settings i saw them applied in a few ways in NWN1 that could be applied here, but these are just idea's.

For rest in NWN1 in played in a low magic server called Aria, now the rest system there was VERY unforgiving like in the PnP the resting would take a while in game. It traslated to about 2-3 min of RL actual sleep time, if you got inturruped for any reason noone got their spells or class abilities and you couldn't just rest again right away it took a LONG time to be able to sleep again. I think it took 12-16 hours of GAME TIME safe place or not, to be able to rest again. Not only that but it was hard to find a safe spot to rest in, so with such unforgiving rest requirments it made spell conservation very important. So no spellcaster ever used up all their spells just on buffing since they rested only when they absolutly needed to. Rest was a comodity more valuable than gold.

So pretty much even a group of only clerics go out and party together. Each one of them is good aligned and has only buff spells prepaired. So each one uses every single buff they have and become ubertastic. Which is going to leave them with a limited ammount of healing and too much time between rests to bank their strat on buffs alone. In a regular PnP dnd session you dont get full HP back when resting in someplace safe like a tavern. Getting full HP by resting is VERY forgiving, and bieng able to rest as much as you like in a safe place is even more forgiving. Which allows clerics to prepair well more buff spells and less healing spells.

The other one i mentioned works well but i am not sure how hard it is to code. Spell components, its simple if you don't have the component you simply cannot cast the spell, even fireball takes spell components in regular DnD. The way i saw spell components implimented in NWN1 was in a dark fantasy RP server, all spellcasters had a spell component bags. It was a custom item that the casters put gold and components in so they could cast. It was actually great for RP, "Well guys i can prepair 15 spells but i can only use this really awesome useful spell once because i have already cast it 10 times and dont have the right components lets rethink our strategy".

If regular DnD rules regarding spell components and sleep were implimented i think it could benifit the server greatly. Noone gets nerfed but non casters suddenly become much more useful. This post has gotten pretty long so i am going to end this one here and start a new one regarding a couple other ideas for you guys and some things that dont really work from my experiance.

[Thief Of Navarre]

Yeah Spell components in NWN1 were a real arse ache.... it was great! ^^
Diamond dust (the component for stoneskin) is fairly common in sundren, but if these things were made hard to find it would certainly mean people dont abuse casting rights. On the Layonara PW they also had custom Eshew Materials feats to circumvent the need for components (1-3, 3-5, 5-7. Three feats in total).

Would be nice if you could apply something like this. People would be forced to use good spells that dont require a component instead of the cookie cutter crap that goes on now (fire mages using ice storm and necromancers spamming evocation spells instead of spell from their specialisation)

[Intrepid42]

The other one i mentioned works well but i am not sure how hard it is to code. Spell components, its simple if you don't have the component you simply cannot cast the spell, even fireball takes spell components in regular DnD.

Spell component costs have been added to certain strong spells. These components are represented by gold deduction. Resurrection is the most expensive. Level 9 spells are the most expensive after that, coming in at 150 gold. The costs are less for lower level spells. This should balance some of the gold gain for casters vs. melee, along with the really cheap bandaging.

This was implemented in a limited form and discussed by staff publically in March this year. Personally, I think spell components are cool.

However, we would need to consider the sheer number of enemies you fight in a computer game as opposed to a PnP session. Also, direct damage spells are less powerful in NWN2 due to everything getting max hp per hit die. As well, gold earnt per monster is less on Sundren than PnP. If implemented more fully, they should be a lot cheaper than their PnP equivalents.

[Cornuto]

Also, direct damage spells are less powerful in NWN2 due to everything getting max hp per hit die.

Most of the mobs on the server don't have anywhere near to max HP per die.

[Thief Of Navarre]

Most of the mobs on the server don't have anywhere near to max HP per die.

Some of them still have an unreachable ac... unless you happen to be a cleric of course. Divine power, go!

But yeah spell components are cool, especially if you have to hunt for them. You can imagine druids searching forests for discarded pieces of bark or pine needles - that being said it requires lots of effort adjusting loot to accomodate such a step

[Cornuto]

Some of them still have an unreachable ac... unless you happen to be a cleric of course. Divine power, go!

Still? I toned down some of the crazy AC mobs already.

[GholaMan]

I dont know how stacking buffs work in NWN2 but in normal DnD you can only recieve the best of one type of buff. I will give an example.

So someone has a gauntlet of ogre power +4 so they get a +4 ENHANCEMENT bonus to their str.

Cleric casts bulls str which also gives a +4 ENHANCMENT bonus to str. Those two numbers dont stack since they are both enhancement bonus.

So if the gauntlets were a +2 instead then they would only recive the +4 from the bulls str. Make sence? I remember in NWN 1 you would recieve the benifit from both.

I am making suggestions based off the tabletop because these are just rules to impliment that dont include nerfing. Usually nerfing is like a dragon eating its own tail a downward spiral.

I definitly understand what your saying about volume of enimies i think a balance could be made though, making spell components to hard to come by leads to weakened spellcasters. Making it too easy to accuire doesn't change anything and the spell spamming continues.

I havn't seen that many people who play clerics or wizards and such post on this topic. I wonder what all the people who play them think about all this.

[Dragor]

Nwn2 already handles enhancement bonuses as such