Ethrealness house rule

[Laurk]

We're not disabling the sanctuary effect at this time or likely at any time in the future. The class is working as intended.

Not according to the wiki. According to the wiki I should be able to toggle it on an off. I agree that turning off Sanctuary is not the best fix, making the kicker optional would be better. Changing the Sanctuary to something that doesn't switch agro would be even better. But if it could be toggled as per the class' description, there are times when I would use it, and times I wouldn't. If it could be toggled as it was supposed to be, it would be a non-issue.

Just curious, I get the restriction on offensive spells as part of a pacifist character, but why no defensive spells?

This isn't correct. I do use several defensive wards. I try to RP a priestess of Ilmater who gives special reverance to Ilmater's doctrine of non-violence & poverty. Granted its a bit easier in PnP as the pacisim vow (book of exhaulted deeds) gives you a constant "calmness" aura that acts like a high level sanctuary ability. If you look at the list of spells used by the "healer" class, that's where my rational for her spell list comes from.
http://dndtools.eu/classes/healer/

I do have armor, defensive gear, and while no "training" I suppose Abby woud be pretty good at a shield by now given her HP & BA which come from being high level. However, my gear is just limited by poverty vows, so I get what is donated basically. Its never been important for me to be a combat-machine cleric because I could act as healing support in ethrealness before. I should note however that I have never had any trouble playing characters like this elsewhere. This is the first time that ethrealness has ever been disabled for healers. That in combination with the broken Sanctuary effect is a pretty serious limitation on my character concept. I could continue with either one, but not both issues.

Doubtful are you still working on this, or has Lotus (or the staff in general) asked you to stop?

[Lotus]

We're not disabling the sanctuary effect at this time or likely at any time in the future. The class is working as intended.

We aren't band-aiding a class feature for one PC's ease of play. Any change will result from a discussion among the staff.

[Laurk]

Great, ill check back to see what you all decided.

[Torgar]

Lotus already said it's not getting changed. Senior staff member. Not getting changed, at all. Not happening. And I'm in complete agreement with that ruling. There are multiple ways to do exactly what you want to do without etherealness, and it's all on the cleric list. Use shield other, and then just heal yourself with targeted heals and them with untargeted mass healing. You could throw on "Stone Body" and just let the enemy attack your DR 10/adamantine with immunity to crits and sneak attack, and be pretty much safe while your front line demolishes them. You could ask the wizard/sorcerer with your group to cast "invisibility" on you. You can pound invis potions, because the amount of gold you get in those runs makes it so you can drink 6-7 of those pot's each time and be good to go. If you cant' buy them yourself, ask for the group to donate them to you for a run to make sure you don't die.

So many ways to do what you want to do without etherealness. You need to step out of the box and look at other ways your class has to do things. They are there.

[Laurk]

Torgar, are you saying you absolutly agree the class should not work as its supposed too? Because Lotus actually said:

We aren't band-aiding a class feature for one PC's ease of play. Any change will result from a discussion among the staff.

Shouldn't PrCs work as they are described? Unless im mistaken, Lotus is saying they are not going to disable the sanctuary effect. It doesn't sound like they are unwilling to fix the PrC so that it functions like its supposed too.

I don't get nearly enough "mass cures" for your shield other solution to be effective let alone efficient in a lengthy dungeon. When im needed its because someone is taking massive damage quickly. That would either kill me, or cause me to have to spend precious time curing myself so I can try to get to my companion. Not effective for anything other than maintenance healing. Its the emergency healing that makes playing a healer fun.

Stonebody is not a spell I cast for RP reasons, and unless im mistaken, id have to give up all my "heal" spells to be able to prepare enough of those to survive a dungeon. Also id move very slowley, and my companions are usually running around & spread out. Id be unable to get to my charges in time at my slow walking speed to heal them if they got into trouble.

Pounding invis potions is something I used to do until I got ethrealness. I wasn't fond of it, but knew it was a temporary solution. I use on average 20 per dungeon (once per encounter) in order to be able to heal. While people were always happy to donate more, id run out constantly, and I got tired of asking for more and more. Getting donations is a part of my PC, but "constantly" having to ask for the same thing is annoying to me and other players. It was an un-fun "band-aide" for a problem caused by a class which is NOT working as intended. Im not doing that anymore.

[Lotus]

Extended Stone Body would last you the length of any dungeon on our server even if you took your time and RP'd the whole way.

[Laurk]

Good to know, though Id still not be able to get to anyone on time to heal them. Groups are nearly always spread out, and when you need a healer, you generally need them "now."

Does "Freedom of Movement" work to negate slow movement speed?

[Lotus]

It was an un-fun "band-aide" for a problem caused by a class which is NOT working as intended.

The class is totally working as intended. Saying it isn't is an argument of semantics; where one sentence says, "You can ..." another says, "You do."

Thus, you can add a short-term protective effect to your healing spells, allowing a healed target to more easily survive the rigors of combat.

Whenever you cast a conjuration (healing) spell on an ally, you imbue the spell with a secondary effect as described below. These effects stack with each other, but not with themselves.

I could much more easily change a few words in the class description and be satisfied with the result. When I refer to disabling the sanctuary effect as a band-aid, I don't mean to say that the sanctuary effect is broken. Rather, I mean that the sanctuary "problem" is a niche case that is aggravated by a certain PC concept and would not be an issue for basically any other cleric who took the class because those clerics would actually use their spellbook, wherein the solution to all of these self-inflicted difficulties are contained.

[Lotus]

Does "Freedom of Movement" work to negate slow movement speed?

No, we've disabled that exploit here.

[Laurk]

Well given that being able to reach my party members in time to heal them is vital to playing a healer, Stone body is clearly out of the question then. I can't afford to be stuck walking when my group is spread out getting injured all over the place.

I could use my whole spell book, but then, keeping with my god's dogma and role playing my PC as "lawful" to her principals is important to me.

The Sanctuary effect also affects other support characters by taking Agro off the tank. It doesn't always just get "me" killed. Even if im invisable, that doesn't mean that the four orcs wont rush the squishy support characters instead of the healer. Ive seen this happen numerous times, and its gotten others killed a couple times. Every cure spell I use endangers my party. That's ridiculous, and it makes bringing me a liability to any group that has support characters in it.

Also, as I fail my own save 50% of the time, there have been times when the person im trying to heal dies because I can't get them another healing spell when the first one wasn't enough.

This is feedback. Im the only person currently playing a Combat Medic for a reason. The Sanctuary effect causes more problems than its worth. by far. Im not the only one saying this. Not only in terms of people posting simliar things, but in terms of the fact that no one uses this PrC dispite some amazing benifits. All of you who are saying how it works just fine and there is no problem certainly haven't rolled one up. Maybe you should. Then when you run the risk of getting the support behind you killed every time you cast a cure spell, you might understand that the class is NOT fine as is.

There are literally dozens of potential fixes for this that would fix the sanctuary issues with something just as good, but keep the class playable for those who choose (for RP reasons) to play clerics who are not combat-optamized (im not sure there are any Gods who grant both healing & trickery/darkness domains). You could use a force push, ghostly visage, stonebody, mirror image, premonition, or any number of defensive wards to mitigate damage from the "healed" for a round or two without switching Agro. The sky is the limit. The fixes would be easy to script. I could do it in five minutes.

This PrC is custom. It isn't source, so you can do anything you want without hurting source. So whats the problem with tailoring the class so its useable by ALL cleric types, even focused healers?

I get that im only one lowley individual, but im one of your core players and I add to the RP and diversity of Sundren. Im also the only one who uses this PrC. Its up to you to assign a value on that. NWN is not the thriving comunity it once was.

[Fuzziebunny]

Actually, I have a combat medic / cleric (5/15), and I don't have those issues at all with Kindra. I have no idea why you fail your save so much. Kindra has a DC 29 to her sanctuary effect and I almost never fail it. My cleric wears plain Mithrial armor with 0 enchantments on it and she still manages to solo Mossdale as well as do every other dungeon without dying or killing anyone else.

My cleric does not use stonebody either. I take one potion and that is bark skin. I guess I am just not sure why you seem to be having it so much harder. Maybe Kindra is bugged?

[Aniril_Telin]

No, Kindra is not bugged, not utilizing full class features is an rp choice not a mechanic fault. I have no intention of writing out a 'how to play a cleric' here, but it is quite doable if the player takes the time to examine what is at their disposal.

[Laurk]

I don't understand how you get so high a will save Fuzzie. Faction gear I guess? Ive got a +8 from wis, +12 base, -1 from natural leader and +4 from conviction. That's a will save of 23. My DC is also 29. That means I fail around 1 in 3 will saves when ive buffed with conviction. Closer to 50% when I dont. Next level ill get another +2, but that's still not great odds. You must have some gear to increase your will save? Even if you can get your will save to 29, that's still a 1 in 20 chance of not being able to heal your own party member.

I don't know how it hasn't been an issue for you Fuzzie when monsters agro weaker support members. That's happened to me many times. Perhaps you tend to travel with Triumvirite paladins and it doesn't matter whom agro switches too? When im with a large group of tanks, its a non-issue as well. Its the times where we have a group of squishy support and 1 or 2 tanks that we get issues. Rare at high levels, but it does happen.

I have a mithril breastplate and a +2 light shield for AC. So armor: 5, shield 3, dex -1, boots +1; AC: 18. With an 8 str I can't handle full plate, even mithril. Even when I use divine shield we're talking what, 23 AC, maybe as high as 26 with other buffs? With my build, trying to increase AC isn't really worth it, and im better off avoiding being attacked and saving those spells for healing. My spell book isn't going to be enough to make Abby a valid combatant at this point. I would have to start over from ground up and build a PC who is not physically weak and can purchase level equivalent gear, and have a RP personality that makes her able to join a faction.

I can't stress enough: I "could" build a cleric/combat medic which would make a fine tank and have few issues with collecting full agro. Ive played about every sort of PC you can in NWN at one point or another. Its not that I don't know how. I built my PC around the fact that I could heal from Ethrealness in order to maximise my healing skill & spell casting without having to worry about having a high AC. A huge part of my PC's character is that she is physically weak. Its who she is. A 5' 90lb nun with 8 str, dex & con. That path is no longer an option on Sundren if you want to be a good alighned combat medic who doesn't guzzle invis potions like a drunk. As I lack the ability to see the future, I didn't realize that ethrealness was going to be taken. So now im stuck. Either Combat Medic is fixed to do what it says it does in the wiki, or I can no longer participate in dungeons as anything other than a liability, which is about 50% of what draws me to a server.

If this thread is any indication, there is exactly 0 desire to altar the PrC in any way; Some would rather change the wiki than help me keep my PC playable. Still I don't want to jump the gun since Doubt seemed like he wanted to help. So ill wait to see what the staff decides.

[Doubtful]

There's a discussion open staff side regarding exactly what to do with the kicker effects, give it a little while for people to weigh in with opinions and ideas, then we'll see what's what.

[Laurk]

Thanks Doubtful!