State of the Server (9/24/15)

[thaelis]

Re: Magic debate, I think Torgar and me/Kit are arguing from very different perspectives. I don't engage in PvP very often. I find that in PvP whoever gets in the first shot generally wins, whether it's the Wizard with a Bigby's or the Fighter with an attack bonus that greatly exceeds the AC of a buffed Sor/Wiz.

My gripe with magic is that it isn't very useful in a party except for buffing then following along invisibly.

Evocation spells do not in any way shape or form do "solid damage". A meteor swarm does about 84 damage, 42 if they save. If you cast three of them you can kill most of the enemies in an average spawn in Whurest. Don't believe me? Go and test it yourself. Meanwhile, you damage your own party, unless of course you prepared five Energy Immunity spells.

Magic is already fine for soloing, albeit using cheesy spells bugged to give 20 AC higher than they should. Wouldn't removing the cheese from Shapeshift alone more than balance out a small boost to offensive spells?

EDIT: Sorry for derailing!! OP is awesome and of course in all respects praiseworthy! This is my final post, promise

[Elusa]

My point by point comments. I apologize in advance if I'm blunt at any point, I'm just giving my honest opinion:

1. We're moving the level cap back. Current projection is a soft 15 (monsters, RP XP) and a hard 20 (advancement quests, DM XP). Rather than delevel existing PCs, it's much easier to start with new. I feel this is fine. I'm old enough to remember when there was a hard cap at 15, and there were no issues. I will say, I'd like for 20 to be obtainable for non-power builds. Before/currently, 23 is tempting but basically unobtainable without being able to consistently grind the high level repeatable quest. There's DM exp, but I never once got enough exp from a DM to realistically reach higher than 21.

2. We're untangling snarled story threads. Moving the timeline and clearing out old PCs lets us start fresh and gives more PCs an opportunity to get involved in what's going on. Yeah, it's probably about time for this. I would hope/presume this means no re-creating old characters. I'd like to see a truly fresh start.

3. We're redoing item balance. A new cap means new item standards, and this will get rid of all of the old items we don't want running around anymore. Please remember to remove all the junk items from the loot tables. Those chain gloves.

1. Finished crafting. All recipes will be functional, all materials will be accessible through drops, nodes, and stores. Crafting will be a reliable way to keep your character competitively equipped. Nothing needs to be said, except that I hope this finally includes skills such as cooking. Really looking forward to this.

2. Class improvements. Look for further boosts to Rogues, Barbarians, and a host of prestige classes. I'll personally be keeping an eye on MoMF. It's one of the few PrCs unique to Sundren and I really, really enjoy the RP chances it gives, but it suffers in combat, especially if you lower the level cap.

3. Faction reorganization. Factions will be based around the four major cities (Sundren City, Port Avanthyr, Aquor, Sestra). Again biased by previous characters I've made, but I'm hoping druids and rangers still have a faction and ideally a store.

4. Competitive faction control points. We're developing a system that will allow factions to dynamically compete for control of certain areas. Capturing these areas will be a means to increase faction reputation and will provide access to special stores, crafting resource nodes, and even dungeons. I'm mostly hoping this doesn't create excessive PvP, but I consider this a really delicate change, because players shouldn't be discouraged from joining underplayed factions or feel forced to join a particular faction for the opposite reason.

5. Deeper dungeons. You thought killing the Goblin Chief was the end of it? Think again. Nothing needs to be said here, more content is always praise-worthy.

[Redjack]

I'm guessing Clive is/was the most powerful divine caster ever on the server.
Offensive spells were never a worry for him, he feared swords wielded by paladin's and in turn killed with a sword most of the time.
Offensive magic isn't a threat, debuffing was the most dangerous magic. But a wizard can't debuff enough before he dies under a sword.
Magic isn't over powered. Sure if you stand around and let a character buff up or cast spell after spell again you then you will die. A good adamantine weapon is the answer to any battle.

[Kaybrie]

Something that could be done to help evokers and conjurer's out without seeing a gigantic power creep (By like, doubling the damage they do) would be giving a buff to the Spell Focus feats to give +2 DC each instead of +1. This wouldn't offer a buff to hard no-save damage spells like IGMS, but it would offer 10% more consistent numbers for fireballs and a number of the lesser-used evocation spells.

In PvP every class / build has some means of mitigating evokers anyways, be it improved evasion, energy immunity, or just a burly mountain of HP, or some combination of two or even three of the aforementioned.

I do feel like the damage school in terms of /reflex save spells is a little on the weak side right now, but I can also see how over buffing it could turn into a new series of 'win button' scenario's for casters in PvP.

I'm less concerned about how good they are at grinding mobs, there are certainly better classes to contribute to/solo a dungeon run at high levels then a wizard/sorcerer focused around evocation, even with DC or dice buffs.

[Torgar]

A level 10 rogue with only 33 hp was made wrong. Means a 10 con, which is pretty much purposefully making a low HP character weaker on purpose. With an average con of 14 with gear, he'd have (33+2/lvl[20]=53) HP, which is enough to survive almost any fireball thrown at him on the low chance he fails that save. I actually don't see the downside to someone being unable to murder large mobs with low level magic. To be honest, most of the monsters on the server we all fight average around 140-200 hp per mob at the level 20 area, excluding anything in IWD content. Which, as anyone who has played level 15+ DND will tell you, is not super high HP. A caster specializing in artillery magic shouldn't be able to one shot the field with one spell. What he DOES is score a huge chunk off the enemy to start before they close the gap, thus massively shortening the fight and still overall doing more damage in the fight then the fighter does, since he's cleaning up what the caster left. There is a reason almost every spell does either 1d4/lvl or 1d6/lvl of damage, and it's specifically so that monsters and players are likely to SURVIVE being hit by one at full HP.

All I am saying is that the damaging magic is fine where it is. Creature HP isn't really that far outside of our capability for them to contribute a LOT to the fight. Enchanters and illusionists are save for nothing, so are necromancers too for the most part. Transmuters too. Basically every other school of magic is save for nothing, or save for a minimal effect. No other school of magic goes "My spell is save for half, which can still be a solid number of damage points" or even "You get no save, you take damage period." Only evokers and the conjurers, the two schools specializing in damage numbers, do this. They are doing just fine with damage.

As for the level 20 fighter being safe from a PW after two IGMS's....good. If a fighter can not soak, with gear and not even that great a CON score, an average of 150 damage and still have over 100 hp left, then he's a paper-mache of a fighter. And I mean that in PNP DND, not just on the server. Most fighters should be around upper 260's or near 300 hp as a PNP character with gear, since PNP gear is FAR superior to NWN2 gear.

But, don't fret, because with the LVL cap going back to a soft 15, power word spells will still be useful against them after a good solid nuke to the face. But I don't think spells need to be reworked so that artillery mage's can solo the content with one spell per group. Our content should encourage grouping to survive it, and I believe it does so with the HD being maximized for mobs and players.

[jarlexel]

Really looking forward to this going live, I miss real RP, plots and story.

[Kitsunestume]

With all due respect, Fuzzy, the spells to which Thealis is reffering is combat damage spells. As I understood it, Chime mostly used enchantment spells, which are unaffected by total HP.

Since all creatures use maximum HD, they have usually 40-50% more HP than they would in P&P, where each hit-die is rolled, usually resulting in 'average HP' for each monster being half of the die-size times the number of die, instead of the maximum die-roll times the number of die.

Since offensive damage spells (blast-casts) were not modified to suit, they still deal half their damage on average. Where in P&P a fireball worth 10d6 (average 33, max 60) damage has a reasonable chance of killing a level 10 rogue (10 d6 HD: average 33, max 60 + con) who failed save, it never will one-shot in NWN2 (rogue has 60+con HP).

Such is what is meant by spells in NWN2 being less effective.

Power-Words are also significantly nerved, for similar reasons (level 20 fighter laughs at your feeble 100 HP requirement for PW: Kill and PW: Petrify, even after two IGMS to the face) . Any spell not reliant on direct HP for effect, however, is generally unaffacted.

[jarlexel]

LOL Requiem

[Fuzziebunny]

I played a caster for some time. I would say that most spells are fairly balanced. My caster is a Heartwarder/Sorcerer and she can solo almost any dungon without any sort of faction gear, next to no armor and zero ability to melee. The only places she has an issue PVE wise, are places where the mobs are immune to mind effecting spells. And even in these places, I have managed a few work arounds that keep my toon from being totally useless.

The only time I would say that offensive magic is weak is PvP. Fighting other players will hurt your feelings if you are pure caster class. For the most part, faction gear and the ease of gaining scrolls and potions effectively make a DC Mage generally useless in PvP. That being said, this is an RP server and there are lots of ways to get your character's way without PVP.

[Requiem]

Guys should beef up bards, their kinda weak here.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0128.html

"...being a bard is pretty silly. You walk into dungeons and SING at people. Who could take that seriously?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ohk5Swy-04

All they really are good for is dying so important party members don't have to.

[Kitsunestume]

How feasible would it be for using the pathfinder feat progression, instead of the 3.5 progression?

Basically feat every odd, instead of feat every third.

I may well be wrong, but I'd see that it would allow for increased character breadth with a diminished power creep.

[jarlexel]

Guys should beef up bards, their kinda weak here.

[Lotus]

Is magic OP? Is it UP?

Only Lotus knows for sure.

[Doubtful]

At the risk of veering utterly off-topic...

Personally I'm of the opinion that most of the defensive and buff based magic is balanced, offensive stuff (aside from the save v death stuff) is weak as hell.

Double or even triple the damage output of spells and let the fun times roll. Maybe combine with less HP on dungeon monsters.

[thaelis]

There are indeed a few caster archetypes that are quite powerful. Buffing and Shapechanging into a Horned Devil, buffed Eldritch Knight, summoning a Death Knight and buffing, Maximised Missile Storms and Hand of Mundus class.

Claiming that spells themselves are more powerful than in D&D or Pathfinder is patently false. Spell durations for many spells are <10% of what they are in PnP. Likewise, damaging spells are about 50-60% as effective as PnP given that everything has almost double HP. It's the "Buff and forget" builds that are more powerful due to engine limitations, stacking bonuses etc