Re: 7 Thoughts From Ceremorph

[*Vandole]

CEREMORPH

So after reading all the comments for a few days, I'm going to toss out a few ideas for consideration. Please note, I'm not actually planning any of these, I'm just spitballing at this point with some ideas for balancing. And obviously no plans would ever be made to do all of these!

1. Create new martial feats and edit existing martial feats to improve them based on combined levels of melee classes.
This is actually something that's been discussed and seems to be a popular idea. It doesn't prevent the gish or the dedicated caster build from taking them, but in the hands of someone with greater combat skill they become more dangerous.

2. Adjust UMD to be a little more selective.
Every character, even dedicated casters, seems to walk around with a bundle of wands. Which gets somewhat silly when you've got epic mages casting a gerbil-ball full of cleric and druid spells, or blackguards rocking holy sword. This would be a larger project, but it would push things more towards "play your character sheet" and less "play your inventory". This would also play into making dedicated rogues and warlocks, who actually are supposed to be superior because of their ability to get extremely high scores in UMD and the warlock feat, more useful than current.

3. More UMD locking.
You've probably run into certain items that UMD can't get around. This would allow selective item tweaking to prevent UMD access of things that a character really shouldn't have (for example, evil characters using holy sword wands). Of course it would require notation on the item description of some sort.

4. Gish-busting.
And by this, I mean the practice on many other servers requiring a certain number of levels in any class (although in our case it would be via script and not nosy DMs). This would do away with the common practices of 1 shadowdancer for HiPS, 1 cleric for free feats, 1 monk for AC and so on. Scripting it would probably be a huge pain, but this would definitely be seen as a blow against power-builders.

5. Dedication bonuses.
Kind of the reverse of #4, and even something that could go hand-in-hand with it, this would dole out notable bonuses for those who build within a theme. For example, if all of your levels are within a certain archetype (all melee, all stealth, all divine) or a specific combination (arcane/stealth).

6. Diversification bonuses.
A little wackier, this would provided bonuses to those who actually make a point to go halvsies on very diverse archetypes. A character with no wider than a 60/40 split between divine and stealth, for example. A reason to go outside the comfort zone of "I need X levels to be undispallable and X DC on my avasculate to beat the Hellfire Erinyes".

7. No, your God of Home and Hearth does not support the Travel domain.
Not suggesting that we go to the "Your god is Tits McGee so your domains must be Jiggle and Bounce" extreme, but preventing certain blatant powergrab combos would not be a terrible thing and might actually lead to some diversity of builds.

Again, just ideas and nothing actually planned, but I'd love to hear feedback.

This is taken from the Woes of a Fighter Thread. These are not MY ideas, they are Ceremorph's.

I believe these are important to discuss as well and deserve feedback in their own thread.

Be nice folks! - Happy debating.

[*rapsam2003]

"Gish-busting" is probably more accurately called "increasing cost of powerbuilding". A pure gish is really just a PC who uses arcane magic and melee attacks. Prime example is the Eldritch Knight class.

[*rapsam2003]

A few thoughts of mine on point #4, from the thread "Balancing the Level 1 Splash":

As the rules state. If it can be made, it is acceptable.

Nothing in the rule state that there won't be changes to classes. In other words, there's nothing to say that "it can always be made".

Please don't get me wrong. If these are going to be altered to limit what people are allowed to play, these are fine examples of doing so. I'm not trying to discredit the idea at all. If it's going to happen, these are great ideas.
I just think altering classes to prevent something that isn't really that big of a deal, something that isn't even a legitimate problem, is silly.

I would that, since all of these are examples of powerbuilding, they are a problem. Choosing to add in a level of Shadowdancer purely for the concealment and no other reason? That's a powerbuild. You can come up with whatever BS reason you want besides the HIPS, but it's still a powerbuild.

There is nothing wrong with a level 1 dip, but doing so you accept both the benefits and drawbacks, you shouldn't complain it still has weaknesses.

The current problem is, there are almost no drawbacks at this point. There's no penalty accrued for a single class dip. Should there be? No, but neither should the benefits be so high as to give an unfair advantage. For an example of unfair advanateg, refer to this post: http://z13.invisionfree.com/nwn2planesc ... p=22796456

Two: Its limiting the capability of melee even more while theres public outcry they cant do more.

This can be fixed in other, much better ways. Such as adding Melee-only feats.

Trying to add build rules to try to remove some cases of powerbuilding just doesn't work, it merely changes the powerbuilds slightly, while non-powerbuilds get affected about as much, leaving the exact same situation as before, just with a whole bunch of headaches.

And a powerbuild has to take 3 levels instead of 1, that actually means there's more cost to a powerbuild than before. You can NEVER completely remove powerbuilds, but you can make the cost of a powerbuild higher. If you make the cost higher, it tends to have the consequence of lower power than before. It's also a lot easier to justify, in terms of RP, taking 3 levels of a class than taking 1.

@Ceremorph: Is there a thread where you posted your 7 points from this post? http://z13.invisionfree.com/nwn2planesc ... p=22796203 Because, as a sidenote, this topic seems to be a discussion of point #4.

More thoughts here: http://z13.invisionfree.com/nwn2planesc ... p=22796582 and http://z13.invisionfree.com/nwn2planesc ... p=22796598 and http://z13.invisionfree.com/nwn2planesc ... p=22796601

[*Sinlinara]

7. No, your God of Home and Hearth does not support the Travel domain.
Not suggesting that we go to the "Your god is Tits McGee so your domains must be Jiggle and Bounce" extreme, but preventing certain blatant powergrab combos would not be a terrible thing and might actually lead to some diversity of builds.

I don't really have much to say about anything else, mostly because I'm pretty much in agreement. But I think this might be slightly problematic in as much as we currently only have so many deities to select from which leads to people selecting ones that are similar to one that their character truly favors. However, the issue then becomes "Well I want to be a Favored Soul/Cleric and this deity matches the Favored Weapon for my actual deity but none of these domains are right. There is one deity that matches it closer, but it's a different alignment than me and my real deity so I can't be a Cleric with it."

In general I think this idea is good on paper but unless I've misunderstood and we actually are able to add more deities to the list of ones that we are able to be select from... This one might end up being a toss unless we're going to have DM's monitor character sheets and poke every cleric to ask them what their real deity is.

[*Godolia il Magus]

CEREMORPH

So after reading all the comments for a few days, I'm going to toss out a few ideas for consideration. Please note, I'm not actually planning any of these, I'm just spitballing at this point with some ideas for balancing. And obviously no plans would ever be made to do all of these!

[b/]1. Create new martial feats and edit existing martial feats to improve them based on combined levels of melee classes.[/b]
This is actually something that's been discussed and seems to be a popular idea. It doesn't prevent the gish or the dedicated caster build from taking them, but in the hands of someone with greater combat skill they become more dangerous.

2. Adjust UMD to be a little more selective.
Every character, even dedicated casters, seems to walk around with a bundle of wands. Which gets somewhat silly when you've got epic mages casting a gerbil-ball full of cleric and druid spells, or blackguards rocking holy sword. This would be a larger project, but it would push things more towards "play your character sheet" and less "play your inventory". This would also play into making dedicated rogues and warlocks, who actually are supposed to be superior because of their ability to get extremely high scores in UMD and the warlock feat, more useful than current.

3. More UMD locking.
You've probably run into certain items that UMD can't get around. This would allow selective item tweaking to prevent UMD access of things that a character really shouldn't have (for example, evil characters using holy sword wands). Of course it would require notation on the item description of some sort.

4. Gish-busting.
And by this, I mean the practice on many other servers requiring a certain number of levels in any class (although in our case it would be via script and not nosy DMs). This would do away with the common practices of 1 shadowdancer for HiPS, 1 cleric for free feats, 1 monk for AC and so on. Scripting it would probably be a huge pain, but this would definitely be seen as a blow against power-builders.

5. Dedication bonuses.
Kind of the reverse of #4, and even something that could go hand-in-hand with it, this would dole out notable bonuses for those who build within a theme. For example, if all of your levels are within a certain archetype (all melee, all stealth, all divine) or a specific combination (arcane/stealth).

6. Diversification bonuses.
A little wackier, this would provided bonuses to those who actually make a point to go halvsies on very diverse archetypes. A character with no wider than a 60/40 split between divine and stealth, for example. A reason to go outside the comfort zone of "I need X levels to be undispallable and X DC on my avasculate to beat the Hellfire Erinyes".

7. No, your God of Home and Hearth does not support the Travel domain.
Not suggesting that we go to the "Your god is Tits McGee so your domains must be Jiggle and Bounce" extreme, but preventing certain blatant powergrab combos would not be a terrible thing and might actually lead to some diversity of builds.

Again, just ideas and nothing actually planned, but I'd love to hear feedback.

1st: it needs to be pondered well

2nd: Simply raise the DC properly on the items, so that only peculiar classes (like thief and warlock) can have full benefits.

3rd: if raising the DC alone still doesn't work, sure. (see point 2)

4th and 5th: the easiest solution - IMHO - is to not award those bonuses at level 1, if the character already has got X (total) levels of difference from that level 1, where X would be the point in which reasonably the choice has been made to illogically power up the character.

6th: If it can help, alright, but I wouldn't focus too much on it.

7th: Easily regulated by DMs' and players' both prudent judgement, no need to script anything on it

My two nickels.

[*Ceremorph]

7. No, your God of Home and Hearth does not support the Travel domain.
Not suggesting that we go to the "Your god is Tits McGee so your domains must be Jiggle and Bounce" extreme, but preventing certain blatant powergrab combos would not be a terrible thing and might actually lead to some diversity of builds.

In general I think this idea is good on paper but unless I've misunderstood and we actually are able to add more deities to the list of ones that we are able to be select from... This one might end up being a toss unless we're going to have DM's monitor character sheets and poke every cleric to ask them what their real deity is.

Actually this concept would not be deity-dependent. Instead, it would be creating certain "no-no" combinations, so for instance if you wanted the traditional Time for permahaste and premonition, your second domain would have to come from a smaller range of things that might synergize with Time. No taking contrasting domains like Good and Evil, or Healing and Destruction, or Undeath and Sun.

[*Lucadia]

QUOTE (Lucadia @ Jun 3 2016, 06:54 PM)
Two: Its limiting the capability of melee even more while theres public outcry they cant do more.

This can be fixed in other, much better ways. Such as adding Melee-only feats.

Why would you do this? You woudnt need more melee feats by keeping things as they are. We dont need reasons to further widen the gap between fighter and caster?

Why are we worried about dips on a server that dont cater to pvp? Hips is just a defense mechanic , it costs you two feats in your build and mininum dex with two maxed out skills, meaning you need 4 more points of int.

Why should there be more increased penalties for level 1 dips? Often they come at cost of exp penalties . Epic divine might takes three feats and a class dip along with allocating those stat points.


Ill point out here, theres no such thing as a "power build" either. Your given alloted amount of stat points and you pick your race. What you do with that is what the character is. Its not a power build , because the dm did not give you more stats compared to anyone else. Your on fair playing grounds.

Im all for giving bonuses to pure class like Pathfinder does. Like your favored class giving additional spell slots, hit points. skill points for staying with it.

and now what you going do if you say you have take three levels in a dip to get the benefits instead? Your going make some class combos more powerful then others while cutting out options.

We are /already/ losing options with the change to races and prcs. Not that they are not great, but when you have take up 9-13 levels in your prc to only be good in 1 of three classes we have available, it gets horridly skewed. Take a look at the succubi and then try limiting divine might to having 3 cleric levels. It hurts a lot other builds, but its not going hurt them one bit.

[*Born2BeWild]

4. Gish-busting.
And by this, I mean the practice on many other servers requiring a certain number of levels in any class (although in our case it would be via script and not nosy DMs). This would do away with the common practices of 1 shadowdancer for HiPS, 1 cleric for free feats, 1 monk for AC and so on. Scripting it would probably be a huge pain, but this would definitely be seen as a blow against power-builders.
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Just to be clear, 6 ranger 5 cleric 10 stormlord 9 ass(slayer for extra cheese) edm+zen+manyshot from ranger, this is powerbuild folks it can deal about 120 dmg with axes, it got hips, it got extend regeneration and it's under 3b20 rule.
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We got about 80 classes here and about the same amount of races, no matter how you will "increase cost of powerbuilding" we still got a room for a thousands of powerbuilds.

[*Ceremorph]

We are /already/ GAINING options with the change to races and prcs.

Fixed that for ya.

:lol: :D :lol: :D :lol:

[*Neethanial]

I'm afraid I don't understand what the issue is with power building if everyone has the option of doing it. If you don't want to, then don't. If you do want to, then do. It's beginning to seem like these lines of discussion are more about complaining that so and so can solo Carceri and it's not fair because I either don't want to make a build that can, or don't know how to.
A straight, single class wildshaper can solo the maze with impunity, and it doesn't even matter which race you use as a base. Is that power building? My "power built assassin" can't touch the maze. She can't even solo the abyss without tons of effort and lots (and lots and lots lol) of waiting around for opportunity.

Look at it from a different perspective, while we're at it.
Swashbuckler 3, int to damage in addition to str.
Evasion.
Sneak attack with spells?
Flurry, free attack, or 2 later.
Granting things like this later doesn't just hurt dip builds. It hurts people playing classes who rely on these features.

On the other hand.
Epic Divine Might. Can it be scripted so it has to be taken on a cleric level? That's reasonable.
Again, the biggest reasons for UMD cross classing is the use of specific items that everyone wants, eg. Monkey boots, pfe (Primarily for the fear immunity). Give fighters a way to head into the Abyss without running in terror every five minutes. (Admittedly, the reduced fear duration is a godsend. Thank you!!!)
Shadow Dancer. Rather than increasing which level gets you hips, why not adjust the pre reqs for the class to better reflect pnp. (5 ranks in perform, pick a dex related feat to replace combat reflexes). For most, dodge is handy, but mobility is a feat dump unless you're playing a ranged character (which need hips to effectively solo anything beyond Limbo in the first place, more often than not).

The changes to races are limiting the number of levels available to take certain classes, while offering better saves, hp, feats, etc. It's kind of a double edged sword. All in all, I approve of the changes, but I'd like this to be kept in mind if you want to increase the levels things are gained. Some of these races are using (effectively) up to 13 class levels on their own. You'd be surprised how limiting certain builds already are when you're working with 17 levels of them. You're making the feat requirements easier to get, yes. But if you up monk ac to, say, 5th, SD hips to 3, that's 8 of those 17 levels right there.

EDIT: I stand corrected. Evasion works in heavy armor. I didn't know that lol