Arelith

It's been around for a long time.

This is mostly out of curious to, but, I do wonder what consequences could be if it were changed.

1. If we abolished the 3 Level Rule, what would change?

2. If we altered the level 3 rule to, "you must have 2 classes with at least 3 levels in them", what would change?

3. If we increased the level 3 rule to level 4, what would change?

4. Is there another way of instilling a semblance of balance on the server by not using the level 3 rule?

5. How disruptive would it be, or difficult to monitor, if the level 3 rule was changed to "by level 20, and level 30 you must have at least 3 levels in a class"? This would allow characters to start out as 1-1-1 of three classes.

This only sprung up because of the discussions around Kensai. Arguably the most "effective" builds have a 3 level dip.

1. Wizard CL goes up by 2.

2. I'm not sure I understand this one.

3. 19/7/4

4. That will take a lot of thought.

5. I'd have no problem with requiring fulfillment of the 3 level requirement by 30, but it would be confusing and misleading for new players, who might get to level 26 or 28 only to discover that they're not allowed to take any more levels of their base class. It would certainly make for smoother leveling of multiclass concepts, but with the addition of quests, those low levels blow by quickly, so it would most likely be used to spread out skill dumps. Good in that it reduces those latency periods where your skills aren't appropriate for your level, but bad in that it's just another big fat kick in the teeth for Rogues.

new wizard build would be like 28 1/2 rogue 1 ranger

free epic feats and evasion

Any changes to the 3 Level Rule would require a lot of other balance tweaks, as many classes get benefits at 25 & 28 based on the idea that at those levels you're sacrificing some ability to multiclass.

29 druid/1 monk unkillable murderbot

reason there's a 3lvl minimum to begin with is because without it we'd all get to play super dank op cheese power builds

29druid/1monk comes to mind, also 29sorc/1pally or whatever else could break server balance

Dropping in to say that I would love to see the rule change to "at least 3 levels in all classes by level 30, and at least 3 levels in each of your first two classes before you can take a third class."

Would drastically alter early game quality of life for the better, IMO, and have neither a positive nor negative affect on skill-dumping or build-balance.

1) People start taking a single level of rogue/bard rather than three.
2) What?
3) Most builds would drop one level from their primary class. Casters no longer get a skill dip until high epic. It no longer is possible to play a 3 APR battlecleric without waiting til epics for all your fighter levels.
4) Probably, but I don't really see the point. The three level rule works well enough.
5) You'd probably see more wizards getting discipline/umd early, and clerics dipping a single level of fighter at like 9-10.

Yeah, generally I feel like this would just result in more fine-tuning of builds.

I'd be happy with #5 where you could spread out your dips if only to remove some of the "rush to 27-30 mentality". It has been brought up in the past so I'm not holding my breath but I'd love to be wrong.

The annoying thing is, even if it was made that way, melees would still benefit from dumping only past epics, otherwise they lose saves and AB. Casters lose a bit of saves. End of the day, it becomes more convinient, but doesn't change the best level order by much.

Dumping at 21-22 versus 27-28ish can make a good bit of difference as level 21 is XP wise approx. halfway to 30.

Pushing the envelope here...

what about keeping all the same, and pushing the level cap from 30 to 32.

The Kriv wrote:Pushing the envelope here...

what about keeping all the same, and pushing the level cap from 30 to 32.

Main problem is that this is accessible at level 31. It would be a pretty big buff to full caster classes, who would suddenly have 50/+20 DR for 2 to 3 minutes depending on their number of caster levels. That's a big balance shift in PvP particularly.

Dev crit is disabled isn't it ? Disable epic warding too ?

Or Enable Dev.

The level cap is best pushed down, not upward.
Balance is already dangling from a cord, or already free-falling as it is.

Iceborn wrote:The level cap is best pushed down, not upward.
Balance is already dangling from a cord, or already free-falling as it is.

Dropping the level cap would only make balance worse.

I believe the current max lvl is fine and that there's no need to change the 3 level rule either.

I agree things are probably best left as they are.

That said, to humor the question:
The 3 level rule helps ensure you're losing something by taking a dip.
Using the 29Sorc/1Pally as an example, Sorcerer's get a bonus epic feat on L29. If they take that pally dip for the saves, they're now losing an epic feat, which is actually a pretty big deal to a class that gets no bonus feats pre-epic.
There's many instances such as this, where taking that dip hurts the build in at least some way, and many of these cases are caused by the 3 level minimum.

Sometimes it's still worth it, which is good, it means builds aren't too cookie cutter(which is honestly one of my favorite things about NWN mechanics).
If the 3 level rule was removed, I suspect builds would become far more cookie cutter, because gaining that extra bonus a dip has to offer could end up costing nothing.

Additionally, many classes on the server are balanced around that 3 level rule. Pure Fighter would be even more tedious if they had to bump the last set of bonuses all the way up to L30 instead of 28.

As far as increasing the number:
It would further increase the likely hood of losing something by taking a dip, and would most likely lower the overall power cap of builds on the server, but the backlash and work that would arise wouldn't be worth the potential gain.
I could see many players leaving the server over something like that, dungeons and gear would have to be re-balanced, etc.

A couple of the above post confuse me because i thought you always had to have a minimum of 3 lvls in a class before you could pick up a new class.

You do, the post is discussing what buildsm ight look like if that was no longer a pre-requisite.

Having come from a server like this, you see a lot of 1 bard, 1 ranger, 1 rogue. Things like 25 ranger/4 fighter/1 rogue become common, 28 mage/1 ranger/1 rogue (or 2 rogue 27 mage), 24 cleric 4 fighter 2 rogue, so on, so on. 12 fighter 2 rogue 16 WM, 24 barbarian 4 fighter 2 rogue, 9 monk 2 fighter 19 assn

Some of these builds also pick up the possibility of doing rogue at level 1 for more skill points, then rogue at 27.

It'sa pretty drastic reorganizing of class balance and build ability. Would not recommend doing it purely because of the amount of upheaval and obsolesence you'd see.

Yea that's what I thought, but reading some of the post.....i'll just say I read them wrong, lol.

I like the way it is. Not a fan of the 1 levels dips anymore, which I where I came from some 7 or 8 years ago. lvl 40 at that. I've come to love how Arelith does things, min lvl 3 but in order to get some rogue or Ranger special privileges you need 4 lvls or so.

Anyways, I like it as it.

28 sorc, 1 paladin, 1 rogue