Level 40

[Ryudo]

I've been wondering for a while now why Arelith limited the max level to 30? Is this just for balancing reasons? Is there more to it? I couldn't find any posts on this.

[flower]

Even 30 is way too many

[Queen Titania]

Balancing becomes really difficult from 31-40. In singleplayer it doesn't matter so much, or in cooperative play. But in a PW, it can certainly get difficult to tweak.

[Ryudo]

Balancing becomes really difficult from 31-40. In singleplayer it doesn't matter so much, or in cooperative play. But in a PW, it can certainly get difficult to tweak.

Thank you for the information!

[Rwby]

Yes, I mean... What challenges do you throw at a party of level 40's? Demi gods? It's immersion breaking enough everyone goes 'Training' in the Abyss. Imagine what it'd be like with level 40's running around the server.

[Ebonstar]

I played on a server way back when that did go to level 40, but it took years to get there and after level 30 xp came through the deepest most complex dungeon crawls which were changed each month by that team and by DM Events that drove a server wide story campaign that didnt count for day to day adventures.

It was alot of fun, but alot of work for both the team and those playing since it was a homebrew Pnp game moved to nwn.

I played on and off again from 04 to 07 and was only at level 20 so most of our mechanical players would say hell no to such a place

[BegoneThoth]

I doubt that. I imagine you could easily power level there if you took the time to learn it. NWN is an easy game and tools allow you to ignore most threats.


To OP, level 40 is flat busted. Basically any build can get anything they want, and stats/skills/AC/AB hit astronomical levels. For example, what if I told you, that you could gain access to a +15 weapon regardless of server in a 40 level server?

[Hunter548]

Balance isn't that much harder at 40 compared to 30. With regards to Arelith, it's probably more a question of inertia than anything. Sure, Irongron could roll out of bed tomorrow and declare we're going to be a level 40 server now rather than a level 30 server, but what would we actually gain from that?

Devs would need to go through and do some fairly stringent balance passes, too, along with designing areas for the 30-40 gap. Someone probably has to go through and make sure some builds don't get too crazy at 40 and need to be nerfed. Things like the Arelith fighter bonuses, Druid Monolith forms, Wild Mage -fate, etc, all needs to be redesigned to reflect the new level cap, etc. It's a lot of work for not much benefit.

[flower]

And the gap between level 1 and level 40 would be too big. Unless changed, the policy is that people are encouraged to roll old characters. Would you roll level 40? To begin down at level 1. The best level cap would be much lower, around 21s-24th :O

[Ebonstar]

I doubt that. I imagine you could easily power level there if you took the time to learn it. NWN is an easy game and tools allow you to ignore most threats.


To OP, level 40 is flat busted. Basically any build can get anything they want, and stats/skills/AC/AB hit astronomical levels. For example, what if I told you, that you could gain access to a +15 weapon regardless of server in a 40 level server?

it was made so that no matter how well you build or grind you could not power level there and actually the only thing i miss about that place is builds had to make sense and were enforced to do so.

[BegoneThoth]

I mean, you say that, but on this server I see people over level 25 in level 12-15 zones, saying the grinding is hard.

So I really don't put a lot of stock in people saying the game is hard, no matter the server.

[Tourmaline]

The two things that make this game "hard" in PVE are lack of knowledge and lack of time.

Lack of knowledge just takes persistence.. Once you know what weapons and spells work and what don't and once you know what enemies are going to be in an area the game gets much easier. Things never change and can be quickly figured out once they do, so once you beat a dungeon you can repeat endlessly.

Unfortunately for new players most of this is not at all intuitive so the game does indeed seem hard even for people who've writted their way up into the 20s, which isn't that hard to do.

Lack of time, unfortunately, only increases with age for most of us, which makes the amount of busywork in the game to slow you down vs. the amount of enjoyment you get a very fragile equation. I think we are at a pretty good place where everyone can get to 20 with a fair amount of effort and time and reaching 30 is not unreasonable even for players who can't make this a full time job. I would be very concerned if 40 was opened up but it took a long time to reach since that would create a godlike tier of players that many of us couldn't hope to compete with.

[flower]

Another aspect is that levels 20+- can coop with higher levels and mid levels can easily coop with early 20s in the content. If level cap was 40, it would make larger gap between mid levels and high levels in content aspect of game (good luck surviving with level 20th in a thing designed for late 30s...).

Quite contrary lower level cap would reduce the gap between characters allowing even lower levels to get big impact (in pvp battles, in quests containing top npcs and alike).

But to lower cap is near impossible so.

[Rwby]

A lower cap is easy.
You just set the level up cap to 25.
The only issue is everyone clinging to their level 25+ characters and not wanting to roll them for a while, but as time passed the higher levels would slowly fade away.

[StrykerMontgomery]

A lower cap is easy.
You just set the level up cap to 25.
The only issue is everyone clinging to their level 25+ characters and not wanting to roll them for a while, but as time passed the higher levels would slowly fade away.

This was more a balancing concern like saves and ab and ac and custom content created for certain classes. Both player and environment content migjt need a major overhaul.

That being said, if your suggestion bring fruit,let me reach lvl 30 first lol. I been on and off arelith many times and have only lost characters to time not rolling. I would never roll lol (still hsve not reached epic

[Hellscr3am]

Lack of time, unfortunately, only increases with age for most of us, which makes the amount of busywork in the game to slow you down vs. the amount of enjoyment you get a very fragile equation. I think we are at a pretty good place where everyone can get to 20 with a fair amount of effort and time and reaching 30 is not unreasonable even for players who can't make this a full time job. I would be very concerned if 40 was opened up but it took a long time to reach since that would create a godlike tier of players that many of us couldn't hope to compete with.

Totally agree with you. I would simply add that even when you reach lvl 30. You have ALOT of effort to put into getting appropriate gear for your level.

[Durvayas]

40 is far too high a level for any degree of balance.

You could build a fighter/WM/rog with 2000HP that has 50+AB, which would be more than enough to hit anyone on arelith. And you could do so while having DR against every element, THEN have a UMD high enough to use ALL items in existance, regardless of their properties. Thats to say nothing of saves, which get absurd.

If you want to even consider a level cap of 40, you need to build the entire module around it, because power scaling is just so absurd. PvE can be balanced around it, but PvP is literally impossible to balance at that level. E-dodge becomes mandatory for literally every single dex build, you have to have devestating critical available to counter absurd AC builds. Every build can have save feats, so pure casters need a DC of like 60+, and if they can reach that, literally anyone who isn't max lvl is toast when they're throwing a dozen implosions and several epic spells.

It gets very silly, very quickly.

[Sab1]

Not to mention a pure lvl 40 monk with all the SR feats would basicly be immune to spells that trigger a Sr check.

[Jagel]

Not to mention a pure lvl 40 monk with all the SR feats would basicly be immune to spells that trigger a Sr check.

And the speed ... the zoom is real.

[Sab1]

OMG a lvl 40 pure monk that is an orginal kensai, god just think of that speed.

[StrykerMontgomery]

OMG a lvl 40 pure monk that is an orginal kensai, god just think of that speed.

Just drink potion of speed and gauji plsnt as lvl 40 monk.

Original kensais are all updated kensais anyways. (My kensai has gone through three major changes).

[Capt.shadow]

Honestly anyone with the time to make a decent build Lvl 30 way to much, but the idea of a lvl 40 cap everything would be just a bit too crazy.

[ReverentBlade]

The wider the level bracket, the more difficult it is for DMs to balance events. Things that would challenge a level 40 character would crush a level 30 one. Power progression in NWN is exponential, not linear.

[The Kriv]

COULD, though, offer a level-cap to 40 with an auto-activated -2 con for every death that 31+ character receives, making them progressively weaker and weaker until their CON <= 2... then the next death would be permanent. *evil grin* ..

[msterswrdsmn]

Theres some stuff that gets a bit too powerful after level 30. Full self concealment feats, epic warding, and supersmite builds that don't need to make the sacrifices for level 30/below builds come to mind for some quick examples.