Irongron, devs: we get rebuilds, but what is next?

[Adam Antium]

Irongron. Dev team.

We all just got rebuilds because the server is changing drastically and going to change more in the new future.


Can you please just tell us the gist of some of the major mechanical changes we might want to be aware of with our one and only free rebuild, so we don't waste this and then ragequit your server in a month when another batch of changes comes out and we're not allowed to do anything to take part in them?


We've had some things teased but we need more info. What is happening to social skills? What is happening to balance mages, if anything? Are more major changes to classes or feats coming relatively soon? What are we doing on this Earth? What is the point of life, the universe, and everything?


Please just let us know what you're doing because this "kept in the dark until your life is turned upside down and there's nothing you can do about it" is something that makes people leave in frustration and tears. Many of our characters' stories aren't even close to being finished yet, and my interpretation of this is "you should delete and build a new character regardless of the story, or you will just suck."

The free rebuild is a remedy to that. But we need to know what we're rebuilding for... Please tell us because right now I basically am not logging in out of fear that I'll rebuild and then two days later changes I'll need to have included in my character will be released. I'm not the only one who feels this way.

[Bunny]

Already read some folks are deleveling to 1 then putting the character on ice until changes settle

Given how freely leveling is bypassed in this platform, it would make sense to be more open about changes or more liberal with rerolls

Maybe the would needs a divine transformation challenge that could facilitate any characters reroll

[garrbear758]

That's exactly what I'm doing. Deleveling and holding off until I at least have an idea of what is coming.

[Peppermint]

I hate the jump on the frustration train--but likewise. I don't feel confident using a rebuild right now. I'll be on FFXIV in the meantime.

[Aniel]

Likewise I too am afraid of rebuilding only to be trapped with something nonfunctional.

[Nitro]

Reminder for everyone using a rebuild then putting the char on ice to level to at least 2 first. Otherwise you might lose inventory items in resets.

[ltlukoziuz]

That is no longer true, as Spyre has confirmed that Lvl 1 characters are no longer on ice. That is a thing of the past now.

To join on the conversation, Averitt is on a temporary shelve (although I releveled him fully, as I wasn't too touched considering what I went for) for a different change in the update (25% language comprehension cap), but will eventually come out.

[MalKalz]

Reminder for everyone using a rebuild then putting the char on ice to level to at least 2 first. Otherwise you might lose inventory items in resets.

Yes, this is a myth now likely caused by an old message still lingering. The message needs to be removed.

[Adam Antium]

Glad to hear, but I still can't say I'm going to log in until we get some rough notes on what to expect in terms of major changes in the near future. This isn't out of spite but out of necessity - I'm not going to re-level my character back into the epics and then go ask for another rebuild in a week if something major is released because we didn't get any notice ahead of time.

[Irongron]

Irongron. Dev team.

We all just got rebuilds because the server is changing drastically and going to change more in the new future.


Can you please just tell us the gist of some of the major mechanical changes we might want to be aware of with our one and only free rebuild, so we don't waste this and then ragequit your server in a month when another batch of changes comes out and we're not allowed to do anything to take part in them?


We've had some things teased but we need more info. What is happening to social skills? What is happening to balance mages, if anything? Are more major changes to classes or feats coming relatively soon? What are we doing on this Earth? What is the point of life, the universe, and everything?


Please just let us know what you're doing because this "kept in the dark until your life is turned upside down and there's nothing you can do about it" is something that makes people leave in frustration and tears. Many of our characters' stories aren't even close to being finished yet, and my interpretation of this is "you should delete and build a new character regardless of the story, or you will just suck."

The free rebuild is a remedy to that. But we need to know what we're rebuilding for... Please tell us because right now I basically am not logging in out of fear that I'll rebuild and then two days later changes I'll need to have included in my character will be released. I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Hi,

A lot of very reasonable questions here, but at times like this 72 hours can seem like a lifetime, and I just haven't had time to sit down and draft a very long response to this. I think if nothing else we can likely all agree there are a number of questions many will feel happier to have answers to, even if they don't agree with them.

Before getting into the nuts and bolts of the recent update, I just want to clarify what I hope to achieve by this post. We've gone through a major update which has made a number of already dissatisfied players feel even worse, and many have been very vocal as to why. I am not trying to convince anyone to change that opinion (and would be highly surprised if anything I said could), but I do want to offer some more clarity for just the reasons you are asking.

I do think my history on the forums shows I really try to answer player concerns, provide active engagement with players, and discuss and listen to their suggestions, and I have not intended to be vague with the post update discourse; for one thing I haven't had time to make one of these dreadfully long posts (which really I still haven't, there is a ton of area work and other things I'd much rather be getting on with) and also because I've (sadly) become a bit cautious of posting anything lately. I find that it is has become the norm for people to snip single, out of context, lines to labour a point or present a skewed narrative here, not just from myself, but from many people.

Forum conduct has become so depressingly agressive (or passive agressive in some cases) that as has happened more and more with updates, many players have chosen to show their support via private messages here on the forums, in game or on the Discord, rather than stick their heads above the parapet and engage publicly in these debates, or post in the associated kudos thread. If anyone looking over the forums these last few days has wondered just what has happened to the civility of the community, I can only say that out of our hundreds of active players, what ones sees here is hardly representative, though I feel just awful that so many of our players only feel comfortable expressing themselves privately.

That being said I'm not in the habit of banning people from having their say just because they think myself and the rest of the team are rubbish at our jobs, and ironically, while the support has been honestly heartwarming, it is the criticisms that are right now of the greatest use to us, for between the vitriol and veiled threats, a huge amount of what has been pointed as being flawed has been extremely helpful in showing us just where to look to next. Indeed while we had prepared a few things, and discussed the problems that would arise, it was judged best by the developers that worked on much on this to wait to see just what feedback the players would offer before taking any further concrete action.

This isn't, however a post where I want to invite yet more heated discussion about the merits of our choices (goodness knows I've already posted a lot which will be quoted and thrown back at me), and so I won't be using this post as a springboard for yet further back and forth, and will try to concentrate on toolset work, and keep of the forums for a few days aside from posting update threads. Addressing me directly as you have here will likely not work, as it's just getting too much to stay on top of. If something is truly presssing send a PM to the admin team, or if anything really explodes I'm sure one of the other staff will relay the information to me.

Anyway, let's get started shall we? I'm going to break down the update into its constituent parts, explain as best I can why we did it, what the problems going forward are, and what I roughly expect in that area in the coming days and weeks.

First off...

WEAPON GROUPS & CHANGES


Why did we do it?

I've wanted to do this for a very long time, and I think the reasons are clear to most players, who have been overwhelming supportive of this change. It allows for a lot more in-game fun, where doesn't have to ignore all but one individual weapon for the entire journey from 1-30.

Who benefits?

Almost everyone, there are no losers from this change, though Weapon Masters (and to a lesser extent monks) are disadvantaged compared to other classes due to the fact that they don't really have the same option to swap weapons around, and must instead continue to focus mainly on a single weapon (Weapon of Choice & Unarmed)

What problems has it caused (or may cause) and how will you approach them?

Whether it is adjusting existing new weapons, or introducing new ones, we're not always going to select the right stats from the start. For instance as was suggested on the forums soon after the update Sai is a better fit to Shield AC than Wakisashi. Overall though, I don't see any major mechanical issues that can't be solved by some solid forum feedback.


What can we expect in future?

There are still these last few weapons to go in, with plenty of scope to add more. If one can find a model on the NWNVault, then this is a ripe area for suggestions from our players.

Do you foresee more rebuilds being required in future in this area?

We're likely going to change some weapons stats more (such as Sai) but given most players don't need to wed themselves to a particular weapon any longer, this shouldn't require rebuilds. The exception is naturally Weapon Master. If a we adjust the stats of any weapon someone has taken Weapon of Choice in, they will be offered a full rebuild to select another, if so desired.

NEW CLASSES - COMMONER & SPECIALIST

Why did we do it?

Commoner - its already a NWN class, albeit one is unable to select as a PC. There are a lot of players who prefer that style of roleplay, and we've never said it is forbidden. On balance we felt a lot of good could come from giving people that option.

Specialist - I love the idea of this class, I admit. People are always going to 'skill dump' on Arelith, for purely practical reasons. I've always felt it disingenuous of us to ask that they roleplay that class (We're an RP server and you're not RPing your bard/rogue etc'), here they can devise their own, and take the skills they want without feel obliged to shoehorn into any roleplay. Besides the obvious it also also allows for some interesting skills, and with it concepts, such as Animal Empathy (Available for dealing with animal and magical beast summons btw), or trapping. Certainly as we move forward with more skill additions (see below) the specialist class will really come into its own.

Who benefits?

Both - New characters looking for new concepts really, it should have very little effect on existing PCs.

What problems has it caused (or may cause) and how will you approach them?

Commoner - Prior to its release we felt there was a real risk of it being used as a 'crafting alt' among some groups of players, and this was quickly isolated as a concern by our players. There has also been feedback from some quarters that it will encourage social RP. Well, as to what we do about these problems, for the first, we closely watch it for just that happening, and if so have a word with the players in question, and for the second - social RP isn't my cup of tea, but has always been welcome here. Arelith is a nice place to live for many people, and if they want to? I feel it offers a real sense of a living breathing world.

Specialist - This one was tricky. We couldn't make it too good or it would replace almost every other dip class. Many will still go rogue for the sneak attacks and other benefits, others will dip in casting classes to unlock at least some of the spells. As long as the class isn't supercharged I don't yet see it causing any problems.


What can we expect in future?

I suspect commoner will see some adjustments, and possibly different paths, while specialist very little.

Primarily though? More classes. We've already started extensive discussion on a Red Wizard class, and while I think it is an awesome idea, sadly we have a really poor track record of introducing new classes and paths that didn't need a great deal of rebalancing (or outright removal), so making more is a tall order. The two I loved most of all from the past were PDK (which while not a new class for us, effectively was given we'd never used it on Arelith, and Wild Mage (because its bags of fun to play). Yet in almost all other cases I think we've all seen how bad things can get when classes go through endless periods of readjustment, so if we do anything in this area I'd hope we can develop a better means of getting it right straight out of the box. It's not a lie to say I'm feeling class fatigue right now.

Do you foresee more rebuilds being required in future in this area?

Not in the near future, but I expect commoner will be offered a full rebuild at some stage, it's really bare bones right now.

SPELL ADDITIONS

Why did we do it?

Action Replay, along with other members of the team have been enthusiastic about adding new spells from D&D. NWN only comes with a few, and new options are always fun.

Who benefits?

Well, casters, or at least those classes which receive the spell. As they make their way onto craftables and loot items, everyone should.

What problems has it caused (or may cause) and how will you approach them?

Spells can be either too powerful, or not powerful enough, but I think Action Replay has once again done an outstanding job of quickly responding to feedback, and adjusting the spells from their traditional D&D form to something more suited to NWN based upon feedback from the playerbase. The other problem is that more spells simply makes casters more powerful, which in light of the scroll/UMD change is an issue, but not because of these updates themselves.


What can we expect in future?

More spells, more adjustments to spells. There is a lot of chatter about both in the development team. There is also a lot of discussion about a better way to handle specialised spell schools.

Do you foresee more rebuilds being required in future in this area?

Not really.


So, saving the best for last....

SKILL CHANGES & SKILL ECONOMY:

Why did we do it?

(I'm specifically going to talk about lore/UMD here, as I know that is what is on most people's minds. I will touch upon other aspects afterwards - be warned, these sections will likely be longer than the previous ones in this post.)

On Arelith, and indeed elsewhere in NWN, it has been the case for some time that builds are judged in their level 30 PVP potential, rather than the journey to it, crippled by lack of spell use to counter their enemies, players were encouraged to race up to their first 'dump' level before engaging in any meaningful way with the environment. The lore change, specifically, was first devised as a means to allow players another option and I originally proposed this an alternative, not a replacement for UMD scroll use, but after much discussion was convinced, along with much of the team that it was better approached as a full replacement. There were other reasons too of course - many of which have been outlined by our players, most commonly the increased diversity of builds on offer.

As the current development team many of us badly felt we wanted Arelith to have some proper trade-offs when picking skills, to allow for a more disparate plethora of characters, and with it a richer game-world. I should state that whether it is with lore, or adjustments to skills in general our 'way' here is far from being the 'right' way, and I am in no way posting our reasons either as an invitation to refute them (because of course one easily can), or to tell people that dislike it that they are catagorically wrong - there is far too much of that.

Who benefits?

Lore/Scrolls: Level 1-6 scroll use is relatively easy, and mudane characters (who were not UMD Classes) throughout low to mid to early epic levels will be able to draw on magic tha was otherwise excluded to them, if they so choose. Lore is a skill anyone can invest in, unlike UMD, which effectively ruled out a lot of spells until one was at the optimal level and skill point build up to finally invest. Due to the PVP imbalance thereafter, however, the benefit is firmly (currently) with the casters, who in PvP no longer have to be as concerned with what their mundane foes have in their pockets.

Due to the ease with which they can invest in lore, pure mages have the extra benefit of being able to access many cleric/divine scrolls that they could not previously manage. (I am not saying this is a good thing!)

Skills Generally: Any attempt to improve skills, or add more (see below) is going to further escalate the already readily perceived issue of high Skill Point/High INT classes and characters. If we continue down this path without addressing this, then there will be a huge advantage to those individuals who simply have the points to spend.

What problems has it caused (or may cause) and how will you approach them?

Lore/UMD: The problems have been well explained in a number of other theads, though they rest mainly with PvP imbalance between 'end game' characters. (Though it also effects the economy). Our challenge is how to fix that balance without nerfing those casters in PvE situations. Ample supply of items to both dispel and dismiss has already been covered, and can be achieved via craftables, loot and existing, more readily accessed spells, but will primarily be approached by looking at the spells themselves.

Summons for instance, if more easily dismissed/disabled will retain much of their PvE strength, while at the same time become of considerably less use in PvP. It's not our intention to massively nerf summoned creatures if we can take this approach, and developers have already advanced plans in this area under work. EDK has been the subject of discussion for some time, and has approved changes to tone them down, not because of PvP primarily, but because they are simply too effective against even our strongest of NPC foes (who generally lack the means to get past their DR)

Elsewhere damage shields are an issue, and with both of these are team are not only only discussing this among themselves, but reaching out to members of the community for feedback. It's not the reversal that many want, but should, hopefully, help mitigate the issue of PvP imbalance caused by this cange.

Skills Generally: The main problem caused by any updates related to skills, as mentioned above, is the fact that not every class can afford to get them, but it was decided (for good reason) that we should not look at how many ranks everyone gets (something discussed relatively recently in the feedback section) until all skill changes and additions had gone through.


What can we expect in future?

Lore: As mentioned above, in the near future there will be changes to how feats and spells to remove/disable/weaken summons are treated in PvP, and possibly how easily damage shield can be breached (latter here should not be too easy)

Skills Generally:

This one is really open to discussion and suggestion, but I can touch on a few things, that I've already mentioned elsewhere.

Firstly, social skills. We intend to replace 'Persuade' with a new skill 'Leadership'. The benefits of this skill will likely chiefly relate to how henchmen behave, such as those in Darrowdeep, Gloom, and elsewhere (Intimidate, conversely, might affect the behaviour of certain NPC foes) . Further to this there has been some discussion on very minor benefits to party leadership, or politics from the new leadership skill.

With social skills more broadly (and again I'm speaking before details are finalised) we intend to introduce a 'diplomacy' skill (possibly one that isn't manually invested in), which will draw on synergy from the 3 'invested' social skills - Bluff, Leadership, and Intimidate. A simple Diplomacy check will replace many conversation options wher players must currently choose between the 3. This is a good QOL change I think ,as its rather clunky, in a PW, to divide them. Because it is more thematically suited to the class, PDK will be able to check against either for any of its current abilities which currently require ranks in itimidate - this will not be a change to the class beyond that, and should not affect any existing PDK's character.

We would also like to introduce other skills, but probably after we arrive at a way to separate skills into two groups - primary (those skills with obvious balance/gameplay benefits,such as discipline, stealth, UMD, Lore etc) and secondary skills (skills that can be fun mainly for game world stuff (appraise, social skills, crafting etc).

New skills will almost certainly fall into this second group, which will be invested from an entirely separate pool to primary. We'd love to hear suggestions as to what they could be. The guiding principle here is for secondary skills to not affect 'balance' in any meaningful way, but rather provide a means for characters to differentiate themselves from one another. There has been talk of making tracking a skill, adding a 'linguistics' to provide a further boost to language learning, or foraging skills, to increase yields when gathering resources.

What would be incredibly helpful to hear from players is just how we could handle/determine skill points between those two groups. I kind of lean towards a flatter (universal) amount of primary points, and having INT mainly benefit the secondaries, though nothing here has been determined.

Do you foresee more rebuilds being required in future in this area?

Absolutely, at some stage, though likely not soon, we're going to need to look a skill points in such a way that universal rebuilds will again be on offer, not because anyone has been nerfed (there are no plans to adjust the function of other major skills at this time) but rather so that old characters can gain the same benefits as newer ones.



Well, its been over 2 hours getting this down, and with another evening spent outside of the toolset. We've got so many new tilesets, and half-made areas that I really am extremely keen to get on with actual creation, and to leave development to those more qualified to do it. Before I sign off, a few other things:

I've read a few posts that I don't respect the players, or their opinions and feedback. I've really tried over my years here to listen, and respond, and with it, question my judgements, and I've not always done a great job. Nevertheless I think with our suggestion and feedback policy, the availabilty of our staff, and quality of our DMs we do a great deal to accomodate the community in this area. We won't ever be the 'player collective' that some have called for, where development and direction is determined by the masses, and our developers work to their instruction, for reasons I have had cause to explain before, but we will continue to listen, if approached politely.

Next; I'm out front and centre when updates happen. I take responsibilty for mistakes, and present much of what we do the community, but I do exist within a much larger team, where many have agency to pursue their own ideas, and ideas are often openly discussed. It isn't perfect, but it is fun, and I dearly want it to continue to be. Whether it is players who steer clear of toxic forum discussions, or staff that would rather not deal with what they see directed my way, I really think the rest of us can do better to give them less cause to feel that way.

I understand that some people would rather I wasn't here (and one day I won't be), but it really is not just me, for good or bad, the Arelith staff are a team, and that team is not going to be replaced. If someone is constantly frustrated by us being who we are, and doing this job, I don't want to say 'go play somewhere' else, but I can say, don't expect it to change. I'm not fond of another Arelith/Amia split, but I do know there are some highly competent people among our current detractors, and with the Arelith engine, sans the areas (I would not condone a clone of Arelith), out there ready to be used, and a NWN community that would badly like to see another quality server, we would fully support any group wishing to build something, and do our best to ensure whatever they built remained in the public eye via our means to promote it. We'd like players to stay, but are by no means scared of losing them.

Finally, I and the rest of the team have received too many messages of support these last few days to reply to, not because they're all saying 'UR update is the BEST' but because they can see the enormous strain such an atmosphere can put on the volunteer staff, and wish to offer us the motivation to continue to be engaged despite it. We've read them all, and I don't think there is anyone this side of the curtain that hasn't been given to cause to smile at seeing them. I won't reply to all (because there really isn't time) but I do want to say here, how much that has been appreciated.

It's a shame to have to say this, yet again, but it would be great if we could all remember that we're not some faceless MMO, there are real people and bonds between many here. Whatever our opinions of the server direction (and really neither is RIGHT or WRONG), we do an injustice to Arelith when we treat each other so badly. I expect there's a ton of typos in this post, but I'm just way too tired to go over an edit the thing.

Thanks for reading (those that managed to get this far).

[Adam Antium]

I read the entire thing, and this is a good post, and restores a lot of faith for me in Arelith and the team.

If you lowered the lore requirement for some of these scrolls, that would likely go a long way to easing the mind of many. What many of us have said/heard from others is not that we lament no longer using UMD for everything (in fact this lowers the immense power of the Bard that many feel was unbalanced in the past), but the fact that the lore requirement is so high. 80 lore requires most builds to have at least 14 INT, cast Fox's, have all the lore feats, full investment in the skill, equip several of the pieces of special lore-increasing gear (rings of lore, adamantine bracers of knowledge, etc.), and +2 lore added onto most of the rest of their slots. Just to read magic scrolls.

It's just too much.

Conversely, it's not even that difficult to get the appropriate amount of discipline for a caster (mid 60's as opposed to 80), and discipline is a skill melees ALSO have to invest in, while lore is not something casters have to invest in because if you're a caster you have several of the spells available that are usually desired in scroll form anyway. It's simply too large of an imbalance and nobody is going to be happy with RNJesus being the way forward, with trying to find highly rare, non-craftable rods instead.

Honestly it feels like 40 or 50 lore would be a far better option for 9th level scrolls. That still hurts, but it hurts in a way that is both achievable and not immediately going to mean your build is horribly gimped by reaching it. You will have to sacrifice another skill, most likely, and maybe an epic skill focus feat. If it were 50, you'd also have to use a lore item like adamantine bracers of knowledge, but that's it. You wouldn't need all your other gear to be lore-focused, wouldn't need the other two lore feats (skill focus and courteous magocracy), it would be costly but still doable. Just like discipline.



That said, ActionReplay does deserve credit - they almost immediately fixed Avascular Mass again to give it a save regarding the damage it does. I don't know why the save was even removed to begin with but the change came pretty quickly and I'm glad about that, and the iceberg change.


I personally play a (slightly non-optimal) bard. I'm not nearly as heavily affected by these changes as others. I haven't been upset by these changes because I'm now gimped (although I do lose a /little/ bit of functionality, but I can craft my own wands including dismissal, which has its own utility despite not being nearly as good as WoF in most situations), but because it was such an earth-shattering change along with other changes that seem a bit unfair (again, relying on grinding and RNG to try and find items to counteract casters, who do not have any such requirement but merely have class abilities that the rest of us are trying to survive when they fight us), it just seemed like building half a ship and setting it out to sail while promising that the rest of the ship would be added later on, and saying that the ship will only take on a little bit of water in the meantime, but still be mostly fine by the time the other half of the ship is riveted on.

So it was concerning. And frustrating. Several characters and players I play with are distraught and several players have left. For my own self-concern, what was originally a nearly-impossible fight with casters is now completely impossible, not that it wasn't already very difficult before, and not that I was ever built to counter casters in the first place. But there's really just nothing we can do now, and it feels like /something/ to help mundanes out (like lowering summon will saves and SR, so that dismissal wands might actually work) should've been included in the /initial/ update, rather than promised "in the future, probably."


So I'm glad everybody's doing mostly fine and receiving encouragement when needed, but maybe some features of this update need to be revisited (specifically the amount of lore needed!) and next time gigantic balance shifts occur, /something/ to help the side that was ultra-nerfed should be included at the same time. That would probably save everybody headaches and heart attacks.

[Reallylongunneededplayername]

Hey Iron,

Lot of updates are great or fine, And those who aren't you eighter work on or we get used to,
I always see Arelith as a house where I chill with my world wide friends, And sometimes the owner buys a new couch or add a lamp, And that couch might not sit perfectly, But you get used to it, The light is set a bit dimmer and it's fine.

Though I fel I've been kicked down a few times,

Often misinformation and confusion:
I'm not a native english speaker, So I do not get -every- thing and some times things go far over my head (Why I proudly build crappy builds )

Recently with the "Let's all do rebuilds afterall" after I deleted my characters. That was painfull.

I'll get over it though!


HUGE KUDO's to you though for your patience with us players.

I know I ain't easy with my "Eh, I'd still been fine with Arelith 6 years back" mentallity.

Also I am happy to see you open up a bit with what is going on behind the screens, Cause a lot of us have no idea.

"Evil skull mask DEV's plotting to ruin mah RP!"

I hope you open the door a bit more,
I see often the "test" server on. I'm not sure how it works or its function.
But maybe a good idea to invite a bunch of players before updates and play there for a day next day another group and thirth day the last and check their feed backs?

[Huschpfusch]

-- Argh, since there is a feedback-thread on secondary skills I am shoving my post here to that --

Secondary Skill Thread in feedback thread ppl, contribute, contribute!
viewtopic.php?f=37&t=25828

[Subutai]

If a we adjust the stats of any weapon someone has taken Weapon of Choice in, they will be offered a full rebuild to select another, if so desired.

Can I suggest that, as weapons are changed, full rebuilds be offered to anyone with Weapon of Choice in any weapon, who wants to switch? Right now, since practically all weapon masters use one of three or four weapons, there's very little variety when it comes to Weapon Masters. But if, say, longswords and spears were modified to suddenly become viable choices for Weapon Master, I think it would be really cool to be able to rebuild to make use of one of those weapons.

That would allow Weapon Masters as a whole to diversify more with the new changes, rather than all existing WMs staying stuck with the old weapons.

[TimeAdept]

Longsword and Spear are already viable weaponb choices. I think you might be referring to things like Light Flail, that was inexplicably changed to Small size with no other changes, making it worse in every single way than Morningstar, Warhammer, and the upcoming Heavy Mace.

[Durvayas]

Ample supply of items to both dispel and dismiss has already been covered, and can be achieved via craftables, loot and existing, more readily accessed spells, but will primarily be approached by looking at the spells themselves.

Indulge me and elaborate on this. As far as I'm aware, there are no craftables that meaningfully dispel anything. I'm afraid I have to question your definition of the term 'ample'.


Everything you've offered piecemeal so far is strictly RNG chest loot oriented, which for obvious reasons is not a fix by any means. It only ensures epics are farming lowbie dungeons to check the chests, to hit as many chests as possible in as little time as possible to fill a supply shortage (of the only things available to give mundanes a fighting chance against mages) that you've artifically created by gating mords scrolls behind a frankly absurd 80 lore, which, mathmatically, no mundane can reach without crippling their build. It punishes casual players. It punishes players with jobs, and families. It punishes people for playing mundane at all, because they are relegated to the role of cannon fodder, and completely robbed of mechanical agency in conflict against anyone with a staff.

The rods are not even close to a solution, unless you make them craftable.
Lesser breach wands, while useful for PvE, are useless in PvP. They simply don't dispel enough to make a difference before the mundane is dead.

I, like everyone else, am waiting to see a solution offered to mundanes that, pardon the french, un-F*cks them.
Literally all they need is mords, WoF, and timestop.

Timestop, less so, if you alter the spell so that nobody can take damage while its active.

They need mords as counterplay to deal with damage shields and summon SR.
They need WoF as counterplay to deal with summons just to even the playing field (since most casters can effectively summon their own WM)
They need timestop to counter timestop, otherwise they just get timestopped and nuked with zero counterplay.

The only thing we seem to have, is the witchhunter cloak for dismissals , and the spellbane shield for lesser breaches. That doesn't even approach 'ample'. (I'm not mentioning the rogue disjunction shards, because such a delve so deep into rogue renders them harmless to literally everyone, not just magi, thus you never see anyone doing it.)

So if you have something else craftable in the works, now would be a good time to let us know. You've acknowledged you screwed mundanes, but you haven't offered any meaningful solutions.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

This may be completely anecdotal, and probably said before -

but all of these updates has created deterrence to me logging in. I have a character who's power-level has dropped significantly, but also, some of the feat changes have gutted the "spirit" of his design.

And so as I'm scrambling to reconceptualize him as something adjacent via a -rebuild, I also have no idea if that new concept is also going to be valid in the coming weeks.

And second, I don't want to roll a new character in the meantime because I'm not the kind of player who can juggle a whole cast of personas. But I also have no idea how the mechanics have altered balance, power and design. I'm not the kinda guy who lives for optimization, but I just have a broader sense of uneasiness that just doesn't make me want to play.

[Skarain]

Longsword and Spear are already viable weaponb choices. I think you might be referring to things like Light Flail, that was inexplicably changed to Small size with no other changes, making it worse in every single way than Morningstar, Warhammer, and the upcoming Heavy Mace.

I would like to remind you that Light Flail is also the Racial Goblin +4 Weapon. It being Medium sized meant that Goblins could only 2H it. Goblins are a -2 STR, +2 DEX race to boot.

With the size changed to small, It should open more options for Goblin builds to utilize their racial weapon, No?

[Dalenger]

Longsword and Spear are already viable weaponb choices. I think you might be referring to things like Light Flail, that was inexplicably changed to Small size with no other changes, making it worse in every single way than Morningstar, Warhammer, and the upcoming Heavy Mace.

I would like to remind you that Light Flail is also the Racial Goblin +4 Weapon. It being Medium sized meant that Goblins could only 2H it. Goblins are a -2 STR, +2 DEX race to boot.

With the size changed to small, It should open more options for Goblin builds to utilize their racial weapon, No?

I've been in favor of this for ages. IMO it seemed like an oversight that the only racial weapon for goblins was 2h.

[Skarain]

Related to skill and skill points, is it be "mechanically possible" that once you multiclass, you gain the "profiency" to spend skill points across all your classes "profencies"/Class skills?

Or is such impossible on NWN engine?

For example, a player wanted to make a Nature Stalker Druid, with a few levels of Ranger. Once you have 3 levels in both classes, you would be able to spend skill points in Hide/Move Silently when taking a Druid level, having gained the "profiency" from having Ranger levels.

Currently, many roleplaying concepts "come life" only after taking their dip at high epics. If you want to make a scoundrel mercenary who steals from others (pickpocket), a Fighter/Rogue, you are unable to "gradually grow" if your build intended 4Rogue/26Fighter. You would take the 3 Rogue levels at pre-10, but after that your skills won't improve at all no matter how much you practiced until you reach level 29 or 30.

That is a long time to wait before you can play your character the way you envisioned them.

But yes, it all leans on on if the engine could handle "skill proficiencies" like that.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

Related to skill and skill points, is it be "mechanically possible" that once you multiclass, you gain the "profiency" to spend skill points across all your classes "profencies"/Class skills?

Or is such impossible on NWN engine?

For example, a player wanted to make a Nature Stalker Druid, with a few levels of Ranger. Once you have 3 levels in both classes, you would be able to spend skill points in Hide/Move Silently when taking a Druid level, having gained the "profiency" from having Ranger levels.

Currently, many roleplaying concepts "come life" only after taking their dip at high epics. If you want to make a scoundrel mercenary who steals from others (pickpocket), a Fighter/Rogue, you are unable to "gradually grow" if your build intended 4Rogue/26Fighter. You would take the 3 Rogue levels at pre-10, but after that your skills won't improve at all no matter how much you practiced until you reach level 29 or 30.

That is a long time to wait before you can play your character the way you envisioned them.

But yes, it all leans on on if the engine could handle "skill proficiencies" like that.

I'd also enjoy this immensely. "Class skills" become "character skills", and you can invest ranks freely without cross-class if you've already taken the valid class.

I resent the necessity of the late-epic dip, so anything that can lessen its necessity would be fantastic.

[Subutai]

Part of the late-epic dip comes from the need to take higher-BAB classes earlier, when at all possible. Since every class gets +1 AB/2 levels in epics, regardless of class, any class that's going to have at least 20 levels combined full AB classes will, if possible, not take any classes with less than full AB before epic. I'm not sure what a balanced solution to this would be.

Now that we have haks, would it be possible to take the highest possible AB + 5, at 30? For example, if you take a weird build like 4/10/16 Rogue/Fighter/WM, with 3 Rogue to start, then some fighter and WM, ordinarily at 30, their BAB would be +24 (+2 from 3 Rogue, +17 from Fighter/WM, then +5 from 21-30). The same build with all the rogue levels taken in epic levels would be +25 (+20 from Fighter/WM, then +5 from 21-30).

Would it be possible to set the BAB at 30 based on the 20 Fighter/WM levels, and disregard the rogue levels? That would allow people to take classes when it most makes sense for their character, and alongside the "character skills" ideas mentioned by others, could allow players to start their concept from the get-go, rather than waiting until 26 or 27.