Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

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Juke The Spuke
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Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Juke The Spuke » Mon Aug 10, 2015 6:04 am

Is the reason that Weave Master cooldowns are universal based on balance or mechanical limitations?

Would it be possible to have a separate cooldown for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th & 9th level spells? In other words, you would be able to cast spells of any other level than the one you've just cast.

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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by PinataPlethora » Mon Aug 10, 2015 6:25 am

The cooldown is meant to trade the quick and powerful bursts of spells used by regular casters for endurance and longevity. If there was a separate cooldown for every level, WMs could plan out their spells so that they have an attack spell at every level, and use those to burst as effectively as a wizard.

Imagine a WM casting Mordenkainen's Disjunction, Bigby's Clenched Fist, Prismatic Spray, IGMS, Firebrand, ILMS, and Flame Arrow in the space of three and a half rounds, and then having only 30 seconds of cooldown left before starting the combo again. There would be no reason to play a normal caster anymore. (Granted, that requires Autoquicken III) Similar schemes could be devised to easily wipe out high level mobs, too.

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Mithreas
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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Mithreas » Mon Aug 10, 2015 6:47 am

Or in short:

Game balance.
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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by DestroyerOTN » Mon Aug 10, 2015 9:34 pm

I do need to ask, because I'd been working on it in all theoretical concept

What about a system that operates more off the premise of "per 3 spell levels" (1-3, 4-6, 7-9 all have their own cool downs)?

Divide the cool downs. The worst case scenario then is that someone does a 3rd level spell, a 6th, and a 9th in succession. There's not too much damage that can do when one throws it to comparison with what a proper Sorcerer/True flame can lash out in a round (Remember: Autoquicken applies to metamagic. A true flame can lash out almost 300 save-less damage per round without haste. This is just an IGMS, a lesser, and a magic missile at worst (or a bit more than 1/2 of that) at a far slower rate)

Making metamagic castings count for their actual (not effective) spell tier's cool down would bolster the balance of any spam attempts. (For example, Stoneskin and Quickened Stoneskin don't share a tier; but rather, go by the spell level at which one can use them)

For instance: I could throw Wail of the Banshee, magic missile, and lesser missile Storm all in the same go (?); but all of them would have their own cool down. The loop couldn't be repeated seamlessly, but I still have some worthwhile role in a PvP environment.

I can cook up a full spreadsheet on this, with details for quickened and non-quickened; but I'd rather have input on it before I bother.
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DrVindaloo
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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by DrVindaloo » Tue Aug 11, 2015 3:16 am

The real question is... Why would you need to do this? Weave Master casting already has a distinct advantage over normal Sorcerer casting. So much so that I hardly ever seen any news sorcs that are intending to be pure caster types.

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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Tue Aug 11, 2015 6:03 am

Relevant to examples being discussed right now, but not to the point itself:

You can cast a maximum of two spells per round in NWN. There are some quirks with metamagic in NWN in comparison to PnP. A quickened spell fires at the same time as a haste spell would.

What this means is that in NWN auto-quicken spell is just a waste of 3 epic feats- you can achieve the same objective by taking quicken spell and spending a single 7th level spell slot for a quickened haste.

While it uses a spell slot four levels higher to effectively gain the same benefit in a fight, it also saves you three epic feats. That's 3 epic spell foci, or 3 epic spells. That kind of gain is easily and without fail worth the trade-off.

You are correct that in PnP 3.0 you could use that haste attack action to cast an extra spell for three a round including a quickened spell, though- if you're playing a wizard or a travel domain cleric. In PnP, only prepared spellcasters can use metamagic on spells without it being a full-round action.
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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Lorkas » Tue Aug 11, 2015 6:46 am

For True Flame sorcerers, auto-quicken is emphatically not a waste of feats, since there are only 2 epic spells you can use, only 1 epic spell focus you can use, and you can't cast haste.

For Weave Master sorcerers it also has the additional benefit of lowering cooldowns, which is by far the biggest weakness of the class.

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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Mithreas » Wed Aug 12, 2015 12:24 pm

DrVindaloo wrote:The real question is... Why would you need to do this? Weave Master casting already has a distinct advantage over normal Sorcerer casting. So much so that I hardly ever seen any news sorcs that are intending to be pure caster types.
This. :-)
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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Cortex » Wed Aug 12, 2015 12:28 pm

Which is weird, since the vanilla sorcerer trumps over both TF and WeaveM.
:)

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Lorkas
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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Lorkas » Wed Aug 12, 2015 1:35 pm

In PvP, which is a miniscule proportion of just about anyone's playtime.

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Cortex
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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Cortex » Wed Aug 12, 2015 3:14 pm

No, not even then.

A weave master is only good early on, later on they're just buffs, nothing a normal sorcerer can't do since they have a lot of use/day spells, WITHOUT THE COOLDOWN.

TFs have bare minimum for defense and rely on gimicks like darkness spam.

Normal sorcerers are more versatile, deadlier and useful in every aspect. They only fall short on early-mid soloing.
:)

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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Lorkas » Wed Aug 12, 2015 3:31 pm

In PvM TF is still the supreme magic damage-dealer, and the WM is a limitless source of buffs. The only way that a vanilla sorc even comes close to what a WM can do when it comes to party buff maintenance (especially the ever-important and short-lived haste and mass haste) is by taking immersion-breaking rests in the middle of dangerous territory.

This doesn't even touch the kind of multiclassing possibilities that are opened up by weave master. Sorcerer rules in PvP for sure, but it falls short of TF when it comes to damage dealing and it falls short of WM when it comes to buff maintenance. There's obviously value in being able to do both things (even if you do them a little worse), but let's don't pretend like WM and TF don't have a niche, because they do.

I have played a normal sorcerer in a party with both of these types of sorcerer paths, and it definitely becomes clear why the paths exist when I have to throw slingstones during most normal encounters (while the TF is spamming their best damage spells every time) and when I have to ask the party for rest when I run out of spell slots (while the WM is still going strong, albeit more slowly).

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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Cortex » Wed Aug 12, 2015 4:32 pm

You speak of immersion breaking rest, I find them significantly more tolerable than waiting ten minutes for the WM to finish buffing the party, and then another ten minutes every time a dispel occurs.

A TF out damages the vanilla sorcerer, but he can't put himself in situations where he would be able to do his job better, whereas a vanilla sorcerer could with defensive buffs, acid sheath, summons, etc.
:)

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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by PinataPlethora » Wed Aug 12, 2015 4:40 pm

Why would you ever stand around waiting for party buffs to finish? That's just silly. Do your level 1-3s quickly, then start walking, and apply buffs as you go. Infinite Haste/Expeditious Retreat lets you overtake your party members for touch and group buffs. And if your party can't survive for a few minutes without that whole stack of level 9 buffs, you were probably going to die, anyway.

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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Cortex » Wed Aug 12, 2015 4:43 pm

If you're able to kill through everything with those minor buffs, you were going to succeed without the WM anyway.
:)

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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Wed Aug 12, 2015 4:54 pm

Cortex wrote:You speak of immersion breaking rest, I find them significantly more tolerable than waiting ten minutes for the WM to finish buffing the party, and then another ten minutes every time a dispel occurs.

A TF out damages the vanilla sorcerer, but he can't put himself in situations where he would be able to do his job better, whereas a vanilla sorcerer could with defensive buffs, acid sheath, summons, etc.
I agree with this sentiment completely. I'll go a little further to say that if you're deep in dangerous territory, and your mage- whose buffs are helping you all stay alive by improving every swing and quickening every reflex- is running out of magic, it might be a good priority to find a place to allow him to replenish it!

There is nothing immersion-breaking about securing a location and preparing- during a siege, sometimes your troops have to rest. It also adds to the story, IMO, since traditionally bonds are built during rest and meal, outside of training and warring.

I will say this- I believe a level 30 WM with Quicken and Auto-Quicken 3 has better output than a sorcerer, even just for basic buffing.

But that is definitely a long-game scenario. All the way up to Auto-quicken III, IMO the vanilla sorcerer outperforms in every way.
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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by PinataPlethora » Wed Aug 12, 2015 4:59 pm

PinataPlethora wrote:a few minutes
Cortex wrote:everything

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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Lorkas » Wed Aug 12, 2015 8:02 pm

Cortex wrote:You speak of immersion breaking rest, I find them significantly more tolerable than waiting ten minutes for the WM to finish buffing the party, and then another ten minutes every time a dispel occurs.
To each their own, I suppose. When I am with a party going through incredibly dangerous territory, where our heroes are surviving only because they are not attracting the full force of the enemies that surround them, it is absolutely not in any way okay in that scenario for someone to declare naptime.

To me it is sometimes as bad as something like Sam and Frodo breaking out their sleeping bags in Shelob's lair or on the slopes of Mount Doom. Now if there is significant RP toward finding a place to rest and we actually find a place that makes sense to rest in, that is another thing, but I have seen some seriously terrible rest decisions that were clearly made for purely mechanical reasons rather than considering the RP of the situation.

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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by JediMindTrix » Wed Aug 12, 2015 8:11 pm

I don't find 'we must search for a safe location away from the monsters' RP very entertaining after the nth time.

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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by grip » Wed Aug 12, 2015 9:03 pm

Aelryn Bloodmoon wrote:since traditionally bonds are built during rest and meal, outside of training and warring.
This is how I met my first wife/husband/partner and had our first child/dog/goldfish. Memories
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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by DrVindaloo » Wed Aug 12, 2015 11:37 pm

Buff time doesn't matter once they get Auto-Quicken. Even the first and second ones pretty much solve that issue. They really are amazing in that toolset. And yeah, playing a Sorc in the very high levels along with a WM makes you feel entirely useless. PVP isn't everything.

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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Lorkas » Thu Aug 13, 2015 3:44 am

JediMindTrix wrote:I don't find 'we must search for a safe location away from the monsters' RP very entertaining after the nth time.
Instead, sorcerers, wizards, clerics, and druids should do their best to RP the situation and when it would be appropriate or not to call for a rest.

It doesn't make sense to call for a rest n times at all (where n is a number greater than 1 on a single outing of reasonable length), but because casters throw spells around like crazy and keep themselves at negative rest, they have to choose to be more conservative with their spell usage or to start seeing beds everywhere. Some casters I have traveled with don't even RP it at all--they just plop down when there are no monsters around and the entire party has to huddle around them.

No-rest zones help a little bit in some areas but what would really help (I think) is a change in the script so that certain zones where resting does not make sense (most dungeons) spawn a group of enemies that could be a serious threat to the party's survival, if, say, someone decided to drop all of their wards by resting in that place where it doesn't make sense. Putting an actual mechanical threat (to back up the threat that should already be RPd) would make more players start to think about these things and adjust their RP accordingly.

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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Ork » Thu Aug 13, 2015 4:49 am

Resting in NWN isn't and shouldn't be considered a full 8 hour rest. In 5E (also 4E, but anything from that edition could be considered heresy) there are two types of rest: short rest and long rest. NWN's rest is most definitely a short rest. It does make sense for a party to take a break and collect itself in the middle of a dungeon, especially after a tough encounter/boss fight. In those instances, it could be considered a "rest".

Dungeons are designed with natural lulls in the action for this purpose, and makes sense. You never see a hero charging into an encounter, get mortally wounded, and then charge into another one. They rest, heal, recuperate.

I think getting frustrated with immersion breaking is kind of doing yourself a disservice. If you invent a new way to approach the issue it won't be so jarring, since it's clearly not going away.

On Weave Masters, I've seen what an efficient weave master can do, and while startlingly powerful, doesn't hold a candle to a vanilla sorcerer of equal game prowess.

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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Cortex » Thu Aug 13, 2015 7:59 am

I didn't mention PvP once, but it's nice to know you guys acknowledge vanilla sorcerer as the superior one in that regard :P
:)

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Re: Weave Master: CD per Spell Level

Post by Mithreas » Thu Aug 13, 2015 10:09 am

The classes do different things.

A traditional wizard or sorcerer is a great asset to a party during boss fights, which are typically a significant step up in difficulty from the "norm". However, they rely on the rest of the party to carry them through the grind of routine encounters. It's very much a 'team hero' role.

A weavemaster provides a solid support role that acts at a consistent level encounter to encounter, just as (say) a fighter does. However, they can't really lift their game for bosses, and can be a bit one dimensional in their threats since their spell selection is usually more buff heavy.
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