Rangers, Paladins, Gish - those caught in between

[Seven Sons of Sin]

The recent thread over here discusses (again) the use of UMD, caster level = character level for mundane builds, the power of casters, and how some builds and classes get caught in between. yellowcateyes references that blanket-alteration of caster level/character level will only continue to leave some archetypes behind. 12345's thread arrives at the conclusion at the difficulty of creating a gish build beyond a battlebard/battlecleric.

We've talked about how paladins need a looking at, and this has been addressed. A popular idea is an expanded spellbook.

But should we have broader discussions about builds that fall into that half-caster variant? We're looking at builds that have less than 20 levels in a casting class, like many ranger and paladin builds.

What are the ways to make these gish builds not mechanically better, but more mechanically fun? Or are dispels just their eternal bane of existence? Should buffs from a ranger's spellbook be treated the same as buffs from UMD?

I hate talking about mechanics and meta, but I'm still riding the high of having played a Wild Mage, and having so much darn fun with it. I'm of the opinion of making more fun.

Is there a way of making half-casters more fun? Rangers? Paladins?

I think there's general consensus that these sort of build archetypes get caught in between, as noted in some of the linked threads above. I don't really want to talk about mechanical extremes, but ways to help out the average 75% player (those who don't want to fall behind in PvE adventuring, who can put up a fight in PvP, but aren't concerned with being extremely competitive, and extremely optimal.)

Or is this a non-issue/solvable via haks so just be patient/something that's not important to have a public forum about? Because warlocks get love every 6 months, but paladin is just that person at the dance sitting in the bleachers being ignored.

[Karris the Anarchist]

Be wary with the dispels on mobs, really. As a mage with Epic Focus in Abjuration, I feel bummed out that I can't reliably dispel someone's CL 3 buff from a potion, balance be damned.

But at the same time, if the bug was fixed and potions/wands suddenly cast spells at their true CL, fighter types would get bummed over since most epic mobs dispel, which I'm not a fan of, either, since I like diversity in among characters.

[Tourmaline]

How would it be dispels were purely based on character level and not caster level across the board?

[gilescorey]

How would it be dispels were purely based on character level and not caster level across the board?

Clerics would crash the server with no survivors.

[One Two Three Five]

Is there a way of making half-casters more fun? Rangers? Paladins?

I mean, haks could help. More spells on their lists that are good- I'd suggest Instant Enemy for rangers.

Being MAD doesn't help either: Paladins want str, con, int, wis, cha, all at at least 13-14, but then you want str very high, or cha very high for the rare (and terrible to play for a long time) smiter builds.
Rangers want strength, dex, con, wis, int, as well, for a number of reasons.

The armors don't fix the class. Ranger, specifically, suffers from not getting its 'good' part until level 21, assuming you didn't multiclass for some direly needed extra feats. Paladin, on the other hand, has such a narrow focus (something that also plagues the ranger- you can be very good in some cases, but only against like 5 things ever) that the build of their abilities only key off of those. And not only do a lot of players have a tendency to play Chaotic Neutral serial murderers, a holdover I guess from the Prot From Evil un-nerfed days, but a lot of monsters got changed to neutral as well because of those old great smiting 7 aasimar pal/cot's.

Stuff that might help them: scaling wisdom boost over time. Level 5 spell slots.
Paladin specific: Take a long look at holy sword and perhaps drop some bonuses (power, duration) onto it, because it's been pointless since the 1.69 nerf.

As well, making smite evil less of a 'three tries and your character is spent' ability might be interesting. Perhaps smite, instead, gives a cha-bonus and paladin level scaled boost against evil, with a lower bonus against chaos, for a duration, instead, and paladins pick up extra uses naturally as they progress? This retains their ability as evil-destroyers, but also lets them be at least passingly useful against the ol 'someone got tired of Erik instagibbing bosses' trick. Might give them better sustain, too.

I would be.. interested in opinions on just giving them divine might and shield, as well, possibly after the 'paladin dump' amount of 3-5. It would help their feat starvation a little.

Ranger Specific: Man, I don't know. Pathfinder got so far away from fixing rangers, for instance, that they split ranger into two classes with their hybrid stuff: The slayer, a ranger/rogue mix that got the combat style and a more active favored enemy called Studied Target, and the Hunter, a druid/ranger mix with 6th level casting and a beefier pet.

So, maybe that? A couple more ranger archetypes that aren't just 'now you're a bow dude.' Like..
Beastmaster: Loses? Favored enemy, gains a much, much beefier pet, and some abilities that synergize with it.

Slayer: Extra, boosted? favored enemies, no pet, maybe an ability to assign favored enemies on the fly.

(AC against favored enemies on all rangers would be stellar, by the by.)
Dunno how much this would fix. Even 5E is on their, like, third ranger rewrite. It's just a weird, kind of directionless class, and yet the fictional concept of a ranger is really strong.

[rat0a]

My 2 cents on this:

If you take a Paladin as a dip class or do a STR Paladin you will be fine
If you do CHA Paladin ditto.......I'm playing two at the same time one level 30 the other one is level 19 My level 30 feels like some bad build that can hold his own because of his level

He does have good saving throws but that's about it and the only good thing they have was taken away from them,I'm sorry but that Bronze weapon sucks and I do have expensive excellent enchanted gear and the Adamantine set.

I still play them both because I enjoy their RP going on with both of them but they are lacking
That spell book is limited alright but I do thing the main problem is the weapon.

To this day I don't understand why my offensive is so limited when my defenses suck even with DS I fight mobs with the Bronze weapon and my DS wore off and I get hit quite a bit at level 30

[Cybernet21]

Some of the paladin suggestions that one two three five gave are a good idea,like giving them divine might and shield freely (on paladin levels 3 and 5 repectively) and getting more smite evil as they level up (maybe one more use every three levels?That would make around 10 smite evil if they only take paladin or CoT)

Something to add:everything paladins get like that above,CoT's also get(one smite evil use every 3 levels of the combination of paladin and/or CoT) and have a choice of path,anyone that takes a paladin level must take one or the other(either on character creation or any other level they get pally or CoT),one for STR based paladins(create a name like...combat paladin or something) and one for CHA based paladins aka smiters(the player chooses, or the game does it automatically based on the highest base mod of the two and simply states wich path you are going through) and each of the path gets some different things(like the combat paladin gets less smite evil but gets AC similar to a fighter,etc.. or the smiter gets more spell slots and automatic 1 divine damage on evil creatures wich gets higher every 3 levels or so as well,etc.. not very good on thinking of stuff like that but you get my meaning).

This would make smiters more cool to play with but still let people who want to roleplay less smite based paladins (like me).But just my opinion and i'm sure a lot of what i said would make paladins super OP

PS:Just thought of something that would be awesome for the smiter path(and might fix some of rat0a's complaints): smiter paladins can enchant weapons up to steel/masterly steel who dont have any other sort of enchantement that is not from the material(up to greensteel if 20 character levels are in the smiter path)

[Seven Sons of Sin]

Is there a way of making half-casters more fun? Rangers? Paladins?

Ranger Specific: Man, I don't know. Pathfinder got so far away from fixing rangers, for instance, that they split ranger into two classes with their hybrid stuff: The slayer, a ranger/rogue mix that got the combat style and a more active favored enemy called Studied Target, and the Hunter, a druid/ranger mix with 6th level casting and a beefier pet.

I think Pathfinder's addition of Favoured Terrain as a base class mechanic for rangers, rather than tucked behind a PrC, was a really smart move. Rangers now have Woodland Stride. It makes me wonder if we can implement mechanics tied to the [Nature] zone designation.

You also mention the MADS thing, which I think is an excellent point. Fighters get soft increases to either STR/DEX (which is sort of insane when you stop and think about it - they're the only class that gets that.)

I wonder,
a) would giving soft ability score increases to Ranger and Paladin every 10 levels be beneficial? (if not every 10, then what?)
b) what ability score would you want increased?

I personally think getting increases to CON would free up early ability score distribution, allowing to take an early level hit to your HP and Fort Saves, in favour of your other class-specific abilities. I also think it would be the least abusable.

So maybe like +1 CON per 10 levels? Rangers/paladins also never get access to Endurance. All other ability buffs except that.

In regards to paladins, I also think they just need more interesting mechanics. I think it's very telling that rangers get all these things, and paladins get nothing but spells past level 4 (it's also telling that rangers get all these things but still have a hard time.)

Further, Scholar Midnight mentioned in one of those other threads about being able to change Caster Level. What if you have the majority % of your levels in ranger or paladin, you get +X to your Caster Level? It would increase the longevity of buffs (indirectly buffing their spellbooks, sort of) and also providing added resistance to dispels, which, while not harming rangers immediately, can shut down a paladin pretty hard.

[Norfildor]

Make smite evil proc automatically once per round of combat on a random attack and get rid of the 3 times per rest limitation. The 3 uses per day are somewhat underwhelming especially when taking into account the amount of feat investment and stat spread that is required in order to make greater smiting worthwhile. At the same time 3 consecutive smites delivered by a dedicated smiter character can result in a really excessive amount of damage that an evil aligned character suffers (we're talking up to three digit numbers when you add up the damage from all 3 attacks, especially when taking crits into account) during a potentional PvP encounter. Having it proc once per round of combat might even things out a bit when it comes to PvP and having it proc automatically and without the per rest limitation would make it actually useful in PvE (the dps of a dedicated CHA based smiter would become on par with a WM while fighting evil aligned spawns that way). A CHA based paladin still has much lower AB than a WM, which should be taken into account as a balancing factor.


STR based paladins are pointless IMO. If you want to make a STR based melee fighter, make a WM.

[Hatsune Miku]

I've been hoping a certain someone considers making changes to RDD and having it add at least one caster level for every two RDD levels, the PrC largely ineffective for a character that decides to fulfill a significant amount of their other levels in sorcerer (20/10 business).

[Cybernet21]

STR based paladins are pointless IMO. If you want to make a STR based melee fighter, make a WM.

No they arent...and there are also people like me that like to roleplay STR based paladins,a simple melee fighter can be boring,so i make a STR based paladin because i like paladin archetypes and want some magical abilities to help my combat.So yeah both smiters and STR based pallies must have a look at

[Ork]

Str based paladins melt bosses with their divine favor & might. Can't reduce that damage.

[Hunter548]

Making smites an automatic thing every x attacks would bust smiters wide open, too.

Personally I'd like to see haks make rangers cast from constitution and paladins from charisma, then make their spells good.

[Cybernet21]

Making smites an automatic thing wvery x attacks would bust smiters wide open, too.

Personally I'd like to see haks make rangers cast from constitution and paladins from charisma, then make their spells good.

That...is actually a good idea,that way paladins wouldnt need to invest on WIS seeing as every other ability is more important(same thing with rangers) that way pallies would be able to take the points they would have on WIS and put on either DEX or CON

[Jagel]

Rangers:

- Some ability that lets them access creatures of the wild more reliably. The "dominated animals as henchmen" thing is useful but it requires the ranger to be able to locate powerful creatures to dominate. Some kind of console command (-callofthewild or whatevs) that has a chance to spawn a creature (neutral, hostile) of some power. There are a lot of cool creatures but on my low lvl ranger it usually just amounts to dominating badgers, dogs and wolves and letting them be slaughtered by their comrades.
- Ability to locate nearby alters. Addition to -track command perhaps? Will tell you if there are any altars in the area ([dood-voice] "I can feel some powerful divine vibes, y'all"). Could be expanded to being able to "track" ressources
- Some sort of "mark creature" ability that gives allies a small to bonus ab/dmg against the marked creature. Make it more powerful if targeted creature is a fav. enemy (or make it only work on fav. enemies)
- Give rangers bonuses in similar vein as shadow dancer's shadow. Maybe not sneak attack but something useful. Rangers tend to lack in the AC department so maybe AC boosts?

[Opustus]

My knowledge about the balance of Arelith is for all intents and purposes nil, so I can only contribute with a silly anecdote. On Amia, back in 2006 or so, there was a trio of elves who were Ranger/Rogue/SD, CoT/Rogue/SD and Bard/SD. Their builds were wildly suboptimal as standalone builds, but they were designed to complement each other and the players played their strengths to an astonishing effect.

Even though I can't estimate if they had any effect on the general practice of builds being built to play strong independently, they did prove people wrong who claimed that builds are OP by default but that their performance varies depending on circumstance and syngergy. I understand that overrepresentation is a tangible problem, but I believe that players who take an active interest in breaking the mould can change trends and opinions by doing differently, because NWN, in my humbledore, is a complicated and multidimensional game.

[Mithreas]

For rangers, I've always wanted to make traps relevant. The problem I always end up coming back to though is that the playstyle of traps is really clunky, especially in parties, and they take up a bunch of inventory space.

The ability to create scaling traps on-demand might be a way of giving rangers something more fun. But the effect of those traps would likely need to be more than just "do X damage". This would both expand the "spellcasting" dimension of rangers while giving them their own niche.

[Peppermint]

Keeping it short:

Rangers

1. The plan here remains to expand their list of favored enemies with dynamic choices. A couple other cookies were planned out (e.g. making Blade Thirst work on any weapon), but that alone should make them much more viable as a hunter/skirmisher archetype with reliable damage output.

Paladins

A proposal was made here, but never finalized. Pending admin approval:

1. Hard wisdom bonus every X levels (i.e. probably 6 or so). This allows paladins to effectively treat wisdom as a dump stat at character creation, and still cast spells.
2. Improve Holy Sword by making its dispel scale harder (and probably tack on bonuses for GSF Abjur as well). This pushes paladins into a magic-shredder niche.
3. Optionally, give a handful of other spells a facelift as well. Deafening Clang stands out here as one that could use a longer duration and some kind of scaling component.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

All of that is beautiful, Peppermint.

[Beard Master Flex]

I've really liked the changes you guys have implemented so far. I feel like I'm closer and closer to being able to one day just play a Pure 30 Ranger to have the archetype I feel is true for the class.

I'm a big Ranger fan, I've been playing them for years and years on this server and PnP, but pretty much until 5e; in order to be a ranger I was essentially having to take levels in other classes to not just be competitive but also just to play the part.

To me a Ranger isnt the best fighter, the best rogue or the best nature magician - The Ranger is just a dude or dudette that has a deep affinity for the land and self sufficiency. I like to see Ranger's thrive by being cautious, durable and resourceful. A Ranger shouldn't be able to go toe to toe with the big bad at the drop of a hat... but watch and wait for the right moment to strike with a big dirty trap or a cunning ambush.

A list of things I feel are important to the Ranger:

1. Stealth (Vanilla Ranger is pro at this and with HiPS in natural areas this is 100% complete.)

2. Skills (After the update with increased skills per level the Ranger is complete in this area. He shouldnt be as good as a rogue, but he should be able to cover all the bases without having to take a gift of +2 Int.)

3.Traps/Ambush (This is hard because traps are really awkward in this game. Its awkward with a party, its awkward with PvP rules... I have no clue what can be done to help this. The other alternative is Sneak Attack... but the rogue covers this, and is part of the reason most of my rangers are pretty much just rogues. I think Bane of Enemies is a pretty cool ability and is plenty strong enough for this class; the problem is it doesn't really happen until level 21 or later. Maybe Bane of Enemies can be parceled out for free earlier on? Level 9 or 10? At that point the Ranger only really has two or three enemies it would be useful against so I cant see it being too broken.)

4. Animals! (A Ranger should be friend to beasts. Vanilla animal companion, even at higher levels is just not equipped to handle this server. The Buffed companions from a few years ago were too powerful. I haven't played enough with the current iteration to say definitively, but I feel like AC is still an issue and they could benefit from the Awaken buff druids get.)

As far as spellcasting goes I feel like this is open for debate between ranger fans. Personally I'd prefer to see them as they are in 5e as a half caster (Something akin to a NWN bard in casting ability) but I know plenty of people would just as rather see them with no spells at all. I feel that with the Blade Thirst changes this area is complete more or less.

[Rwby]

I think there's an awful lot of merit to Peppermint's Paladin suggestions. A hard wisdom bonus suits the class well, and it'd be nice to have a non-mage class that focused in a limited aspect of dispelling.

[Cybernet21]

Paladins

A proposal was made here, but never finalized. Pending admin approval:

1. Hard wisdom bonus every X levels (i.e. probably 6 or so). This allows paladins to effectively treat wisdom as a dump stat at character creation, and still cast spells.

Would CoT levels also count for that bonus?(many Pally builds take CoT)

[One Two Three Five]

The cost of multiclassing, I guess?

That looks out-frikkin-standing, Peppermint.

[Cybernet21]

The cost of multiclassing, I guess?

That looks out-frikkin-standing, Peppermint.

I guess,but CoT's are just like pallies just,better trained?Or like Elite paladins(reflected on bonus feats) so it would make sense they would get the same things as pallies(like the WIS bonus in this case) or maybe get some things and not others

EDiT:And yeah i agree that looks awesome even if CoT's wont get the WIS bonus as well(CoT's do get Bonus Feats after all)

[One Two Three Five]

CoT (Divine Champion on Arelith, I guess) isn't super close to paladin, though? It augments paladin, sure, but it's more like..

Like, weapon master augments 'what fighters do,' but it doesn't give you fighter bonuses, right? You trade that for other things. You trade paladin levels for feats and some extra saves. It looks like the idea is that taking higher levels of paladin will be more viable/wanted, and to build the benefits of higher paladin levels into another class would run counter to that.