Spellswords (Again and again)

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Iceborn
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Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Iceborn » Sun Feb 18, 2018 11:48 pm

Seeing the new change, it happened just the thing I was worried that would change.


Kama Spellsword needed to be hit with the nerf hammer by all means, don't get me wrong, but dual wielders did not. They have an already incredibly expensive cost to pay for their extra attacks, and now the biggest advantage of going dual wield is completely invalidated.

This could be levelled by giving dual wielders 2 procs/flurry.


One of the damage components should have been flatly removed. Currently spellswords get three extra damage sources than other classes:
They directly turn their int modifier into damage.
They receive free elemental damage with their imbue. (That can be stacked with essences)
Half of their procs deal additional damage.

They don't need all these sources of damage. The latter should be turned entirely into utility effects. The other two I believe to be fine.

Currently, acid is practically useless, as advertised.
Cold received the much needed buff and pushed to actual usefulness, and that's good. I've been moaning about cold for a while.
Negative got nerfed to a less state of broken.
Lightning... well, works basically the same.
Sonic is still questionable broken.
Magic is questionable useful/useless depending on who you ask (I'm in the latter wagon).
And Fire is simply as good as it should be.

And one thing that I'd like to see addressed is their AC problem. They are completely vulnerable to losing most of their AC to any stray dispel/breach until they get EMA, which is not cool in any mean. No class drops on 12 of AC (or more considering other sources of AC that a spellsword may use) to a spell breach, and at certain point of their build become then completely immune to something that proved a mayor danger to navigate during most of their playtime.
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TimeAdept
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by TimeAdept » Sun Feb 18, 2018 11:55 pm

Acid needed to be made unstacking

Losing the ability to have 3-4-5 stacks of 20-30 damage going off a round did not destroy the class.

Dualweilders do not need 2 procs per flurry, that's six a round and undoes the fix done for monks.

Mage Armor is like the 2nd to 3rd lowest thing on the breach list, and EMa is immune to it. Irrelevant point of discussion.

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Iceborn
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Iceborn » Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:05 am

Acid needed to be made unstacking. Agreed (I also think all imbues need to be changed to not deal damage on proc too).

A kama spellsword can get up to 9 attacks.
6 base. 2 dual wield. 1 haste. I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong.
3 attacks per flurry was too much. That was absurd and needed to go.

A dual wielder attacks a maximum if 7 times. 3 the first time, and 2 the rest. Making it cap at 33% less than what monk spellswords had before, and takes a huge chunk of the damage of dual wielders.

In most cases, you don't actually walk with your whole spellbook worth of buffs. And surprisingly, with the changes to dispels as well and the removal of the +3 against dispels (which I'm okay with), they are made a whole lot more vulnerable to losing a huge chunk of their defense.
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by One Two Three Five » Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:36 am

With more attacks per flurry dual wielders are more likely to land all of their imbues vs someone with fewer attacks per round/flurry. A dual-wielding monk spellsword vs a bastard sword spellsword, for instance, has 2 more attacks in each flurry- I'd rather have 3 chances to land that last imbue than just one. (You are wrong about how many attacks a dual kama wielder can get. With 16 BaB, haste, and flurry, they throw out 10 attacks a round. 4, 3, and 3 attacks per flurry). Problem with doing '2 imbues per flurry if dual wielding' is that you'll then have more opportunities to imbue AND more imbue drops.

The 'mentioned in a different thread' change of kama monks not getting spellsword AC was a good one, too.

Acid was straight up broken but probably has usefulness for longer fights. (Negative+Acid might be a fun one at higher levels.)

Their AC is more a problem if they're a dexer that doesn't have a shield to pull out- and well, being dispellable is a risk every caster deals with. They've got a lot of feats to work with, given how most people build them, and can probably afford abjur defense if the builder is that worried.
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flower
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by flower » Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:50 am

I still think we are missing few minor things which need to go away from SS.

Discipline boost.

Kensai was removed 10 discipline away in nerf.
Fighter gets it if goes full pure class.

Yet SS retains discipline bonus. While it can pmp up strenght as any other meleer, and on top has high INt, which benefits both, damage and skill points. SS can get many times more skill points than any other meleer, yet they get scaling bonus to discipline? Why?

Uncanny dodge. I understand when classes going naturally dex based like ranger received this. But why SS gets it without need to multiclass into rouge/anything else? If people build SS on dex then have them multiclass for benefits of other classes.

And as for INt modifier applied to damage. Make it, it is valid only when SS is having strenght lower than INT.

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One Two Three Five
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by One Two Three Five » Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:56 am

Frankly, every class in the game should get uncanny dodge for free because of how horrifyingly wonky the pathing for fighting is. Meleers of all stripes get flatfooted at complete random by doing nothing but sticking on a melee target.
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Baron Saturday » Mon Feb 19, 2018 12:59 am

I've always hated that monks in particular don't get Uncanny Dodge... But that's a subject for another thread.

I could certainly see an argument being raised that only pure class Spellswords should get the discipline bonus.
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flower
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by flower » Mon Feb 19, 2018 1:04 am

One Two Three Five wrote:Frankly, every class in the game should get uncanny dodge for free because of how horrifyingly wonky the pathing for fighting is. Meleers of all stripes get flatfooted at complete random by doing nothing but sticking on a melee target.

UD is not helping you when flatfooted. It only makes your dexterity AC bonus to be kept in same manner like platemail retains its AC when flatfooted. Most meelers without it do not go dexterity based or already take class having it (barbarian, ranger, rouge, asasín).

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One Two Three Five
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by One Two Three Five » Mon Feb 19, 2018 1:07 am

Everyone should get it as a concession to how bad NWN's combat is still stands.
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by BegoneThoth » Mon Feb 19, 2018 1:08 am

One Two Three Five wrote:Everyone should get it as a concession to how bad NWN's combat is still stands.
I would agree.
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Iceborn
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Iceborn » Mon Feb 19, 2018 1:36 am

The only reason I don't raise up the discipline is because I hate the way KD works in Arelith, specially in PvP, and I want to see the least of it as possible.

Uncanny Dodge. UNCANNY DODGE FOR EVERYBODY.
Actually, I wouldn't be ENTIRELY opposed to have this removed, if there were items with uncanny dodge as a bonus feat in the craft matrix. Ideally, AC boots.
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BegoneThoth
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by BegoneThoth » Mon Feb 19, 2018 1:38 am

I'd also support making disc a class skill for all or a free skill for all, as TS IKD kills nearly anything w/o full prog and ESF.
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Scurvy Cur » Mon Feb 19, 2018 2:23 am

BegoneThoth wrote:I'd also support making disc a class skill for all or a free skill for all, as TS IKD kills nearly anything w/o full prog and ESF.
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Dreams
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Dreams » Mon Feb 19, 2018 2:31 am

Tbh, after looking through these changes, it seems like an excellent fix for the moment.

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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by RedGiant » Mon Feb 19, 2018 4:01 am

Dreams wrote:Tbh, after looking through these changes, it seems like an excellent fix for the moment.
This.

I like it. Its sensible. Spellswords are still attractive without being gutted.

Yes it curbed a little monk synergy, which I think was fair and needed, but those characters still get more attacks than anyone else, so... (And lets face it, these were not Dragonshape - style monk changes...they didn't take away your APR progression or your monk AC bonus.)

Honestly, I also don't get the dual-wield arguments. Spellsword is specifically designed NOT to synergize well with dual wield, two-handed weapons, etc...and to pay a steep penalty in defense if they do.

And, for the record, I respectfully disagree with almost everything said by flowers. In part, because I don't think they should have taken the discipline boost away from Kensai. One should not premise Kensai changes....arguably the most abused/reworked class on the server...as a template for aaaanything.

Spellswords are good. Your weren't going to KD a properly built / geared Spellsword anyway, and the disc boost just lets the more SPELL than sword types (of which I know several) survive in PvE. Let the dust settle on this one.
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Kirito » Mon Feb 19, 2018 8:30 am

slight addendum for clarity
The on hit effects should trigger 1/flurry
This is tracked separately for each effect. so dual welding can have effects from 4 different imbued, but can't double up on two.

(it's actually once per 2s, so this might need to get tweaked if the round timings are out)

The approach for spellswords is going to be slow and careful so as not to inadvertently neuter them with too many changes.

(and yes, disc really should be set so you can't dump 33 ranks and get the boost

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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Azaria » Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:14 am

it seem two sided weapons got gimped for spellblades then..over normal dual wielding with only 2 imbue effects

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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Lorkas » Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:26 am

Azaria wrote:it seem two sided weapons got gimped for spellblades then..over normal dual wielding with only 2 imbue effects
Unless I misunderstand, it shouldn't hit them any differently. Sure, dual wielders can have 4 imbues active at once, but two of those imbues are in the offhand which gets its attacks stuck on at the end of the round. In effect, if you have 6 or 7 attacks per round, you're getting mainhand imbues for the first two flurries and offhand imbues for the last two.

Since your attacks will be split into flurries of 2/2/2 or 3/2/2 depending on whether you're sitting at 6 or 7 attacks per round, there won't be any case where you could have gotten an extra imbue in some flurry. The only case I can see is if you compare a spellsword/monk quarterstaff user with a spellsword/monk kama user, if both have 9 or 10 attacks per round. The kama user could possibly get 3 imbues in the last flurry (one from the mainhand, two from the offhand) while the quarterstaff user could only get 2.

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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Kirito » Mon Feb 19, 2018 10:21 am

Azaria wrote:it seem two sided weapons got gimped for spellblades then..over normal dual wielding with only 2 imbue effects
Nope, same for all

That is a possibility, yes.

If the reduction in number of imbue activations is acceptable for monk/twin weapons i'll do something to even it out for two sided weapons as well.


EDIT:
From what I get from here http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Attacks_per_round

What you will have is something like the following for a 16/4 spellsword/fighter at level 20

Single weapon: 16/11/6/1 would be split into (16/11) (6) (1)
16, 6 and 1 would be affected by the imbues from weapon 1.

Two weapons incl. feats: 14/9/4/-1/14*/9* would be split into (14/9) (4/-1) (14*/9*)
14 and 4 would be affected by imbues from weapon 1, 14* would be affected by weapon 2 imbues.
* denotes off hand (second weapon) attacks

Two sided weapon incl. feats: 14/9/4/-1/14*/9* would be split into (14/9) (4/-1) (14*/9*) 14, 4 and 14* would be affected by imbues from the weapon
* denotes off hand attacks.

So actually, there's no difference between the number of times the imbue are activated overall. Just with two weapons you have the choice of having a different effect.

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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Terenfel » Mon Feb 19, 2018 11:09 am

so if you miss with 16 there and hit with 11 in the first flurry would that trigger imbue?

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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Kirito » Mon Feb 19, 2018 11:10 am

Terenfel wrote:so if you miss with 16 there and hit with 11 in the first flurry would that trigger imbue?
yes (this is where the timing limits may need tweaking to ensure that if you miss on the first and hit on the second of the first flurry, you can still trigger the imbue on the first hit of second flurry)

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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Wintersoul » Mon Feb 19, 2018 3:20 pm

:D just wanted to say thank you for all the time and effort you put in for us. I'm having a blast with the class.

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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Azaria » Mon Feb 19, 2018 3:32 pm

what about cleave and AoO? do they count as sepperate flurries?

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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Lorkas » Mon Feb 19, 2018 3:39 pm

Azaria wrote:what about cleave and AoO? do they count as sepperate flurries?
In general, no. Specifically, also no--Kirito mentioned that the limit is that each imbue has a 2-second cooldown after each time it procs.

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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Kirito » Mon Feb 19, 2018 3:43 pm

Azaria wrote:what about cleave and AoO? do they count as sepperate flurries?
They get counted after main hand attacks but before off hand attacks

(Main hand attacks) (Free attacks) (Off hand attacks)

So a level 20 cleric with divine power, haste, and in a round with an OOC and cleave whilst wielding two weapons would get (just looking at BAB)

Main hand: 15/10/5
Free: 15*/15*/15*/15*
Off hand: 15**/10**

In flurries of (15/10/5) (15*/15*/15*) (15*/15**/10**)

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