Spellswords (Again and again)

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Hunter548
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Hunter548 » Fri Feb 23, 2018 7:03 pm

The point also wasn't that you must optimize and are a bad person if you don't. The point was that if you refuse to optimize, or are unable to optimize, your character shouldn't be held up as an example of what's viable, or used to set the upper standard of abilities, or held up as the standard example of whatever class.
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Sockss
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Sockss » Fri Feb 23, 2018 7:11 pm

Old Kentucky Shark wrote:I just gave this thread a read, and while I do think the changes seem warranted, the tone of some of the responses was a little hard to read, and smacked of a 'you don't play like I do so you don't get an opinion' mentality. I think we can probably debate the points of an update without trying to build shame someone for not optimizing.
Unfortunately balance does not work if you balance around the lowest common denominator. It only works if you balance around the highest - otherwise the divide between people that build badly, or play badly increases. That is to say, people are worse off for RP building, or not optimising.

Saying something is bad, because you have built it deliberately* bad, is silly.

No one is saying don't build how you like (And I guess... therefore not build shaming... I mean. Ugh). Just that if you build badly, don't complain something is weak.

(This is akin to building a 6 CON elven wizard and sitting at 80 hp, then saying wizard hp is too low, or that say, PWK is too strong. Balance is not a matter of perspective.)

*Deliberately: I say deliberately because I don't think anyone in this community has no access at all to someone that can advise them on builds or hand them a ready made build. By virtue of even being able to post on the forums you have a wealth of information available. I, and I'm sure most other people here, would be more than happy to help out someone who doesn't know their blind fight from their invisibility purge.
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Scurvy Cur
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Scurvy Cur » Fri Feb 23, 2018 7:16 pm

Old Kentucky Shark wrote:I just gave this thread a read, and while I do think the changes seem warranted, the tone of some of the responses was a little hard to read, and smacked of a 'you don't play like I do so you don't get an opinion' mentality. I think we can probably debate the points of an update without trying to build shame someone for not optimizing.
There's been no build shaming. I fully support Iceborn's choices to build the character he wants to build.

However, this thread is chiefly a feedback thread on mechanical changes, and said feedback has been structured as follows:

:arrow: I see the things you changed, and I think you went too far. I present as evidence:
1) I built my spellsword to maximally leverage imbue procs.
2) He was previously fine, if not optimal.
3) He's now seriously weakened.

What the OP has glossed over is that he is, in effect, making the case for the nerf. Essentially, his build has some very bad choices in it that are not particular to spellswords. Skipping blindfight on a melee is a poor choice. Dual welding rapiers is a poor choice (short swords, kukris, and quarterstaves are the dual wield options for non-monk dex guys, since tossing away an additional -2 AB is a drastically unforced error). When you have a feature that is so strong that you can make a number poor build choices and the feature will carry you through anyhow, it's probably an indication that the feature needs to be nerfed.

Iceborn's opinion is welcome. He ought to be prepared for the reasonable observation, however, that the issues he's observing may have less to do with the nerf being excessive than they do with the fact he's using a build with some very questionable choices.

This is because, from the standpoint of a balance discussion, we need to concern ourselves with what's possible to do with a feature, not with what a below-average build does with a feature. If we give spellswords features that allow you to dual wield rapiers without blindfight and still perform adequately, we've probably given spellswords features that are actively broken in the hands of a well-built character.

In this case, however, he seems to be insisting that he, in fact did everything right, and that, but for the unkind intervention of spellsword nerfs, he'd be playing a good, fun, and enjoyable build. Before anyone takes him seriously, it needs to be pointed out that he's made what I will charitably call a large number of highly unorthodox build choices, and that these are not representative of the class taken as a whole.


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Iceborn
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Iceborn » Fri Feb 23, 2018 7:41 pm

Sockss wrote:Unfortunately balance does not work if you balance around the lowest common denominator. It only works if you balance around the highest - otherwise the divide between people that build badly, or play badly increases. That is to say, people are worse off for RP building, or not optimising.
Just to nitpick at this from my point of view.

Balance is not a matter of using the perspective of the highest, medium, or low common denominator. You don't balance around what is simply 'the best' and the most meta build that is working at the moment, because then you are assuming that all the players will be part of the Luck of Heroes club.

You need to take into account a range of possibilities between the high and medium spectrum, in order for the class to be fun, effective, doesn't get more power than it deserves, and it still allows players to 'make mistakes' or make choices that open up a new strength and a new weakness. Things that allow versatility and players to make characters based on an artistic vision, without feeling like they are being punished for choosing something that may seem appropriate for their character, without crippling the effectiveness of a build, rather than copy-pastes of the same build posted in a thread.

Going back to my own character, I built something that I felt was a great way to represent the character I wanted to play, and I did not shoot myself in the foot while doing it. I didn't take Dirty Fighting and Circle kick; I went for things that worked for him, whilst opening weaknesses in what he could not do.

If this kind of build is not encouraged in our game world, you may have to reconsider your stance in Arelith.

This is not a 'you' aimed at anybody in special, by the way. But I am still looking at you when I write this, Scurvy.
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Scurvy Cur
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Scurvy Cur » Fri Feb 23, 2018 8:06 pm

Impressive passive aggression notwithstanding, some responses are merited here:
Iceborn wrote:Balance is not a matter of using the perspective of the highest, medium, or low common denominator. You don't balance around what is simply 'the best' and the most meta build that is working at the moment, because then you are assuming that all the players will be part of the Luck of Heroes club.
First, it's adorable that you're calling it the luck of heroes club. I haven't actually had room for that feat in any of the last 4-5 characters I've built, and it's only an optimal choice in a few builds. So I'm not sure where this linguistic quirk is from. I'm going to charitably assume it's not spittingly incoherent snark.

Second, you do in fact balance for, if not only the utter peak possible build, at least for the upper range of what is possible. This is because upper limits on what a class can do are more important than ensuring that there's a floor to class performance. This is a quirk of the NWN system; there are just so many bad choices available that you can't design a class to account for all of them. You can, however, watch for a few exemplar builds and make sure they don't run away with the game.
Iceborn wrote:You need to take into account a range of possibilities between the high and medium spectrum, in order for the class to be fun, effective, doesn't get more power than it deserves, and it still allows players to 'make mistakes' or make choices that open up a new strength and a new weakness.
You've actually gotten the bolded part right here. It so happens that this is exactly what was done. It was determined after careful consideration that uncapped imbue procs opened up possibilities for 8 and 9 APR builds that were way too strong, and further made the imbues difficult to balance. This is ensuring that spellsword doesn't "get more power than it deserves", as it so happens.
Iceborn wrote: Going back to my own character, I built something that I felt was a great way to represent the character I wanted to play, and I did not shoot myself in the foot while doing it.
This, strictly speaking, is not correct. I know you're convinced that dw rapiers is okay. I know you're convinced that blindfight is an okay thing to skip on a melee character. You shot yourself in the foot. This was true before the imbue nerf, it's true after the imbue nerf. I reiterate my support for this choice, but let's not collectively make-believe that it's not a deep flaw that you crutched your way through with a feature that's too strong on anyone that hasn't engaged in this sort of build based self maiming.


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Iceborn
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Iceborn » Fri Feb 23, 2018 8:45 pm

I wouldn't call it passive aggressive. I'm very deliberate in what I find is detrimental to the game.

Now. Read carefully what I wrote.
Yes, there are five million possible bad choices. This is why I say you balance around averages and high ends. Both. Not one of the two. You cap the top of power, and you make sure that there is more than a few ways to build a character without them either one-hitting Paush or dying miserably to ship rats.

While you are perfectly free to take a build shotgun and obliterate your feet, this is about characters with certain cohesion to their build. To what should be acceptable to perform adequately in the role you want to perform. In this instance, I think it should be perfectly acceptable to not take Blindfight, and that it does not invalidate my build, nor that taking dual wield on rapiers was an act of sum lack of good sense. Both were options that I measured heavily, and I knew would have advantages, and disadvantages. I chose to have a harder time against the select group of players that I would engage in PvP, and that would know and could use Displacement instead of Imp Invisibility, and I chose to have the option to wield a second weapon for two extra attacks selective and amplify my damage output.

You can argue that blindfight is 100% necessary all you want. You can argue that dual wielding was a mistake. I simply do not agree, in my experience I do not agree, and I see reasons to not agree. You can argue that every point of everything that I play is a mistake. But you can only repeat yourself so long before it's just noise.

Now, going back to spellswords for just a brief moment to stay in topic:
I wanted, and I still want spellswords to be nerfed. They still have too much damage for my taste, and their amazing spellbook is not used nearly enough, making them favor vastly the melee part of the character and not enough magic. But I want those changes to occur in a way that still allows flexibility, and the whole point of this thread when I first wrote it was to point that a chunk of that flexibility was removed in the effort to nerf a more powerful build, while leaving nothing to grasp in the stead or to make the choice worth the expense.
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Cortex
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Cortex » Fri Feb 23, 2018 9:04 pm

Too much flexibility is a power in itself.

Also, I don't know if you knew this, but blind fight also negates attack bonuses from invisible enemies, or if you're blinded (WoF comes to mind). It's not subjective if blind fight is worth or not, so much as objective and factual that it is required on any melee of any type.
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by flower » Fri Feb 23, 2018 11:25 pm

Iceborn

you sadly must balance class with the best configuration in mind. If not, then you are leaving behind weak spots in design ending up with the class overperforming anything else, like SS did. Just look how many people jumped to play them. Before nerfing taking place (and being mentioned) you often had most people in the crowd being SS. That speaks for itself.

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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Cataclysm of Iron » Fri Feb 23, 2018 11:42 pm

C'mon people.

If the average random mishmash of 'not inherently conceptually dumb' but also 'not optimised to the point of obsession by an expert in the server meta having made a skillpoint-by-skillpoint build for all 30 levels' isn't able to enjoy and cope with most of the server and be viable in the game, the balancing is wrong.

If the aforementioned optimised builds are easy, reductive into only one or two classes/archetypes, and too far ahead of the 'average' build on the server, the balancing is wrong.

If you have to have a small subset of skills/feats and/or an in-depth understanding of the engine, the base game mechanics, and the server changes to play an enjoyable character on the server, the balancing is wrong.

All of it works together. Balance is... a balance. Joe Schmuck should be able to roll a character and take some mishmash of feats and levels within an intuitive class structure and still kill his fair share of stuff on the server, hold his own in most contexts, and not be a liability to party with or frustration to play. At the same time, Sally Buildgoddess should be able to perfect a mathematically optimised build which is better than Joe Shmuck's enough to reward her expertise but not so much that Joe's not able to enjoy himself whenever Sally is around. That involves playing with the floor, the middle, and the ceiling in tandem as well as how they interact.

tl;dr - some of us play a few optimised builds to get the most we can out of the stats, others want to just roll with a broader range of less perfect stuff. Both should be fun and viable.
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by One Two Three Five » Sat Feb 24, 2018 2:09 am

Joe Schmuck should be able to roll a character and take some mishmash of feats and levels within an intuitive class structure and still kill his fair share of stuff on the server, hold his own in most contexts, and not be a liability to party with or frustration to play.
Ironically, that's the opposite of how 3rd Edition D&D was written, so you're barking up the wrong tree on framework.

In all seriousness: This is.. relatively possible for most classes so long as you take feats with some thought. For the most part, this is also intuitive. You can balance both for the people who make sure their stats and feats line up so that no skill point is wasted while also, pretty easily, getting the people who make build choices that make a relative amount of sense. For example, you can balance for EDR druids and your average 'evo and conjuration look cool' druid.

Pretending that spellsword wasn't balanced in this way- when it was given a few small, 'common sense within the player-base revealed parameters' tweaks that bring it more into line with other classes if a bit strong- is intellectually dishonest at best, and reveals a stunning lack of basic mechanical knowledge for a video game built around the mechanical base of perhaps the most 'build and mechanics-centric' tabletop game outside of some particularly math-y retroclones.

The difference between sensible and intelligently chosen feats and stats and optimized feats and stats, I feel, is often overstated for the purpose of obscuring and making arcane something that's, frankly, pretty simple if you're paying attention to the description of feats and the purpose to which you're putting your character. To say a spellsword wont function in average content with the new updates (which, again, are relatively small, sensible nerfs) on someone who took feats that fit their character- presumably a 'melee-based wizard' sort of character- is incorrect. It'll be fine. The spellsword chassis is still good, and it's Definitely one of those classes where you can step outside of what's usually optimal (dropping a feat on exotic for a bastard sword instead of just using scimmy, for instance) and still stand a good chance of, to be real fair to Kirito, breezing through a lot of content.

Where you get problems is the sort of, and this isn't a read on anyone despite this thread's general theming from the get go, 'First CRPG/Recommended Clicker' builders, who don't necessarily know or have any interest in NWN's mechanics as such, so build more for Rule of Cool or the need to keep taking feats being, perhaps, stressful. Who then end up making choices that aren't necessarily intuitive.

A weapon master who doesn't take knockdown feats. A ranger with favored enemy: Goblinoid. A strength-based cleric with great fortitude and no spell foci.

Not taking basic measures to make your character effective and not optimizing aren't nearly the same and shouldn't be conflated. A non-optimized spellsword will do just fine. A spellsword that didn't build for the exploitation of the class being hyper-strong and little else will be just fine. The difference between a spellsword with, say, transmutation focus and a scimitar and the level-by-level posted in the spellsword building thread which is freely available on these very forums for anyone to take and experiment with to learn more about is, like.

A couple AB points, maybe your last -15 attack that wont hit on a 3/4ths class anyway, a few AC? Spellsword's strong enough to push past all that. It's intuitive. It's simple. It's still gonna be pretty easy for most people. Easier than rogue by a mile.

You'd have to, and this is going to be a read on someone and I'm sorry but come on dude, purposefully nerf yourself by making mistakes you should and do know better than taking- dual medium weapons for an AB penalty on a middle AB class, lack of essential feats, burning feats on DC casting where it's unecessary & doesn't add side benefits (a transmuter spellsword can flesh to stone you AND gets -teleport and modified zoo spells), and then on top of all that, knowingly pretend that you didn't nerf yourself and imply that mechanical knowledge is somehow the wrong approach to a game whose foundation is mechanical and mathematical, and that we haven't grafted on the roleplay parts ourselves, as if your character is the 'average' build capacity of the general playerbase.

Spellsword is fine so long as you don't stick a pole between the spokes yourself and blame Kirito when you fall off.
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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by Sanctum » Sat Feb 24, 2018 2:25 am

FWIW,

I just got done soloing the Mind's Eye on mine, post nerf. Will give Mourn a go soon.

Initial signs suggest that the nerfs aren't the end of spellsword viability.

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Re: Spellswords (Again and again)

Post by BegoneThoth » Sat Feb 24, 2018 4:32 am

I personally don't feel they were hit hard enough, but we really need to wait a bit for people to find the new spicy techniques and bring them to the forefront.
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