Damage Caps For Magic (Feedback and Discussion)

[Disciprine Come From Within]

By that logic, it makes no sense that Flame Arrow improves well into epic progression, yet it does. And it's a 3rd level spell, same as fireball. The discussion idea is to make less used spells more likely to be used in general. Options that aren't worth using can feel very lackluster, especially when you want to do something specific with those options. Ball Lightning used to be a worthless spell until it was changed into a lightning element firebrand.

I don't think anyone arguing for better progression of spells want them to rise all the way to level 30 damage, or even to outperform higher level spells. They just want the option for those lower level spells to be worth using. How to do that, and what would be considered fair and balanced is something that probably would be better suited to the devs.

[Sab1]

But every spell casting class has spells that don't get used the higher you go. I just don't think people are missing out on a lot if fireball at lvl 27 doesn't seem worth casting.

[Disciprine Come From Within]

Except fireball isn't worth casting past level 10, for example. It's average damage is an AoE of 35 that isn't party friendly and the reward for the risk makes it a forgotten spell fairly fast. Lightning bolt suffers the similar problem, also not being party friendly and doing around 35 per target.

Meanwhile Flame Arrow does an average of 14 damage per arrow and once you reach level 12, it outperforms fireball in single target damage and continues to rise to a max of 98 damage at caster level 28. For a 3rd level spell. That also can be maximized to do even more. (168 damage)

The fact that every spellcasting class has spells that lose their luster quickly to me is a problem, not something to just shrug about. I feel that way about every spell in the game. Ideally, they should all have a use, even if it's just situational. Again, I'm not saying they should be overpowered, but that they should have a use. There are even a few interesting ways to make spells have better uses that don't involve improving them. For example, making certain enemies vulnerable to specific elements.

[Chucky1234]

I kind of see your point. Perhaps having a damage scale of dwhateverdice + epic mage levels/2. That would mean a level 30 mage casting a spell capping at 15d6 would have his spell being 15d10.5 so not hugely overpowered but enough to spice things up a little.

It seems reasonable that whatever the spell is that a level 30 mage should be better at it than an apprentice.

[Tourmaline]

I wonder if GSF infini-cast spells could be expanded, or.. something. Maybe expand the list of spells you can cast at epic spell focus?

A lot of direct damage spells would be great to cast except you need a few of them to affect a high HP, high save Arelith monsters and you can't even stockpile tons of 1st level spells. I never really got why at level 30 you get as many base 1st level spells as 9th. An epic generalist wizard can only cast 4 1st level spells before intelligence bonus, maybe 7 or 8 with? After a few needed other spells that's maybe four magic missiles, which won't even put a dent in one epic monster.

That's the biggest issue for me. You only have room for so many, and it takes more than that to make a difference, so why bother? You have your buffs, your summons and your emergency PVP spells (usually enough for one fight) and what's left over is never enough to use offensively except as a parlor trick.

(And I should add how much I do like the infini-cast spells, it is so much better than the days of every wizard shooting and never hitting with their obligatory crossbows.)

[Shadowy Reality]

I don't know if this has been mentioned, but these level caps were thought out for random HP rolls, while Arelith maxed that out. If everyone's HP were roughly half of what they are now these spells would have a bit more impact.

Weapons in Arelith are overbuffed, the numbers you can pull based on the weapon alone are crazy, which is why it is not possible to play any build that does not optimize Con, and why these spells seem to do so little in comparison.

A masterly iron scimitar in the hands of an epic WM still does way more damage than a fireball in the hands of an epic mage, so it is not about rotating out old things as you level up.

[Tourmaline]

Maybe there could be ways to enhance basic spells with consumables (like essences or flame/iceberries, but for certain spells instead of weapons and companions) to do much more damage temporarily, or ways to chaining sequences of spells could make them more effective as the rounds go on (i.e. if you have a certain focus and cast spells in a certain order they improve over the basic versions)

[Diilicious]

this does get a bit annoying really as a 30th level cleric with all of the evocation foci, a hammer of the gods will still VERY RARELY do more than 25 damage, you cant even kill the badgers on the road without hitting them several times with it. its sort of embarrasing really.

and the other attacking cleric spells like flame strike dont do much more AND have a save for half, firestorm doesnt do much, earthquake will do about 100 to EVERYTHING near you, which means its useless unless you're alone and miles away from civilisation where fixtures could be, I should be able to as a high level caster decide under whos feet the ground shakes if a darned wizard can pull comets from orbit and not effect any of their party members.

[RedGiant]

This thread brings up valid points. IMO, its also absolutely valid to compare DPS across classes, yes even comparing melee and magic potential.

For a long time, this server has tilted toward a melee-renaissance, for good or for ill. I trotted out my old evoc-specialist...and I could only get a measly 120-140pts from my 5 feats toward hellball and greater ruin respectively. This went from a "fairly useful" path to "I don't know any sane person who takes them anymore".

I also have a shameless lvl 15 or so scythe ftr/wm/rogue, because..."if you cant beat...them join them", who regularly hits for 160+, often several times a round, and is nowhere near his full damage capacity.

DPS is jarringly out of whack right now. Complain all you want about how reasonable it is to cap IGMS, then look me in the eye and tell me weapon master is fine. (Some of you will do this.) Weapon master, by any sane measure, is completely broken in all the things it does multiply, but shouldn't.

In short, I think many of these old building decisions need fundamentally reevaluated...especially in the era where 600+hp end characters are common place, and these characters can often simply out-heal any unsustained source of incoming damage.

[Cortex]

weapon master is fine

[Durvayas]

this does get a bit annoying really as a 30th level cleric with all of the evocation foci, a hammer of the gods will still VERY RARELY do more than 25 damage, you cant even kill the badgers on the road without hitting them several times with it. its sort of embarrasing really.

This is the point where I point out that badgers, like all of Arelith's creatures, have HP pools well beyond anything that makes any degree of sense, and that much of this discussion is really just about power creep, or rather, dealing with the main symptom of it; Namely, that what used to be good, simply isn't anymore.

Everything on arelith makes no sense after you hit lvl 10. Saves for mobs become insane to the point that using any spell with a save component becomes a crapshoot(clearly a result of the addition of infinicasting classes, and overcompensating for that), everything has absurd amounts of HP(a result of maximized hit dice, and powerbuilding making things trivial for melee oriented builds, and building to compensate for the absurd numbers melee classes hit. HP was boosted to compensate for this), and if a character is not running one of a half dozen cookie cutter powerbuilds, partying becomes less a matter of 'what can this character contribute to the group' and more a matter of 'what weakness does this character have that could be a liability'.

In order to have things not be utterly trivial for powerbuilds, everything on Arelith has been boosted to the point that one more or less MUST powerbuild in order to stay on the curve, for PvE and PvP. We used to not discuss builds on the forums. Years ago it was even frowned upon, and now building is an absolute science, and you can see that the attitude about it has shifted dramatically on the server. 'If your build is not optimal, it is trash' is the prevailing wisdom on Arelith now because power overall has been on a slow, but steady incline since the introduction of true flame sorcerers.

Redgiant is right about how melee DPS has gotten insane, and the average build is now sporting upwards of 400-500HP minimum. Arelith's balance, in general, has utterly broken. Everyone has been so concerned with builds being balanced, that they don't seem to have noticed that the module's PvE balance is completely out of whack. It never used to be this bad across the board(except for some classic examples of spectacularly bad creature design like the deep troll shamans).

Something needs to give. We need to be bringing the numbers down on the PC side, not endlessly pushing them higher and higher on the mob side.

[Richørd]

So, I've thought often about this topic.
As a newer player on Arelith, but a "gamer" (cringeworty word, I know) for more than half of my life, I think I managed to get a good feel for what's balanced or obviously broken in any game I invest some time in. And let me tell ya : Arelith feels surprisingly good in terms of balance.

First of all I need to point out that the first character I built is not some min-maxxed freakozoid of a powerhouse. Freshly dinged level 30 character with levels put into fighter, CoT and halberd weaponmaster. Absolutely unfit to be a tank in higher-end content of Arelith but a monster when it comes to constant DPS.
And yes, while 200+ damage crits are the norm for my character, while even epic level spells like Greater Ruin struggle to reach the same amount (35d6 so a theoretical 35 to 210 damage) Arelith does not feel incredibly unbalanced.

Reason being that most classes have something that feels utterly broken about them and that it is generally hard to completely f*ck up a build to the point where the character just becomes dead weight in any situation. I could look at any class and find something that makes me think :
"Damn, that's good!"
While melee characters are able to dish out insane amounts of DPS, what worth does that damage have in the end if a single, failed save can cost you your life? Even with saves like 23 reflex, 20 fortitude and 19 will I never feel safe against any caster.
I have met several characters that are weaker than a wet tissue without their buffs but once you give them some time to prepare they outshine anything I can do and basically transform themselves from a wet tissue to a magical Randy Savage on steroids!
Conjuration-focused characters still amaze me with how they can pull an aditional tank, that heals the entire frontline, right out of their pockets.
Shapeshifters. Enough said.

I could go on about each and every single character archetype there is, but what I am trying to say is :

Damage is nice, it feels good to see triple digit numbers pop up but even without high damage numbers each character can provide something that's good. Either in PvE or PvP. If you are a caster that doesn't happen to be a True Flame or a warlock you of course will not be suited to provide reliable damage in a group setting, without having to rest every few encounters.

And I think Arelith has a few other balancing issues (grandfathered Kenseis for example ALWAYS outclassing other martial characters with a laughable downside to their path, everyone being able to invest three levels into rogue at any point and making several aspects of the class less unique to list a few) , but those are a topic for another day.


EDIT : my bad, checked the wiki and found out that Greater Ruin's damage has been increased to 45d6 + 10 damage on Arelith. Still, that is a one-time feat that takes up your entire round, dealing 55 to 280 damage.

[Dr_Hazard89]

Epic evocation feels very underwhelming. All those feats for so little pay off. I know what uses it has and why it's great in certain situations, but for the price paid I'd rather it be much more powerful.

Arelith has a problem. Everyone and everything has ridiculous HP and saves. NPCs more so than PCs, but it applies to both. Compounded with instant self heals that you can do no matter your condition (-pray)... it makes all these underwhelming spells and feats seem even more useless and frustrating to play with.

[Sockss]

Arelith PvE is really easy. You can solo everything aside from some of the high epic bosses with a lollipop and a bad attitude. For the epic bosses you might need two lollipops.

Mages don't need to be able to cast wail and screen wipe mobs. With summons you can do everything anyway, more efficiently than the majority of other classes.

That said:

Pray had been nerfed which makes mage nuking and disabling much better.

A lot of the reworked mobs as of late don't have super inflated saves, either.

It's rare to meet a player with stacked 5% / runic gear and most PC's have at least one low save. Not that you ever need a save to kill someone.

Comparing melee damage output to mage damage output with raw numbers is silly. There's a huge amount of factors you're ignoring.

[Shadowy Reality]

weapon master is fine

This keeps being said, over and over again, any time someone brings their numbers to the table.

But the fact that the cookie cutter build of Arelith is a WM must mean something is at least off with it. In fact the cookie cutter build takes on two aspects of Arelith that often come under discussion, UMD and WM damage output.

I do not know in which world WM DPS is fine. The only thing that competes is Evo Combo and that's a once per rest thing. Nothing else scales damage better than WM, and this thread blatantly shows that in particular mages have to resort to limited, high level spells of they want to even try to compete with melee numbers.

I would love to be explained what would happen to the meta were WM to either lose the multiplier or the critical range.

[Jagel]

Or if the added multiplier only had a certain chance of triggering. Say, at lvl 5 on a crit there is a 25 % chance of multiplier being increased by one. Chance increased by another 25 % with each lvl after wm lvl 7 until it’s 100% at wm lvl 10

[Crackle]

I get nervous when people on this server start talking about balance.
Time to make a character of every class before something gets deleted.

[Mithreas]

Saves for mobs become insane to the point that using any spell with a save component becomes a crapshoot(clearly a result of the addition of infinicasting classes, and overcompensating for that)

As I have commented before... wrong way around.

In the beginning, there were insta-kill spells. Finger of Death, Hold Monster, Wail of the Banshee, Weird etc. etc.

These spells made high level content trivial for casters, meaning they could level more quickly and safely than other classes.

So monsters got given higher saves, so that you couldn't just roll up an int 18 wizard and breeze your way to 30.

But in turn, this led to magic not really doing very much in PvM. You'd have a decent arsenal of damage spells for bosses, and a summon to grind its way through everything up to the boss, but any spell with a save became so unreliable as to barely be worth a slot. Playing a mage didn't feel very, well, magical - you spent most of your time toting your trusty crossbow.

Infinicasters were developed in response to this, meaning you could throw spells around a lot more. If individual spells did less, well, you just cast more of them. Saves were still high, so (despite my efforts with feylocks in particular), disabling effects were still not really a viable strategy, but you could at least play a mage who didn't need to carry a crossbow any more.

This *also* compensated for the fact that individual damage spells, as this thread observes, don't really do very much. (On FL, I doubled the damage of pretty much all spells that anyone of level 9 can cast, as well as having infinicasters and cheaper wands/scrolls. Magic Missile isn't a very powerful spell, but quickened magic missile cast twice a turn at double damage is quite capable of taking down even FL's dragons which have HP pools in four figures.)

There's a fundamental problem here. Magic in D&D is balanced for an environment where combat is relatively rare - a couple of times per session - and where parties solve problems together. It's not at all balanced for an MMO style environment where characters play solo and grinding through enemies is the main way to gain XP. My design philosophy was very much to move away from Vancian style casting and towards the sort of magic systems used in MMOs, for precisely this reason (that's a massive change to make, and the evolution was taking place over years, with plenty of balance bumps along the way). The big weakness of this approach is that it's not D&D, and lots of people are not fans of such a significant departure from core rules. That's absolutely fine - but it still leaves the original problem unsolved, namely, how to make Vancian magic feel like magic without also making it trivialise content. Quite honestly, I've never seen a good answer to that on any PW. Messing with damage on spells, on its own, doesn't IMO address that fundamental issue.

[WanderingPoet]

In order to have things not be utterly trivial for powerbuilds, everything on Arelith has been boosted to the point that one more or less MUST powerbuild in order to stay on the curve, for PvE and PvP. We used to not discuss builds on the forums. Years ago it was even frowned upon, and now building is an absolute science, and you can see that the attitude about it has shifted dramatically on the server. 'If your build is not optimal, it is trash' is the prevailing wisdom on Arelith now because power overall has been on a slow, but steady incline since the introduction of true flame sorcerers.

Just want to point out that there is no "MUST" here, you don't have to powerbuild at all for PvE. Will you level a bit slower if you don't? Probably. But powerbuilding is far from a requirement for PvE. I've personally played several characters that are not powerbuilds (still am) and leveled at the same speed of others, had just as much fun, and was sufficiently useful(or just enjoyable) to my party that they wanted to invite me along again.

PVP will typically come down to a mix of who is more skilled and who has the better build. Being both more skilled AND having the better build will guarantee a win - how is this an issue? You don't win at chess by never practising (skill) and by removing your queen and rooks from the board before playing (choosing to not build a strong character) and then expect to be on an even playing field with the opponent. Ultimately sufficient mechanical advantage can beat most skilled players, but sufficient skill can beat most mechanical advantages - so if you want to engage in PVP and also want to not powerbuild, then get really good at playing whatever character you choose to play, in PVP.

[Peppermint]

As a side note, shortly after the summons update (i.e. a year or two ago), I spent a significant period of time on the DM client shadowing players to analyze builds and their performance to better determine how the new summons were faring (and which ones needed tweaking).

The number of optimal builds I spied was surprisingly minimal: a definite minority, perhaps 20% or less. This notion about a 'culture of min/maxing' was patent nonsense then and almost certainly is now.

I would love to be explained what would happen to the meta were WM to either lose the multiplier or the critical range.

Nothing, probably. WM hasn't been S-tier (or arguably even A-tier) for a while. You just wouldn't see any weapon masters anymore.

[Hexgoblin]

Weapon masters remain reliable, but many separate changes pushed them off their throne a long time ago. Primarily the removal of artefacts as their main source of saving throws, and the change to timestop, making physical damage dealers unable to initiate with a scroll of it. It was a throne they held with these things accounted for. In a dungeon, you'll have a hard time finding a more consistant source of physical damage, but every class, or atleast standardized conjuncture of classes have their archetype. The WM in particular doesn't have much else going for it, aside from its designated DPS role.

Why it's often thrown around in mentions these days, is usually because the 20/7/3 is a good first build to recommend to someone, as opposed to it being the best thing available if played to its peak potential. They don't take a lot of investment to get contributive results out of, making it a good springboard for someone either fresh to the game, or mechanically unaccustomed, while generally being able to hold their own defensively vs. casual content. You don't need to be particularly good at the game to get results out of a weapon master in a dungeon, and there's still plenty to distinguish a versed one from a novice, in terms of combat mode useage, UMD, target priority, so on. They've got a lot of growing room.

All in all, the weapon master boasts exceptional damage, average AC and absolute garbage saves outside of really high end gear. Seems balanced to me. They're making a pretty distinct tradeoff.

Also, I really don't get how infinicasters keep being brought up in these topics. A warlock, assuming it hits both blasts averages around 110 damage a round PvM at the level cap. That's not good damage. Trueflames are arguably the worst class path in the game. Yes, they do a lot of damage in low level, to mid, to low epics dungeonc content, assuming they've a permanent guard to handhold them, but spells as a source of dungeon damage really falls off later on, primarily on behalf of a wide slew of specific immunities. Meanwhile, they can't exist on their own, have no means of spotting invisibility, no means of applying crucial rudimentary buffs to themselves, and get bopped in PvP by near every other class available. If that's the price they pay to be good in run of the mill dungeon content, then power to them.

In summary. Every class will never be equal in dungeon damage. if they were, they'd have to be equal in every other facet of the game too, which they're not. Classes, or builds composed of multiple of them that complement eachother excel at different things. In a lot of setups, the damage dealer is often the least crucial member of a party.

[MissEvelyn]

This is inherently a D&D problem. 5th edition solved it by letting you cast your lower spells using your higher level spell slots, but we can't expect something like that to happen here, as it would require a complete overhaul of the system.

[-XXX-]

Have spell charges replenish automatically after 3 IG hours

[RedGiant]

To Mithreas' erudite summation: "How to make Vancian magic feel like magic, without trivializing content", I would submit the following.

Restore magic damage potential. In my last post I spoke about weapon masters in contrast with an evocation focused caster to highlight the absurdity of the current system. Especially in the case of arcane casters, Arelith has take steps to everywhere curb this potential. In vanilla NWN, both weapon masters and casters had incredible DPS potential, the trade off for casters being that they could not sustain this for any length of time. Here I like the FL model (at least for damage increase) as well as the old version of epic evocation spells, which enhanced the damage in recognition of this limited "burst" dynamic (i.e. doing 400+ on a failed save...once per rest).

I still think this is where the balance is at in DnD DPS...the trade off being sustained damage versus burst. As for trivializing content, I think Arelith has done a bang-up job presenting radically different sorts of challenge in PvM, and this too I think is at least a solution in part. Along this line, I had sort of a radical thought.

Since the Arelith wizards can already make artefacts with random properties, what about a similar system to assign bosses random properties (both immunities and vulnerabilities?) from a set list per reset and/or respawn? This would keep challenges fresh and let different characters shine depending on the run.

Oh crap, my missile storms bounce of the Juggernaut (immune to evocation this iteration). But wait! The Rogue's dagger effortlessly dismantles it (piercing vulnerability this time). Everyone....cover the rogue!

If this is too gimmicky, maybe just reinforce the classic DnD vulnerabilities and immunities, but vary bosses enough that each major block of classes can shine.

[Chucky1234]

Maybe have a boost to DPS at level 28 so those pure mages receive the bonus. Owing to most mages taking a dip for discipline this may limit the number of 'power casters' that you'd see - and it would only come into effect level 28 - 30 anyway.

I would have thought that a level 30 mage should have some pretty devastating versions of the basic spells.