Monster Creep and Dungeon Difficulty - Is it a problem?

[Nobs]

i would rather have a WM then a fire elemental on my wizard...infact on my wizard i dont even summon when i party with WM's.

Mutch beter of just keeping greater invis and haste on the WM and watch him roll every thing as i look pretty behind him.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Sure, and I would love to have a wizard every time I went out to do that for me, or even better a healer. But my original point which has kind of gotten lost here was that without a caster a wm starts to get hard around 17 unless you party up with caster classes, and its really the only class that has that as an issue now that monks got a super overhaul. And in my opinion, there in lies the problem. Its not so much that any class relies heavily on other classes to get by, its that only one relies so heavily on them. If say summons were reduced to a turn per level, then casters would need weapons masters (or pallys, or straight fighters) as much as the wm needed them, and things would be just peachy.

[MajorArcana]

That being said, if you really think leveling a wm is as easy as any other class besides a monk (and with the changes, monk just got a whole lot better) you may be a bit too used to having casters on hand at all times when you go out and about. Which is fine, but not always feasible unless you do a lot of ooc arranging, something I try to avoid.

It's not hard to walk up to a caster and ask "Can you give me wardings?" or "Do you want to accompany me on an expedition?".

You could argue that they might have extreme level differences, but there are so many casters of all sorts of flavors and levels that you're bound to find at least one that can travel with you without gimping xp gain.

Remember, this is an RP server. A social setting. You don't need to set things up OOCly if you want to grind. Is it easier to? Yes, absolutely, it's easier to grind with a group of friends. But it's not impossible to find randoms either, and it's disingenuous to spin a narrative that it is.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

That being said, if you really think leveling a wm is as easy as any other class besides a monk (and with the changes, monk just got a whole lot better) you may be a bit too used to having casters on hand at all times when you go out and about. Which is fine, but not always feasible unless you do a lot of ooc arranging, something I try to avoid.

It's not hard to walk up to a caster and ask "Can you give me wardings?" or "Do you want to accompany me on an expedition?".

You could argue that they might have extreme level differences, but there are so many casters of all sorts of flavors and levels that you're bound to find at least one that can travel with you without gimping xp gain.

Remember, this is an RP server. A social setting. You don't need to set things up OOCly if you want to grind. Is it easier to? Yes, absolutely, it's easier to grind with a group of friends. But it's not impossible to find randoms either, and it's disingenuous to spin a narrative that it is.

I can see how you read it that way, but that's not the narrative I am spinning at all. Read the post right above yours, and maybe you can get a clearer picture of my perspective.

[Nobs]

Get some wands on your WM and you wil roll stuff solo.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Lol, I surrender. It seems like every comment I make is met with "Just get better" as an attitude, which would be insulting even if I did suck. Which I don't lol. Part of that may be because a lot of people assume I just want to go out and be able to solo everything, but that's not the case at all. We have gotten a few casters in the sentinels recently, but when I look at the first six people that joined me we were all melee builds and archers. And if all seven of us went out, we would be less efficient then two wizards, which just seems wrong. That in a nutshell was the point I was trying to make, but clearly I just need to get better...or something

[Cortex]

Party setup also plays an important role, a tank accompanied by a DPS will be able to shred most things. A party of four glass cannons will struggle a lot more than the former.

On WM, I've leveled one to late epics some time ago completely solo with a scythe of all things, it is do able. But I have to admit that doing some epic content will require you to buy some epic gear before you are able to do it, and a properly geared 1h WM should be able to solo a lot of the content with enough effort.

Classes that have been able to effortlessly solo epic content have been getting a look at, and measures will continue to make sure it evens out better.

[Subutai]

WM, currently at 50k.

This one's a little bit confusing to me, to be honest. At 27, my WM was sitting at somewhere around 400k, without ever really putting much effort into getting gold. Admittedly, he had AA and rogue buddies to help him level up from the low-teens on, and had a mage with him a few times before 10, but the vast majority of the time he was just self-buffed using wands. Worse, he didn't even have Improved Expertise until after 20 and hadn't invest in Heal until after his rogue dump, so he was doing all that with frankly embarrassing AC and 0 heal.

Then again, he can forge adamantine armor, so he didn't need to spend on that.

Either way, I don't think WM compares at all to how much AAs, for example, need to spend. 500 arrow bundles last an hour or less, so even if they're able to craft their own arrows with carpentry or forging, they're still going to end up buying 1500 worth of arrows for every other hour they spend leveling, in addition to wands, kits, etc.

[Sic Semper Tyrannis]

Based on NWN spell mechanics it will nearly always be cheaper to play a caster. My 27/3 Cleric cost near nothing to play as it had summons and could heal/buff itself. This coupled with a piety system that didn't cost me a single gp (compared to spell components) made the character a cheap leveling experience and low cost upkeep.

I currently play a melee character and I feel the cost of wands/gear. The main driver of this is that melee classes (not counting hybrids or summons) typically see a 1:1 ratio with improvement as gear improves. Casters often aren't as dependent on gear because magic or summons can act as a buffer.

So I'll buy the premise that a melee character with UMD costs more to play than a caster does.

However, the question then becomes is this fair? and also, does it need to be fair?

in my eyes it's fine to expect melee who want to replicate magic via items to pay more. They're already powerful in a natural state (as opposed to the often weak natural state of unbuffed casters).

As for the disparity between being tied to gear, or being able to survive with very little gear, I'm not sure there's a viable solution that fixes innate DnD/NWN mechanics that make this the case. Do we charge components for all spells? Do we add time delays between casts (a la Weave Masters, but with no benefit)? These types of solutions seem punitive.

Do we give melee players a free gift of wealth? That at least subsidizes the costs, but with market rates as they are, a 1000/month payout doesnt help all that much. And what even qualifies as melee? Can you dip and still qualify?

I see your argument of cost, but I both:
a) Don't see the cost as unfair, and
b) Don't see viable system fixes that aren't punitive or arbitrary

[The GrumpyCat]

Just a gentle reminder to please keep it civil here folks.

[Subutai]

While I'm not going to suggest any kind of solution here, I do want to address one thing.

Don't see viable system fixes that aren't punitive

While I agree on the surface that classes shouldn't be punished for being good, I do think the tendency towards improving weaker classes to match up with stronger classes, rather than nerfing the stronger classes, has played at least some role in the current trend towards perfect optimization. This has resulted in a lot of big power boosts, and a need to focus on getting the very, very best out of those changes or risk falling behind into a class combination that doesn't get much, if anything, from Arelith's tweaks.

I'm not saying this is solely responsible for any kind of power creep or need to power build. Rather, I'm saying it to make the point that "punitive" changes isn't necessarily the word I'd use. I don't think that calling nerfs to classes should be considered a punishment. The people playing those classes aren't being punished for their class being too strong. Rather, the classes are just being balanced. If wizards are too strong, or archer rangers are too strong, or monks are too strong, or whatever, it isn't that those players are being scolded or reprimanded for something, it's just that it was determined that the class they'd chosen had an unfair advantage, and that advantage had to be corrected. I don't think there's anything inherently punitive about it, personally.

[Sic Semper Tyrannis]

Words

You raise a very good point. Punitive is a poor choice of word in the context of class balancing.

I do think you brought up an implicit second point worth noting as well, in that class design is done in an effort to balance them. There is value in this process, as a player shouldn't be absurdly behind the power curve just because they chose a class that is necessarily weaker (see Barbarian before the Arelith changes). Equally important is what measuring stick the design team uses to balance classes. There is a difference between balancing a powerbuild vs. non-powerbuild.

I am curious what measuring stick the design team uses.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I personally think gimping the summons is the best way to go. I know I said turns per level in an earlier post, but really even that's too good and would make it rounds per level. Perhaps creating a summoner path similar to spell sword and shadow mage that has limitations on what they can cast but boosts the duration as you go up in level. Then I would get rid of -pray to make them a bit better against weapons masters in pvp, since you don't want to take away their ease of leveling without giving them something in return. This would hands down make it more balanced on how each half needs each other, but its far from being completely thought out, since you still need to account for clerics and druids as well. But its a good place to start if the intention is to make people need to party up.

[Ecthelion]

I'm not really certain what is being debated at this point anymore.

If the question is to which class can roll on PvE content the most easely ? Definately casters.
The most quickly ? Definately WM/Barbs that will just outdamage everything. You'll have to pay more, fine, that's it. It's not un-doable.

For levelling experience, I don't know. There can be levels where the writs you can take will be too hard, then what ? Find people to do them with you at those levels. It's very rarely constantly hard.

Are there better builds than others ? Of course. Is it easier to roll on dungeons with better builds ? Of course. Is it impossible to do solo the 'hard' dungeons with suboptimal characters ? Probably. Are dungeons tailored towards optimized characters ? Certainly not. A wizard can solo all the content of the game, excepted Paush, even if built 30 Wizard and geared with +1/+1/+2/+2. It won't be quick, of course. Take a party of two, three optimized builds ? Content is trivial. Do we want to make /every/ dungeon hard, so that people with RP build will never see them ? No.

Maybe the server deserves a few very challenging dungeons (like one or two, not twelve). And make Paush immune to Gonnes, please. The reward system, though, in my opinion, seriously needs to be changed. It is absolutely frustrating to bring big parties with mid-level people, through super dangerous areas, with a lot of RP, spending a couple of hours on a trip to head somewhere, and to find an empty chest with a mine of zinc. If not changing the runic system, at least put other chests in there, or gem veins, or mithril veins, or whatever. Disclaimer, I have no idea what would be the best way to tweak it, nor do I know if better is attainable (But I sure hope it is).

We can also keep debating how much gold a WM needs to solo content, but I'm not certain that's very useful. Worst case, reduce the cost of wandmaking or increase the charges. It never struck me as really needed though. I went through levelling with just the simple consummables that mobs dropped. It took me the Hells of a time, sure ! I found buddies and all, and discovered the server.