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Is the Aielund Saga supposed to be really hard? I'm having a really tough time with it.
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Jan 3, 2015 22:39
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I was thinking about trying to go through the official campaigns using a lightly-armored, Dex-based, dual-wielding warrior with spellcasting capability (mainly for self-buffing). I wanted to see whether people think that this build I came up with viable and if so whether there are ways of improving it. I went with Swashbuckler for the Dex-based fighter, Wizard for the Int synergy with Swashbuckler and Eldritch Knight for the good BAB and spell progression. Race: Human Initial Stats (at level 1): Str: 10, Dex: 16, Con: 14, Int: 16, Wis: 10, Cha: 10 Final Stats (at level 30): Str: 10, Dex: 26, Con: 14, Int: 18, Wis: 10, Cha: 10 Skills to focus on: Bluff, Concentration, Diplomacy, Lore, Spellcraft, Tumble, Use Magic Device. Weapons: Rapier in main hand, dagger in off-hand. Armor: None Levels (10 Swashbuckler/10 Wizard/10 Eldritch Knight): 01 Swashbuckler (Spellcasting Prodigy, Able Learner) 02 Wizard (generalist) 03 Wizard (Two Weapon Fighting) 04 Wizard (+1 Dex) 05 Wizard 06 Wizard (Spell Penetration) 07 Eldritch Knight 08 Eldritch Knight (+1 Dex) 09 Eldritch Knight (Weapon Focus (Rapier)) 10 Eldritch Knight 11 Eldritch Knight 12 Eldritch Knight (Two Weapon Defense) (+1 Dex) 13 Eldritch Knight 14 Eldritch Knight 15 Eldritch Knight (Improved Two Weapon Fighting) 16 Eldritch Knight (+1 Dex) 17 Swashbuckler 18 Swashbuckler (Greater Two Weapon Fighting) 19 Swashbuckler 20 Swashbuckler (+1 Dex) 21 Swashbuckler (Great Dexterity) 22 Wizard 23 Wizard (Great Intelligence) 24 Wizard (+1 Dex) 25 Wizard (Great Dexterity, Great Intelligence) 26 Wizard 27 Swashbuckler (Perfect Two Weapon Fighting) 28 Swashbuckler (+1 Dex) 29 Swashbuckler (Great Dexterity) 30 Swashbuckler
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Jan 6, 2015 22:38
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I don't have time to mess with the builder right now, but I suspect you'll do much better with a Divine, rather than Arcane version of this build. The buffs available are generally better, the Int synergy is a bit overrated, Divine Power basically solves your BAB issues, and the Divine classes just flat out offer more goodies than Wizard/EK do in terms of HP, bonus feats, etc. The main way you fall behind is skills, which is annoying, but manageable.
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Jan 6, 2015 23:22
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CaptainPsyko posted:The main way you fall behind is skills, which is annoying, but manageable. Race: Yuan Ti Pureblood Initial Stats (at level 1): Str: 10, Dex: 18, Con: 14, Int: 18, Wis: 12, Cha: 10 Final Stats (at level 30): Str: 10, Dex: 26, Con: 14, Int: 20, Wis: 12, Cha: 10 Skills to focus on: Bluff, Concentration, Diplomacy, Lore, Spellcraft, Tumble, Use Magic Device. Levels: 01 Swashbuckler (Spellcasting Prodigy) 02 Wizard (generalist) 03 Swashbuckler (Able Learner) 04 Wizard (+1 Dex) 05 Swashbuckler 06 Wizard (Two Weapon Fighting) 07 Swashbuckler 08 Wizard (+1 Dex) 09 Wizard (Spell Penetration, Improved Two Weapon Fighting) 10 Eldritch Knight 11 Eldritch Knight 12 Eldritch Knight (Iron Will) (+1 Dex) 13 Eldritch Knight 14 Eldritch Knight 15 Eldritch Knight (Greater Two Weapon Fighting) 16 Eldritch Knight (+1 Dex) 17 Eldritch Knight 18 Eldritch Knight (Combat Expertise) 19 Eldritch Knight 20 Swashbuckler (+1 Dex) 21 Wizard (Epic Prowess) 22 Swashbuckler 23 Wizard (Combat Insight) 24 Swashbuckler (+1 Dex) 25 Wizard (Great Dexterity) 26 Swashbuckler 27 Wizard (Perfect Two Weapon Fighting) 28 Swashbuckler (+1 Dex) 29 Wizard (Great Intelligence, Great Intelligence) 30 Swashbuckler
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Jan 7, 2015 00:10
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While I don't know much about good character builds I doubt you're going to reach level 30 with LA+2.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:22
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Poil posted:While I don't know much about good character builds I doubt you're going to reach level 30 with LA+2.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:26
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I'm dumb and basically just repeated the post above me while trying to contradict it because I kin reed gud. Oops.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:33
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It will also make most of the game extremely miserable, because being 2 levels behind everyone is just no fun, especially when you are a wizard and especially ESPECIALLY when you are a multi-class wizard. Make that double for a build where you will have to wait for epic levels to get those nifty build-defining feats.
Lt. Lizard fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Jan 7, 2015 |
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Jan 7, 2015 00:37
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Factor_VIII posted:I was thinking about trying to go through the official campaigns using a lightly-armored, Dex-based, dual-wielding warrior with spellcasting capability (mainly for self-buffing). I wanted to see whether people think that this build I came up with viable and if so whether there are ways of improving it. I went with Swashbuckler for the Dex-based fighter, Wizard for the Int synergy with Swashbuckler and Eldritch Knight for the good BAB and spell progression. Too much Swashbuckler, same for the other build. Go Wizard/Swash/EK/Invisible Blade. Take just the 3 levels of Swash, then stack the gently caress out of EK and take all 5 levels of IB. Take 18 as your starting Int and 17 Dex, then max out your Dex with every level up from then out, use Int boosting items to pad it out. You may say "why IB when I have no Sneaks?" Doesn't matter, you're stacking shitloads of AC with buffs to be impossible to hit, and when they do hit, you have hilarious DR from spells. Your flat damage with Kukris will be solid and you'll have a metric fuckton of attacks with Haste, plus you'll always be rocking Keen Edge on both of them so you'll be a crit machine, and crits multiply the +Int damage from both Insight feats. You may say "well what about Crit immune stuff?" That's what Firebrand and Isaac's GMS are for. Don't bother with lots of Wizard levels, that's what EK is for, you will still get level 9 spells and you NEED the High BAB progression. IB helps pad this out while also giving you a badass Feint (take Able Learner and start skilling up Taunt immediately with Swash levels), plus the 5 extra AC. If you want to use Kaedrin's (you should), you could make this setup even better by axing IB or (even better) EK entirely and instead going Swiftblade, then making sure to have Persistent Haste by level 20 (very doable). Then you'll just be making GBS threads damage all over the place at high speed, since the +3d6 from Swiftblade is flat damage, and it's also multiplied by crits.  It'll do way better against crit immune poo poo, and just wreck everything else. The key is stacking AB, take Necro as your School and make sure to always be rolling with Heroism and GMW. Fuzz fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Jan 7, 2015 |
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Jan 7, 2015 00:44
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So after 8 years of owning Neverwinter Nights 2 and roughly 12 attempts, I have FINALLY managed to beat the Original Campaign. There were only three attempts that made it to Act III - everything else was aborted in Act I, roughly around Orc Caves (of course), because gently caress that jam. The first one was a few months after the release, and I made it RIGHT to the end, but I couldn't finish, because the True Name Scrolls got bugged and didn't work, making me unable to defeat those three Shadow Reavers just before the final fight. The second serious attempt was roughly year back - I decided to replay and finally finish the OC, using all recommended mods from this thread to make ti more bearable.... And thanks to the fantastic NWN2 Plot Fixes mod, by Act 3 I accidentally killed several plot critical NPCs that were supposed to be invincible and fire a cut-scene when beaten and irreversibly broke several quests, including the main one, making the game completely unwinnable. (oh yeah, and someone should REALLY delete that recommendation for NWN2 Plot Fixes mod from the OP, because that poo poo will ruin your game.). The third serious attempt was the current one and for once, everything worked as it should and once I got through the horrible tedium of the Act 1, I finished it without a problem. So here I am, with roughly 140 hours played according to Steam, and probably another 40 hours or so played before I got NWN 2 on Steam. All that is NWN 2 OC only, without a minute of MotB or SoZ played, because I am a horribly stubborn sperglord who decided he wont begin the Mask of the Betrayer or Storm of Zehir without beating the OC at least once - because starting the expansion without beating the main game even once just wouldn't be right....  I will begin MotB tomorrow, and I hope it is as amazing as everyone says, because JESUS I think that I deserve something nice from this game by now. 
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Jan 17, 2015 22:01
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Factor_VIII posted:I was thinking about trying to go through the official campaigns using a lightly-armored, Dex-based, dual-wielding warrior with spellcasting capability (mainly for self-buffing). Roll a straight Dex Bard. It covers every single base you've requested and it consistently much better than any kind of cross-class build.
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Jan 17, 2015 22:04
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Vermain posted:Roll a straight Dex Bard. It covers every single base you've requested and it consistently much better than any kind of cross-class build. There's one silly variant of the Dex Bard I tried the last time I did a full run of the OC and MotB: Bard with six levels of duelist. The only issue is if you're starved for feats (It sacrifices two epic feats and requires three to qualify, one of which is a bit poo poo). A lot of guides tend to heap far too much praise on a dual-wielding strength bard setup when this, IMO more and better more elegantly. Duelist is hugely bugged, possibly because without these implementation bugs it's actually an incredibly lovely prestige class. - Precise Attack will hurt absolutely anything and even a single die of Precise Attack can beat a lot of DR, so long as you're using a single piercing weapon (including spears). Critical immunity doesn't affect it. - Flourish apparently works with any sword, including the sword of Gith, which was a very nice bonus - While the potential naked AC is huge, I'd question a bard with 22 Int at all Also swashbuckler's insightful strike is ignored by crit-immune enemies. With duelist 10, you'd basically trade the Requiem songs for single strike damage that will beat almost any DR even with an unenchanted adamantine rapier at epic levels. IMO it's a huge sacrifice unless you really want to focus on a proto-Valor bard. That said Requiem is a bit overrated even if being able to blast a demilich in the opening round was very literally a blast On the other hand, Requiem means you can't really buff (except with the somewhat lovely healing) so there's that; A Bard/Duelist 10 would still get access to the epic version of the heroism song. Agnosticnixie fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Jan 18, 2015 |
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Jan 17, 2015 22:44
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Vermain posted:Roll a straight Dex Bard. It covers every single base you've requested and it consistently much better than any kind of cross-class build.
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Jan 18, 2015 00:45
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So I got a hankering for some NWN again and decided to roll through Shadows of Undrentide straight into Hordes of the Underdark. I grabbed the GoG version and that was a pain in the rear end that required me to play with my windows permissions. Even after getting it to install I found I had to run it in very low resolutions or the game would simply crash every time when trying to load the scenario. I finally work all this out and am running about when I hit up the farm to retrieve the tarot cards for the halfling caravan. I enter the basement and suddenly am unable to bypass the terrain down there, rendering me unable to complete the quest. At this point I quit out and try to Google up a solution to no avail and when I come back all of my save games now refuse to load and crash the game in the same manner as trying to play with the video options. I'm running on Windows 7 and hope anyone here has some insight in how to address all of these issues or if I should just give it up for naught.
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Jan 18, 2015 12:05
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Well, I've finished Aielund since I made that last post about it. It turned out I was just a bit underleveled for the part that was causing me problems because I'd missed a sidequest. Overall, it was pretty good, albeit a bit railroady. For instance, you end up in a romance with one of the NPCs no matter what. She's likable enough, so it wasn't too bad, but it's always nice to have choices. The series as a whole was a little light on dialogue options at times. Anyway, I have a general question. Am I right in thinking that it's basically pointless to keep taking Sorcerer levels after level 20 unless I want to switch spells? I didn't want to do any multiclassing because I'm not very familiar with D&D rules and I didn't want to accidentally screw myself over, but it looks like that was a mistake. Aielund was very generous with XP, and I kept getting all these levels I didn't know what to do with. My stats were ill-suited to moving into a martial class, and I didn't really want to anyway. I considered taking Wizard levels from then on so I could at least get more spells, but at the same time I was also finding that spells were doing very little damage against all these epic-level enemies the mod was throwing at me. Everything I fought made their save against everything I threw at them. Meanwhile, the fighter and cleric/paladin I was with were still doing respectable damage. It felt like playing vanilla Skyrim all over again. Plus, it would have taken a long time before I could boost my intelligence enough to cast high-level spells as a Wizard, because up until that point, I'd been raising Charisma at every opportunity. Did I just miss something that would have made my spells harder to save against? I took all the Spell Focus feats for Evocation, but it didn't seem to help. Maybe I'm just bad at D&D for wanting to play a magic user who kills stuff with fireballs and magic missiles instead of debuffing and save-or-die-ing things.
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Jan 18, 2015 19:45
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You'll get more epic feats faster, as well as increases to caster level which are important for offensive casting if you stick with Sorc after 20. That said, you'd get more out of, for example, 10 levels of Arcane Scholar of Candleleep, for super-metamagic with no caster level loss.
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Jan 18, 2015 19:51
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CaptainPsyko posted:You'll get more epic feats faster, as well as increases to caster level which are important for offensive casting if you stick with Sorc after 20. That said, you'd get more out of, for example, 10 levels of Arcane Scholar of Candleleep, for super-metamagic with no caster level loss. PS: I played around with my Swashbuckler/Wizard/Eldritch Knight PC and it's quite impressive what you can get if you exploit crafting to its full capacity in MotB. A Greater Amulet of Health, the Dread Wraps robe, the Heart of Rashamen and Mourningring rings, the Bracers of the Inner Planes, Dragon Slippers (enchanted to provide +8 Dex), Ceremonial Uthgard Belt (enchanted to provide +8 Str, and +9 to Fort saves), the Shroud of the Elder Doom (enchanted to provide +8 deflection AC bonus) and a custom headband (enchanted to provide +8 Int, +8 Con, +8 Cha and +9 to Will saves) resulted in my character having a 48 AC and 350 HP, +39 Fort, +29 Ref, +33 Will saves, as well as immunity to sneak attacks, paralysis, knockdown, fear, disease, level/ability drain, poison, death magic and also have freedom of movement, haste and improved evasion. And all that is before applying any wizard buffs.
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Jan 18, 2015 20:39
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Factor_VIII posted:Agreed. Caster level is very important. It makes spells last longer, increases their damage and is vital for getting through enemy spell resistance. Taking both wizard and sorcerer levels is a terrible idea. The character will have low caster levels in both classes. Better to mix things up and take levels in a non-caster class if one wants to multiclass, since that will give one's PC a different set of skills. Arcane Scholar of Candleleep is very nice, but 30 levels of Sorcerer will make a very effective character as well. The latter has the advantage that you are completely free to spend your feats however you like without worrying about meeting prestige class requirements. That's the thing, though. I did take 30 levels of Sorcerer, and my spells were still underpowered. Everything was saving against everything and the damage output was very low. If a higher caster level is supposed to make spells do more damage and be harder to save against, I haven't seen it. Also, this is NWN1, so Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep isn't an option. I'll be honest, I have no idea what determines the DC for monsters to save against your spells, or how I can increase it (other than the Spell Focus feats, which didn't seem to make much difference). Maybe if I knew how that worked, I might have a better idea of what to do.
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Jan 18, 2015 21:06
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Praetorian Mage posted:Well, I've finished Aielund since I made that last post about it. It turned out I was just a bit underleveled for the part that was causing me problems because I'd missed a sidequest. Overall, it was pretty good, albeit a bit railroady. For instance, you end up in a romance with one of the NPCs no matter what. She's likable enough, so it wasn't too bad, but it's always nice to have choices. The series as a whole was a little light on dialogue options at times. Aielund is pretty tough in the beginning, i had to cheat through one of the encounters(fight against some mercenary) In any case, if anyone still is playing nwn 1 modules and hasn't played the prophet series i heartily recommend it, it actually has a good plot(the first episode has a dumb drow sidequest though) and is well balanced, it can also be played coop multiplayer and that has some differences compared to playing through them singleplayer. Delerion fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Jan 18, 2015 |
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Jan 18, 2015 21:09
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Praetorian Mage posted:That's the thing, though. I did take 30 levels of Sorcerer, and my spells were still underpowered. Everything was saving against everything and the damage output was very low. If a higher caster level is supposed to make spells do more damage and be harder to save against, I haven't seen it. As far as Evocation spells go, Isaac's missile storms don't have saves and do magic damage, so these might be a good option if you all your enemies keep making saves or if they're resistant to elemental damage. Bigby's hand spells also don't have saves and are a good way to immobilize an enemy. Do enemies automatically fail their saves when attacked by spells under a Time Stop? I can't remember anymore how that spell worked in NWN.
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Jan 18, 2015 21:32
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Factor_VIII posted:It's been a while since I played NWN1, so I don't remember things so clearly. I had played through SoU and HotU with a pure Wizard and had no problems, though I'm not sure how relevant that is to you since this involved having a henchman and the enemies were presumably different from whatever you're up against. Spell DC is 10 + spell level + Charisma modifier + feat bonuses. If you can't affect enemies with your spells you either botched your character development (which doesn't sound like it based on what you've said) or that server decided to punish spellcasters by giving enemies huge saves. Yeah, I had to make liberal use of the Missile Storm and Bigby spells. I don't think I could have beaten the final boss fight of Aielund without Bigby's Crushing Hand. The thing was that most enemies I faced later on seemed to take 3 or 4 Greater Missile Storms each to kill, and that was with every missile hitting them. And I often had to fight four or five of these things at once. It probably also doesn't help that there aren't a lot of direct damage spells at the higher spell levels, so the only options you have are spells that have lower DCs to begin with. Maybe it was just a problem with Aielund. It could very well be that everything just had ridiculous saves and slightly-less-ridiculous AC. It gives you a lot of really powerful weapons to use against its high-HP enemies, but spell damage is more or less static (Christ, it really is like Skyrim all over again). It seems that someone who's making a module can create new weapons to compensate for monster difficulty, but not new spells. Is that true? Also, for as well-thought-out as the mod appears to be, you can't buy any blank spell scrolls beyond part 2 or 3. I figured that if I had to throw three missile storms to kill anything, maybe I could get by by scribing scrolls, so I took that feat, only to find that there were no scrolls to scribe. The module lets you buy loving dye for your armor (which I do like, but there's a hak that lets you do that already), but not spell scrolls. I sure as hell could have afforded to make a lot of scrolls, because Aielund throws gold and XP at you like candy and doesn't give you much to spend it on. That actually reminds me of another question I had. Is a spell cast from a scroll as good as one of your own spells, or does it have a lower DC for some reason? It seemed like spells I cast from scrolls or items got blocked more often than the ones I cast from my own spell reserves. Edit: I don't know about Time Stop. I never used it. Praetorian Mage fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Jan 18, 2015 |
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Jan 18, 2015 22:02
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Praetorian Mage posted:Is a spell cast from a scroll as good as one of your own spells, or does it have a lower DC for some reason? It seemed like spells I cast from scrolls or items got blocked more often than the ones I cast from my own spell reserves. Maybe the creators of the modules were worried about caster supremacy and deliberately beefed up monsters against spells. Of course managing balance is pretty tricky so it sounds like they overdid it.
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Jan 18, 2015 22:20
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Metal Meltdown posted:So I got a hankering for some NWN again and decided to roll through Shadows of Undrentide straight into Hordes of the Underdark. I grabbed the GoG version and that was a pain in the rear end that required me to play with my windows permissions. Even after getting it to install I found I had to run it in very low resolutions or the game would simply crash every time when trying to load the scenario. I finally work all this out and am running about when I hit up the farm to retrieve the tarot cards for the halfling caravan. I enter the basement and suddenly am unable to bypass the terrain down there, rendering me unable to complete the quest. At this point I quit out and try to Google up a solution to no avail and when I come back all of my save games now refuse to load and crash the game in the same manner as trying to play with the video options. Don't know how much help it would be for you at this point, but what graphics drivers are you using? If they're old, try updating them, or if they're new, maybe roll them back. As I recall, NWN tends to be somewhat sensitive to driver revisions. There's also a handful of graphical options like shiny water that you shouldn't enable, but I can't remember them all offhand. Maybe also try compatibility mode for WinXP.
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Jan 18, 2015 23:14
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Factor_VIII posted:The NWN wiki doesn't say anything about the DC of spells cast from scrolls. In D&D however a scroll has a DC that is 10 + the level of the spell + the ability modifier of the minimum ability score needed to cast that level of spell. So a 9th level spell would have 10+9+4, i.e. a DC of only 23. Also in D&D the caster level of a spell cast from a scroll is normally the minimum level necessary to cast the spell (e.g. 17 for 9th level spells). So if NWN follows D&D rules in this, then spells cast from scrolls will be weaker. That would fit with my experience. That's good to know. Factor_VIII posted:Maybe the creators of the modules were worried about caster supremacy and deliberately beefed up monsters against spells. Of course managing balance is pretty tricky so it sounds like they overdid it. That wouldn't surprise me. The final dungeon eventually puts you up against golems that are completely immune to all magic. The only way I could be useful in those fights was to take a single level of Fighter so I could use the "power swords" (read: lightsabers) you take from the other enemies in the dungeon. I'm pretty sure you aren't meant to fight through all of them (and indeed, I didn't), but still. There's also another part of the dungeon where you can get special armor for your wizard companion that basically makes him into a fighter, as if they knew spellcasters were weak in this module. Also, you have no idea how disappointing it was to hear that 3.0/3.5 was the edition of "caster supremacy" only to find out that they forgot to mention "except for direct damage casters". I can see how battlefield control stuff can be fun, but destruction mages should be viable too.
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Jan 19, 2015 00:46
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I definitely seem to recall that even Isaac's Greater Missile Storm would have trouble with Damage Resistance towards the end of Hordes of Underdark, at least without pumping some empowerments. Honestly both NWNs were more fun as Dex Bards with some levels of a more fighty prestige class (Arcane Archer, Canaith Lyrist, Duelist, etc). Also, much of the caster supremacy of 3rd edition hinges on extremely generous reading of SRD definitions of the spells (Contact Other Plane is a big culprit, no, time is not linear, and your wizard isn't important enough to get an overgod on the line), assumptions about the generally accepted power levels, and in the case of any sort of magic exploit involving the use of the spell Wish, downright cheating (even the SRD implies that going above the listed parameters should make the DM feel justified to go monkey paw on the player). Agnosticnixie fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Jan 19, 2015 |
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Jan 19, 2015 00:57
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Best class in original NWN is Shifter Druid with all the absurd monster and undead forms.
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Jan 19, 2015 01:04
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Agnosticnixie posted:I definitely seem to recall that even Isaac's Greater Missile Storm would have trouble with Damage Resistance towards the end of Hordes of Underdark, at least without pumping some empowerments. Honestly both NWNs were more fun as Dex Bards with some levels of a more fighty prestige class (Arcane Archer, Canaith Lyrist, Duelist, etc). The final boss of Hordes of the Underdark also has extremely high magic resistance against pretty much everything except acid damage. Guess which level 2 spell I swapped out shortly before that boss fight? It was basically impossible for me to win without using his True Name. Agnosticnixie posted:Also, much of the caster supremacy of 3rd edition hinges on extremely generous reading of SRD definitions of the spells (Contact Other Plane is a big culprit, no, time is not linear, and your wizard isn't important enough to get an overgod on the line), assumptions about the generally accepted power levels, and in the case of any sort of magic exploit involving the use of the spell Wish, downright cheating (even the SRD implies that going above the listed parameters should make the DM feel justified to go monkey paw on the player). That would certainly explain why it doesn't hold up in a video game that plays all the rules strictly as written. Still, I've heard that direct damage is regarded as not just suboptimal, but downright bad, even in tabletop.
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Jan 19, 2015 01:16
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Praetorian Mage posted:Still, I've heard that direct damage is regarded as not just suboptimal, but downright bad, even in tabletop. 3e made the addition of your constitution modifier to your hit dice for HP, which inflated average hitpoints as you leveled. On the other hand spell damage wasn't adjusted, with an end result of spell damage becoming less effective as you gained levels. Meanwhile, saving throws were reworked so that your Save or Suck/Die spells are more difficult to resist.
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Jan 19, 2015 02:03
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isndl posted:3e made the addition of your constitution modifier to your hit dice for HP, which inflated average hitpoints as you leveled. On the other hand spell damage wasn't adjusted, with an end result of spell damage becoming less effective as you gained levels. Meanwhile, saving throws were reworked so that your Save or Suck/Die spells are more difficult to resist. Well that just sounds absolutely terrible. Did 3e only become the "caster edition" because every game was running a fuckton of house rules or something?
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Jan 19, 2015 02:13
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Praetorian Mage posted:Well that just sounds absolutely terrible. Did 3e only become the "caster edition" because every game was running a fuckton of house rules or something? Actually much of the 3e mentality seems to have been that house rules are bad and catering to horrible rules lawyers, basically it became caster edition thanks to a lot of rules lawyers reading the DMG and thinking suggestions were supposed to be hard, solid rules, then fed by this bubble of online rules lawyering. Late 2e had much of the same problem when splats moved from setting material and monster ecologies to stuff like Players' Options, which consisted of a few okay things (e.g. grandmastery, variant specialists, etc) for a lot of ridiculous stuff (S&P was never, ever meant to be a players' buffet).
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Jan 19, 2015 02:18
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Praetorian Mage posted:Well that just sounds absolutely terrible. Did 3e only become the "caster edition" because every game was running a fuckton of house rules or something? Regarding caster supremacy as a whole, much of the stuff I've seen involves abusing questionable spells and abilities from supplements such as the Book of Vile Darkness. Spellcasters can be very powerful and do things that a straight fighter cannot do, but much of the extreme cheese you saw involved things no sane GM would allow. And while casters can use spells to replicate the abilities of other classes, spells are limited in number so a caster couldn't really replace them all. In the end I also think it depends on the players. I'd that a good caster PC should buff and help his allies rather than try to hog all the spotlight, just as a rogue PC shouldn't constantly run off to try and loot houses or pickpocket important NPCs.
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Jan 19, 2015 09:02
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I fiddled around with some drivers and settings and now the game is working perfectly. I'm planning to run through SoU and HotU as a cleric/paladin/champion of torm with long sword proficiency. Anything I should know in particular? I cleared both campaigns in the past but that was many years ago now.
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Jan 19, 2015 11:24
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Factor_VIII posted:No. Magic in 1st and 2nd edition AD&D was really dangerous for the caster and his allies. E.g. every casting of Teleport had a chance to teleport you underground, instantly killing you and everyone with you. One bad roll could lead to a total party kill. Haste would magically age your body by one year. After a few weeks of adventuring human fighters would have to go to a retirement home. Additionally, in 2E every magical effect that aged the target also triggered a system shock roll (a percentile roll based on Constitution). Fail that and you'd die. In other words characters could die from being hasted, particularly if their Constitution wasn't high. And there were plenty of spells that magically aged the caster or their target. In other words earlier editions still had very powerful spells, but actually using them could result in instant death, which wasn't very fun. 3E removed that limitation. I think a lot of the perception in caster supremacy in various D and D editions relates to how the systems have been translated to PC games too. For instance, in Baldur's Gate 2(not 3rd edition) combat scenarios basically boil down to wizards throwing up really powerful defenses and other wizards countering them. In BG2, probably the most popular Dungeons and Dragons Products, wizards are the most powerful tanks and damage dealers, and typically the sole option to counteract tank-like abilities. I would also argue that in both the Infinity Engine and Neverwinter Nights games, melee classes are pretty boring(largely because of real time with pause), and that rogue's utility is limited because the real time with pause system makes setting up good backstab/sneak attack scenarios less interesting. I don't know if this is the case in tabletop, but fighter/wizard classes are by far the most powerful option too. Not because you can both swing a big sword and shoot fireballs and magic missiles, but because you can swing a big sword and do it really fast(with haste) and with defensive abilities superior to most armor(with stoneskin, which outright blocks either all damage or a portion of a damage at a point where enemies have enough high enough attack rolls that Armor Class becomes fairly irrelevant). Also, as I understand it, "caster supremacy" in third edition was much more applicable to clerics, who had decent-good combat abilities plus a bunch of magic abilities that had fantastic synergy with those combat abilities. prometheusbound2 fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Jan 20, 2015 |
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Jan 20, 2015 03:39
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Metal Meltdown posted:I fiddled around with some drivers and settings and now the game is working perfectly. I'm planning to run through SoU and HotU as a cleric/paladin/champion of torm with long sword proficiency. Anything I should know in particular? I cleared both campaigns in the past but that was many years ago now. Start with Paladin, because SoU has some pretty sweet paladin-only stuff.
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Jan 20, 2015 03:50
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prometheusbound2 posted:I think a lot of the perception in caster supremacy in various D and D editions relates to how the systems have been translated to PC games too. For instance, in Baldur's Gate 2(not 3rd edition) combat scenarios basically boil down to wizards throwing up really powerful defenses and other wizards countering them. In BG2, probably the most popular Dungeons and Dragons Products, wizards are the most powerful tanks and damage dealers, and typically the sole option to counteract tank-like abilities. I would also argue that in both the Infinity Engine and Neverwinter Nights games, melee classes are pretty boring(largely because of real time with pause), and that rogue's utility is limited because the real time with pause system makes setting up good backstab/sneak attack scenarios less interesting. No it applies to wizards too because Wizards get all the spells and spells in D&D start doing silly things from...level 1 upwards. Clerics/Druids just get to cast in full armor or cast when as a giant bear. That's cool and all but it doesn't match up to the Wizard spell list. Caster supremacy was around plenty in earlier editions of D&D too. There was no edition of D&D that wasn't a caster's playground except maybe Gygax's own games because Robilar was some sort of Fighter Superman. Hypocrisy fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Jan 20, 2015 |
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Jan 20, 2015 06:49
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Lt. Lizard posted:
This happened to me back in the day, too -- didn't end up finishing it until many years later. It can definitely be a slog, but I enjoyed the OC overall. It's like it misses every mark but it almost hits every mark, so it has its own weird charm. MotB still has some sloggy parts but the story is pretty great. The new "resting mechanics" bugged me but it's easy to adapt to it.
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Jan 20, 2015 07:11
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Honestly, it's not that a caster's direct damage is bad, it's just that they usually have other options that end up better. As part of a group facing down four bog standard charging goblins a level 1 wizard (or sorcerer) with Magic Missile and Sleep can take a 1 in 4 chance that MM will kill one goblin or take a 75% (or better) chance per goblin of it being effectively dead. Get lucky on one spell and one dies, get lucky with the other and they're all dead. The pattern holds for the second spell level (just counting SRD/core spells), but changes up a bit in 3rd spell level because you're more likely to see a spread of HD that can change things up. And then things get all wibbly-wobbly but unless you're built for it going nova is generally less effective than save-or-die.
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Jan 20, 2015 08:52
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FH_Meta posted:Honestly, it's not that a caster's direct damage is bad, it's just that they usually have other options that end up better. As part of a group facing down four bog standard charging goblins a level 1 wizard (or sorcerer) with Magic Missile and Sleep can take a 1 in 4 chance that MM will kill one goblin or take a 75% (or better) chance per goblin of it being effectively dead. There's also the problem that when you finally get the 15d6 fireball you probably run into a lot of poo poo with 20 points of resistance or outright immunity to fire that just laughs at you. A lot of high-powered nasties are going to be immune to all sorts of things but can still be immobilized easily by certain spells which allows you to just walk up and stab it to death.
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Jan 20, 2015 09:55
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3.x Caster supremacy has never been about house rules and has always been about poor game design. Level by level a fighter, or barbarian, or even rogue, will get tougher and hit things better. That's about it. They hit the things. If they're a rogue they also can disable magical traps and they have sneak attacks, but that's a subset of 'hit things' that applies only in certain circumstances. A spellcaster (especially a cleric, wizard, or other full caster) can heal things. Or do damage in an AoE. Or charm things with a spell. Or cast save-or-die or save-or-suck effects that make someone useless in the space of a single spellcast. Or just generally do magical fuckery. So this means that not only does a wizard have more combat options than the fighter, but they also have more narrative options. With the spell Tenser's Transformation or a druid's wildshape, a caster can do what a fighter can do - but a fighter can never do what a caster can do. At least, not without getting loaded with some pretty hefty magic items. In theory this is supposed to be balanced by casters only having limited numbers of spell-casts in a day, necessitating rests and rationing of spells. In practice, this led to groups that weren't on time-limited quests (and as so often happens in NWN2) just resting after the caster blew his load so he could get all his spells back. NWN2 alleviates a bit by chucking large groups of weak monsters at you frequently, and having lots more encounters than you'd ever see on the tabletop, which helps the martial classes get a bit of the limelight. Also because in NWN2 your casters don't get spells like teleport or fly or making tunnels. Of course, a DM could try to alleviate constant resting by enforcing 'wandering monster' rules to interrupt a sleeping party, but as soon as your Sorceror or Wizard hits 8th level, the low-level spell Rope Trick lets the whole party hide in extradimensional space for 8 hours where they can't possibly be hurt or interrupted while they rest. Caster supremacy is pretty much there in the 3.x core, no special rules fiddliness requires.
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Jan 20, 2015 10:45
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bewilderment posted:Of course, a DM could try to alleviate constant resting by enforcing 'wandering monster' rules to interrupt a sleeping party, but as soon as your Sorceror or Wizard hits 8th level, the low-level spell Rope Trick lets the whole party hide in extradimensional space for 8 hours where they can't possibly be hurt or interrupted while they rest. Rope Trick and other bullshit like this assumes everyone in the universe is a complete moron and that there's never anything time sensitive. My players were quite annoyed when they realized the first time that I keep schedules for the antagonists. quote:Caster supremacy is pretty much there in the 3.x core, no special rules fiddliness requires. The book doesn't DM, the DM does. The concentration skill and the lack of limitations on spellbooks is a much bigger issue that also hurts the spontaneous casters who get touted as having more raw talent yet end up being shittier. quote:]teleport or fly or making tunnels. Teleport still has a random death chance and is nowhere near as accurate as players would love to believe. Fly is beaten by having archers against you and making things hinge on a short broken bridge is bad DMing in the first place, tunneling spells take ridiculous levels to actually become useful. You're also apparently working from the "every wizard is rolled at level 20 assumption that's so common online but that I have literally never seen on tabletop. And non spontaneous casters do not get to pretend they are spontaneous, not submitting your memorized spell list of having it be available for verification is literally cheating if you're not a sorcerer, bard, spirit shaman or favored soul. quote:In BG2, probably the most popular Dungeons and Dragons Products, wizards are the most powerful tanks and damage dealers, and typically the sole option to counteract tank-like abilities. Regarding BG2, unless it's a lich or they start popping protection from magic weapons, pounding the mage with magic weapons tends to work surprisingly well. I will, however, admit that I am a bit sad that breech immunity isn't a HLA (Warrior classes in 2e high levels basically reach a point where any weapon they use is considered enchanted). I have played through BG2 three times and ToB once and I used breach exactly once. That said, most of the cheese in BG is from spells that had strong limitations on tabletop (nobody pops Stoneskins all the time with that kind of material component costs) or came from the Complete splats. Time Stop is the one exception as far as ridiculous cheese spells go. Agnosticnixie fucked around with this message at 12:08 on Jan 20, 2015 |
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Jan 20, 2015 11:55
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