75 réponses à ce sujet

[G_Admiral_Thrawn]

Here's an example. NWN (and for that matter, BG2) included the only useful level 9 spell (imho, atleast)-Time Stop, but it was cut from NWN2. Why? Then there's Persistant Spell. In NWN2 (it wasn't included in NWN for some reason), it uses 6 slots higher than actual spell level, when in the Campaign guide (which I'm looking at, and the devs also used) it only raises it by 4. And it still has NWN's problem with metamagic feats. In the P&P version, you can add as many metamagic feats to a spell (assuming you can cast with the combined metamagic cost. i.e., a maximized, empowered Flame Arrow would be level 8). That didn't happen in NWN, and still doesn't happen in NWN2.

In epic levels, the nerf becomes even more pronounced. Like NWN, spellcasters gain nothing but feats (and added DCs) in epic levels. They don't gain additional spell slots (and for sorc types, additional spells/invocations known). That wasn't (much of) a problem in NWN, where melee types didn't gain much post 20 either, but that changed with the addition of an epic level BAB increase of MotB. Sure, casters continued to gain BAB, but what pure caster in his right mind would be meleeing? And those spells that require a touch attack don't gain anything from additional attacks. Ok, that's not a caster nerf as much as a melee buff (but the end result is the same). NWN2 also has NWNs nerfed epic casting. Epic spells are once per day, rather than being something like (Spellcraft ranks-30) /2 And no 10+ spell slots, which if the devs bothered to read the part about Mystra's Ban, that only level 10 spells were banned, not level 10+ spell slots. It's perfectly legal to cast a normally empowered Horrid Wilting spell, assuming you have the feat that allows you to cast level 10+ spells. Oh, and another nerf. Autoquicken used to be I (0-3), II (4-6), and III (7-9). Now auto-quicken is one level per time chosen. Meaning, a well planned (or EXTREMELY lucky, probasbly both) build could get Autoquickened 4 (4th level and lower). Chancer are, however, you'd be lucky to get one or 2, at that.

So why the caster nerfs?

Modifié par G_Admiral_Thrawn, 19 février 2011 - 10:59 .

[Shallina]

Time stop was made less powerfull in 3.5 ed, where you can't cast offensiv spell.



Also the dmg of spells don't scale as melee dmg do, but do they really need to scale ? Casters just swtich to save/no save spell where damage are irrevelent. And they still are way above melee.

[painofdungeoneternal]

1. This is D&D 3.5 rules, not 3.0 rules, ergo timestop is not the same as in NWN1, no offensive actions, lot of things don't stack, etc. This is not nerfing, but fixing broken rules which is a good thing since it unerfs the non caster classes, and most regard this as a good thing - especially dm's and those trying to balance things for players when they make modules like it a lot better. The problem was 3.0 rules were not very well tested on release. Quite a few things like the autoquicken - well you do realize that in NWN1 autoquicken was completely borked. Almost all the nerfs are following those 3.5 rules and here is some info on it http://www.wizards.c...d/dnd/20030718a .



2. This is a computer game. It's not that they can't do it, it's that they can't do everything just like PNP. At some point they got to say it's just too much effort to get it close to PNP. So they might do spells xyz, but if a spell is extremely buggy in NWN1, is it worth fixing. Timestop for example was changed or banned on EVERY single PW i ever played on, it was a mess. Good riddance, even if it was implemented it would not be the same in NWN1 since in 3.5 it's a different spell just for buffing.



3. Some rules were changed to match ideas the folks at WOTC had and are in use in 4th edition. As such you don't see them in PNP but they are in place.



4. This game follows rule Zero, on my PW i set up my own rules. I've added mettle, made more things not stack, boosted damage, made grease catch on fire, added counterspelling and added a lot of spells--i basically have rewritten all the spells. Its all under my control, and if you get on the vault you can get things which boost things back up. WHO CARES what it is officially when they give us the same tools they use to set those rules.



If you like something a certain way, ask for help changing it, play on a PW that agrees with you, or learn to do it yourself.

[M. Rieder]

I am bothered by the lack of spell slot progression past level 20. I imagine this may be fixable, however. I don't think that level 9+ spell slots would be available, but additional level 1-9 slots could be made available fairly easily. Hmmm....... If someone has not already fixed this, maybe I will.....

[painofdungeoneternal]

I saw a completely new spellcasting system last night, based on call of cthulu - that world where you go crazy if you dabble in magic - if you can imagine it and put enough effort into it, you can make the game do almost anything. It just gets harder the further away from the core engine you go.

[nicethugbert]

The reason why anything gets nerfed is cost. It would cost more to make it not nerfed either directly by having to actually program it or because of disgruntled customers.



Time Stop was one of the things singled out by the Resident Balance Gurus. They cried so The Devs complied. Never mind the fact that no one is obligated to use the spell and that PW devs can turn it off or mod it and that people never stop crying about balance and that The Devs have had their way with spells not caring much for PnP and that there are lots of NEAT! spells they could have provided us with.

[metatheurgist]

The best reason I heard for timestop going was that on a PW it's not possible to timestop the world for just one combat. The entire world freezes.



The FR campaign guide is 3.0. Persistent spell was modified in 3.5 as was many other things, they really did screw the pooch with 3.0. Best story I heard was when the designers were playtesting the Druid and realised the Druid's familiar was tougher than the Fighter in the party. By that time the first edition had already gone to press. Can't say I'm impressed with their testing procedures.



The NWN2 spell system isn't designed to do multiple metamagic feats. That's either just poor design on their part or they decided it was too hard.



Epic spells is almost an entirely different spell system. Probably put in the too hard basket and got substituted with the "Feat per spell" system. If they'd thought out the spell system better (with the meta magic feats) it might have been possible. It's also possible that they never considered epic casting in creating the first game which doesn't approach epic levels so it wasn't possible to retrofit when they got to MotB.



At the end of the day casters still rule.

[painofdungeoneternal]

nicethugbert wrote...

The reason why anything gets nerfed is cost. It would cost more to make it not nerfed either directly by having to actually program it or because of disgruntled customers.

Time Stop was one of the things singled out by the Resident Balance Gurus. They cried so The Devs complied. Never mind the fact that no one is obligated to use the spell and that PW devs can turn it off or mod it and that people never stop crying about balance and that The Devs have had their way with spells not caring much for PnP and that there are lots of NEAT! spells they could have provided us with.

Those balance gurus have something called wisdom, and tend to be the ones who understand how to DM.

I totally get wanting to have "everything", but unless you actually understand DMing, and that the game is about a lot more than feature X, its about making everything work together.

Imbalanced games mean you don't have a few hundred build combos, that you can really choose any 9th level spell and do decent against that boss monster. When you have 2-3 spells which are vastly overpowered ( like bigby, IGMS, time stop ) you basically make the other 10-20 spells of that level not an option. So it sounds like you are adding a single spell, or losing a single spell if they "nerf" it, but you actually are losing 10-20 spells which are not as good for that level.

Those balance guys are why you can still play a fighter or a rogue, even then the classes being nerfed are indeed where all the power is, especially with the infinite resting you are allowed.

Balance is not about power, it's about making all the options for a given power level being viable for you, useful or fun, ideally making you have so many good choices you can't pick because they are all so good.

Modifié par painofdungeoneternal, 20 février 2011 - 03:20 .

[Matheau]

I don't think dropping from utterly game breaking to merely ridiculously overpowered quite qualifies as a major nerf. You didn't actually describe anything that is truly insurmountable or losing something that wasn't a game breaker in its own right.



Also keep in mind that, realistically, getting to a high enough level caster to be insanely powerful is supposed to be a much longer and more difficult process in the PnP game than NWN2. That makes epic level comparisons of power substantially different. There should be a much bigger payoff for someone that spent 6 months of gaming sessions playing a character with no armor, almost no hit points, relatively poor skill options, insanely expensive equipment, low spells per day, low numbers of different spells, and far, far less opportunities to rest and regain spells much of the time. In comparison, you can hit "I am nearly invincible to everything and raining fire and destruction upon you" in a matter of hours in NWN2.

[dunniteowl]

Honestly, the comparison of PnP to cRPG is ludicrous. Not for any other reason than the developers over the years have strayed from making a game that replicates the PnP experience in terms of time it takes to level, richness of opportunity to use skills and abilities in non-combat ways, and in the ability to really determine unique ways to do things.

In this regard, cRPGs now level in hours what it would take, as Matheau describes "...for someone that spent 6 months of gaming sessions..." to achieve these insanely powerful levels of ability for casters.

Additionally, I design module adventures (mostly PnP, but am learning to convert to cRPG) and I had heard all the horror tales of AD&D1st to 2nd, then D&D 3.0, to D&D 3.5 and how casters have been consistently nerfed in the official PHBs over that course of time. As it so happens, I have all those (with the exception of 3.0) and so I made a comparison.

If anything, casters haven't been nerfed directly. They actually come out with more spells per day and more methods to use them overall compared to earlier editions. They now have feats and skills that they gain (and with INT being a prime stat of casters, they tend to get more skill points than anyone else to spend gaining them per level) in a faster succession rate than any other class with Rogues running a close second. They have access to things that allow them to cast while Silenced, Held or Paralyzed *(Meta Magic Feats) and they have newer, even more powerful spells since those days.

Time Stop was poorly implemented in NWN and I was personally glad for it's removal. It seriously unbalanced the game. IGMS was another game changer that, by all rights should have been better implemented, however, in lieu of fixing it, removal was a sane course of action.

We talk about nerfing things and making it harder for casters, but honestly the changes that have come have made them much, MUCH more powerful than ever before. Only problem: D&D is in a class Arms Race. This Arms Race has caused things to occur like Every class Levels at the same number of experience points. Every class has to have "Killer Awesome Skills and Feats" useable RIGHT NOW! Every class has to have something else beyond the last thing. It's all about getting more and more and more and MORE!

So fighters are pretty kick butt now, even at lower levels and it's hard to deal with them. Thieves get such powerful sneak and backstab opportunities that it's nearly ridiculous. Bards can be turned into the amazing double Ginzu Knife with a lute to boot. There's just no end to this mad dash for MORE POWER!

IN that light, casters might not be seen as getting as much in that way, but you have to bear in mind, the Caster is the reason that all these other classes are in the arms race in the first place. Everyone thinks their character should be "balanced" with a caster of the same level.

The last generation of players, both PnP and cRPG, have clearly got the largest amount of blame for this. However it's not their fault directly. We have seen D&D in cRPGs change from a slow paced, exciting series of adventures that left you biting your nails during an encounter, wondering if you were going to see the end screen, "The monsters have defeated your party! The monsters rejoice!" to now a situation whereby, more often than not, losing an encounter is a mere annoyance that provokes a saved game reload, or all your party members miraculously get back up and you hit the rest button and five seconds later you're ready to rock and roll. Again.

Now, with cRPGs it has become an Arms Race of Instant Gratification and perception of "I Should Be Totally Invincible!" Casters are not nerfed. If anything, the entire game has been nerfed with overpowered characters, skills, feats, classes and mixing of classes, spells, items, weapons and so much magic that the hoards of several ancient dragons would pale in comparison.

I think, and of course this only this one person's humble opinion, that the best thing that could happen to D&D right now is a sort of "Back to Basics" mentality where the adventure and the story is the thing, and the realization that the meager limits of the characters and their ability to persevere over the long haul is exactly what really makes this game worth playing.

You want fast levelling and high combat action? Go play WoW, or Call of Duty. You want a deep story, involved NPC interaction and an epic length (not epic levels) saga that you'll remember fondly for years? That's what, to me, D&D was and should be all about -- always.

Monopoly is stil the same game it always was and people still enjoy that. Why can't we be satisfied with adding to this game without having to completely change it's nature into a PvP concept where more is always better and more power is the penultimate search in your character stats?

dunniteowl

[M. Rieder]

The infinite rest option definietly turns the tables in favor of the casters in the NWN2 original campaigns. However, modders and DMs can easily cirvumvent this with turning resting off in most areas.

[M. Rieder]

DNO said...



"I think, and of course this only this one person's humble opinion, that the best thing that could happen to D&D right now is a sort of "Back to Basics" mentality where the adventure and the story is the thing, and the realization that the meager limits of the characters and their ability to persevere over the long haul is exactly what really makes this game worth playing."





I agree that the game is much more fun when each event is a struggle for survival. Makes it far more immersive. I also think that some of this is on the individual player's decision to make a more realistic character to roleplay instead of just going for a super-power build.

[avado]

dunniteowl wrote...
Monopoly is stil the same game it always was and people still enjoy that. Why can't we be satisfied with adding to this game without having to completely change it's nature into a PvP concept where more is always better and more power is the penultimate search in your character stats?
dunniteowl

I think it has to do with a certain segment of nwn that created, what we called, Epic Characters (of which I was one).  For some messed up few of us, it was all about min/maxing a character to achieve the "ultimate" (i understand it is impossible, but we tried).  It started out innocently enough with only a few of us bragging to each other.  Then bioware decided to "highlight" the best of the best (builds which forced them to change the game mechanics in certain instances), and it grew like wild fire, so to speak.  SO what was once, a closed group of d&d freaks, became the norm.  People would come to us, asking us to design for them the ultimate.  A few of us learned the skill, the art if you will, of putting together classes.  Most of the others simply reaped the benefits of pre-done builds, never learning anything, but expecting the world. 

LOL  OK, enough of that!  I am sure there were always "power-gamers", even in PnP, but in nwn it became fashionable.  It spread to nwn2 and the rest is history.  This is why we get people commenting on Time stop (a spell that few if any of the epic builders EVER considered, as it was basically taken out of most pws, as was said) or maxed igms as the standards, when they were just bonuses for a well designed toon. 

SO instead of blaming the devs or whomever, blame the folks that actually did it:  Epic Character builders guild!  If we hadnt devoted insane amounts of time creating the best of the best, 99% of the gamers playing nwn or nwn2 would have no concept of what was uber or not. 

*rant over with*

On a more real note: nice post DNO.  Thanks for the wisdom

[Shallina]

There is no good game without good balance.

If one spell is really more powerfull than all the other, then it become the spell to get, and all the others go in the trash can.

Balance is always necessary to have something pleasing to play. If one class is way aove all the others then the others have no purpose than to be fooder, and no one wants to be fooder.

The game need to be fun for everyone, not only those who load "time stop"  or whatever "balance breaking spell" in their spellbook.

Modifié par Shallina, 21 février 2011 - 07:52 .

[kevL]

dunniteowl wrote...

Honestly, the comparison of PnP to cRPG is ludicrous.

*cough* agree *cough*

[ delete personal rant about how it took three years to work a character up to 15th level, whereupon said character was basically considered a demi-god .. let Dno's & Shallina's stand ]

ok, personally I'll choose bad choices, and force my Dwarven Fighter to do utterly stupid things every once in a while .. and i don't play on highly populated servers because there strikes me as too much competition for the Powerbuild (at the expense of ...). On the other hand, when I found some faraway stop and happened to meet someone to group with, we just .. err, played the game with what we had.


i'm getting nightmares of EverQuest again, better stop.

[The Fred]

The comparison between PnP and cRPG IS ridiculous, but to be fair, it's ridiculous for more fundamental reasons than any mistakes devellopers of cRPG games might have made; that is, it's a computer game and not a DMed, imagination-driven table-top game. There are always going to be engine limitations on what can be done in a cRPG, it's just the way it is.

[dunniteowl]

Yes of course, it's not entirely the developers' fault. I had to end my rant somehow and a focussed objective of seeing power just grow and grow, seemed to me, the most all encompassing and succinct point to make. And, if you can get past the wall of text, you'll see I don't really blame the developers at all. I blame mostly the current holders of the IP known as D&D. It's been a long slow march to making the game more and more like Magic: The Gathering, giving every player more actions, more powers, more skills, more cool stuff. And it just keeps growing.

We went from single classes of just a few types, to more than 18 "base" classes. Isn't a "base" class something simple that you "base" the rest of your character's growth upon? And it's not just the IP holders, because change is primarily driven by the players over time.

Yes, there have always been power gamers. Yes, munchkins have always been around. Yes, Rules Lawyers and Exploiters have been there since day one. And Yes, it makes sense to add to the game over time.

It's just -- gotten out of hand, I guess. How many PrCs are there? Several Hundred?

And really, part of it is perception. There's ALL THIS STUFF in the PHB, DMG, MMs and other splat books, errata sheets, expansion books, etc. and for some reason, it seems like you gotta have it all in one single campaign.

I think it's important to have a perspective. Like all the cop movies you watch on TV. If you just picked one big city (I don't care if it's L.A., NYC, Boston, Miami or San Francisco) if you believed that such shows were showing you a true story and the norm, then each of those cities would be so riddled with crime and ill-will that you couldn't imagine living there.

D&D is not any different. We have become inured to the concept that the primary adventurer and hero is JUST YOUR PARTY and pretty much everyone else is a backstop character to help tell the story. Just because the evil villain is about to destroy the world, it doesn't mean that all the villains you run into have to be getting ready to do the same and you don't have to be UBER powerful to save the day.

And all that is just sort of an aside to the issue of nerfing in the first place. I don't think any characters have specifically been nerfed or gimped, and I do believe that there is room for all sorts of character types, character classes and playing styles. However, in the long scheme of things, the powers and abilities of the classes and characters have steadily risen and advanced in overall power and effect and this is nothing more than the overall desire of the Creators to Appease the Masses with something that is hard to kill. (or at least harder to kill.)

I don't see no stinking nerfing, personally.

dunniteowl

[nicethugbert]

painofdungeoneternal wrote...

nicethugbert wrote...

The reason why anything gets nerfed is cost. It would cost more to make it not nerfed either directly by having to actually program it or because of disgruntled customers.

Time Stop was one of the things singled out by the Resident Balance Gurus. They cried so The Devs complied. Never mind the fact that no one is obligated to use the spell and that PW devs can turn it off or mod it and that people never stop crying about balance and that The Devs have had their way with spells not caring much for PnP and that there are lots of NEAT! spells they could have provided us with.

Those balance gurus have something called wisdom, and tend to be the ones who understand how to DM.

I totally get wanting to have "everything", but unless you actually understand DMing, and that the game is about a lot more than feature X, its about making everything work together.

Imbalanced games mean you don't have a few hundred build combos, that you can really choose any 9th level spell and do decent against that boss monster. When you have 2-3 spells which are vastly overpowered ( like bigby, IGMS, time stop ) you basically make the other 10-20 spells of that level not an option. So it sounds like you are adding a single spell, or losing a single spell if they "nerf" it, but you actually are losing 10-20 spells which are not as good for that level.

Those balance guys are why you can still play a fighter or a rogue, even then the classes being nerfed are indeed where all the power is, especially with the infinite resting you are allowed.

Balance is not about power, it's about making all the options for a given power level being viable for you, useful or fun, ideally making you have so many good choices you can't pick because they are all so good.

Not buying this stuff about wisdom and DMing.  If they were so wise, they would give the monsters the "unbalanced" stuff too.  The balance gurus are still crying "UnBalanced" and the game just gets smaller under their "wisdom".

[manageri]

nicethugbert wrote...

Not buying this stuff about wisdom and DMing.  If they were so wise, they would give the monsters the "unbalanced" stuff too.  The balance gurus are still crying "UnBalanced" and the game just gets smaller under their "wisdom".

So if a mage is overpowered and a rogue is not, the solution is to make the monsters more powerful so the mage is actually challenged now and the rogue gets shafted even more. Brilliant.

Or MAYBE if the problem all along has been that the mage is too strong a better way to fix it is to just nerf the mage?

You didn't even attempt to address the effect imbalanced spells (also applicable to feats etc) have on other spells and how they effectively limit your choises within a class. If a certain spell is much more powerful than other spells of it's level, then either:

- Those overpowered spells are required to beat the game in which case there's no actual choise
- Those overpowered spells make the game way too easy in which case the game sucks and the only way to have the game not suck is to use the crappy spells which again limits your choises.

[NWN DM]

Just limit your games to say 7th level tops... then most of these issues don't happen.

[nicethugbert]

manageri wrote...

nicethugbert wrote...

Not buying this stuff about wisdom and DMing.  If they were so wise, they would give the monsters the "unbalanced" stuff too.  The balance gurus are still crying "UnBalanced" and the game just gets smaller under their "wisdom".

So if a mage is overpowered and a rogue is not, the solution is to make the monsters more powerful so the mage is actually challenged now and the rogue gets shafted even more. Brilliant.

Or MAYBE if the problem all along has been that the mage is too strong a better way to fix it is to just nerf the mage?

You didn't even attempt to address the effect imbalanced spells (also applicable to feats etc) have on other spells and how they effectively limit your choises within a class. If a certain spell is much more powerful than other spells of it's level, then either:

- Those overpowered spells are required to beat the game in which case there's no actual choise
- Those overpowered spells make the game way too easy in which case the game sucks and the only way to have the game not suck is to use the crappy spells which again limits your choises.

You are completely ignoring the role of personal preferance.  Plus you are thinking of combat alone and in a very narrow sense.  The game is much bigger than you mention and a good DM can come up with surprises.  A wizard can't have all the right spells memorized all the time or enough of them.

[manageri]

nicethugbert wrote...

You are completely ignoring the role of personal preferance.

Stuff's either OP or not, it has nothing to do with preference.

Plus you are thinking of combat alone and in a very narrow sense.

It doesn't matter how great your char is in other areas, you still need to beat the monsters.

The game is much bigger than you mention and a good DM can come up with surprises.

Too bad there isn't a DM in single player.

A wizard can't have all the right spells memorized all the time or enough of them.

So if he's got all the best spells memorized and those aren't enough then...the worse spells would be even more insufficient?

[painofdungeoneternal]

The DM's i know are all about balance, and things like timestop make the game a lot smaller than it should be. From what happened in NWN1, where it was almost universally rewritten, banned or removed, i'd say not putting it in gives those DM's more time to focus on stories and adventures and not about fixing issues caused by players having too many POWAHZ.



Most DM's seem to dislike the power gamer anyway, as it just makes their carefully built and solid adventures suddenly way too easy. Imbalanced mechanics is a headache for any DM. Note all the rules on PW's about not doing more than one class.



I agree its up to your preferences, which is why we have the vault. Note that reeron implemented it on the vault, nothing was removed, he just put in nwn1 code, icons and descriptions in. Go download it. It's your game.



Unless you are a DM or creator of modules, or admin of a PW - which you are not - balance is not something you need to regard. For the most part you just play where things are fun and don't really see the balancing that went into making your game play all about strategy. Yeah i get that you don't like others choosing what features to use or not use, but then those who build things are the ones who really should be the decision makers, and you are free to choose to play on their creations or not.



A game is a lot more than the sum of it's parts, its how it all works together. It is very easy to lose sight of this, and it's also easy to just focus on the negative of how i did not get feature x, when in fact you are gaining far more than you are losing. ( i have folks complaining about there being too many spells and classes at this point to choose from )



I actually listen to a lot of DM's who are the ones coming up with what players describe as Nerfs, since they are things that make being a DM harder ( and generally the playerbase votes and agrees on them ). Frankly if it comes down to a choice as to whether i make a DM or a player happy, i always side with the DM. ( a game with DMs and nerfs is far more fun than a game without either. )



As for the remark about monsters should use the unbalanced stuff, come visit my drow area and see what happens when the NPC's use actual player builds. Anytime you kill a boss i take your character, rename it and make it into a drow race, add in SR, and you might just end up fighting yourself. Make sure you bring a powerbuild because it's no place for the weak since there still seems to be a lot of sacred fist builds with 60 ab, 70+ AC, 18 attacks a round, divine damage on each hit, caster level 30 spells doing dispels, silence, and all the buffs, and doing HIPs.

[nicethugbert]

manageri wrote...

nicethugbert wrote...

You are completely ignoring the role of personal preferance.

Stuff's either OP or not, it has nothing to do with preference.

OP is situational.  You're over generalizing and not looking at the actual situation.

manageri wrote...

Plus you are thinking of combat alone and in a very narrow sense.

It doesn't matter how great your char is in other areas, you still need to beat the monsters.

Situational.

manageri wrote...

The game is much bigger than you mention and a good DM can come up with surprises.

Too bad there isn't a DM in single player.

Irrelevant.  Your PC's actions are very much constrained compared to DM'd games.

manageri wrote...

A wizard can't have all the right spells memorized all the time or enough of them.

So if he's got all the best spells memorized and those aren't enough then...the worse spells would be even more insufficient?

Situational.

Try out The Maimed God's Saga or Crimmor when it's released, for example.

[The Fred]

NTB, the points you make are valid, but they don't excuse something being overpowered. Now, generally, the whole notion of "overpowered" is situational, but you can draw parallels between certain spells, feats etc and often see clearly that one is in some way better than the other. So, to a certain degree of approximation and uncertainty, that one can be said to be more powerful than the other and, relatively speaking, overpowered.