19 réponses à ce sujet

[ehye_khandee]

WE have all seen many descriptive terms used to categorize modules for NWN - but is there a standard repository where the terms are defined? Terms like

LOW / MID / HIGH MAGIC?

EPIC CAMPAIGN?

[INSERT YOUR OWN TERMS OF CURIOUSITY TOO]


Example, I run a world where the rule of thumb is loot is +1 or one power max per five levels of the PC; topping out magic items at +8 (back when we played 2nd Ed AD&D levels capped at 20 and magic at +4 or +5, so I felt this was comparable). Magic items can be found in some stores. PCs can craft items of modest power. How would this rank in Low Mid / High magic terms?

Maybe I'll get lucky and someone will have sorted this out before - maybe even made a handy reference you can link to?

Thanks for your input.

Be well. Game on!
GM_ODA

http://playnwn.com

[omen_shepperd]

I don’t think anyone has made a list of NWN jargon. I also think it would be a great addition to the community. The only thing I think is that with the categorizing of Low/Mid/High magic as far as +1 to + whatever everyone would consider a low magic world.

Maybe it would be good for all of us to kind of come up with a scale so new players/builders could have something to look at and work with. This is a really good idea in my opinion and I would like to thank ehye_khandee for suggesting it

I would have to say a Low Magic range would be somewhere around +1 to +5
Mid Magic would go up to + 6 to +10
High would be + 11 to + 20
These would be the staticics for different magical properties found on items, spells and other effects would need to be adjusted per range as well. .

But that in and of itself could be another topic.

Modifié par omen_shepperd, 20 mars 2012 - 07:43 .

[MagicalMaster]

I think "high magic" versus "low magic" depends less on the enhancement range and more on the other properties. I mean, I could make a module with +19/+20 weapons and armor that would feel pretty low magic to people (with the caveat that it screws up clerics/paladins and the +20 magical AB cap) because there would be no other properties on the gear.

On the flip side, I could make a world with +1 to +3 gear that feels high magic because all stats are maxed, tons of resistances, lots of damage immunities, crit/sneak/death magic/etc immunities, things like HiPS and Imp Evasion on gear, and so on.

[Empyre65]

It is not a requirement, but generally, the other properties on gear tends to go up as the enhancement goes up, which makes the enhancement a good-enough measure of high / low magic. I acknowledge that this is my viewpoint, not a statement of fact.

[MagicalMaster]

Empyre65 wrote...

It is not a requirement, but generally, the other properties on gear tends to go up as the enhancement goes up

Why is that, though?  Why is a necklace of +5 AC any more likely to have crit immunity than a +3 AC necklace or a +15 AC necklace?

[HipMaestro]

MagicalMaster wrote...

Empyre65 wrote...
It is not a requirement, but generally, the other properties on gear tends to go up as the enhancement goes up

Why is that, though?  Why is a necklace of +5 AC any more likely to have crit immunity than a +3 AC necklace or a +15 AC necklace?

I agree.  It's based solely on the intent of the designer how he/she decides to parse properties and enhancements.

I played on a server with max +10 enhancements and yet with crit immune belts, gloves that did Level 40 IGMS OnHit, wands of Timestop and lots of other unbalanced equipment.  I considered it an extremely high magic server myself.  I consider any environment that effectively negates the power of spellcasting classes via properties as high magic.

The boilerplate cutoff range of enhancements will always be a point for debate.  When building characters, we use the low/mid/high nomenclature just to get a rough idea of the general environment of intended use rather than to infer anything concrete. 

For builders, there may be some more value to hashing out a finite range via consensus, but for players... well, one finds out while playing what the environment really is regardless of how it may be advertised.

Modifié par HipMaestro, 21 mars 2012 - 01:07 .

[Empyre65]

MagicalMaster wrote...

Empyre65 wrote...

It is not a requirement, but generally, the other properties on gear tends to go up as the enhancement goes up

Why is that, though?  Why is a necklace of +5 AC any more likely to have crit immunity than a +3 AC necklace or a +15 AC necklace?

It is certainly not a hard-and-fast rule, but is a general tendency I have observed. The higher the enhancement levels you can find in items, the more likely you will find items with other properties, like the crit immunity in your example, though not neccessarily the same item as the one with high enhancement.

[FunkySwerve]

MagicalMaster wrote...

Empyre65 wrote...

It is not a requirement, but generally, the other properties on gear tends to go up as the enhancement goes up

Why is that, though?

Because otherwise you'll have severe imbalance in some aspects of play. If you have, for example, +15 weapons, you'll either make nearly all soak completely worthless, and make low physical resistances far less impmortant, and make most weapon buffs nigh irrelevant, or you'll have to upgrade other things to preserve those game mechanisc. Even then, you will have severe imbalances, both between certain build choices and between various game mechanics, which lead to still further imbalances, for example in the difficulties of certain types of bosses. Epmyre is completely correct - while it is POSSIBLE to do this, there are very good reasons it's generally not being done - reasons I could fill a book with, given time and inclination.


Funky

[MrZork]

This is a tough question and one that may need a little refining before it can be answered usefully. On top of being a matter of opinion, and needing to cover a myriad of different factors, the topic is very situational (like balance), being based somewhat on frequency of creatures/items/feats/customizations. For instance, if the highest damage reduction any creature has is +6 soak X, then maybe a +6 weapon is a high magic item. But, if Premonition is scripted to replace +5 soak 30 DR with +CasterLevel/4 soak 30 (or whatever), then +6 may not be a high magic item at higher levels.

And, of course, other item properties can trump enhancement bonuses, at least in the sense that those other properties can have a large impact on whether particular characters are more or less effective. I've mentioned elsewhere that a module where a PC is very likely to find an item that confers immunity to crits, paralysis, and stun is one where the incentive for taking PM levels is greatly reduced, not to mention WM levels, etc. Another example is that certain feats are very seldom used because so many items give the same benefit. E.g., Blinding Speed (with just one use/day, 10 round duration, etc.) is a marginal feat even in a world where the best magic item is a +2 dart, but it's really worthless when half of the gear has permanent haste.

Anyway, I have thought about this a little before and not quite come up with a working metric. IMO, one thought on  what would be ideal is some way of normalizing the item properties with typical creature/character properties. The earlier example of enhancement bonus normalized by damage reduction is kind of the idea and some other properties (e.g. fire damage and fire resistance) might be handled similarly. For other properties, it might be useful to catalog the character feats that are available as item properties in the mod. E.g. if fewer than 10% (just an example) of the character feats that are item properties are available on items, maybe that's a low magic world, if 80% of them are, then it's high magic.

[SHOVA]

I for one have all ways hated the terms low, mid and high magic to describe mods, and servers. Your definition of those terms will probably not be the same as mine. of the 7 other posters here, that has already been observed. I do not agree what is low, mid or high. That's the problem with, and why the community has not made a jargon guide to this point. (Mainly "the low magic" is the reason for the disagreement, very few in my experience have a problem calling mods high magic.)

I humbly suggest, if the community is going to go forward and make standardized magic level definitions, that the low, mid, and high, be removed from the list as definers. Instead, perhaps these would help clear the confusion:
Original PnP: this level utilizes original PnP D&D levels of magic, +1 is scarce, +2 is rare, +3 extremely rare, and usually has cons attached to it. Items do not remove the need for class abilities. Immunity items do not exist. (of course your PnP version may differ from mine, For those interested in my version it is 1st ed.)
OC settings. items found the the NWN OC are common. Immunity items can be found, or purchased. Items may negate the need for certain PC classes.
Expansion Level, The OC level plus. Magic Items are everywhere, and as high powered as the game allows. If it can be made in the tool set it is probably in the game.

[WhiZard]

SHOVA wrote...
I humbly suggest, if the community is going to go forward and make standardized magic level definitions, that the low, mid, and high, be removed from the list as definers. Instead, perhaps these would help clear the confusion:
Original PnP: this level utilizes original PnP D&D levels of magic, +1 is scarce, +2 is rare, +3 extremely rare, and usually has cons attached to it. Items do not remove the need for class abilities. Immunity items do not exist. (of course your PnP version may differ from mine, For those interested in my version it is 1st ed.)

3.0 SRD limits enhancement to +5, and  has few immunities (such as evasion and freedom of movement).

[SHOVA]

WhiZard wrote...
3.0 SRD limits enhancement to +5, and  has few immunities (such as evasion and freedom of movement).

Thats one of the main reasons I do not put the OC as the lowest magic range. I never played PnP with 3rd ed rules (or 3.5 or 4.whatever) I don't plan on playing them either. While some of the changes that 3rd edition and beyond have, the removal of thaco for instance, I do actualy like. However I can not get behind the, in my opinion cheese, other things that 3rd ed made. Dwarf Palidins, non rolled stats, any class can pick locks or disarm traps, and the most annoying of all, undead good assassin type builds that are possible. That is just my preference mind you, not a call to change NWN or the community. 

The main point from my above was that it has been my experience, that when those of our community are talking about "low" magic games, they tend to talk about original pre 3rd ed rules. Often they bring up HCR, (hard core rules) Hunger thirst systems, rest restrictions, and level caps under 20th. There have been instances of higher levels 20+ for PCs, on a few, but it has been rare for the epic level to be added in such a way as to make the players of these type of settings "happy".

I have been involved with such discussions on various server build teams before, Sometimes lower magic was used, sometimes it was "cheesed". My main arguement against adding the +4 and greater was that when you start adding properties to items that negate the need for a PC of a peticular class, you start making playing that class in that Modual useless. Case in point, a item that heals, removes the need for a cleric/druid. a item that dispells magic, removes the need for a wizard or sorcerer. (I am not talking about potions, scrolls or wands/rods, here but items that are non charged.) Eventualy what you get is a server filled with rogue/fighters, or rogue/monks or whatever power builds the items favor. 

I realize that I am in a small minority when it comes to play style. I have yet to find a server that is "perfect" in magic levels and play, but I am still looking, and building. the beauty of NWN is that it can be a perfect game for all of us, even if we all build something completely different. After a bit of thought, it might not be possible to "jargon" nwn magic levels. at least not into 3 blanket catagories.

[WhiZard]

SHOVA wrote...
Thats one of the main reasons I do not put the OC as the lowest magic range. I never played PnP with 3rd ed rules (or 3.5 or 4.whatever) I don't plan on playing them either. While some of the changes that 3rd edition and beyond have, the removal of thaco for instance, I do actualy like. However I can not get behind the, in my opinion cheese, other things that 3rd ed made. Dwarf Palidins, non rolled stats, any class can pick locks or disarm traps, and the most annoying of all, undead good assassin type builds that are possible. That is just my preference mind you, not a call to change NWN or the community.

So you are looking at the three levels as being reflective of the treasure tables for: AD&D, DnD 3.0, and DnD 3.5 respectively for low, medium, and high.

[SuperFly_2000]

I think the "list" for the chargong has already pretty much been made by the vault.

This is the best and most full PW cathegorizing list I know by so far....


EXAMPLE:

Title   The Savage Frontier and Surrounds
Author   kalbaern
Submitted / Updated   04-21-2009 / 03-01-2012
Category   Roleplay
Patch Version   Requires All Expansions (SoU & HotU & CEP)
Website   Link
Number Players   64
Setting   The Forgotten Realms (Savage Frontier, The North, Western Heartlands,The Underdark, The Sword Coast and The Spine of the World.
Length   Persistant PW where players influence the course of events.
Number DMs   7
IPs   Non Static .. find us under Roleplay on Gamespy or check our forum for the current IP to direct connect
Scope   Epic
Hack & Slash   Medium
classes   All classes allowed. Multiclassing and PrC requirements can be found on our forum.
Tricks & Traps   Medium
Level Range   1 - 40th
Magic Level   Low to Moderate
Schedule   24/7 unless updating
Treasure   Moderate
Number Servers   1
DM Needed   Occasional DM Needed
Alignments   Any (So long as your play is not disruptive to the overall setting and stays In Charaacter.)
Experience Rewards   Low to Moderate
Races   Any of the Standard Races: Human, Half-Elven, Half-Orc, Gnome, Halfling, Elven and Dwarven.
No Exotic Races such as Kobolds, Goblins, Drow, Duergar, Wemics, etc...
PVP   Full PvP
ApplicationReqs   PRCs require pre-approval from our Admin. See our Forum for details.
Vault Type   Server
Death   Respawn to start area with penalties
Connection   T1+
House rules   See our forum for details
Content guide   Everyone
Player Requirements   We only require players to be mature in the setting and be prepared to take responsibility for their actions ICly Ingame.
RolePlay   Heavy
Forums   Link
Description
"The Savage Frontier and Surrounds" is an RP Server based in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. We are currently in an "Open Beta" and adding to the world weekly if not more often.
Your adventure will begin in the sleepy little town of "Orlbar" located south of the Delymbir River between the towns of "Loudwater" and "Llorkh". Our starting date is mid 1369 as the infamous Hellgate Keep is in the midst of being....

[SHOVA]

WhiZard wrote...
So you are looking at the three levels as being reflective of the treasure tables for: AD&D, DnD 3.0, and DnD 3.5 respectively for low, medium, and high.

Not quite, I am looking at 3 tables for Pre NWN, NWN, and NWN SOU/HOTU. 
Up untill NWN AD&D computer games utalized 2nd ed rules, which were closer to 1st ed, than 3rd ed rulesets.

The annoyance for me comes from using vague terms of low med and high, as an example, the OPs server.
He often advertises it to people looking for low magic PWs. However he has also stated it has higher levels than some would call low magic, whether items or character levels. There is nothing wrong with his server, or how he describes it, but I feel that low magic is not epic levels or +7 items. that probably why he started this thread, because the definitions of the low mid and high terms are so different across the community. using my definers, eliminates the confusion. Untill NWN most magic was under +3. with NWN I believe it jumped to +10, or 12. With the expansions, +20.
Those are simple definers of magic levels, without being extremely vague. It places the expectaion of the magic levels without causing confusion as to where low ends and mid begins.

[MrZork]

I'm not sure if this is what SHOVA was referring to, but when I think about terms like "low magic module", I am thinking about power and availability of magic items, not character levels. Obviously, a world in which half of the NPCs are epic characters (particularly casters) is going to be a world with a lot of magic in terms of the presence of magical or pseudo-magical effects, even if the best item a level 40 character can get is a +3 dagger. But, I would think of that world as "low magic" because the term is more commonly used to refer to items and because we already use another term ("epic level") to refer to the level range of the module. So, in my mind, there no contradiction in someone describing their module for characters of level 30-40 with +3 max items as an "epic level, low magic" module.

[HipMaestro]

The following is pure opinion and nothing more:

In brief, to me, low magic connotates an environment where any magical properties, even small ones have a significant impact on the game play, yet does not infringe upon the effectiveness of the class-specific capabilities built into the default rule set.  Since I have only ever played 3.0 in video form, and we never needed to categorize our games in pre-3.0 PnP games, I am totally blind to the impact of other D&D versions, including Pathfinder.  Most all my playmates are as equally near-sighted about versions that were never implemented into the default NWN gameplay.

High magic, to me, is any environment that has run amok and has created an artificially unbalanced usage of those same magical adjuncts that worked so well to produce a balanced environment in the less "saturated" case above. These environemnts typically create special monster AIs with elevated saves, SRs, DRs and HP levels near 1K or better, I suppose, to give some relevance to the unmanageable properties of the available items.

Mid magic is a mixed bag where one has no clue what they will experience until they've make a few trips though themselves.  The +X categorization has little significance to anew player until he/she experiences the monster and environmental (like uber trap DCs) customizations.  It is quite possible for a +10 blanket enhancement to play like low magic if the monster skins have been modified to completely balance the increased enhancements (HPs, AC, DR, etc.).  What can tip the mid magic scale toward high magic is the introduction of those properties that imbue class abilities or feats.  Once any class asset is compromized or neutralized it has become a high magic environment.  So mid magic is a catch-all category which can be much wider than either low or high depending on how the environment has been designed around the enhancement levels.

As far as I am concerned, character level has no direct  impact on the relative effectiveness of item enhancements. However, the way many of the prestige classes are designed tends to force a higher magic enhancement level, like SD's HiPS, AA's +15 innate enhancement and PM's crit immunity to name only 3.  In epic levels, the capacity of some prestige features and availability of potentially-unbalancing feats (like Epic Dodge, Epic Warding, DevCrit to name 3 of those) may cause a higher magic capacity to be implemented just to "keep pace" with the standard default progression of that potential.  But I believe the issue becomes more related to providing equally progressive capabilities across all the classes, inclucing the prestige ones, rather than figuring out what properties to place on items.

God!  How can they stand trying to balance PRC worlds?  Seems like a nightmare to me.  

So now that you've suffered to read this far, we get to my REAL question...
Besides the eternal debate about low/mid/high magic, what other "Jargon" is worth trying to define in this thread?

[SHOVA]

Spot on Mr Zork. As for other jargon, most terms are already defined and agreed to. A hak is a hak, and all that. the one confusing thing for NWN has always been magic levels, availability and so forth.

[MagicalMaster]

FunkySwerve wrote...

Because otherwise you'll have severe imbalance in some aspects of play. If you have, for example, +15 weapons, you'll either make nearly all soak completely worthless, and make low physical resistances far less impmortant, and make most weapon buffs nigh irrelevant, or you'll have to upgrade other things to preserve those game mechanisc. Even then, you will have severe imbalances, both between certain build choices and between various game mechanics, which lead to still further imbalances, for example in the difficulties of certain types of bosses. Epmyre is completely correct - while it is POSSIBLE to do this, there are very good reasons it's generally not being done - reasons I could fill a book with, given time and inclination.


Funky

Perhaps this isn't necessarily the best thread to discuss it, but I'd be curious about why you think some of those things.

Regarding soak, I presume you're referring to spell soaking (Stoneskin, Greater Stoneskin, Premonition, Visages, etc)?  Yes, +15 weapons would make those worthless (anything +5 or better would, or +3 for Ethereal/Shadow Shield), but I'm not sure that's even a bad thing for a number of reasons we could get into.

I agree that it would also decrease the benefit of low physical resistance, but I think resistances are problematic in a number of ways regardless, so again I'm not sure that's a bad thing.  Heck, I experimented with turning Barbarian and Dwarven Defender reduction into immunity instead.

What weapon buffs are you referring to?  Specifically Greater Magic Weapon/Holy Sword?  Keen would still be as useful, elemental damage debuffs would still be nearly as useful (if a fighter does 33 average damage with a +5 sword versus 43 average damage with a +15 sword, extra elemental damage is still quite useful).  I admit I don't get the fascination with making GMW/Keen/whatever key buffs at the end game.  Haste is often replaced by items, stat buffs are replaced by items, what makes GMW special?  If you're going for a super low magic world where fighter = buff received and caster = buff bot I guess that could work, but I don't think that's what you mean.

I guess a large part of this also depends upon what kind of AI you're using and whether you're trying to encourage aspects of the "holy trinity."  Note that "encourage aspects of" doesn't necessarily mean "make mandatory" but rather that *having* a person who is trying to tank is useful and *having* a druid/cleric trying to heal is useful.

[SHOVA]

I think the hardest thing for some folks to take into account when talking about magic item levels vs. magical spell enhancements, is that items tend to be permanent, spells are limited. In the example above, a stone skin/greater stone skin, shadow shield wears off, has set number of damage it takes before it collapses, and the +15 stays +15 forever. While in your ideal world that works just fine, in some it makes the bravest shudder.

As a builder I know NWN is not really balanced as a multi-player game, at out of the box settings if you go PnP style. Bio made to many tweaks for the OC to make it playable. That's why so many nerfs were done by the community to get it playable as "Low end magic" however, one thing is true, no mater what magic level you build with, it remains out of balance as you go higher, the points at the imbalance shows up just changes. It doesn't mater how hard you try and make it balanced either, at some point one class will outshine another, either with class abilities, or items vs other class abilities.

The real difference is how the builder wants to keep the "math" in the game. a low end, +3 vs whatever, the high end +20 that seems to come out as the main focus for the lower ended builder is group vs encounter, and the higher focus builder solo vs encounter or PvP. (not always but usually in my experience.)