23 réponses à ce sujet

[MagicalMaster]

Continuation of a discussion that began in the February Adventure Building challenge roughly here.

rogueknight333 wrote...

Not exactly, or at least not entirely given that I am somewhat conflating the experiences derived from multiple modules. I am talking about situations where I have every piece of equipment I would have any use for (every inventory slot occupied by some over-powered item, with more ready to be switched in for specialized situations where some specific immunity is called for), and more consumables than I can find opportunity to use. Yet I still find more and more loot coming at me.

You're familar with the phrase "vendor fodder?"  And yes, I know one of your points is that you have more gold than you can possibly use anyway so vendoring items makes no difference in that sense, but I think players like finding items, even if they just sell them.  There's sort of a visceral thrill of defeating an opponent and prying loot from its cold, dead hands.  Even if the loot is entirely useless.

It would almost seem kind of weird, I expect, for players to be showered with loot for a while and then suddenly stop finding any.

But since you're still finding loot (which includes potions) and you're used to vendoring most things, you still do it instead of using the consumables (especially since, in these modules, the only useful potions are often healing potions).

I would prefer, like I imagine you would, for loot and gold to remain relevant throughout the whole game - but that's much harder to do, so I expect most authors err on the safe side and have players hry too much rather than t0o little (then you get into the question of Appraise which is another issue).

rogueknight333 wrote...

Let us take as an example a case where a player has a sum of gold he can spend on buying either an item that enchances his AC or a bunch of Potions of Heal. The advantage of the item is that it will reduce the amount of hits and thus damage he takes over the course of a series of encounters. Yet those potions of Heal might well result in even less effective damage (defined as the difference between damage taken and healing received), depending (among other factors) on how many encounters intervene between the opportunity to again upgrade or restock. Of course, a player would not normally possess sufficient information to make such a calculation reliably, even if he were inclined to think of things in these terms.

Completely agree on both points - if an amulet winds up saving you from 200 damage over the course of a module but potions bought for the same amount of money can heal 400 health, the potions would generally be better (laying aside issues like dying before you can use the potion and things like Attacks of Opportunity).  However, I think most people assume they'll always have enough healing potions (or rather, won't need to use many of them) but never have good enough gear, in a sense, so they try to upgrade gear over buying more consumables (and the lack of information compounds the problem - if you're going to replace the amulet soon through a boss drop or something, the potions are definitely better, but if you're using the amulet for the rest of the game, the amulet might actually be far more valuable than it seems at first glance.  Hard to say without more information).

rogueknight333 wrote...

This is perhaps relevant to our earlier discussion about how many low-level modules tend to be excessively hard or luck-dependent, while many high-level ones are too easy.

Indeed.

rogueknight333 wrote...

Not all of those tricks would be applicable to less specialized kinds of combat, and feeling easier is not the same thing as being easier. Though this does make me interested in trying Siege again with a variety of different builds and seeing what happens (not sure when I will find the time for that, alas).

I'm just glad you picked a character who could actually beat the spider in the original version - some builds would be unable to (most could, though).  And yeah, some of them are specialized - though something like "x damage per hit that occurs at most once every six seconds" could be generalized fairly easily.

Well, when I say "not being easier" I mean that the outcome is not in doubt either way, assuming you pay reasonable attention.  For example, a weapon master using a dagger instead of a bastard sword will probably never affect the outcome of a fight - the fight will just take longer.  But the fight is definitely easier with a bastard sword.

Likewise, a fighter who skips Epic Weapon Focus/Weapon Focu/Epic Prowess will take longer to beat an opponent than one who gets them - but again, that's probably never going to make the fight suddenly unwinnable (at least not in nearly all modules).

The fight "feels" easier in that it takes less time and/or has less risk of dying (for example, compare a fighter who takes Armor Skin and Tumble versus one who skips both, 6 AC difference by the end but likely that both characters will be able to make it through a module), but the outcome is never really in doubt.

rogueknight333 wrote...

And the respawn system (if it actually deserves to be dignified by being called a system) for Snow Hunt was produced by asking something like "What kind of respawn procedure can I dash off a script for in the next five minutes?"

Huh.  Suddenly I have a desire to go play Snow Hunt and actually die to see what this respawn system is

I'll put Swordflight commentary elsewhere.

simomate2 wrote...

Not really sure if this is relevant to your debate, but the debate was intriguing and I just felt like barging in on it.... simply limit the number of potions the PC is allowed to carry with them.

It's absolutely relevant.

simomate2 wrote...

This is something I'm considering doing in a module I am developing, The PC can only carry a limited number of potions. This isn't a problem outside of dungeons, but when you enter a dungeon the PC cannot leave until they complete it. Therefore, they are forced to recongise the need to preserve their potions or they will ultimately fail.

 As a solution to both issues, limiting the number of potions the PC can carry could prove useful but only if its implanted correctly. I mean, there's absolutely no point if the PC can go back in forth to the potion store and get more potions because then they'll see that as a tedious game play mechanic.

Definitely correct on the tedious part and needing to avoid that - also probably ideal to have a plausible reason for why only a certain number of potions can be carried.

One problem, though - the PC is really walking blind and doesn't know when he's expected to burn a potion or when he's supposed to conserve them.  Especially if he guesses wrong, he gets into a situation where he is out of potions and cannot beat the dungeon, but cannot leave to restock.  So he's just hosed.  Which seems unfair unless you make it very clear when he's "allowed" to use potions or your module expects people to fail at this the first time or two and retry.

Modifié par MagicalMaster, 02 avril 2013 - 09:46 .

[rogueknight333]

MagicalMaster wrote...

You're familar with the phrase "vendor fodder?" ...

...I would prefer, like I imagine you would, for loot and gold to remain relevant throughout the whole game - but that's much harder to do...

I grant there are reasons for handing out useless loot that I was not addressing: doing so for the sake of realism or flavor (as with stuff one would logically expect to find on the enemy's corpse, or in the castle's armory, or wherever), or simply as a nominal reward ("You beat the boss so you get this useless item as a trophy." "Yay! I will prominently display it on my virtual mantelpiece."). I do some of that sort of thing myself, and have occasionally been caught on one or other of the horns of the dilemma between story or setting logic and game logic. To clarify things, perhaps I should say that I was more making an appeal to tone down the excesses of useless loot, rather than a demand to do away with it altogether.

MagicalMaster wrote...
...if you're going to replace the amulet soon through a boss drop or something, the potions are definitely better, but if you're using the amulet for the rest of the game, the amulet might actually be far more valuable than it seems at first glance.  Hard to say without more information)...

Of course that lack of information cuts both ways. I do not know that a set of potions will actually be more valuable than an item, but for the same reasons I do not know that they will not be either. And though one does not know it is often possible to make reasonable guesses based on things like RPG conventions, the habits of a particular author (in a module or series one has been playing for a while, anyway) and so forth.

MagicalMaster wrote...

I'm just glad you picked a character who could actually beat the spider in the original version...

If you are curious, I was playing an elven Rogue 29/Shadowdancer 1/COT 10 (DEX based). It might be lucky that I was able to beat the module since I called on a high-level character I already had floating around, rather than making one from scratch, and as a result it was not particularly optimized for your special rules. With every really dangerous enemy having True Seeing, that Shadowdancer level was doing nothing for me, and being a PvE skill monkey was not exactly was what called for in Siege. On the other hand, playing a module in which absolutely no one was immune to Sneak Attack occasionally made my dexer Rogue think he might be fighting in heaven after all.

MagicalMaster wrote...
Well, when I say "not being easier" I mean that the outcome is not in doubt either way, assuming you pay reasonable attention...

I think the term "easier" might be somewhat equivocal here. One might mean (at least) two things by saying something is easier. If one is playing some kind of "No Reload" challenge (that people sometimes did in the old Baldur's Gate game for example - and I think some still do) it refers to the chance of being able to get through without having to resort to reloads (and perhaps similar such devices like respawns) - basically, "Can you beat the game?" In other contexts, where perhaps one has no problem with occasionally reloading, it may simply mean how fast and trouble free a run-through might be. In this latter case, a situation where one turns a corner and gets taken out by a lich casting a Finger of Death at you need not be a big deal, one simply reloads and tries again, and little time will be lost if one was saving regularly. In the former case, avoiding that sort of thing is important. Depending on which sort of "easyness" one is going for, different builds or strategies might be called for as well. If getting through quickly is the key thing, and an occasional reload not seen as a problem, maximizing DPS, at the expense of just about everything else, would seem the way to go. But if one wants to beat the module without any reloads, defensive characteristics become much more important. One would like to have AC, HP, and Saves to be as high as possible, and it would be good to have things like Evasion, methods of protecting oneself from death magic, and from Fear and other incapacitating effects that can easily result in death. Sacrificing some DPS to get some of those defensive characteristics might then be quite reasonable.

MagicalMaster wrote...

Huh.  Suddenly I have a desire to go play Snow Hunt and actually die to see what this respawn system is

You would need to purchase a Rune of Resurrection. Without one, respawning is disabled, and death just means "Game Over - Reload." If you possess one, the rune will be used up, and then one just respawns in place with a small XP penalty. Not much to it.

simomate2 wrote...

This is something I'm considering doing in a module I am developing, The PC can only carry a limited number of potions. This isn't a problem outside of dungeons, but when you enter a dungeon the PC cannot leave until they complete it. Therefore, they are forced to recongise the need to preserve their potions or they will ultimately fail.

 As a solution to both issues, limiting the number of potions the PC can carry could prove useful but only if its implanted correctly. I mean, there's absolutely no point if the PC can go back in forth to the potion store and get more potions because then they'll see that as a tedious game play mechanic.

I kind of like this general idea. One thought I have is that how you go about implementing could depend a lot on how likely it is that a PC will actually use up his limited potions. Would this be a common danger or only one for those who are using them to a really extravagant degree? In the latter case, allowing them to tediously backtrack to restock might not be that big a problem, since most players would not need to, and for the rest it would be the price they pay for poor resource management.

[MagicalMaster]

rogueknight333 wrote...

To clarify things, perhaps I should say that I was more making an appeal to tone down the excesses of useless loot, rather than a demand to do away with it altogether.

I'm a bit confused.  I understand the word loot, it means pure awesome.  And I comprehend the adjective useless, it means bad.  So I'm having a hard time extracting meaning from "bad pure awesome."  Perhaps you meant to say "tone down the surplus of useful loot?"  Because that'd be horrible!

Joking aside, yeah, I agree.  Basically original campaign syndrome (where there were about 39532874 lootable object in each area with nearly entirely junk in them).

rogueknight333 wrote...

Of course that lack of information cuts both ways. I do not know that a set of potions will actually be more valuable than an item, but for the same reasons I do not know that they will not be either. And though one does not know it is often possible to make reasonable guesses based on things like RPG conventions, the habits of a particular author (in a module or series one has been playing for a while, anyway) and so forth.

True.  On the flip side, think of how many modules never expect, let alone require, you to use potions at all.  Maybe 1-2 heal potions in a "tough" fight.  On top of that, the general trend in RPGs has been to move away from consumables - for many of the reasons we've stated in this thread.  It seems you can hardly blame a player to expect an item will be more important than potions (unless, as you've said, they've been given reason to believe otherwise).

rogueknight333 wrote...

If you are curious, I was playing an elven Rogue 29/Shadowdancer 1/COT 10 (DEX based). It might be lucky that I was able to beat the module since I called on a high-level character I already had floating around, rather than making one from scratch, and as a result it was not particularly optimized for your special rules. With every really dangerous enemy having True Seeing, that Shadowdancer level was doing nothing for me, and being a PvE skill monkey was not exactly was what called for in Siege. On the other hand, playing a module in which absolutely no one was immune to Sneak Attack occasionally made my dexer Rogue think he might be fighting in heaven after all.

Yeah, I felt HiPS was just too exploitable so I took a hammer to it for lack of time.

The people who couldn't beat spider original were those who couldn't burst high damage on a vulnerable target (the webbed victims).  So a weapon master, rogue, AA, sorcerer/wizard, cleric, druid, assassin could all handle it...probably a 2H fighter as well.  But a more defensive build (monks, sword and board fighters, dwarven defenders, dedicated shadowdancers, etc) would be unable to prevent the spider from healing to the point where they'd be killed by the Frenzy.

P.S. I hate Crit/Sneak immunity

rogueknight333 wrote...

Depending on which sort of "easyness" one is going for, different builds or strategies might be called for as well.

True enough.

rogueknight333 wrote...

Sacrificing some DPS to get some of those defensive characteristics might then be quite reasonable.

I was also just thinking of less optimized builds - a weapon master using a dagger instead of a bastard sword, like I mentioned above.  It's very likely both builds will be able to beat the module, but one will have an "easier" time (which mainly means fights take less time).

rogueknight333 wrote...

You would need to purchase a Rune of Resurrection. Without one, respawning is disabled, and death just means "Game Over - Reload." If you possess one, the rune will be used up, and then one just respawns in place with a small XP penalty. Not much to it.

Gotcha.

rogueknight333 wrote...

I kind of like this general idea. One thought I have is that how you go about implementing could depend a lot on how likely it is that a PC will actually use up his limited potions. Would this be a common danger or only one for those who are using them to a really extravagant degree? In the latter case, allowing them to tediously backtrack to restock might not be that big a problem, since most players would not need to, and for the rest it would be the price they pay for poor resource management.

Yeah, if you're trying to tune it tightly and have them barely make it through the dungeon when using every potion compared to only running out if they're stupid makes a large difference.

[rogueknight333]

MagicalMaster wrote...

True.  On the flip side, think of how many modules never expect, let alone require, you to use potions at all.  Maybe 1-2 heal potions in a "tough" fight... .

It makes plenty of intuitive sense to assume that an item would be more valuable (and it doubtless is in at least some cases): you will benefit from the AC or stat boost or whatever it provides in every fight between equipping it and getting an even better item, while potions will only be useful on the typically rare cases one uses them. But thinking about the matter has made me curious how often this initial intuitive impression is actually true.  Let's take as an example a normal difficulty spread (such as one would expect to find in an official campaign) where there might be the occasional very tough boss fight but most encounters are basically just filler. A few potions of Heal could be the difference between victory and defeat in those few fights that actually test the player, while, by contrast, the boss might have such a high AB and damage output that a slight increase to AC or something hardly makes a significant difference (though I have at least sometimes run into fights where fairly modest boosts to a few things did seem to make a noticeable difference).  In the filler encounters it hardly matters what one invested in: they will not pose a problem either way.

MagicalMaster wrote...
Yeah, I felt HiPS was just too exploitable so I took a hammer to it for lack of time.

As someone who makes use of that particular talent quite often, I can assure you it is very exploitable, so I do not blame you.

P.S. I hate Crit/Sneak immunity

I can see why. It is a property that can make a dedicated Sneak Attacker or Dev-criting Weapon Master go from being severely over-powered in one encounter to being almost useless in another. Kind of a nightmare for anyone trying to balance a module. On the other hand, I do like the general idea of different monsters having different kinds of immunities: it can make gameplay more interesting when tactics have to be adapted to deal with the strengths and weaknesses of particular foes, and it adds to the depth and lore of a setting when the various monsters are different in ways that actually affect gameplay. That said if I were designing a D&D-type rule system from scratch I think I would be inclined to prefer a property that simply reduced the damage from Sneaks/Crits rather than granting complete immunity.

[ffbj]

Yes to that last point as making it similar to the various immunities 10% 25% etc... immunities. In my module I disallow Dev Crit. and hips, except (hips) is activatalbe with a cloak where you need to be a ranger, rogue, or assassin to wear it. The extra activation step is added in as with certain potions I made, and it takes up an equipment slot. I reduced full heal to 100 hp + level * 2d4, in the first heal, and then delayed 10 seconds for around 1/4 more healing. I also have a fatigue system, and nagging wound(s), which you get if you fall. Lots of moving parts to address some of the things mentioned above.
For the eventual useleness of loot I have trophy collection and bounty hunting for the higher level PC's. Various npc's have trophy collections which you can add too and not receive loot but notoriety for you achievments. You receive bonus noteriety for taking bounties. Without a certain level of notoriety you will not be able to access certain aspects of the modules content.

[MagicalMaster]

rogueknight333 wrote...

by contrast, the boss might have such a high AB and damage output that a slight increase to AC or something hardly makes a significant difference (though I have at least sometimes run into fights where fairly modest boosts to a few things did seem to make a noticeable difference).

Just as a point of reference, gaining 1 AC is roughly equivalent to taking 10-15% less damage for most AB ranges.  Not sure what you consider "significant" but to me a few AC is very significant.  Gaining 2 AC is like having 120-130 HP instead of 100 HP.

rogueknight333 wrote...

Let's take as an example a normal difficulty spread (such as one would expect to find in an official campaign) where there might be the occasional very tough boss fight but most encounters are basically just filler. A few potions of Heal could be the difference between victory and defeat in those few fights that actually test the player,

In the filler encounters it hardly matters what one invested in: they will not pose a problem either way.

Entirely possible.  On the flip side, if the filler encounters are difficult enough to make you use more healing potions if you lack the AC boost, then you'll have less potions for the boss (assuming you aren't resting to full health after every fight or something).  I think it's impossible to say without a lot more concrete details, it could very much go either way.

rogueknight333 wrote...

I can see why. It is a property that can make a dedicated Sneak Attacker or Dev-criting Weapon Master go from being severely over-powered in one encounter to being almost useless in another. Kind of a nightmare for anyone trying to balance a module.

Indeed.  Especially when you consider something like a skill focused rogue (meaning pure rogue for maximium skill points) is basically by definition a dedicated Sneak Attacker - taking that away from them robs them of pretty much all of their offensive power  And even for a non-Dev-critting WM, crit immune foes make them do about 55% of normal damage with a longsword.  47% with a scimitar/rapier.  67% with something like a mace or other terrible weapon.

rogueknight333 wrote...

On the other hand, I do like the general idea of different monsters having different kinds of immunities: it can make gameplay more interesting when tactics have to be adapted to deal with the strengths and weaknesses of particular foes, and it adds to the depth and lore of a setting when the various monsters are different in ways that actually affect gameplay. That said if I were designing a D&D-type rule system from scratch I think I would be inclined to prefer a property that simply reduced the damage from Sneaks/Crits rather than granting complete immunity.

Even making the sneak/crit stuff adjustable instead of binary raises issue - because by default, weapon masters and rogues don't HAVE other tactics to adapt.  The WM can't say "Oh, this foe is crit immune, so I'll adjust my tactics by doing X instead."

I've seen guilds torn apart and relationships ruined over monsters having "lore properties" that affected gameplay - I'm very hesitant to deliberately make a character worse against a monster without a very, very good reason.  It really seems like the point of the change should be to add depth - if the change doesn't do anything but say "Weapon Masters are Y% worse against these foes," then it doesn't contribute to the game.

ffbj wrote...

For the eventual useleness of loot I have trophy collection and bounty hunting for the higher level PC's. Various npc's have trophy collections which you can add too and not receive loot but notoriety for you achievments. You receive bonus noteriety for taking bounties. Without a certain level of notoriety you will not be able to access certain aspects of the modules content.

Interesting idea - just something you don't see in most modules.  Having loot be for something beyond vendoring or sitting on the enemy because you can't be bothered to pick it up would be good.

Modifié par MagicalMaster, 06 avril 2013 - 10:39 .

[rogueknight333]

MagicalMaster wrote...
Even making the sneak/crit stuff adjustable instead of binary raises issue - because by default, weapon masters and rogues don't HAVE other tactics to adapt.  The WM can't say "Oh, this foe is crit immune, so I'll adjust my tactics by doing X instead."

Not sure I agree about rogues, who have a bunch of other tricks at their disposal: traps, whatever resources UMD opens up, being usually fairly good kiters, and simply outlasting some enemies in a battle of attrition due to superior defense (i.e., it may take a very long time for a dexer rogue to kill a tough crit-immune enemy, but if he has the full defensive panoply of Epic Dodge + Self Concealment + Very High AC he can still win a lot of fights on account of no one being able to do much damage to him either). One can of course hypothesize a scenario in which none of these advantages will help, but any build can be rendered useless if the environmental deck is sufficiently stacked against it. In any case, though 3rd Edition rules rather undermined this, traditionally in D&D Rogues (or Thieves as they once were called) were supposed to be somewhat weaker in combat than many other classes to compensate for their being so much better than anyone else at most non-combat tasks. For Weapon Masters, yes, they have a tendency to be one-trick ponies (if we are talking about a very dedicated WPM. Multi-classing might open up various other options, depending on the specific WPM build) which means crit immunity is a real problem for them, especially considering that they are actually intended to be powerhouses in melee combat. One might argue that this is as much or more because the class is not well-designed than because of a problem with Crit Immunity, but in general I agree that the phenomenon of "Being able to generate Sneaks/Crits is a really, really important game mechanic, until it suddently isn't" can be pretty annoying. This is one reason why I like games in which balance means balancing a whole series of encounters with accumulating attritional consequences, rather than just balancing each encounter as a distinct event. That way one can balance an encounter in which a particular type of character is at a disadvantage (pretty hard to completely avoid) with another one where that same character is at an advantage. The character can then, for example, use more consumables in the harder encounters and economize in the easier ones (among other long-term balancing devices, and assuming consumables are not so plentiful they can be used without limit).

MagicalMaster wrote...
I've seen guilds torn apart and relationships ruined over monsters having "lore properties" that affected gameplay - I'm very hesitant to deliberately make a character worse against a monster without a very, very good reason.  It really seems like the point of the change should be to add depth - if the change doesn't do anything but say "Weapon Masters are Y% worse against these foes," then it doesn't contribute to the game.

I cannot analyze the scenarios you refer to with guilds being torn apart, etc., without knowing any of the details, but I am guessing this occured in the context of play that was multiplayer, very combat-focused and intensely competitive. That hardly seems to describe the way the majority of players approach a RPG, and I suspect that you might be in some danger of over-generalizing from rather specialized circumstances. However that may be, it is certainly true that the ideal would be for monster properties to make sense from the point of view both of what fits the lore and the world and what contributes to reasonably balanced combat with some tactical depth. The problem with focusing on balance at the expense of everything else is that doing so will move you closer and closer to a game like chess, where everything is perfectly fair but also completely abstract and unrealistic. I have nothing against chess, but chess in not a RPG. A RPG needs a certain amount of lore and atmosphere, and it needs to be somewhat realistic (in the sense of being immersive and internally self-consistent once one takes as a given one is in a fantasy world with magic) or it is not a RPG anymore. For a further contrast, I might mention that, at the opposite extreme from chess, I have also played complex historically based board wargames which sometimes, in the interests of historical accuracy, deliberately set up scenarios that would put certain sides in the game at a serious disadvantage (real history being notoriously unconcerned with fairness). If you were playing one of those sides the object would be to do as well as one could with the deck stacked against you, and gain some historical insight in the process. I would expect a RPG to land somewhere between these two extremes. It does of course make a difference precisely what style of play one is trying to cater for: someone building a server focused on PvP action, for example, would need to approach questions of balance from a very different perspective than someone designing a RP-heavy single-player module. It also makes a difference, at least psychologically, if one goes in knowing that "yes, this scenario was meant to be especially hard for class X, and I will just have to deal with that" and on the other hand finding to one's surprise that class X has been given a raw deal because the designer failed to understand the consequences of his own rules.

[MagicalMaster]

rogueknight333 wrote...

Not sure I agree about rogues, who have a bunch of other tricks at their disposal: traps, whatever resources UMD opens up, being usually fairly good kiters, and simply outlasting some enemies in a battle of attrition due to superior defense (i.e., it may take a very long time for a dexer rogue to kill a tough crit-immune enemy, but if he has the full defensive panoply of Epic Dodge + Self Concealment + Very High AC he can still win a lot of fights on account of no one being able to do much damage to him either).

The rogue has those tricks at their disposal for all enemies, they're not adapted tricks to deal with sneak immune foes.

Non-Sneak Immune Foe
Traps, UMD, Kiting, Outlasting, Sneak Attacks

Non-Sneak Immune Foe
Traps, UMD, Kiting, Outlasting

Now if you're saying that some enemies are designed to be beaten by Sneak Attacks, some need to be dealt with via taps, some need a UMD item to defeat, some should be kited, and still others just need to be outlasted - then that's a different matter.  You're specifically designing enemies to tailor to the various tools in a rogue's arsenal.

But if you just take a standard enemy and slap sneak attack (or crit) immunity on him, you're not doing that.  And that's what usually happens - "Oh, this guy is supposed to be a powerful enemy...so let's give him crit immunity!  BRILLIANT!"

rogueknight333 wrote...

This is one reason why I like games in which balance means balancing a whole series of encounters with accumulating attritional consequences, rather than just balancing each encounter as a distinct event. That way one can balance an encounter in which a particular type of character is at a disadvantage (pretty hard to completely avoid) with another one where that same character is at an advantage. The character can then, for example, use more consumables in the harder encounters and economize in the easier ones (among other long-term balancing devices, and assuming consumables are not so plentiful they can be used without limit).

Fair enough (for single player games, at least).  But surely you'd agree that most (or all) modules don't do this - they make some characters at a disadvantage for some fights and never put them at an advantage (partially because making a rogue, for example, at an advantage for an encounter is trickier than doing something like mage vs fighter).

That's not even getting into the difficulty of appropriately balancing that like you mentioned, which  is an incredibly fine line.  And it means you are also constrained in design - you have to figure out which encounter is going to be easier for what builds, have enough encounters that you can make a roughly equivalent amount for each build (or have one encounter very easy for rogues and two somewhat easy for fighters or something), and handle consumables effectively.  Because what I suspect will usually happen is that, for example, a fighter will basically not care about what which enemy is meant to be easier for what and will just use potions when needed.

rogueknight333 wrote...

I cannot analyze the scenarios you refer to with guilds being torn apart, etc., without knowing any of the details, but I am guessing this occured in the context of play that was multiplayer, very combat-focused and intensely competitive.  That hardly seems to describe the way the majority of players approach a RPG, and I suspect that you might be in some danger of over-generalizing from rather specialized circumstances.

Yes to the multiplayer and combat-focused.  Oddly enough, not really on the competitive (relatively difficult, but not competitive).  It was more just people saying "Bob, we like you and all, but rogues are the worst class on the next fight so we're taking someone else instead, sorry.  We're not going to make the fight harder for us by taking you when we could bring a better class."

And if we had brought Bob, then each time we died people would have been resentful and thought "Why the hell did they bring Bob, he's a liability on this fight and we could have beaten this already if we had someone else."

There's a reason Blizzard changed that situation - this was occuring throughout basically all raiding in WoW at the time.

Now things are far more competitive (both what I'm personally doing and in a general sense) and I can't even imagine how bad things would be if Blizzard hadn't addressed those issus.  Granted, this is basically exclusive to group content in MMOs (not just WoW, but SWTOR, EQ2, Rift, etc) - but if it's good game design for that sort of thing, I think it's worth carefully considering changing that paradigm.

rogueknight333 wrote...

However that may be, it is certainly true that the ideal would be for monster properties to make sense from the point of view both of what fits the lore and the world and what contributes to reasonably balanced combat with some tactical depth.

Except it often doesn't make sense, lore wise.

Why would a human sized water elemental be immune to meteors falling on it - it should evaporate, if anything.

Why is a skeleton immune to critical hits - can't I just smash off its arm or something if we're using critical hits as hitting something "vital?"  And if we're not using that as a critical hit idea (since you don't lose combat effectiveness until dead), then isn't a crit just a particularly solid blow?

Why does a skeleton take 50% damage from slashing?  If you can cut someone's arm clean off with a sword strike (cutting through flesh and bone), then why doesn't the same apply to a skeleton (just bone)?

Etc.

And a lot of these don't contribute to tactical depth, either - what exactly is a fighter or WM going to do differently against a foe who's crit immune?  Nothing changes from their perspective except that they won't crit.

rogueknight333 wrote...

 (real history being notoriously unconcerned with fairness).

In a historical sense, a fair fight means everyone on your side comes home alive, screw the other side

rogueknight333 wrote...

It also makes a difference, at least psychologically, if one goes in knowing that "yes, this scenario was meant to be especially hard for class X, and I will just have to deal with that" and on the other hand finding to one's surprise that class X has been given a raw deal because the designer failed to understand the consequences of his own rules.

True enough.

[rogueknight333]

MagicalMaster wrote...

The rogue has those tricks at their disposal for all enemies, they're not adapted tricks to deal with sneak immune foes...

...Now if you're saying that some enemies are designed to be beaten by Sneak Attacks, some need to be dealt with via taps, some need a UMD item to defeat, some should be kited, and still others just need to be outlasted - then that's a different matter.  You're specifically designing enemies to tailor to the various tools in a rogue's arsenal.

But if you just take a standard enemy and slap sneak attack (or crit) immunity on him, you're not doing that.  And that's what usually happens - "Oh, this guy is supposed to be a powerful enemy...so let's give him crit immunity!  BRILLIANT!"

If supplies are limited a rogue might not want to use traps or UMD items in every encounter, perhaps saving them for battles against SA-immune foes, thereby effectively creating a situation where different foes call for different tatics, but I do not fundamentally disagree with any of this. The point was simply that rogues are not exactly rendered useless just because SA is taken off the table, and so are not really in quite the same situation as a WPM, who apart from generating more crits cannot do much that some other class cannot do as well or better. WPMs can sometimes get more hits against very high AC enemies, I suppose, if we also assume some reason (limited ammo?) for preferring melee to missle weapons so that we would not be calling on an AA for that purpose. Also I suspect one of the reasons crit immunity is often given to enemies meant to be especially powerful is to keep them from being taken out with embarrassing speed by certain characters (not necessarily the best means of handling that particular issue, but at least slightly more intelligent than you were implying).

MagicalMaster wrote...
Fair enough (for single player games, at least).  But surely you'd agree that most (or all) modules don't do this...

True, most do not (though something like it might occasionally emerge accidentally), but then most modules hardly seem to address problems of balance, at least in any very well thought out way, at all (not always unreasonably, as they may be focused on other aspects of gameplay).

MagicalMaster wrote...
That's not even getting into the difficulty of appropriately balancing that like you mentioned, which  is an incredibly fine line.  And it means you are also constrained in design - you have to figure out which encounter is going to be easier for what builds, have enough encounters that you can make a roughly equivalent amount for each build (or have one encounter very easy for rogues and two somewhat easy for fighters or something), and handle consumables effectively.  Because what I suspect will usually happen is that, for example, a fighter will basically not care about what which enemy is meant to be easier for what and will just use potions when needed.

It is very hard, especially since with 3E we are not balancing so much for Rogue vs. Fighter vs. Mage etc. as for Rogue/Fighter vs. Paladin/Cleric vs. Bard/RDD and who knows what else. I try to do something along the lines I suggested myself, but I make no claims to have succeeded spectacularly well. It does not seem obviously harder, however, than trying to make sure each and every individual encounter has been satisfactorily balanced (unless you just make all of them really easy, which to be sure is a solution many module builders have embraced). Balancing combat so that it is very difficult but still possible by its nature means walking a very fine line, and  in a game of any great complexity, with great heterogeneity among both possible player builds and the types of monsters encountered, balance will be inherently difficult to achieve, however one goes about it.

MagicalMaster wrote...
Yes to the multiplayer and combat-focused.  Oddly enough, not really on the competitive (relatively difficult, but not competitive).  It was more just people saying "Bob, we like you and all, but rogues are the worst class on the next fight so we're taking someone else instead, sorry.  We're not going to make the fight harder for us by taking you when we could bring a better class."

And if we had brought Bob, then each time we died people would have been resentful and thought "Why the hell did they bring Bob, he's a liability on this fight and we could have beaten this already if we had someone else."

There's a reason Blizzard changed that situation - this was occuring throughout basically all raiding in WoW at the time.

I would think there would be more ways to deal with problems like that than simply doing away with a lot of special immunities (if that is in fact what Blizzard did, which is not completely clear from what you say). Things like providing multiple enemies with different powers so that a character weak against one could deal with others (which might even make channeling monsters to the teammate best equipped to deal with them part of the strategy), or giving characters powers that while sometimes weak on their own could synergistically combine with those of other classes to provide additional benefits, or just making more versatile classes with more tricks in their repertoires. Of course, I am not a MMO player, and have no qualifications to give advice on MMO-related matters, so if your response to this amount to "You have absolutely no clue what you are talking about" I shall be inclined to believe you.

MagicalMaster wrote...
Now things are far more competitive (both what I'm personally doing and in a general sense) and I can't even imagine how bad things would be if Blizzard hadn't addressed those issus.  Granted, this is basically exclusive to group content in MMOs (not just WoW, but SWTOR, EQ2, Rift, etc) - but if it's good game design for that sort of thing, I think it's worth carefully considering changing that paradigm.

Perhaps, but I am suspicious of the argument that if it works for MMOs it will work in other contexts. Again, I know almost nothing about MMOs, but in reference to things of which I have at least slightly greater qualifications to speak, I can say that there are things that work in P&P that do not in a computer game (and vice versa), or in a single-player module but not in a PW (or vice versa), so such a claim hardly seems self-evident, or, absent additional reasons, even especially likely.

MagicalMaster wrote...
Except it often doesn't make sense, lore wise.

Why would a human sized water elemental be immune to meteors falling on it - it should evaporate, if anything.

Why is a skeleton immune to critical hits - can't I just smash off its arm or something if we're using critical hits as hitting something "vital?"  And if we're not using that as a critical hit idea (since you don't lose combat effectiveness until dead), then isn't a crit just a particularly solid blow?

Why does a skeleton take 50% damage from slashing?  If you can cut someone's arm clean off with a sword strike (cutting through flesh and bone), then why doesn't the same apply to a skeleton (just bone)?

Etc.

And a lot of these don't contribute to tactical depth, either - what exactly is a fighter or WM going to do differently against a foe who's crit immune?  Nothing changes from their perspective except that they won't crit.

One could defend some of these design decisions (e.g. I think the idea behind undead being immune to crits is that they have far fewer vital points than a living organism, and thus it is much harder to score an immediately crippling blow against them - though one still has to account for how one gets from "much harder" to "completely impossible") but I have plenty of my own issues with much of the NWN ruleset so I grant the general point: from either a balancing or a lore/realism perspective they could use a lot of improvement (like every other game, of course - nothing is perfect). My object is not to defend crit immunity specifically (or any immunity in particluar), but simply to say that there is more to an RPG than balance (important as that is). I would not be entirely happy to play an RPG in which there were no qualitative, more-than-cosmetic differences between the capabilities of different monsters, however helpful that might be for balancing reasons. It would remove some of the atmosphere that makes an RPG an RPG, and not a game of chess with funny looking pieces. Ideally, of course, rulesets and worlds both would be designed with an eye to minimizing the likelihood of gross conflicts between balance and lore.

Modifié par rogueknight333, 09 avril 2013 - 07:04 .

[ffbj]

I don't make lower level undead immune to critical hits. They usually have a bonus vrs. piercing but then skeletons have vulnerability to blunt. To me its all about your vision and how you implement it.
To differentiate classes for instance I use spot/listen mechanism for many monster spawns. Success means something spawns, being unsuccessful with spot/listen checks could mean an ambush.
Just basic sensible things I do to add verisimilitude to the game.
Interesting thread, though at times leaning towards pendantry.

Modifié par ffbj, 11 avril 2013 - 05:31 .

[MagicalMaster]

rogueknight333 wrote...

The point was simply that rogues are not exactly rendered useless just because SA is taken off the table, and so are not really in quite the same situation as a WPM, who apart from generating more crits cannot do much that some other class cannot do as well or better.

Hmm.

While I'd agree that rogues do have some other tricks like UMDing stuff (though this typically gets less and less powerful as levels go up), traps, and (at epic levels) better survivability, I'd argue that WMs suffer less from crit immunity.  Worst case a weapon master loses about 50% of his damage but still has sky high AB - he basically becomes a fighter with more AB and slightly less feats.

A level 40 rogue, on the other hand, loses probably 84 damage per hit.  If we assume he's using a sword short with +5 enhancement and 2d6 bonus damage, that'd be roughly 16ish damage per hit (can quibble about the exact number, not important).  Which means he's going from 100 damage per hit to 16, or doing 16.7% damage.  Even if you upped his base damage per hit to 25, that's still 25/109 = 23% of his former damage.  He's being hit over twice as hard in the damage department as the WM, and the WM will manage just fine if a fighter can manage.

Similar logic holds for all levels, not just 40.

Obviously if supplies AREN'T limited and the rogue has 500 scrolls of IGMS or 200 epic traps he might relatively better off than the WM.  But if they're trying to conserve supplies...

rogueknight333 wrote...

Also I suspect one of the reasons crit immunity is often given to enemies meant to be especially powerful is to keep them from being taken out with embarrassing speed by certain characters (not necessarily the best means of handling that particular issue, but at least slightly more intelligent than you were implying).

Possibly, but who does it so drastically affect besides SA and WM builds?  Said creatures are often taken out with embarrassing speed by casters regardless.

That's more rhetorical to be clear, not claiming you endorse that strategy.

rogueknight333 wrote...

True, most do not (though something like it might occasionally emerge accidentally), but then most modules hardly seem to address problems of balance, at least in any very well thought out way, at all (not always unreasonably, as they may be focused on other aspects of gameplay).

True enough.  A story heavy mod solely focused on dialogue and such might not care about combat (just like Siege is not exactly concerned with gut-wrenching moral quandaries or a plot that's impacted by the decisions players made).

rogueknight333 wrote...

It does not seem obviously harder, however, than trying to make sure each and every individual encounter has been satisfactorily balanced (unless you just make all of them really easy, which to be sure is a solution many module builders have embraced).

Perhaps, though if you can figure out a rough "template" it can be applied to encounters in general with tweaks depending on the situation.  Making individual encounters balanced also becomes easier with some mechanic modifications since the default ruleset is not even remotely balanced for single player stuff (though to be fair, it wasn't meant to be).

I think a large part of the problem is the sheer deviation available.  For example, to be very simplistic, let's imagine we have a fighter who does 20 damage per hit and 200 HP.  We can balance combat based around this and make something challenging and engaging.

Now image we throw in two more fighter builds that have 10 damage/400 HP and 40 damage/100 HP respectively.  Suddenly coming up with something that's about the same challenge for each is very hard.  On the other hand, imagine that the two new fighter builds had 18 damage/220 HP and 22 damage/180 HP.  You can use the original encounter and still have something reasonable for all three.

I don't think everything should be the same, but I think a game that has players with ABs and ACs with a deviation of over 20 on a d20 system is somewhat messed up.

rogueknight333 wrote...

I would think there would be more ways to deal with problems like that than simply doing away with a lot of special immunities (if that is in fact what Blizzard did, which is not completely clear from what you say).

They stopped making monsters immune to a specific type of damage and made all monsters vulnerable to bleed/poison effects.  That was basically it.

rogueknight333 wrote...

Things like providing multiple enemies with different powers so that a character weak against one could deal with others (which might even make channeling monsters to the teammate best equipped to deal with them part of the strategy), or giving characters powers that while sometimes weak on their own could synergistically combine with those of other classes to provide additional benefits, or just making more versatile classes with more tricks in their repertoires.

You can do this without making monsters immune to a specific type of damage, though.  Blizzard's often done things like make some mobs immune to physical damage and others immune to spells or created situations where certain classes can do slightly better.

Always having to do this kind of thing also severely limits encounter design, especially since Blizzard doesn't want to force every group to have X class to do Y content.  classes have different tricks that let them "break the rules" in an encounter - but in a way that makes it slightly easier, not in a way that trivializes it.

rogueknight333 wrote...

Perhaps, but I am suspicious of the argument that if it works for MMOs it will work in other contexts

Not what I'm saying.  For example, the idea of re-running a dungeon a bunch of times for boss drops makes little to no sense in a single player game.  Or the idea of the game not really beginning until max level.

However, if an MMO decides to remove a "staple" of RPGs (fire elementals being immune to fire) because it horribly messes up balance and causes severe problems - it's probably worth considering whether having fire elementals be immune to fire is worth doing in your game.  If it adds some tactical depth and players can adapt, feel free.

But if you look at NWN, there are mainly just two cold spells - Ice Storm at level 4 and Cone of Cold at level 5.  Unless you take meta-magic, you have no other way to deliver cold damage - contrast that to Combust, Fireball, Firebrand, Delayed Blast Fireball, Incendiary Cloud, and Meteor Swarm.

It's even worse if you consider a foe weak to acid - Mestil's Acid Breath (level 3) and Acid Fog (level 6).  I realize that DnD has far more spells than NWN, but my point is that if you want to want to force players to adapt to immunities and expect them to exploit vulnerabilities, you need to make sure they have the means to actually do so.

On another note, players tend to want the easiest path (within reason).  If you have two fighters, where one uses a sword and the other uses an axe, and the only difference is that the sword-using fighter does twice the damage - how many people do you think would pick the axe-wielder?  There might be a few who go with the inferior option because they think it looks cooler or they want the challenge - but that would be very, very few people.

The Mass Effect series has an interesting example of this.  By default, the general "roles" are combat, techonolgy, and biotics (space magic).  There are six classes: soldier (pure combat), vangard (combat/biotics), infiltrator (combat/tech), adept (pure biotics), engineer (pure tech), and sentinel (biotics/tech).  In Mass Effect 1, biotics were incredibly strong.  In Mass Effect 2, Bioware tried to tone them down but overshot the mark, resulting is basically no one playing the adept class.  The class practically might as well have not existed for most people because it was so weak (still playable, but much weaker).  When the playerbase pretty universally ignores a class because you made it weaker than the others, you have an issue.  Even in a single player game.

Edit: forget the chess thing, I think I get what you're saying and delving too much into the analogy doesn't really do much.

Modifié par MagicalMaster, 12 avril 2013 - 04:36 .

[rogueknight333]

MagicalMaster wrote...

 ...I'd argue that WMs suffer less from crit immunity.  Worst case a weapon master loses about 50% of his damage but still has sky high AB - he basically becomes a fighter with more AB and slightly less feats...

Sure, he would basically not be much worse (at worst) than a straight fighter in that scenario, and quite possibly a bit better if the extra AB proved crucial. I was not thinking so much about the DPS math, but on the fact that if I knew that in a given module 90% of the monsters were Crit immune, I would not exactly be inspired to play through it with a Weapon Master. Not because that class would necessarily be especially weak, but because in that situation it could not do much of anything fun and interesting that some other class could not do as well or better. Whereas I might (depending on a lot of other details of course) still be interested in playing that module with a Rogue.

MagicalMaster wrote...
Possibly, but who does it so drastically affect besides SA and WM builds?

Any high strength build with access to Dev. Crit.

Said creatures are often taken out with embarrassing speed by casters regardless.

Yes, if they are not also doing something about IGMS and Harm and Implosion it is a very poorly thought out way of addressing the problem. But then, as I have said, the approach taken to such balancing questions often is very poorly thought out. Lots of builders are not powergamers and thus do not really understand what they would need to do to balance encounters for those who are, even assuming they were all that interested in doing so.

MagicalMaster wrote...
Perhaps, though if you can figure out a rough "template" it can be applied to encounters in general with tweaks depending on the situation...

 

"If" perhaps being an important word here, since you are also quite right to point out that

MagicalMaster wrote...
...a large part of the problem is the sheer deviation available...

and thus it would require quite a lot of tweaking to account for all the possibilities. Another problem is that a lot of the built-in balancing features of the rules (to the extent there are any) also assume a kind of balance that takes more than one encounter into account. The chief advantage of a fighter-type build is that it is a lot less dependent than a caster on the need to rest. A situation where we have no rest restrictions and thus where a caster has no reason not to unload his entire repertoire of spells in a single encounter, is one where I have a hard time seeing why one would ever prefer to play a dedicated warrior class over a caster (at least if one is looking at things purely from a power perspective). Unless (maybe) the caster is very low-level, or there are some other unusual environmental factors nerfing him (like, for example, a monster immune to everything except physical damage - but I expect you would not like that particular idea), he will always be the stronger class if we are thinking of each encounter as a discrete event.

I don't think everything should be the same, but I think a game that has players with ABs and ACs with a deviation of over 20 on a d20 system is somewhat messed up.

Oh yes, there is plenty of messed up stuff in the 3E rules, though I am not sure they were that bad until the feature bloat where they started adding in all sorts of Prestige classes and ECL races and such with (apparently) little or no thought to their effect on game balance. Plenty of things in the ruleset I could start ranting about, if I felt so inclined. Though to be fair I am unaware of any RPG ruleset I would consider perfect.

My own approach as a builder has nevertheless been for the most part to try and make lemonade out of the rule-lemons, rather than instituting a lot of alterations. Aside from simple laziness, this is partly because with some of the other seemingly disconcerting things I do I am not sure I want to present players with the additional difficulty of having to learn a whole new ruleset (that kind of thing tends to be a lot more appropriate in a PW where players are expected to spend a lot of time, and thus can acclimate themselves to rule changes). Another reason is that without a great deal of thought and play-testing, and perhaps even with it, I might create as many new balancing problems as I fix. This way I can just blame some of the issues on Bioware.

MagicalMaster wrote...

...However, if an MMO decides to remove a "staple" of RPGs (fire elementals being immune to fire) because it horribly messes up balance and causes severe problems - it's probably worth considering whether having fire elementals be immune to fire is worth doing in your game.  If it adds some tactical depth and players can adapt, feel free...

Personally I would find removing that particular immunity pretty immersion breaking. More generally, I can certainly see how immunities of various sorts tend to create balancing problems. What I have a hard time seeing is how simply removing them altogether would be the only way to address those problems. Maybe what Blizzard did was the most cost-effective solultion given the specific circumstances they were dealing with, I do not know enough to say. But in the case of NWN, the problem you raise with that particular immunity is that there are a lot of fire-based spells, and not so many based on other elements. True enough (one of my own little pet peeves is that if you are going to have spells like Flame Weapon and Darkfire, it would make sense to have some equivalents for other elements), but the obvious solution would seem to be a better designed spell list, not doing away with fire immunity. In fact a situation where casters had access to a lot of spells emphasizing different elements, and a reason to use them, would seem to increase tactical depth - mages would then have a motivation to do something besides cast IGMS all the time, which does not exactly stirke me as something I would hate seeing. If you had a game where one of the classes was a Fire Adept or something who could do nothing but cast fire-based spells, I could see how it would be a bigger problem. Even then I think one could just give the Fire Adept a spell that does something like allowing him to absorb fire from elementals (sort of like a Necromancer-type caster draining life) or perhaps able to dominate them, and thus make him useful in fights against them in a way that fits in with the lore.

MagicalMaster wrote...
...On another note, players tend to want the easiest path (within reason).  If you have two fighters, where one uses a sword and the other uses an axe, and the only difference is that the sword-using fighter does twice the damage - how many people do you think would pick the axe-wielder?  There might be a few who go with the inferior option because they think it looks cooler or they want the challenge - but that would be very, very few people.

Not sure I quite understand the larger point being made here, becuase to me this sounds like an argument in favor of having special immunities: it is a way to make different types of weapon all be useful in particular situations, and thus provide a reason why everyone will not always use the same type. I mean, in NWN, the only reason one would use most of the bashing weapons (from a power perspective anyway) is because a significant number of enemies have some degree of immunity to non-bashing damage. Likewise if it were not for crit immunity I am not sure I would ever want to use any weapon other than a rapier, scimitar or kukri.

ffbj wrote...

...Interesting thread, though at times leaning towards pendantry.

Glad you find it interesting, but what do you mean we are leaning towards being pedantic? All we are doing is splitting hairs over the definition of "easier" and doing math to see who suffers most from Crit Immunity, and...oh, wait, I guess you have a point.

MagicalMaster wrote...
But if you look at NWN, there are mainly just two cold spells - Ice Storm at level 4 and Cone of Cold at level 5.  Unless you take meta-magic, you have no other way to deliver cold damage - contrast that to Combust, Fireball, Firebrand, Delayed Blast Fireball, Incendiary Cloud, and Meteor Swarm.

It's even worse if you consider a foe weak to acid - Mestil's Acid Breath (level 3) and Acid Fog (level 6)...

Hey! You left out Ice Dagger and Flame Arrow and Melf's Acid Arrow! How are we supposed to maintain our reputation for pedantry with lacunae like that?

[jackkel dragon]

*Fake Cough* There's also Ray of Frost and Acid Splash, but those spells are pretty much useless after level 3 since they don't scale at the same rate of other damage spells.

Um... I don't actually have anything productive to say. It's very clear this is all way out of my league, as I usually intentionally pick subpar skills/feats/spells either for "roleplaying" (which never ends up happening because they all end up being useless in the module in question 90% of the time) or because I couldn't make a decent combat build past level 3 if I tried.

This is an interesting thread, though... I've been caught between two apparently incompatible design philosophies when working with NWN lately: 1) Allow the player to import any character made with standard NWN rules (with all the imbalance that implies) and 2) make every encounter be equally challenging to any class/skillset (on encounter basis, not all encounters at same difficulty). Of course, seeing as more experienced builders still have to work to make NWN more balanced, I might have to end up making restrictions to class/skillset in my modules to help balance them or give up on such strict balance issues...

Modifié par jackkel dragon, 13 avril 2013 - 03:32 .

[MagicalMaster]

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

Not because that class would necessarily be especially weak, but because in that situation it could not do much of anything fun and interesting that some other class could not do as well or better. Whereas I might (depending on a lot of other details of course) still be interested in playing that module with a Rogue.[/quote]

What could a fighter do better (within the realm of this discussion - obviously a fighter could pick up, say, more Extra Toughness feats or Epic Damage Reduction feats, but that's true regardless of the crit immunity or lack thereof)?

I do understand your point about the rogue, though, more slightly amused at the poor Fighter.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

Any high strength build with access to Dev. Crit.[/quote]

...I am so used to  Devastating Critical being removed, reworked, having foes immune to it via Immortality, or characters being level 20 or below that I did not even consider that.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

Lots of builders are not powergamers and thus do not really understand what they would need to do to balance encounters for those who are, even assuming they were all that interested in doing so.[/quote]

True.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

The chief advantage of a fighter-type build is that it is a lot less dependent than a caster on the need to rest.[/quote]

Not vulnerable to interruption?  Higher HP?  Higher AC?

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

A situation where we have no rest restrictions and thus where a caster has no reason not to unload his entire repertoire of spells in a single encounter, is one where I have a hard time seeing why one would ever prefer to play a dedicated warrior class over a caster (at least if one is looking at things purely from a power perspective).[/quote]

I would be very curious whether you find it easier to play Siege as a 2H weapon master or a mage.  Though I suspect that's largely because the HP pools of bosses are tuned ASSUMING that you'll unload your entire repertoire of spells (or at least have access to it) during the fight.   I honestly suspect you'll find it slightly easier with the weapon master (definitely simpler to play).

Though in most situations, yes - if the enemy has 480 HP and the mage can Time Stop and then double Maximized IGMS - that's game.  Without any risk.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

Aside from simple laziness, this is partly because with some of the other seemingly disconcerting things I do I am not sure I want to present players with the additional difficulty of having to learn a whole new ruleset (that kind of thing tends to be a lot more appropriate in a PW where players are expected to spend a lot of time, and thus can acclimate themselves to rule changes). Another reason is that without a great deal of thought and play-testing, and perhaps even with it, I might create as many new balancing problems as I fix. This way I can just blame some of the issues on Bioware.[/quote]

Blame-shifter!

But yes, I completely agree on the avoid making players re-learn everything - which is why I changed so little in Siege (if you think I changed a lot there, you should see what I did in a mod that was a testng ground for a PW...).

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

Personally I would find removing that particular immunity pretty immersion breaking. More generally, I can certainly see how immunities of various sorts tend to create balancing problems. What I have a hard time seeing is how simply removing them altogether would be the only way to address those problems. Maybe what Blizzard did was the most cost-effective solultion given the specific circumstances they were dealing with, I do not know enough to say.

If you had a game where one of the classes was a Fire Adept or something who could do nothing but cast fire-based spells, I could see how it would be a bigger problem. Even then I think one could just give the Fire Adept a spell that does something like allowing him to absorb fire from elementals (sort of like a Necromancer-type caster draining life) or perhaps able to dominate them, and thus make him useful in fights against them in a way that fits in with the lore.[/quote]

The bottom paragraph is reasonably accurate.  classes can pick one of three (four for druids) specializations, and can then gain abilities focused in that.  For example, warriors can pick Protection (sword and shield, tanking), Arms (2H weapon, big powerful strikes), or Fury (dual-wielding berserker).  For mages, this is Arcane (mana management), Frost (slowing/freezing enemies), or Fire (burning over time, lots of critical hits).  And monsters immune to Fire meant Fire mages had to swap to another specialization with different gear needs and a different playstyle.  In addition to that, Warlocks use Shadow and Fire spells - so a monster immune to Fire generally hurt them across the board.  On top of THAT, Shaman use a spell called Flame Shock - being unable to use that would also hurt them.

Blizzard would have to come up with so many new abilities that basically do the same thing but of another damage type (in which case it doesn't add any depth) or new abilities with new functions (which means players have to learn effectively two specializations instead of one - and the difference between a bad Fire mage, a good Fire mage, and a great Fire mage is already huge).

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

In fact a situation where casters had access to a lot of spells emphasizing different elements, and a reason to use them, would seem to increase tactical depth - mages would then have a motivation to do something besides cast IGMS all the time, which does not exactly stirke me as something I would hate seeing.[/quote]

I was mainly pointing that out as a general failing - the point that if you want to try to use a Rock/Paper/Scissors system, you need the tools for every category.

However, what I consider more important is I still don't think that adds tactical depth.

"Okay, the monsters up ahead are standard - I'll memorize 24 IGMS."

"Okay, the monsters up ahead are Fire elementals - I'll memorize 24 Cones of Cold."

"Okay, the monsters up ahead are White Dragons - I'll memorize 24 Firebrands."

All that changes is you spam a different spell at them.  The monsters don't actually ACT differently or have weaknesses that make you PLAY differently - you just pick a spell effective against them and spam it.

This is especially true for a Sorcerer, who simply redoes a portion of his action bar where he keeps meta-magic spells.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

Not sure I quite understand the larger point being made here[/quote]

I was pointing out that balance in single player games is still important - if you make something obviously stronger, then people will ignore the weaker stuff.  Saying "single player game, balance irrelevant" doesn't work if you actually want people to play different classes.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

becuase to me this sounds like an argument in favor of having special immunities: it is a way to make different types of weapon all be useful in particular situations, and thus provide a reason why everyone will not always use the same type.[/quote]

That doesn't mesh well with (Epic) Weapon Focus and similar things, though - for example, are you going to make an Arcane Archer use a sling for bludgeoning damage?

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

I mean, in NWN, the only reason one would use most of the bashing weapons (from a power perspective anyway) is because a significant number of enemies have some degree of immunity to non-bashing damage. Likewise if it were not for crit immunity I am not sure I would ever want to use any weapon other than a rapier, scimitar or kukri.[/quote]

I think that's because most bludgeoning weapons are too weak (either deliberately, because they are simple weapons, or accidently because who knows why?) and the rapier/scimitar/kukri generally too strong.  Not sure if you noticed, but in Siege a longsword had d8 on weapon damage bonuses (as a medium weapon) while the rapier/scimitar only had d6 (despite also being medium weapons) to somewhat address this.

[quote]jackkel dragon wrote...

Um... I don't actually have anything productive to say. It's very clear this is all way out of my league, as I usually intentionally pick subpar skills/feats/spells either for "roleplaying" (which never ends up happening because they all end up being useless in the module in question 90% of the time) or because I couldn't make a decent combat build past level 3 if I tried.[/quote]

Out of curiosity, could you describe what you mean by picking subpar things for roleplaying?  I'm honestly curious about your thought process because that's never something I've really understood.

[quote]jackkel dragon wrote...

This is an interesting thread, though... I've been caught between two apparently incompatible design philosophies when working with NWN lately: 1) Allow the player to import any character made with standard NWN rules (with all the imbalance that implies) and 2) make every encounter be equally challenging to any class/skillset (on encounter basis, not all encounters at same difficulty). Of course, seeing as more experienced builders still have to work to make NWN more balanced, I might have to end up making restrictions to class/skillset in my modules to help balance them or give up on such strict balance issues...[/quote]

If you want to see a module which I think reasonably addresses both concerns, look at Siege of the Heavens.  It's not perfectly equal, but I think it does a very good job while allowing anything to be imported (meaning no hak or server side changes).

However, it is extremely difficult and time consuming to try to do, yes (especially at lower levels).

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

Hey! You left out Ice Dagger and Flame Arrow and Melf's Acid Arrow! How are we supposed to maintain our reputation for pedantry with lacunae like that?[/quote]

[quote]jackkel dragon wrote...

*Fake Cough* There's also Ray of Frost and Acid Splash, but those spells are pretty much useless after level 3 since they don't scale at the same rate of other damage spells.[/quote]

Gentlemen...I am ashamed.

I deliberately left out some spells as to help improve our club's reputation - meaning the Pendantric Club, of course - as being willing to talk shop with heathens, I mean, non-pendantric people.

But I am not upset about your attempt to correct me - indeed, the attempt heartens me as a demonstration of your commitment to our principles.  No, my disappointment and subsequent fury comes from the fact that, in your haste to correct me, you both completely overlooked a key spell: Burning Hands.

I'll accept your letters of resignation from the Pendantric Club at your convenience.  Thank you.

Modifié par MagicalMaster, 14 avril 2013 - 11:55 .

[rogueknight333]

MagicalMaster wrote...

What could a fighter do better...

Not much, I was just thinking that a fighter's abilities would not have been degraded by Crit Immunity in the way the Weapon Master's would be, at least not to anything like the same degree, i.e. he would not be doing anything in particular better, he just would not be much worse off than usual against Crit Immune foes.

MagicalMaster wrote...
Not vulnerable to interruption?  Higher HP?  Higher AC?

These are advantages of course (aside from higher AC which I am not sure would apply if we are talking about a cleric or mage with Improved Expertise), just not sufficiently big advantages to compensate for the power of a fully rested caster in normal circumstances. To refer to your own example, if a mage opens a battle with a Time Stop followed by a couple of empowered or maximized IGMS spells followed by victory, what difference will it make if his HP or AC is not that great?

MagicalMaster wrote...
I would be very curious whether you find it easier to play Siege as a 2H weapon master or a mage... I honestly suspect you'll find it slightly easier with the weapon master (definitely simpler to play).

That would probably be the case but Siege is not exactly the most typical of environments. I am more curious if a Cleric would compare as well as usual to a Fighter or WPM.

MagicalMaster wrote...
The bottom paragraph is reasonably accurate...

So what I put forth as a purely hypothetical example eerily fits the actual facts? That does make Blizzard's approach seem more reasonable than it did out of context, though it still seems to boil down to that being the most cost effective approach in those particular circumstances, rather than the only one, or one that is generally applicable.

MagicalMaster wrote...
All that changes is you spam a different spell at them.  The monsters don't actually ACT differently or have weaknesses that make you PLAY differently - you just pick a spell effective against them and spam it.

Well, it would not add very much tactical depth, but it might be a step in that direction, particularly given that one might be facing a variety of monsters, or not know exactly what one will be facing, thus providing some reason to memorize a variety of spells. And there are a few differences, with Cone of Cold for example positioning oneself before casting to hit the maximum number of enemies and not hurt allies becomes a factor (which in this particular case of course only puts Cold spells at a further disadvantage since one does not have to worry about such things with IGMS or Firebrand, but it does demonstrate one kind of thing that could in theory have been done to make spell selection more interesting).

MagicalMaster wrote...
I was pointing out that balance in single player games is still important - if you make something obviously stronger, then people will ignore the weaker stuff.  Saying "single player game, balance irrelevant" doesn't work if you actually want people to play different classes.

I see. I certainly agree that balance is important even in single player games, partly for the reason you say (why waste game resources on some class that should not be used?) and partly because ignoring it sets up traps for inexperienced players who might not realize how useless some class they decide to play actually is. On the other hand, given the difficulties of adequate balancing, single player perhaps gives one a bit more margin for error. In a single player campaign I suspect most players would not particularly care (or even notice) if class A has 5% less DPS than class B, whereas in a sufficiently competitive multiplayer setting that could constitute an enormous difference.

MagicalMaster wrote...
That doesn't mesh well with (Epic) Weapon Focus and similar things, though - for example, are you going to make an Arcane Archer use a sling for bludgeoning damage?

One could encourage the AA to use different types of ammo in different situations easily enough. It is true that even as things stand the rules encourage one to specialize in a particular weapon (and a limited range of the available weapons at that), but without various immunities this tendency would be even stronger.

MagicalMaster wrote...
 Not sure if you noticed, but in Siege a longsword had d8 on weapon damage bonuses (as a medium weapon) while the rapier/scimitar only had d6 (despite also being medium weapons) to somewhat address this.

I did notice. While on the subject, I should qualify my earlier statement about always preferring scimitars and such, since that would not necessarily make sense for low-level characters or a very low-magic environment. Once magical damage bonuses start to become significant though, a weapon's base damage becomes increasingly unimportant and its ability to generate crits much more so.

jackkel dragon wrote...

This is an interesting thread, though... I've been caught between two apparently incompatible design philosophies when working with NWN lately: 1) Allow the player to import any character made with standard NWN rules (with all the imbalance that implies) and 2) make every encounter be equally challenging to any class/skillset (on encounter basis, not all encounters at same difficulty). Of course, seeing as more experienced builders still have to work to make NWN more balanced, I might have to end up making restrictions to class/skillset in my modules to help balance them or give up on such strict balance issues...

One of the main things one needs to do in fine-tuning balance is a lot of play-testing with different types of characters (it is easy to overlook potential issues when everything is theoretical), which unfortunately can get quite time-consuming. Also, while I certainly want to encourage builders to pay more attention to getting a reasonable combat balance than many apparently do, if you are agonizing over how to do so it might be worth pointing out that one can overthink such issues to. In many cases unbalancing the combat will just mean certain characters will take longer to win or need to reload/respawn a bit more often than others - not necessarily unaccepatable disasters (or if you err on the side of making things easier, it means powergamers will find your module quite easy, and that will probably not be the first time they have had that experience). 

MagicalMaster wrote...

...my disappointment and subsequent fury comes from the fact that, in your haste to correct me, you both completely overlooked a key spell: Burning Hands.

I'll accept your letters of resignation...

Since you failed to correct us for not mentioning Cloudkill, which does acid damage, I must wonder whether you are actually qualified to determine who should be resigning from the club.

[jackkel dragon]

MagicalMaster wrote...

Out of curiosity, could you describe what you mean by picking subpar things for roleplaying?  I'm honestly curious about your thought process because that's never something I've really understood.

It's not really something I'd recommend for CRPGs... I've had cases where I'll make things way too hard on myself because of "roleplaying" choices sometimes.

Basically, I'll try to come up with a character concept separate from the NWN ruleset (or try to think of an underused variant of whatever class a module wants me to play) and try to recreate that in the game. For instance, I've tried making wizards that only cast non-damage spells, rogues that don't disarm traps, and fighters that fight with only one weapon and no shield.

(Note: I don't usually come up with my character concepts in the terms described above. Sometimes I'll come up with a concept that outright rejects the class template, but most times I'll pick an idea that happens to require skipping the expected skills. For instance, the fighter example was a swashbuckler-like character.)

It's pretty clear right away where some of the problems are (wizards need damage spells in most modules, rogues that can't disarm traps and don't focus on sneak attack aren't useful anywhere, fighters that don't fight fully equipped have lower AC and damage output than usually expected).

Looking at it written out, I suppose I'm essentially making characters that could be interesting in a tabletop game where the DM could tailor encounters to the character's strengths, but focus on abilities that very few NWN modules encourage. I'm not entirely sure *why* I do that... it's pretty clear in most of the modules that I play that RP and game rules only really meet when it comes to the three conversation skills (if those are even used). I suppose I keep clinging to the idea that one day I'll finally be rewarded for my Spot/Bluff/Charm Person wizard...

[MagicalMaster]

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

Since you failed to correct us for not mentioning Cloudkill, which does acid damage, I must wonder whether you are actually qualified to determine who should be resigning from the club.[/quote]

Whoa whoa whoa!  Since this is the most important part of this thread, we need to get this sorted out!

First of all, I did not mention Cloudkill because there is a bug associated with it!  To quote the Wiki:

"Creatures that block the death effect (from immunity to death magic) will not suffer the movement speed decrease nor the initial acid damage. This is likely an oversight."

I mean, we can clearly include something blocked by (Improved) Evasion, since that's a fairly "standard" mechanic, but I was not comfortable including something that was partially blocked by Death Magic Immunity.  Likewise, Prismatic Spray CAN do acid damage, but saying it's not reliable would be an understatement.

Thus, the reason I didn't include Cloukill was because I was being even MORE pedantic than you!**

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

Not much, I was just thinking that a fighter's abilities would not have been degraded by Crit Immunity in the way the Weapon Master's would be, at least not to anything like the same degree, i.e. he would not be doing anything in particular better, he just would not be much worse off than usual against Crit Immune foes.[/quote]

True.  Just thought it seemed funny to say "Well, Weapon Master does 100 damage per round versus normal foes and a fighter does 50, I think playing a WM would be cool" and then "Damn, a crit immune foe!  Now my WM only does 55 damage per round and my fighter 40, WM is now worthless despite still being better than a fighter!"

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

These are advantages of course (aside from higher AC which I am not sure would apply if we are talking about a cleric or mage with Improved Expertise), just not sufficiently big advantages to compensate for the power of a fully rested caster in normal circumstances. To refer to your own example, if a mage opens a battle with a Time Stop followed by a couple of empowered or maximized IGMS spells followed by victory, what difference will it make if his HP or AC is not that great?[/quote]

Because the fighter can brag about losing more hit points during the fight than the mage even has, duh.

But yes, the default rules are insanely broken in most cases, especially if you design foes that are supposed to follow character building rules.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

That would probably be the case but Siege is not exactly the most typical of environments. I am more curious if a Cleric would compare as well as usual to a Fighter or WPM.[/quote]

Both a caster cleric and a melee based cleric should do just fine, I imagine.  Caster cleric has the "bugged" firestorm that does 40d6 at max level and melee cleric can still get higher AB than a fighter.  No real advantage to having healing, though.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

So what I put forth as a purely hypothetical example eerily fits the actual facts? That does make Blizzard's approach seem more reasonable than it did out of context, though it still seems to boil down to that being the most cost effective approach in those particular circumstances, rather than the only one, or one that is generally applicable.[/quote]

If by "cost effective" you mean for monetary/development time reasons, then no.

If by "cost effective" you mean alternative solutions would massively complicate things for the players, force people to learn even more things, widen the already massive skill gap even further, and the only benefit would be that people could see a fireball not hurting a fire elemental, then sure.

What's an alternative solution that makes no difference to anything besides the spells used (meaning rotation complexity has to stay roughly the same, gear has to stay the same, DPS has to stay the same)?

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

Well, it would not add very much tactical depth, but it might be a step in that direction, particularly given that one might be facing a variety of monsters, or not know exactly what one will be facing, thus providing some reason to memorize a variety of spells.[/quote]

And it also means you can easily run out of the right kind of spell unless you're a sorcerer.  Say you prepare 5 acid, 5 cold, 5 fire, and 5 electric spells - but then you run into a foe where you need 8 fire spells  Uh-oh (assuming the foe is immune to cold, resistance to acid/electric, and weak to fire).

This isn't even talking about things like needing to carry about eight longswords with different damage types for different foes, which is ridiculous.

The ideal of elemental rock/paper/scissors works well in Pokemon and Real Time Strategy games, but I'm not convinced it's a good thing in RPGs outside of plot reasons ("Oh, you're going to challenge the lord of fire?  Here, take this ring, it'll offer some protection against his attacks!").  Even then, it means you might need to reshuffle your entire gear set (at least at higher levels, obviously matters less at lower levels).

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

And there are a few differences, with Cone of Cold for example positioning oneself before casting to hit the maximum number of enemies and not hurt allies becomes a factor (which in this particular case of course only puts Cold spells at a further disadvantage since one does not have to worry about such things with IGMS or Firebrand, but it does demonstrate one kind of thing that could in theory have been done to make spell selection more interesting).[/quote]

True, but whether it's a cone versus a sphere versus something else has nothing to do with the elemental type - burning hands is also a cone.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

 partly because ignoring it sets up traps for inexperienced players who might not realize how useless some class they decide to play actually is.[/quote]

Oh yes, definitely this as well.  Which is honestly one of my major gripes about NWN - so much depends on the many things you have to choose at level 1 and they can't reasonably be fixed without restarting the character.  You can't simply "jump in and play" and learn as you go effectively.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

On the other hand, given the difficulties of adequate balancing, single player perhaps gives one a bit more margin for error. In a single player campaign I suspect most players would not particularly care (or even notice) if class A has 5% less DPS than class B, whereas in a sufficiently competitive multiplayer setting that could constitute an enormous difference.[/quote]

Definitely true.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

One could encourage the AA to use different types of ammo in different situations easily enough. It is true that even as things stand the rules encourage one to specialize in a particular weapon (and a limited range of the available weapons at that), but without various immunities this tendency would be even stronger.[/quote]

When a 3 AB bonus is something like a 30-45% damage bonus, then yeah, the rules certainly encourage specializing in a weapon.  To me this screams either "Removing specializing in weapons, period, you're already a fighter/barbarian/rogue/whatever" or "Make 'Weapon Focus' affect all weapons."

P.S. More WoW stuff!  Rogues and warriors used to be able to specialize in a weapon type (swords/axes/maces/polearms) but it got removed because all that happened is that people would rebuild their character to be specialized in whatever their best weapon was.  And since it was a passive bonus, it didn't add gameplay depth either.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

I did notice. While on the subject, I should qualify my earlier statement about always preferring scimitars and such, since that would not necessarily make sense for low-level characters or a very low-magic environment. Once magical damage bonuses start to become significant though, a weapon's base damage becomes increasingly unimportant and its ability to generate crits much more so.[/quote]

Ah, sounds like you might not have noticed.

Longsword:
1d8 base damage
1d8 of four different types
5d8 total

Scimitar:
1d6 base damage
1d6 of four different types
5d6 total

The magical damage bonuses were linked to the type of weapon (d4 vs d6 vs d8 vs d12).  I think Scimitars still wound up being slightly better, but they were very close.

Granted, most modules and worlds just give the same bonus damage dice to all weapons regardless of their size or required proficiency, but that's not something hardcoded or anything.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

<stuff responding to Jackkel>[/quote]

True enough.

[quote]jackkel dragon wrote...

Basically, I'll try to come up with a character concept separate from the NWN ruleset (or try to think of an underused variant of whatever class a module wants me to play) and try to recreate that in the game. For instance, I've tried making wizards that only cast non-damage spells, rogues that don't disarm traps, and fighters that fight with only one weapon and no shield.

(Note: I don't usually come up with my character concepts in the terms described above. Sometimes I'll come up with a concept that outright rejects the class template, but most times I'll pick an idea that happens to require skipping the expected skills. For instance, the fighter example was a swashbuckler-like character.)[/quote]

Fair enough.  Reminds me of arguments I saw about people trying to replicate Drizzt - "He's supposed to be dexterity based, he's nimble and quick and uses light armor!"  "But he's dual-wielding scimitars, which means his AB would be terrible!"

I thought you meant something different - I've literally seen people make Fighers with things like 14 to Int, Wis, and Cha and get skill foci in Persuade and such.  For "RP purposes."  Then complain when they find combat difficult or impossible.

[quote]jackkel dragon wrote...

Looking at it written out, I suppose I'm essentially making characters that could be interesting in a tabletop game where the DM could tailor encounters to the character's strengths, but focus on abilities that very few NWN modules encourage. I'm not entirely sure *why* I do that... it's pretty clear in most of the modules that I play that RP and game rules only really meet when it comes to the three conversation skills (if those are even used). I suppose I keep clinging to the idea that one day I'll finally be rewarded for my Spot/Bluff/Charm Person wizard...[/quote]

Definitely true.  It's a lot harder to make a new class or design something around the possibility of someone making a Spot/Bluff/Charm wizard when there's already a bunch of other stuff than it is for a DM to react to it.

Also, for what it's worth, there are modules that feature a Swashbuckling class where you get benefits for having an empty off-hand

** I totally just forgot about Cloudkill because it's a terrible spell

Modifié par MagicalMaster, 18 avril 2013 - 09:37 .

[rogueknight333]

MagicalMaster wrote...
What's an alternative solution that makes no difference to anything besides the spells used (meaning rotation complexity has to stay roughly the same, gear has to stay the same, DPS has to stay the same)?

If you mean to ask what an alternative solution would be for WoW, I have no idea. I do not know enough about that game to have an opinion that is worth anything. If you mean in the abstract, that too is hard to answer since the optimal solution could easily depend heavily on the details of a particular ruleset or the priorities of a particular community of players. Speaking in general (i.e., not saying it would work in any and all circumstances), I do not really see the problem with the kind of thing I suggested for the hypothetical Fire Adept: give him a mix of spells, some based more generally on an ability to control fire in a variety of ways rather than simply fling fire at enemies. That works with the lore without rendering him helpless against fire-immune foes, if there are such, and adds more variety and depth to the game's spell system. Works all around, as far as I can see.

MagicalMaster wrote...
And it also means you can easily run out of the right kind of spell unless you're a sorcerer.  Say you prepare 5 acid, 5 cold, 5 fire, and 5 electric spells - but then you run into a foe where you need 8 fire spells  Uh-oh (assuming the foe is immune to cold, resistance to acid/electric, and weak to fire).

So are you saying we should have a singe one-size-fits-all spell that we cast all the time? In the nature of things, more depth and complexity in the tactical system means more opportunites to mess up one's tactical approach. If you have multiple spells of any kind at all, obviously some are going to be better in some situations than others  (unless the differences are purely cosmetic, or some are always inferior, and thus in either case rather pointless), whether that be because they can better deal with a particular immunity or some other reason, and thus the potential for a problem such as you describe will exist.

MagicalMaster wrote...
The ideal of elemental rock/paper/scissors works well in Pokemon and Real Time Strategy games, but I'm not convinced it's a good thing in RPGs...

If it were a pure rock/paper/scissors system, where not having the right tool (be it a particular spell or type of spell or weapon, etc.) rendered one completely helpless I would be inclined to agree. But with regard to NWN's immunities rock/paper/scissors is not a perfect analogy. Most of the time not being able to inflict the right damage type will just make a fight harder, not impossible. E.g. a warrior fighting with a battleaxe will be at a disadvantage against skeletons (other things being equal) than one fighting with a warhammer, but that need not mean he could not still win.

MagicalMaster wrote...
...outside of plot reasons ("Oh, you're going to challenge the lord of fire?  Here, take this ring, it'll offer some protection against his attacks!")...

One thing to keep in mind though is that in an RPG, particularly, plot reasons are important reasons. The plot is, or at least can be, an important part of the game. While I consider balance important, if a conflict arose between the needs of balance and the needs of the plot or lore, I would not automatically and in every instance come down on the side of balance.

MagicalMaster wrote...
...To me this screams either "Removing specializing in weapons, period, you're already a fighter/barbarian/rogue/whatever" or "Make 'Weapon Focus' affect all weapons."

I think feats like Weapon Focus are partly there for RP reasons, i.e. having a character specialize in a particular weapon is one way to make him distinctive (e.g. Drizzt's iconic scimitars). At least for that reason, I would be sad to see such things removed entirely, though a good case can be made for reducing the importance of choosing a particular weapon.

MagicalMaster wrote...

rogueknight333 wrote...

I did notice. While on the subject, I should qualify my earlier statement about always preferring scimitars and such, since that would not necessarily make sense for low-level characters or a very low-magic environment. Once magical damage bonuses start to become significant though, a weapon's base damage becomes increasingly unimportant and its ability to generate crits much more so.

Ah, sounds like you might not have noticed...

I think you might have misunderstood the 2nd sentence above as referring to Siege in some way. In fact I did see the way you adjusted bonus damage depending on the type of weapon and noted it as an impressive example of the care you were taking to balance various factors in that module. Above I was simply going off on a tangent a bit to correct my earlier hyperbole in declaring that without Crit Immunity I might never want to use a weapon other than a scitmitar/rapier/kurkri. If we were talking about non-magical weapons or low-magic weapons with very modest bonuses than a higher base damage could well be preferable. It is only when one gets weapons with the kind of bonuses typically handed out to mid-to-high level characters that the ability to generate crits becomes all important. Certainly one could in theory (or in practice, in your case) adjust the bonuses on different weapons to compensate for such things, but that is rarely done. To be sure most followers of the true faith - er, I mean pedantic powergamers - could figure out what I meant easily enough, but having been reminded that the occasional heathen - er, non-pedantic person- reads this thread I thought I should set the record straight.

Modifié par rogueknight333, 20 avril 2013 - 07:26 .

[MagicalMaster]

rogueknight333 wrote...

So are you saying we should have a singe one-size-fits-all spell that we cast all the time? In the nature of things, more depth and complexity in the tactical system means more opportunites to mess up one's tactical approach. If you have multiple spells of any kind at all, obviously some are going to be better in some situations than others  (unless the differences are purely cosmetic, or some are always inferior, and thus in either case rather pointless), whether that be because they can better deal with a particular immunity or some other reason, and thus the potential for a problem such as you describe will exist.

Ah, I think I've found part of the problem - you're not used to games that require you to do anything beyond "spam the best spell until you run out of them" for the bulk of gameplay.  Which essentially means all of DnD (except maybe 4th ed from how much people complain about it, never played any DnD so can't really say).

Going to try to explain this so you understand where I am coming from without going into too much detail if I can.

In WoW, my main character is a priest.  Priests have Discipline (shielding and smiting), Holy (pure healing), and Shadow (sort of like negative energy in DnD) as specializations.  I mainly play Shadow - which means every single one of my spells deals Shadow damage (in fact, one of my abilities is called  Shadowform - which gives my shadow spells a bonus and makes me take less damage but I literally cannot cast healing spells while it is active).

As Shadow, my main combat spells are Shadow Word: Pain (deals heavy damage over time, SW:P), Vampiric Touch (deals moderate damage over time and restore my mana, VP), Mind Flay (deals damage and slows the target, MF), Mind Blast (deals heavy damage with a cooldown, generates a Shadow Orb, MB), Shadow Word: Death (deals heavy damage with a cooldown, generates a Shadow Orb, can only be used if enemy is <20% health, SW:D), and Devouring Plague (Consumes up to three Shadow Orbs to do extreme damage over time, DP).  Those six spells are the "core" spells and make up about 80-90% of my casting time.

When I am playing, every second this is the decision tree/priority listing I have to constantly evaluate:

1, do I have three orbs?  If so, DP
2, is MB ready?  If so, use it
3, is SW:D ready and the enemy under 20%?  If so, use it
4, is SW:P on the target?  If it expired, put it back up
5, is VT on the targe?  if it expired, put it back up
6, If none of the above are true, use a Mind Flay

On top of that, I have several other spells used as cooldowns (like increase damage by 25% for 20 seconds, cooldown of 120 seconds or summon a shadow to attack my target).

The ability to use these effectively means that if you tried to play a shadow priest with my exact same level and gear and such, I would probably double or triple your damage.  I (at the risk of sounding arrogant) am probably in something like the top 0.1% of shadow priests in the world.  Even someone who's played a shadow priest for a while is probably going to be doing at least 25% less damage simply because I am better at playing the character.

That's not even getting into things like using defensive abilities or avoiding boss attacks and such.

So right there I've outlined a system that makes this statement false:

"If you have multiple spells of any kind at all, obviously some are going
to be better in some situations than others  (unless the differences
are purely cosmetic, or some are always inferior, and thus in either
case rather pointless)"

I use at least core six spells in all situations and all are important - skipping any one of them would be a drastic performance decrease (like 15% or more lost from not using a spell).  The key is that the six spells are differentiated and each has a specific purpose.  To a some degree, you could say that NWN is about building a character while WoW is about playing a character.  Give a novice a good NWN fighter build and he'll probably do all right.  Give a novice a WoW character and the results would be disastrous.

Which leads us to the following...

rogueknight333 wrote...

I do not really see the problem with the kind of thing I suggested for the hypothetical Fire Adept: give him a mix of spells, some based more generally on an ability to control fire in a variety of ways rather than simply fling fire at enemies. That works with the lore without rendering him helpless against fire-immune foes, if there are such, and adds more variety and depth to the game's spell system. Works all around, as far as I can see.

So let's say there was a Shadow damage immune foe - which would be problematic because all of my spells do Shadow damage.  This means you'd have to create new spells that are only used against shadow immune foes - which widens the skill gap even FURTHER (and it is already huge) and effectively creates two rotations that the player has to know.

You'd effectively be like doubling the learning curve for everyone and it is already massive.  Or you'd be making one spell for a shadow priest to spam versus a shadow immune foe and they'll think "So we went from an engaging and interesting playstyle where I had to juggle six core spells plus another half dozen peripheral ones to spamming one spell against this enemy?  This is stupid."

Now perhaps you're arguging that because the NWN system is so simplistic, making people spam a different spell versus different foes is the only way to make things interesting (to prevent a wizard from never doing anything but spamming IGMS).  While that is still somewhat true, that still brings up problems like having to memorize a set number of each type of spell (unless you're a superior sorcerer) and needing multiple weapons/ammo types for different foes.  Simply saying "Okay, going to use fire arrows instead of cold arrows here" is not exactly a thrilling or deep combat mechanic.  Now if fire arrows left the foe more vulnerable to damage while cold arrows slowed them or something then we might be getting somewhere...

rogueknight333 wrote...

E.g. a warrior fighting with a battleaxe will be at a disadvantage against skeletons (other things being equal) than one fighting with a warhammer, but that need not mean he could not still win.

True, but that's because most combat is stupidly easy and not tuned tightly whatsoever.  For example, let's say you gave a person 5 full heals per day.  Because you're not trying to tune things too tightly, you decide to make a skeleton boss that will require 4 full heals for the warhammer guy.  This means that even if his stats are a bit worse than they should be or he isn't using appropriate consumables or whatever, he'll still be able to win,

...However, the fighter with the battleaxe (since he does 50% damage) is going to need 8 heals.  And he only has 5.

But if we tune the skeleton to be doable with 4 heals with a battleaxe, then the warhammer only needs 2 and it seems really easy and not threatening.

So what if we tune it for 4 heals for the warhammer but assume Mr. Battleaxe will swap to a warhammer?  All right, but he loses 3 AB, and thus loses something like 25-30% damage - which means he'll need more than 5 heals, which means he still can't win.

Houston, we have a problem.

rogueknight333 wrote...

One thing to keep in mind though is that in an RPG, particularly, plot reasons are important reasons.

Oh, absolutely.  My point that was usually it is "Well, we're going to fight fire elementals, so let me buy a ring of fire immunity from the vendor" instead of "You'll never survive against the lord of fire without protection!  Let me give you a bunch of quests to assemble an artifact that will give you some immunity to his fire attacks!"

In other words, it rarely (if ever) has anything to do with the plot and instead is simply a gameplay mechanic.

rogueknight333 wrote...

I think feats like Weapon Focus are partly there for RP reasons, i.e. having a character specialize in a particular weapon is one way to make him distinctive (e.g. Drizzt's iconic scimitars). At least for that reason, I would be sad to see such things removed entirely, though a good case can be made for reducing the importance of choosing a particular weapon.

Well, part of the problem is that Drizzt doesn't run around upgrading his scimitars constantly throughout a campaign  Or find an enemy that requires a +5 weapon to beat but he only has +3 scimitars.  You can choose to use a certain style without needing feats to reinforce it  - and if you do include the feats, then in effect you need to constantly provide every single weapon type for every single weapon upgrade.  Or else you might have someone not use the better item because they don't have (Epic) Weapon Focus, Improved Critical, and (Epic) Weapon Specialiation for it.  Laying aside damage reduction, a fighter using a +3 standard Longsword that he has those feats for is better off than a fighter using a +6 Keen Longsword without those feats (he gains +3 AB, +6 damage, and effectively the Keen property).

rogueknight333 wrote...

If we were talking about non-magical weapons or low-magic weapons with very modest bonuses than a higher base damage could well be preferable. It is only when one gets weapons with the kind of bonuses typically handed out to mid-to-high level characters that the ability to generate crits becomes all important.

Somewhat true.  Assuming crit vulnerable foes, a level 1 fighter with 16 strength comparing a scimitar and longsword would get...

Scimitar: 7.48 damage per hit ((3.5 + 3) * 1.15)

Longsword: 8.25 damage per hit ((4.5 + 3) * 1.1)

But let's look at level 8 fighter with +2 weapons, +2 strength from gear/buffs (+2 is guaranteed from a Bull's Strength potion), and Improved Critical/Weapon Specialization...

Scimitar: 16.25 damage per hit ((3.5 + 5 + 2 + 2) * 1.3)

Longsword: 16.2 ((4.5 + 5 + 2 + 2) * 1.2)

So all you need for a scimitar to become better versus crit vulnerable foes is a level 8 fighter with a +2 weapon and +2 strength from a Bull's Strength (guaranteed).

[rogueknight333]

So to briefly summarize the line of discussion on this topic:

MM: "We should do away with a lot of these immunities because that worked great in WoW."

RK333: "WoW is (I think, don't know much about it) a very different sort of game. It does not follow that because something made sense there it will make as much sense in NWN. At least in an NWN-type game, there are various other methods one might employ to address some of these issues."

MM: "Ah, but you do not know much about WoW. Your proposals for addressing these issues would not work there. Let me explain how it works." *Gives interesting and informative explanation* "As you can see, it is a very different system from NWN."

RK333: "Um, I think that was the point I was trying to make."

Admittedly that is a slightly unfair oversimplification. And I am not saying that there is no case for doing away with this or that immunity or other potentially unbalancing complication, just that there are unavoidable trade-offs involved in doing so, and the cost-benefit analysis behind any given trade-off can vary depending on what one wants to achieve. What WoW apparently did was reduce complexity in one area (monster characteristics and associated lore), so they could have more complexity in another (tactical spell-casting). Was that a reasonable trade-off for that particular game? Sure. Is it a reasonable trade-off for any game? I doubt it. It is certainly true that if you try to provide significant depth and complexity in every aspect of gameplay, the complexity of the game will become unmanageably high. Hence the necessity of trade-offs.

If you were trying to create a situation calling for spell-casting tactics similar to what you describe for NWN (and wanted to do so by some method less drastic than rewriting the entire spell system), you might actually be able to use immunities to your advantage. For example, you might script a boss whose immunities change from moment to moment, requiring one to constantly adjust the spells being used.

MagicalMaster wrote...
...To a some degree, you could say that NWN is about building a character while WoW is about playing a character...  

I would say that whereas the WoW system as described is more tactical (the system presented would certainly be more interesting, at a tactical level, than the typical NWN encounter) a D&D type game is more strategic, with more emphasis on long-term planning, and more opportunities for a PvE rather than pure PvM system. Or at least it is supposed to be that way. When Bioware superimposed on D&D rules a console-gamish system with effectively unlimited rest and healing that does not mesh with that approach at all, what we actually got was more of a confused muddle.

MagicalMaster wrote...
...Now if fire arrows left the foe more vulnerable to damage while cold arrows slowed them or something then we might be getting somewhere...

Something of the kind could in fact be implemented.

MagicalMaster wrote...
...So what if we tune it for 4 heals for the warhammer but assume Mr. Battleaxe will swap to a warhammer?  All right, but he loses 3 AB, and thus loses something like 25-30% damage - which means he'll need more than 5 heals, which means he still can't win...

This of course is why the complexity of NWN character building makes it hard to fine tune anything all that tightly. For the sake of simplicity I set up "Battlexe vs. Warhammer - other factors equal" but in a more realistic scenario they are unlikely to be equal. If for example we assume that the Battlexe wielder can cast Bless Weapon while the Warhammer wielder cannot, our calculations about who has the advantage in the above scenario drastically change. Pretty hard to fine tune such things at a tactical level. Somewhat easier at a strategic level, where one can assume that certain characters will have a harder time in certain encounters, but can use more resources to get through those while economizing in (for them) easier encounters, or in a non-linear game put off the harder nuts to crack until they are more powerful, or  find different types of items depending on class that compensate for certain weaknesses, and so on.

MagicalMaster wrote...
 "You'll never survive against the lord of fire without protection!  Let me give you a bunch of quests to assemble an artifact that will give you some immunity to his fire attacks!"

Perhaps we should submit this as an adventure seed for some future ABC poll?

MagicalMaster wrote...
... You can choose to use a certain style without needing feats to reinforce it ...

One could, but if it does not really make any substantive difference in the game it would seem less meaningful. Similarly one might solve the problem of balancing spells by providing spells that have different VFX associated with them, but essentially do the exact same thing, but to me at least that would seem pretty pointless.

MagicalMaster wrote...
<does math demonstrating that a Level 1 Fighter does better average damage with a longsword than a scimitar, but that the balance tilts rapdily in favor of the scimitar as he levels and gears up>

Yes, pretty much exactly what I said. But you have served the cause well. Now we have mathematical proof to present to any non-pedants who doubt our words! That will show them!

Modifié par rogueknight333, 24 avril 2013 - 06:04 .

[MagicalMaster]

rogueknight333 wrote...

And I am not saying that there is no case for doing away with this or that immunity or other potentially unbalancing complication, just that there are unavoidable trade-offs involved in doing so, and the cost-benefit analysis behind any given trade-off can vary depending on what one wants to achieve. What WoW apparently did was reduce complexity in one area (monster characteristics and associated lore), so they could have more complexity in another (tactical spell-casting).

While true, part of my complaint is that I don't think NWN added much complexity (and certainly didn't add much depth) by using immunities by "default."  I realize that somewhat got lost in the other discussion, my long "rant" up there was more to illustrate a way to make multiple spells all useful at the same time (since you seemed curious about how that could actually be done) and without making them carbon copies with different spell visuals.

In short, doing the same cost/benefit analysis you mentioned, I think NWN is worse off with elemental immunities.

Pros
- More immersion (debatable for many creatures)
- More tactical spellcasting (quite small in since IGMS or something similar is often just used by default and the "tactical" spellcasting usually involves picking a spell of a different element and spamming it)

Cons
- Renders many of the best spells useless without effective replacements
- Does not adapt well to the DnD Vancian magic system (sorcerers get around this problem, but if a wizard, for example, memorizes five spells of each element and then needs a few more of a certain type during combat, he's screwed)
- Causes many weapons to be worthless and creates situations where physical attackers carry a dozen swords (and/or arrows) with different damage types

I mean, the "complexity" we're talking about is typically "Hey, we're about to fight fire elementals, everyone pull out their ice sword and frost arrows and prep 50 Cones of Cold."  Then you just fight normally (spamming Cone of Cold instead of Firebrand or whatever).  It is all done before even beginning combat, within combat itself things stay exactly the same (yes, strictly speaking Cone of Cold is a cone versus a circular AoE and all that, but that has nothing to do with the elemental type and "friendly fire" (cold?) is often irrelevant).

On top of all that, your summary was "In WoW, less complexity on creatures and more complexity on spellcasting."  Except it would really be more *depth* on spellcasting, NWN's system is more complex but has far less depth.

In NWN, we get situations like the following...

Level 9: Empowered Delayed Blast Fireball
Level 8: Maximized Firebrand
Level 7: Empowered Firebrand
Level 6: Maximized Fireball
Level 5: Firebrand
Level 4: Silenced Fireball
Level 3: Fireball

But that spell list spanning seven spell levels, three different spells, and three different meta-magics (plus base spells) typically boils down to "Cast a spell from the highest spell level remaining, repeat until you run out."

rogueknight333 wrote...

If you were trying to create a situation calling for spell-casting tactics similar to what you describe for NWN (and wanted to do so by some method less drastic than rewriting the entire spell system), you might actually be able to use immunities to your advantage. For example, you might script a boss whose immunities change from moment to moment, requiring one to constantly adjust the spells being used.

Would probably cause huge issues for Wizards and would definitely cause massive issues for Clerics/Druids.  Plus then you have archers and fighters swapping their arrows/weapons (assuming they have elemental damage).  That kind of thing just does not play well with the DnD system - if anything, it would make more sense in a mana based system like WoW.

rogueknight333 wrote...

When Bioware superimposed on D&D rules a console-gamish system with effectively unlimited rest and healing that does not mesh with that approach at all, what we actually got was more of a confused muddle.

Well, how many enemies in DnD would require a wizard to throw 60+ fire spells at them to win?  Individual spells are supposed to mean far more in DnD and my understanding is that a ton of them deal with non-combat situations.  If anything, a wizard casting a few spells in combat is supposed to be a big deal and something that turns the tide, right?

rogueknight333 wrote...

Something of the kind could in fact be implemented.

True, true...but they aren't by default.   And I've never seen something like that done in a module or PW.

rogueknight333 wrote...

This of course is why the complexity of NWN character building makes it hard to fine tune anything all that tightly. For the sake of simplicity I set up "Battlexe vs. Warhammer - other factors equal" but in a more realistic scenario they are unlikely to be equal.

How is comparing two fighters, one with a focus in Battleaxe and one with a focus in Warhammer, unrealistic?

Because this is a common problem in PWs and modules - people want to know what the best weapon type(s) is so they can focus in that (which means both what is best against foes and what type of weapons the best ones are).

rogueknight333 wrote...

Perhaps we should submit this as an adventure seed for some future ABC poll?

Here's the final boss battle dialogue:

- Upon Engaging: "Hah!  You stand no chance against my fiery fury!"
- At 75% Health: "Fire rains from the sky!" - Have to dodge fireball impacts which deal 1000 fire damage, which means the player can just ignore them he has 100% fire immunity
- At 50% Health: "The ground beneath you ignites!" - Boss sets portions of the floor on fire, dealing 2000 fire damage to anyone caught on that section, which means the player can just ignore them because he has 100% fire immunity
- At 25% Health: "There will be an APOCALYPSE!" - Boss ignites his full fury and deals 3000 fire damage per second to every enemy in the area, which means the player can just ignore it because he has 100% fire immunity
- At Death: "You...cheated..."  - Boss explodes for 10000 fire damage to every enemy in the area, which means the player can just ignore it because he has 100% fire immunity

Sounds like a fun and engaging fight!

rogueknight333 wrote...

One could, but if it does not really make any substantive difference in the game it would seem less meaningful. Similarly one might solve the problem of balancing spells by providing spells that have different VFX associated with them, but essentially do the exact same thing, but to me at least that would seem pretty pointless.

But I hadn't even written down that seven spell level list above when you wrote this...can you see the future or something?

And yes, it does make weapon choice less meaningful - it means you can pick whatever weapon you think sounds cool without worry about which one is the best.  There's a reason many PWs alter the base stats of weapons to try to balance them out and make them all roughly equal.  So you can pick what you want rather than what is clearly best.

rogueknight333 wrote...

Yes, pretty much exactly what I said. But you have served the cause well. Now we have mathematical proof to present to any non-pedants who doubt our words! That will show them!

I was showing that as low as level 8 with a +2 scimitar (not keen or having any other properties) the scimitar is better.  Perhaps you could clarify what you mean by "bonuses typically handed out to mid-to-high level characters?"  Level 8 is still fairly low level to me and a +2 scimitar plus nothing but a Bull's Strength potion are very low bonuses to me as well.  I mean, there's no bonus damage or keen on the scimitar, the player has zero strength from gear, the player started at 16 strength, the player only got two strength from the potion - to me, that's stacking the deck completely against the player and the scimitar STILL comes out ahead.

Modifié par MagicalMaster, 25 avril 2013 - 06:20 .

[rogueknight333]

[quote]MagicalMaster wrote...

While true, part of my complaint is that I don't think NWN added much complexity (and certainly didn't add much depth) by using immunities by "default."  I realize that somewhat got lost in the other discussion, my long "rant" up there was more to illustrate a way to make multiple spells all useful at the same time (since you seemed curious about how that could actually be done) and without making them carbon copies with different spell visuals.[/quote]

The "rant" was actually quite informative in terms of clarifying where you are coming from, albeit it seemed just a bit like dealing with, for example, a player of arcade-style martial arts arcade games (something along the lines of Mortal Kombat or Streetfighter) who starts playing a Monk in NWN and then complains "Hey, in the games I play martial artists have access to a whole slew of different punchs, kicks. blocks and combos, with the one you would want to use changing every second. Here I just click on an enemy and sit back and watch, and maybe try for a knockdown from time to time. This game has no tactical depth at all!" While in a certain sense that criticism would be entirely just, it would also be a dubious apples to oranges comparison. To be more precise my curiosity would be about how one can make multiple spells all be different and simultaneously useful in the same encounter (or at all, for that matter)  in NWN, without taking advantage of immunities, and without reworking the core game mechanics or spells in an extremely radical way.

[quote]MagicalMaster wrote...

Cons[/quote]

Seem a bit exaggerated.

[quote]MagicalMaster wrote...
- Renders many of the best spells useless without effective replacements
[/quote]

Or it might render an ordinarily useless spell effective. But yes, the spell list not being all that well coordinated with the likely immunities is a potential problem.

[quote]MagicalMaster wrote...
- Does not adapt well to the DnD Vancian magic system (sorcerers get around this problem, but if a wizard, for example, memorizes five spells of each element and then needs a few more of a certain type during combat, he's screwed)[/quote]

As he still is if he expends all his IGMS spells and the monster is still standing. Or if too wide a variety of spells is called for the Sorcerer might be the one in trouble. These are the kinds of balancing issues that can come up regardless, and in either case it is rarely necessary for mages to use all their spells in one fight (and they might have some backup scrolls or something in case they run out of some crucial spell). The whole point of the Vancian system is that it calls for long-term planning: anticipating or finding out what spells are likely to be most useful and preparing them. If different spells are not called for in different situations, and one can just memorize one or a few one-size-fits-all spells, it defeats the main purpose of that system.

[quote]MagicalMaster wrote...
- Causes many weapons to be worthless and creates situations where physical attackers carry a dozen swords (and/or arrows) with different damage types[/quote]

As a rule it makes certain weapons be somewhat less effective, not worthless. And being expected to carry a dozen (which at least in my experience is hardly a common requirement) might be a bit ridiculous, but is being expected to use more than one really all that bad?

[quote]MagicalMaster wrote...
I mean, the "complexity" we're talking about is typically "Hey, we're about to fight fire elementals, everyone pull out their ice sword and frost arrows and prep 50 Cones of Cold."  Then you just fight normally... [/quote]

So instead we do what? We cannot have as much tactical depth as we might like, so we should settle for having even less?

[quote]MagicalMaster wrote...
On top of all that, your summary was "In WoW, less complexity on creatures and more complexity on spellcasting."  Except it would really be more *depth* on spellcasting, NWN's system is more complex but has far less depth.[/quote]

I was carelessly using "depth" and "comlexity" more or less interchangeably, but if you define them more precisely in this way I suppose the correction is accurate enough.

[quote]MagicalMaster wrote...
Would probably cause huge issues for Wizards and would definitely cause massive issues for Clerics/Druids.  Plus then you have archers and fighters swapping their arrows/weapons (assuming they have elemental damage)...[/quote]

Depends on the details. Wizards and Druids both have a variety of spells that could benefit or suffer from various immunities (and it would not necessarily have to just be elemental immunities. One might for example make a monster that was immune to Death Magic off and on, so that something like Finger of Death could be useful, but only if timed properly), they would just need to be given reason to anticipate the need to memorize them. I do not see why having fighters and such expected to switch weapons would be that massive a problem - it is one use of a quickbar button to do it. And as a rule anything fighters can do Clerics can do better.

[quote]MagicalMaster wrote...
...That kind of thing just does not play well with the DnD system - if anything, it would make more sense in a mana based system like WoW.[/quote]

Of course it would, the whole point is to create something relatively closer to that kind of system. Trying to adapt a game to a different style of play than it was desgined for has inherent difficulties, but it seems to be something you are interested in trying to do anyway. So I am throwing out there a few ideas off the top of my head about some ways one might go about it. Perhaps they are no good, but what alternative (aside from playing a completely different game) do you suggest?

[quote]MagicalMaster wrote...
Well, how many enemies in DnD would require a wizard to throw 60+ fire spells at them to win?  Individual spells are supposed to mean far more in DnD and my understanding is that a ton of them deal with non-combat situations.  If anything, a wizard casting a few spells in combat is supposed to be a big deal and something that turns the tide, right?[/quote]

Right. That is the theory anyway. One of the reasons making the # of spells that can be cast per day effectively per encounter instead makes spellcasters so overpowered.

[quote]MagicalMaster wrote...
How is comparing two fighters, one with a focus in Battleaxe and one with a focus in Warhammer, unrealistic?

Because this is a common problem in PWs and modules - people want to know what the best weapon type(s) is so they can focus in that (which means both what is best against foes and what type of weapons the best ones are).[/quote]

Just referring again to the balancing problems inherent in the character building complexity. If one picked out two characters people are playing at random based solely on what weapon they were using  the odds would seem to be against them being all that similar. Certainly if the object is specifically to determine which weapon is best than of course we would assume or test with otherwise similar characters.

[quote]MagicalMaster wrote...

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

Perhaps we should submit this as an adventure seed for some future ABC poll?[/quote]

...At Death: "You...cheated..."  - Boss explodes for 10000 fire damage to every enemy in the area, which means the player can just ignore it because he has 100% fire immunity

Sounds like a fun and engaging fight![/quote]

In case it was not clear, that question of mine was a bit of a joke. Although if one were to take it seriously as an adventure seed the immunity might be less than 100% (or against something other than fire, or perhaps not even an immunity, just some useful property or power provided by a reconstructed artifact).

[quote]MagicalMaster wrote...
[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

... spells that have different VFX associated with them, but essentially do the exact same thing[/u]...[/quote]

But I hadn't even written down that seven spell level list above when you wrote this...can you see the future or something?[/quote]

I have many strange powers: seeing the future, reading the existing spell descriptions, etc.

[quote]MagicalMaster wrote...
And yes, it does make weapon choice less meaningful - it means you can pick whatever weapon you think sounds cool without worry about which one is the best.  There's a reason many PWs alter the base stats of weapons to try to balance them out and make them all roughly equal.  So you can pick what you want rather than what is clearly best.[/quote]

Yes, exactly the kind of thing I do not like: cosmetically but not substantively different. I want to be able to pick a weapon that is better (at least in some respect or in some situations) than another. The trick is to make that possible without making one weapon so clearly and universally superior that there is no point in including any other. And actually the NWN weapon list is not as terrible at doing that as it could be. True, without things like Crit Immunity we are reduced to scimitar/rapier/kukri as the three best weapons but between the three we have:

Scimitar - benefits from Keen Edge while the rapier does not. 
Rapier -benefits from Weapon Finesse while the scimitar does not.

 As opposed to the kukri, both do higher base damage and have no need for Exotic Proficiency.

Kukri - can be dual-wielded without special penalties.

So depending on various factors, we could have a meaningful, non-arbitrary choice to make between these three, without any one of them being automatically better. Taking things like Crit or Slashing/Piercing Immunity into account gives one even more interesting choices.

[quote]MagicalMaster wrote...
 ...Level 8 is still fairly low level to me and a +2 scimitar plus nothing but a Bull's Strength potion are very low bonuses to me as well...  [/quote]

I see I was using vague and ambiguous terminology in a manner unworthy of a pedant. Since in the vast majority of modules one spends all or most of one's time below Level 15, I was thinking of "mid-level" as starting around Lvl  7 or 8 or so. But yes, that might seem a strange classification if one were thinking in terms of Lvl 40 characters.

[MagicalMaster]

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

The "rant" was actually quite informative in terms of clarifying where you are coming from, albeit it seemed just a bit like dealing with, for example, a player of arcade-style martial arts games (something along the lines of Mortal Kombat or Streetfighter) who starts playing a Monk in NWN and then complains "Hey, in the games I play martial artists have access to a whole slew of different punchs, kicks. blocks and combos, with the one you would want to use changing every second. Here I just click on an enemy and sit back and watch, and maybe try for a knockdown from time to time. This game has no tactical depth at all!"[/quote]

While I get your drift, and agree with your general point, that's not the issue being discussed here really.  It would be more like the player has access to the following abilities in the arcade game:

Jab: A quick strike that deals damage and sets the opponent up for a Cross
Cross: Only works on opponents hit by Jab, deals more damage and exposes the opponent for a Kick
Kick: A mighty kick which can only be used on opponents exposed by a Cross

Simplistic example, but multiple abilities that interact with each other and are all offensive.  Now he comes to NWN and has the following abilities:

High Punch: deals damage to tall opponents
Middle Punch: deals damage to average opponents
Low Punch: deals damage to short opponents

He asks what the difference is between these beyond the damage to different heights and gets told they're all executed the same way and are effectively used exclusively in place of each other - you ready the punch appropriate for the height of your opponent and otherwise do exactly the same thing (same buttons and everything).  So he says

"Hey, in the games I play martial artists have access to a whole slew of different punchs, kicks. blocks and combos, with the one you would want to use changing every second. Here I just press the same button for a punch I pick ahead of time based on the height of my opponent and literally everything else is the same. This game has no tactical depth at all!"

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

While in a certain sense that criticism would be entirely just, it would also be a dubious apples to oranges comparison. To be more precise my curiosity would be about how one can make multiple spells all be different and simultaneously useful in the same encounter (or at all, for that matter)  in NWN, without taking advantage of immunities, and without reworking the core game mechanics or spells in an extremely radical way.[/quote]

Well, damage-wise, there are a few ways.

First, part of the problem is the lack of distinction between AoE and single target spells.  If you're facing an ancient white dragon, what do you use?  Maximized Firebrand.  If you're facing a bunch of white wyrmlings, what do you use?  Maximized Firebrand.  What if it's two adult white dragons?  Maximized Firebrand.  This is the "problem" of IGMS - it's the only spell that is actually a single target spell.  In fact, the damage it does isn't even really as crazy as people think.

A common figure I see for AoE spells is 40%.  In other words, it's only a gain for 3+ targets but a definite gain at that point.  The funny thing is that if we compare an Empowered IGMS (level 8 spell, 210 damage) to a Maximized Firebrand (level 8 spell, 90 damage) we see that Firebrand is 43%ish of IGMS's damage - actually slightly above that 40% mark.  Even if we look at Maximized IGMS (level 9 spell, 240 damage) the percentage only drops to 37.5% for the extra spell level.

The main problem of IGMS is the lack of saving throw (and, you could argue, the relative lack of damage immunity to magic damage).

Second, keep in mind we have defensive spells - and not just long term buffs.  Things like Elemental Shield, Spell Mantle, Divine Power.  That's a larger variety in combat.

On top of that we have utility spells - things like Dispels, Breaches, stuns, immobilizes - these can all potentially be made useful.

If we look solely at "Damaging spells that are all AoE spells" then you can see why it becomes difficult to encourage a variety of spell use!

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

Or it might render an ordinarily useless spell effective. But yes, the spell list not being all that well coordinated with the likely immunities is a potential problem.[/quote]

Are we considering "The enemy is immune to everything but Sonic damage, so Horizikaul's boom is one of the only spells that work" as "rendering it effective?"

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

As he still is if he expends all his IGMS spells and the monster is still standing. Or if too wide a variety of spells is called for the Sorcerer might be the one in trouble.[/quote]

If he expends all his IGMS then at least he doesn't have spell slots level 6 and above that are just sitting there and being worthless.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

The whole point of the Vancian system is that it calls for long-term planning: anticipating or finding out what spells are likely to be most useful and preparing them. If different spells are not called for in different situations, and one can just memorize one or a few one-size-fits-all spells, it defeats the main purpose of that system.

Right. That is the theory anyway. One of the reasons making the # of spells that can be cast per day effectively per encounter instead makes spellcasters so overpowered.[/quote]

Smashing together two quotes since they're related.

To me, it sounds like the idea of Vancian magic system is to have a large variety of spells available in your arsenal and then you pick the ones applicable to your situation.  And the funny thing is that you can see this in the default Bioware creatures - the casters tend to have just one of each spell memorized.

A player, on the other hand, will memorize nothing but fire spells for seven spell levels like that list earlier.  In effect, players defeat the whole purpose of the Vancian magic system.  Instead of having a limited number of fire spells in a wider arsenal that need to be used appropriately they convert the entire thing fire spells and spam them.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

As a rule it makes certain weapons be somewhat less effective, not worthless. And being expected to carry a dozen (which at least in my experience is hardly a common requirement) might be a bit ridiculous, but is being expected to use more than one really all that bad?[/quote]

By worthless in regards to elemental damage I don't mean the weapon does zero damage, simply that it becomes no better than a generic weapon of the same enhancement, rendering the bonus damage worthless and wasting part of the item level.  A greatsword +2 with 2d6 fire damage becomes just a greatsword +2 versus a fire elemental -- the fire damage is worthless.

And a dozen might be a slight exaggeration, but not by much.  You have a sword with cold damage, a sword with fire damage, a sword with electric damage, potentially more...and then you need bludgeoning and/or piercing weapons with varying damage types as well.  On some worlds, such as Higher Ground, some mobs HEAL from taking damage of a specific type -- even from a weapon.  So that greatsword with fire damage is actually making it more difficult than a greatsword without any bonus damage.  People literally do walk around with a weapon for every damage immunity (or close to it) for all of these reasons.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

So instead we do what? We cannot have as much tactical depth as we might like, so we should settle for having even less?[/quote]

I would say we need to make sure the cure isn't worse than the disease.  That we don't force players into situations that aren't fun in an effort to try to get an idea to fit NWN, which is radically different from PnP or novels.  That we use other methods to add tactical depth instead of simply making casters redo their spellbook and reconfigure their bars for the sake of doing so.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

I was carelessly using "depth" and "comlexity" more or less interchangeably, but if you define them more precisely in this way I suppose the correction is accurate enough.[/quote]

They're extremely different, though, and that's part of my point.  Adding complexity without depth isn't good design.  More choices does not inherently make something better.  Case in point (to use another WoW example) - WoW used to have a "talent tree" system (like feats in NWN) that you could fill out which had 71 points at one point (most of the boxes below can be filled with five points if it is not clear):



Here's what it looks like now:



Gone from spending 71 points to 6.  Why?  Because everyone spent their 71 points in *exactly the same way.*  Maybe a handful of points were different in something that made effectively zero difference and no one cared about them.  Plenty of complexity, no actual depth.

Now, though, each of those 6 points have valid options.  You can put them in different places without actually being inferior because there are separate but equal actual choices.  That's not to say the new talent trees are perfect, but there's far more depth in spending those 6 points compared to the complexity of spending 71 points.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

I do not see why having fighters and such expected to switch weapons would be that massive a problem - it is one use of a quickbar button to do it. And as a rule anything fighters can do Clerics can do better.[/quote]

The question is more along the lines of why SHOULD the fighter be expected to switch weapons like that?  What benefit does it give?  Is the benefit worth the cost of having to collect multiple weapons and swapping between them (especially once you factor in foci)?

And regarding clerics, I meant a caster cleric who basically can only do Fire and Divine damage consistently.  With absolutely zero way to deal Cold damage outside of domain spells.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

So I am throwing out there a few ideas off the top of my head about some ways one might go about it. Perhaps they are no good, but what alternative (aside from playing a completely different game) do you suggest?[/quote]

Well, the obvious one to me would be to say "Pick what type of damage you think is cool (or use individual spells you think are cool)."  Hauling around 500 of a bunch of different types of arrows is not exactly compelling gameplay.  Nor is redoing your spellbook/action bar with the net result of simply swapping fire spells for cold spells or whatever.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

In case it was not clear, that question of mine was a bit of a joke. Although if one were to take it seriously as an adventure seed the immunity might be less than 100% (or against something other than fire, or perhaps not even an immunity, just some useful property or power provided by a reconstructed artifact).[/quote]

Oh, I know -- I was being tongue in cheek.  I've actually encountered several amusing scenarios like this in Swordflight 2, though - mainly packs of acid/fire beetles.  I shift to black/red wyrmling and literally take 0 damage.  They spam acid arrow, acid bolt, combust, fire bolt...and they all do absolutely nothing to me.  I actually laughed at how much this trivialized those packs.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

Yes, exactly the kind of thing I do not like: cosmetically but not substantively different. I want to be able to pick a weapon that is better (at least in some respect or in some situations) than another.[/quote]

Why?  That's an entirely serious question.  Why do you think some weapons should be better in some situations than others?  Laying aside the fact it doesn't even make sense in many cases (a light hammer is more effective at killing a skeleton than a greatsword/greataxe?).

On your point about RP, how many times did Aragorn swap to a battlehammer because his foe was slashing resistant?  Remember when Legolas used a slight for an enemy weak to bludgeoning?  And that was cool when the hobbits used a mace instead of Sting.

Can you name a single story where the damage type of the weapon was "relevant?"  The closest thing I can think of is some Drizzt story where he used the curve of his scimitars to his advantage over a longsword user and that's a matter of fighting style, not damage type (especially since both damage types are the same anyway and it had nothing to do with "crits," mainly had to deal with Drizzt being a better fighter and being able to adjust his swings to compensate for something his foe was doing).

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

Scimitar - benefits from Keen Edge while the rapier does not.
Rapier -benefits from Weapon Finesse while the scimitar does not.

As opposed to the kukri, both do higher base damage and have no need for Exotic Proficiency.

Kukri - can be dual-wielded without special penalties.

So depending on various factors, we could have a meaningful, non-arbitrary choice to make between these three, without any one of them being automatically better. Taking things like Crit or Slashing/Piercing Immunity into account gives one even more interesting choices.[/quote]

Why do you find that choice to be interesting?  Especially since it's made at level 1 and then never changes.

[quote]rogueknight333 wrote...

I see I was using vague and ambiguous terminology in a manner unworthy of a pedant. Since in the vast majority of modules one spends all or most of one's time below Level 15, I was thinking of "mid-level" as starting around Lvl  7 or 8 or so. But yes, that might seem a strange classification if one were thinking in terms of Lvl 40 characters.[/quote]

Ah.  Well, the main point is that it really doesn't take much at all for the Scimitar to pull ahead and even when it's behind it is barely behind.

Modifié par MagicalMaster, 03 mai 2013 - 04:32 .

[rogueknight333]

Not certain I have time ATM to respond to every point in any great detail, but the pivot around which most of this discussion turns is the question of what constitutes a choice for players that is actually interesting. To some extent this cannot be answered in the abstract, since different players will be interested in different things, and different game genres will present different types of choices, but in general I think it fair to say that the best choices are those that are both meaningful, having some concrete impact on gameplay, and real, i.e. there is not one obviously correct choice that makes all others irrelevant. To take your example, it is better to have 6 points and be confronted with an actual decision about how to spend them, than to have 71 points that are always going to be spent the same way once one has figured out the game mechanics. I have no disagreement about that. Likewise I do not disagree that it is easy for game designers who do not think things through to fall into the trap of just adding pointless complications that do not really contribute anything to making the player's decisions more interesting. However, there are a lot of different ways one can go about presenting interesting choices, and what is a pointless complication in the context of one game or module might be a useful way to add depth in another. For better or worse, one of the main things that distinguishes one offensive NWN spell from another, and makes the choice of one rather than another at all interesting, is the immunities that it can or cannot overcome. This is also a factor in distinguishing one weapon from another, thereby making a choice about which weapon to use an interesting one. Therefore, other things being equal, removing damage or other immunities would reduce the number of meaningful choices players must make, and bring less rather than more depth to the game. Intelligent and thoughtful use of immunities (which, granted, is rare) might add yet more depth. Now if one is adding depth in some other way, then indeed one might want to simplify and streamline aspects of gameplay irrelevant to one's purposes to prevent things from becoming unmanageably complex. That is the normal and inevitable kind of trade-off that game desgin involves, and I have no problem with it. But different trade-offs will be more or less appealing, depeding on a designer's particular priorities.

MagicalMaster wrote...

First, part of the problem is the lack of distinction between AoE and single target spells...

Second, keep in mind we have defensive spells - and not just long term buffs.  Things like Elemental Shield, Spell Mantle, Divine Power.  That's a larger variety in combat...

On top of that we have utility spells - things like Dispels, Breaches, stuns, immobilizes - these can all potentially be made useful...

Good ideas in principle, although since you criticized my idea of shifting immunities for being unbalanced one thought that occurs to me is that making these kinds of spells more useful sounds great for Wizards, but less so for most other classes, who will tend not to have access to a great many of the more specialized spells.

MagicalMaster wrote...
Are we considering "The enemy is immune to everything but Sonic damage, so Horizikaul's boom is one of the only spells that work" as "rendering it effective?"

I do not recall that I was thinking of any spell in particular, but If I were to do that I am not sure Horizikaul's Boom would be the best example, since its deafening effect makes it arguably of limited use as an anti-mage weapon even if the type of damage it is doing is irrelevant. A better example would be something like Scintillating Sphere, which aside from doing a different type of damage does nothing Fireball does not, and thus, absent immunities or resistances, would be wholly superfluous.

MagicalMaster wrote...

...In effect, players defeat the whole purpose of the Vancian magic system.  Instead of having a limited number of fire spells in a wider arsenal that need to be used appropriately they convert the entire thing fire spells and spam them.

Right, the spell list is poorly designed given the purpose of the system, with a small handful of spells that are clearly better than the alternatives in all but rare contingencies. Actually, now that I think about it, it occurs to me that most of the worst offenders (like IGMS and Firebrand) were added in the Expansion Packs. Kind of makes me wonder if Bioware at that stage was not deliberately dumbing down the game to make it easier for players who did not like having to think and read lots of documentation.

MagicalMaster wrote...
The question is more along the lines of why SHOULD the fighter be expected to switch weapons like that?  What benefit does it give?  Is the benefit worth the cost of having to collect multiple weapons and swapping between them (especially once you factor in foci)?

At best, choosing different weapons for different contingencies would add a bit more depth to playing a fighter. In an FPS-type game, for example, choice of weapons and ammunition can be a major feature. Assuming a warrior-type character has access to different weapons providing somewhat different capabilities could also in some cases make it easier to balance encounters for them, given that as a rule spellcasters tend to be stronger and more versatile classes. At worst, at least assuming the number of weapons is not ridiculously large, it would be a minor nuisance (i.e., the cost is trivial, so it would seem to require very little benefit to make it a reasonable thing to do).

MagicalMaster wrote...
...I've actually encountered several amusing scenarios like this in Swordflight 2, though - mainly packs of acid/fire beetles.  I shift to black/red wyrmling and literally take 0 damage.  They spam acid arrow, acid bolt, combust, fire bolt...and they all do absolutely nothing to me.  I actually laughed at how much this trivialized those packs.

A Shifter has a big advantage in those particular encounters, certainly. Though this comment provokes a couple of questions: if there were no immunities involved and those creatures inflicted some type of damage against which there was no special defense, do you think that would add to or subtract from the depth of the module? If one could not make those encounters significantly easier by finding/bothering to use some method of giving oneself immunity or resistance to a particular element (and without such protection some of them can be brutally difficult) do you think I would have more or fewer players complaining about how insanely hard the module is?

MagicalMaster wrote...
Why?  That's an entirely serious question.  Why do you think some weapons should be better in some situations than others?

So that the choice between weapons is meaningful and real, rather than purely cosmetic. The same reason (I think) you would rather have 6 points to spend on real choices rather than 71 on pseudo-choices. Now if a game was just going to do away with all the different weapon types and give everyone a generic "Sword," so that there could be more focus on some other aspect of gameplay, that would be one thing. But if there are going to be a whole bunch of different weapon types included in the game in the first place, there should be some reason for the variety.

MagicalMaster wrote...
On your point about RP, how many times did Aragorn swap to a battlehammer because his foe was slashing resistant?...

Can you name a single story where the damage type of the weapon was "relevant?"

For that matter, in stories, how often are the effects of a wizard's spells defined in terms of how much DPS they inflict? AFAIK, never, but in a game that would be a very important consideration. Obviously a story is not going to refer to gamey things like "Damage Type" and "Critical Hit" and the like, it would not fit the medium. But fantasy heroes who favor a particular type of weapon or particular fighting style are common. Things like a "Weapon Focus" feat are attempts to translate that aspect of a character into a game in a way that makes it actually meaningful within the context of that medium.

MagicalMaster wrote...
Why do you find that choice to be interesting?  Especially since it's made at level 1 and then never changes.

As opposed to having no choice (or none that matters) at all? It is one aspect (not the only or most important of course, but it would add nothing to remove such choices without putting something in their place) of coming up with an interesting and distinctive character. The opportunity to do that is one of the reasons I like playing RPGs, as opposed to pure strategy games, in the first place.

Modifié par rogueknight333, 06 mai 2013 - 11:43 .