75 réponses à ce sujet

[Jfoxtail]

PA's usefulness in and of itself is indeed debatable.  However, the Cleave family of Feats is a must for any melee character.  So since PA is a requisite, it too is a must.

 

 

I tend to "side with this opinion" for melee characters. Fighters, Barbarians, even Str based Paladins... but less so for dual welders like Rangers.

 

I think the gist of the "must" statement is to think of the typical module / campaign / adventure in single player mode.

 

I honestly cannot think of any "boss fight" (in dozens of adventures) where the boss was not surrounded by a groups of weaker underlings. If not directly summoned during the boss fight then it was a small prelim melee just before the boss walks into the local dungeon to orate about his her evilness and your inconvenience.

 

The Cleave and Great Cleave allows the melee character a slew of additional attacks and efficiently kills off the chafe before the last stand. Wizards use area effect spells for this purpose; my melee builds use Great Cleave.

 

Someone asked about usefulness in SoZ. I say yes. Think of all those "caravan attack encounters". Run your melee type into the orcs, bandits, whatever and watch your Great Cleave get you a number of extra kills off your first critical.

 

Dual wielders as pointed out get the extra off hand attack and thus I would be less prone to invest in PA / Cleave / IPA / GC ; I think I might prefer to invest in all the Improved 2 weapon feats and then 2 weapon defence.

 

Above all its an opinion; but  you can build effective melee types with or without. It becomes either style or roleplay choice.

[Jfoxtail]

PA's usefulness in and of itself is indeed debatable.  However, the Cleave family of Feats is a must for any melee character.  So since PA is a requisite, it too is a must.

 

 

oops double post

[Snowdog65]

The Cleave and Great Cleave allows the melee character a slew of additional attacks and efficiently kills off the chafe before the last stand. Wizards use area effect spells for this purpose; my melee builds use Great Cleave.
 

 

IMO, Great Cleave(GC) worked like that in NWN1 which was a solo oriented game. I loved wading through low level MOBs with GC. But this has not been my experience in NWN2, with it's party orientation(even if you try to play solo). Groups of MOBs are tougher and seldom can be one hit killed to set up a GC chain.  I still like cleave in NWN2 but would only take GC to qualify for FB. This is yet another reason why I found combat much more fun in NWN1. 

 

I am playing through the OC right now with a Ranger with Cleave and Khelgar by my side with GC. I really don't see Khelgar getting any increased mileage out of GC vs my Cleave.

[Thorsson64]

You are right. GC is pretty much only worth taking to qualify for FB. The thing with Cleave is that it works best against weak Mobs and in early levels. For the former all it does is make easy battles even easier; meh. Great Cleave is simply more of the same. OFC it can feel satisfying to take out a mob of rats with one hit, but I always aim my Feats for the hard battles, not the easy ones.

[Luminus]

Improved Power Attack is worth it if you know what you're doing.

"A 10th level, the Frenzied Berserker gains a +6 damage bonus (instead of +3) using the Power Attack feat. Using the Improved Power Attack feat, the Frenzied Berserker gains a +12 damage bonus (instead of +6). This translates to +12 with two-handed weapons for standard Power Attack and +24 for Improved Power Attack. This replaces the bonus granted by Enhanced Power Attack."

-6 attack for +24 to damage more than makes up for it.
If you Frenzy, you get +10 to STR. That means +5 to attack and +5 to Damage. If you cap it with an item, spell or a basic rage, you pretty much can cap it at +12 STR (+4 Rage, +10 Frenzy = 12 STR capped).

Now let's do the final math. +12 STR = +9 to damage with a two-hander. (+6 + 50% = +9)
With Improved Power Attack and +12 STR you are at +0 to hit (-6 + 6 = 0) but get 24 + 9 = 33 damage.

In short: +12 STR + IPA = 0 attack bonus and +33 damage.
So yeah, it's worth it if you know how to use it.

Combined with Greater Cleave and Supreme Cleave (FB), you get two extra cleaves after you kill an enemy and it pretty much starts a chain reaction of carnage if you're surrounded.

[Snowdog65]

IPA does have very situation application. As already mentioned in this thread, mainly for FBs.

 

It is the only class that offers a big enough boost to make that -6 AB tradeoffs sometimes.

 

-6 AB is a lot.

 

BTW: Frenzy strength doesn't stack with items, so it is kind of useless except in low magic settings.

[Luminus]

It's useful for other builds as well. As a Weapon Master or RDD for example where you get either lots of criticals and auto-hits or lots of STR that stacks.

Sure, it's not for every build but most of the feats are like that.

[Thorsson64]

Sorry, I'll have to pull you up on that. In the case of WM you need your crits; taking away 6AB is going to affect the number of crits you get. It will only work against mobs that are easy to hit (which is what I've already said). There's nothing special about RDD builds that makes IPA work better.

 

As for your number crunching... As Snowdog mentioned, Frenzy doesn't stack with items, so if you have a +8 Str item, then all you get from Greater Frenzy is +2. In any case, that Str is available to you whether you PA/IPA or not; so you still take a 6AB penalty from IPA when you compare it to not being switched on. Whether the attacks hit will depend on your starting AB and the AC of the opponents. In addition, only your first attack is made at full AB. You will eventually have 6 attacks, the last being made at a 25AB penalty, so even if your first attack hits even with IPA on, you are certainly affecting the to hit chances of several later attacks. You will not hit as often with IPA on.

 

Again Snowdog is right, it is mostly worth it for FBs, because they gain extra damage from EPA (which is the main reason to take FB, rather than the Frenzy or Supreme Cleave); it's mostly not worth taking IPA for non-FBs as the 6AB penalty is too harsh.

 

Regardless of all the above, whether or not you have IPA has little to do with whether Great Cleave is a good Feat. As already noted, it's a pre-requisite for FB, and FBs also get Supreme Cleave, therefore they are a special case. For non-FBs Great Cleave is not a great Feat. It's not disastrous, and if you have Feats to burn then by all means take it, but if you are going WM you already have to take a bunch of Feats, and you may want to use your remaining Feats to do things like improve your Armor Class, Skills, Damage or AB. Great Cleave will get extra damage if you are surrounded by weak enemies, but it won't do a thing for you in a Boss fight. Which is the tougher fight?

[Luminus]

Yeah but in how many modules or PWs do you see +12 STR items around? You might get or make that near level 30.
Most servers are at about +3 to +6 maybe +8 for some exceptions.

Without items, a simple Barb/FB reaches the STR cap at +12.

You can also counter-balance the penalty with (Red) Dragon Disciple. That +8 STR stacks and makes IPA useful as well.

Also a Weapon Master with a Falchion crits for 12-20/x3 if I am not mistaken. Greatly increasing your chance to crit even with that -6 penalty. Power Critical helps in that.

[Snowdog65]

Yeah but in how many modules or PWs do you see +12 STR items around? You might get or make that near level 30.
Most servers are at about +3 to +6 maybe +8 for some exceptions.

Without items, a simple Barb/FB reaches the STR cap at +12.

You can also counter-balance the penalty with (Red) Dragon Disciple. That +8 STR stacks and makes IPA useful as well.

Also a Weapon Master with a Falchion crits for 12-20/x3 if I am not mistaken. Greatly increasing your chance to crit even with that -6 penalty. Power Critical helps in that.

 

Which is why I said only on low magic environments, does FB frenzy, make sense. Now you are bringing FB/Barb into it. Yep that is good combo on low magic. FWIW OC lets you craft +8 Str belt, by level 15.

 

There is no net AB gain from Red Dragon +8 strength for a full BAB class. 10 RD levels cost you 3 BAB, 1 magic class level costs 1 more BAB. So you lose 4 BAB. You then gain 4 AB back from strength, so net AB from RD = 0 already. Like most things in the game it seems to balance out.

 

As far as the WM. You have to essentially roll twice. Once to critical, and once to confirm, and you essentially have to hit both times. Since your attacks drop 0,-5,-10 etc already, stacking another -6 on top of that is and needing 2 hit roles to confirm, means you are going to get less hits, and less crits when you do, unless what you are attacking is ridiculously easy to hit.

[Dann-J]

My experience with an epic-level fighter / weapon master / black guard in Mask of the Betrayer is that *everything* is ridiculously easy to hit, due to a combination of a high BAB, lots and lots of combat-related feats, and a +8 adamantine weapon with oodles of fire damage on it. Improved power attack would do little to crimp that character.

 

The irony is that since few enemies last more than a few seconds in melee combat with him, there's no need for any power attack feat to be active at all. Cleave proves useful though, since many enemies die in a single round. Although since he's evil and enjoys sucking the souls out of things, quick kills actually prove to be a nuisance.

[Thorsson64]

@Dann-J

Yes the Campaigns are easy and MotB has very powerful gear. That's why the Kaze no Kama build was made. When you get such powerful gear, more attacks will work better than adding some damage to existing attacks.

 

Also a Weapon Master with a Falchion crits for 12-20/x3 if I am not mistaken. Greatly increasing your chance to crit even with that -6 penalty. Power Critical helps in that.

 

You're mistaken. It's 13-20, presuming he has a keen weapon, or improved critical. As Snowdog said, these attacks need to confirm the crit, but what he omitted to say was that they also have to hit in the first place. Only a 20 is an automatic hit.

 

I'll repeat what I've said several times already. Against easy opponents you can turn IPA on, and Cleave/Great Cleave works well. Cleave also works well in early levels, when your opponents have lowish HPs. As the opponents get tougher all these work less well. IPA is just not worth it on non-FBs except against much weaker opponents. Cleave & Great Cleave are always useful, but you may have better Feats to take if they are not required.

 

It's pointless talking about FBs and Great Cleave, because a. they have to take the Feats and b. they also get boosts to them, like Supreme Cleave.

 

You won't find Cleave on Kaze no Kama. You don't need Cleave when you have 18 attacks per round.

[Snowdog65]

My experience with an epic-level fighter / weapon master / black guard in Mask of the Betrayer is that *everything* is ridiculously easy to hit, due to a combination of a high BAB, lots and lots of combat-related feats, and a +8 adamantine weapon with oodles of fire damage on it. Improved power attack would do little to crimp that character.

 

The irony is that since few enemies last more than a few seconds in melee combat with him, there's no need for any power attack feat to be active at all. Cleave proves useful though, since many enemies die in a single round. Although since he's evil and enjoys sucking the souls out of things, quick kills actually prove to be a nuisance.

 

Having just finished the OC (I haven't played MOTB in ages), my take is that the tougher boss type entities have both good armor class and hitpoints. The toughest fights were where I was missing a lot.

 

My only save from the OC is right before the King of Shadows emerges. I just went to it and attacked him. I missed 6 out my 7 first attacks. Turns out there is a bug on the Silver Sword. It forgot it had enhancement, so +4 AB went away and I missed all my main hand attacks missed.

 

Switching back to my crafted weapon, I was still hitting not much better than 2 for 7.

 

My AB was 31/26/21/16 main, 30/25/20 Offhand.  The minimum hit I saw was 40. 

 

It already looks like only 2 of my attacks have just better than 50% chance to hit. Any minus AB in this case greatly reduces chance of hitting. Another -4 would mean none of my attacks would have even 50% chance of hitting.

 

Anything that I can hit with most of my attacks doesn't live very long, so something like IPA is not needed for things that I can hit easily. The problem is the things that are hard to hit, and there IPA would only make things worse.

[Dann-J]

@Dann-J

Yes the Campaigns are easy and MotB has very powerful gear. That's why the Kaze no Kama build was made. When you get such powerful gear, more attacks will work better than adding some damage to existing attacks.

 

 

Indeed. My particular character has the 'perfect two-weapon fighting' feat, and gets more attacks per round than can be displayed by the character model animations.

[Arkalezth]

Short answer: It depends.

 

Long answer: Blah blah, but on the other hand, blah blah, and then there's blah blah and blah blah, not to mention blah. So in conclusion, it depends.

[Snowdog65]

I just ran a test (100 rounds each combo) with the Jegs Dummy and 20th level equipped (best of the OC) Ranger/Fighter/FB/SD1 (character I had already).  Using a Falchion with 36/31/26/21 AB.

 

AC 30:

PA Off  121 hp/round

PA ON  146 hp/round

IPA ON  145 hp/round

 

AC 40:

PA Off  71 hp/round

PA ON  68 hp/round

IPA ON  50 hp/round

 

I did a quicker test at AC 25 and only there did IPA pull ahead, and this is with a higher level character designed with extra power attack damage.

 

So I guess IPA would be useful when your epic character is attacked by Kobolds.

[Thorsson64]

I could have saved you the trouble; I corrected an existing Google Doc to make this all easier.

[Arkalezth]

Believe it or not (apparently, you don't), many modules feature many enemies with low AC, and I'm not talking about kobolds (25 AC is a lot for those, BTW). Moreover, since NWN2 happens to be a party-based game, party buffs can make a difference.

 

As for the test with the King of Shadows, well, maybe an end boss is not the best testing subject when trying to determine the usefulness of something in the game overall.

 

I'm tired of this thread, but again: It depends. On your build, on your party, on enemies' defences (no one has mentioned DR, BTW)... There's no universally correct answer.

[Snowdog65]

I could have saved you the trouble; I corrected an existing Google Doc to make this all easier.

 

I tested one of my cases and I got within 2 HP/round, so it seems to work, but that is more work setting up, than simply pushing PA/IPA on my character and walking away while he wails on the dummy.

 

There used to be an online calculator for NWN 1 that would pit two setups head to head, and graph the output across an AC range. If this could be extended to do that,then it would be awesome. 

[Snowdog65]

Believe it or not (apparently, you don't), many modules feature many enemies with low AC, and I'm not talking about kobolds (25 AC is a lot for those, BTW). Moreover, since NWN2 happens to be a party-based game, party buffs can make a difference.

 

As for the test with the King of Shadows, well, maybe an end boss is not the best testing subject when trying to determine the usefulness of something in the game overall.

 

Many modules for 20th level characters have 25 AC monsters that are supposed to be some kind of threat? AC 30 is pretty low for a 20th level character to face. 25 is a joke. As far as the King of Shadows, it was the only save game I had, having just cleaned up my directory.

 

But I then went into Jegs and tested more systematically against 30 and 40 AC.

 

As I said from the start IPA is highly situational. Best used for FBs facing un-challenging opponents.  I think it reasonable to expect challenging to have an AC 10 greater than your character level.

 

But if challenging opponents with low AC are so common enlighten me with examples.

[Arkalezth]

You can use IPA before level 20. I said low AC, challenging or not. And the fact that you don't -need- something in order to win doesn't mean that it can't be useful.

 

If you've played through the OC and haven't seen any examples of enemies with low AC, regardless of the challenge, I doubt I can tell you of others.

 

Anyway, we're talking in circles, and I don't feel like going on forever. Bottom line: We both agree that (I)PA is situational, even if we may draw the line at a different point or have different experiences or playstyles, but we basically agree in the basics.

[Thorsson64]

Why not look at this another way? If the module, or whatever, you're playing is easy enough for IPA to be turned on most of the time then you should be taking the FB class... 

[Luminus]

On a server I play, I made a cheesy Fighter/Bard (skills)/Weapon Master/Frenzied Berserker with a Falchion. 30 level build. +5 1d6 + 1d6 Falchion.
I almost always have IPA on and deliver ~175 damage criticals.

He can kill 40 level Warlock monsters in a couple of rounds at most, I believe. No, it's not the most optimized build and it would be better if he was "this and this and this" but IPA is useful to me even there.

On higher AC mobs, I switch to Power Attack or simple attack for about 100 damage on criticals. So yes, PA and IPA make a difference for me. And no I don't use Frenzy.

Also those are most likely high HP, low AC monsters so there you go. IPA is awesome there.

[Thorsson64]

You should have used a Scythe; then your criticals would be ~300. 

[Luminus]

Yeah, I know. But totally didn't go with my concept.
He is a berserker northman. I hate EDM/RDD builds so I just dipped into Bard for a Skaldish type and the skills.
Though Rogue is probably better, I think.

Anyway, Scythe doesn't fit with his style. Falchion was second best because I am getting more criticals. Almost half of the attacks are criticals.

Now I am kind of experimenting with a Rogue/WM/FB/SD. Same concept different execution and that HiPS is helpful even with crappy stealth.
Mobs have awful Spot/Listen scores.

Basically run towards them, as they try to blast me, I HiPS and then deliver 6d6 Sneak Attack criticals in their face.
BAB at 26 and damage at ~150 with simple Power Attack so eh.
But that HiPS is sweet.