40 réponses à ce sujet

[kamal_]

I couldn't think of a good name, so this is the one that stuck out to me. This is a modification that moves all stock feats to the bonus ability list, and adjusts the number of bonus abilities appropriately. These extra bonus feats are then handed out when you reach a level that would normally grant a regular feat, for example at level two instead of getting evasion automatically, the rogue gets a bonus feat and can choose evasion or go for some other bonus feat.

 

This lets you make a fighter with no proficiency but lots of weapon specializations (maybe he was a pit fighter before the adventure began), or a wizard with who can't scribe scrolls and has no familiar.

 

http://neverwinterva...type-characters

 

Included are the fighter, cleric, wizard, and rogue. Are there things that broken? Probably. I did this in an hour or so. Could you powerbuild with this? Definitely. It's an override form for single player, so if you want to have fun powerbuilding with it, go ahead. Seems to work just fine with the fighter and wizard though.

[kamal_]

One of the things that seems broken is at least some feats that level up, like how the Paladin gets progressively more cure disease uses as they level. Each of those feats showed up as selectable, when the next use/day should have the previous use/day level as a pre-req.

As for power building, this allows you to not have to get feats you already have, allowing you to cboose different feats instead. For example a paladin who takes a level of fighter can say "you know what, I already know how to wear armor, lets just focus on the greatsword because I have a Holy Avenger", allowing the character to take extra feats they wouldnt normally get. A character who planned on starting as a fighter and becoming a duelist could skip taking the armor feats and put them into weaponfeata for their planned duelist. Those kinds of things do make sense from a rp perspective but they give the player more power than they would have under the stock rules.

It would be interesting for martial classes to have the ability to take feats like "battle training vs x" since you could have a rp background class of something like "Samarach Snake Hunter", a fighter that didnt take heavy armor (useless in the jungle heat), but had battle training/favored enemy versus reptilians because of Samarach's hatred of yuan ti. That way, even if the class says "fighter", you could encompass a wide range of rp focused specialty "classes", almost in a make your own kit type of fashion. You'd get the Samarach Snake Hunter, the Nomad Warrior (light armor, focused on a few weapons), the Undead Hunter (based in Ravenloft, this warrior has battle training/favored enemy vs undead), etc, all under the Fighter class, without the need to make custom classes for each.

[Happycrow]

So Kamal, as I understand this, you could then build this fighter out to be 100% stock, or else hugely varied within the same class?

 

That's a significant improvement over the version we had done of "lots of excess rp feats" on my old PW, if so.

[kamal_]

So Kamal, as I understand this, you could then build this fighter out to be 100% stock, or else hugely varied within the same class?

That's a significant improvement over the version we had done of "lots of excess rp feats" on my old PW, if so.

Yes, you could build the 100% stock fighter with this by simply taking the regular feats at the levels you would normally earn them as part of the "bonus feats". Doing that will give you a 100% stock fighter, with no extra feats. Or you could not take any armor or shield feats and use those feats to make a "pit fighter" type who has multiple weapon specializations at level one. Then as our pit fighter adventures he could learn to use armor and take the armor feats as they level, or they remain a proud pit fighter and never take the armor feats.

For pure classes, they dont get any more feats than they would otherwise have at a given level, but they do get to choose they feats they want from the standard set of feats for the class. Where that could get interesting to me is for the rp purposes, like the BG2 inquisitor kit (I think that was the paladin kit that didnt have turn undead). Adding to the existing feat choices things that make logical additions to a feat list, such as battle training vs x for fighters, which seem like a logical feat for a fighter to have access to, representing specialized training they took to combat specific enemy types , like the Samarach Snake Hunter. Likewise there'd be no reason to not give Paladins access to battle training vs undead for example if the Paladin's order hunts down undead, with things like the BG2 Paladin Undead Hunter kit as the example for something like that. The idea is to give flexibility in character design inside of the overall archetype of "fighter" or "paladin" or "rogue", allowing players to assemble their own kit like combinations of feats so they can be truer (if that's a word) to their roleplay concept for the character.

Since these are overrides, you can dump them there and then launch a levelling/training mod and get a feeel for how you could build up a character this way. I didn't include any feats the stock character does not have access to yet, since it was only a proof of concept for the idea.

[Happycrow]

"Doing that will give you a 100% stock fighter, with no extra feats."

 

So total number of feats is the same and I could thus recreate any vanilla fighter using this system OR any subset fighter or Paladin. Or whatnot.

 

That. Is. Awesome.  Especially at lower levels of roleplay where, for instance, a paladin pretty much HAS to take Power Attack at 1 or 3 and Divine Might at 6 or else be horri-gimped.  DEFINITELY going to test and push for local adoption on my PW if I don't see any show-stoppers.

[kamal_]

Basically, the idea is that if you play a Paladin you would be able to mix and match from the feat pool of a paladin to make the type of paladin you want (no turning feat, but an extra weapon feat instead). You would not be able to choose Find Familar for a feat as a Paladin, as that's a wizard archetype feat, same with say sneak attack as sneak attack would be part of the rogue archetype feat pool. So you can make the paladin you want by taking the feats from the paladin archetype in the order you wanted, including the ability to not take feats the stock paladin has like cure disease or turn undead. This would mean you could be a super disease curer paladin by taking the cure disease x/day feats right away instead of waiting for level x to get cure disease x/day, or you could make an inquisitor type paladin that doesnt take cure disease at all, but uses the feats instead for weapon specialization. Both would be valid paladins, and as you could guess they would be significantly different in their abilities. From an rp perspective you could have different paladin orders and have them differentiated in that manner, the inquisitor type, the disease curers, etc. Yet all are paladins.

For a lower level ranger, you might make a super tracker and take the whole track/full movement tracking specialist, forgoing an animal companion and favored enemy feats in favor of pursuing the tracking feats as soon as possible. Or you could in theory go straight into the archery/two weapon lines of ranger feats, skipping taking the tracking feats to access the full archery/two weapon line faster.

The basic idea is you would not ever automatically be given feat x at level y, instead you always choose a feat from the full pool of feats available to the archetype (as long as you meet the prereqs for the feat of course, no skipping straight to Mobility without taking Dodge and have the qualifying dex score).

Since you're enthusiastic about the possibility for the paladin, I will post the archetype feat 2das for the paladin when I get home, with the caveat I know the cure x/day line is all available at once for some reaon, but in a training module it should allow you to see how you can build a paladin thats not the stock paladin, but still a paladin.

[kamal_]

"Doing that will give you a 100% stock fighter, with no extra feats."[/size]
 
So total number of feats is the same and I could thus recreate any vanilla fighter using this system OR any subset fighter or Paladin. Or whatnot.
 
That. Is. Awesome.  Especially at lower levels of roleplay where, for instance, a paladin pretty much HAS to take Power Attack at 1 or 3 and Divine Might at 6 or else be horri-gimped.  DEFINITELY going to test and push for local adoption on my PW if I don't see any show-stoppers.

If I counted them right when I adjusted the feat tables, the stock and the archetype have exactly the same number of feats at any given level. So there is no advantage there (with the exception of the powerbuilding example I noted above when multiclassing.

Basically yes, a fighter could choose from any of the feats available to the fighter archetype, but cant take feats that are in other characters archetype. The "archetype" is the set of feats normally available to that class, so a fighter could not take "Turn Undead" because Turn Undead is part of the cleric and paladin archetypes. Inside the feats of the archetype, the player is free to choose and can even elect to not take the feats of the "stock" class. The original stock feat progression is an option, but now you have other build options inside the class, for instance the pit fighter type or nomadic fighter type. These get more ability to differentiate themselves from the stock fighter because in this system they do not have to take feats that were make no sense to the character background (such as heavy armor proficiency for a nomad).

[Happycrow]

I'm not uber-excited about paladin *personally,* so no need to rush there Kamal. Paladins tend to lag notably in the power balance sub-10, so it was the first thing which sprung to mind (fwiw, I'm personally a ranger fanatic who enjoys playing high-survival types).  Opens up huge potential which would ordinarily require subclasses (the martial-arts possibilities for monks all by itself is pretty awesome).

 

It's one of the simplest ideas I've seen come down the pipe in a while, and probably the most effective I've ever seen without radically screwing up the power balance. Major props man.

[Happycrow]

How did you spec out things like FE/IFE, then, which would seem purely ranger, but which you've mentioned in other class contexts?

[kevL]

If I counted them right when I adjusted the feat tables, the stock and the archetype have exactly the same number of feats at any given level. So there is no advantage there (with the exception of the powerbuilding example I noted above when multiclassing.

I view that as a good thing. that is, i've often not subclassed thinking "oh, i already have that/those feats" -- and since i don't plan my builds, but go-with-the-flow, the present system is irksome.

Overcoming the x-use/day thing will likely require specific scripting onLevelup ...

[kamal_]

How did you spec out things like FE/IFE, then, which would seem purely ranger, but which you've mentioned in other class contexts?

FE/IFE are part of the ranger archetype in the stock game, meaning they are part of the ranger's feat list. However the feat lists are basic 2das, you could add FE to another class with a simple edit to the feat list for the other class. For martial type classes like the fighter, adding what are basically specialized combat feats that are not part of their existing feat list, such as FE or Battle Training vs X, would make sense for me. After all, the fighter specializes in fighting, and get lots of bonus fighting related feats to choose from. Of course it would be up to a PW to allow feats like FE for other classes than ranger.

 

For a role play example of FE/Battle Training for fighters, the warriors in Samarach in SoZ really don't like yuan-ti, yuan-ti are supposed to be a kill on sight enemy for Samarach's soldiers. Thus, it would be logical for fighters in Samarach's forces to have some specialized training in fighting yuan-ti, ie FE or Battle Training vs Reptilian. If you're a dragon slaying knight? Take FE/Battle Training vs Dragons as a feat. Dad killed by orcs? You became a soldier (fighter) and took special training against orcs (FE Orcs) because you really hate orcs for killing your dad. Those would all be things you couldn't do with the stock class, sure you could say you're a dragon slayer or you hate orcs, but that wouldn't reflect in your character other than pure rp. But with this you really could hate orcs so much you took a feat for it.

 

In essence, the idea of expanding the feat pool for the classes isn't required for this of course, just something I am considering as I think it would allow more rp options and class flexibility. Class abilities that were considered "core" such as say tracking for rangers, or turn undead for clerics/paladins, could stay exclusive to the feat lists for those classes. This is kind of a rethink of how feats could work to make more flexible characters without having to make a ton of custom classes (and there's a 2da size limit on number of classes). It's kind of like having lots of custom classes (Snake Hunter/Nomad Fighter/Pit Fighter/Dragonslayer), but all lumped under the banner of the fighter archetype class because you've made the fighter class much more flexible in feat selection.

[kamal_]

I'm not uber-excited about paladin *personally,* so no need to rush there Kamal. Paladins tend to lag notably in the power balance sub-10, so it was the first thing which sprung to mind (fwiw, I'm personally a ranger fanatic who enjoys playing high-survival types).  Opens up huge potential which would ordinarily require subclasses (the martial-arts possibilities for monks all by itself is pretty awesome).

 

It's one of the simplest ideas I've seen come down the pipe in a while, and probably the most effective I've ever seen without radically screwing up the power balance. Major props man.

I updated the files in the first post link to include a ranger archetype since you like rangers, and added favored enemy/battle training options for the fighter so you could see that in action. I'd suggest trying it out at this point in a levelling/training module. That's probably all I'm going to do at this point as it is enough to be a "proof of concept" even if it would need more work to truly work (as kevl said, level up scripting might be required or something).

 

In this picture, I loaded up SoZ and made a level 1 "super tracker" ranger to illustrate a possibility of the archetype system. He has all the ranger tracking feats at level 1, but since he didn't take any weapon feats he can't even use the ships plank "club" (he can't wear armor either, he didn't take any armor feats). That makes him not very playable as a character, he'd have to punch things until he had a chance to take a weapon proficiency, but this is only an example of how you could build a pc in this archetype system. This is a valid character, in that he has the same number of feats that a stock ranger does.

 

You could also build a ranger that had both the archery and combat fighting styles in the archetype system, if you spent the tracking feats the character would normally get on the second fighting style. He'd be a great damage dealer, but couldn't track at all. The stock ranger can't have both fighting styles, but the archetype system allows it by letting the character trade other feats (tracking, animal companion, whatever) for the feats of the second fighting style.

 

[Happycrow]

Sounds good, and I agree with the arguments. I burn feats in odd directions all the time for rp purposes (currently playing a noble fighter with tracking, because he's a noble -- he hunts -- but because rangers have to have nature deities, that wasn't a good rp fit). Soon as I"m done with Itempalooza this weekend I'm giving it a whirl.

[kamal_]

To make this a more viable system instead of a proof of concept it would probably need to have several things put into place:
Feat paths such as the rangers gradually improving tracking skills dont seem to require prerequisites, asIin you could take full speed tracking currently without taking the base tracking feat, same with their combat ability feats. Thats not a problem for the stock system because the previous feats are always there, but the feat 2da would need to be adjusted so there were proper prerequisites. This seems to be the case for a lot of these class feat paths, there never was a failsafe prereq put in for thrm because the cclass level granted feats and class level ensured the character couldnt do things like get full speed tracking without the base tracking feat.

Some feats also seem to assume a minimum character level. For instance animal companion is a level 4 ranger feat, and summons a companion 3 levels below the pc. Since archetype allows taking animal companion at level 1, the feat does nothing when used by a level 1 pc (you get the summon animation, but no companion). Either the feat scripting would need to be adjusted or the feat would need to only become possible at a given character level (like how you have to be epic to take epic abilities).

[rjshae]

What I'm curious about is whether this approach would be useful for creating a Psion character? At least for their psionic powers.

[Happycrow]

With the right feat movements, I don't see why not. IF you can build a "Seriously feyblooded" fighter who doesn't know how to wear a lick of armor with it, I can't see why you couldn't do all kinds of stuff, so long as the custom feats work. For low-level PWs I'd probably mix in a slew of the epic stuff as well (A traditional Persian Pahlavan, for instance, was basically a powerlifter and a wrestler - what survives of their weapons work is pretty basic stuff, in sharp contrast to seriously extensive strength conditioning tied to solid wrestling skills. So sacrificing profiencies for physique wouldn't bother me much in the right context.  A Pahlavan character whose approach to combat is "throw him on the ground and beat him to death while he's there, rinse, repeat as desired" is basically called "doing it right."

[WC_Sumpton]

@kamal_

The feat.2da would need to updated also.  By the way I just downloaded this and the fighter still get his starting feats with 8 open feats to select.  Last question other feats like epic fighter -granted at lvl 21, should that also be left unselected?

[kamal_]

What I'm curious about is whether this approach would be useful for creating a Psion character? At least for their psionic powers.

I think rasael/bartjed work on custom spellbooks (http://neverwinterva...pellbook-rework or http://forum.bioware...g-system/)would probably be a better fit for a psion, but I guess this could work if you made a new base class, didn't give it a spellbook but did give it an array of appropriately scripted feats. I have not thought about it.

[kamal_]

With the right feat movements, I don't see why not. IF you can build a "Seriously feyblooded" fighter who doesn't know how to wear a lick of armor with it, I can't see why you couldn't do all kinds of stuff, so long as the custom feats work. For low-level PWs I'd probably mix in a slew of the epic stuff as well (A traditional Persian Pahlavan, for instance, was basically a powerlifter and a wrestler - what survives of their weapons work is pretty basic stuff, in sharp contrast to seriously extensive strength conditioning tied to solid wrestling skills. So sacrificing profiencies for physique wouldn't bother me much in the right context.  A Pahlavan character whose approach to combat is "throw him on the ground and beat him to death while he's there, rinse, repeat as desired" is basically called "doing it right."

I think you'd need to look closely at each epic feat, making Epic Strength available at level one for your persian powerlifter seems ok, +1 strength for a feat spot seems balanced, but the epic feat that gives 30 hit points would be overpowered at level one (never mind something like Vampiric Feast).

The warlocks special heritage feats you mention seem like they could be a reasonable add for basically any class archetype. You could then be a really demon blooded fighter and Blackguard as a prestige class would then be very appropriate lorewise. Or a druid that was drawn to nature because of fey blood as expressed in the fey blooded feats.

[kamal_]

@kamal_
The feat.2da would need to updated also.  By the way I just downloaded this and the fighter still get his starting feats with 8 open feats to select.  Last question other feats like epic fighter -granted at lvl 21, should that also be left unselected?

Hmm, the feat adjustments for fighter, ranger, and cleric all work for me testing them with SoZ and a fresh character, as well as in a blank test module. Did you start with a level one character or a character that already had levels and thus existing proficiencies.

Adjusting the feat pre-reqs would require adjusting the feats.2da. I dont believe that the adjustments would be difficult to make, more of a time consuming thing.

[kevL]

it sounds like some feats should be left 'as is'

and select others, opened to Archetype

[kamal_]

Yeah, some you'd want to leave as epic or have some level requirement because of balance reasons, but others i dont thin would be unbalancing if they were immediately available. The persian wrestler guy (presumably a fighter archetype character) could load up on the "epic strength" feats at level one, with eight feats the wrestler could get up to +4 bonus right off the bat, but would have to not take any armor or weapon proficiencies to do that, so he would be a bare chested brute that would have to punch things to death. Is that balanced at low levels? Maybe, our wrestler has no armor and a normal level one fighter has scale armor. A non-monk punch does what, 1-2 base damage? Our stock fighter probably has a longsword doing 1-8. If both started with equal strength before our wrestler started taking epic strength, I thing the wrestler comes out maybe one point ahead in average damage at the penalty of having a worse armor class by the value of the scale armor (thats what, 4ac). I think the stock fighter would probably win most of those low level fights one on one, but it would seem to make "I'm just going to punch people to death with my massive strength" a better choice than it currently is, it could work well for a half orc, in fact I think shaugn78 had a punching half orc in one of his campaigns.Some of the monk's more physical powered as opposed to spiritual powered feats could also be added to fighter for our persian wrestler guy. A PW might open up monk gloves to the fighter class to allow the persian wrestler fighter to keep up magic-wise.

Fortunately editing the cls_feat 2da for a class is very easy, it should be in the technical skill range of any PW, so they could add/remove feats for the archetype to suit their needs. For instance adding the favored enemy feats to fighters consisted of opening the cls_feat 2da of the ranger and the fighter and then just copying over the lines, and done barring any problems like the feats that level up that might need onlevelup scripting. Changing a feat from the normal "given at level x" to an archetype feat available at any level is just a max of two cells in the cls_feat 2da.

[kamal_]

@kamal_

The feat.2da would need to updated also.  By the way I just downloaded this and the fighter still get his starting feats with 8 open feats to select.  Last question other feats like epic fighter -granted at lvl 21, should that also be left unselected?

I fixed the fighter feat thing, you should not be granted any feats automatically anymore.

 

Here is a fighter who only took light armor and basic weapons

 

And fully embraced his heritage instead

 

This cleric never learned to turn undead:

 

This rogue gave up his armor training and all normal rogue abilities like trapfinding, for maximizing sneak attack. (sneak attack is one of those feats that can be powered up that don't have their pre-requisites set properly).

[kamal_]

This rogue is a master of parkour (Long Gait, more movement speed), hates aberrations (they killed his family!), and has a fey bloodline.

 

 

He also is unnaturally dextrous and has practice tracking his mark. However he has not had any training in trapfinding or sneak attacking. He will never be as good a tracker as a ranger, as he can only take the base tracking feat but not the more advanced feats like swift tracker, advanced tracking skills will remain the specialty of the ranger.

 

 

I've got my feats.2da updated so the rogue feats properly require pre-requisites and the epic statistic feats (strength, int, wisdom etc) can be taken at any level. Since many feats were previously granted by level they didn't check for pre-reqs. The pre-requisite for Deflect Arrows has been changed to requiring Improved Unarmed (stock) or Improved Evasion (added option for archetype). It didn't make much sense that Rogues couldn't train to dodge arrows when they train to handle traps, particularly since there are arrow traps. I also plan on adding a "Null" feat for two purposes, so you cold purposely gimp a character by taking feats that do nothing, and so you could keep the same number of feats as stock for characters that multiclass (you would take "Null" to avoid extra meaningful feats when multiclassing between classes that normally get the same feats such as armor proficiencies both classes have).

 

Not uploaded yet. I want to get a few more classes adjusted.

[kamal_]

This cleric of an evil deity is fearless, and has spent enough time exposed to poisons that he's developed a resistance to them. His church hates elves and teaches their priests how to attack unexpectedly (max sneak attack 2d6).