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Falling Spider
 
PostPosted: Mon, Oct 09 2017, 17:22 PM 

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An AB or damage boost while two-handing (not monkey gripping) is the 'easy' route, I imagine, but no idea how it would effect balance. Lets it keep its damage niche some. (I still like the idea of divine might, power attack, etc, adding 1.5x too)

A small speed and immunity boost while two-handing, to represent being the sort of badass that runs in swinging a greataxe with little protection?

It's a damn shame there's no way to implement the Reach property from pnp, though. That was one of the big draws of large weapons.

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Dark Immolation
 
PostPosted: Mon, Oct 09 2017, 20:51 PM 

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The major problem with non-shield playstyles is this: When it comes to melee, AC is king. AB and Damage are tied for queen.

Most of our mobs are made in mind with the highest general AC for PCs in that range. Factor that into everyone always wanting to solo, and it becomes hard to sell two-handers or two weapon fighting. The idea is that you'll be doing more damage than sword+board, and therefore will finish fights quicker and get hit less, but the ratio just isn't there most of the time.

Nerfing shields simply isn't an option. Unless you go back through an balance more mobs than you can shake a stick at, you're just putting everyone else in the same boat as two-handers and dual-wielders, and then sword+board will still be better because not getting hit is still more important than hitting hard(er) most of the time. Balancing by addition is a lot more attractive and sensible at this point.

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Dark Immolation
 
PostPosted: Mon, Oct 09 2017, 20:52 PM 

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Options that have been suggested here or elsewhere. They can be taken as individual suggestions or maybe a combination is needed.

Increasing the Damage Bonus when Two-handing, possibly including Spell Bonuses
Pros: This attempts to balance the equation of "not getting hit vs hitting" that was mentioned before. Finish fights even quicker, and you don't get hit as much.
Cons: That ratio increase is going to benefit different weapons in different ways, due to crit multipliers. It will take some fiddling with, and even then it's not guaranteed that everyone who two-hands will find a sweet spot. What may be a tiny increase for Greatsword WM may make Greataxe and Scythe WMs crazy.

Giving an AB Bonus when Two-handing
Pros: Another way to balance the equation. You're hitting more often, therefor doing more damage quicker, and supposedly getting hit less.
It also lessens the penalties of Power Attack and Expertise, meaning if you have those modes as a two-hander, you're more encouraged to use them.
Cons: Without a HAK change, whatever increase you give is going to still be subject to the +20 Cap. Not that meleers hit it on their own that often without True Strike potions, but still worth noting.
It may also require us to go back in and re-balance mobs. The same way decreasing shield AC would mean recalculating the general AC expected by mobs, increasing two-hander AB could mean looking at the general AB expected by mobs as well.

When Two-Handing Parry Gives Shield AC vs Single Target and/or Concealment
Pros: AC will always be a huge reason not to go two-hander for the reasons stated. This gives them the option to at least be somewhat good at dueling, but still not take away the sword+board job of being an actual tank. Soloing goes a little easier, still, because at least one target per round is hitting you less often.
Concealment is something that mundane classes usually can't get from any source but spells or potions. This gives them a non-gold and UMD option and they can always have it ready, if they invest in it.
Cons: Melee classes get the lowest skill points per level. While the option is there, it's not guaranteed everyone will be able to access it. This can be lessened by crafting slots on equipment, but even then, meleers still are usually at a disadvantaged, compared to casters who can go without having AC on their items.
Additionally, you run the risk of things like dex-classes and monks, who have more skill points and Parry as a Class Skill, the benefits intended for two-handers. This might be avoided by linking an AC cap to your BAB, but that adds another level of calculations.

Two-handed Weapons deal "Splash" Damage of some sort, representing wider range/swinging arc
Pros: A huge difference between melee classes and casters is the ability to damage multiple targets at once. The same way the Parry suggestion gives Two-handers access to something they generally don't get, so does this. The bonus would be relatively small(say 10%-25% of full damage) and affect a set number of targets around the initial one. But it would still serve to balance the Two-hander in solo situation a little better. You're taking damage from all sides, but you're also dishing a bit of it back, too.
Cons: It is still subject to the cons of the pure damage increase suggestion. It may be difficult to find a sweespot for everyone weapon.

Two-handed Weapons gain an Initiative Increase to represent Range
Pros: Increased weapon range means your weapon is more likely to hit first in battle. You're going to have a chance to hit a guy with your spear before he has a chance to hit you with his dagger(unless he's really quick, I.E. Initiative feats and DEX).
Cons: Initiative doesn't do that much in NWN on its own. After lowbie levels, it really doesn't matter who goes first, you're going to stand there and slug it out for a few rounds anyway.

We have options, tons of them. But nothing comes without a price of some sort.

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Last edited by Dark Immolation on Mon, Oct 09 2017, 20:59 PM, edited 1 time in total.

 
      
Maverick00053
 
PostPosted: Mon, Oct 09 2017, 20:57 PM 

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Not a bad discussion overall.

This is the battle plan. I believe going AC would be the best route. I need to weigh the pros and cons and think it over with the dev team but right now.

Starting at level 8 you get +1 AC, and +1 AC every 10 levels afterwards. At level 28 you would get a bonus of 3 AC.

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Shadowfiend
 
PostPosted: Mon, Oct 09 2017, 21:27 PM 

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Maverick00053 wrote:
Not a bad discussion overall.

This is the battle plan. I believe going AC would be the best route. I need to weigh the pros and cons and think it over with the dev team but right now.

Starting at level 8 you get +1 AC, and +1 AC every 10 levels afterwards. At level 28 you would get a bonus of 3 AC.


For both dual-wielding and two-handed?

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Maverick00053
 
PostPosted: Mon, Oct 09 2017, 21:31 PM 

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Shadowfiend wrote:
Maverick00053 wrote:
Not a bad discussion overall.

This is the battle plan. I believe going AC would be the best route. I need to weigh the pros and cons and think it over with the dev team but right now.

Starting at level 8 you get +1 AC, and +1 AC every 10 levels afterwards. At level 28 you would get a bonus of 3 AC.


For both dual-wielding and two-handed?


That would be the idea ya.

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Xenos
 
PostPosted: Mon, Oct 09 2017, 21:45 PM 

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Personally i've always felt that Epic Dodge should just not work with a Tower Shield, maybe not even with a Large Shield. If Epic Dodge only worked with the small shield, thats only a loss of 2 AC really, along with a few other changes to bring ac up a bit else where, maybe it could be a fair trade off?

Further, in perhaps instead of, ive always liked PoTM set up, quoted from their wiki.

PoTM also has the additional application of for every 5 modified ranks in parry, you will receive a +1 shield AC (to a maximum of +5) Indicated as (PoTM).
Certain Criteria will remove this bonus:
    If you are wearing a shield.
    If you are wielding a greatsword, a great axe, heavy flail, scythe, falchion, or maul, the bonus will be halved unless having the Improved Parry feat.
    If you are wielding a ranged weapon.
    If you are unarmed, unless having the Improved Unarmed Strike feat.

I've always really liked the PoTM way of doing it, and felt it would be a very good way to make Parry more useful, make various feats more useful, and the narrow that gap in AC.

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Shadowfiend
 
PostPosted: Mon, Oct 09 2017, 22:30 PM 

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I am personally not a fan of giving dual-wielding ac bonuses beyond maybe 3, because that gives dexers everything. Now we'll get dex characters that has about everything one could want.

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Falling Spider
 
PostPosted: Mon, Oct 09 2017, 22:33 PM 

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Singular Worry: Monks. Q-staff and Kama monks already have an extra item slot (and more apr for kama monks) than unarmed. And as mentioned in the other thread, unarmed monks have some problems anyway. Can this be carried over if you have 2/3rds of your level as monk and aren't wielding anything?

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Maverick00053
 
PostPosted: Mon, Oct 09 2017, 23:05 PM 

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Falling Spider wrote:
Singular Worry: Monks. Q-staff and Kama monks already have an extra item slot (and more apr for kama monks) than unarmed. And as mentioned in the other thread, unarmed monks have some problems anyway. Can this be carried over if you have 2/3rds of your level as monk and aren't wielding anything?


Monks would be an exception I think. The q staff build is already really strong.

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Dark Immolation
 
PostPosted: Mon, Oct 09 2017, 23:13 PM 

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I would think it could be disabled at 5 or more Monk levels. That's when monks get their first AC bonus, which is supposed to do the job this is going to do for Two-hander people really. Making it 5 or more levels also doesn't additionally penalize people who dip Monk over Rogue or Bard and two-hand.

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thunderbrush
 
PostPosted: Wed, Oct 11 2017, 18:48 PM 



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This may be derpish.. how about damge reduction for two janders. Dual wielders, if they are not an ED build. Slap the damage reduction on a widget.

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Cyan
 
PostPosted: Wed, Oct 11 2017, 20:32 PM 

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i really like the splash dmg idea for 2h, but ac or whatever gets finalized will definitely be an improvement.


 
      
InquisitorBiologos
 
PostPosted: Thu, Oct 12 2017, 19:18 PM 

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I'm still of the opinion that any change to 2HD should emphasise their damage not their defence.

When you fight sword and board style you accept that your damage potential will be X and your defensive probability will be Y.

When you discard sword and board for extra large sword you naturally know and expect that your damage potential will be X+ and accept that the inevitable price for this will be defensive probability of Y-.

With regards to two weapon fighting that this is a mode intended to work with a parry style of fighting and as far as I know parry doesn't work very well on this server or NWN in general? So perhaps that is something that needs looking into?

So again I say lets look at making 2HD better, and not weapon and shield worst.

Which is surely the result if you start giving defence a boost for 2HD rather than a damage boost which after all is the mechanical reason why you give up a shield for a larger weapon in the first place, so lets play into the strengths of 2HD not merely make it a minor version of monkey grip by way of giving it an invisible shield.

The splash idea is interesting but should also come with a flat damage boost which after a week of trying to level a 2HD and finding it easy in the first 10 levels but soon becoming extremely irksome in the 11-20 bracket mostly because of not being able to hit anything because RNG and the NWN often conspire to make players roll a D4 to hit whilst giving the mobs a modified D20 in which they get to reroll any 1-18s....

So I wondered if the already in place 2HD damage bonus from strength could be made to apply to the AB as well? On the premise of spank before tank for 2HD.


 
      
freaxxshow1338
 
PostPosted: Thu, Oct 12 2017, 19:55 PM 

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InquisitorBiologos wrote:
So I wondered if the already in place 2HD damage bonus from strength could be made to apply to the AB as well? On the premise of spank before tank for 2HD.


In terms of PvP, I think if you give 2HD an extra bonus from Strength to AB, this would heavily affect shield users, because AC would loose worth.

Also: That would make TWF completely lack any reason to even exist. I just realized that sentence is completely useless and it's meaning null because you could do what you said for 2HD and something else for TWF. Yes I am stupid. Yes I am aware of that. No I don't have a solution for beeing stupid.

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robbi320
 
PostPosted: Thu, Oct 12 2017, 20:25 PM 



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I personally would find the thought of like 65 AB a bit scary, if you calculate in all the little stuff like bless and all. I feel like it would be a bit OP for PvP. (the 65 is from a 19 WM, and all, or a 13WM/MS, which do focus on AB, but they're the extreme, and they'd have a really hard punch)
I feel like it would be pretty crazy for Clerics as well, since they'd still get a decent amount of AC (like, close to 60, maybe 58) and still punch at around 55 AB (possibly a bit more or less, not 100% sure here)

And, especially combined with Monkey Grip being a thing, I feel like 2HD could be at the point where very few people would go onehanded. Like, when I can have both benefits, with sword'n'board MG already being superior, I'm a bit afraid of that.

Then again, it might be different if it applied as a bonus, and cap with the +20 cap, and therefore gave a Cleric a single AB (because they sit at a net +19 AB from their spells, at 16 BAB), and still did decent things for everyone else, except wouldn't put True Strike to close to 70 AB.

I feel like the 7 AB at 14 mod would give would be too much anyway... Maybe just flat AB?
Like 2 or 3 AB doesn't seem too much, still makes a decent difference. (And I just realise this is the same suggestion I made earlier in the last page, before I started flaming there...)
If we give 7 AB to anyone, he can turn on expertise, at best lose 3 AC, and gain 2 AB, as opposed to a sword'n'board. I do think AB would be a good way to go, but 7 is way too much, because expertise would be really painful then, and you'd shred though armor so hard.


 
      
InquisitorBiologos
 
PostPosted: Fri, Oct 13 2017, 2:33 AM 

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freaxxshow1338 wrote:
InquisitorBiologos wrote:
So I wondered if the already in place 2HD damage bonus from strength could be made to apply to the AB as well? On the premise of spank before tank for 2HD.


In terms of PvP, I think if you give 2HD an extra bonus from Strength to AB, this would heavily affect shield users, because AC would loose worth.


The salient point I'm trying to make is that surely it would be better to play to the strengths 2HD of spank before tank.
Exactly how this would be done is of course heavily debatable but I strongly disagree with the concept of giving all 2HD characters a sort of virtual free weak Monkey Grip which ultimately won't really improve the AC to any real effect on the ground.
No I feel it much better to make 2HD do more damage than be able to slightly and mostly in theory avoid an attack or two more by way of a few virtual AC.

Lets not forget that 2HD weapons exist in a niche in melee combat namely to defeat heavy armour, now of course the D&D AC system doesn't really allow us to model this ~except~ by way of increasing the AB which has been pointed out could have a serious effect on pvp here.

So I submit that we need to find a way to buff the damage potential without making them the new op.


 
      
bobofwestoregonusa
 
PostPosted: Fri, Oct 13 2017, 3:59 AM 

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Two handing doesn't need to be buffed, the damage you do is your buff. A two handed WM decimates things if they're allowed to flank and they have adequate ability to survive in nwn when you have a tank. Detect mode allows you to not provoke attacks of opportunity as long as you're willing to let the tank grab up all the aggro and door tank but I've noticed a lot of nwn tanking on amia involves big open rooms so that's kind of harder to do.

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Cyan
 
PostPosted: Sat, Oct 14 2017, 15:15 PM 

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i keep seeing monkey grip mentioned. therefore, make a new feat for 2hand weapons w/no shield. call it two handed specialization/style or something. if you have this feat, you are disqualified from selecting monkey grip, and vice versa. the feat could merely add +2 dmg, basically weapon spec without the fighter prereq. if the character wants to devote time/levels to training for weapon spec let the two feats stack. 1 is a fighting style, the other is training with 1 weapon specifically. so, the first would work with any 2handed weapon, as long as there is no item in the offhand slot. which, without monkey grip there can't be, right? weapon spec works only with the specialized weapon, but also benefits from the first feat.

Quote:
Two handing doesn't need to be buffed, the damage you do is your buff.


the benefits from a shield far outshines the bonus x.5 str mod.

2 characters with identical stats, 1 is 2hand, 1 is sword and board. both have 20 STR and we'll say no weapon feats.

2hander uses a greataxe, so dmg would be 1d12+7? 8-19
1hander uses a bastard sword, so dmg would be 1d10+5. 6-15

so 2hander is up on 1hander by 2-4 dmg.
1hander is up on 2hander by 3 AC (we'll say he/she is using a tower shield).

and 1hander has another item slot for use of mythals.

personally, i would take 3 AC over 2-4 dmg whether i was level 1 or 30.

let's say my proposed feat comes into play. we'll give the 2hander this specialization feat.
dmg ranges change to 10-21 2hand/ 6-15 1hand.
4-6 bonus dmg vs 3 AC & extra mythal slots.
that's a little better trade-off to me.


 
      
InquisitorBiologos
 
PostPosted: Mon, Oct 23 2017, 17:40 PM 

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On further experience on my Dwarf with his greataxe and on further reading of historic uses of 2HD weapons it would be legitimate to allow 2HDers to equip a buckler shield. This could then be mythalled to allow the wearer to have some defence that is useful in the server context and reasonable and legitimate in the lore of the world.

I think in order to balance this option however bucklers should be a new item with a reduced mythal power limit of 1 and the loot bins to have some magic ones but for their powers to be much less than other shields and with rare epic drop variants to round out the collection.

This could allowed 2HD a bit more AC without out scaling the defence advantage of a proper shield IF it is decided that improving 2HD damage isn't the way forward. (Which I still maintain is the best way to make 2HD and 1H1S distinct and worthwhile thematically and tactically)





 
      
Hodie Mihi
 
PostPosted: Wed, Oct 25 2017, 16:36 PM 

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Hoo wee...

I see a lot of "curious" opinions on how this issue could be fixed/broken. Don't overthink this guys. You can't fix this with anything offensive or the effects will ripple across builds with attacks-per-round ranges of 3 to 10. Non-shield builds suffer from greatly reduced defenses, and that's the only thing that could be tampered with.

Shield = up to +8 AC (and bonus mythal slots).

2H/2WF = let's say +50% damage (this is an arbitrary number).

Therefore, give Parry +1 AC per 5 ranks, halved if your offhand is not free.

Is that fair, is that balanced vs shield? No. It's a choice. You get sword/board at 1.0 damage and +8 AC, 2H/2WF at 1.5 dmg and +3 AC, "duelist" at 1.0 damage and +6 AC. Clearly the shield is the same old tank build, 2-hand gets a choice to invest 30 (!) skill points for a bandaid, and you give birth to a viable new way of fighting - the duelist (well... kinda, it's still way better to just use the damn shield, but hey maybe someone really wants to RP that, and now they could without feeling absolutely silly).

Fun thing is, you could technically still take the fighting styles discussion further, without this AC patch being a roadblock. New feats and tricks like 2H AoE cleaves, duelist feints, shield bashes and w/e else don't have much to do with AC anyway (not with a marginal increase like this at least), but with AB and damage. So there's that.

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InquisitorBiologos
 
PostPosted: Thu, Oct 26 2017, 22:56 PM 

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Hodie Mihi wrote:
Hoo wee...

I see a lot of "curious" opinions on how this issue could be fixed/broken.


No need to be insulting just because you don't get or don't agree with someones idea doesn't make it "curious".

Furthermore some of those "curious" ideas if implemented would not nerf peoples builds or in fact destroy them utterly like finding 30+ skill points for Parry would, not to mention the fact that dozens if not hundreds of rebuilds would have to be requested and pored over and eventually implemented for existing 2HDers.

Seems to me any improvement to the life of a 2HDer needs to be as easy to implement as possible in order to even be considered ideas such as some of those "curious" ones that don't require build destruction and rebuilds.


 
      
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