AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

I am currently at lvl 20 with my palemaster who only has 14 intelligence. Ive been doing this many times, and every time I could cast epic spells with enough palemaster lvls without having much intelligence. Something however scared me when I read the 'spells' section of the forums. It says:

NB: Mind that you need a Wis, Int or Cha of at least 20 to be able to cast Epic Spells!

Now my question is:

Was that just the way NWN always was and it only goes for the clerics/druids/sorcs/wizards but not in the case of pm... or were the epic spells nerfed by adding this requirement to all, and including the palemaster? Because it could easyly just be for every other class just like "you must be able to cast lvl 9 spells to take the epic spells" and you dont need to be able to cast lvl 9 spells to take epic spells as a palemaster.

I hope I got scared over northing

It's an amia custom rule that you must have 20 of your caster ability to take epic spell feats. It wasn't added to the spell changes page until a few months ago, although it was on the forum elsewhere.

The epic spells were actually improved.

Custom amian change, to prevent melee palemasters with little arcane ability from casting epic spells.

*Facepalm* Thanks for the quick answer. Time to throw this character into the recycle bin. Im glad I didnt spent all my DCs on him as I planned to do tomorrow.

Serves you right for rolling the melee palemaster and expecting Epic Mage Armor.

You made a melee PM.

ticket wrote:

I must say I find that pretty rude.

Hehe true, I did deserve it and I dont find the "HA HA" rude at all. It did make me laugh.

Anyways, I will still make teh melee palemastor :twisted:

Riddle wrote:

Hehe true, I did deserve it and I dont find the "HA HA" rude at all. It did make me laugh.

Anyways, I will still make teh melee palemastor :twisted:

Makes it even more fun when I myself have a melee PM. Muahaha

Just out of curiousity though.. if there will be a few melee palemasters with 20 intel just for the epic mage armor but will have no other spells and you get a lot of people whining how powerful they are, will they be nerfed again?

Riddle wrote:

Just out of curiousity though.. if there will be a few melee palemasters with 20 intel just for the epic mage armor but will have no other spells and you get a lot of people whining how powerful they are, will they be nerfed again?

If you can get to 20 int and keep the rest of your build working, kudos to you.

Really, the fact that palemasters go melee is the fault of the class itself. Any serious mage will cripple himself by taking pm levels as they lack proper spell progression. Same with RDD.

There's nothing wrong with melee PM's, that's what the class is best suited for. They should not be casting epic spells though, so no complain against this particular nerf.

Always been like this. 18 caster ability for level 8 spells, 19 for level 9 spells and 20 for epic spells. We just corrected it from nwn default. Since a mage/pm/cleric/whatever casting epic spells and then don't know how to cast the normal spells is abit off.

Well I just want to be sure that you dont take away the epic spells from PM when they do go melee without casting any other spells. I mean.. you put 20 int requirement not to correct NWN but to prevent melee PMs with mage armor. So if I make one with 20 intel just to get the armor will you nerf it again lol?

Riddle wrote:

Well I just want to be sure that you dont take away the epic spells from PM when they do go melee without casting any other spells. I mean.. you put 20 int requirement not to correct NWN but to prevent melee PMs with mage armor. So if I make one with 20 intel just to get the armor will you nerf it again lol?

They shouldn't.

Because... somehow managing to get 10 int on a build like that, is nerfing the build enough to make the EMA irrelevant.

There are however other melee PM powerbuilds which can be made, using EMA...

Well.. there will always be a way to make something overpowered. What I am trying to say is, people who know what theyre doing will always find a way to make those that dont, cry. Always, until they nerf everything to 0 and make every class impossible to play. If you nerf PMs there will be dragons. Nerf dragons there will be mages etc etc. It doesnt matter, but the time lost on building is a huge loss. A sad loss. What Im afraid of, and why I keep asking the same question is they nerfed it probably because of people whining. Alright.. that made them happy "yay PMs suck now and I can own them, not like before when I used to loose to every PM I run into." But when people adjust and a new generation of PMs comes along and people loose to them, and their ego hurts so much that they go crying again for them to be nerfed.. all as one saying PMs are still overpowered. Will they be evaluated for a nerf once more? Someone above said if one can make a PM with 20 int and not screw up the build then kudos to you. Well yeah I can. And I assure you that there will be whining. I just hope I dont throw my time away for nothing.. because Im already half way into rebuilding it after I found out about the 20 int requirement.. =/

No they won't nerf it, simply because someone put some actual time and effort into such a build. (And FYI. I've seen my share of Devcritting PMs with EMA)

The first powerbuild to get nerfed now, is the Monk/Druid and Shifter's insane gain from Monk AC to Dragon forms.

After that, I'm guessing arcane casters are going to take another hit or two, but it won't be because you made a melee PM with EMA. (Especially not since I can think of a good few other ways to get that 70+ AC on other builds)

We can make no promises. We can't predict the future, so doing so would be talking about things we don't know. Maybe we will change it in the future. Judging by the current situation, though, it seems extremely unlikely.

The modification was done because it was sensible: it is sensible that we should fix Bioware oversights, subject Epic Spells to the same ability requirements as other spells, and prevent 13 Int warriors with minimum caster levels, incapable of casting any but the most basic of spells, from mastering Epic Spells. It was cheesy and nonsensical; power was surely a factor, but probably not the incriminating one.

I see no reason we should do any further modifications. We have not "nerfed" anything, we've improved game balance over the years to make Amian mechanics smoother and more interesting than vanilla NWN ones. We've been rather conservative, the changes we've done have generally been long after common acknowledgement of the problem and much consideration, and usually we've tried (and managed) to compromise and find a balance that does not unfairly cripple anyone.

I should think that the current balance of Amia attests to the fact that we're not exactly trigger-happy or careless with our modifications.

Riddle wrote:

Just out of curiousity though.. if there will be a few melee palemasters with 20 intel just for the epic mage armor but will have no other spells and you get a lot of people whining how powerful they are, will they be nerfed again?

When there's whining, what we tend to do is go and find or create an example of what's being whined about and have a good look. Sometimes it's funny just how poorly thought out the whining is. There was one chap who insisted the GS/Summon tweak had made his Sorcerer so weak it couldn't even fight in the Brog Wilderness, so I got out my Wizard, which was markedly inferior to his for that kind of work, and anally raped the poor bears and doggies so hard I felt sorry for them, and moved onto the much harder Frozen Wastes, which I was still able to give a deeply onesided beatdown to.

Likewise, the EMA+Devcrit Palemaster build just isn't very good.

im pretty sure that learning epic spells require the ability to cast level 9 spells according to the epic level handbook...so this rule makes sense

Also requires 21+ caster and the feat Epic Spellcasting and the research and creation of the spell at huge GP and XP costa s well as exorbitant spellcraft checks everytime to want to develop or cast, soooooo....

You make out like bandits here.

TormakSaber wrote:

Also requires 21+ caster and the feat Epic Spellcasting and the research and creation of the spell at huge GP and XP costa s well as exorbitant spellcraft checks everytime to want to develop or cast, soooooo....

You make out like bandits here.

This is true, but it's also worth the cost since you instantly become invulnerable.

But wait, we're talking about Wizards and Sorcerer's here ... so you just become extra invulnerable.

TormakSaber wrote:

Also requires 21+ caster and the feat Epic Spellcasting and the research and creation of the spell at huge GP and XP costa s well as exorbitant spellcraft checks everytime to want to develop or cast, soooooo....

You make out like bandits here.

Yes, but you also have a broader range of choice in PnP.

Noob question although I believe I already know the answer. In order to cast an Epic Spell, you need a 20 in your ability score for your caster. I have a level 18 cleric with a 17 unbuffed WIS. I can only cast spells up to level 7 because my unbuffed/unmodified WIS is only 17. So I am assuming that you need an unbuffed natural WIS of 20 to be able to cast an Epic Spell with this character. Periapt of Wisdom does not help in getting the required 20, right?

tundrawalker1 wrote:

Noob question although I believe I already know the answer. In order to cast an Epic Spell, you need a 20 in your ability score for your caster. I have a level 18 cleric with a 17 unbuffed WIS. I can only cast spells up to level 7 because my unbuffed/unmodified WIS is only 17. So I am assuming that you need an unbuffed natural WIS of 20 to be able to cast an Epic Spell with this character. Periapt of Wisdom does not help in getting the required 20, right?

Correct.

you will need to have a actually score of 20, unmodified, to gain qualification for prereqs

That was what I thought. *facepalms*

Didn't consider that in my build. Now I have to wait until level 28 for the Epic Spells. Grrrrr. Chaulk it up to noobieism and move on from there. Thanks guys!!!

I thought EMA and Epic Warding were solely for Bards, Wizards, and Sorcerers. Even taking like 2 lvls of Bard, and 11 of pm you still can get EMA and epic warding? The book says you must be Epic lvl 21 for Wizard, Sorc, Bard, 11 for Pm or Rdd or any prestige. Just curious if it has changed.

freezey wrote:

I thought EMA and Epic Warding were solely for Bards, Wizards, and Sorcerers. Even taking like 2 lvls of Bard, and 11 of pm you still can get EMA and epic warding? The book says you must be Epic lvl 21 for Wizard, Sorc, Bard, 11 for Pm or Rdd or any prestige. Just curious if it has changed.

Bards cant get epic spells. Pale Master needs 15(16?) levels. Wizards, Sorcerors and Pale Masters are the only people who can cast EMA. The other epic spells are Cleric and Druid too. No other class, prestige or otherwise, can cast 9th level spells, the prime requisite aside from the casting stat of 20. Epic Warding is out. Needs 34 ranks in spellcraft, not possible until level 31, thankfully. The single best thing about the level 30 cap is keeping that out of the equation.

Epic spells nerfed?

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