Removal of +20 AB Crafting/better pvp balance.

[Omnifarious]

Balance issues.

My case for the removal of +20 AB weapons is that it messes with character building options, and PVP. Nobody wants to use more than 3-4 levels of paladin unless they're a smiter. Divine favor, aid, bless, and prayer doesn't add to the AB cap of +20. However, divine favor is still useful in the sense that it grants +5 divine damage (not really though). Divine favor +5 divine dmg is canceled out by anybody using a crown of thorns helmet so it's irrelevant. You can use divine might to great effect, but without Smite/Divine Might/Divine Shield paladin is basically a useless class because even the BAB can be better enhanced from a 21 ranger with Bane of Enemies. I would prefer being able to only craft +10 enhancement weapons for this reason so that players are required to find other alternatives in regard to maxing their AB. True Strike is also a useless spell when you have +20 AB weapons. As for the high paladin saves you can look at that below.. high saves are irrelevant as well.

Issues with creating a DC Castor

Sorcerers are very powerful on NWN but not when you have immunity to mind spells, knockdown, freedom, death magic, IGMS, and +15 Elemental resist on most items. Sorceror/Wizard characters are very limited to scroll/potion/wand crafters. Druid DC casters are also irrelevant due to the freedom immunity on items. In fact, the only relevant DC caster I can think of in a PVP spectrum is implosion cleric, and only because of a glitch where implosion bypasses death magic immunity.

AC/AB balance

Even +10 EB on weapons is scary when the maximum AC on items is +6. I think that should be balanced out to a decent AC/AB ratio on items to foment good PVP. Not every high AC pvp build should require pale master to get enough AC to deal with AA and WM effectively. Even high AC pale masters get completely destroyed by Arcane Archer AB with the current system unless they have total immunity to arrows which is possible on here, and very stupid.

Recommendations

+10 EB on items is okay if you have +8/+9 AC on gear.

[Omnifarious]

Also, more DMG on weapons is much needed to deal with all the physical/elemental resistances that people can acquire from items.

[driller]

PvP is secondary to PvM on BSK. Also, considering PvP, the AC vs AB bell curve is out of sync, you can get much higher AC than AB from a base stand point. Most of the highest AC item are around +6 because of this.

[Jake_Master]

BSK has always been a high magic level server, and PvM without a +20 weapon might be quite the issue. PvP has never been an issue on BSK due to +20 weapons.. it isn’t broken therefore it does not need to be fixed

[Wing--Zero]

Honestly its balanced for both very nicely in my opinion. We've already got some +7 ac items available in Blackstone as is but, back in the day it use to be +8 and AC was way to high for a +20 weapon. In terms of Ac vs AB you only get the one boost to your attack and that is a maximum of a +20 (thats including buffs, or just having the raw +20ab). For AC you get multiple modifiers to them (5x6 + a extra +10 from buffs and +4 from haste).


I've got a level 40 12 paladin 16WM 12Cleric that is a very nice build. There are many other builds that are good with paladins. Especially in PvP

[Yunim]

Also, more DMG on weapons is much needed to deal with all the physical/elemental resistances that people can acquire from items.

I'm assuming that you haven't seen many fully forged weapons on the server? A properly built and equipped STR PvP build won't have trouble damaging any non-Shifter/DD. Plus there are multiple ways to deal with Shifter/DD's in PvP, so even then it's not really an issue.

[Terankar]

honestly the game is extremely balanced in terms of pvp at the highest level of magic. it is on lower magic settings it becomes a huge issue imo.

Then spellcasters reign supreme bar none.

[The Flying Rodent]

Balance issues.

My case for the removal of +20 AB weapons is that it messes with character building options, and PVP. Nobody wants to use more than 3-4 levels of paladin unless they're a smiter. Divine favor, aid, bless, and prayer doesn't add to the AB cap of +20. However, divine favor is still useful in the sense that it grants +5 divine damage (not really though). Divine favor +5 divine dmg is canceled out by anybody using a crown of thorns helmet so it's irrelevant. You can use divine might to great effect, but without Smite/Divine Might/Divine Shield paladin is basically a useless class because even the BAB can be better enhanced from a 21 ranger with Bane of Enemies. I would prefer being able to only craft +10 enhancement weapons for this reason so that players are required to find other alternatives in regard to maxing their AB. True Strike is also a useless spell when you have +20 AB weapons. As for the high paladin saves you can look at that below.. high saves are irrelevant as well.

Issues with creating a DC Castor

Sorcerers are very powerful on NWN but not when you have immunity to mind spells, knockdown, freedom, death magic, IGMS, and +15 Elemental resist on most items. Sorceror/Wizard characters are very limited to scroll/potion/wand crafters. Druid DC casters are also irrelevant due to the freedom immunity on items. In fact, the only relevant DC caster I can think of in a PVP spectrum is implosion cleric, and only because of a glitch where implosion bypasses death magic immunity.

AC/AB balance

Even +10 EB on weapons is scary when the maximum AC on items is +6. I think that should be balanced out to a decent AC/AB ratio on items to foment good PVP. Not every high AC pvp build should require pale master to get enough AC to deal with AA and WM effectively. Even high AC pale masters get completely destroyed by Arcane Archer AB with the current system unless they have total immunity to arrows which is possible on here, and very stupid.

Recommendations

+10 EB on items is okay if you have +8/+9 AC on gear.

I disagree that +20 Ab Weapons messes with character building options, rather it just empowers different ones. It also sounds like apart from DC Caster worries (which unfortunately is hard to balance in high magic environments), that your main gripe is PvP balance, which from my experience playing on several different NWN servers over the years, is basically impossible to completely achieve. There’s always going to be some builds and classes better at it than others.

The only builds that +20 AB ‘detriments’ TBH (I.e. makes less significant) are battle clerics that normally rely on +15 AB from spells, or those that habitually use True Strike. Even then, one can still opt to get +10 Enhancement Weapons instead of +20 AB and live with extra Damage over relying on buffs for AB. Not a bad trade off.

Plenty of builds benefit from using more than 3-4 Paladin levels. For one, Sorcerer Spellswords can make use of 8-16 Paladin levels (depending on build makeup) for extra Base AB before level 20. Same goes with Dex Paladins that might index into Rogue later for Epic Dodge. +20 AB weapons means ‘less’ motivation to choose Paladin as a PvP build, but certainly not ‘no’ motivation.

There’s also motivation to get decent damage from Divine Favour, which is a ‘Damage Increase’ effect (similar to Divine Might), and thus bypasses any Damage resistance from items like Crown of Thorns, despite being listed as Magical Damage. And as for Bless/Aid/Prayer/Divine Favour AB, see the comment about going for +10 enhance over +20 AB for extra Damage.

As for Mages in PVP; have you checked out any of the Epic Summons? They pack quite a punch. The only PvP spells have received significant nerfs are Isaac’s Greater Missile Storm (which launches half the number of missiles than normal i.e. 10 instead of 20), and True Seeing (which just adds +50 Spot and See Invisibility here instead of making Stealth totally useless).

Quite a number of damage spells have had their damage caps increased (Horrid Wilting/Chain Lightning to name a couple) , and Ice Storm still works fine as a damage nuke. And if they aren’t enough, Mages can still rely on good old Mage BS like the counterspelling bug, Time Stop, and Greater Sanctuary if they aren’t winning a fight hard enough.

DC casters have traditionally never shone in NWN PvP, unless one is playing in a super low-magic environment with next to no save boosting gear (in which case, you’d be mad not to go for something like a Paladin as a PvP build for the extra saves). Sorcerer / Paladin / Monk has stood the test of time for good reason, and people who build them for PVP generally don’t focus on DC’s apart from ‘maybe’ Necromancy for cheesy kills and levelling.

I actually quite like Blackstone PVP. The dynamic of having +20 AB equipment alongside +6/7 AC gear, the extra Damage Palemasters take from bludgeoning Weapons, and the fact that Devastating Critical isn’t a silly instakill or banned (rather it has been reworked into something still useful), means that PvP duels don’t turn into ‘one-shot dev contests’ or ‘airswinging for days’. Perhaps saves could be incooperated moreso into PVP , but its hard to do that in NWN without introducing spells/feats/abilites that mean “failing the save = automatically losing the duel”.

Generally speaking, duels on blackstone are more explosive and people die quicker than your typical Palemaster/Shifter Monk affair with Improved Expertise and boredom, which IMO is pretty good fun. And Sorcerer still seem as overpowered as they normally do in PvP, so I wouldn’t worry about that either.

Building for PvP just requires a different build dynamic to what may normally work in NWN PvP. Surely if you’re a veteran of the game (which I’m assuming that you are), you can just adapt to that and learn what works rather than trying to change the system, right?

[Terankar]

If anything, ghe arguement should be Barbarians needs a huge buff.

[The Flying Rodent]

If anything, ghe arguement should be Barbarians needs a huge buff.

Yeah, but what weirdos play that silly class?

[Omnifarious]

Some of you actually think this is a high magic server?? That's unbelievable to me considering there's a ring that gives immunity to all magic missles + 100% electrical immunity. On top of that you can easily find gear to be completely immune to acid sheath, ice storm, fire spells, or any other elemental dmg attack. All of that and i still haven't even mentioned Immunity to mind spells, death magic, freedom, paraylze, knockdown (to stop T-clap). If you think that just because bigbys and timestop work that its a high magic server then you're sadly mistaken. Also, the game is generally more balanced out at about +4 AB/EB on weapons and +5 AC on gears. I know that's never gonna happen here but that's how the game was meant to be played. On servers that have +7 AB/EB weapons I can still manage enough AB to easily destroy any PM build so your entire argument about how AC is too high with +6 vs. +20 AB is totally wrong.

[Omnifarious]

"flying rodent" if you read my original post I already covered your entire argument here lol.

[Omnifarious]

You can literally make a level 39 rogue 1 sd on here with like 70 ab which is not really balanced considering rogues already have tons of things they can do that make up for having lower BAB. As for WM builds and AA builds which already have naturally high AB but no AB buffs gives them a supreme advantage over lower BAB builds that are supposed to use buffs to increase AB. Why even make lower BAB builds that have buffs when you get an automatic +20 AB. Also, Flying Rodent said Paladin is good for the BAB which is true in a sense but it's not better than using a ranger with bane of enemies. My argument still stands if you look above.

[Omnifarious]

Also, you know how easy it is to deal with Epic Mummy Dust summon? All you need to do is have a mage that has scribe scroll to make dismisall scrolls for UMD builds and that's the end of that. You also mentiioned something about PM being weak to bludgeoning but why does that even matter if you use a -/15 bludgeoning resist belt.

[Omnifarious]

I've also noticed that the best normal drop you can get for a weapon is +10 enhancement if you fight that boss at great chasm. That boss basically drops a useless weapon and has like 2 million hp to deal with. It took me 30-45 minutes of spamming creeping doom and rakshasah ice storm to kill it. Drop wasn't worth the time it took to kill the boss.