Other classes viable?

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Cornflower
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Other classes viable?

Post by Cornflower »

I know from my own experience how hard it is to balance a PW, but still, a suggestion:
I was thinking of making myself a new magic-user toon and was looking around for inspiration. I found a very serious lack of Pale Masters, which I personally think is kind of a cool class. I found that they have bludgeoning and divine damage vulnerability since they are somewhat undead, which is logical in some way. The thing is that the upsides of being a Pale Master are almost non-existant on BSK. The undead summonings are more or less useless, the touch ability is useless due to all the high saves on the bosses and mobs (especially on higher levels).

I think these vulnerabilities may be the reason why I almost never see any Pale Masters in game, especially not on raids or other high-level areas.

Perhaps we could remove those vulnerabilities for a while, to see if it unbalances stuff too much? The assassins and barbarians got a revival when they got some new features, so it could be worth a try?

It's more fun when there are more viable builds than the usual handful that Yunim and the others have posted.
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Re: Other classes viable?

Post by driller »

In regards to the touch attack, saves have already been lowered across the board for all mobs.

I will see about tweaking the Summon Greater Undead script, maybe changing it so the Palemaster can summon something similar to the Wizards'
Forge Golem, not as powerful of course and they would be mutually exclusive. But, the Palemaster could forge unique items that would boost the level of the summon to be equivalent to a Wizard's Forged Golem.

I have adjusted the vulnerability to 25% and 10% respectively.
Cornflower wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 4:04 am I know from my own experience how hard it is to balance a PW, but still, a suggestion:
I was thinking of making myself a new magic-user toon and was looking around for inspiration. I found a very serious lack of Pale Masters, which I personally think is kind of a cool class. I found that they have bludgeoning and divine damage vulnerability since they are somewhat undead, which is logical in some way. The thing is that the upsides of being a Pale Master are almost non-existant on BSK. The undead summonings are more or less useless, the touch ability is useless due to all the high saves on the bosses and mobs (especially on higher levels).

I think these vulnerabilities may be the reason why I almost never see any Pale Masters in game, especially not on raids or other high-level areas.

Perhaps we could remove those vulnerabilities for a while, to see if it unbalances stuff too much? The assassins and barbarians got a revival when they got some new features, so it could be worth a try?

It's more fun when there are more viable builds than the usual handful that Yunim and the others have posted.
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Re: Other classes viable?

Post by Garrett »

driller wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:47 am In regards to the touch attack, saves have already been lowered across the board for all mobs.

I will see about tweaking the Summon Greater Undead script, maybe changing it so the Palemaster can summon something similar to the Wizards'
Forge Golem, not as powerful of course and they would be mutually exclusive. But, the Palemaster could forge unique items that would boost the level of the summon to be equivalent to a Wizard's Forged Golem.

I have adjusted the vulnerability to 25% and 10% respectively.
Cornflower wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 4:04 am I know from my own experience how hard it is to balance a PW, but still, a suggestion:
I was thinking of making myself a new magic-user toon and was looking around for inspiration. I found a very serious lack of Pale Masters, which I personally think is kind of a cool class. I found that they have bludgeoning and divine damage vulnerability since they are somewhat undead, which is logical in some way. The thing is that the upsides of being a Pale Master are almost non-existant on BSK. The undead summonings are more or less useless, the touch ability is useless due to all the high saves on the bosses and mobs (especially on higher levels).

I think these vulnerabilities may be the reason why I almost never see any Pale Masters in game, especially not on raids or other high-level areas.

Perhaps we could remove those vulnerabilities for a while, to see if it unbalances stuff too much? The assassins and barbarians got a revival when they got some new features, so it could be worth a try?

It's more fun when there are more viable builds than the usual handful that Yunim and the others have posted.
Were all PM vulnerabilities adjusted?
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Re: Other classes viable?

Post by driller »

Yes.
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Re: Other classes viable?

Post by Yunim »

Pale Masters are useless for PvM since monsters can't crit players due to the difficulty level. The main reason for making a PM isn't useful on the server except for PvP, and changing the difficulty level of the server would require rebalancing everything. Improving the PM summons would help but decreasing the DV wouldn't really change anything since the few mobs that do Blu/Div/Pos damage are not designed to be tanked by casters anyway.

Will it just be the PM30 summon that gets improved or will all of the undead summons be improved?
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Re: Other classes viable?

Post by driller »

I would just change Summon Greater Undead to summon a Golem that levels with the player and can be boosted by crafting specific unique items that only work for Palemasters.
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Re: Other classes viable?

Post by Garrett »

driller wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 2:04 pm I would just change Summon Greater Undead to summon a Golem that levels with the player and can be boosted by crafting specific unique items that only work for Palemasters.
Why not a larger shadow fiend but equally strong as golem. Having two Golems in party would make things a bit confusing with space occupation. Also dear driller lich king rapier aint working :)
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Re: Other classes viable?

Post by driller »

It would be a bone golem. It works, I just need to comment out the part where it says if(Garrett) then FAIL.
Garrett wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2020 3:31 am
driller wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 2:04 pm I would just change Summon Greater Undead to summon a Golem that levels with the player and can be boosted by crafting specific unique items that only work for Palemasters.
Why not a larger shadow fiend but equally strong as golem. Having two Golems in party would make things a bit confusing with space occupation. Also dear driller lich king rapier aint working :)
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Re: Other classes viable?

Post by Cornflower »

driller wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2020 6:38 am It would be a bone golem. It works, I just need to comment out the part where it says if(Garrett) then FAIL.
*laughing hysterically*

So, any hints on the limitations or required items/levels? I was thinking of making myself a Pale Master and was wondering if there were things I needed to take into consideration before designing the build. Or, should I just be patient?
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Re: Other classes viable?

Post by driller »

It would be along the lines of a unique drop(that would not be to hard to find) plus some stones added to it in the forge.

The power will be determined by caster level, so your build would need to be spell caster based to get the most out of it.
Cornflower wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 9:47 am
driller wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2020 6:38 am It would be a bone golem. It works, I just need to comment out the part where it says if(Garrett) then FAIL.
*laughing hysterically*

So, any hints on the limitations or required items/levels? I was thinking of making myself a Pale Master and was wondering if there were things I needed to take into consideration before designing the build. Or, should I just be patient?
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Re: Other classes viable?

Post by SkyBlues87 »

Reading way back about 2 years ago you did introduce some optional classes I winder if those could be re-introduced again as an optional download I personally would be interested to try the shadow thief of a thousand faces type, sounds very interesting to me and would be a great thing for a role-playing type character...
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Re: Other classes viable?

Post by driller »

That required a hak pak. I have decided to keep BSK free of hak paks for the time being.

Regardless, I would wait anyways even if I decided to add them.

Beamdog really opened up how customizable Neverwinter is with the latest patch.

There should be a lot of cool classes coming down the pipe.
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Re: Other classes viable?

Post by Cornflower »

driller wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:15 pm It would be along the lines of a unique drop(that would not be to hard to find) plus some stones added to it in the forge.

The power will be determined by caster level, so your build would need to be spell caster based to get the most out of it.
Erm. Sorry to be so persistent, but... "Caster level"? As far as I know, the Pale Master level does not count when calculating caster level (same as RDD). That would mean:
  • Bard 39 / Pale Master 1 = Really powerful Bone Golem
    Sorcerer 10 / Pale Master 30 = Totally worthless Bone Golem
Is that really what you mean? That seems counter-productive somehow.

If you count Pale Master into the caster level, that would mean:
  • Bard 39 / Pale Master 1 = Really powerful Bone Golem
    Sorcerer 10 / Pale Master 30 = Really powerful Bone Golem
This doesn't seem logical either.

I would humbly suggest that the Bone Golem power is determined by the Pale Master levels only (since it's a Pale Master specific summon) and since you can't be higher Pale Master level than 30, maybe the formula should be PM level + 10. That would mean:
  • Bard 39 / Pale Master 1 = Totally worthless Bone Golem
    Sorcerer 10 / Pale Master 30 = Really powerful Bone Golem
This seems more in line with the original purpose, to make the Pale Master cool again.
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Re: Other classes viable?

Post by driller »

Caster Level:

The caster level of a cast spell is a measure of the power of that particular casting. For spells cast by a character, this is the character's level in the class used to cast the spell.
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Re: Other classes viable?

Post by Cornflower »

Will you let us know when it's in game?
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