Terrible Woes Of Playing A Fighter On Sigil

[*Strawberry Jam]

I think you're right about thief but only conceptually. It requires the dm or mod builder to take extra care to make the unique thief toys have a purpose. But people will say that rogue in 3.5 is the class to pick for acid test. If a rogue can beat it, then anyone can.

For 3.5 they make fighter very unique because they get so many feats. It means they can take general feats instead of just combat feats. I took fey heritage because I knew I will have almost 30 feats by maximum level, so I have more room for customization than any other class.

Heavy armor optimization and greater optimization, wow! I don't remember those, but now you can increase armor before you're epic too, neat. =)

[*Plaxy100]

Fighter is strong expecially in the beginning throw a little umd or and they can do the job. why people say fighter is week is not when your level 10-12 infact take any class and give him what you normally a fighter style build and he'll smash through content easily in the early levels.

if your geared in +4 stuff your geared for mid levels you should have an AC of 40 my vampire who has 2 levels of fighter and 10 vamp at level 12 has an ac of 40 and is in mostly +2 gear. your gonna find though your AC kinda caps out here about 50 + alittle more is where Plate wearers cap out in ac. at 50 Handling they abyss shouldn't be too much an issue but its still hard to survive in places like Nilfhelm where your ac doesn't matter no more you need Evasive abilities like Mirror Image, or Kill at range before they can smack you for 200 damage in around. yah one mob now imagine 3 or 4 mobs doing that and swell even barbarian hp not gonna be enough. you'll need significant amount of damage mitigation and evasive abilities to not be quickly mauled.


What most realize when building a Mellee style build. is that about 12 fighter is where they peak in usefulness. thats taking full build into consideration. after that point your not gaining much by taking more fighter. Yes I understand Joe Average. and Joe Average is basically really accurate and hits kinda well. But he could do all that with 12 fighter, 8 bard 10 RDD and have Mirror Image, Concealment, with his song up he's pretty much just as accurate. but has a shit load more survivabiltiy.

12fighter, 8 cleric 10 stormlord will make a full of him out there doing far more damage and once again filled with a ton of things that make him nearly impossible for mobs to kill.

Basically Yes Fighter is Good and the class has its purpose... but being just a fighter well thats gimping yourself in the long run. Think of fighter as a support for your build. it can make it stronger and more accurate, but byitself after awhile it becomes Meh.

[*Strawberry Jam]

You can see here the Obsidian design decisions, they were quite smug about it, just compare.

http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Harm

vs the improvement

http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Harm

[*Tomekk]

Wow, its not another instant death sentence spell... what a shame. :rolleyes:

[*Strawberry Jam]

+continue+
Structurally, casters don't need any particular change, my idea (which I think is correct, in theory) is that the only things that need readjusting are mainly the spells and maybe some few other magical abilities.

Yes, that's everything for casters. There are monsters with very high saves, which means most spells are useless, but yes they should be weaker, because even having no effect and wasting 6 seconds is too powerful.

Other spells without saves should be brought down in damage die. 20d6 is far too powerful for a spells you can cast in 6 seconds but still has to deal with spell resistance. Especially if an epic melee character can only about 4d6+5 base damage, up to 7 to 18 times in 6 seconds.

[*Mr_Otyugh]

Only offensive spells need help on casters, their buffs are already just about as powerful, if not more powerful than they need to/can be... but then this isn't really a topic for it. Even if the premise has been quite clear from the get go "oh look how well the fighters have it, my caster couldn't get this" well no, but there's a lot of things the casters have that the fighter couldn't get.

Nobody's arguing that fighters should have all the spells, because they're not casters. The whole point of the thread that started this was to give them options, and it's already clear by everyone agreeing that fighter is boring. So there, they need options and not power, and now we're all in agreement. :P

Also lets remember how the DnD casters vs non-casters is. :P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw mostly because things are getting silly and serious.

As far as I can see there's two camps. PnP players and computer game players. And let me assure you, NWN2 is not a PnP experience, but it is very much a computer game experience.

[*Godolia il Magus]

Which is...basically "everything" for casters...

I didn't say "every spell" but "mainly the spells". If some spells get rebalanced casters will be meaningful, although not overpowered as they are now. :D

is the cost of all those volunteer man hours truly worth the actual benefit?

If you want an enjoyable server where everyone can pick whatever class picks their interest, without mixing it every time with a caster-like class (I call this stuff: "Uncle Tony's improbable mixtures"), yes. It's worth the benefit, and compared to the detriment coming from not doing it, it is not burdensome. :)

My argument is particularly effective since we're in a roleplay oriented persistent world. If it was an arena server, I wouldn't have been writing all the thoughts I believed were useful. Even if an arena server can be more strict about balancing, :P my ideas were inspired by focusing on teamwork and group role-play, rather than on the "single-player grinding" that a person can choose to do on her own.

[*rapsam2003]

Which is...basically "everything" for casters...

I didn't say "every spell" but "mainly the spells". If some spells get rebalanced casters will be meaningful, although not overpowered as they are now.

is the cost of all those volunteer man hours truly worth the actual benefit?

If you want an enjoyable server where everyone can pick whatever class picks their interest, without mixing it every time with a caster-like class (I call this stuff: "Uncle Tony's improbable mixtures"), yes. It's worth the benefit, and compared to the detriment coming from not doing it, it is not burdensome.

I don't think that casters need rebalancing, as I said. If you want meaningful choices, then you make fighters more unique. You give fighters feats that are fighter specific and fill the lack of variety and power that they have in comparison to non-casters.

You don't rework every damn spell on the whole server, to bring it into line with some notion of PnP balance or something. Consider the example that Strawberry Jam gave:

20d6 is far too powerful for a spells you can cast in 6 seconds but still has to deal with spell resistance. Especially if an epic melee character can only about 4d6+5 base damage, up to 7 to 18 times in 6 seconds.

Do you realize that the max damage a 20d6 spell can do in 6 seconds is 180? By contrast, a fighter who only has 7 attacks per round will do 203 max damage. (It's simple math.) And the gap between that widens even further if a fighter has more than 7 attacks. The balance there is that casters have more utility, and that the fighter may miss some attacks.



As I said, you won't fix the core issue by debuffing other classes. You fix the core issue of "fighters being boring and/or slightly underpowered" by giving them options, by giving them fighter specific feats/abilities, by making it such that there is an actual benefit to being a pureclass fighter. Players should feel as if it's fun to play a fighter who is planned to become a weapons master or a stalwart defender (or maybe even a blackguard) in the long run, without requiring a few caster levels to have fun. To do that, you don't make casters weaker. You add more options to fighters. Even you made casters weaker, then you won't have made fighters more fun.

[*Strawberry Jam]

I think sometimes people don't play the game if they think beating a save of 30-40 is ever easy. Yes they get buffs, without them they would be toast so fast your irl fire alarm would go off. They don't get class features that make them survive by default, they're weak as heck and most are feat starved.

A gish is a different story, not a real caster, they're actually fighters that just uses magic to boost their physical abilities and protections. NWN2 does lots of neat things formelee people, it's not all doom and gloom. If you can get regen it's not half bad.

Invest in the skill spellcraft even cross classed. Each 5 ranks is +1 to your saves, bonus! :lol:

[*rapsam2003]

A gish is a different story, not a real caster, they're actually fighters that just uses magic to boost their physical abilities and protections. NWN2 does lots of neat things formelee people, it's not all doom and gloom. If you can get regen it's not half bad.

A Gish is also generally at a disadvantage because of the fact that they have to spread their stats more. Consider the ranger/warlock build I started. I wanted the ability to be damaging in melee (Two-weapon Fighting), have a bit more toughness than a normal warlock, and actually be able to hit things as a "melee caster". Granted, warlocks aren't as weak as wizards or sorcerers either.
However, to make this build viable, I have to spread my stats across 2 main stats, as opposed to just 1. It's a fact that my character's base strength will be lower than a pure melee ranger, and my character's base charisma will be lower than a pure warlock. I also took 16 dexterity, so that I can have Two-Weapon Fighting and more base AC. Yes, I will have invocations like Leaps and Bounds and Walk Unseen and so on. But I have a wider stat spread, which limits my power.