So... class balancing? Love for unused classes?

[mantis3]

Hey guys I think I've brought this in the past but this current DM staff seems a lot more receptive to change so I'll suggest it again.

Would anyone like to see some (scripted) love for unused classes? This would include:

Barbarian
harper scout
blackguard
dwarven defender
PDK

Example on how to buff Barbarian class:
-Barbarian rage receives +2 AB and +1d6 damage
-Stat bonus is adjusted to +2 STR and +2 CON (from +4/+4)
-Duration adjusted to 3 rounds + (1 round per Barb lvl divided by 2) + CON modifier
-Negative AC penalty removed
-Greater rage (15th Barb lvl) increases the AB and damage bonus to +4 AB and +2d6 damage, stat bonus is adjusted to +4 STR and +4 CON (from +6/+6)
-Mighty rage (21st level Barb+) adds +6 AB and 80 temporary HP

I don't know if the -2 AC penalty should be removed or not, but if it does stay then they would probably need a bigger dmg boost IMO.

Harper scout buffs could be tied to the potions they create, blackguard buffs tied to their bull's strength spell they can self-cast...I can throw out a lot more ideas if ppl are interested.

[Azelle]

Blackguard isn't common, but it is good for bards that want to use divine might/shield without being a channeler. My old charisma based arcane archer on TGS ended up using it and it worked out pretty well.

Dwarven Defender is probably underused because dwarf. But from what I saw, Roran ended up putting it to good use.

The others...yeah. They're probably deserving of something.

I'd also like to add a suggestion that assassin be added. Due to the int based DC of death attack, and the fact that you're not allowed to use their spells iC (With many enemies having permanent true sight anyway), they seem to be worse than rogues in almost every way unless you go with some weird int based build who can't hit anything.

I'm voting for yes, but I think that there needs to be a difference drawn between underused because it's broken in its NWN implementation (Barbarian), underused because it's awful (Harper Scout), and underused because of some other reason (Blackguard is most likely underused because of the alignment rather than because it's genuinely awful.)

[mantis3]

I'll agree with assassins.

As for Blackguards, they're just used for access to divine shield and for the save buff... so if we made the AB bonus on bull's strength kick in at say, level 6... and then increase at levels 10, 13, 16, etc.

[DeathProphet]

Also if you could rework druid spells a bit.

[Azelle]

Druid spells are fine. Their only real major issues were lack of haste, which is on greater magic fang now. They have a decent defense with access to premonition (Which requires a +20 weapon to penetrate here), and their offense is excellent, with access to empowered firestorm (The most powerful direct damage spell) against fire vulnerable foes, and earthquake (The best coverage spell) for those with immunities to flames.

The have finger of death for single target removal, and some of the best attribute buffs in the game (Though those suffer for the same reason that barbarian's rage does).

They also have the talent of healing, which can be helpful in RP, and an animal companion which, can also be used for RP situations (i.e. tracking).

The only real change to their spells that might be warranted is the old TGS change where awaken became an other only haste.

What would be interesting would be to give their shapeshifting the Tenser's Treatment, and have it act as a combat buff of some sort with 100% spell failure instead of a straight polymorph. Offensively, and defensively, their spell list is good, but their shapeshifting is kind of polarising in that all the shapes are awful except dragon shape, and that shape is
1) Weird to RP
2) Too big to fit through doors
3) Ridiculously overpowering on the defensive side

Giving their shapes that treatment would give a reason to use the non-dragon shapes, fit better iC, and remove the defensive abuse potential of druid/monks who end up with over 100AC since they would no longer be getting the huge bonuses to AC while being considered to be using no equipment.

As an offensive caster they're perfectly comparable to the other classes, and healing wise are similar to clerics. They do however lack the same ability to switch to melee that the other classes have though (divine power, tenser's transformation, etc.)

[Deleted]

Happy to hear any balanced suggestions, but I don't know much of this side of things so I don't have anything more to say at the moment other than it'd be nice to have more class possibility and variation around.

[DeathProphet]

Oh can we get some shifter love? Most of the forms are highly outdate and useless compared to gear/spells and the high magic on the server. On antiworld (pvp server) They made it so that stat bonuses correlated to the shaped forms. =) I love being a shifter as I allows for a wide varity of RP. I know it would just be mirror wewaves and certain ones would get you killed, but pretty please

[mantis3]

Jan 24, 2014 14:16:26 GMT -5 @flame said:

Happy to hear any balanced suggestions, but I don't know much of this side of things so I don't have anything more to say at the moment other than it'd be nice to have more class possibility and variation around.

When I'm feeling more motivated (Sunday possibly) I'll do a writeup comparing the stats of current popular melee builds (dex and str WM) with potential buffs we could do to Blackguard and Barbarian.

[Necro-367]

I'd like to see Dwarven Defender get a buff. I'm interested to play one, as it'd be fun to play a walking brick wall, but with the DMG output from the many Blademasters we have, it's irrelevant.

[Aurell]

This is what I feel with shifter

I can't really see them justified in anyway to RP, sure, if you can actually find
a way to rp that, all good, but I just can't find a way to do it, sorry, I've always
felt it's a class that should be banned, with dragon form

[kaito]

It's possible to remove the appearance changes when shifting. That would reduce most of the RP awkwardness that comes with the class.

[Necro-367]

Maybe no remove, but at least modify? Instead of a gigantic Dragon, or Undead Lich, have something more Lore friendly.

[Aurell]

there really isn't much lore friendly appearances, but yes, I could see otherwise

[kaito]

Jan 25, 2014 13:54:08 GMT -5 Necro-367 said:

Maybe no remove, but at least modify? Instead of a gigantic Dragon, or Undead Lich, have something more Lore friendly.

Mirror weaves shouldn't make anyone better at fighting or anything similar. Then again no weave should be able to do that, but most of the in game buffs already do so its not a far stretch of imagination. There's no plan to change that as far as I know, so with that in mind I'll try to address this.

Lore friendly would be tricky, 90% of the supernatural creatures in WoT are creations of the shadow. The other 10% are not even close to common knowledge (the Finn) or are entirely unknown to most (like the Nym). Which leaves non-supernatural creatures like animals.  The only animals that specialize in combat in the series are the seanchan trained ones.  Those particular animals are not well known outside of the Seanchan, nor should they be. The easiest solution by far in my opinion is just to remove appearance change entirely, or just have them take the form of another type of human or humanoid (Ogier I guess, maybe Heroes of the Horn?). Taking the form of shadowspawn doesn't sound like a good feature to add for non-darkfriends, in my opinion.

Additionally some of the form traits don't make much sense in our setting.  Mainly Raksha form, which provides immunity to level 1-8 spells and exclusively cast ice storm for damage for example.  Most of the others can be written off as minor weave tricks and combat enhancements.

[Azelle]

I remember Hopea giving an iC explaination for how Tenser's worked on his recruit from an iC perspective.

Basically, the idea was that in the heat of combat, he would stare so deeply into the void that he ended up losing sight of Saidin altogether, focusing on only the flame and the void and pushing himself further than he otherwise could in combat, but losing his ability to channel (cast)

Not technically a weave, but it's a state of mind that could explain it.

Alternatively, instead of being a weave that makes them better at combat, it could be an effect that makes others worse at it. Like, say, thickening the air around the opponent so that they can't dodge as effectively.