Strength Tweaks

[Gruesome Wolf_ns3]

I would also argue that heavy armor should be able to soak more than lesser weight armors as well. I mean come on, full plate that only soaks +6/35 and robes that can do the same?

"Oh, but it's magic...." -- OK, well there is simply more full plate material to enchant, thus it should be able to hold more of that magic.

Yeah... what he said...

Magic is nice and everything, but 1/2 inch thick steel plates should count for something too. And should be impossible for people with less than godlike strength to run around in.

And when its MAGICAL battleship plating? Wow...

From another perspective, what about weapon modifiers?

I am not really conversant with 3rd addition rules, but when dinosaurs roamed the land, PnP had the concept of weapon modifiers that were based upon the armor type you were trying to hit with your weapon.

So, a whip was irrelevant to someone in platemail, whereas a pickaxe had nice penetration.

EDIT: And Rocco's soak argument sounds reasonable to me too...

[trhyne_ns3]

I agree. Finesse equalizes brute strength. Where finesse builds have an advantage is with concealment. Sure, plated characters should have a higher AC. Don't nerf our weapons though. Boo. We dexers typically have lower hp. There's a balance there.

Want a str build to be interesting again? Bring back dev crit.

[DM_ShadowKeeper_ns3]

If you were to adjust the finesse weapons then it would more correctly reflect what a strength fighter is suppose to mean to a combat situation over a Dex fighter. Not sure it lays in the armor itself so much because Dex fighters should be hard to hit. That is their benifit. Strength fighters should do more damage.

i also think, however, that str builds shouldnt necessarily be able to do more damage. especially with the finesse feat. part of "finesse" is being able to use your weapon with a maximum efficiency, thereby finding "weaker" spots on your opponent to do similar damage to the "unguided bashing" of a str build.

I

The Finesse feat will still work just fine. The damage on WEAPONS that the finesse feat uses would be lowered. Not your abilty to use it to its maximum potential. I never said lower it's attack bonus. Therefore a Finesse fighter would still be able to use this skill to hit a mob a lot more often than a STR fighter. He simply would not do as much damage. Which makes sense.

[DM_ShadowKeeper_ns3]

I agree. Finesse equalizes brute strength. Where finesse builds have an advantage is with concealment. Sure, plated characters should have a higher AC. Don't nerf our weapons though. Boo. We dexers typically have lower hp. There's a balance there.

Want a str build to be interesting again? Bring back dev crit.

I disagree with your point on a plate wearer having a higher AC. That should never happen at all. A Dex'er should always have a higher AC.

I do agree with what some have pointed out that Plate Armor should indeed have better Soaks and maybe even better resits. That makes sense.

As far as a nerf? It's not a nerf really. It's a balancing issue in my opinion. I'm a Dex'er through and through so my suggestions affect all my melee toons in a negative way. So trust me... While it may seem painful, it's not really. If you make the finesse triton weapons do less damage, then, the weapons that pure Strength type fighters have access to will out damage us per hit. This is one thing that can be done to give the Strength fighters a reason to be a Strength fighter. Adding extra soak to their gear, or, taking soak off a robe is another very plausible thing that should be looked at as well.

The STR fighter should not get more AC and the Dexer should not lose any AC.

The Plate armor should have more soak or the robes should have less soak.

The STR fighter should have a weapon that does more damage and Dex fighter should still have the high AB's that allow him to hit more often.

If you lower the damage that finesse weapons do and lower the soak on robes or add soak to plate then I'd think it would balance the two diffrent types of builds easily.

Remember as a Dex'er we will still hit more often so we should still do about the same damage over time even if they lowered the damage on Triton Finesse Weapons. Especially when you consider the critical threat range on some of the Finesse weapons.

[paco_ns3]

The Finesse feat will still work just fine. The damage on WEAPONS that the finesse feat uses would be lowered. Not your abilty to use it to its maximum potential. I never said lower it's attack bonus. Therefore a Finesse fighter would still be able to use this skill to hit a mob a lot more often than a STR fighter. He simply would not do as much damage. Which makes sense.

oh, i wasn't taking it to mean that you were saying to lower ab or alter the finesse feat itself. i was just saying that, usually, even, or especially in real life, that finesse works just as well as "brute strength". for example - golf - swing the club as hard as you can at that stupid white ball. you'll get it to the hole at some point unquestionably. however someone who has more "finesse" with golf, and can swing easier through the correct path and hit the ball at the right spot - will experience results every bit as good, if not better at times than the previous.

i think it would be an overcorrection, in an attempt to balance the classes more appropriatly, to lower both, dmg soak ability and dmg dealing ability at the same time. maybe try a dmg soak lowering first, since thats what most of the thread agrees on so far, then judge the results at that point and decide if weapon modification would then be required.

i do agree wholeheartedly with your ac statement.

[DM_ShadowKeeper_ns3]

Yep. Maybe one first. To finally balance it however you will really need to do both.

You made a great point using the golf analogy. If the STR guy ever does get it right he hits it a lot father than the Dex'er though. Daly comes to mind. lol

The triton Strength based weapons should still do more damage than the Dex based ones. Even at that the Dex based ones will still end up doing the same or more damage than the STR as far as DPS or damage over time goes cause the Dex'er will miss a lot less and is a lot more accurate.

That in and of itself keeps the Strength and Dex based toons still doing the same damage over time for the most part.

I guess I'm looking at this from a diffrent perspective. I feel the Dex'ers are way over powered in the amount of damage they can do compared to other melee builds. The prime reason I have to level 40 STR builds parked. Not cause I'm worried about how much damage STR or Dex takes. Cause I can not kill nearly as fast with my DEX toon.

Yes they make sacrafices in hitpoints sometimes. However, if you can't hit them does soak or hitpoints even matter? You can take every last bit of soak off my robes. Won't bother me a bit. Just means I might have to drink one or two more heal pots during a fight and thats a maybe. So what huge advantage does the Dex'er really have remaining? The sick amount of damage he does cause unlike a STR fighter we can get our AB to 68 or so... meaning our crit range is better, meaning we do quite a lot more damage.

I do agree a change is needed. Let's try the soak part first and see how it works out. I like the idea of wanting to play my STR toons again.

[Dr_Fangorn_ns3]

Oh MY. Someone has brought GOLF into the forum topic somehow...now we're in trouble....

[Charon_ns3]

I would suggest increasing the soak of heavy plates instead of taking it off robes and such...just got back from Starfall with my 101 AC bard and if my soak is any lower, I would have been in some real trouble. (Unless I am mistaken and the creature weapons down there are more than +6, in which case my soak was doing absolutely nothing...)

By increasing the soak, you balance the lack of AC with the least amount of possible work for the devs...

[DM_ShadowKeeper_ns3]

I would suggest increasing the soak of heavy plates instead of taking it off robes and such...just got back from Starfall with my 101 AC bard and if my soak is any lower, I would have been in some real trouble. (Unless I am mistaken and the creature weapons down there are more than +6, in which case my soak was doing absolutely nothing...)

By increasing the soak, you balance the lack of AC with the least amount of possible work for the devs...

Good point. By the time you put a properly built Epic DR Dwarven Defender in armor with more soak it's going to be one hard DorF to kill.

[DrakhanValane_ns3]

one hard DorF to kill.

DWARF!!

[duodave_ns3]

I already have a couple of dex-based dwarfs with Epic Damage Resistance and they are extremely hard to kill.

I think improving the soak on heavy armor is a great idea. You could also buff up the attack bonus on some of the popular str based weapons, like Yudumbastage.

-dave

[duodave_ns3]

Theres another thread where someone asked about Kukris. I bring this up because how much damage a weapon does is more about its design than about its weight. A kukri, in real life, is curved so the blade makes more contact to the victim's neck or body part, thus doing more slicing damage.

Lets say you have an axe though. In real life, the mass of the axe is mostly at the end of the axe. You have to really give it a heft, and I bet if you had a waraxe you would miss quite a lot before you started to be really effective with it.

Of course, I agree that the weight of an axe alone could potentially provide a lot of damage. But then you might hit your victim with the flat of it, perhaps not doing much at all. Or maybe your axe gets stuck in the victim when you hit him really hard.

Are these things reflected in the game? Not terribly well. It's a game. It's not even a terribly good simulation of actual hand to hand combat. Are strength vs dex toons broken? Absolutely. But don't nerf dex toons damage - a well trained person could do as much damage with a light weapon as a dwarf wielding a big, bulky axe.

-d

[DM_ShadowKeeper_ns3]

Are these things reflected in the game? Not terribly well. It's a game. It's not even a terribly good simulation of actual hand to hand combat. Are strength vs dex toons broken? Absolutely. But don't nerf dex toons damage - a well trained person could do as much damage with a light weapon as a dwarf wielding a big, bulky axe.

-d

hehe. The Nerf word again. It's not a nerf I'm suggesting. It's a better (I'm going to steal your word here. lol) simulation. You are making my point for me in your post. Trust me you know my toons Duo and they are all Dex builds except for my two Level 40 Strength based fighters that are now Mules. I don't like the idea of losing my maximum damage output on my Dex'ers... but throw the Strength fighters a bone. They should do more damage when they DO hit with that big old ugly Dwarven Axe than I do with my little ole' kurki.

I know what you are saying and no one likes change. I'm not saying we nerf the Finesse weapons to NOTHING. Maybe just knock off a little of the damage they do. Seems to me that the two things that are identical on every good piece of NS gear is the Soak damage and the Tritons Weapons. So those are two good places to start.

I think everyone is to invested in their Dex builds now. I know I have 8 of them. We'd still out damage the STR fighters over time I feel based on Rocco's charts he posted in damage over time. Simply beacuse we hit more, and our critical threat range is better.

I doubt that the Dev's will even entertain the suggestions made here right now with all the other stuff they are working on. Especially considering that NWN2 is right around the corner, but, I hope if they do look at it they look at more than just the Armor Soak. Cause while it will help the STR fighters a great deal if they increase the Soak on heavy armor it's still fairly easy for a Dex'er to get around if they nerf Soak on the robes.

I promise DV I'm not a DorF hater. lol

[DM ex Machina_ns3]

i don't know that dexers are actually overpowered, if you mean the run-of-the-mill melee dexers. there's a few specialty dex builds that are phenomenal, but meh--something like ac 80-90 ab 65ish dual-wield--that's not overpowered. if it's nothing but melee, it's not even particularly useful, aside from a few places. the str builds are just underpowered. there's a couple str builds that are great (i use one to solo all my ns cloaks--but, then, i use wis, cha, or dex based toons to solo the other gear slots).

the weird thing i see about str toons is they all use stuff like [censored] swords, which makes no sense. scimi i can see--it's got the crit range of a rapier. sythe has the +5 crit on a wm. most of the other str wpns are for show and tell. with the dmg pumping out of a triton, the dmg added from str doesn't matter. i think if you wanted to even it out, just add a 0 at the end of the dmg bonus, and keep the armor as it is. the str toons pump more dmg and take as much as they always have.

[Aaron315_ns3]

I think ex-Machina might be right there. Its more to do with the str builds being a little underpowered. Note: I said a little. There is balance between both choices of builds, just not enough.

I think if you increase the soak on heavy armours you'll run into the problem of DD's walking all areas without running into pretty much any problems (lets face it they can do most anyway).

I like the idea of increasing the damage done SLIGHTLY on str based weapons. Its a fine thing though, you go too much one way and str builds will end up overpowered.