Interfaction Balance Requires 2 Class Limit

Bluestar · Post by **Bluestar** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 10:11 am

It seems clear from the way the PCs have been depowered in NS4 that it is the goal of the developers to get away from the uber twink fest that NS3 is some respects has become. Fine. However, there is one area of unbalance that has been overlooked.

The area of which I speak is the granting of exclusive use of the more powerful prestige classes to single factions. Mystral Ascendancy (Pale Master) and Ancient Ones (Red Dragon Disciple) come immediately to mind. Some of the old uber combinations we all came to love (or hate) are still available under this scenario. These combinations will give some factions a clear advantage over others, and doesn't seem to be in the spirit of the new Neversummer.

The fighter/pm and paladin/rdd (these are just examples don't debate them) that were so popular in NS3 will still be createable under the current rules, and will dominate interfactional melee contests. If the idea is to get away from uber PCs, then this must be applied evenly to all factions.

Solving this dilema in principle is easy, doing so in a practical way may not be. The easiest way to solve this problem would be to require that all PCs be limited to two classes INCLUDING prestige classes. However, this would hardly be fair to those factions that have exclusive rights to one of the weaker prestige classes, or don't have exclusive rights to any prestige class.

So what I propose is necessarily a little more complicated, but it works like this:

Any PC that belongs to a faction that has exclusive use of a prestige class, and makes use of that class, is limited to two classes overall including prestige classes.

CYA later fighter/pm and paladin/rdd. I do not believe that this was the original intention of these prestige classes anyway. And continuing on the subject of what was intended, there is one other suggestion I would like to make.

The idea of taking 1 level of a class is BS. There is no way you will convince me otherwise so don't try. Am I pointing fingers? Absolutely not - I am guilty of having done this myself. That doesn't make it right, and it is clearly outside of the spirit of the game.

What I would suggest is placing a minimum number of levels requirement on any class taken. I will throw out the number 6. Meaning that if you take a class, you must take a minimum of 6 levels in that class. No more of this taking one level of monk or one level of paladin.

In closing I must state that I throughly enjoyed the uber twinking contest. I will miss it in many ways. However, it we are going to change to "spirit" of Neversummer, let's do it right. Do not interpret my suggestions as criticism - my only intention was to point out two areas that may have been overlooked.

sbarnes · Post by **sbarnes** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 10:38 am

How do you propose taking a minimum of six levels in a class? If I am a level 10 sorcerer and I want to start taking RDD levels, it's going to take a while before I meet the minimum. Sure, you could block leveling in anything else until it's up to 6, but that doesn't seem right. It would make sense to occasionally take sorcerer levels (especially if you start the RDD early on).

NS4 does restrict you to one prestige class (not what you wanted, but part of it). It also sounds like it is a challenge to pursue a prestige class (presumably more effort for better classes). Also, there is more to balance than pure character stats. We won't know until NS4 opens, but there are all kinds of things they could have done. Perhaps it'll be harder to get XP in areas where the seemingly more powerful factions are. Maybe the gear will be weaker/more expensive. Basically, we can't really complain about balance until NS4 opens and we see how things work. In fact, the devs almost certainly want things like this to come up. Once they see how players play and what kinds of balance problems exist, they can fix them. In my opinion it's better for the devs to change as little as possible before testing it on a real group of players (besides things that were obviously broken in NWN and NS3). This way they can see the effects of individual changes to the mod.

Devlin · Post by **Devlin** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 10:54 am

This is Beta so you are going to have to make new charcters at first anyway because there will most likely be wipes. taking 1 level can make sence btw. I am a person that takes 1 level of sorc or wiz just to have a familiar or pet. My rogue / assassin has a Raven that i can use to spy of people for example, i need 1 level of wizard to do it. but that is 3 classes so that prolly will not work here.

Mokihana · Post by **Mokihana** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 11:05 am

I see 2 sides to this argument that you should ponder.
1) the power gamer:
this is the person who sits and plots every aspect of his character, doing math to figure the bell curve of average damage between 1d12 and 2d6. this players fun is making that perfect tank sorc, or cleric.

2) the role player:

this is the person who derives the most fun from interacting with other players, in an alternate reality of imagination. they are the ones who say rouge pali combo is an oxymoron and should be illegal, unless you can come up with a good story as to why.

now there are many shades between the two extreames. the goal is to be fun for everyone. so limiting classes in this way would lessen the fun of the first type of player.

just something to ponder.

Billiard · Post by **Billiard** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 11:20 am

I think from an RP sense that limiting certain prestige classes to certain factions makes sense. I just hope that there are other game balancers in place to make sure these factions don't become too uber. One way to negate the advantage of PM for example is to have crit immune gear available to all classes in the form of equipment. Then there is less incentive to make funky PM builds.

Devlin · Post by **Devlin** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 12:24 pm

I am sick of seeing the 27 (warrior class) 3 bard 10 pm build.

Mokihana · Post by **Mokihana** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 12:32 pm

well pg's wont be disuaded. they will find a way no matter what you do. its in their nature to sit and add and calculate. ie: 20 monk 20 cleric builds, 10 rogue 18 pali 12 monk builds. we did it before prc's we can do it with only one prc. some players are more interested in builing a demi god then rping just the way things are.

sbarnes · Post by **sbarnes** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 12:34 pm

From an RPing standpoint, having all RDD characters in a single faction makes sense. Having them live in the territory of the dragons makes a lot of sense. I imagine this would help decrease the power gaming nature of RDD characters. Similarly, encouraging the dwarves to band together adds consistency to the game. Instead of having random races and classes, you have groups that make sense.

Billiard · Post by **Billiard** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 12:51 pm

well it may make sense from a faction and war point of view, but not an adventuring party point of view. It may be difficult given the factions for parties of different races to get together and do quests at the same time. Think of how boring it could be if everyone you partied with was just like you! Granted there will be some differences within factions, but not near as great as the differences between factions!

I think the factions make an interesting starting back story - but I am not sure how it will play out when you want to party with people from all over ala the Fellowship of the Ring!

sbarnes · Post by **sbarnes** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 1:07 pm

There are also the faction alliances and neutral factions to consider. You can work together with people who are friendly to you. You may also be able to party with people who have been outcasted from hostile factions. I'm not sure what the effects of this are, but it should be possible for this to be implemented well.

Post by **DeputyDog** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 1:09 pm

There are no rules that state you cant party with members of hostile factions. Once in a party you are no long hostile to each other until you log out. That being said, you do have to be careful when you enter a land friendly to one and hostile to another, but for going to into hostile creature territory it is great.

You all have failed to forget the implementation of Subraces into the mix. These add yet another thing for power gamers and roleplayer alike to mull over and figure out what works best. Being the lead, I have tried hundreds of class/race/prc combos so far and have found many ones that work well and alot that dont. There are alot of new unexpected ones that noone has thought of as well that I have come across.

Even combining a subrace with a standard class gets a whole new set of results.

For Instance. Kender Druid. - No Fear
Deep Gnome Druid. - Spell Resist
Drow Druid - Spell Resist

Aasimar, Pally, Sorc is insane. Elemental immunities, No fear, No Charm/Dominate- Huge stats etc. Add in some RDD and its just over the top.

--

Being that this is beta, we need to see what uber builds develop and tweak from there. I do like the idea of forcing several levels of a class to prevent only having one lvl of that class. Doing that will be the trick and doing it so its not restrictive to people doing a true multiclass char will be the goal.

Billiard · Post by **Billiard** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 3:03 pm

I wish there was some way to test out the various builds of NS4 offline. Right now I use a mod for doing that, but with the subraces it adds a dimension that is tough to capture. Same with ECL and seeing the effects of that on leveling. I guess it just means you are like 3 levels behind when it comes to experience, but its still hard to envision when you don't know how hard experience will be to come by.

Gil-Este · Post by **Gil-Este** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 3:08 pm

If anyone has read the PnP manual Tome and Blood, where the RDD and PM were first introduced, it is clear that the intent behind both those classes was an alternate means of progression of a spellcasting character and not a means of beefing up a melee character. I don't understand Bioware's reasoning (or lack thereof) in giving NWN the RDD and the PM but not many of the other prestige classes that would have balanced things out, i.e. the spellsword and the bladesinger, the duelist, and the frenzied berserker. Additionally, Bioware decided to toss the multiclass restrictions of monks and paladins right out the window, leaving power gamers free to abuse those classes. Admittedly in 3.0 far too many classes had their special abilities all piled on at 1st level, but 3.5 served to correct that for the most part (especially for paladins). Tumble was never supposed to give an AC dodge bonus (except when fighting defensively and then the bonus was only +1 or +2). In conclusion, many of the powergaming problems are a result of Bioware not really understanding the balance of real dungeons and dragons, and if we wanted to fix those problems, there are some rather excellent books available.

Pettsson · Post by **Pettsson** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 3:17 pm

I doubt that Bio didn't understand the rules, I rather think that they had to do the things they did for some rather good reasons. That it turned out wrong is another thing entirly. Some changes are not possible to make, as certain parts of classes and other functionality is hard-coded. So we're stuch with some things.

Gil-Este · Post by **Gil-Este** » Tue Apr 13, 2004 3:22 pm

bioware understood the hard and fast rules of D&D well enough to code them (more or less) but what they failed to grasp was what made each aspect of the game balanced