Pure Prestige classes

[VagaStorm]

I hate bonuses for uncreativity!

[Korr]

I like the idea of the disciplined shifter (with epic shape feats), but alot of that would go crazy. . . QUICK. Look at the 30 RDDs, thats a great example. Now imagine you dont just have 1 (and 1 time a day at the time) red dragon shape. You have an 8th level spell and below immune character with 120 discipline, or a construct, or any of those other really nice epic feat shapes with that much discipline.

30 shifter / 5 barbarian / 5 druid would be the new trend for a long time out of TC I would think.

Then you'd still have the same discipline as 30 shifter 10 druid?

Hah I think you get what I mean outa that anyway ';)

[Celorn]

I think one of the worst things NS4 has is Pure Class Bonuses. For me, the great thing about DnD is the mixing of classes. Its why this game is more enticing to me than WoW. And yet here on NS4, in the spirit of balance, you are rewarded for having less creativity. "Stay generic and get pure class bonuses."

Pure class bonuses (seeming to me) have been implemented to improve classes that were underpowered. But why shouldn't a 25 lvl barbarian gain some bonuses too. They only gain those powers if they stay pure? Each one of Pure Class Bonuses these has made building that class now pretty boring.

Take Bards now. The bump of +2 ab, ac, and saves to bard song was nice but only if a bard stayed pure. That change made every potential 30Bard, 5____ 5 ____ a lot less interesting. This resulted in a number of generic Dex based Gith Bards with basically the same starting stats, feat selection and skill set. Boring. Now I believe that Lokey has reduced that bonus. I have a pure Bard so it hurt me too but I will like the change because it doesn't quite force you to stay pure. Adding back a little of the creativity for Bards.

Same problem with Paladin, Fighter and Barbarian. Its amazing how often multiple players come up with almost the same exact build for these classes. I thought of trying a Dex/Con based 28 Barbarian 6____ 6____. Props to Nyeleni for making Lilla Thistle. It wasn't so much that the build was really awesome but it was very cool. I wanted to try something similar but the more I calculated, giving up on the pure bonuses was too big of a loss. Then once I had decided to go "pure" I was giving up other things because I was dex based. So I started a Str Based Pure Barbarian and it happens to be the only build I've given up on in more than a year. I just got bored with it.

Personally, I think the bonuses to Ranger were the best ones. They were modest bonuses. You get some nice perks at various levels and don't lose them if mix other classes in. Therefore, there are a lot of interesting Ranger builds.

I'm not asking for a rework of the existing ones. I would just prefer that new development of bonuses to classes didn't stiffle the creativity of the player.

**I'm not saying that Dex based Pure Palys and Fighters and Barbs don't exist. You can make them but the bonuses limit you. So basically, the idea says, "Let's have a bunch more generic builds." <--- I'm just not a fan.

- Glow -

Quoted to echo my main reason for leaving NS4 a year ago.

The variety of FUN builds has been decreasing every time I read the changelog, I keep wanting to come back but yet another thing I was going to build has been nerfed into uselessness.

What fun is left?? Monochromatic pure classes... Zzzz /sleep

Even wow isn't so simple you realize -- every class can build in different ways, druids and paladins can be healers, tanks or damage dealers, other classes have different ways of working alternate builds, it's actually much MORE complicated than NWN/D&D once you really look at it, and when you homogenize classes, basically frowning on anything other than pure, you make a very mundane world.

So plz stop the nerf war and bring back the game I used to love! Let people HAVE FUN with creative builds -- Why must this be a battle between players and devs/dms? When it should be a battle between players and other players and NPC mobs!

[Rufio]

Pure fighters are an atrocity.

[mining]

You can make highly unique builds easily. NS is maybe the most versatile in that respect with so many subraces and books.

[Celorn]

YES! I agree, ns4 is amazing overall, no other nwn server compares.

my point, (and many others') is that it's very frustrating when you have great builds designed, you play for a while and things are going great, then suddenly the whole reason your build works well is nerfed so that it doesn't work anymore. What do you do then? You either start a new toon from lvl1 and work with the changes, or attempt to de-level and take different feats to make up for the nerf... or try something totally new. This is great for people with nothin' but time on their hands. Pre-last wipe i had 13 level 40's, most of which were creative and worked well.

If you think the variety is great now, it used to be a lot more - working with basic concepts that were the foundation of ns4 like bardsong capping at 30 levels, there were so many nice builds you could do with just that but now those same builds are weak compared to a pure bard, or pure fighter-- that kind of kills the game for me. The increased limitations of faction class choices also crushed many builds that would have been fun to play, thus lowering the variety even more. Now mind you, this is just fine for new players because they didn't know how it was before, but people who have played here for years feel the pain.

I LOVE the way you can't see builds on the login screen list, this is the best thing to happen to NS4 ever! It stops a lot of metagaming that used to go on where people copy-cat builds, or others would watch the login list and decide which character to log in to hunt people based on known weaknesses or level ranges. I appreciate that the DEVs are working hard to attempt to balance out the PRCs, what I don't feel is needed is to nerf multiclassing to the point where you will nearly always be weaker by multiclassing - this is where nwn is fun for me, I spent MANY MANY hours fine tuning a huge number of builds only to see them fall apart with changes later on.

Shifters and PMs have always been the 2 classes hardest to balance it seems, one small change can overpower or underpower them in a heartbeat, other changes can cause a ripple-effect to a whole bunch of other non-pms or non-shifters (ie: the recent change to epic mage armor). Really, it's truly amazing how ns4 has pulled thru despite all of this and is still the best nwn server around. I have been watching things, i've seen the number of players dwindle on the other nwn servers, but ns4 stays strong - so they must be doing something right.

[Rufio]

Balancing is difficult, but I think the devs are doing great personally. like you said, shifters are very difficult to balance, but shifters are great now, one of my favorite parts of the server. There are so many build options with them, i just think most people don't know what to do with them when they build shifters, it's all about finding 1 form and maximizing it. There are very few forms that are unplayable, (I have this really fun looking harpy barbarian that I'm sure I'll never build just because I don't have enough time to do them all) but nothing is really overpowered (though there are a couple of abilities on some lesser used forms that could use some scaling back that no one has exploited yet.)

[Daral0085]

From what I understand, the reason for pure-class bonuses is to reduce the testing matrix and ultimately to reduce the amount of work the devs need to do to ensure balance. Think about it: much of the complaint in this thread is about how there are fewer and fewer viable multi-class builds. However, if you're in a situation with very limited dev resources, that makes perfect sense, as reducing the number of builds reduces the amount of testing work the devs need to do to ensure balance with every change they make.

Think about it this way. Suppose the devs take every class and make it 30% weaker (to invent a wholly fictitious number). 30% less AC, AB, whatever. Then they add a 40% pure class bonus. This means that every multi-class build is taking a 30% nerf, or even more if you consider the nerfs over multiple classes, but a pure class build is still going to be slightly stronger than before. Ultimately, the number of multiclass builds is (number of classes)^3, if you discount various alignment/faction/PrC/whatever restrictions, there are going to be somewhere around 8000 triple class builds. If you include the restrictions, it probably drops to around 700-1000 builds, which is still pretty bad. That's completely untestable with 2 devs. If you nerf all triple class builds and strengthen single class builds, they only really need to test 9 pure class builds, and can be fairly confident that multi-class builds will not be seriously overpowered (they will certainly still test multiclass builds, but this nerf + pure class bonus design really helps to bound their power).

So at the end of the day, while it would be nice for the devs to come up with some miraculous way to balance 1500 triple class builds, ultimately with resource constraints being what they are, pure class bonuses make a lot of sense. It's all about making pure classes stronger with respect to multiclass builds, which helps to preserve balance.

Also, remember that factional restrictions make balancing MUCH more difficult, because a particular overpowered build will only be available to some factions and not others, resulting not just in build imbalance, but factional imbalance. For examples of this, see RDD, PM, or Shifter at various times in the past, some people would say even still these classes are imbalanced, and I'm sure there are plenty of more examples I don't know about.

[Ryddwillow]

YES! I agree, ns4 is amazing overall, no other nwn server compares.

my point, (and many others') is that it's very frustrating when you have great builds designed, you play for a while and things are going great, then suddenly the whole reason your build works well is nerfed so that it doesn't work anymore. What do you do then? You either start a new toon from lvl1 and work with the changes, or attempt to de-level and take different feats to make up for the nerf... or try something totally new. This is great for people with nothin' but time on their hands. Pre-last wipe i had 13 level 40's, most of which were creative and worked well.

If you think the variety is great now, it used to be a lot more - working with basic concepts that were the foundation of ns4 like bardsong capping at 30 levels, there were so many nice builds you could do with just that but now those same builds are weak compared to a pure bard, or pure fighter-- that kind of kills the game for me. The increased limitations of faction class choices also crushed many builds that would have been fun to play, thus lowering the variety even more. Now mind you, this is just fine for new players because they didn't know how it was before, but people who have played here for years feel the pain.

I LOVE the way you can't see builds on the login screen list, this is the best thing to happen to NS4 ever! It stops a lot of metagaming that used to go on where people copy-cat builds, or others would watch the login list and decide which character to log in to hunt people based on known weaknesses or level ranges. I appreciate that the DEVs are working hard to attempt to balance out the PRCs, what I don't feel is needed is to nerf multiclassing to the point where you will nearly always be weaker by multiclassing - this is where nwn is fun for me, I spent MANY MANY hours fine tuning a huge number of builds only to see them fall apart with changes later on.

Shifters and PMs have always been the 2 classes hardest to balance it seems, one small change can overpower or underpower them in a heartbeat, other changes can cause a ripple-effect to a whole bunch of other non-pms or non-shifters (ie: the recent change to epic mage armor). Really, it's truly amazing how ns4 has pulled thru despite all of this and is still the best nwn server around. I have been watching things, i've seen the number of players dwindle on the other nwn servers, but ns4 stays strong - so they must be doing something right.

I have to agree with Celorn here in many ways here but the shifters from before and the pm's from before were no problems to defeat. I have played many a factions as SL, and AO and could defeat both in like fashion. I have to agree that ac of a shifter(90 plus) is a bit high but could be defeated by me. PM's are easy to defeat with a mage of some sort. We as Slaves fought IO with thier PM's and other toons and beat them and you as players having trouble now in beating them in which you cry to a DM? Come on, Belly up and get a beer and rethink about what you build.

Every faction should have a true seeing toon or non for relic raiding etc. period. make it fair for all if you want balance

pure classes I had no problem here. Some needed some HUGS like 3 kd tokens per rest, nice idea but abused.

[Amoenotep]

in the hayday my shifter had 112ac and my pm was hitting 105.

explain to me how you kill it when you can't hit it.

pm btw was str based Hogre....which means much better builds were viable.

[Nyeleni]

He means mages of course. I personally don't think pure characters have limited the building in general. In the contrary they added some spice. The only limit you encounter now a days is the faction imposed one and maybe harper, although you can do some nice stuff with it .

[mining]

From what I understand, the reason for pure-class bonuses is to reduce the testing matrix and ultimately to reduce the amount of work the devs need to do to ensure balance. Think about it: much of the complaint in this thread is about how there are fewer and fewer viable multi-class builds. However, if you're in a situation with very limited dev resources, that makes perfect sense, as reducing the number of builds reduces the amount of testing work the devs need to do to ensure balance with every change they make.

Think about it this way. Suppose the devs take every class and make it 30% weaker (to invent a wholly fictitious number). 30% less AC, AB, whatever. Then they add a 40% pure class bonus. This means that every multi-class build is taking a 30% nerf, or even more if you consider the nerfs over multiple classes, but a pure class build is still going to be slightly stronger than before. Ultimately, the number of multiclass builds is (number of classes)^3, if you discount various alignment/faction/PrC/whatever restrictions, there are going to be somewhere around 8000 triple class builds. If you include the restrictions, it probably drops to around 700-1000 builds, which is still pretty bad. That's completely untestable with 2 devs. If you nerf all triple class builds and strengthen single class builds, they only really need to test 9 pure class builds, and can be fairly confident that multi-class builds will not be seriously overpowered (they will certainly still test multiclass builds, but this nerf + pure class bonus design really helps to bound their power).

So at the end of the day, while it would be nice for the devs to come up with some miraculous way to balance 1500 triple class builds, ultimately with resource constraints being what they are, pure class bonuses make a lot of sense. It's all about making pure classes stronger with respect to multiclass builds, which helps to preserve balance.

Also, remember that factional restrictions make balancing MUCH more difficult, because a particular overpowered build will only be available to some factions and not others, resulting not just in build imbalance, but factional imbalance. For examples of this, see RDD, PM, or Shifter at various times in the past, some people would say even still these classes are imbalanced, and I'm sure there are plenty of more examples I don't know about.

I would agree with this, but pure class builds are there to make MORE builds viable, rather than less.
Viable doesn't mean beating the Crap out of everything else, it means not walking outside in a shitstorm and dying.

[Ryddwillow]

Offline
Lord DM Supreme
User avatar

Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2006 3:09 pm
Posts: 3438
Location: in the mists of eternity
in the hayday my shifter had 112ac and my pm was hitting 105.

explain to me how you kill it when you can't hit it.

pm btw was str based Hogre....which means much better builds were viable.

A shifter wow you sucked mostly at builds the best you got was the pm and now everyone makes it better then you. Back it up with true facts, I have witnesses on my shifter, ask linux he saw it and made special npcs to pk me and red. Wow she is a brick house, wow she is a brick house, do you really want to go with me on builds?

[Ryddwillow]

Should ask the Saint of Cuhtbert and see where your friends lie. see who will pick you up and brush you off, wait -- me

[Amoenotep]

the last round of linux's shifter nerfs were because of my builds. in fact, it took him a week to find out how i exploited his scripting.

st cuthbert knows the pm builds i make and i know his...in a trip to HoD 3 cookie cutter builds of his died fast and mine was the only one left standing, but its ok...i'm not a good builder