drow/duergar and darkness

[Marah Telexus]

LOL, "justifiable payback". Nice.

[Flailer]

Just as an aside, if there are any two planes that would be hostile to drow, shouldn't it be Dwarf Home, the afterlife home of the sworn enemy of the drow who have had millenia to hone their drow killing setup and the Plane of Fire, the plane of really bright things?

And, if I could make the SR that's applied unreducable, I would. At least now it's going above the 32 SR that it was capped at before. The problem with that is for PvM, not every monster is going to have mords to toss at a drow to reduce their SR.

I can try and look at putting a check into Mords to not reduce SR, but I'm predicting it'll get hairy quick (ie, how do you distinguish between a drow with a natural SR and a drow cleric with spell based SR on top of that, which *should* be affected by the Mords).

[JesterOI]

Let mords act normally. Reduce SR.
Why change mords?
If you can make the SR script do 10+lvl or 5+lvl then you should be able to make it do 5+lvl+10
Edit the SR script for drow to increase by whatever amount the spell made the SR drop by.
If it's mords have it increase the SR by 10 until the little reduced SR icon in the top right disappears.

[Death Dealer1]

i quit playing my remade drow cleric as she was affected by spell/race changes once again. i have plans to play a githzeri maybe one of these days. however i'm not a big subrace kind of person and think ecl anything sucks. getting low xp and lvling for me is tedious enough without making it worse by making myself weaker at low lvls.

[Lokey]

Darkness
Evocation, Level: Brd 2, Clr 2, Sor/Wiz 2
Components: V, M/DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Object touched
Duration: 10 min./level (D)
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

This spell causes an object to radiate shadowy illumination out to a 20-foot radius. All creatures in the area gain concealment (20% miss chance). Even creatures that can normally see in such conditions (such as with darkvision or low-light vision) have the miss chance in an area shrouded in magical darkness.

Normal lights (torches, candles, lanterns, and so forth) are incapable of brightening the area, as are light spells of lower level. Higher level light spells are not affected by darkness.
....
Darkness counters or dispels any light spell of equal or lower spell level.

Pretty weak I see it's main use as something you throw up when you're getting pounded and want to retreat.

The big problem is the Darkness engine effect essentially turns off the AI (similar to what makes HiPS overpowered--it alters the NPC's percieved object table instead of being scripted behavior). You really don't want to know how much work Flailer's done to try and make it workable, and he's done a great job considering the utter lack of tools available to work with (with Bio's AI, darkness is still I win).

[Lokey]

Oh, remember that subraces that have the Darkness ability really only cast the spell at a caster level = their hit dice.

Some back of the envelope stuff:

Maybe 20% conceal allies, 20% spell failure enemies (if they don't have UV or TrueSee?). Maybe some further bonus for friends/penalty for enemies if it's from an innate ability? Of course it could be quite a bit stronger than that and still be a nerf, but that doesn't worry me.

[Nemesis Revised]

Maybe 20% conceal allies, 20% spell failure enemies (if they don't have UV or TrueSee?). Maybe some further bonus for friends/penalty for enemies if it's from an innate ability? Of course it could be quite a bit stronger than that and still be a nerf, but that doesn't worry me.

this a possible implementation in the future? sounds good to me

[Go'f]

If changes to darkness are afoot can you use the graphic from grease, many players complain about the visual effects and lag and stuff more than any other aspect of the spell itself. I would enjoy that it looks pretty and if it lags its bellow the feet and you can still see what happens and it looks very cool. did i mention it looks cool.

I myself have been thinking for some time that direct application of the conceal effects would be easier to manage than AI tweeks which are script heavy and both suffer from and cause lag.

Alain I play Drow because of the RP aspect of the Guild... I have had drow since I joined the guild. If nothing changes I will be changing the guilds fundamental design or resigning from it.

[JesterOI]

The Mass Camoflage I've seen the Zon druids use looks pretty cool as well.

[Elagneros]

The problem now is that drow cannot go to any planar area without being blinded and SLOWED (the slow part is the killer), especially the fire plane and dwarven home plane (priests and gob shamans spamming flame strike and such). Then you have Dwarf elites (which are fighter type monsters) casting dispell on the drow darkness, and ultravision on themselves. It makes it very dificult to do anything in the planes except die. There really isnt any benifit of a drow in planar areas as they are now, they are at par with other races (perhaps that was the intention?).

So? My strongest charater is a ranger/rogue/sd plain vanilla human combo that can't sneak squat on the elemental planes (except molemen) and is only really good against the mobs in Dwarf Home. But I'm not complaining. I think it's good that the planes are set up the way they are so there are few cases where a single toon can easily dominate everything, and teamwork is needed.

[Marah Telexus]

So? My strongest charater is a ranger/rogue/sd plain vanilla human combo that can't sneak squat on the elemental planes (except molemen) and is only really good against the mobs in Dwarf Home. But I'm not complaining. I think it's good that the planes are set up the way they are so there are few cases where a single toon can easily dominate everything, and teamwork is needed.

You obviously missed the point. The point was not to cry that the planar areas are tough, they are supposed to be. The point is that even in a group a drow is extremely hindered seeing as they are constantly blinded and slowed in the planar areas. The point IS at those lvls your human build is gaining xp way faster than a drow and they are on equal footing (or some may say the drow are at a serious disadvantage) in the only real place to gain xp in epic levels.

The slow part of the blind should seriously be taken away. With a drows superior senses they would still be able to run away when blinded without being at 1/3 speed.

[JesterOI]

Ranger/Rogue/SD would be absolutely pointless if they had mass charm enabled

[Celorn]

Well... STILL, my drow is the most powerful toon I have, PvP or PvM and it does pretty well in planar zones AS-IS -- the blinding is annoying, but doesn't last very long usually, so I just buff during that brief time.

But one thing I would like to see is the SPEED SLOWDOWN GONE... If I'm blind and I want to run like a maniac, then I should be able to do it..I don't logically see how being blind makes you walk slower, if anything you should have a 5% chance of falling down if you run around while blind ;] (say, if you trip on a loose rock or brick...)

[JesterOI]

The movement slow makes sense if you're blind.
You're blind and trying to get away, so you be trying to move fast, but tripping on stuff, the ground is not level (try running while blind and see what happens when there is a step down somewhere).
I can see the movement speed decrease being in to simulate this.
That being said I don't think 50% decrease is good. Maybe 10-25%...

[Celorn]

i still disagree, give me a better argument --- In real life: can you not put on a blindfold and run or walk at the exact same speed as you can without it? As I said, a more realistic way would be to have a percent chance (hopefully low, like 1% or something?) per round that while blind, if you run, you could trip and fall down (and it would be like being KD'd) thus more realistically simulating the 'tripping on stuff'.