Balance for any game module might be difficult actually. Any module that is UBER like BadLands (that's a lot of modules) has balance issues. To add to the problem is Sub-Races and going over level 40.
What probably slips past our attention is how and what NeverWinter Nights was built for. NWN was not designed for multi-player, persistent worlds such as BadLands. NWN was originally designed to be the self-standing game campaign that came on the CD. Work for Arebeth and Lord Nasher and save the Realm. Everything was built to support that cause. Nothing else was included or considered. There was no extra Tilesets, Items, Scripting Functions or anything.
The Game included some On-Line Tools so a few buddies could hook up and play with each other. Me and my brother did just that. I had an extra computer that I used as Game Server and we played the NWN game every Tuesday and Thursday night from 8 to 11. We started at 8 pm when his baby boy went to bed and stopped at 11 no matter what. We both had to get up in the AM for work. I would save the game and we would continue as if we had never stopped.
NWN was built with the ADD 3rd Rule Set. To many players log in and proceed to tell me it's all wrong and I am too stupid because nothing matches the book they bought in a store. Bioware did a excellent job at getting the ADD 3rd Rules implemented. On the rare occasion they could not, they did include notes to us builders as to where and why. BadLands is it's own Realm and therefor does not need to follow ANY set of rules nor make since based on what another Realm did.
It is my belief NWN is best balanced in the lower levels and while using blank weapons and armor. I'm not convinced that over level 20 is really balance well. At level 20, while using blank weapons and armor, is probably the closest you will get to real balance. After level 20, you start in with Epic stuff like Epic Mage Armor that put things out of balance.
When I added the DAR II Sub-Race Engine, that really put everything out of perspective, and I will tell you why. The engine I downloaded and installed included a lot of pre-made subraces. Being new to this sort of thing, I assumed that they were balanced and well built. Later when I started to realize some of the balance issues it was too late.
Most of the Subs were being given double stats. That is that a Dwarf gets a +2 Con boost added to its starting roll. Normal, expected. The Dwarven subraces all get an extra +2 Con boost for a total of +4. The Arctic Dwarf in most Realms does not get a +4 Con boost. This is true for all the subraces in BadLands. When I tried to change this and lower it to what might be a better balance, it was too late. BadLands had to many regular players and they all told me what they thought. "Put it back or we will leave." So I put it back and looked for another way to balance BadLands.
Going over Level 40 added to this un-balance some, but mostly in regards to monsters and Bosses, not to Player vs Player. All Characters over 40 get a list of skills and feats that's well suited for the controlling class. The players choices are the deciding factor here, as it should be.
ECL was one of my ways to help balance things. Not very effective, but in the book and better than nothing. And pretty much "by the book" actually.
One of the problems with being an UBER Server is that we hit the Bioware Caps, or the limits of the Game Engine. AC boost to any one type is capped at 20. Attributes (Str, Con...) can't be magically enhanced past +12. In BadLands, you can max out you gear at level 21 (you only need 3 mill gold). This will buy +12 in almost every area preventing spells like Bull Strength from working. Most of these limits effect everyone equally so I have not addressed it.
I built the UBER Barbarian System as a way around this limit. Let's face it, a Barbarian that can't rage is useless and without the +12 gear that everybody else has is pointless. This starts new problems. Most of which is that it can be confusing. Part is that "The Honor System" is needed here. Some of which is that I have not yet addressed some "bugs" that I missed in my build/test.
Deep in the hard-coded part of the game-engine, if your Saves get to 125, the counter will roll-over and go negative. OUCH! I think skills will roll-over at 255. A player can rise to 255 in Attributes like Strength before a roll-over, but Monsters hit a different limit.
Bruce, the Brass Dragon is a good example of this limit. In the editor, I can set his strength to 125, but in game play, it's dropped to 100. I can dress Bruce up with +12 gear like a player for 112 str. But I can't get beyond 112 Strength for a monster. I could increase a monsters AB by adding Weapon Master Levels. I can add 60 real WM levels to a monster for a wad of AB. But, a Real Dragon like Bruce does not use a weapon that is recognised in the WM list. Fortunately, Bruce is plenty tough as he is, but, building past Bruce will prove difficult.
Changing the Weapon Elements in the Upgrade Shops proved to be a very effective way to help balance things. Big weapons do BIG damage and small weapons rely on speed and Dexterity to do more hits with each hit being a small chip.
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Balance in Badlands has always been always a hard task to accomplish.
The best thing you did was to remove the stacking damage shields and nerf the monk/racial SR.
Before that, it was too damn hard to bash a mage without dying fast from acid and/or fire. Unless you were a mage as well, you had to stay far away..
Likewise, no mage, even exalted ones could touch a monk. The typical gith monk20 had class SR30 + 45 racial = 75.
It did left open the possibility of creating an anti mage build with monk and wizard levels.. build that could easily tear apart most mages without SR..
Anyways, damage shields don't stack anymore. And monk SR doesn't get higher than 60 without feats.
People critize the double stat subs like stone dwarf and deep orc but even after the changes mentioned in the beginning, str based bashers were always weak compared to most dexers and mages.
These two specific subs and hopefully one halfling, one gnome and one elf in the near future will have similar stat increases.
Stone dwarf and the upcoming blindsighted subs were made to even it out. Deep Orc was the only one with doubled stats and blindisght feat (Orklings don't count, due to their many stat decreases, including dex).
There are plenty of stuff to be added to improve game experience but so far, I think the Badlands RPG staff (not including Ledak.. lol?) have done a great job.
I agree with you completely about DND being designed for Levels 1-20 and everything else being an after thought. In BL it’s pretty easy to see what’s ‘unbalanced’. Just look for many people doing the exact same thing. Gith Monks were a great example of this. For a while they dominated. Now there are other viable build options that can be just as good, and not be “Novelty Builds”. The problem is that now you have 10 players with hundreds of hours into their untouchable magekiller builds and they’re pissed when you nerf ‘em. So rather than take Gith Down another notch you add goodies for the Melee builds. Everybody wins! (except mages, but they’ll do okay until everyone get’s SR) Oh, and the mobs loose also.
This gets into the next problem that Q brought up: power creep. Gith monks are better than any of the possible melee builds so we get deep orks and whisplings, Eventually every build starts with +4 to their critical stat, +2 to another useful stat. And at level 11 they get an AC of 50. At level 21 they get +12 to everything and by level 40 they’re twinked to the max because the penalties to the dump stats don’t really matter. Than you need to up the bosses to keep it interesting for the experienced players. I’ll be honest, back before the old server crash I didn’t hit the drow until I was in my 20’s. Now I’m fine there at level 16 or so.
Mostly everyone farms for 800 exp and by the mid 30’s the complaint is that they don’t spawn fast enough.
So what’s the answer? Personally I love BL and the only change I’d make would be to give rogues more to do. (Melee based rogues will never match up to monks) But as far as balance goes I’d do the following
1. Rebuild the subraces with more consistency and variety.
2. Add in more penalties to the better subraces. I’d say that if you get a point you loose a point. If you get a good point (say str +2 and loose a crappy point Say Chr-2) You get an ECL penalty.
But that’s pretty much what you’ve got now. So just keep doing what you’re doing and I’ll be happy.
""So just keep doing what you’re doing and I’ll be happy.""
Dude! Nobody cares if YOU'RE happy, Garble. LOL
This topic came up back in October:
(http://badlandsrpg.blogspot.com/2008/10/love-and-balance.html), but I think it's always a good topic for discussion. As I mentioned back in Oct, and as Q points out, NwN was designed as a "solo" game. Had Bioware been able to predict that there are thousands of game/module builders out there with plenty of time on their hands, they might have worked more balance in so as to accommodate multiplayer and PvP gaming.
BL (and other high-magic servers) have the hard time of balancing the scales. The analogy I think of in terms of game balance is a wood plank on a flat pivot point- the shorter the plank, the easier to balance. Now start lengthening the plank (subraces) and putting weights on the extreme ends (SR, +12 stats, etc.) and it becomes extremely difficult to balance. One small weight on one end of the plank will cause it tip that direction. So the solution is to keep adding weights on both ends so quickly that the plank "teeters" back and forth without crashing.
That being said, Q et al. have done a great job on their "teeter-totter". This is the BEST high magic server I've come across, with tons of incredible custom content. Sometimes we, as players, get greedy even when we know deep down that something is way out of balance (for example, think of all the people crying when gith dex went from +6 to +4).
Frankly, making things less powerful seems a better strategy to accomplish balance than to simply increase other subrace stats to keep up (think if gith dex was left at +6, but other subs were given +6 to "balance" it out).
One thing that is rarely mentioned in game balance is the saving throw boosts. With the +15 from rings and ammie and +6 to Wis/Con/Dex, you get +21 to each save minimum. Essentially, the only time you fail a save is when you roll a "1". The "saves" issue causes a lot of problems in itself: First, it makes LOTS of mage and cleric spells useless for PvP (this becomes more of a problem in legendary levels as saves continue to increase but caster level does not (probably my biggest problem with the HGLL system)). Second, it makes CoT pretty much useless. In low and mid-magic servers, CoT is a great class, as is Rogue/assassin yet you don't see many CoTs running around and people who build rogues get up in the teens and realize the difficulty leveling a rogue then go back to the dozo resort and whip up a new toon.
Jim and Garble, as always, with interesting thoughts but I think what we should see here is that...
Frankly, making things less powerful seems a better strategy to accomplish balance than to simply increase other subrace stats to keep up (think if gith dex was left at +6, but other subs were given +6 to "balance" it out).
.. simply can't be done today. If Q were to nerf something like a subrace's stat, no more saves on rings and amulets, gauntlets of ogre power, nymph cloak instead of generic gear with +12 in every stat.. we would get so much grief, think about it..
You change suff now and ppl who already have old versions would still be running around and new players would whine about it. Nerfed gear would be easily avoided simply by transferring your stuff from one char to another.
So unless we have these drastic changes after a complete HD format, it just wouldn't work well enough..
Should we do it???
I don't have any intentions on "wiping" the server vault. I think we have done a good job at finding a balance.
Deimonos suggested to me to add a "discipline" check to certain spells like "Bigby's Grappling Hand". Did I spell that right? As it stands now, there is no defense against it. Most well-built fighter has good discipline and that would be a good defense and would help with the balance.
When I added saves to the Amulet, it seemed to me that it would not upset the balance, but, would offer more choices. Later, it proved to be "saves" is usually better than extra attributes. So what is my Fighter/WM/Monk can't buy Charisma. She can still buy all the important stuff and +15 to all saves.
My single biggest complaint against NWN2 is that they did not set it up for online, multi-player, persistent worlds. My old server could not handle hosting NWN2 so I spend $1500 on a server that could handle NWN2. Later, when I started working with NWN2, I found out what it's limitations really are and gave up. So did a lot of others.
But we got a nice server out of it.
Just saying that I think you can't balance things today by nerfing stuff. Not at this point and not without getting a whole lot of grief about it. Especially pvp related whinge.
Deimonos suggested to me to add a "discipline" check to certain spells like "Bigby's Grappling Hand". Did I spell that right? As it stands now, there is no defense against it. Most well-built fighter has good discipline and that would be a good defense and would help with the balance.
Indeed. But I was actually referring to Bigby's Forceful Hand.
As it is now, you roll your str against it. If you have no SR or not enough to resist the attacker and you're dex based.. you're down for sure.
You may have some bard or monk lvls and max your disc but you'd still get bull rushed often. Hell, the Drow Lady has discipline 99 and she gets down to her knees more often than a cheap hooker..
"the Drow Lady has discipline 99 and she gets down to her knees more often than a cheap hooker.."
But, that's what I love about her.
:)
I wouldn’t want to see things nerfed. I really wouldn’t want to see the server wiped and restarted. I don’t get to play as much as I’d like and I don’t want to start from scratch.
Regarding saves.
First, your caster level doesn’t help. Only spell level, feats, and attribute bonuses. One advantage dev crit has is that it’s based on character level. That gives it a much higher DC than any spell.
Any spell with a save is useless for PVP and usually not that good for farming.
the DC for spell saves is 10+SPELL level+ attribute bonus + feats. so if you’re a caster with a 52 intel/chr/wis casting ninth level spell your MAXIMUM possible DC is 10+9+22+6 =47.
Let’s say you’re casting wail of the banshee on a lvl40 rogue (Low fort save) with a con of 8. Their save is 16 + 10 + 15 = 41 + 1D20.
So, an epic mage with a 52 intelligence and 3 feats in spell focus casting a ninth level spell will be able to insta kill a character with the weakest fort save possible about 25% of the time. So let’s say it works out worst case and you have to cast 4 wails before they roll a 5 or less. If, instead you cast maximized IGM you’d kill them with 3 ninth levels spells. (No save)
And this is a twinked out caster going up against a nerfed fort save.
Bigby’s is different. Some of them do work off of caster level. But none of them is that overpowered. Level 5 is basically + 10 to AC. Level 6 is a bull rush Level 7 need to both hit the targets AC AND make a grapple check. 8 and 9 have saving throws so they’re not that useful.
So for example
Level 6 Bigby’s forcerful hand.
The bull rush works as follows: caster rolls 1d20 + 14 versus the target's roll of 1d20 + target's strength modifier + target's size modifier.
This should work if the target has a str less than 14. So it’s totally useless on bashers and dev critters. It works well on dex based builds that don’t have Spell resistance. Even than it’s not that overpowered for PVP. A dex build with a base str of 10 will have +5 from gear, so they only need to roll 7 higher than the caster to avoid the bull rush. That’s a 35% chance of success. Say 1 in 3. It’s still a pretty decent chance of not working.
And that’s the penalty for nerfing your str against a caster.
Level 7 Bigby's grasping hand
To hit you need
1d20 + caster level + (casting ability modifier + 10) - 1 vs. target's armor class
To grapple and hold them you need
1d20 + caster level + (casting ability modifier + 10) + 4 vs.
1d20 + target's BAB + target's strength modifier + target's grapple size modifier.
So lets compare a PM build (28 caster levels) with an Int of 20 (typical on BL) with a str based fighter (Str 40 with gear) and an AC of 60
To hit the PM needs to hit a 60 with D20+28+11+10-1. So they need to roll a 12 or better. But let’s say they roll well and get to try to grapple.
That check is
PM: 28+11+10+4 = 53+D20
Fighter: 15+35+0 = 50 +D20
So it’s another coin toss. And you have a 25% chance of the PM’s spell landing. I hope they make their discipline check to keep from getting knocked down. Or have lots of HP to let mestil’s do it’s work. And once the target’s AC goes to 74 you need a 20 for the spell to land.
If you /add/ a discipline check it makes it that much more likely the spells won’t work. Also, how would you do it??
Most PVP builds get a discipline of at least 48 without trying.
Sticking with the PM build Caster level + Attribute would be 39,
Character level + attribute would be better at 51. But it’s still pretty easy.
Character level + attribute + D20 would better, now you need a discipline of 61 to avoid it. 50% of the time.
It MIGHT encourage caster builds that were based around Int/Chr and not Con. But if that’s what you want I’d like to see the DC for all the spells changed to
caster level+ spell level + attribute + feats (this would make high level spells with saves useful in PVP again.) If you did this I’d think a balance would be to change IGM so that it did 1D6 per level and not 2D6.
I say you leave the bigby’s spells alone. Most dex builds have Monk levels for SR and most STR builds already have a good chance of avoiding these spells. Again, this is the trade off for nerfing your str.
Just my 2 cents.
So I did a quick calculation of how a changing the DC calculation might work and I think the best way to go is
DC = Caster Level + Attribute Bonus + Feats + Spell Level – 9.
This means that the DC will go up with spell level. The DC’s 9nth level spells range from 39 (28 caster levels and a casting attribute of 20, typically con based PM build that’s going to spam IGMs) to
68 (40th level pure caster with a casting attribute of 54 and all 3 spell focus feats)
The pure caster will have some hella high DC’s but will have crappy HP and a lousy skill selection.
A “normal” build with a skill dump in spell craft will have save bonus in the mid 40’s. More with access to cleric spells and bard song. So they’d have a substantial advantage over a IGM spammer. But the pure caster will give them the same problem that a Dev Critter will. 68 is higher than most Dev Crit characters can get, but mages can’t cast 5 times a round with a 40% threat range on a +8 scimitar. If anyone knows how to post an excel spreadsheet let me know and I’ll put it up. I’ve mailed a copy to simon.
Qwildurn said...
I don't have any intentions on "wiping" the server vault. I think we have done a good job at finding a balance.
The server "crashed" once before. I'm not betting the farm that it won't happen again someday.
You're right. The "10+SPELL level+ attribute bonus + feats" DC doesn't work with +21 on saves.
DC = Caster Level + Attribute Bonus + Feats + Spell Level – 9
Are we considering legendary levels as caster levels?
If yes, then a lvl 55 mage with.. hmm.. int 54 would have DC 83 when casting a Waill of The Banshee or Weird? Damn!!
I think that just raising the base 10 to a number equivalent to what we get on saves with gear would suffice. Say like 30 + Spell level + stat modifier + feats..
Hmm.. does that sound reasonable?
Not sure if that 10 could be changed.. if not, maybe just adding a +20 in the roll..
The range I found on save was from 35 to 68 (Ignored Pally’s). But you really need to try hard to get either of those values. I figured that a normal build would fall in the middle at about 48
18 Base Save
1 Base attribute
6 Attribute Bonus from gear
15 Save bonus from gear
0 Spell Bonuses
8 Spell craft
0 feats
48 Total
Attribute, cleric Spells bard song feats all give you more I didn’t spend a lot of time looking for all the saving throw buffs. There are plenty out there.
I was only considering pre HGLL levels btw. But I like your idea of playing with the base a lot better. You could ‘tune’ it in a lot more easily. Most builds would still have a better than 50% chance of making a fort save against all but the most devoted caster and that that chick will have shit for HP.
If DC’s were raised to give more spell variety IGM would definitely need to be scaled back.
Hmm, one problem would be that all mages would get the 30+spell level. That would mean that pre-epic mobs don’t stand a chance…
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