With all the conversation this post has generated lately, and considering that it's not even on the first page of posts anymore, I thought I would bump it up to the top. Here's the link:
http://badlandsrpg.blogspot.com/2009/04/lich-quested-subrace.html
I like the way this discussion is going, it sounds pretty cool and like it could really work. I also like that this is going to be a CHOICE that people can make, not something that is automatically applied to all toons with 10+ levels of Pale Master:P
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I did a test after my last post, and the results are negative. Adding RDD and Barbarian feats have no effect without any levels in those classes.
I changed the movement rate though. 15% speed increase might be interesting.
I already knew that I need to add a creature skin to do certain changes.
The Lich can be Smited because it is 'evil'. No need to make any changes.
If you start a new Cleric or Paladin and go into the Dozo Ruins or Shadow Tombs and 'test' a few things, you will find what I have found.
1) Heal Kits heal undead as if they are players.
2) Heal Spells will harm the Undead.
3) Harm spells will heal the Undead.
4) Piercing weapons cause about 2-3 less damage compared to slashing.
5) Bludgeoning weapons cause about 2-3 more damage compared to slashing.
6) Most of the undead are slow, slow, slow, which is what makes them good low-level targets.
If I change the heal kits, I think they should simply have no effect on the undead. Not heal and not harm.
As far as the other normal spells like Resurrection and Destruction, I have successfully modified those to work in reverse of normal. The Lich can be killed with a well placed Resurrection spell and brought back from the grave (un-grave?) with a Destruction spell.
I have modified almost all related spells, making the Lich truly undead and making the clerics have to spread their spells out further across a wider range of uses.
BTW, I did some quick math and the highest the DC on a 9th level spell can possibly be is 51 the way the rules operate now.
Also, with 30 levels of Wizard, the highest possible Spell Penetration roll you can get is a 56. Add 10 for Mordenkainens Disjunction and you have a 66.
I'm mentioning this because in order for the Lich to be attractive the benefits will need to make it a viable PURE spell casting class. For example, if one of the bonuses the Lich would get is a boost to the DC on Necromancy spells, it would have to be large enough to put it over the "automatic save number" that exists on Badlands due to the +5 to Saves on jewelry and the +12 to Abilities.
The same is true with the Spell Penetration. In order to make the subrace attractive the Spell Penetration boost would have to be enough that it would actually threaten the Monks that are running around with a minimum of 60 SR. Many of them have as much as 70 and simply laugh at most spell casters. I'm not saying that the Necromancer should get enough bonus Spell Penetration to be a "Monk Killer" but there should be some consideration made as to how much spell penetration is given.
I think taking away respawn would be bad. It takes a lot of time to make a 40th level caster. Having to sit around and wait for someone to rez you would be too much. There’s no in game justification for respawn anyway. It doesn’t make any more sense for a 1st level fighter than it does for a lich. Much like the heal kits it’s done just for playability. Speaking of heal kits it’s no more silly to ‘stitch together undead flesh’ than it is to have a toon spam heal kits until they’re totally better. The only logic is that it’s more fun if you can heal in the middle of a fight. I say keep ‘em and let them work on any player smart enough to buy them.
Having healing spells kill a lich is cool, at least so long as you get a saving throw. Since that means you’ll only die on a 1 it makes Resurrection just as useless as all the other insta-death spells.
Iirc an arcane casters necromancy spells *also* heal undead. Is that correct? If so how will that work when you adapt it? Would finger of death heal a lich? If a sorcerer could cast finger of death, or wail of the banshee and get healed (or 10HP per level like the heal spell) that would balance out the heal kit thing a bit.
The damage reduction is an interesting approach. It would also make sense for divine energy to do more damage. But have the lich be immune to negative energy and cold.
Good points about the DC and the SR. There are 2 problems with DC.
First DC doesn’t scale with caster level. It’s 10+Spell level + attribute + feats.
Second it’s possible to have 2 lvl 40 toons with save bonuses more than 20 apart.
This means that if you put the DC high enough to threaten the ‘high save’ build the low save build has a 1 in 20 chance of making the save. And this isn’t counting the paladin bonus, or the COT bonus, or high levels of bard song. I’m not sure what the max save of would be with *all* the modifiers. But it’s a certainly out of reach of any PC wizard. Most necromancy spells allow a fort save and most build have a decent con. Also, if this is put in place I’d imagine that people would work in some of the many many feats that improve your saving throws.
The SR thing is a good idea. A lich is a devoted caster. Q’s requirements for the quest force the build to give up a tumble (+8AC!) and discipline dump at the end. This in itself is a *huge* disadvantage that needs to be compensated for. Most of the ‘monk’ builds have only taken half their levels in monk, if that. But they still get an SR that even a pure caster can’t touch.
To take a look at the scaling problem first I’d look back to the basic 3rd edition game.
3rd edition was created for lvl 1-20. It works best and is most balanced pre-epic.
So at lvl 13F/7WM with a con of 12 will have a fort save of 14.
A wizard casting a ninth level spell with an 22 int will have a DC of
10 + 9 + 6 = 24.
So the fighter has a 50/50 chance to survive. If he does he’s going to knock that wizard to the ground and beat him to death in a single round since an int based lvl 20 wizard has low HP
As for spell resistance, a lvl 20 monk has an SR of 31. A lvl 20 caster (with spell penetration feats) has a spell penetration range of 24-44 so they’ll hit the monk a little better than half of the time. Again, if the don’t land quick the monk will beat them to death in short order.k
Right and Right.
When Bioware add levels 21 to 40, they did NOT continue the same logarithm that is used in levels 1 to 20. It would be a much better PVP balance if all 40 levels had the same logarithm. But, this is all hard-coded and I can't change it.
ATM, I'm thinking that the Lich requirements should be Wizard 20 / PM 10, Chaotic Evil with Spell School of Necromancy along with the Necromancy Feats which would include Epic Spell Focus Necromancy. After this you can choose between more Wiz or PM, BUT, taking a third class would prevent you from gaining any more XP. (I can't actually stop you from taking the 3rd class, so stopping the XP is my next best choice.)
There are four things, all easily confused.
Spell Penetration (SP)
Spell Resistance (SR)
Saving Throw (Save)
and DC (I don't know what DC is short for)
I need to do some research to see what and how I can change these things.
For the most part, the spell scripts do a 'Caster Level' check and use this for the duration and damage of most spells. Most have a '20' cap. If this 'Caster Level' controls the DC or SR, I can override the cap in the script.
if (caster == Lich) CasterLevel = CasterLevel + 5;
That is easy and straight forward, but time consuming to edit each spell script in question.
Some of you are quite knowledgeable and can do some research as well.
As I told Dano in an email, I'm going to do this Lich thing right or not at all.
The math in my above post was off because I forgot about the "Spell Focus" feats, so the highest DC (Difficulty Class) a pure caster can get on a 9th level spell is 57.
Nice, but like Garble pointed out, even with a boost from being a Lich there are still builds that will be able to make that save fairly easily (Paladins, CoT, ect)
DC = Difficulty class.
It's what you need to hit to make your save.
Spells have a DC of 10 + SPELL Level + feats + attribute bonus.
So a 9nth level Wail cast by an epic necromancy mage has a DC of:
Base 10
Spell level 9
Feats 6 (max)
Int Bonus 28 (int = 66!)
-------------------------------
Total 53
The target will roll 1d20 + fort save. an unbuffed Fighter/WM will likely have a fort save of at least 48. So they have a 75% chance of making it. If they have 40 ranks of spell craft they'll get +8 and only fail on a '1'. Or they can buff. There are lots and lots of ways to buff saving throws.
Keep 3 things in mind.
1. This is not a well rounded build and will likely have less than 200hp.
2. It can cast 3 spells in 2 rounds. A Bard/Rdd/PM can make 6 attacks in 2 rounds with a much higher DC.
3. Caster level doesn't matter. A 1st level mage with a 20 int has a DC of 17 for burning hands. A 40th level mage with an int of 20 also has a DC of 17 for burning hands.
That said having some builds shake it off is fine. It would actually make COT and Pally more desirable to play. My problem isn't that a Cleric 16/Cot 22/Pally 2 has an awesome save. It's that everyone can make the save.
You can buy gear to give you +15 to save. You can buy gear to give you +12 to your con. So everyone gets +21 to their fort save. Than they get +10 from levels 20-40. So, if this were the lich's big thing I'd say a minimum would be +15 to the DC. I'd want to play test it a bit but that's the range It's going to take to make it useful.
I have no idea how they do it but karlindale realms has a scipt that gives you a save/bonus if there's a level difference between the caster and target.
Point 2 above is in reference to Dev Crit.
D, How did you get a DC as high as 58?
Is 'karlindale realms' a NWN module? and is it an UBER server or a standard type server?
One of the big problems we have at BadLands RPG is that it is UBER, and with that we hit the built-in cap which kills the balance.
The Barbarian is a perfect example:
How many Barbarians did you see before I built the UBER Barbarian system? How many do you see now?
Why?
Because our UBER Barbarian can get past the +12 cap and use their rage.
Karlindale realms isn't uber. Far from it. I just mentioned it because I knew that they'd found some way to incorporate a level check into the DC of a casters spells.
I totally agree with you about the barbarian. Similar problem with the other high BAB classes. Self buffing was a big part of their advantage relative to fighter and UBER gear makes that less useful.
All this talk about the lich having extra spell penetration is all fine and dandy, but your forgetting 1 thing all you have to do is cast death ward on yourself and your protected from death spells.
As for a paladin or cot having high saves so it should be able to make to make the DC. Thats what the paladin was basiclly designed for kicking undead tail and whats the grand daddy of the undead a lich.
Don't forget the lich can always dispell that ward..
Or even if the cleric is high enough that his spells can't be dispelled, I doubt he'd have enough SR to resist the undead's offensive spells..
Reading all this stuff, it almost makes me believe something is gonna happen.. but it also makes me wonder if it's worth chatting about an unfinished quest when the server hasn't been updated in ages....
Looks like I was mixing up the Spell Penetration formula and the Spell DC formula. Also, the highest Intelligence I've been able to come up with is 62 as shown below. Garble, am I missing something? If so, please help!
18 - Base Int
04 - Racial Bonus
10 - levels 1 - 40
08 - levels 41 - 58
10 - Great Int Feat
12 - Equipment
62 = Equals
DC = 10 + spell level (9) + ability modifier (26) + feat modifier (6) = 51 DC
And I gotta agree with Deimonos on the update issue. Aren't we still running on the "Oh Shit, I fucked up, here's a temporary replacement" server? Shouldn't we be learning to walk before talking about entering the Boston Marathon?
No comment. (looks away like at something more interesting) Oh look at the cheese sandwich that got run over by a bicycle.
It's not that we're not grateful for the work being done to make the server better and more interesting, but...yeah, getting on the "less lag" server would be even better than having a Lich subrace, at least to me. Maybe I dont speak for everyone else, but for me it would be SWEET :)
I feel the 'lag' too. Sometimes it's just a Dano, I mean bitch.
The true nature of the lag is not the serving hardware, the faster machine just hid it better. The lag is caused by the dead monsters actually. I use 'timers' to count how long it is until a monster or boss can respawn. The doors that we bash (or close automatically) also use a timer.
The more players that are on, the more monster there are that die, and the more timers there are running. Eventually the serving computer is watching so many 'timers' that it does not have time to take care of the players.
I was working on a alternative to the timer system. Was almost done when my editing computer died. In it is a whole lotta new stuff and fixes that I don't really want to have to redo.
I have been working on a big job that should be done next week. Then I will focus on fixing my editing computer and gaining access to all the work waiting in it.
After I get that updated finish, tested and posted, I will start on the new, faster server hardware. The update does not include any 'Lich' quest.
What does the update include?
If I may.. I remember the 095 update included:
- 2 new halfing subraces
-------
Wild Hafling
These halflings are use to live in the wilderness
and rarely leave it for the city.
69: Wild Halfling
ECL = 1
DEX = -2
CON = 2
WIS = 2
Feat: Darkvision
Feat: Keen Sense
Skill: Spot = 2
Skill: Listen = 2
Favored Class = Druid
Magi Halfling
These little fellows are smart and keen.
Their unusual curiosity makes them interested
in magic.
70: Magi Halfling
ECL = 2
CON = -2
INT = +4
WIS = +2
Base Spell Resistance = 11
SR increacement per level = 1
Favored Class = Wizard------
- 3 new bosses (all linked to new outposts)
- Few new areas including my attempt at doing something close to a new "sheelo mountain"
- 3 new drops (kama, logbow and greatsword
----
Longbow "Gastrophetes"- Attack Bonus +7
- Massive Criticals +2d10
- Mighty +8
- Regeneration +2
- Immunity Knockdown
- Use Limitation Class: Arcane Archer
--------------------
Kama "Killer"- Enhancement Bonus +6
- Keen
- Magical Damage +2d8
- Divine Damage +2d6
- Massive Criticals +2d8
-----------------------------------
Greatsword "Pandemonium"- Enhancement Bonus +7
- Keen
- Magical Damage +2d8
- Divine Damage +2d6
- Sonic Damage +1d12
- Massive Criticals +1d10
- Vampiric Regen +2
---
- Q Fixed shadow tombs quest (as is, Jared The Bold gives you a ring that 99,9% of the lowbies can't use. Now he will cast an extended Bless and Bless weapon on ya for all the trouble you had killing the zombie)
----
I think that was pretty much all the new stuff..
That would be sweet. I hope it works out.
- 3 new drops (kama, logbow and greatsword
Sounds awesome, but what's a "logbow"?
:P
Wow boss kama's i won't lie they have got me rather aroused. and nice damage on the great sword.
"logbow" huh? well.. lol
Anyways, I was thinking about a new Two-bladed sword called "The oki smasher"..
That baby would triple the damage dealt to any oki/ledak you bashed..
hmm, it probably should be hold by an uber boss, otherwise the game could get unbalanced pretty fast :(
too many potential targets running around these days.....
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