Santa Claus Builders Bash (Update)

Badlands RPG stanta

In the badlands Santa is strength based.

Merry Christmas!

Latest Poll Results

The votes are in, and the favorite base race is human. wow!

Human 11 (42%)

Elf 4 (15%)

Half Elf 1 (3%)

Half Orc 1 (3%)

Gnome 0 (0%)

Halfling 6 (23%)

Dwarf 3 (11%)




Votes so far: 26
Poll closed

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The above map depicts: 1,433 visits from 11 Dec 2008 to 11 Dec 2008
Running total of visits to (URL) Qwildurn's DND Server since 10 Dec 2007: 1,433

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ClusterMaps sent me a note stating that I have been using their free service for exactly one year now. This is some of the information. The larger the red dot, the more people from that area that have viewed our web site.

Interesting, but not necessarily important.

HGLL and balance

Since we're talking balance, I thought a healthy discussion/debate about the HGLL system was in order.

Q mentioned in his previous post:
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.

To say that Legendary levels add to the un-balance is a HUGE understatement IMO. The biggest losers here are mages. We all know that BAB and caster level do not improve from level 41 thru 60. Ok, seems fair on the surface. But melees do have ways of upping their AB by either cranking STR (includes dmg bonus) or DEX (includes AC boost) depending on the build.

For example: Let's say Krunk, a straight human barbarian hits level 60. His legendary levels give him 7 feats and 10 abilities. If it all goes into STR, he's upped his AB AND damage by +8 (not to mention improving his dev crit DC by +8). The same goes for the Gordon Lightfoot the dexer halfling: +8 AB AND AC.

Now what does Elminster the straight human wizard get by grinding out legendary levels? More DEX for AC? Ok, that helps a little. Or more CON? Yup, HP are important. OR more INT for extra spell slots? Very handy indeed. But none of those compares to the double bonus that melees get from legendary levels.

Okay, I can live with the above disparities. A level 40 mage is very tough to kill even for a level 60 melee. My biggest gripe is the fact that monks continue to gain spell resistance even though their "monk" or controlling class isn't technically increasing. Essentially, a gith monk15/cleric15/rogue10 who pumps SR with feats in epic levels can resist a 40th level mage's spells 60% of the time. By taking four more ImpSR feats in legendary, that 15th level monk will be untouchable, even by Elminster the 60th level guardian of Shadowdale. This seems ridiculous to me. We can get into more specifics, but I know you guys can all add and subtract, so here's my suggestion(s):

Option 1: Since casters cannot improve upon their casting abilities beyond 40th, then monks should not be able to improve upon their spell resistance. I.e., Imp SR should not be a selectable feat beyond 40. If you're a monk and you want high SR, you sacrifice everything in your epic levels to get it as high as you can. In this scenario, a gith monk20/cl15/SD5 with everything in ImpSR in epic would hit SR 74. Making him 90% immune to Elminster. Granted, the monk has to give up A LOT of good feats, but he can get them in legendary levels if he wants (eg, epic wpn focus, epic prow, etc.).

Option 2: Allow legendary casters to improve upon their casting abilities by selecting additional (stackable) epic spell penetrations as feats. With possible epic spell penetration feats, Elminster could up his caster roll to 40 + 1d20 + 6 (three pre-epic and epic) + 14 (seven legendary)= 61 - 80. In this case, the mighty Elminster will have a 50% chance of hitting a maxed out SR gith monk with a SR of 80 (effectively 70 after mords). Even under this circumstance, the monk is able to get there with a minimum of 15 monk levels, whereas the mage has sacrificed a lot to get a spell penetration that high.

Keep in mind that I am talking about the EXTREME case of a 40th level pure caster. Most caster/PMs have between 28-29 mage levels. With option #2 above, a wiz/pm who pumps legendary spell penetrations would still not be able to touch the 15monk. At least one of the above would allow a PC to create an Elminster-type that would have a *chance* of landing a spell.

I truly believe that one of the above options will help to balance out the parity that exists between monks and mages in the Badlands. Neither option seems like it would affect a mage's utility versus non-monks. They can already hit normal melee builds, so extra spell pen won't help them anymore there, and a mage vs. mage duel will still come down to who casts first.
There are probably other options that I have not considered, and I'd like for everyone to throw out their thoughts.
Just for the record, I am not particularly fond of either mages or monks (I prefer bard class myself), but I've played on both sides of mage/monk coin and the problems here are glaring and hopefully they can be addressed in the near future.

Game Balance

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.