class changes and balancing Again..

[Leevoth]

Really though, no one character can be immune to everything.

Thats where the clever, clever DM's need to exploit those gaps in the 'uber-builds'.

[Veilan]

Really though, no one character can be immune to everything.

Thats where the clever, clever DM's need to exploit those gaps in the 'uber-builds'.

Heh, and kill all the ALFA mainstream PCs happening to be along in the process.

[Leevoth]

Hopefully not all those other PCs would have the same weakness as the 'uber' PC.

I'm mostly thinking about saves.

[Mayhem]

Bear in mind that this is a CVC environment, so it isn;t as simple as having a DM on hand to exploit a PG'd character weakness. They might get involved in PVP and have that unfair advantage early on.

PLUS, if a DM deals with PGing (or any rules issue) by delivering in character consequences, they are effectively condoning and encouraging the behaviour.

[Veilan]

PLUS, if a DM deals with PGing (or any rules issue) by delivering in character consequences, they are effectively condoning and encouraging the behaviour.

Spot on. In fact, I've seen a positive feedback cycle like this on a server once (participants will remain unnamed), where someone made a definete farm character... went out to farm... DM upped the challenge secretly... killed the PC. Player rerolled, only tougher and better suited to farm.

Anyway, balancing does not mean nerfing - it is just that Obsidian and some supplements have handed us classes and things that are overpowered, and it would seem easier to bring those down in line with the core stuff instead of buffing all others .

[Leevoth]

Really though, there will always be Powergaming. Even if some classes get altered (which they should), there will always be someone exploiting something, somehow.

[hollyfant]

I still fail to see how any of the measures balance anything against anything else, but that's probably just me.

So how are we going to "balance" the wizards once they overtake fighters in the damage department, now that we're denying fighters the chance to rush them?

[ayergo]

The answer is to punish PGers, not players. In the grand scope of things we haven't got many here that last long. We're already painfully short on tech staff, and it will take far more to come up with some technical solution than it will to allow folks to handle PGers on their own.

[Mulu]

Ah, once you tread down the path of nerfing, forever will it control your destiny.

Given that our standard definition of PG'ing includes min/maxing, IIRC, our rp rules should be a sufficient guard.

[AlmightyTDawg]

As best I can tell, the theory is to try to replicate the rough playbalance of PnP classes in the new format. There are translation issues, and reasonable people can disagree about how that transition is done. Just as a basic example, there were a number of invocations that have not been implemented for warlocks, and those that have been implemented have been changed somewhat to make them a bit more useful in the format (e.g., Leaps & Bounds).

The point of that is not that the classes would be balanced, as the simple fighter/wizard thing can never be solved. The idea is to make the translation errors a bit less extreme. Of course that's insanely multivariate and there are lots of reasonable opinions about how that should be done. My philosophy, for example, was to nerf "top end" or "minmax" power for greater flexibility - as in the old NWN1 edits of cleric domains, particularly the nerfs of the Healing and Animal domains. I always think it's better when there are lots of legitimate, roughly equal playable builds as opposed to clearly-superior and clearly-inferior ones.

Other issues, however, have clear exploitability. However, the community tends to be very, very hesitant as a whole to look at the use of something allowable in the engine and calling it self-evidently wrong, and hence call the exploiter wrong. For example, the old NWN1 True Strike applied to multiple attacks, so people could stack it with Haste, Rapid Shot, Flurry of Blows, Knockdown, Called Shots, etc. Oh yeah, and True Strike is a no-somatic spell, so a FtrX/Wiz1 could pull it off in full plate. Similarly, things I thought were clear exploits of the AT system were considered perfectly legitimate by other members of the community. Typical solutions for these are "soft" (calling them PGing) with technical solutions when possible to avoid the "attractive nuisance" problem (where people "legitimately" don't know about it).

I think no-nerfing is not an option, as the balance established by the game designers presumes campaign balance and wealth/power so far beyond the pale that there are bound to be translation issues. Similarly, I don't think "it's in the game so we shouldn't take it out" is necessarily always appropriate - even though I agree that more options leads to greater character diversity. Sometimes we'll learn how things work in practice in ways we couldn't necessarily imagine on paper. That doesn't mean that the way it's done is always palatable. But I think we have to distinguish the concept from a) the pejorative "nerf" and b) the way it happens in any given instance.

[Mord]

Clown train is not amused by your antics.

[ThinkTank]

In ze ALFA, all PCs are equal.

Some PCs are just more equal than other PCs.

Clowntrain just wants to be loved.

[Mulu]

You can't make this game unexploitable.

[Mayhem]

Talking of class changes, I undertand that the Pale Master PRC actually has a worse spell progression in NWN2 than it does in PNP. Is this going to be changed?

[Vendrin]

Talking of class changes, I undertand that the Pale Master PRC actually has a worse spell progression in NWN2 than it does in PNP. Is this going to be changed?

No, because in ALFA we only make it closer to PnP if it is a negative change for a class.