Meeting skill requirements for PRcs

[orangetree]

I've never experienced that xan... Dms on Alfa have tended to punish poor planning forcing adaption and learning. Spells are a very guarded resource. I feel guilty just borrowing a stone skin knowing a warrior might benefit more. (Fortunately my character is a little selfish)

The only thing I might critic a little (and forgive and correct me if I am wrong) is that wizards tend to be played awfully young. Unless one has been studying wizardry at an exceptionally young age, perhaps from a well off family... But I thought it took 'time' to learn more then a cantrip. a level 1 wizard should be studying at least 10 years. Though maybe I'm just defending the one attribute of sorcery that does separate from wizards.

[Xanthea]

Suggested starting age for a human wizard is 17-27 with an average of 22.

[Ithildur]

I'm not sure that's true in ALFA.

It's still true. It's just that I've noticed that people play spellcasters in general very badly on ALFA. People are constantly wasting spells on things that they shouldn't be, both on blowing up inoffensive things that could be handled by the rest of the party and by using big flashy spells where lesser ones would suffice. Spellcasters aren't meant to deal with the hordes of minions, they're meant to save themselves until a dangerous fight and blow most of their spells winning that one.

Of course, that does rely on a DM actually giving you legitimate threats during the adventure and you being of a relatively similar level to the rest of the party. If there isn't going to be a challenge that you can make a big difference in at any point then you're going to be pretty useless whatever you do.

+1

To be fair the combination of NWN2 arcane spell nerfs, targets often having double HPs, and ALFA's rest once every 24 hours vs vastly more combat than PnP results in a mix that's severely nerfed/resource poor compared to mages anywhere else in pnp or NWN2 (the vanilla game was balanced around being able to rest after every single fight!); it's probably part of the reason that we don't have any high level mages around after 6 years of ALFA2 (alfa1 probably had better balance with rest every 8 hours and despite life being much harsher overall, plenty of mages above lvl 10).

Having said that, the challenge is still appealing, like squeezing mileage out of a fighter with dagger and leather armor... until it's time to PWN the boss of the climactic fight. I would've liked to have seen Olaf or Venali do what they do especially if they made it to high levels; I've heard they did nice work.

Back to OT's AT... I'd say relax and not get too worried about getting the PrC asap; given Lunette's current focus and build it's going to be a while, gives you time to figure her out both RP wise and mechanically.

[Ithildur]

Dms on Alfa have tended to punish poor planning forcing adaption and learning.

This isn't a good attitude/mindset... you don't have to be perfect, but surely you don't want to be rewarded/coddled for poor planning? What happened to actions/choices have consequences? If it really is poor planning, it's not DMs 'punishing' you any more than DMs 'punish' a Fighter that plans poorly and fights a dragon naked with his fists. No one is 'punishing' a Monopoly player that never buys any property besides Board Walk and wonders why they don't do well...

Unless you're specifically talking about planning builds, rather than IC choices... if so I'd still have to disagree; as said previously, plenty of PCs with terrible builds have been successful, often because they made solid IC choices/planned well. Terrible build with poor IC planning, yeah, that probably will be 'punished' by the universe, but then, a neato build with poor IC planning will sooner or later also be 'punished' as well.

There's no getting around some elements of this game; if you're going to repeatedly play squishy types, you gotta figure out some things work better than others and cope with dealing with some of the more complex parts of the ruleset. More than that, it really helps to be adaptable and willing to learn, and in a lot of ways have a more aggressive/proactive mindset than the guy with full plate and double your HPs who can get away with just hitting stuff most of the time. It takes a certain amount of pluck to play squishies... especially halfling squishies!

[Arianna]

Dms on Alfa have tended to punish poor planning forcing adaption and learning.

Ummm . . . when did it become a DM's job to make sure the player/ PC plans correctly?

[orangetree]

I didn't mean it in a bad way. I don't think my mostly rogue is that squishy.. For her level. I mean I have tried to make the build a bit more survivable and useable. I try to play realistically. I don't know how to make good PCs but I do like magic and just try my best.

Sorry.

[Ithildur]

The word squishy is somewhat relative certainly, but by most people's definition a sorcerer/wizzie is squishy with d4 HD and no armor, and a pureclass rogue is pretty squishy as well with d6 HD and light armor (though they can be slippery squishy certainly). So a sorcerer with a splash of rogue is squishy by definition unless you have freakishly high CON, lots of extra HP feats, etc and even then...

Doesn't mean they're bad or even easy to kill (lots of ways to mitigate being squishy; AT's can be supremely difficult to lay a hand on eventually), but yeah, definitely squishy, with or without Mind over Body giving her 2, 3 extra hps.

It's worse in NWN2, relative to the d8-12 guys getting max HPs; consider that a raging barbarian the same level as Lunette would have 80+ hps in NWN2, and yeah... Lun is quishy. Aglaril was pretty darn squishy for most of his midlevels.

Just face the fact you like squishy characters and proceed accordingly.

[Veilan]

The appeal of ALFA to me always has been that it's in the journey, not any "planned-for" or "ideal" result or plateau to reach. Of course, mechanical accumen still is favoured (survivors usually tell better tales than the dead, sans necromancy), but if you do not set out to deliberately gimp your character, I would not worry about pre-planned, optimised routes too much and just follow your character's journey - even if that means a "weird" (power-wise) choice here or there to fit actual development and experiences, rather than trying to force or pretzel the IC around the mechanics (even if the latter is, in my opinion, the true PGers most creative and respectable artform).

In my experience, DMs are not out to "punish" for IC choices at all, but surely willing to reflect the game world (which means poor planning and idiotic actions may not engender "success" in the mechanical sense... which can lead to hilarity rather than death; most DMs seem not out to break their toys, just make them realise they are not invulnerable). DMs also seem adaptable and note when somebody is not optimising their prowess, and likely have their villains fit the mould, with the whole spectrum from quirky eccentric to ruthlessly efficient at their disposal. Lack of "power" may still be problematic due to Gauss: if you are the one non-optimised character in a group of fairly optimised characters, stochastics and statistics just don't favour you, hence it pays to have a baseline of survivability to at least be able to tell the story of Butch holding off the dragon, Buff murdering the ogres and you stabbing a kobold in the ankle from behind before running away shrieking in horror realising it was a caster.

As always, the biggest determinant is the consensus about the kind of game your group wants to play together, find some common ground there, ask a little, give a little, and all will work out.

0.02€,

[shad0wfax]

I'll have to agree that wizarding is not always up to par.

*Casts Evard's Black Tentacles on self and ally.*
*Ally casts Fireball on creature as creature charges self and ally.*
*Fireball goes off, affecting creature, self, and ally.*
*Dies.*

This is probably the funniest thing that I ever witnessed.

A close second was,

Aislinn: "I will web it."
Talindra: "I shoot after web."
Algaril: "I will fireball it when you web it."
*Aislinn casts Web*
*Talindra shoots*
*Frost Giant charges.*
*Web goes off behind giant.*
*Frost Giant melees Talindra.*
*Fireball cast on frost giant goes off, hitting Talindra.*
Talindra: "After this dies, I shoot you in back, Aglaril. See how you like it."

[Ithildur]

XD That was pretty funny, yes. There was also a hilarious miscue at the onset about Aglaril saying 'go when I cast spell x (Grease or Web or ROE, I forget)', and said spell x being cast by AISLINN, which totally threw me/Aglaril off... and when Frosty closed to melee with a fireball roaring towards it and whoever it was in melee range with (Talindra)... yeah, it all went to hell... comedy gold looking back.

I've also seen NPCs do this too, target aoe spell at PC, PC runs forward... NPC either misses everything or toasts himself along with the PC.

Bottom line, the traditional wizard bread and butter aoe spells tend to be pretty lame in NWN2 for many reasons.

[Zelknolf]

This sounds like a problem that would be solved by turn-based combat.

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