Balance issues!

[Fillivan]

Ok, i've seen 2389713 treads about balance of mele vs caster... and how easy epic content is... don't know if anyone suggested this before me (lol probably at least 10 ppl did), but here is mu proposal:

1. SR: Make all spells resistible with SR... no matter if it's fireball or curse! I remember the good old days on DnD games like baldur's gate where even heals were resistible with SR... and drows were 1 hell of an enemy O.o.

2. Creature enhancement: Give all creatures some(not much) SR! We can craft, so why can't the nearby troll shaman make some +2 Loincloth of spell resistance for his fellow tribesman? My suggestion is to make it bypassable with small rolls like... 5 on normal, 7 on hard and 10 on elite for normal dungeon for normal casters at that lvl O.o. (Still no SR on casual...). Also needing to roll at least 10(on Epic-Normal, considering you never TRed and your items are still not that good) to 17-18(on Epic-Elite, for medium geared chars with a few TRs), on epics, before shattermantle effect applied will be a good idea.

3. Epic diffs! Make the epic difficulty not a checkbox, but an option. In other words make us have Casual, Normal, Hard, Elite, Epic-Normal(lvl23), Epic-Hard(lvl24) and Epic-Elite(lvl25)! Items like scrolls and shards will drop with a very small % normal (smaller chance than now!), hard will have the chances which we get now, and Elite will have increased % to drop stuff! Also Epic-Normal will drop only fragments as end reward(25-50), hard will drop fragments (50-99 fragments) or a whole token, according to diff, and epic will drop 1-2 tokens depending on the quest. Also, Epic-Normal will have the same DC(on spells only!) as now, Epic-Hard will have +3-4 and Epic-Elite will have +7-8!

Long story short: Epics become Epic-Normal, and we get Epic-Hard and Epic-Elite!

4. Add debuff on some weps to make mele chars effective! What I have in mind is:

a) Giving Axiomatic, Holy and Righteousness weps the ability to cast shattermantle on hit! (Logic: The alignment of your wep partially purifies the taint, on your enemy's body, caused by the evil magic placed upon the item.)

b) Giving Anarchic, Anarchic Burst, Good burst, Holy Burst, Pure Good, Axiomatic Burst weps inflict improoved shattermantle on targets! (Logic: (1st and 2nd)The chaos created by the wep disrupts the energy of the enhanced items and causes them to malfunction. The other ones is the same as 4.a) but with improoved effect since they are considered the greater version!)

c) GS weps are considered as Improoved cursespewing items! (Logic: They are treated as evil aligned, so they curse the owners of the blood spilled on them! Evil isn't it?).

5. (Epic-Normal Dungeons)Reduce all saves(I'm talking only about fort, will and reflex saves) by a little and replace the amount you lowered with saves vs spells! So that mele abilities like stun and trip will be usable! Also increase a little the AC, to scale with the changes and to make it a little bit harder for non-casters!

6. PMs will be severely damaged by this(fingering get a lot harder!) so it will be a good idea to make PM spell like abilities get improved by feats like maximize and empower, or at least by one of them, in order to get some damage to make up for not being able to wail all the time cuz of the SR.

7. Dimensional barriers on some quests on epic-elite! (for example at the red named in ADQ1).

What will the result be? In my opinion:

a) Casters will be severely balanced! (Soloing will be rly hard on their mana pools...due to SR).
b) Mele characters WILL be taken into parties(especially on Epic-Elite) even for the sole purpose of debuffing for the casters... kill count will still be lower, but if you don't do your job the casters are doomed... after all without removing the SR and reducing the saves of the creatures even DC 50 will not be as efficient as otherwise.
c) Sorcs will not be making the dungeons into a child's play.
d) If you need to do epic content and you are not TR you'll be able to do epic-normal without so much trouble. If you seek challenge... you're welcome to try surviving in Epic-Elite dungeons! If you want to 1hit kill everything and do a caster party... go do it on Epic-Normal!
e) Due to the save changes, even a party with only mele's + healer will be ale to make it trough Epic-Normal by stunning/tripping/etc. Otherwise, having a balanced party (with both meles/rangeds and casters) is recommended (obligatory on epic-Elite! Since having only spell casters is equal to having only 15-20% chance to bypass the SR... which will cause lack of mana and probably painful death and a wipe!)
f) Casters won't be a haste/hold bots, since they will pretty much still kill most of the stuff (although with 50% chance to fail :P) because their dps WILL matter, and at the same time mele's will have to hit hard all the time.

In defense of the SR: 25%(0 on casual) failure chance for spellcasting even on low lvls is not THAT much, so it will not trouble the casters to the point of being weak... they will still own most of the time, but it won't be that much...

I know that i am not that experienced but I think this will be a good way to balance the game a little bit. Feel free to point out how stupid you think the idea is, but please be objective and tell me why do you think it's that way! (not with posts like: "stupid idea...")

PS: All SR has to be scaled...

[DeltaBravo]

Tbh, i see where you are going . But in the end all i see here is just a way to increase SR on mobs. I dont think that is the way to go. if you have a DC 44+ you allready did something to get there and raiseing the SR with 6-7 Will just make a quest imposible or very very SP expensive.

Adding Debuffers on weapons will not really help it would be anice twink on all items.. But the mobs can also save against the debuffs from your weapon and you just raised the mobs saves. So they will hardly be landing. Wich then again makes the casters spells the best Debuff.

And again i see no idea why you would want to get the mobs cursed and so on, is that so the caster then can cast a instant death spell ? the mob take just asmuch dmg in a FW cursed or not cursed.


I really think it is working okey atm, i know some people can instant kill most mobs ingame, but they had a long road getting there, only to be nerfed again. Not really the best way imo.

EPIC sould be EPIC sadly EPIC is not that hard in this game. But it have nothing to do with the mobs that epic is not hard. it have something to do with the design of the quests. I still think some of the ahrdest quests in this game are teh amrath quests on elite. And that is all becourse it is very balanced with everything in there. And the mobs dont have crazy SR or DW in there.


just my point.

[Fillivan]

the idea of being debuffed was something liek the following scenario:

You have maxed out spel penetration on Epic-Elite and your party is attacking trash. If you want to hit them with a spell you need to roll 17+ on spell pentration to bypass their SR... which means that you have 20% to actually affect them with your wail/dmg spells... + they have higher saves, let's say that the mobs save vs wail is 48, and you have 48 DC. This means that if you are trying to wail 10 mobs only 20% or in other words 2 of them will be affected... and with 50% to bypass the saves it means you will probably kill only 1 out of 10 monsters... which is more than insufficient!

Now, the mele attackers actually hit the monsters with improved shattermantle(about which i never heard of having a save but also never used... :?)! This means -6 SP, or in other words suddenly you have 50% to land a spell (so now you can insta kill 2-3 out of the 10 monsters!) Further more, if someone is cursed, he has -4 save, which means 20% bigger chance to hit with a spell... in the best possible situation you will have 10 monsters with shattermantle and curse on them... this means that you'll have (20+30)% chance to land a spell and (50+20)% for wail to kill them... compared to 20% chance to land the spell and 50% to kill them, which is highly unprobable, you get to kill 3-4 out of 10 instead of 1... so it's 350% more effective .

So my point was, that unless the mele weakens the trash, the caster will probably be unable(with 20% to land the spell...) to insta kill the trash... therefore meles will have nothing to complain about in terms of not being useful and there will be no caster only or 1casteronly groups, cuz casters will be needed to take down the trash, but they will be unable to do so unless some mele chars are involved... and if no one wails/nukes with spells/holds the trash it will surely cause a wipe .

PS: That's why I proposed Epic-Elite difficulty which makes the EPIC content TRULY EPIC, while keeping the Epic-Normal difficulty for no TR players