Let's Talk: Enhancements!

[Tyrande]

Oh no please not scimitars for tempest! if drow get tempest for racial pre = 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 Drizzt clones running round Eberron!! NNNOOOOOooooooo..... (runs out the room screaming !)

The books about Drizzt were New York Time best sellers list and DDO was full of them when DDO meant Dwarves and Drow Online.

[Tyrande]

The number will increase dramatically. Does anyone know if the name drizztclone is taken on sarlona? I need a name for my halfling thrower gimp.

Don't believe that name is taken yet.

[Missing_Minds]

No idea just yet. It will be as early as we can so there's lots of time for tweaking. That said, I have no problem sharing screenshots and info about the various trees as they become known so that we get even more feedback as early as possible.

I can say that it won't come before mid year.

Shove it onto lama for long play checking before live release, please.

[LeLoric]

No idea just yet. It will be as early as we can so there's lots of time for tweaking. That said, I have no problem sharing screenshots and info about the various trees as they become known so that we get even more feedback as early as possible.

I can say that it won't come before mid year.

Yeah I had a feeling this was going to be one of those things we won't see for quite a while. I appreciate you coming out early and letting us know about the changes.

What does this mean for any kind of more immediate release stuff though. I find it doubtful now that we would see any prestige enhancements released between now and then under the current format. Are we just looking at content releases from now til then?

With changes this big it kinda puts a hold on things for me as far as tr'ing/character building if things are going to be so vastly different in 6-8 months.

[dkyle]

I'm coming to the conclusion that, assuming that all class enhancements are assigned to a PrE pane, the 3 pane limit will put a serious damper on multiclass builds.

Let's take a look at what my Bard, my most heavily multiclassed build, will probably look like. She's a 15 Bard, 3 Rogue, 2 Fighter build. Now, obviously a completed Warchanter line will be a hit to her viability right off the bat. But I've always known to expect that.

That aside, what is she likely to end up with?

First, on the Bard side, I'll assign her main enhancements to the PrEs I think they're likely to end up in:

Warchanter
Inspired Damage
Inspired Attack
Inspired Bravery (but hopefully this will be dropped as a hard prereq, so I won't take it anyway)

Virtuoso
Lasting Song

Spellsinger
Wand/Scroll Mastery
Charisma

Now, for my Rogue splash:

Assassin
Sneak Attack Accuracy
Sneak Attack Damage

Mechanic
Skill Boost

Acrobat
Haste Boost

And finally, my Fighter splash:

Kensai
Strength

Stalwart Defender
Toughness


So, that's 8 enhancement panes just to get what I have now. Furthermore, from the looks of it, Racial PrEs will be far to good to even consider passing up. So that's a ninth pane. Meanwhile, a pure Bard is only choosing between 4 panes.

Is it fair? I can't categorically say it isn't (after all, choices make a game interesting), but I do think it does go too far in penalizing multiclass. Just giving up levels of our primary class is enough. And that's on a build that doesn't even splash for another PrE. With deeper multiclassing, the choice of panes will get even more painful. Even just spending APs on a PrE pane that you aren't seeking the PrE benefits from is a significant cost.

Ultimately, I suspect that my best course of action would be to either go pure, or with a two level Rogue splash for evasion/traps, and rely on the Racial PrE. I believe most 12/6/2 builds would be in a similar position. Go 18 for whatever the 12 class was, choose a race that gets the PrE the 6 splash was for, and pick up the 2 splash.


So, what would I do?

First, get rid of the three pane limit. It's not necessary. There enough limits on multiclassing already. It feels like a UI restriction driving game design, and I don't think that's a good thing. Instead, just add tabs to the top. A tab for Racial General enhancements, plus the Racial PrE. Then, a tab for each class the character has levels in.

Second, make general class enhancement panes. Absolutely core things like stats, toughness, scroll mastery, and monk stances would go there. Any APs spent here would count towards the progression of the PrE pane with the most APs spent on it (in case of tie, prompt the user to choose their primary). The General Class enhancement pane would show up where the Racial pane shows up on the mockup, on each tab.

Third, Racial PrEs sound like they'll be game warpingly powerful. The choice of Race will mean far more than the choice of multiclass split, which is a radical departure from the game as it exists now, and a bad one, in my opinion. Race-Class combo is a less interesting choice than all the myriad possible multiclass combinations. Furthermore, they have the effect of actually discouraging the iconic Race-Class combos they're meant to represent. A Drow Tempest Ranger and Dwarven Stalwart Defender Fighter would likely be foolish unless the AP cost for those Racial PrEs is enormous.

I mentioned this earlier, but I'd like to flesh it out some more:

Instead of the carte blanche, all-or-nothing, racial PrE, add a Racial PrE enhancement line. This line would cost 1 AP per tier, and have 6 tiers, available at character levels 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, and 16. Each tier adds an effective level of the class the PrE belongs to, solely for the purposes of qualifying for that PrE's enhancements. These effective levels would stack with any actual levels of the class, although PrEs would still be limited by character level, not just class level. Furthermore, every Racial PrE would gain a "class level 26" capstone, that would essentially be dedicated to pure 20 builds of the specific race. Choosing to dedicate all class levels, and a racial PrE, to a single PrE is a huge investment, which gives up a lot of other options, so there should be some reward. But not enough to make doing so mandatory, of course.

The result should be that all Dwarves are capable of taking the first tier of SD, no matter their class picks, but if they want to be a full SDIII, they have to take at least 12 levels of fighter. They still get a lot of flexibility to multiclass the rest of those levels. And if a Dwarf wants to be the absolute paragon of a dedicated Stalwart Defender, they should go pure 20 Fighter. All, I think, are interesting build options.

As I said earlier, Elven AAs would get grandfathered in. Instead of providing Ranger levels towards the Ranger PrE, there'd be a true Elven PrE card for AAs that would be different from the Ranger AA PrE, as it is currently. Elves would get Archmage as their conventional Racial PrE, and would choose between Archmage and AA.

[Tyrande]

As far as I can tell the general enhancements are THE worry over this change. That and drizzt clones.

I suspect the general enhancements are going to be rolled into the individual PRE trees to be able to make sense. Also, some feats like ranger favorite enemies and evasion are going to be given feats, not in the tree.

Drizzt clones are not a concern... How many drow fighters/rangers have you seen running across Eberron? Most of the fighters or rangers are either humans, half-orcs or warforged (and dwarves, forgot this) at level 18 to 20 raids. Drow is and was considered to be a pretty gimp race for melee. Even the ranger icon is pretty rare showing in raids nowadays, probably less than 1 in 20.

Most of the dark elves that I have met are caster types.

[Vargouille]

Unless "No idea just yet." is in answer to his first question....than you still haven't answered the question about what happens to the general class enhancements that were not previously tied to any particular PrE of the class, whether or not they will end up being shared by the new PrE tabs, whether or not they will count for both, whether or not they will lock out same-type enhancements in other tabs. All questions we would like answers to, for several pages of this thread by now.

We're still figuring this stuff out. If you have opinions on which way to go, let us know!

[slimkj]

No idea just yet. It will be as early as we can so there's lots of time for tweaking. That said, I have no problem sharing screenshots and info about the various trees as they become known so that we get even more feedback as early as possible.

I can say that it won't come before mid year.

Thanks, appreciated. Looks worth waiting for. Excited about the possibilities this opens up for character building so looking forward to more info.

[Ganak]

Something like Barbarian Critical Rage may be folded into the Ravager enhancement line as the Ravager Capstone.

So will each PrC have a true level 20 capstone or is this intended to be the tier 3 that is unlocked?

Love the idea of adding more capstones.


I like what I am hearing overall.

[Quetzacoala]

I think that the current list of racial unlock trees were:

Dwarf: Stalwart Defender
Warforged: Stalwart Defender
Halfling: Assassin
Half-Orc: Ravager
Elf: Arcane Archer
Drow: Tempest
Human: Pick one. (Slightly higher investment in Racial tree required to unlock.)
Half-Elf: Arcane Archer, Human, Elf (Yes, in our current plan they can unlock racial trees from the other races if desired. They might be able to go Half-Elf tree -> Human tree -> Any PrE through gargantuan AP expenditures.)

These are still subject to change. (Especially that Human part.)

I like the look of these, but it looks to me that it will be very feat intensive to take Tempest as a racial enhancement on a drow due to the necessity of the prerequisite feats and the two weapon fighting line. The only class that I can see handling this is a fighter...

Also, I feel elves need some serious help... they need to have a good reason to be played. I love playing elves, but I simply do not see any benefit that they bring to the table that a half elf does not.

Of course, I have been wrong before, but this is what it looks like to me.

[Scraap]

We're still figuring this stuff out. If you have opinions on which way to go, let us know!

What proportion of PRE vs Class vs Race are you currently envisioning in terms of game-impact target-wise?

Makes a difference in suggestions if you're favoring racials as half, or PRE as 75% of a toons power, or those as icing on top of the base class.

[QuantumFX]

Thinking on this some more I have to say: The choices available to the demihuman races (except half-elf) is too limiting and is overly skewed to half-elves. You want to try some sort of Pale master/Water savant build? You should obviously choose the race with the most magical background. What race is that? Not elves.

This might be a good time to use those favored class rules from P&P and just make all the PrE choices for the particular class available to the race:

ex.
Dwarves/Warforged: Any Fighter PrE
Elves: Any Wizard PrE.
Drow: Any Wizard or Cleric
Halflings: Any Rogue PrE
Humans: Any PrE
Half-Orc: Any Barbarian
Half-Elves: Any PrE based on their Dillitante choice. (This would do a lot to make some of the weak dillitante feats more useful.)

[LeLoric]

We're still figuring this stuff out. If you have opinions on which way to go, let us know!

Having to use up an entire panel to get one wanted pretty versatile ability like str bonus or rogue sneak attack training would be pretty disappointing.

Enhancements like this should be available to any tree in the class. Whether this counts towards both trees if you take it should depend on a few factors.

1. Would this make it too easy to just get tier 1 of all three class prestiges just by taking enhancments that count for all three.

2. If taking rog sneak attack training and dex in assasin locks out the same enhancement under theif acrobat is there enough remaining useable enhancements to still get mechanic I if you so choose.

That's a really hard one for us to tell ya where to go without having any knowledge of whaqts availabe in each tree and each class is a different conundrum.

[killerzee25]

Only problem i see is that all the pre's need to be completed for classes to not get screwed over

[LeLoric]

Thinking on this some more I have to say: The choices available to the demihuman races (except half-elf) is too limiting and is overly skewed to half-elves. You want to try some sort of Pale master/Water savant build? You should obviously choose the race with the most magical background. What race is that? Not elves.

This might be a good time to use those favored class rules from P&P and just make all the PrE choices for the particular class available to the race:

ex.
Dwarves/Warforged: Any Fighter PrE
Elves: Any Wizard PrE.
Drow: Any Wizard or Cleric
Halflings: Any Rogue PrE
Humans: Any PrE
Half-Orc: Any Barbarian
Half-Elves: Any PrE based on their Dillitante choice. (This would do a lot to make some of the weak dillitante feats more useful.)

I could really get behind this with one exception. It pretty much limits a favored class choices with limited further benefit. Sure you may save some ap like el said to go barbarian ravager versus just half-orc ravager. But that half-orc ravager can also be a ftr with three more choices whereas the barb doubles up and only has 3 total choices. In this case a half-orc barbarian needs to have something more.

[slimkj]

With changes this big it kinda puts a hold on things for me as far as tr'ing/character building if things are going to be so vastly different in 6-8 months.

I've gone the other way. When I had 3 mths in my head as a guess, I was parking TRs. Now I'm thinking if it's 6 months off, I may as well carry on and tweak or TR again in the summer. Plenty of time and too long to pause everything for me.

[slimkj]

The choice of Race will mean far more than the choice of multiclass split, which is a radical departure from the game as it exists now, and a bad one, in my opinion.

This possible bigger emphasis on race for different abilities would be more palatable to me if you could switch race like class with a different heart, although I can see how that would be eye-poppingly lore breaking for some. I have some chars I just don't want to TR again but am greedy with ideas right now.

[Scraap]

I could really get behind this with one exception. It pretty much limits a favored class choices with limited further benefit. Sure you may save some ap like el said to go barbarian ravager versus just half-orc ravager. But that half-orc ravager can also be a ftr with three more choices whereas the barb doubles up and only has 3 total choices. In this case a half-orc barbarian needs to have something more.

Half price generics, or phantom APs (inherent +1s to a given ability) in explicit lines might serve, depending on what weight they want to give each aspect.

Edit: Something along the lines of Racial|General|Specialty1|Specialty2

[sweez]

The books about Drizzt were New York Time best sellers list

Is this supposed to be a good thing?

[slimkj]

We're still figuring this stuff out. If you have opinions on which way to go, let us know!

I think there are definitely enhancement lines out there, like caster elemental damage, monk stances and so on, which belong in a General pane (panes perhaps), but which can count towards pre-reqs for any desired tree(s) if required.

So for example, any caster could pick up any elemental dmg line under General Spellcasting and if they happened to be a Sorc wanting Savant, those bought would count towards prereqs of the relevant element, and if they didn't need them anywhere they just sat in this tab with progress like the other trees to emulate the old lines.

Things like tying monk stances into PrEs would be a restrictive nightmare, so there's going to have to be some kind of generic outlet for these things. Possibly a tab for each of the three subtypes; spellcasters, specialists and melee?