Armor Up - Developer Diary #3

[bennyson]

I'm a bit concerned about the requirements needed for the new Paladin cleaves. The intention was stated that they should replace the feats (Cleave/ Greater Cleave) and thus freeing feats for Paladins. That is a great idea! Now when we take a look at the requirements - and especially the levels in which you aquire the abilities to cleave - it suddenly beginns to feel like a bad trade.

Feats
Cleave: needs Power Attack as prerequisite. Thus you can take it as your second feat -> third level, Humans or Fighters at first level.
Geat Cleave: needs Cleave and BAB+4 as a prereqisite. Thus you can take it as your third feat -> sixth level, Humans or Fighters from fourth level on.

Enhancement Tree
Exalted Cleave: Needs Paladin level 2. -> Second level. Nothing wrong here...
Avenging Cleave: Needs Character level 12 (Paladin level 5). -> Twelfth level!!!

The thought of playing a melee character to level twelve without Greater Cleave makes me shudder. And the option to choose Great Cleave as soon as possible and let Fred do his psychochirurgical heresy (yes Heresy!) on my divinely anointed soul seams... not elegant.

Second - and probably more substantial - part of that problem is that you can only take Tier 5 from one Tree. Great Cleave is not an ability you want to miss on a Paladin, so (at least for my playstile) the choice is either Knight of the Chalice or keeping the Cleaves as feats. Of course we could take them as feats, but then the initial intention (freeing much needed feat slots) is lost...


Different options for possible workarounds:
- You could make Avenging Cleave a Tier 4 enhancement.
- You could get rid of the shared cooldown with Cleave/ Great Cleave.
- You could make Exalted Cleave a optional prerequisite for Great Cleave, so you can have Cleave (Feat) OR Exalted Cleave (Enhancement) as a prerequisite for Great Cleave. Although i guess it could be difficult to code (without bugs) and it breaks the general way in which feats need prerequisites.

My favorite solution:
Get rid of Passion. Make Avenging Cleave weaker (like a normal Great Cleave) but obtainable at Tier 4. Give us a Tier 5 enhancement that improves Avenging Cleave to the one now suggested.

Other thoughts:
- Why not keep the old Holy Sword spell and just ad the intended new Holy Sword as a different spell? Although the old Holy Sword was only usefull in very specific situations, there is probably no need to get rid of it.

Because the "old" Holy Sword spell becomes a waste of effort to cast because once you get to epic levels, the weapons it creates become obsolete.

Second, the "new" Holy Sword spell is far more similar to its PnP version than the old one, while they have their differences, they are similar in purpose, to buff your weapons. I'd rather the spell as a whole gets changed instead of letting it sit there gathering dust.

About Avenging Cleave, I am against lowering its power and tier because other classes cant get their most powerful enhancement cleaves until level 12ish with 5 levels of their class. Also, Avenging Cleave will inflect a stack of Vulnerability (1% extra damage from all sources of damage) to ALL enemies hit by the cleave. Am also guessing that it will stack up to 20 and since its applied after you hit a group of enemies with Avenging Cleave, your party's damage will benefit.

my own concern is, how much AP will these abilities cost and will we have enough AP left from KOTC will we be able to spend in other trees.

[toapat]

Agreed. To balance the AP cost, switch the tier 4 and tier 5 to one rank of 2 AP each, as opposed to three ranks of 1 AP each.

You make a good point with the new great cleave having ML12.

both cleaves currently have planed to have costs of 1/2/3, not 1/1/1. Removing passion doesnt really help add space, expecially since you are ignoring the single largest waste of space in the tree to do so.

Vigor of Life and Sealed life should be one enhancement node. They still have the tech to level gate each tier of an enhancement and they should do that, but having 1 6/3 enhancement worth of attributes spread across 4 nodes and costing 8 AP just isnt worth it. Mechanically speaking those nodes dont even fit with the rest of KotC beyond "its what HotD used to get".

You cant just accept that Turbine is wasting nodes of a tree, if there are things that they could be doing with those nodes. No one wants the paladin update to be underpowered, but as it is, going onto lamania, paladin will still be behind everyone. Its better to start testing from a state where the class is overpowered then from a point where you dont even have the options to tune the class. With most of KotC being dedicated to redundant nodes, (4 healing nodes, 2 action boost nodes, either Extra remove disease or improved restoration, Censure outsiders). Literally a third of the vertical tree is dedicated to nodes which are just eating space better used for a wider variety of offensive enhancements.

[bennyson]

• Passion: Your Divine Sacrifice ability gains: On Damage: Gain (5/10/15) temporary spell points if you strike an undead or evil outsider an evil creature with this attack.

Sev~

This is really weird wording

Sev, does this mean that Passion will work IF you attack an undead or evil outsider OR an evil creature?

[toapat]

This is really weird wording

Sev, does this mean that Passion will work IF you attack an undead or evil outsider OR an evil creature?

the only flag that raises is why would we be ******** to Eludecia? she has enough problems with being vulnerable to all alignment effects simultaineously and with a Kill on sight flag by every demon, devil, Daemon, angel, archon, eladrin, modron, inevitable, and any other patron of the great wheel in existance.

on the other hand a quest chain with the Succubus paladin would be interesting

note: here: archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fc/20050824a

[EllisDee37]

both cleaves currently have planed to have costs of 1/2/3, not 1/1/1.

Right, that was my point. They cost 3 AP to take to rank III. The suggestion was to split the tier 5 one into two parts:

Tier 4: Just like a normal great cleave, shares cooldown with great cleave
Tier 5: Improves the tier 4 great cleave to match what the tier 5 cleave is listed to get

I'm saying that this is a great idea, but if they go this route, instead of having both the tier 4 and tier 5 ones cost 1/1/1 (6 AP total if you want both), make the tier 4 and 5 ones 2 AP each, 1 rank. (4 AP total.) Either way, the lower tier "regular" cleave would be unchanged, still costing 1/1/1 with three ranks.

[EllisDee37]

This is really weird wording

Sev, does this mean that Passion will work IF you attack an undead or evil outsider OR an evil creature?

The wording is awkward because not all undead are evil. It's intended to work against all evil mobs as well as all undead mobs.

[Psiandron]

My Suggested Improvements to the KOTC Tree

I liked your suggested changes to the KotC tree quite a lot.

I would like to suggest that there be some more buffing of the pally spell list.

Perhaps the 2nd level stat improvement spells which are, I think that we can all agree, completely useless in this game could be altered ala Ram's Might to give a stacking increase.

Also, Ranger gets Remove disease and Neutralize poison as 3rd level spells and Paladins don't get those same spells until 4th level spells. How about giving Paladins FoM at 3rd in exchange. Not exactly equivalent, I agree, but FoM is hardly game-breaking (it doesn't even always work) and it would be nice to have another class as a source for it.

[OverlordOfRats]

Right, that was my point. They cost 3 AP to take to rank III. The suggestion was to split the tier 5 one into two parts:

Tier 4: Just like a normal great cleave, shares cooldown with great cleave
Tier 5: Improves the tier 4 great cleave to match what the tier 5 cleave is listed to get

I'm saying that this is a great idea, but if they go this route, instead of having both the tier 4 and tier 5 ones cost 1/1/1 (6 AP total if you want both), make the tier 4 and 5 ones 2 AP each, 1 rank. (4 AP total.) Either way, the lower tier "regular" cleave would be unchanged, still costing 1/1/1 with three ranks.

This is a good solution to let them get great cleave enhancement before level 12. Then at level twelve you can buff it up if you want.

[oradafu]

I skipped the cores because I think Sev has done a remarkably good job on them. (kudos Sev). The name for the Sev's holy sword spell could easily be changed, but there's a part of me that would like to see the existing spell left in the game.

As for the KOTC capstone, I know it's easy to get good via a plethora of different enhancements/ED's. I run my paladin in fury or LD, which don't have a method to obtain good, getting good free in the capstone does save me a twist / red slot. I think going one way or the other will likely leave the same amount of people feeling put off as they do currently.

I think I'd rather see the capstone get a significant Melee Power boost than have it bypass all DR's. Bypassing DR is easy enough as is, thus won't overly encourage me to stay pure, but a BIG boost to melee power might.

Yeah, now we're cooking with gas! Now that you point out this most obvious solution, all melee capstones should grant melee power, IMO.

For kotc, by significant, were you thinking in the 50 range? That might be too high, but I'd be willing to test it out. My first thought was 20, but that might be too low.

This in addition to all capstones across the board getting a bump from +2 stat to +4 stat.

These are good points. Yes, generally, all melee trees should receive a boost in melee power boost in their cores and capstones.

As for DR breaking, I've been saying for years that Paladins Good capstone is junk for epics for years and should be moved to a lower level for paladins. (although I have been complaining about how its broken for about the same amount of time). With EDs, DR breaking in Epics became obsolete. It's not an important ability like it used to. Pre-MOTU, all major bosses had DR that needed to be broken, but that's not the case anymore. And EDs and twists and now Thunderforge make DR breaking insignificant now.

And let's face it, with Arcane Archers, Artis, Druids and Monks being able to bypass DR quite early in heroics, there's no reason why Paladins shouldn't be able to do it also earlier in heroics also. I've suggested before that paladins should have a toggle similar to AA Secondary Imbue Toggle. Paladins should have a Metalline toggle (since it was removed from the new Holy Sword, and a Lawful Good toggle.

Getting DR bypasses at level 20 (if it works, because the current one has been broken for over two years) is really too late for Paladins (or any other class). As stated, EDs actually work (unlike what paladins currently have) and most useful epic weapons already contain DR breaking within them. And don't claim that the Epic DR bypass feats are popular because there is only one that anyone picks and its the Monks' Vorpal Strikes. (Aside, I don't see why Monks can get a Vorpal feat, yet Banish on a Paladin is considered too overpowered).

This is really weird wording

Sev, does this mean that Passion will work IF you attack an undead or evil outsider OR an evil creature?

It's poorly worded, but all the Dev did was add all Evil mobs, instead of limiting it to just Undead and Evil Outsiders as it currently does. So finally this ability gets the boost it should have over a year ago. I'm not sure its worth picking up anymore though since AP costs for Paladins was never dropped like they should have been and the new stuff is looking pretty expensive. I wish the Devs kept the promise to drop AP for their trees when the new system was put in place then when the trees were intially revealed over a year ago.

[Scrabbler]

The wording is awkward because not all undead are evil. It's intended to work against all evil mobs as well as all undead mobs.

Where did you learn that that was the intent?

[OverlordOfRats]

How would you feel about those abilities getting moved to a different tree?


Drop Vigor of life to tiers two through four in it's new tree.

Some two level paladins will be able to take the first tier. They will have to find seven spare APs in their build to do so.
To take all three will require 22APs.


Drop Sealed Life to tier three or four in it's new tree.

Still require three levels of paladin and 12APs or four levels of paladin and 22APs.
I don't feel to many people would spend those cost just for it. Warforged and Bladeforged are naturally immune and an easier way to get it.

[oradafu]

Where did you learn that that was the intent?

Probably when the Dev responded to one of your posts with this:

Monsters with an evil alignment, or that are undead.

The only reason we didn't just say "Evil" is because there are some neutral undead and we didn't want Paladins to lose ground against them. We figured, lore wise, that Paladins would find all types of undead (at least those created with negative energy) to be abominations.

Sev~

[toapat]

I liked your suggested changes to the KotC tree quite a lot.

I dont because he doesnt solve any real problems with the design of the tree.

Im sorry, but "Glowing Venomed Blades", nerfing the already cripplingly weak censure enhancements, a very weak on kill effect, along with removing all decisionmaking involving Holy Retribution, isnt good design.

Alot of the reason i havent been just listing off replacements for the 8 nodes i want opened is i just dont have anything ideas for them. Currently alot of the tree is pseudo dead space, which isnt good design.

Hell, from a balance perspective i dont even agree with KotC having Channel divinity mechanics. Its the tree for smite evil. Having both major resources of the paladin in the same tree just means they are going to be stepping over eachother and cause weaker design philosophy themselves.

Do i feel that moving turn undead into DoS would be good? no, but that is because the design space which DoS Occupies is not correct for such a move.

[Munkenmo]

I dont because he doesnt solve any real problems with the design of the tree.

Im sorry, but "Glowing Venomed Blades", nerfing the already cripplingly weak censure enhancements, a very weak on kill effect, along with removing all decisionmaking involving Holy Retribution, isnt good design.

Alot of the reason i havent been just listing off replacements for the 8 nodes i want opened is i just dont have anything ideas for them. Currently alot of the tree is pseudo dead space, which isnt good design.

How did I nerf censure? It's stronger and tied it into extra damage. Carrying on, in the one post you've stated you "don't like kotc having channel divinity, it's the tree for smite evil, & that changing holy retribution to no longer require channel divinity is bad design" contradiction much?

Limiting a paladin to ~3 strikes per minute after his initial few have been exhausted is hardly game breaking. The enhancement severlin proposed just wouldn't get used, 1 turn undead for one smite evil is a terrible exchange rate.

Reckoning might seem weak in epic levels, but melee power hasn't been introduced yet, the damage and possibly the healing will scale with an as yet untested system and I felt it better to err on the side of caution. If after testing it's too weak, I'd agree with maddmat, tie it into smites with with some extra crit threat.

On the enhancement tree as I proposed it, I would take all but 2 abilities, hardly seems like pseudo dead space.

[toapat]

How did I nerf censure? It's stronger and tied it into extra damage. Carrying on, in the one post you've stated you "don't like kotc having channel divinity, it's the tree for smite evil, & that changing holy retribution to no longer require channel divinity is bad design" contradiction much?

Limiting a paladin to ~3 strikes per minute after his initial few have been exhausted is hardly game breaking. The enhancement severlin proposed just wouldn't get used, 1 turn undead for one smite evil is a terrible exchange rate.

Reckoning might seem weak in epic levels, but melee power hasn't been introduced yet, the damage and possibly the healing will scale with an as yet untested system and I felt it better to err on the side of caution. If after testing it's too weak, I'd agree with maddmat, tie it into smites with with some extra crit threat.

On the enhancement tree as I proposed it, I would take all but 2 abilities, hardly seems like pseudo dead space.

your changes are one line of comment, what im talking about design wise is completely unrelated to you and primarily related to my experiences with designing classes for PnP and careful examination of talent tree systems like is currently used for the enhancements

you didnt increase types of valid targets of censure while you tripled the cost of censure and its no longer then Severlin's OP where it was said in a later post the ability will still cost 1 point each.

you eliminated any decisionmaking from Holy retribution, which has been stated by Severlin abilities with no decision making are bad design. This is something he is correct about.

you fail to understand what dead space is then. Having one ability which shouldnt take up more then 1 node take up 3 is bad design.

Of your changes, the only one i would touch is only the third tier of vigor of life.

[EllisDee37]

you didnt increase types of valid targets of censure while you tripled the cost of censure and its no longer then Severlin's OP where it was said in a later post the ability will still cost 1 point each.

Yes he did, and by the correct amount. On live, maxed censure applies to all evil outsiders, plus all chaotic outsiders. (Eladrin.) Under his proposal, maxed censure applies to all evil mobs. Note the lack of the word "outsiders." You could censure hobgoblins, drow, etc...

[EllisDee37]

Regarding the pally spell list, what about redoing the cure spells?

Level 1: Cure Light Wounds (no change)
Level 2: Cure Moderate Wounds (currently nothing)
Level 3: Cure Serious Wounds (currently moderate)
Level 4: Cure Critical Wounds (currently serious)

Do the same for rangers while you're at it. Right now the cure spells have a dizzying array of levels for the various classes who get them. Three of my characters alone have three different sets...

Cure light/moderate/serious
Paladin 1/3/4
Ranger 2/3/4
Cleric 1/2/3

It's silliness that at least one class is "off" a level for every spell.

[EllisDee37]

How would you feel about those abilities getting moved to a different tree?


Drop Vigor of life to tiers two through four in it's new tree.

Some two level paladins will be able to take the first tier. They will have to find seven spare APs in their build to do so.
To take all three will require 22APs.


Drop Sealed Life to tier three or four in it's new tree.

Still require three levels of paladin and 12APs or four levels of paladin and 22APs.
I don't feel to many people would spend those cost just for it. Warforged and Bladeforged are naturally immune and an easier way to get it.

I would not be a fan of moving vigor/sealed to a different tree. Those are signature HotD enhancements, and as such should remain in the KotC/HotD tree.

[toapat]

I would not be a fan of moving vigor/sealed to a different tree. Those are signature HotD enhancements, and as such should remain in the KotC/HotD tree.

you should also not argue in favor of mechanics from PrEs which are based off of primarily tank trees from PnP. Mechanically, KotC is intended to be the offensive paladin tree. This is why i argued against using either HotD or KotC as bases for the tree, because both PrCs are mechanically defense oriented against the chosen class of enemies. KotC has some bonus damage, HotD has weapon riders. but most of their class features are protection against undead or demons.

Also, im sorry, but 9AP for a rare stun of minimal duration isnt worth anything. Stunning blow has a cooldown similar to the proc rate of an ability you wasted 9 ap on while incapacitating for twice the time.

[Qhualor]

you should also not argue in favor of mechanics from PrEs which are based off of primarily tank trees from PnP. Mechanically, KotC is intended to be the offensive paladin tree. This is why i argued against using either HotD or KotC as bases for the tree, because both PrCs are mechanically defense oriented against the chosen class of enemies. KotC has some bonus damage, HotD has weapon riders. but most of their class features are protection against undead or demons.

Also, im sorry, but 9AP for a rare stun of minimal duration isnt worth anything. Stunning blow has a cooldown similar to the proc rate of an ability you wasted 9 ap on while incapacitating for twice the time.

well, I found the stun to be pretty worthwhile. it procs a lot more than you might realize. I wouldn't mind seeing it change to something that could make it proc a bit more though. however, you can compare 9 AP or a precious feat slot for something that could be difficult for a Paladin to boost. how many Paladins use SB?