Armor Up - Developer Diary #3

[droid327]

I'm thinking you've just changed Paladin from a /2 splash for saves to a /4 splash for +1/+1 crit for 4 mins. Nothing in the tree is making me want to build a main-class Paladin. Its only got me thinking of what else I could splash in to make use of the few nice abilities. TWF Ranger seems like it'd benefit more from the scaling +light damage at Core 3 (Pal 6) than a pure pal would get from the 8d6 at the capstone.

Abilities that only work vs undead/demons/outsiders are not worth it. Attacks that consume limited "charges" are not worth it. Abilities that require your opponent to be under 1000 HP aren't worth it....especially instakills - by that point the fight is over, anyway, in endgame.

A whole lot of focus on fear effects when one Fear Immunity Topaz makes it all moot.

I could go 3 deep in Knight to get a +2/+2 crit attack that costs me a use of Smite. Or I could get it for free in the cores of Ranger, along with a superior melee DPS tree.

Also, 30% Melee Power AB? Is that 30 Melee Power? Or 30% bonus multiplier to whatever your current Melee Power Rating is?

[toapat]

I'm thinking you've just changed Paladin from a /2 splash for saves to a /4 splash for +1/+1 crit for 4 mins. Nothing in the tree is making me want to build a main-class Paladin. Its only got me thinking of what else I could splash in to make use of the few nice abilities. TWF Ranger seems like it'd benefit more from the scaling +light damage at Core 3 (Pal 6) than a pure pal would get from the 8d6 at the capstone.

Unless the TWF +1/+1 modifiers add a combined melee power of over 1000, it wont. in blitz, a paladin with the capstone would deal 28d6/hit. and they still benefit from dual wield with it

[Lonnbeimnech]

I'm thinking you've just changed Paladin from a /2 splash for saves to a /4 splash for +1/+1 crit for 4 mins.

you need to be at least 14 paladin to cast holy sword

[Grailhawk]

I'm thinking you've just changed Paladin from a /2 splash for saves to a /4 splash for +1/+1 crit for 4 mins.

PLD don't get level 4 spells until class level 14.

[Scrabbler]

Good design would be every class has 3 distinct trees, each able to invest 90 points in, and which all 80 points of theirs are difficult but rewarding to invest.

Nope. Given that it is possible to start getting tier 5 enhancements with only 30 AP spent, it would be emphatically a bad design if there are 80-90 points spendable within a tree. The best case result would be a gigantic waste of developer effort, but as it stands the current tree layouts just can't hold that kind of stuff in an acceptably fun/interesting way.

EDIT:
It's like this. Suppose a designer has built a tree with a few nice tier 5 abilities, so that it takes 38 points to get them all. Given the choice between trying to make 42 new interesting ways to spend AP in that tree, or to build a whole new 4th tree for the class, the new tree is the better option.

[raggedtopper]

This is all well and good, (pun intended) but if you are going to revamp the cup pally this way does this mean that the capstone good effect is finally going to work? I mean it hasn't worked for a year and lives on the know issues list.

Or are you going to just introduce a collection of new abilities and ignore that little problem as it has been for forever?

Just curious.

[toapat]

Nope. Given that it is possible to start getting tier 5 enhancements with only 30 AP spent, it would be emphatically a bad design if there are 80-90 points spendable within a tree. The best case result would be a gigantic waste of developer effort, but as it stands the current tree layouts just can't hold that kind of stuff in an acceptably fun/interesting way.

EDIT:
It's like this. Suppose a designer has built a tree with a few nice tier 5 abilities, so that it takes 38 points to get them all. Given the choice between trying to make 42 new interesting ways to spend AP in that tree, or to build a whole new 4th tree for the class, the new tree is the better option.

you are correlating Lazy with Good. This is not the case.

the current design is 70ish point trees. This is fine in the short term but not the ideal.

The ideal are deep and competitive trees where i can dedicate my entire build and achieve 2-3 different results depending on what i want

[BDog77]

Something else I just thought. Perhaps we could make Paladin and Cleric Turn Undead hit dice scale with positive spellpower? Otherwise, you need to bump those in Improved Turning to at least 5/10/15 (preferably 7/14/21, and then they would be horribly OP at lower levels, and probably still no good for EE).

[Severlin]

Minor thing: You have the description priority swapped there. The "also increase crits" is the important part, and we couldn't care less about +2 enhancement (it could be -2 and we'd still use the spell).

Major thing: You need to really spell out how this spell stacks, both with other spells castable on weapons and with every other effect that can raise crit profile.

Notice that Holy Sword comes at Paladin level 14, while many other classes get boost to crit profile in tier 5 (which is class level 5)... use caution around builds like Pal14/Rog6 and so forth (if they were allowed to stack crit improvements to huge levels)


That's a strange wording. Virtually every undead (except 1-2 named exceptions) is evil.

It's not clear if "evil and undead creatures" means:
Things that are evil undead.
Monsters with an evil alignment, or that are undead.
Monsters which are Evil Outsider type, or undead.

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~

[Severlin]

Ah... Didn't realize they worked without having the feats. Not a huge bonus if you're working towards overwhelming crit, but free feats are always nice.

Actually we already discussed the Overwhelming Critical issue with the Player's Council. We are removing both the Strength requirement and the Great Cleave requirement from that feat.

Sev~

[maddong]

Is holy sword a competence bonus so you can't combine it with 5 rogue for the uber sireth of doom?

I would probably make it not stack....

Overall all of the changes look really awesome.

I think EN and EH will become even more of a cake walk though....

[Severlin]

Another little nitpick about paladins: I've always found the iconic smite evil ability hard to use.

Often I would try to use the ability, but when the sword gets swung I might find that the enemy has moved away or has already been killed. This isn't much of a big deal except that it means I've lost a smite charge, which takes a full minute to recharge. I'd suggest it be changed to work like adrenalin from the Fury of the Wild destiny, so that the next attack that hits gets the benefit of the smite. Just a little quality of life thing.

If you miss you'll still get the Melee Power bonus.

Sev~

[Severlin]

I like these changes for the most part. However, "Divine Retribution" seems over-complicated and pointless. There is no point in giving what is essentially a vorpal ability a DC check, nor is there any reason to apply a stat debuff to an enemy that is almost dead, that is under 1000 HP, at least in epic levels.

We didn't feel strongly that it needed changing.

Secondly, I feel that paladins should benefit more from Divine Might. Perhaps you could give paladins their own class-specific epic feat that increases either the benefit or the duration of DM? Any class-specific epic feat would be a buff for paladins, honestly.

Divine Might is, quite frankly, strong enough, and one reason Strength based builds overshadow Dexterity based melee. We can't really justify increasing its power.

Finally, why do these smiting abilities share a cooldown with cleave? There are other cleave-like attacks that do not.

Because if you could also take Cleave and Great Cleave then we wouldn't really be freeing up feats for the Paladin.

Sev~

[Delacroix21]

Greetings,


Holy Sword
Evocation (Good spells)
Paladin 4
Components: Verbal, Somatic
Metamagic: Quicken
Range: Touch
Target: Self
Duration: 1 minute per caster level
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No
Cooldown: 3 seconds

Channels holy power to increase the effectiveness of your equipped weapons. Weapons you currently are wielding gain an additional +2 holy bonus to enhancement value. The spell also increases the threat range and critical weapon multiplier of these weapons by 1.


Sev~

Let me guess= Wont work with unarmed (like everything else) and Devs will claim this is WAI.


WAI when it comes to unarmed means= We dont know how to make this work.

[toapat]

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~

of the 12 races in the game, only 3 are from Faerun and would implicitely hate undead, of the Eberron races, Bladeforged, High elves, and Drow condone Undeath, Warforged may condone undeath, if aligned with the Lord of Blades and not the Becoming God, and anyone from Karrnath treats undead as neutral

[Delacroix21]

On a lighter note I have a question for you Sev (PLEASE answer)=

Will grand Master of Flowers petal strikes be allowed to scale with meele power?


These strikes do next to nothing in EE and never scale, monks should want GMoF destiny, but instead run in Fury, LD, or Sentinel. =(

[LuKaSu]

Divine might being available to a level 2 paladin, but unusable without 4 paladin levels, a cleric level, or an epic destiny ability continues to baffle me.

I can see how it could be confusing, but it also allows you to take a feature without spending enough points in the tree to get to tier four before buying the item. For that reason, I like it, but I think there should be a warning in the description about it, or have it un-purchasable if you can't yet turn undead. The other, more exciting option would be to give pallies the FvS version, that uses sp instead. I could get behind that if they moved it up to be a tier three or four ability (or put a scales-with-paladin-levels cap on it), so it wouldn't overpower two-level splashes.

I'm going to /sign the suggestion that the KotC tree serve as pre-req for Overwhelming Crit otherwise the obvious intention to free up Feats isn't going to work {People will still be stuck taking Cleave/Great Cleave!}.

You can never have a feat have an enhancement as a pre-requisite, because you could get the feat, then reset your enhancements. An alternative, however, could be to put an overwhelming critical (not stacking with oc) level 20 core enhancement in the tree, if it was really the devs' intention to reduce feat dependency for Paladins. That being said, I don't think it is their intention. Their current outlook (which I think is a good idea) seems to be to give multiple desirable options, so there isn't room to have it all. You need to make tough build choices that way.

Edit:

Actually we already discussed the Overwhelming Critical issue with the Player's Council. We are removing both the Strength requirement and the Great Cleave requirement from that feat.

Sev~

Even better!

[Severlin]

This cooldown seems pretty absurdly low. It'll end up being a default attack in the player's attack pattern, and always the first one they toggle.

This isn't inherently bad, persay-
But, well.
"This ability also recharges one Smite Evil."

Suffice it to say that the ED faster regenning smites enhancement will be utterly useless for KotC Tier5 builds.
You know. The one that allows you an extra smite every few minutes?

You could just scrap the 'recharges one smite evil' and write in a 'this ability grants infinite smite evils'.
You could even leave the functionality the same.
It'd only be in rare instances that a player'd actually be able to notice the actual mechanics [at least going off of the premise that players will use the attack as a default in their pattern].

In other words-
Is this WAI? ;P

This ability requires one use of Turn Undead.

Sev~

[Delacroix21]

This ability requires one use of Turn Undead.

Sev~

And the lilly petal question Sev?

[Severlin]

This is all well and good, (pun intended) but if you are going to revamp the cup pally this way does this mean that the capstone good effect is finally going to work? I mean it hasn't worked for a year and lives on the know issues list.

Or are you going to just introduce a collection of new abilities and ignore that little problem as it has been for forever?

Just curious.

Yep, it's on our list to fix.

Sev~