Let's Talk: Enhancements!

[kingfisher]

also any multi class battle caster will be completely hamstrung by the 3 tree deal a well, its not like they are op and need to be held in check.

[dkyle]

Of course, a deep multi can't even get one tier III right now. Now he'll have the option of T3 in racial or 2x Tier 2 in primary class. I'm not sure how "He can get 2 and I can only get 1" is worse than "he can get 1 and I can't get any".

What a multi gets now vs what he gets later is irrelevant. Sure, he gains a Racial TierIII. That might make it a stronger build. I have never claimed otherwise. But the pure build also gains a possible Racial TierIII. It gains the same potential benefit (or it can choose not to take that benefit, but that means something even better is available to the pure), so it's not a net benefit to the multi, overall.

The important thing is how builds in the future will compare to each other. The Racial TierIII doesn't change that comparison. What those builds can do with their other two trees is where the real comparison lies. And assuming a Racial III, a pure build has the option of TierIII+TierI, or TierII+TierII. And isn't locked into a Racial III, anyway. Racial TierI, plus two Class TierIIIs might be the better option. The pure build has the option of deciding. A 12/6/2 has only the option of TierIII Racial, TierII from the 12, and TierI from the 6. Anything else, and they're giving up tiers of PrE without gaining any other tiers of PrE in return, or they're not taking a tree from the 6 class, which immediately points towards my belief that deep multiclasses will have less incentive over pure builds than they have now, because enhancements are almost always a major incentive for deep multis currently. No matter what, the comparison of pure vs deep multiclass looks unfavorable given the info we currently have.

[Vormaerin]

limiting all characters to 3 trees is not 'more choices'. period. this is not a vitrue. what virtue's of the 3 tree deal are you talking about? all i see are flaws.

i cant tell you what page, sry, but i know a dev was talking about enhancements being grayed out of the trees under the new system. the mechanic will still be used.

They are talking about several different possibilities. You may have noticed that they answered some questions with "we don't know yet".

Also, as another poster pointed out, unlimited stacking of everything wasn't what was being discussed. Stacking of "Class: Stat" and "Class: Skill Bonus", however, was.


The advantage of the tree system over the current system is that it is easier to use and allows for the points' spent bonus system to replace the "spend 4pts for this package" system.

I'm sure the devs have other reasons its easier, as Madfloyd has said that the current structure is holding back development of new PrEs. Why that is, I'm not sure.

Three trees vs all possible trees is mainly a balance factor, as far as I can tell. Depending on how the enhancements get distributed, it could be very restrictive or just mildly restrictive.

It remains the case that restrictions will be in place. Whether they will be greater or lesser than they are today is entirely unclear at the current time. I can imagine designs based on what we know that go either way.

[Chai]

Another example.

you have a 12/6/2.

You decide you DO want to take multiple lines from the 12 fighter. Weapon focus, AND some kind of shield thingy, AND something from whatever the 3rd line will be.

NOW because of the 3 tree lockout thing - you can take NOTHING from any of the 6 ranger or 2 rogue enhancement lines.

Not ONE thing.

Anyone that doesnt think that is more limiting than now is utterly missing what they are arguing for.

This is of course assuming that each fighter ability is ONLY in ONE line and not in all 3. I covered this using my bard example ~10 pages or so ago, here:

Those questions wont really be able to be answered until we see how they are fleshing out the details about how the abilities can be taken.

The fear of course is that (using bard as an example) scroll enhancements will ONLY be in spellsinger tree, to-hit and damage song enhancements will ONLY be in warchanter tree, and music of making / dead will ONLY be in virtuoso tree. A multiclass bard then who wants all of those is now limited to their racial tree and cant take enhancements from other class trees they multiclassed into due to having to use each bard PRE tree to gain abilities they wanted.

Your question is valid, because if it ends up being the way I outlined in my example, the new system will be MORE LIMITING than it is now. Why spend all this dev time to create a system that is more limiting than the one currently in place.

This is ALSO assuming that taking one point from any line locks you into that tree. I was under the impression that taking the PRE in that tree locked you in - that one toon can take 3 class PRE and one race PRE - not simply access enhancements from those PRE lines being the limiting factor.

[stainer]

Hey Madfloyd,

How does this fit in with the DDOCast report of Turbine registering the following domains?

ddounderdark.com
ddoforgottenrealms.com
ddomotu.com

[Riggs]

these dont stack now, why the heck would they stack in the new system? you cant take rogue dex AND ranger dex, it wont allow you too, why would they start allowing this now?

Eladrin stated he was currently thinking that fighter toughness and barb toughness would stack. Hence all the stacking fears. Toughness alone - racial +3 lines would mean 1 toughness feat would result in...182 hp for 1 feat. 80 more than now.

Most people are arguing that no same type bonuses should be changed to start stacking under the new system. Some are not and think it is all good - not understanding what stacking will do to the game.

The only fair and meaningful way to balance it is to not limit things to three arbitrary trees - AND same type enhancements do not stack. You can access multiple lines - but you dont get to add four types of stat bonuses, four types of toughness bonuses, four types of whatever else will be in there.

Take str in the kensai line? great - you still get to take stuff to put into the SD line - just something other than strength. Nothing locked out, but nothing stacking.

Many ways to get somewhere is good, many ways to stack things is not, and locking stuff out means only a few ways to get anywhere. Also bad.

10 trees? So you need a scroll bar on the UI - so what. Vastly limiting options to make the UI fit on one page is not a good idea at all. You cannot get tier 3 in 10 lines unless suddenly we get 160 more AP to play with.

Seven tier 1 lines? As long as same type bonuses do not stack - AND tier 3 is offering a extra boost over lower lines - a pure class should still be powerful, a wide multiclass will be useful in many ways - but the points should be valuable and roughly equal whether they are focused or spread out.

Balancing and making all enhancements useful is the challenge for Turbine - not limiting the UI. Balanced enhancements means all the fears people have about uber multis running around go away.

[Vormaerin]

No matter what, the comparison of pure vs deep multiclass looks unfavorable given the info we currently have.

I don't agree. I think part of the problem is that you are obsessing with the "tier I/II/III" system.

I could be misunderstanding, but I don't think "assassin I" means "gets the current assassin package". I think the current assassin package is going to be broken into separate enhancements like "Assasin Sneak attack" and "Assassin Poison". The "tier I" modifier is to quality for higher enhancements. Like you can't buy Kensai weapon mastery enhancement until you have the "Kensai I" attribute.

Look at the tempest example. You get a free ability at 5pts spent and at 15 pts spent. Exactly how that relates to class levels isn't clear. Some of that will be class level restricted. But even if it is, it means that there will be far more breakpoints that are reasonable than just 2, 6, or 12. You could take 5pts in the Tempest line for the free +2 shield bonus without needing 6 class levels.

That whole 'bonus for points spent' structure becomes massively more unstable if you allow for 6 or 9 tabs. You'll either have to put in all kinds of specific lockouts or otherwise make sure that all those 5pt free abilities don't add up to be an enormous advantage for the character with 9 trees over the person with only 3.

[dkyle]

This is of course assuming that each fighter ability is ONLY in ONE line and not in all 3. I covered this using my bard example ~10 pages or so ago, here:

Sounds like that's not happening:

Where will effects that modify core class abilities go?

For example, the various enhancements that boost Ranger Favored Enemy damage (useful to both PrEs), Bard Extra Song, etc?

Or will these effects disappear, be made baseline for the classes, rolled into more than one PrE, or just assigned to whichever tree you feel they fit best?

Into the most appropriate tree, generally.

This is ALSO assuming that taking one point from any line locks you into that tree. I was under the impression that taking the PRE in that tree locked you in - that one toon can take 3 class PRE and one race PRE - not simply access enhancements from those PRE lines being the limiting factor.

No. You get three PrE trees possible, period. The Race PrE, if you buy it, counts as one of them. The only other tree is the Racial general enhancements tree. This was confirmed to me via PMs from MadFloyd and Eladrin.

If you look at the original mockup Madfloyd posted, you'll see that there are options to swap each of those PrE trees to one of the ones available to you via your class(es) and/or race. You can only swap out a tree if it has zero points spent in it. So this also confirms that you must lock in a tree as one of your three to spend any points on it.

[Vormaerin]

This is ALSO assuming that taking one point from any line locks you into that tree. I was under the impression that taking the PRE in that tree locked you in - that one toon can take 3 class PRE and one race PRE - not simply access enhancements from those PRE lines being the limiting factor.

The racial PrE tree is separate from the racial enhancements tree.

Everyone gets a Racial enhancement tree plus three class based trees. The racial PrE is one of those class based trees. Its just a way of multiclassing without changing classes.

If you are multiclassed, you pick which three of your 9 class (10 counting racial PrE) trees are active. You can't have points spent in more than 3 of the class trees. That's the current design.

[Angelus_dead]

That whole 'bonus for points spent' structure becomes massively more unstable if you allow for 6 or 9 tabs. You'll either have to put in all kinds of specific lockouts or otherwise make sure that all those 5pt free abilities don't add up to be an enormous advantage for the character with 9 trees over the person with only 3.

That sounds completely backwards.

A bonus for points spent will naturally and automatically work against people who train in more than 3 trees, because their spread out points won't be able to get high enough in any one tree for a good bonus. The only way there could be a problem is if the specialty abilities are incredibly frontloaded; but if they are that frontloaded, that's a problem anyway for characters with only 3 trees.

[Chai]

Sounds like that's not happening:





No. You get three PrE trees possible, period. The Race PrE, if you buy it, counts as one of them. The only other tree is the Racial general enhancements tree. This was confirmed to me via PMs from MadFloyd and Eladrin.

If you look at the original mockup Madfloyd posted, you'll see that there are options to swap each of those PrE trees to one of the ones available to you via your class(es) and/or race. You can only swap out a tree if it has zero points spent in it. So this also confirms that you must lock in a tree as one of your three to spend any points on it.

If this is indeed the case, they are building a system that is MORE limiting than what we already have. If I wanted to go play WOW, I would have just played WOW. What you are describing as far as limitations go is not D&D at all. They are placing ARBITRARY limitations to the UI in order to limit multiple options being available above and beyond 3. In my bard example I could spend up all three of my trees just gaining bard abilities. Then I cant take fighter haste boost 1 str 1 and toughness 1 for having 2 levels of fighter. I can do this now, why cant I do it in the new system?

BTW DEVS: WOW is LITERALLY three talent trees as a limitation. You guys didnt dream this up. This is ganked right out of WOW as much as the double strike / offhand proc chance was ganked out of EQ1. We play this MMO because its not those other MMOs. Please do not turn it into something similar to those other games. You said it yourself that multiclassing is literally what separates DDO from other games, but all youre doing is presenting us the WOW talent tree with D&D names on it.

[Riggs]

...
I can say that almost universally a pure character will NEVER have the plethora of options available to it that somebody willing and interested in multiclassing does. This isn't to say muticlassing is better or worse but it is a concept of options, and multiclassing definitely has those. It is up to each player to decide whether they want to sacrifice some deeper PrE ranks for other types of PrE's or more versatility in their character, that is the nature of multiclassing.

For much of the game - pure class did almost nothing for a character other than arcanes. Turbine stated they wanted to change that - and one quote was "We think there should be NO reason to ever multiclass" - I believe that person is no longer working on DDO - but the trend has been to increase the pure class power over time.

Anyone who knows this history sees what is going on and realizes that there will be another attempt to make staying pure more powerful - and for the most part that is a good thing. TSR are the ones who made pure class fighters a waste of time, but Turbine has to work in that system. There are many weaknesses in the d20 system in 3rd edition - many.

The enhancement system has changed a great deal about how DDO is different from pnp - and a lot of it is great changes. The pnp 'action points' was a small change that added once per quest extra dice rolls and stuff. What we have is way better.

However - if the new system BOTH locks out a lot of options by arbitrarily limiting multiclasses to 3 lines, AND makes enhancements ONLY available to some lines, unlike now, AND makes pure class enhancements much more powerful as most are expecting - what will result is a big shift to making the vast majority of anything other than 18/2 or 20 splits significantly LESS powerful than they are now, with less options - and effectively saying "OK now go reroll half your characters that you have spent years building".

Arbitrary restrictions over and above the cost of the lines themselves is simply not needed, and will be far more restrictive and damaging than most people realize.

These are not minor points, if everything goes that way - a LOT of characters will be pooched and a LOT of people are going to be unhappy.

All for the sake of not putting a scroll bar on the UI really.

[dkyle]

I don't agree. I think part of the problem is that you are obsessing with the "tier I/II/III" system.

My reasons for objection would remain unchanged even if the tiered bonus PrEs were eliminated entirely. That would still leave multclasses with fewer options when it comes to enhancements than pure classes, whereas currently they get the same.

Using Tiers is simply the easiest way to illustrate the point.

I could be misunderstanding, but I don't think "assassin I" means "gets the current assassin package". I think the current assassin package is going to be broken into separate enhancements like "Assasin Sneak attack" and "Assassin Poison". The "tier I" modifier is to quality for higher enhancements. Like you can't buy Kensai weapon mastery enhancement until you have the "Kensai I" attribute.

It could work that way, but I don't think so. It doesn't look like enhancements have have bonus tiers as prereqs.

Look at the tempest example. You get a free ability at 5pts spent and at 15 pts spent. Exactly how that relates to class levels isn't clear. Some of that will be class level restricted. But even if it is, it means that there will be far more breakpoints that are reasonable than just 2, 6, or 12. You could take 5pts in the Tempest line for the free +2 shield bonus without needing 6 class levels.

We know, from Eladrin, that the bonus tiers will be 3/6/9/12/18/20 class levels, except for Racial PrEs which will be character level. We also know that a 2-splash will likely only have access to the bottom two rows of the tree. Sounds like class levels will be a big limitation.

But, reducing class level limitations is one thing I've recommended to reduce the system's discouragement of multiclassing. So if they're loosening more than I expect, that would be good.

That whole 'bonus for points spent' structure becomes massively more unstable if you allow for 6 or 9 tabs. You'll either have to put in all kinds of specific lockouts or otherwise make sure that all those 5pt free abilities don't add up to be an enormous advantage for the character with 9 trees over the person with only 3.

As I mentioned earlier, I'd be OK if the additional trees past the first three chosen had those bonus abilities locked out entirely. So you could only get 3 actual PrE chains, but still splash for enhancements you want from other trees.

[Riggs]

Sort of relevant "side question" I havent read about to this point of the thread.

Are mob hit points, defense or offence being adjusted if it turns out these changes make are toons weaker or stronger?

Id hate to see already inflated mob HP increased even further.

Every other time players got more powerful monster get more powerful in the past. Often too much, then 6 months later get toned down - but pretty much 100% of the time yes.

Some people are salivating over the chance to get bigger numbers on stuff - somehow thinking there will be no power boost to monsters as well. They will be woken up soon enough.

[Angelus_dead]

For much of the game - pure class did almost nothing for a character other than arcanes. Turbine stated they wanted to change that - and one quote was "We think there should be NO reason to ever multiclass"

That quotation is simply untrue.

[dkyle]

If this is indeed the case, they are building a system that is MORE limiting than what we already have. If I wanted to go play WOW, I would have just played WOW. What you are describing as far as limitations go is not D&D at all. They are placing ARBITRARY limitations to the UI in order to limit multiple options being available above and beyond 3. In my bard example I could spend up all gthree of my trees just gaining bard abilities. Then I cant take fighter haste boost 1 str 1 and toughness 1 for having 2 levels of fighter. I can do this now, why cant I do it in the new system?

I'm very confident that's the current plan, so, yeah, that's why I've been so adamant in opposing it.

[Riggs]

Sounds like that's not happening:





No. You get three PrE trees possible, period. The Race PrE, if you buy it, counts as one of them. The only other tree is the Racial general enhancements tree. This was confirmed to me via PMs from MadFloyd and Eladrin.

If you look at the original mockup Madfloyd posted, you'll see that there are options to swap each of those PrE trees to one of the ones available to you via your class(es) and/or race. You can only swap out a tree if it has zero points spent in it. So this also confirms that you must lock in a tree as one of your three to spend any points on it.

Indeed.

Unless every single enhancement that is not absolutely specific to one prestige line is going to be in every possible class line - it is very limiting. Well it is still limiting for no good reason - but lockouts are more limiting on top.

[maddmatt70]

I'm very confident that's the current plan, so, yeah, that's why I've been so adamant in opposing it.

It depends on what is available in each tree. If for e.g. in bard if you can get scroll mastery I in any of the warchanter, spellsinger, and virtuoso trees and the same is true of inspire courage enhancment, but you could only get spellsinger I in the spellsinger tree i.e. then what you are saying would not be as much of an issue. Basically if the trees had alot of common enhancements with the other class trees then I see less of a problem. The real issue would occur like you said if they put in a draconic tree system which the end result was it forced everybody to pure class then that is a huge issue.

[Aashrym]

Two TierIIIs allows for 20 points for Race and tertiary tree. That sounds entirely reasonable to me.

My guess is we'll find that for a lot of builds, the extreme cost of the capstone (11 points) will make it not worthwhile. That's more than an additional TierI PrE right there!

I expect that there would be benefits after the 30 points on the two tier III's that those 20 points might desired for before we can spend them on the 3rd tree or class. Three tier II's with 20 points left over for race and what not above tier II might be common too. In any case I still see top tier enhancements locked on due to cost per tree requirements.

I might have a hard time giving up a capstone for 2 tier III's. That entire depends on what is in the trees.

I'm assuming value in the higher tiers over the value of he lower tiers and see that as better for multiclass as they gain the opportunity for higher tiers and capstones.

What we need is a dev to fill out some of those mock ups with what they are looking at using so we can get a better idea of what will actually be there so we can give better feedback.

I could be sold on a 5th general tab but that just increases the difficulty hitting higher tiers for everyone.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

Every other time players got more powerful monster get more powerful in the past. Often too much, then 6 months later get toned down - but pretty much 100% of the time yes.

Some people are salivating over the chance to get bigger numbers on stuff - somehow thinking there will be no power boost to monsters as well. They will be woken up soon enough.

Oh, been here since the start. We both know the history. However I AM excited about the VARIETY this will allow us in building toons. I am NOT expecting us to have less choices OR be somehow "unfairly overpowered".

I believe when this gets "ready to ship" most people will be very excited to reset their toons. Some, may not like or even know how to get their toons to play the same after the changes (I'm most concerned about that last group).

Any change to already inflated mob hp or defenses will not be a very popular adjustment, unless newly finished PrEs are somehow completely overpowering.