A few questions for the experienced NWN players :)

[Legacy_MagicalMaster]

               Argh, I'd feel bad letting this go.

Bogdanov89 wrote...

Can someone please explain, in very simple english, how does Attack Bonus help counter enemy AC?

If your attack bonus plus a d20 roll equals or exceeds the enemy's AC, you land a hit.  Note that you can have multiple attacks with different ABs -- a level 12 fighter might attack at 18/13/8.  This means he needs at least a 5 to score on his first attack, 10 on the second, and 15 on the third if the enemy has 23 AC.

Bogdanov89 wrote...

Does Attack Bonus help counter enemy damage resistance/reduction/immunity?

No.  It simply lets you hit the target in the first play.

That said, if it's a WEAPON or GLOVE with an attack bonus, that can counter damage reduction.  An enemy with 10/+5 reduction will reduce all physical damage done by 10 UNLESS the enemy has a +5 or better weapon/glove.

Bogdanov89 wrote...

Does Damage Bonus help counter enemy AC, or their damage resistance/reduction/immunity?

Damage resistance/reduction/immunity.  AB helps you hit, damage helps you do damage WHEN you hit.

Bogdanov89 wrote...

If i want to bash a very strong chest, do i need more Attack or more Damage?

Short answer: more damage, AB doesn't help at all.

Longer answer: ideally non-physical damage if you're having trouble bashing stuff -- even something like 1 Fire damage on a weapon lets you deal 1 damage per hit while gaining +5 physical damage might not.

Crits can also help.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

MagicalMaster wrote...

Damnit, my copy/paste stripped all of my links in my latest post.  And trying to copy/paste without using notepad has the indentations all messed up.  Fixing indentations atm, will reply more later, but my previous post should make more sense.

And ShaDoOoW, are you saying I'm "totally off" when I give a specific example of where I was using Empowered Finger of Death to do damage?  How can I be "totally off" when I'm factually relaying an event that happened?

Edit: formatting is fixed, links should be be obvious.

Replied on your news feed as this is only a misunderstandment between you and me.

Re: Empowered Finger of Death. I believe you that thats what youve did. But I actually already covered this in my previous posts: How many hitpoints this boss had then? Because if he had a damage resistance 20/negative and immunity to everything, all you could possibly do to him, if lucky was around 100damage with empowered FoDs. Unless you had unlimited number of them in which case it takes you only a longer with CPP. And the statistics of this boss suggest its some really harsh uberboss on epic levels, which suggests that he wasnt even meant to be killed by FoDs probably not by a arcane caster at all.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Empyre65]

               AC is Armor Class. The Higher your AC, the harder it is to hit you. AB is Attack Bonus. The higher your AB, the better you are at hitting.

Damage Immunity reduces the damage of a certain type by a percentage. If the immunity is 100%, you will have to use a different type of damage. If it is less than 100%, some of the damage will get through, but you might still be wise to use another type of damage.

Damage Reduction reduces damage by a fixed amount, but only if the weapon's enhancement is less than a certain number. For example, if you have 10/+3 damage reduction to slashing damage, and you are attacked by a +2 slashing weapon for 15 damage, the weapon's +2 is less tham +3, so the damage you take is reduced by 10, meaning you actually only take 5 damage. If the weapon is +3 or higher, the damage is not reduced at all.

Damage Resistance is the same as Damage Reduction, except that it applies no matter what enhancement is on the weapon. For example, if a magic shield gives you 5/- damage resistance to piercing damage, than the damage from any piercing weapon will be reduced by 5 points, whether the weapon is +1 or +20.

So, the answer is no, AB does not counter enemy damage resistance/reduction/immunity.

A Damage Bonus will not counter AC, but it might help you overpower damage resistance or reduction by doing more damage than is reduced.

A strong chest has damage resistance, so what you need is more damage to overpower it. Elemental damage of any kind is often useful against chests and doors.

EDIT: Ninja'd big-time.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Empyre65, 07 février 2014 - 11:07 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Bogdanov89]

               Thank you very much for amazing replies!
I got one additional question about countering enemy Damage Reduction:

As far as i understood, if a weapon has "Enhancement +1" then it will bypass enemy damage reduction of "X/+1".

But what if a weapon only has "Attack +1" or just "Damage +1" - does it help against enemy damage reduction of "X/+1"?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WebShaman]

               Quick answer, no.

It has to be an enhancement bonus to counter equal or less Damage Reduction.  Attack bonus or Damage bonus just makes it easier to hit and adds to damage.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               Actually, a weapon's attack bonus works fine for bypassing damage reduction. A damage bonus won't bypass DR, though.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WebShaman]

               I stand corrected.  

So Masterwork items bypass x/+1?  That is interesting.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MagicalMaster]

               

WebShaman wrote...

I stand corrected.  

So Masterwork items bypass x/+1?  That is interesting.

Keep in mind ranged weapons don't HAVE an Enhancement bonus in NWN, so if this wasn't true then a +5 Longbow couldn't bypass Stoneskin.

Throwing that tidbit out while working on a longer response (that I hope to keep relatively short).
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WebShaman]

               Yeah, of course it makes sense.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bogdanov89]

               i actually have a story related question (possible spoilers):


i know the eye symbol represents the reptilian creator race who's leader is the final enemy in the original campaign of nwn.

but why does Aribeth have that eye symbol engraved on her swords from the very first chapter?

is it the same eye that represents the reptilian race?

also, at the beginning of nwn, there is an intro movie where a guy fights a minotaur - and that same eye appears.
who is that guy and who is that minotaur, and why are they important - and how are they related to the displayed eye symbol?!

what is the deal with that eye symbol? what does it really represent?
are there multiple different eye symbols with different meanings?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               Where does Aribeth have a symbol on her sword? I don't mean where on her sword is the symbol, I mean in what situation or scene or area does the PC get a chance to see her sword and can tell there is something inscribed on it? Or is this in a dialog or description of Aribeth somewhere?

LOL, I hadn't really noticed the eye symbol so much, but it would be a little ironic if Aribeth had it when she was a cleric of Tyr, since he's the Blind God. What is mysterious about Aribeth is that she is so upset about what happens to Fenthic at the end of Chapter One that she changes from an elf to a half-elf by Chapter Two! ;-)

I think that the fighter in the intro movie battling the minotaur is supposed to be Lord Nasher. Not certain, but I think that's what I read at some point.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MagicalMaster]

               

ShaDoOoW wrote...

Peoples we are talking about have never used the patch and never will, they just read the changelist and laughed how stupid it is, they are convinced they doesnt need CPP for anything, that their worlds are too advanced to use it and that they are better to fix everything on their own in their modules. I realized I cannot please them so I am no longer trying.

I disagree with this.

People use NWN Client Extender.

People use NWNX.

But I think people are worried about unintended changes (or even some intended changes, especially balance wise) and the fact that apparently a lot of bugs would be UNfixed if a few scripts were mofidied for completely unrelated reasons (like the AI code thing you mentioned).

If the CPP restricted itself to stuff like Firestorm or AI bug fixes (and preferably didn't have the colored icons as those really bug me) and it apparently wasn't easy to "break" many of the fixes I think a lot of people would be open to using it, myself included.

ShaDoOoW wrote...

EDIT: However, to be honest, I didn't noticed till you brough this up, that there is Magic Missile mentioned in the Empower spel lfeat description and that description is empowering the +1 direct bonus together. Quite a good reason to perform the correction based on the DnD then, still to do it, I need more votes/opinions on this regard.

Yeah, that's kind of a big one.

If you want more opinions look at the link I provided earlier (here) and I gave a bunch of quotes from both it and other discussions.

But let's also make this really simple.

It's clear from BOTH the NWN description AND the PHB (apparently page 93) that Magic Missile is SUPPOSED to be (1d4 + 1) * 1.5 for Empower Spell.

Therefore, Bigby's Clenched Fist, which is 1d8 + 11, should CLEARLY be (1d8 + 11) * 1.5 for Empower Spell by the exact same logic.  Likewise, Bigby's Crushing Hand, which is 2d6 + 12, should CLEARLY be (2d6 + 12) * 1.5 for Empower Spell.

I bring these up specifically because they are the ONLY spells in ALL of NWN that actually act differently than +50% overall when Empowered according to you (every other spell which shares that function does not have any constants or even level based constants).

So the ONLY spells that Bioware apparently thought should act differently are CLEARLY incorrect based on the very example given for how Empower Spell works.  Note that neither of these spells even CAN be Empowered or Maximize -- so I suspect Bioware introduced the flawed formula, fixed it for all of the other spells (by making it +50% period), and didn't bother changing those two Bigbies since no one would ever notice the Empower Spell was wrong (since no one could Empower them in the first place).

ShaDoOoW wrote...

Bring me some proof that the balance change I've done in Monstrous regeneration, Bombardment, the new features I added into Implosion (immunity), Sunbeam/Sunburst (plant/oozes), Hellball (possibility to exclude caster if cast right) and something else I forget now or dont consider as a balance change at all breaks something.

That's something I'd have to look more into (to see exactly what was changed and how it was changed).

Also, Suburst just says:

"Sun burst
- was missing delay in VFXs (delay was there, but wasn't ever initialized)
- was missing saving throw VFX
- killing method could fail in special case (magic damage immune/resistant vampire)"

looking at the 1.70 documentation, at least.  Nothing about plants or oozes.  Was that changed in a later version or something?

ShaDoOoW wrote...

I am not fixed on a single gaming environment I do enjoy and play (very very high magic) - afterall if I were why would I "nerfed" so many spells? On the contrary you seems to be, for example the regeneration stacking is extremely overpowered in a low-magic harsh type of world (where usually Heal is nerfed) - way more than in a high magic environment where a lvl 30+cleric has around 40 slots for healing and 10 for extended regeneration.

You can like high magic and still think IGMS does too much, for example.

I'm definitely not convinced that regeneration stacking on low level worlds is extremely overpowered.  If Heal was changed to be 10 HP per level with a cap of 150 while Regeneration healed 6 HP per round for rounds per level, no cap, then it could possibly become a problem if it was an epic world and the Cleric was extending it but I doubt even that.  Precisely because on a such a low level world the incoming damage is likely to be light and the Cleric will spend large amounts of time at full health and thus waste the regen.

And the fact you think that clerics having 25+ spell slots per level is in any way shape or form somewhat typical of even high magic environment is very telling.  I have seen ONE server or campaign where you'd expect more than 10-12 spells per level and that was Higher Ground.

ShaDoOoW wrote...

Re: Empowered Finger of Death. I believe you that thats what youve did. But I actually already covered this in my previous posts: How many hitpoints this boss had then? Because if he had a damage resistance 20/negative and immunity to everything, all you could possibly do to him, if lucky was around 100damage with empowered FoDs. Unless you had unlimited number of them in which case it takes you only a longer with CPP. And the statistics of this boss suggest its some really harsh uberboss on epic levels, which suggests that he wasnt even meant to be killed by FoDs probably not by a arcane caster at all.

Each empowered FoD would do about 56 damage and I could cast about 10.  So that's 560 damage.  I still had another 10 Horrid Wiltings for 36 damage (360 + 520 = 880).  And then another 10 Fingers of Death for about 30 damage each (880 + 300 = 1180).

So probably about 1200 HP or so I think.  It's been a long time and I'm making rough guesses at a lot of these numbers.  And yes, it was supposed to a "tough" boss meant for a group -- I nuked him while others distracted him and chipped away at him a little bit.  Personally I think it was stupid design but that's how I managed to damage him -- and the fact I could put out "all" of that damage guaranteed in 90 seconds meant I was the best person for damaging.  Super high AC, crit immunity, and physical damage resistance/reduction meant meleers didn't do much.

Your version of Empower would change 1180 number I calculated to 980 -- or a 17% reduction in my ability to damage that boss and that's with Empower only affecting one of the three spell levels being used (which happens to make up 44% of the total damage).
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bogdanov89]

               

Bogdanov89 wrote...

i actually have a story related question (possible spoilers):


i know the eye symbol represents the reptilian creator race who's leader is the final enemy in the original campaign of nwn.

but why does Aribeth have that eye symbol engraved on her swords from the very first chapter?

is it the same eye that represents the reptilian race?

also, at the beginning of nwn, there is an intro movie where a guy fights a minotaur - and that same eye appears.
who is that guy and who is that minotaur, and why are they important - and how are they related to the displayed eye symbol?!

what is the deal with that eye symbol? what does it really represent?
are there multiple different eye symbols with different meanings?

i am just quoting my own post in hopes of getting a few more replies '>

some questions about paladins and champion of torm:

Does putting levels into the champion of torm also provide me witih more spell slots for my paladin spellbook - or do only actual paladin levels count for the additional spell slots for the paladin spellbook?

I am having trouble deciding how much charisma does my melee-focused paladin/ChampTorm actually need?

There is a feat called greater smiting: http://nwn.wikia.com...i/Great_smiting
it greatly increases smite evil damage, but it requires 25 charisma - which seems WAY too much to me, perhaps much better damage output would be gained just by putting points into Strength?

What is actually the purpose of Great Smiting... with that high charisma requirement, i don't know why a paladin would ever take it?

Paladins seem to lose a lot of usefullness after only 4 levels... am i missing something, or is it really optimal (for melee character) to take just 4 levels of paladin for those feats - and then invest into some other class?

How good is paladin spellcasting anyway?
Is it worth getting all that wisdom just to be able to cast those paladin 4th level/rank spells?

I noticed champion of torm actually does not give the heavy armor proficiency - is there a penalty to champion of torm if they use heavy armor?

Is it a good idea (for melee char) to mix Paladin+ChampTorm with a class like Weapon Master or Dwarven Defender or a Fighter (epic weap specialization) or even Barbarian?
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Bogdanov89, 09 février 2014 - 09:15 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_WebShaman]

               The eye symbol is the symbol for the City of Neverwinter - see http://forgottenreal...iki/Neverwinter

That man in the beginning fighting the Minotaur I believe is Lord Nasher himself, at a younger age.  The Minotaur dies, of course.

So why is it so important?

Well, we see that perhaps that symbol that was used to represent Neverwinter has an older, different meaning...one lost in the mists of time.  Or something like that.

So, why does Aribeth have the symbol?  Because before the town lynches her beloved (and she then turns), she is in the service of Neverwinter.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

MagicalMaster wrote...

ShaDoOoW wrote...

Peoples we are talking about have never used the patch and never will, they just read the changelist and laughed how stupid it is, they are convinced they doesnt need CPP for anything, that their worlds are too advanced to use it and that they are better to fix everything on their own in their modules. I realized I cannot please them so I am no longer trying.

I disagree with this.

People use NWN Client Extender.

People use NWNX.

But I think people are worried about unintended changes (or even some intended changes, especially balance wise) and the fact that apparently a lot of bugs would be UNfixed if a few scripts were mofidied for completely unrelated reasons (like the AI code thing you mentioned).

If the CPP restricted itself to stuff like Firestorm or AI bug fixes (and preferably didn't have the colored icons as those really bug me) and it apparently wasn't easy to "break" many of the fixes I think a lot of people would be open to using it, myself included.

So do you all say, but you didnt event looked whats there, did you?

Who wants to use this project, does. Who doesn't, always find the excuse why not. Peoples that never even tried it supports my opinion that they wouldnt use it.

You all always speak about a possible balance issues and screwing out some modules while you never tried it to see if its actually true. And thats because you never wanted to. You took the first excuse you found to condemn the project in general.

If you really wanted to use the patch you would have and you would started this debate about empower spell long time ago and something might been done already in this regard. But you did not. So dont tell me stories.

Yeah, that's kind of a big one.

If you want more opinions look at the link I provided earlier (here) and I gave a bunch of quotes from both it and other discussions.

But let's also make this really simple.

It's clear from BOTH the NWN description AND the PHB (apparently page 93) that Magic Missile is SUPPOSED to be (1d4 + 1) * 1.5 for Empower Spell.

Therefore, Bigby's Clenched Fist, which is 1d8 + 11, should CLEARLY be (1d8 + 11) * 1.5 for Empower Spell by the exact same logic.  Likewise, Bigby's Crushing Hand, which is 2d6 + 12, should CLEARLY be (2d6 + 12) * 1.5 for Empower Spell.

I bring these up specifically because they are the ONLY spells in ALL of NWN that actually act differently than +50% overall when Empowered according to you (every other spell which shares that function does not have any constants or even level based constants).

So the ONLY spells that Bioware apparently thought should act differently are CLEARLY incorrect based on the very example given for how Empower Spell works.  Note that neither of these spells even CAN be Empowered or Maximize -- so I suspect Bioware introduced the flawed formula, fixed it for all of the other spells (by making it +50% period), and didn't bother changing those two Bigbies since no one would ever notice the Empower Spell was wrong (since no one could Empower them in the first place).

First. I never said that adding the direct bonus to dice into calculation is wrong. It was me who brought this up actually. And I doesnt care about those discussion on various DnD forums. Ive read them all 2 years ago. The truth isn't on the side that has more supporters. Some peoples simply want to see it more powerful despite all the logic in the universe. On DnD forums, nobody cares what these peoples believe, its their game, in NWN this is completely different matter and it matters.


Now to your opinion of what Bioware intented:
First, I must say that is really plenty of guesses. I mean, I guessed that this this because that, you do guess they did that, because of that, then this, because of another matter and that then they found this and decided this. Thats a cool story really:wizard:. Possibility the intented what I say? 50:50, Possibility they did what you say? 1:1000


BTW. I checked the spels again. I missed one more spell that uses MaximizeOrEmpower function and thats Spike growth. Doesnt have any direct nor indirect bonus though. But then there is a Quillfire, this spell doesnt use the MaximizeOrEmpower function but the caster level bonus is still excluded from the empower calculation. Inflict spell line? Neither - which brings serious diverse with Cure spells dont you think?

And those, with the bigbies are the only spells in SoU that has direct/indirect bonus to the dice. So, from the SoU spells, there is no spell that would calculated empower spell in the old fashion.

The situation in HotU is different. Three spells from HotU actually adds caster level into damage calculation (healing sting, cure spell - other, combust). And three+two(two OC spell updated) spells used directly the MaximizeOrEmpower function, others not. So I ask again as its something I already asked to - does this means that Bioware decided to pull the SoU metamagic calculation off?

Another question: Does Bioware intented to have to have half spells with (in)direct bonus to the damage behave differently than another half?


To the part about regeneration, low magic, high magic. As I said already, its a clear bug. Your arguments and the link suggest you don't understand whats written there. The first link you've brought clearly confirms my statement that spells shouldn't stack. Second is discussing two different sources of the regeneration which wasn't in a discussion at all. And the answer is that in DnD neither two different sources of regeneration stacks which if anything, supports my change and my reasoning.
Your argument about the NWN implementations are also completely off. There are lots of effects those stacks with itself in NWN, spellmantle, damage reduction, dodge ac as a example. They did actually stacked in past but Bioware fixed this all and excluded this possibility via spellscript. The regeneration is the only one spell they missed. Or was it perhaps intent?

So. The actual debate whether was this overpowered or not doesnt even matter and Im not willing to continue in it - I got gaming experienced with stacked regeneration and regeneration in general both in low magic and high magic, you doesn't seem to have anyway.

ShaDoOoW wrote...

Re: Empowered Finger of Death. I believe you that thats what youve did. But I actually already covered this in my previous posts: How many hitpoints this boss had then? Because if he had a damage resistance 20/negative and immunity to everything, all you could possibly do to him, if lucky was around 100damage with empowered FoDs. Unless you had unlimited number of them in which case it takes you only a longer with CPP. And the statistics of this boss suggest its some really harsh uberboss on epic levels, which suggests that he wasnt even meant to be killed by FoDs probably not by a arcane caster at all.

Each empowered FoD would do about 56 damage and I could cast about 10.  So that's 560 damage.  I still had another 10 Horrid Wiltings for 36 damage (360 + 520 = 880).  And then another 10 Fingers of Death for about 30 damage each (880 + 300 = 1180).

So probably about 1200 HP or so I think.  It's been a long time and I'm making rough guesses at a lot of these numbers.  And yes, it was supposed to a "tough" boss meant for a group -- I nuked him while others distracted him and chipped away at him a little bit.  Personally I think it was stupid design but that's how I managed to damage him -- and the fact I could put out "all" of that damage guaranteed in 90 seconds meant I was the best person for damaging.  Super high AC, crit immunity, and physical damage resistance/reduction meant meleers didn't do much.

Your version of Empower would change 1180 number I calculated to 980 -- or a 17% reduction in my ability to damage that boss and that's with Empower only affecting one of the three spell levels being used (which happens to make up 44% of the total damage).

Did this boss had 20/negative and 90/magical? Because the average of 25d8 is imo 112 not 36. But even if he had and thus empowered FoDs would be really best way how to harm him. Still applies what Ive said - this boss wasnt meant to be killable by an arcane caster in a first place. Also, a builder must have count with the fact that not every arcane spellcaster has empower magic. So those who didnt even have it were, screwed right? And this was clearly multiplayer on a PW which 1) never apply CPP 2) will modify anything that they doesnt like if they ever applied CPP in a first place.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par ShaDoOoW, 09 février 2014 - 09:52 .