I hope that, should such nerfs happen, it will be clearly marked in the patch notes so I can opt to not get the patch... which reminds me, we really need manual access to the individual patches at some point; downloading/applying via launcher isn't always an option.
I really do not like seeing changes like this happen to the original game. I feel that the way it is is intentional for a good reason, and changing it for standard p&p rules is not a good reason. There are many rules from the books that don't apply in Baulder's Gate.
Honestly if they changed the way the spell works, it would not affect me at all since I do not use it. I just don't want to see a ton of changes to game mechanics down the line that would interfere with my experience.
I just don't see how it could be changed without turning it into a different spell, or making it useless. We are supposed to have fun powerful abilities right? Why make shit boring so you can feel like it is "balanced". That is something you will never achieve in these types of games anyways.
Most city people does not know of deep sleep, when I was a soldier back in the days, one could go into a minor coma and sometimes sleep a whole day or even a weekend if you had been out in the field 14 days. Even sever pain could sometimes be ignored.
If they leave it as it is, they might as well add the Coup de Grace - affected creatures are as good as dead anyway. If they were to nerf it, simply wake things up - it will still be great at crowd controlling, for instance, Bandit Camp : attract as many enemies as possible, cast sleep, cast fireball, enjoy in little experiencefest.
Then again I think of Power Word : Sleep - targets above 20 health were unaffected. What if something similar was implemented : greater health enemies are simply unscathed by Sleep.
A Hit dice is equal to 8 hp for monsters (races with class levels use those instead). That's all it means. Some like doppelgangers are special and only have 4 or 6 HD worth of HP, but are effected by spells as if they had 10 HD.
What I don't like about Sleep is that, while game-breaking at low levels, it's absolutely useless once you hit level 6 or so.
My counterproposal is that any enemy affected by it with 4 or fewer hit dice gets no save, but can save each round after the first to wake up immediately; any enemy with more than 4 hit dice gets a save, and an additional save each round thereafter.
And getting hit wakes up the target. You get considerable bonuses when attacking a sleeping target anyway; I don't see any real need to keep the target unconscious inevitably.
"Helpless"
Paralyzed, held, bound, sleeping, unconscious, or otherwise completely at an opponent's mercy. A helpless target is treated as having a Dexterity of 0 (-5 modifier). Melee attacks against a helpless target get a +4 bonus. Ranged attacks gets no special bonus against helpless targets. Rogues can sneak attack helpless targets.As a full-round action, an enemy can use a melee weapon to deliver a coup de grace to a helpless foe. An enemy can also use a bow or crossbow, provided he is adjacent to the target. The attacker automatically hits and scores a critical hit. (A rogue also gets her sneak attack damage bonus against a helpless foe when delivering a coup de grace.) If the defender survives, he must make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + damage dealt) or die.Delivering a coup de grace provokes attacks of opportunity.Creatures that are immune to critical hits do not take critical damage, nor do they need to make Fortitude saves to avoid being killed by a coup de grace.
Quoting third edition rules for support in a 2nd edition game is not recommended.
Anyways, having cogitated upon it, how about....
1: When a creature is first hit, they then wake up six seconds later. All attacks continue to be automatically successful for that round.
This lets it continue to be used as a superlative crowd control spell, but doesn't let you just whittle down an ogre's health over ten rounds, but instead gives you at least one full round of attacks against that enemy, up to six peoples' full rounds of attacks against that enemy. A reasonable replacement for Coup-de-Grace style instakills.
2: When a creature of HD high enough that currently sleep would not work at all ever is targetted by the sleep spell, then the following happens:
~6-10 HD = Target is Unconscious for 2 rounds total on a failed save. 11+ HD = Target is Slowed for 2 rounds due to intense waves of fatigue on a failed save.
It also ought to grant a bonus to the saving throws of the target (in game mechanics, "Must save at +4" would be the language). That would create a soft limit on high-level creatures while still allowing for combination tactics to penalize saving throws beforehand.
I don't even see what the problem is. Sleep has never changed in effect from 1st to 3.5 edition...not sure about 4th, cause I don't touch that mess.
The only minor change was in 3rd it lost it's innate penalty (like all other spells with bonus/penalties did) because high ability scores and feats can boost save chance, but still retains it's max HD affected penalty.
It doesn't work that way in 2nd edition. If you don't like the spell, don't use it, but at the same time, it has NEVER changed, so it doesn't need nerfing.
And while were on the subject of nerfing, Nerf every single kit to it's PnP stats/abilities, including overhauling specialist mages to have the proper opposed schools and benefits. They're ridiculously overpowered beyond what they should be, and for no identifiable reason. After you finish getting rid of the stuff that's overpowered without precedent, THEN I'm ok with you tweaking game balance FOR NO GOOD REASON, as long as it's an optional patch not part of the main fixes.
"For no good reason" (caps lock omitted) isn't exactly true.
We've stated several good reasons to modify the spell so that it is both less powerful at low levels and less completely useless at high levels.
I think we need to clarify the purpose of this subforum. Many of the "feature requests" being posted here would make excellent mods, but start out as feature requests in order to solidify the details of what's to be done.
I think we also need to re-clarify that Baldur's Gate is not PnP. It uses AD&D as a base, but it also modifies a great many things in order to maintain playability on a computer platform.
A sorcerer with the Sleep spell has, by the end of the game, wasted a spell slot. That, to me, is a good enough reason to at least look at the spell and see if there isn't a way to improve its utility.
That is a load of crap. 2nd edition mechanics can be ported 100% to a computer, with no dumbing down required. While some spells wouldn't works as effectively without a proper DM to adjust for unforeseen ideas, most of those aren't included anyway. There is however no reason at all for the short cuts that were taken. And especially, those kit implementations....why on earth did they alter them? Their original forms would've required a lot less programing then their current forms do.
The only thing that had to be changed was moving to real-time with at will pausing from turn-based. And the rulebook even includes rules for running a game like that...that is it...everything else could've been ported faithfully, if it was done when the engine was being designed.
Now, I'm not 100% sure how much the current infinity engine can do, what's completely impossible due to hard-coding and what merely needs to tinkering to get to work. Though most of it, in theory could be made to work exactly the same as PnP if people actually took the time to see about fixing everything.
And that sleep spell on a sorcerer is just as much a waste in 3rd and 3.5 edition as it is in BG. The only difference is sorcerers in 3rd can swap spells out. You wanna fix the system, incorporate the ability for sorcerers to swap out spells as per 3rd edition, whence they came.
Comments
Honestly if they changed the way the spell works, it would not affect me at all since I do not use it. I just don't want to see a ton of changes to game mechanics down the line that would interfere with my experience.
I just don't see how it could be changed without turning it into a different spell, or making it useless. We are supposed to have fun powerful abilities right? Why make shit boring so you can feel like it is "balanced". That is something you will never achieve in these types of games anyways.
Even sever pain could sometimes be ignored.
Simply: Sleep is making the early game overly easy, and I wish it weren't. Thats all.
If they leave it as it is, they might as well add the Coup de Grace - affected creatures are as good as dead anyway.
If they were to nerf it, simply wake things up - it will still be great at crowd controlling, for instance, Bandit Camp : attract as many enemies as possible, cast sleep, cast fireball, enjoy in little experiencefest.
Then again I think of Power Word : Sleep - targets above 20 health were unaffected. What if something similar was implemented : greater health enemies are simply unscathed by Sleep.
I'm ok with them waking up when you hit them if you are ok with Coup De Grace working, which would instantly kill them if hit while sleeping so...
I don't see sleep as a big issue, sleep stops working on things pretty soon.
Paralyzed, held, bound, sleeping, unconscious, or otherwise completely at an opponent's mercy. A helpless target is treated as having a Dexterity of 0 (-5 modifier). Melee attacks against a helpless target get a +4 bonus. Ranged attacks gets no special bonus against helpless targets. Rogues can sneak attack helpless targets.As a full-round action, an enemy can use a melee weapon to deliver a coup de grace to a helpless foe. An enemy can also use a bow or crossbow, provided he is adjacent to the target. The attacker automatically hits and scores a critical hit. (A rogue also gets her sneak attack damage bonus against a helpless foe when delivering a coup de grace.) If the defender survives, he must make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + damage dealt) or die.Delivering a coup de grace provokes attacks of opportunity.Creatures that are immune to critical hits do not take critical damage, nor do they need to make Fortitude saves to avoid being killed by a coup de grace.
Quoting third edition rules for support in a 2nd edition game is not recommended.
Anyways, having cogitated upon it, how about....
1: When a creature is first hit, they then wake up six seconds later. All attacks continue to be automatically successful for that round.
This lets it continue to be used as a superlative crowd control spell, but doesn't let you just whittle down an ogre's health over ten rounds, but instead gives you at least one full round of attacks against that enemy, up to six peoples' full rounds of attacks against that enemy. A reasonable replacement for Coup-de-Grace style instakills.
2: When a creature of HD high enough that currently sleep would not work at all ever is targetted by the sleep spell, then the following happens:
~6-10 HD = Target is Unconscious for 2 rounds total on a failed save.
11+ HD = Target is Slowed for 2 rounds due to intense waves of fatigue on a failed save.
It's not drastic, but it is something.
EDIT: Oh, blerg. Merging does some weird things with post-order, doesn't it? Lesson learned, I guess...
The only minor change was in 3rd it lost it's innate penalty (like all other spells with bonus/penalties did) because high ability scores and feats can boost save chance, but still retains it's max HD affected penalty.
It doesn't work that way in 2nd edition. If you don't like the spell, don't use it, but at the same time, it has NEVER changed, so it doesn't need nerfing.
And while were on the subject of nerfing, Nerf every single kit to it's PnP stats/abilities, including overhauling specialist mages to have the proper opposed schools and benefits. They're ridiculously overpowered beyond what they should be, and for no identifiable reason. After you finish getting rid of the stuff that's overpowered without precedent, THEN I'm ok with you tweaking game balance FOR NO GOOD REASON, as long as it's an optional patch not part of the main fixes.
We've stated several good reasons to modify the spell so that it is both less powerful at low levels and less completely useless at high levels.
I think we need to clarify the purpose of this subforum. Many of the "feature requests" being posted here would make excellent mods, but start out as feature requests in order to solidify the details of what's to be done.
I think we also need to re-clarify that Baldur's Gate is not PnP. It uses AD&D as a base, but it also modifies a great many things in order to maintain playability on a computer platform.
A sorcerer with the Sleep spell has, by the end of the game, wasted a spell slot. That, to me, is a good enough reason to at least look at the spell and see if there isn't a way to improve its utility.
The only thing that had to be changed was moving to real-time with at will pausing from turn-based. And the rulebook even includes rules for running a game like that...that is it...everything else could've been ported faithfully, if it was done when the engine was being designed.
Now, I'm not 100% sure how much the current infinity engine can do, what's completely impossible due to hard-coding and what merely needs to tinkering to get to work. Though most of it, in theory could be made to work exactly the same as PnP if people actually took the time to see about fixing everything.
And that sleep spell on a sorcerer is just as much a waste in 3rd and 3.5 edition as it is in BG. The only difference is sorcerers in 3rd can swap spells out. You wanna fix the system, incorporate the ability for sorcerers to swap out spells as per 3rd edition, whence they came.