Chain should be hitting 3 enemies at start. Looks like the first one took the full strength and a half strength hit, then hitting one more target at half. I cannot consistently reproduce anything now though, sometimes it hits 3 separate targets as it should at the correct damage, sometimes it hits the first target twice, full and half, then hits another target for half, and sometimes it hits the first target twice, but the half "hits" first, then the full hits, then it hits a second target. I must have just been lucky when testing it. It uses a similar structure to the Chain Lightning spell in IWD, which functions properly, so I'll play around with it some more. For now, it is at least dealing a total of 2x damage (1 + .5+ .5), so its at the powerlevel I wanted it to start at, just not spreading it exactly as desired.
The "empty" final chain hit and Hellrime/Vitriolic's aoe is an incorrect projectile issue, an odd oversight, but an easy fix.
Chainmail - they should already be able to use any of the elven chain that doesn't prevent arcane casting. I wanted to upgrade Armored Casting either at a given level, or as a choice among other things, allowing normal chain and splint, but haven't found a way to do so functionally.
I noticed while playing today when ranged lock recast his eldritch blast he got a +3 'ability bonus' to thac0. Is this inherent in the blast? For some reason it seems to not stay on the character, but so far I have no idea why. I'll pay more attention to it going forward. I think that bonus has been absent more often than not, but it was included in the 13 thac0 I listed after completing the vale. It doesn't show up with eldritch blow or weapon either.
I had an idea that I'm quite fond of for Spiderwalk: It could give a boost to movement speed.
+2 thac0 and AC would definitely make See the Unseen tempting. As for making warlocks into thief replacements, what about trap removal? I've noticed in IWD the traps seem to go away after triggering, but that's generally not the case in BG, and BG has some awfully mean traps.
The problem with making repelling and fright into different blasts is they'd both be inferior to your proposed hammer blast. I think improving them to match hammer is a better option than nerfing hammer. This probably should be a concern with beshadowed blast as well.
I completed the temple of the forgotten god. It's a remarkably short area where none of my characters even gained a level, but I still got some useful info. Ranged lock took Brimstone Blast. It was less useful than I expected. My party killed most enemies so fast they couldn't take DoT damage, and his accuracy continued to be poor. Hopefully it will shine more when he gets Eldritch Chain soon.
Melee lock took Charm. It was just as good as I expected. The giants were immune, but the druids have an impressive selection of spells. Stealing the enemy casters and having them static charge down the giants then heal up any wounds my party took during the fight was obscenely effective. I finished the dungeon with my whole party at full health, having never rested or used a healing spell from my cleric. I probably just happened to be testing charm in the best location in the game for it, but I'm still thinking it's OP. Potential nerfs are giving a bonus to save against it or shortening the duration. I think giving it a very short duration, maybe 3 rounds, would be the better way to go. I think it's a lot more fun to have a good ability that works frequently rather than an amazing ability that usually fails.
Kjeron, I think you missed this post. Or maybe you just didn't have time to answer it yet. Sorry if I'm over spamming you with feedback, I just happen to have gratuitous free time right now.
Was short on time during the last post, so I prioritized bugs over balance.
Spiderwalk has become Spiderstride, increased movement speed, still with Immunity to Web, Grease and Entangle spells.
Trap removal is impossible right now, engine limitation. The Thief's thieving button is the only functional way to disable a trap.
Frightful blast will induce Panic with -3 save penalty, and Turn undead as level 7 cleric. Either way, only works against creatures with 5 HD or less.
Charm should already work exactly as the level 1 wizard spell, +3 save bonus and Humanoid only, but half duration(5 rounds). Once your past the Lizard Man area, I think it will become hard to find much to use it against. In BG/2, there are humanoids, throughout most of the game, so I'm not against further nerfing it.
I think I have found the problem with Chain's targeting issues, at least its worked so far in my testing.
The +3 thac0 bonus you saw with Blast - this could be anything unfortunately. An "Ability Bonus" is even used by the game to offset the value visually for penalties that don't actually apply.
I've completed Dragon's Eye and the warlocks are growing into their roles as I'd expected. It helps that they're two levels ahead of everyone else. The druid xp table still seems pretty wonky.
For ranged lock acquiring Eldritch chain was the difference maker. As you pointed out it doubles his damage output. It's too bad he couldn't use Brimstone Blast with it. Although Brimstone was quite nice when dealing with all the trolls on level 2. I've only cast the haste spell a couple times so far, but it's enough to see that increased APR with chaining attacks is pretty awesome. Too awesome? Hard to say. The archer has still been getting way more kills.
Melee lock has never achieved his expected roll as a high damage character. It's become increasingly clear to me that he would do a lot more damage if he used a bow or thrown weapon. A big part of this is engine limitations. This playthrough has taught me that melee combat is simply worse than archery without the boon of exceptional strength bonuses. I think my experience with him would've been quite different if he could've been a half-orc like I'd originally planned, or if I were playing BG with its relatively prolific strength enhancing items. However he's still found an effective niche in the party scouting with Walk Unseen and summoning up an ooze or three to distract and entangle the enemies in most fights before moving in for some stabbing. Finding Spinesheath (a dagger with +5 to hit, +1 damage) was a big improvement for him as well.
I think Eldritch Weapon is occasionally not adding its damage. It's hard to tell because there's no icon indicating when the spell is active, and I'd previously written it off as user error, but I've seen it happen enough that I'm suspicious. Probably won't be able to tell for certain until a new build is posted that has an icon for the ability.
During this dungeon I realized that using Eldritch Weapon doesn't count as a character's spell use for the round. Is that a design choice or an oversight? I'm guessing oversight since it makes the discussion about getting multiple attacks per cast irrelevant. Being able to recast it for every attack in a round makes a ranged weapon user the dominant warlock option imo.
Regarding the Grasp spells, I see that Stony Grasp lists the duration as 3 rds +1 per 4 levels, but my testing shows it to be 2 rds +1 per 4 levels. Even so I think it should just be a flat 2 rounds. Considering the ooze's effectiveness as roadblocks having them stick around longer can make a big difference and the spell is already quite powerful. Stony Grasp is probably ok with its 1 rd per 3 levels since it's a higher level ability and takes awhile for the duration to improve substantively.
Melee lock swapped out charm for walk unseen before Dragon's Eye. I can see how the lack of targets could be an issue (I assume yuanti are immune) but I still think the 3 round duration would be appropriate.
I've noticed that melee lock is not getting the expanded crit threshold (which he shouldn't be because he's not making pseudo-touch attacks) but is still unable to score critical hits. It's especially bothersome since he is using single weapon style which increases crits. Along with the accuracy buff I think the expanded threshold option should probably be dropped.
The least tier with its anticipated changes is accruing a nice selection of abilities that high level warlocks will still want to go back for, but the lesser tier has, um, less. Maybe that's ok? Too many buffs can be a bad thing. But it's something to keep in mind.
I had never intended Eldritch Blow to be viable for a Melee build, it was more a freebie to avoid the ranged penalties if getting into melee was unavoidable. Which also reminds me of what I forgot: Eldritch Glaive/Claw, a proper Melee option. I've reconsidered the Warrior APR idea, and will not be using it on Blow, Blast, or Chain. Eldritch Blow and Blast will remain simple and relatively weak but always available, as I originally intended.
Eldritch Glaive/Claw - Going to combine these and mix a little because I can't see either of them being do-able true to their source. Strikes as magical weapon, benefits from strength damage and Thac0, and other damage/Thac0 buffs like bard song. Benefits from weapon specialization as class level increases, and from Warrior APR at level 7 & 13. And of course delivers an eldritch blast on each hit. Something like:
Claw will be a Least, with either 1d4 or 1d6 base damage. Glaive will be a Lesser, with either 2d4 or 2d6 base damage, and the extra range of two-handed weapons. At level 20, they will be comparable to Chain, each capable of 3.5x blast damage per round. This might push Eldritch Weapon aside some, but I think the variety of weapon choice and the use with actual weapons is supposed to be its hook.
I have figured out the per shape/essence Thac0 bonus mechanics, so I will remove the crit threshold and make the proper critical hits the default. Thac0 bonus will start out as +3(Blow, Blast, and Eldritch Essence), and increase(or decrease) for each shape and essence you learn(or forget). Claw and Glaive will only get a +1 base, a slight compensation for not being touch attacks and dealing weapon damage. Eldritch Weapon, and normal weapon usage, will not get anything, they will have to rely on the weapons' enchantments for Thac0. I have also implemented it so the initial bonus for the 3 you start with will re-apply at each level-up, so it won't be completely necessary to start over.
Eldritch Chain will Crit slightly different from the others due to engine limitations - aside from the first target, which will still take double damage, it will seek out twice as many secondary targets instead of dealing double to each of them.
Eldritch Weapon should count as a spell for the round. It got the wrong ability target somehow. The whole reason I gave it a subspell was for this exact functionality, and I somehow still screwed it up, simply amazing. As for it seeing its icon, I've realized in my testing that the "Able to Poison Weapons" Icon is rather hard to see on the portraits, so it will be Quivering Palm instead.
I will try to have a new build ready by Thursday, I just have not had much free time as I would like lately due to work and weather.
The glaive/claw sounds cool but I think it will have the same accuracy issues melee lock faced with eldritch weapon. I recommend having the warlock always count as specialized with the weapon, then instead of gaining pips with level advancement he would gain enchantment levels, progressing from +0 to +5. This gives it a bit more thac0 boost across the whole progression, not to mention keeping it from being strictly worse than eldritch weapon from levels 1-3. You could probably even drop eldritch weapon from the class altogether. Despite the weapon choice I don't think it has much of a hook with glaive around.
Those thac0 bonuses and the chain crit mechanic sound good to me.
Don't rush the new build on my account. I still have lots of IWD to go and I haven't even tested the greater and dark essences yet. Guess I better hurry up.
In the interest of kicking all the tires before heading to the next dungeon I decided to see how far I could push melee lock's AC with Eldritch Ward. I gave him AC 6 bracers and every armor boosting item available, arriving at -12 AC. Activating the ward improved him to an impressive -17. My berserker who has been the party tank so far is sitting at -9, going up to -12 with the blur deck for hard fights since he can't use shimmering sash. -12 was good enough to tank literally every enemy in the Dragon's Eye boss battle with no problem, so I'm not sure how much real value there is in the -17, but I think it would be a net gain for my party to make the tank lock I'd been pondering and have the berserker switch to dual-wielding full attack mode. I'll try it for a bit and see how it goes.
Okay, did some number crunching, here's what I've come to: First, their thac0 progression will be smoothed out, they will still gain 2/3 per level, but they will gain it as (1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0...) instead of (0 0 2 0 0 2 0 0 2...) as they do now. This will get them their increases earlier, but overall the same.
Proficiency unchanged.
All will get the initial +3 for Blow/Blast/Edritch Essence.
Enchantment levels for all will be at levels 3, 6, 9, 12, & 15, but Thac0 & to-hit requirement only, no damage bonus(only Claw/Glaive could take advantage of it anyway, and they will have Prof damage)
Here's the final Thac0 values for Claw/Glaive, with no STR bonus, and no other shape/essences taken, Levels 1-22: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 16 15 13 12 11 09 09 08 06 04 03 01 01 00 -2 -2 -3 -4 -4 -5 -6 -6 and here's a fighter, 18/00 STR, getting mastery at level 3: 16 15 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -6
The fighter will still get weapon enchantment bonuses, and the Warlock can take more shapes/essences.
I know I've harped on thac0 values a lot in my posts here, but I think you might be pushing it too far in the other direction. I think the lock should remain a bit worse in melee than a fighter since he has a bunch of other tricks. And at some point the lock will get a str-boosting item and become much better than the fighter going by the info you posted above.
I completed Severed Hand. Having melee lock tank proved to be very effective. He did little more than stand there in most fights, but he was practically invincible and generally able to hold the attention of most enemies. I'm torn on Eldritch Ward. As a concept I love the ability, but in practice I think it is hard to balance. What is the net value in a party of sacrificing a character to have a supreme tank? How does it compare to a Dwarven Defender? (Which I've never tried using) I'm not sure if the ability needs nerfing, but it certainly doesn't need the buffing we discussed before.
Ranged lock's activities were basically unchanged from Dragon's Eye. He stood back and chain attacked enemies, and did it a bit more effectively than before because of some thac0 boosting items I found. He's still less effective than the archer, but as I said before I think he should be. He also just reached level 11 which (I think) will give him another target per chain, so his effectiveness has progressed well.
I found an odd minor bug with Eldritch Ward- whenever I do a zone transition I hear the sound of it being cast again.
Having reached level 11 I'll be doing some experimenting with all the greater invocations before making selections and continuing on. I probably won't get to it until tomorrow though.
Should I head to Dorn's Deep or do Heart of Winter next? HoW is tempting because I've never played it before, but I think the lock testing may be better served by continuing along the game's original progression. My last playthrough of IWD was so long ago I don't remember much of the main story anyway.
I know I've harped on thac0 values a lot in my posts here, but I think you might be pushing it too far in the other direction. I think the lock should remain a bit worse in melee than a fighter since he has a bunch of other tricks. And at some point the lock will get a str-boosting item and become much better than the fighter going by the info you posted above.
#1 - Base Thac0 progression, same end value as Priests, used for normal weapons. #2 - Eldritch Blow, Blast, and Chain - touch-attacks with scaling weapon enchantment, with an extra +1 bonus for each new essence taken, no bonus for taking shapes. 1APR w/o Haste #3A - Eldrtich Claw & Glaive - non touch-attacks with scaling enchantment and proficiency levels. 3.5 APR max w/o Haste #3B - Eldrtich Claw & Glaive - non touch-attacks with scaling enchantment, starts&ends only specialized. 2.5 APR max w/o Haste For reference: #4 - Pal/Ran/Barb, 18/51 & Specialized #5 - Fighter, 18/00 & Mastery
The Eldritch Ward casting sound - this sound is the visual effect starting up, which would happen at every transition. Does it get annoying or just a bug concern? I'm not very fluent with .vvc files though, so if I remove the sound from transition it would likely remove it when cast as well.
Eldritch Ward balance - I'll keep the buffs singular for now then, but it is probably only the AC buff that is truly excessive. A sure way to keep it balanced would be to make it a Set Base AC, instead of an AC Bonus, but it would need to scale differently. Level: 05 07 09 11 13 15 17 19 Current +: 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 Set Base?: 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 -1
I've never gone through HoW actually, I never owned the expansions until IWDEE, and just haven't gotten around to it yet.
Something to keep in mind is that from midlevels on the lock is going to hit harder than a warrior. Much harder by level 20. For high levels in BG2 and, iirc, IWD monster AC generally doesn't scale up as much as thac0 and by ToB levels you've a hit a point where you can assume any given attack will hit. This was a design choice they made to help fighters stay competitive with wizards at high levels. Fighters require that accuracy because their damage dealing capacity barely grows past level 9, with the level 13 +.5 APR being their last real gain. (I'm ignoring HLAs for this discussion, when we get there the warlock hopefully will have its own HLAs to compare.) Now adding a 3rd damage focused archetype it should try to follow that progression to remain close to the others.
Being a 3E ability eldritch blast scales up levels 1-20 instead of 1-10. So to make it match warrior progression somewhat it should be boosted at the bottom of the chart and abandoned at the top. For this reason I like having them start with specialization and not gain pips afterwards. The enchantment progression you listed, spread from levels 3-15, matches this theme (and mirrors warrior weapon acquisition) pretty well. Which is a very long winded way of saying I like chart 3B the best.
The other end of this problem is making sure the warlock doesn't totally outclass a warrior at high levels. So I'm going to do a theoretical damage comparison of our locks and wars as they progress. In the interest of not spending all day figuring it out, I'm going to ignore thac0. Looking at the damage progression will tell us how thac0 and/or APR may need to be adjusted. I'm also ignoring gear other than weapons since it is equally available to both. The fighter will use a 2h sword since it's the middle road of his 3 options (sword and board, 2hander, dual wield)
Those numbers look reasonable to me. Actually, except for the level 5 one, they look perfect. I know warrior damage can surpass what I listed, most notably by dual wielding with a +APR off hand, but I think it's a reasonable baseline. (This raises another question of whether you want to focus on balancing it versus a typical character or a fully powergamed character) Also remember the lock will get essences, and much more benefit from haste and gauntlets of extraordinary specialization.
So I'd go with chart 3B boosts and no APR gains at 7 and 13 to start with. From there it will have to be playtested.
Regarding Eldritch Ward I like the base AC idea. I'd go a point better than what you outlined to make sure it compares favorably to wearing armor and start level 5 at AC 5. This would still be significant net loss for my lock.
I'll post about testing greater invocations soonish.
Eldritch Cone: Looks good, we'll see how effective it is in a dungeon Wall: Initial impression is I love this ability. Precise aoe, lingering damage area, awesome graphic, just cool all around. Ranged lock will be testing it in combat immediately. Bewitching Blast: Works fine. Potentially powerful debuff with aoe blasts. Noxious Blast: Works, but the effect doesn't seem good enough for a greater ability. Why would I use this over bewitching, especially when undead are immune? Maybe increase debuff duration. Vitriolic Blast: The main selling point here is the strong damage type and ignoring MR. Useful but not a candidate for anyone's first greater invocation choice. I assume MR can stop blasts normally. I haven't actually seen it happen yet. Devour Magic: Isn't adding temp HPs right now. Also, why is it touch range? Hard to rationalize picking this with Voracious Dispelling available a tier earlier. Painful Slumber: Typical save or suck effect. I think it fits well enough as a greater. Nightmares Made Real: It works. It looks cool. But why would you use it? I can't think of any reasonable application for this ability.
Chilling Tentacles: The damage on this ability is nuts. Especially since you can layer multiple casts of the effect. My warlock laid down 3 of these, then I walked my party in and they all instantly exploded. I looked up the Black Tentacles spell it is based off, and that is much weaker: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/blackTentacles.htm Tenacious Plague: Looks good, although being able to layer the effect may be a bit much. Caustic Mire: I expected to be unimpressed, but the mire is very effective. 1 damage every second just ruins any spellcaster, and the 50% slow + characters constantly stopping to flinch when they take damage makes this really live up to its name. However the -25% fire resistance only seemed to work about half the time when I launched fire spells into the mire.
All 3 of these AoE spell look potentially OP (beyond the obvious excessive tentacle damage) to me. Tenacious Plague and the tentacles have to ability to make horrible zones of death by layering castings. Caustic Mire is so effective against casting and movement that it may as well just kill any enemy that isn't an archer. Is there any way to make it so you can only have 1 zone up at a time? If not, I'm not sure how to fix plague and tentacles without reducing their durations to 2 rds. For Caustic Mire I'd make it hit once per round for maybe 5 damage instead of hitting for 1 every second, and reducing the slowing effect from 50% to maybe 30%. (Compare to the druid spike growth spell) Additionally, I think there's a lot of overlap having all of these as greater abilities. Maybe one of them could be appropriately buffed or nerfed to fit in the lesser or dark tier. Although an AoE lesser ability would have to be very tame.
Glaive/Claw - not sure if its the right direction to go, but I could reduce the blast effects for them. I would like to find a way to keep the APR, and this would leave room for Eldritch Weapon doing full damage.
Blast levels will be changed to be closer to the PnP values, the current every other level increase was just something easy to automate, but it should be easy for me now. New rate: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 3 5 7 9 11 14 17 20 24
Devour Magic - posted back a few that it was broken, I think it was a typo in the resource reference. Touch range because it was touch range in source, while considering whether making it ranged or AoE effect. I need to rework its effect anyway though, its targeting won't work correctly at times.
Vitriolic - All other blast essences do not ignore MR, or at least should not. Noxious - Current duration is actually 1-2 seconds on my end, not rounds. Gonna have to see what happened there. It was supposed to be at least 2 rounds by the level it became available. Description doesn't match any of this though. I think scaling towards 4 rounds would be okay though.
Chilling Tentacles - using NWN2 as a reference: bad idea. Lists it attacking each creature 4 times per round - this is where the excess damage came from: [(1d6+4) * 4 = 5-40 = 5d8]. However, if the engine allows it, i think I will combine them: It will still attack 4 times, however, it will attack 4 different creatures once per round, not each creature 4 times per round. So 4 random creatures within the area will take 1d6+4 crushing and attempt to be trapped, and everyone will take 2d6 cold.
Plague - I could try messing around with the clear air effect to see if its possible to prevent layering. It means this spell would be able to clear other cloud spells, but that shouldn't be a problem.
Mire - I'll combine the damage to once per round for now, until hopefully someday we get damage-based concentration effects. I actually did that for the slowing effect, not so much the damage, so that someone wouldn't be able to run through most of it before it triggered. I'll have to restructure the spell, because I want to keep that effect, but no objections to reducing the amount. I'll re-examine the fire resistance debuff, there were bugs getting it to not effect fire-immune creatures, so I eventually had to compromise.
I don't think I could create a balanced Lesser AoE, not one that did damage.
I'll run the numbers again with your new proposed values and see what happens. I'm going to count blast damage as 1 point per die for claw (close to averages of what you posted) and 2 per die for glaive (exactly the average if, as I suspect, by halving damage you mean 1d3 per die). You didn't include the .5 APR from specialization in your post. I'm going to assume that was intentional.
Level 1 (with 18 or 18/9x str) fighter: 20.25 old claw: 15 new claw: 1d3(2) + 5 = 7 * 2 APR = 14
level 5 fighter: 23.25 old claw: 25.5 new claw: 1d3(2) + 7 = 9 * 2 = 18 new glaive: 1d10(5.5) + 10 = 15.5
level 15 fighter: 67.5 old glaive: 55.5 new claw: 1d3(2) + 16 = 18 * 3 = 54 new glaive: 1d10(5.5) + 23 = 28.5 * 2 = 57
level 20 fighter: 70.5 old glaive: 66 new claw: 1d3(2) + 18 = 20 * 3 = 60 new glaive: 1d10(5.5) + 27 = 32.5 * 2 = 65
It works out pretty well. The lock still has that last blast die coming at 24, but that's a minor bonus. The biggest problem I see here is it would only take a small static damage bonus to make claw better than glaive even at high levels, and high level characters will generally have those.
I'd prefer the flat bonus I used for claw damage over the variety of damage dice you listed for simplicity's sake, but its not a significant issue. Gotta go, I'll post about other stuff later.
I went through upper Dorn's Deep and the glacier with Tenacious Plague and Wall of Perilius Flames on my locks. Plague worked out well. It was useful, but not overpowering. If someone were so inclined they could cheese the game into oblivion using it with a thief or invisible scout, but I don't think that is a huge issue because it could already be done with a wizard. The wizard would just need to rest occasionally. I do think it could stand a radius reduction to reduce its propensity for hitting enemies that aren't active though. Maybe skull trap range instead of fireball.
The wall was just as cool as I expected. The hit detection is questionable sometimes, but I'm sure there's nothing a modder can do about that. Also, I don't think the wall's fire damage is actually fire. It didn't kill unconscious trolls. Overall fun and powerful ability, but not too powerful.
I am getting concerned that Eldrich chain could reach OP levels as the blast die and number of targets continues to go up. Now that ranged lock is high enough level to rarely miss, and continuing to accrue targets and dice, he has caught up to the archer in damage with it. I expect with continued leveling he would pass the archer which is a definite no-no, but that brings us to another issue.
The Druid XP chart sucks. My locks hit level 12 while the rest of the party was level 9. Level 13 is a bit slower, then they don't get 14 until around when everyone else does. Level 15 doesn't come till the rest of the party is ~20. So the locks become too advanced in mid levels then stagnate as everyone else advances into high levels. Dark abilities won't even be acquired in normal IWD play and BG2 before ToB. Losing a quick spell slot is crappy, but I think changing to a cleric kit is worth it.
I found some elven chain mail but putting it on covers up the cool glowy bits of my warlock. I'm guessing that's an engine limitation, but it's worth checking.
For Eldritch Ward I'd probably remove the sound effect. I cast the spell once and just left it there across several play sessions when I was testing the ability, but I heard the buff sound repeatedly shifting areas. It wasn't especially bothersome, but overall I'd say the kit is better off without it.
The Chilling Tentacles change sounds good as long as one creature can't be targeted more than once per round. Caustic Mire sounds good too.
I got my first taste of MR stopping blasts facing the drow in Dorn's Deep, and it definitely raisins the appeal of Vitriolic Blast. I was also thinking the ability could be made a little better by making it do 1d6 lingering damage with no save instead of 2d6 with a save. It fits thematically (why save vs spell when it makes the attack nonmagical?) and its a slight improvement since enemies start to rarely fail saves as you get into the higher levels.
The range on the 3 Greater AoE are all now the same, 10' radius (about half what Tenacious was).
Eldritch wall not killing trolls was reported a while back as a bug, and is reported as fixed in the new 1.4 patch. Previously wall projectiles were unable to hit an unconscious creature.
Chainmail - found another color slot for chainmail.
Vitriolic - The save isn't consistent on my end, the comments say no save while the code says save to negate. I must not have fully made up my mind. Changing it to a save vs. Death for half damage.
Chilling Tentacles - I got it to work exactly like that for the tentacles, while the cold will still hit everyone.
Druid/Cleric - I'm not sure how this will interact with Frightful blasts Turning ability, however it could give that essence some long term use, while being somewhat weaker at lower levels. I would rather forcibly smooth out the Druid EXP table, but that's invasive. I'll switch it to Cleric for now, and work on an optional adjusted EXP table Druid.
@jemy000 Updated the first post with the new build.
Hopefully it should have all changes/additions I have discussed, with the exception of Hammer Blast. Not sure what I want to make of it right now. I'm trying to fill another Dark tier and Least tier essence slot, and it could go either way with a little adjusting.
It will not be compatible with any existing save unfortunately, switching it from Druid->Cleric threw out any possibility of that.
I'll finish my IWD playthrough and do some testing with the dark invocations before I dig into it. I've got a busy weekend though. Probably won't do much for a few days.
I finished IWD today. The locks didn't really development much in the last few areas, only gaining 1 further level because of the druid exp chart. After becoming an Eldritch Cone machine for most the remaining game, melee lock had a resurgence of meleeing when I acquired Pale Justice down the stretch. It's hard to argue with a +7 sword. Similarly I can imagine a lock in BG2 using Carsomyr to great effect regardless of the non-proficiency penalty. Cone felt like a solid but not overpowered ability to me. Aiming it to not hit other melee characters can be difficult, and the game oddly lets you target the spell at enemies or spots beyond its range, but it becomes manageable with some practice. I tried using Hellrime Blast with and did indeed chunk a lot of enemies in Markoth's palace. For some reason some of them still dropped gold, but no other items. But it was less of a concern than I expected just because in IWD, especially later in the game, only bosses drop anything worthwhile. Overall, Eldritch Weapon was interesting but not really compelling. I think it has the most potential use with a thrown weapon, but then you have to compare it to Eldritch Chain and that is a high standard.
Ranged lock using Eldritch Chain did indeed surpass archer as my deadliest character, racking up 25% of the kills in the last major chapter compared to the archers 21%. The wall was fun and I used it occasionally, but chain was more damaging and easier to use. Especially considering that the lock will continue accruing blast dice I think it needs to be nerfed. Maybe limit it to 3 targets at any level instead of scaling up. Also, I think sometimes it would chain back to the original target which I wouldn't think it should be able to do. I'm not certain though. It wasn't an easy thing to spot since most groups of enemies all had the same name.
The locks did not fare well in the final fight of the game. For some reason whenever I hit the last boss I would see 'Belhafet: spell ineffective' in the text box and nothing else would happen. This happened with Eldritch Chain, Blast, and Weapon, and switching essences, even to the MR penetrating vitriolic (which I'd specifically learned to try out in this fight) didn't help.
Regarding the xp charts, I'm sure a lot of players would object to a smoothed out druid chart (would this just be the cleric chart?) for the class as a whole but I'd consider it an improvement. Perhaps you could set up install options to make it a druid kit and/or cleric kit and/or change the druid xp chart. I have no idea how much work that entails so it may not be worth the effort.
Why does the base eldritch blast do untyped fire damage instead of magic damage like tenacious plague or magic missile? Copying magic missile's damage type seems appropriate.
I'll test the dark invocations tomorrow. Overall I'm very pleased with the class after my IWD playthrough. Hopefully with a little more tweaking it will be a great permanent addition to my EE games.
Eldritch Chain - I think it is supposed to have one less target than it currently does anyway, I think the extra was added in while I was working on its targeting. I could either remove the extra entirely, or keep the initial targeting at 1+2, and either cap it or scale back when the extra targets are gained. As for doubling back and hitting the first target, this should be mostly fixed in the update, however, some of it is unavoidable. Particularly, if the Chain takes too long to finish, the first target's immunity to being retargeted will expire, which it needs to do so that you can make an attack each round. Which also functions to somewhat limit what Haste can do for it.
Belhafet is immune to direct magic, period. It's not just magic resistance, it is Demi-Lich like immunity to all spell levels. All the eldritch blasts are still considered spells of an appropriate level(2, 4, 6, 8 [Least, Lesser, Greater, Dark]). I do not intend to change this, as it is the intentional content design of Belhafet. Like the Mage and Sorcerer, they must rely on either summoning or shapeshifitng.
The default eldritch blast should do untyped damage, that cannot be reduced by specific damage resistances. It is listed as fire damage because the .2da file that controls the description does not work yet, it cannot add or even change existing listings.
Eldritch Doom: Looks good, and very powerful. Being able to alternate casting this and chucking eldritch chains could allow for some crazy dps. I'm loathe to suggest it, but capping the lock at less than 10d6 blast dice might be needed to keep the damage in line with 2E characters. On the other hand, it's still going to be worse than a wizard with improved alacrity spamming damaging spells. Hard to say for sure what would be best without high level adventure testing, and even then it's probably subjective. Maybe this would be better as a HLA?
Binding Blast: Looks good, except when used with Eldritch Blast my character started chucking electric fireballs.
Utterdark Blast: When tested on my party members the level drain didn't work.
Dark Discorporation: I could not get the swarm to damage enemies. Also, for some reason when I cast this my character would turn invisible.
Retributive Invisibility: Looks good.
Word of Changing: Looks good.
Dark Foresight: Looks good, although I couldn't test backstab immunity. +4 AC is lot, maybe too good for tanky warlocks. By this level the thac0 and save bonuses are less significant. Contingency is a neat toy, but I think the strongest use of this ability is having a party wizard cast timestop and getting to use him and the warlock during the effect. Can you make it only provide immunity to enemy time stops? Potentially OP.
Path of Shadows: This ability did crazy stuff. It seemed to attempt a 1 round time stop for each of my characters, but it would skip the 2nd warlock in my party (coincidence or related to his class? dunno) and instead of triggering once for each character it would go off over and over for several minutes. I left it going while I did something else to see if it would ever stop... when I came back it had finally stopped and I counted 30 triggers. When I tried using it with Dark Foresight it was functionally an infinite time stop for the warlock. Also, it never healed any of my party members. Is it supposed to trigger separately for each character? I'd expect the functionality to be something like an aoe burst around the warlock providing 1 round of time stop immunity to allies and healing, then cast a 1 round time stop. But extrapolating from that the time stop round provides a cooldown for the spell which means you could spam it for infinite healing, and then there's the broken interaction with Dark Foresight. This ability seems very problematic.
For some reason the refresh invocations ability only prepares one dark invocation at a time, so I had to use it repeatedly to prepare all of the dark invocations. Of course in normal gameplay you only get one at a time, so its probably a non-issue.
I was thinking it'd be nice if the blast abilities would tell you when their effect triggered in the chat box. In particular with Binding Blast I could only see who got stunned by looking for characters that didn't make a save in the box, or the stun portrait icon when I hit my party.
Dark Discorporation - Invisibility was in line with being a Swarm - being untargetable by single target spells, but way to powerful. I have already replaced both it and complete immunity to weapons with a constant mirror image effect in the posted build. The insect graphic has been replaced with the bat animation, and it has a bit of life(or death) to it when attacked, it may get excessive under constant fire, but hopefully its not too distracting or annoying.
As for damaging enemies, did you attack something? It's not like blade-barrior or such effect thats occurs every round, it replaces the standard attack.
Binding - that projectile keeps sneaking in there somehow, its even in the new build I posted, ugh. hopefully thats the last of it.
Utterdark - The level drain is working for me, and I can't find anything wrong with it in NI, so I'm not sure about this one right now.
Path of Shadows - The Time Stop effect had the wrong targeting mode. It should only stop time once per casting, for 1 round, then heal everyone effected after timestop ends. It's still very powerful, and have considered either making it not usable during combat, or removing the heal, or, if I can figure it out, have it only heal if your not in combat.
Dark Foresight - I will look into restricting the Time Stop immunity to only trigger when enemies cast it. I'll also replace the AC with a Base AC 0 to prevent stacking issues.
Blast chat box - Hellrime, Brimstone, Vitriolic, Binding, and Utterdark needs string displays. The rest should already display.
Eldritch Doom - I could remove the Party-Friendly aspect or change it to self-targeting(sunfire), and/or further spread the Blast damage progression(1 3 5 8 11 14 18 22 26 30). Making it an HLA would remove it from IWD entirely but only make it stronger in BG2, as it would free up a slot for another Dark Invocation.
Refresh ability - it just restores one of each tier per casting, since that would be the norm, no reason I can't expand it
Binding - Fixed Path of Shadows - Fixed Dark Foresight - Changes managed. Time stop immunity only applies to a hostile Time Stop spell(spwi909), and not any other source of the Time stop effect. Blast chat box - added missing. Added Leaps and Bounds, Least invocation, Passive: Evasion and Immunity to Knockback. First draft.
New build posted immediately because there were files missing from both the folder and the tp2 COPY commands of the old one. I'm still learning to fix one thing, break another - how fun.
Just wanted to check in here and say I didn't vanish. Obviously my excessive free time has dried up but I want to stick with this and help finish the kit. Hopefully I can get back into testing in the next couple days.
I've been looking through what few epic feats and prestige classes there are for Warlocks for ideas for HLAs.
First though, two invocation-feats: - Battlecaster(Chain and Splint) - This will be available in place of taking a lesser Invocation(and cannot be changed out). It will also be available as an HLA, which if you took it as an invocation it will replace it and let you re-choose another Lesser Invocation.
- Armored Caster(Plate and Full Plate) - This will be available in place of taking a greater Invocation(and cannot be changed out). It will also be available as an HLA, which if you took it as an invocation it will replace it and let you re-choose another Greater Invocation. Due to technical difficulties, it will not include nor require Battlecaster. If you have this but not Battlecaster, chain and splint will still prevent spellcasting.
Other HLA's: The easiest one: Extra Invocation of any tier. Can only be taken once.
The already existing Alchemy and Scribe Scrolls HLA's, can be taken multiple times for multiple uses per day.
The obvious Hellfire path would not be practical, mostly due to the way damage and HP scale between 2e and 3e.
Eldritch Sculptor - PnP: Use 2 blasts per round. Again due to the damage/HP scaling difference this wouldn't be practical for the AoE blasts, nor do I think implementable. So only the touch attacks(blast, blow, and chain) will get the extra APR, though chain will still be limited to only hitting the same target once per round. Everything else will just get an improved cast time. That said, all the invocations will have their cast times reviewed, as I set most of them to either 3 or 9 for testing purposes. Claw and Glaive are not affected, as they already grant multiple APR.
Energy Resistance - The 2 damage types (acid/fire/cold/elec) not chosen at level 10 may be chosen as HLA's.
Lord of All Essences - PnP: Use 2 essences at once, each affecting half the damage of the blast. This will be done properly, and is relatively easy to implement. If you saw this before the edit - I was short of sleep.
Blasting Focus - Secondary Essence(requires Lord of All Essences), All non-damaging effects of your primary essence gain a -6 to save penalty.
There's still room for more, but thats all I have right now. The next build I post will be usable with BG2EE, except it will be limited to Cleric Proficiencies for that game until they fix the bug relating to them. Won't be until after all of the HLA stuff is actually made and (hopefully)working though.
My schedule will have some clear time again this week so I will start testing the new build soon. Probably Monday.
I like the idea of making Eldritch Doom a party friendly sun fire like effect. It restricts the ability without gimping it and creates interesting play mechanics.
Battle caster and armored caster sound neat. Armored caster may be more appropriate as an HLA only. Plate for warlocks removes one of the few arguments to keep a fighter over them.
HLAs: Eldritch Sculptor- Doubling the dps on the already amazing Eldritch chain seems OP. I think this ability was created because in 3E warlock damage fell behind other classes at high levels, but moving them into 2E the opposite happens.
I like the others. In particular lord of all essences sounds awesome. How would it work with the essence glow effects?
An idea I had for another HLA is turning tenacious plague into Verminlord. Right now it's unimpressive next to chilling tentacles, but bump up the damage (5d6?) and it could be a good HLA. I'll ponder other possibilities.
Regarding the blast damage type, I used magic missile extensively in BG1/2 and never saw the damage resisted. I didn't use it much in IWD, but I'd be surprised if it were different. Cosmetically I think using that type would be a lot better. The colored damage text is snazzy and the inappropriate Fire keyword would be gone.
Moving Armored caster to HLA only would make things better actually, I would be able to properly require a progression from Battlecaster -> Armored Caster, so that's definitely happening.
Adding the Battlecaster/Armored-caster has had a side effect regarding shields. Due to a bug, the shields will not disable spellcasting if they are already equipped and the armor is removed, though a reload does fix the issue. However, I decided to just alter shields behavior anyway, instead of disabling spellcasting entirely, they will now only disable all the Eldritch attacks except Eldritch Weapon, but will now increase casting time for the Warlock, +2(small), +3(medium), +5(large). The only abilities not affected by the increased casting time will be Eldritch Weapon(this just happened to work), and of course anything with an "instant" cast time.
Eldritch Sculptor - I have 2 separate abilities for each of Claw and Glaive, mutually exclusive to each other and Scluptor. I could do the same for Chain, separating it's APR increase as a 4th option, however, Chain's inclusion was on the assumption that I nerfed its target growth. Currently considering 1 target per 6 levels, so 2(level 6), 3(level 12), and capping at 4(level 18). But it probably should still be a separate upgrade. The Claw and Glaive options upgrade the respective weapon to Grandmastery Proficiency(+2Thac0, +3damage, +.5APR) from their current Specialization. So Sculptor would have 4 mutually exclusive sub-options: Generalist - +1 APR Blow and Blast, -3 Casting Speed Claw Mastery - Grandmastery Claws and Two-Weapon Fighting Glaive Mastery - Grandmastery Glaive and Two-Handed Weapon Chain Mastery - +1APR Chain
The secondary essence glow affects the Major color(the first has always been the Minor color), so it will affect most of the character, but is a slow pulsing effect instead of a constant overlay. This way it will be obvious on activation and reload, but not an eye-sore the rest of the time. Still tweaking it though.
Blast Damage Type - I was holding out for the files to be fixed/activated with the 1.4 patch, but that's come and gone, so for now I will change it to Magic.
Craft Wand - Similar to Scribe Scroll, preset list of low/mid level wands, usable once per day. Wands have 10 charges. About as use(ful/less) as scribe scroll and Alchemy, depending on play style, but it fits their item creation ability better then Scribe Scrolls. Scribe will stay as long as the HLA table has room though.
Verminlord/Tenacious - I have always seen the insect spells as designed for interruption more so than damage, either through constant damage or the direct spell failure opcode, and would like to keep it that way. However, I could add this as specialized upgrade - such that if you know both Summon Swarm and Tenacious Plague, any enemy hit by Tenacious Plague will have Summon Swarm automatically cast on them, representing a part of the swarm breaking off to pursue the enemy.
To fill the role of HLA summon, I have added an essence-based summoning. The creatures are no where near as powerful as the Deva/Planetar, but have unlimited use. They should count towards the normal summon limit, though the party may still only have one at a time. They are classified as "Imprisoned Summons", and the ability will kill any Imprisoned summons each time it is cast, before summoning the new one. Since normal Imprisoned creatures cannot be affected by anything but the freedom spell, this shouldn't have any unintended side-effects. Summoning 2 with a secondary essence will not be possible.
Don't let the creature names mislead you, its mostly just an animation, they all have similar, custom stats to keep them in-line with each other. The primary difference between them are their resistances and attack damage/effects.
I like the shield change. It gives a bit more reason to still use Eldritch Weapon instead of claw or glaive.
The chain target reduction sounds good.
For scupltor, separating it into subcategories is kind of a non-penalty because any given character would only want one of the categories anyway. How about making sculptor give the generalist bonus, and then having claw, glaive, and chain mastery as additional HLAs that require sculptor? Although that's still not much of a penalty, considering that a ToB character will end up with every HLA eventually. Either way I'm concerned about the possibility of (Improved) Hasted warlocks with more APR putting any other dps character to shame. Maybe later I'll break out the calculator and do a real analysis.
Craft wand fits the class well I think. Honestly I don't see it being very useful, but it's better than making a random potion at least.
An easy way to make the insect spells more interuptive would be just splitting the damage into multiple smaller chunks per round. Even 2 hits per round makes casting pretty tough.
Essence based summoning sounds great.
I've started testing the invocations in the build. I'm trying out them all, but I'm only going to mention the ones that have issues since most are looking good now.
Least: Entropic Warding: The graphic for blocking a projectile still appears to be able to trigger off any attack or spell, but only prevent projectiles. The graphic also happens independently of the block, sometimes triggering when an arrow hits and sometimes not triggering when an arrow is stopped. Eldritch Claw: Currently this makes a one handed weapon, which obviously interacts well with single weapon style. Thematically it should be dual-wielding though, I'm not sure that's possible with a magically created weapon. Which also raises the question of what two-weapon bonuses would the HLA provide? Summon Swarm: Ranged Locks nemesis from the Vale of Shadows is much improved. I think it may be too much for an ability available at level 1. 12 damage per cast makes a wizard's level 1-2 spells look pretty crappy, and that's before you consider it's ability to spread and interrupt spells. I'd make it do 1 damage per tick instead of 2. Also, the '1 creature' target listing is disingenuous since it can hit more creatures, and the initial target is a spot rather than a creature. Earthen Grasp: Also hits awfully hard for a least ability. 1d6+3 doesn't shame wizard comparables, but it's at least as good as them and this also entangles and provides a body. I'd go with 1d6, the damage shouldn't be a main feature on this invocation. Also, I see it does non lethal damage now. Didn't it do bludgeoning before? Will undead be immune to it now? Will they still be entangled if they are immune to the damage?
That's it for the least. I'll move on to lesser invocations soon.
I'm not as worried about Improved/Haste with Chain - its targeting parameters should prevent a creature from being hit by the chain more than once per round. I will play around with it to see exactly how it functions at multiple APR though. If its still too much I will just exclude it from any upgrades.
For the rest, I may end up having them grant Haste-Immunity while active, or at least Improved Haste, and adding in a few more Movement speed bonuses to other invocations, as with Spiderwalk. This would be the simplest way to handle it, though maybe not the best.
Entropic - the graphic is semi-random, but I cannot control it any better, its either that, always on or nothing. It does trigger to indicate that the next projectile to hit you should be stopped, for as long as the graphic is up, which I think was 2 seconds. But again, anything can trigger it, not just ranged attacks, which is balanced(the % is averaged) by the fact that it can only deflect one missile per trigger(and they don't stack). However, now that the text display for its opcode is working, I'm open to ditching the graphic entirely, or making it constant, as it was mostly a placeholder to show at least "something" happening.
Claw - Created weapons cannot simulate dual-wielding or even two-handed weapons properly, which is sad. I think I actually can remove the Single Weapon Style bonus from it though. The Two-Weapon Fighting bonus is just a necessary freebie, as they use its proficiency. Same for Glaive and Two-handed Weapon Proficiency. I don't think it will cause a power issue though, they won't get much out of those 2 proficiencies normally, and it provides indirect options should you choose to use a staff or dual-wield with Eldritch Weapon.
Summon Swarm - Now that its an AoE the damage can be dropped, and an updated description wouldn't hurt.
Earthen Grasp - no argument against less damage. Nonlethal will only cause it to knock out instead of kill, it is still effective against anything it was before, it was just another way to differentiate it from Stony Grasp.
I've been experimenting with Chain, and found 2 other ways to implement an upgrade with HLA's: Maximize Chain: Secondary targets take full blast damage instead of half. Enlarge Chain: +1 maximum targets, can be taken up to 2 times. The two would be mutually exclusive. I think I have also fixed any targeting issues that were still present, so it should not double-back or double-tap the first target anymore.
I've also looked into Haste immunity, and have found a way to grant immunity to just Improved Haste, while still allowing normal Haste.
Tenacious Plague - Tenacious mirrors its Druid counterpart and causes direct spell failure, so it doesn't need to hit more often. Unlike the other Greater Invocations though, it has nothing to keep an enemy in its area of effect, so I'm gonna skipped the HLA and add the extra Summon Swarm effect for free if both Invocations are known. So even after an enemy leaves the Plague, they will still have a swarm follow them out for 2 rounds. Still trying to get it to work at all right now though.
Comments
It doesn't matter since Bracers of Armor would be better later on.
The "empty" final chain hit and Hellrime/Vitriolic's aoe is an incorrect projectile issue, an odd oversight, but an easy fix.
Chainmail - they should already be able to use any of the elven chain that doesn't prevent arcane casting. I wanted to upgrade Armored Casting either at a given level, or as a choice among other things, allowing normal chain and splint, but haven't found a way to do so functionally.
Spiderwalk has become Spiderstride, increased movement speed, still with Immunity to Web, Grease and Entangle spells.
Trap removal is impossible right now, engine limitation. The Thief's thieving button is the only functional way to disable a trap.
Frightful blast will induce Panic with -3 save penalty, and Turn undead as level 7 cleric. Either way, only works against creatures with 5 HD or less.
Charm should already work exactly as the level 1 wizard spell, +3 save bonus and Humanoid only, but half duration(5 rounds). Once your past the Lizard Man area, I think it will become hard to find much to use it against. In BG/2, there are humanoids, throughout most of the game, so I'm not against further nerfing it.
I think I have found the problem with Chain's targeting issues, at least its worked so far in my testing.
The +3 thac0 bonus you saw with Blast - this could be anything unfortunately. An "Ability Bonus" is even used by the game to offset the value visually for penalties that don't actually apply.
For ranged lock acquiring Eldritch chain was the difference maker. As you pointed out it doubles his damage output. It's too bad he couldn't use Brimstone Blast with it. Although Brimstone was quite nice when dealing with all the trolls on level 2. I've only cast the haste spell a couple times so far, but it's enough to see that increased APR with chaining attacks is pretty awesome. Too awesome? Hard to say. The archer has still been getting way more kills.
Melee lock has never achieved his expected roll as a high damage character. It's become increasingly clear to me that he would do a lot more damage if he used a bow or thrown weapon. A big part of this is engine limitations. This playthrough has taught me that melee combat is simply worse than archery without the boon of exceptional strength bonuses. I think my experience with him would've been quite different if he could've been a half-orc like I'd originally planned, or if I were playing BG with its relatively prolific strength enhancing items. However he's still found an effective niche in the party scouting with Walk Unseen and summoning up an ooze or three to distract and entangle the enemies in most fights before moving in for some stabbing. Finding Spinesheath (a dagger with +5 to hit, +1 damage) was a big improvement for him as well.
I think Eldritch Weapon is occasionally not adding its damage. It's hard to tell because there's no icon indicating when the spell is active, and I'd previously written it off as user error, but I've seen it happen enough that I'm suspicious. Probably won't be able to tell for certain until a new build is posted that has an icon for the ability.
During this dungeon I realized that using Eldritch Weapon doesn't count as a character's spell use for the round. Is that a design choice or an oversight? I'm guessing oversight since it makes the discussion about getting multiple attacks per cast irrelevant. Being able to recast it for every attack in a round makes a ranged weapon user the dominant warlock option imo.
Regarding the Grasp spells, I see that Stony Grasp lists the duration as 3 rds +1 per 4 levels, but my testing shows it to be 2 rds +1 per 4 levels. Even so I think it should just be a flat 2 rounds. Considering the ooze's effectiveness as roadblocks having them stick around longer can make a big difference and the spell is already quite powerful. Stony Grasp is probably ok with its 1 rd per 3 levels since it's a higher level ability and takes awhile for the duration to improve substantively.
Melee lock swapped out charm for walk unseen before Dragon's Eye. I can see how the lack of targets could be an issue (I assume yuanti are immune) but I still think the 3 round duration would be appropriate.
I've noticed that melee lock is not getting the expanded crit threshold (which he shouldn't be because he's not making pseudo-touch attacks) but is still unable to score critical hits. It's especially bothersome since he is using single weapon style which increases crits. Along with the accuracy buff I think the expanded threshold option should probably be dropped.
The least tier with its anticipated changes is accruing a nice selection of abilities that high level warlocks will still want to go back for, but the lesser tier has, um, less. Maybe that's ok? Too many buffs can be a bad thing. But it's something to keep in mind.
Eldritch Glaive/Claw - Going to combine these and mix a little because I can't see either of them being do-able true to their source.
Strikes as magical weapon, benefits from strength damage and Thac0, and other damage/Thac0 buffs like bard song. Benefits from weapon specialization as class level increases, and from Warrior APR at level 7 & 13. And of course delivers an eldritch blast on each hit. Something like:
L1 - Proficient
L4 - Specialized
L7 - Warrior APR
L10 - Mastery
L13 - Warrior APR
L16 - High Mastery
L20 - Grandmastery
Claw will be a Least, with either 1d4 or 1d6 base damage.
Glaive will be a Lesser, with either 2d4 or 2d6 base damage, and the extra range of two-handed weapons.
At level 20, they will be comparable to Chain, each capable of 3.5x blast damage per round.
This might push Eldritch Weapon aside some, but I think the variety of weapon choice and the use with actual weapons is supposed to be its hook.
I have figured out the per shape/essence Thac0 bonus mechanics, so I will remove the crit threshold and make the proper critical hits the default. Thac0 bonus will start out as +3(Blow, Blast, and Eldritch Essence), and increase(or decrease) for each shape and essence you learn(or forget). Claw and Glaive will only get a +1 base, a slight compensation for not being touch attacks and dealing weapon damage. Eldritch Weapon, and normal weapon usage, will not get anything, they will have to rely on the weapons' enchantments for Thac0. I have also implemented it so the initial bonus for the 3 you start with will re-apply at each level-up, so it won't be completely necessary to start over.
Eldritch Chain will Crit slightly different from the others due to engine limitations - aside from the first target, which will still take double damage, it will seek out twice as many secondary targets instead of dealing double to each of them.
Eldritch Weapon should count as a spell for the round. It got the wrong ability target somehow. The whole reason I gave it a subspell was for this exact functionality, and I somehow still screwed it up, simply amazing. As for it seeing its icon, I've realized in my testing that the "Able to Poison Weapons" Icon is rather hard to see on the portraits, so it will be Quivering Palm instead.
I will try to have a new build ready by Thursday, I just have not had much free time as I would like lately due to work and weather.
Those thac0 bonuses and the chain crit mechanic sound good to me.
Don't rush the new build on my account. I still have lots of IWD to go and I haven't even tested the greater and dark essences yet. Guess I better hurry up.
In the interest of kicking all the tires before heading to the next dungeon I decided to see how far I could push melee lock's AC with Eldritch Ward. I gave him AC 6 bracers and every armor boosting item available, arriving at -12 AC. Activating the ward improved him to an impressive -17. My berserker who has been the party tank so far is sitting at -9, going up to -12 with the blur deck for hard fights since he can't use shimmering sash. -12 was good enough to tank literally every enemy in the Dragon's Eye boss battle with no problem, so I'm not sure how much real value there is in the -17, but I think it would be a net gain for my party to make the tank lock I'd been pondering and have the berserker switch to dual-wielding full attack mode. I'll try it for a bit and see how it goes.
No comment on the ooze durations?
First, their thac0 progression will be smoothed out, they will still gain 2/3 per level, but they will gain it as (1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0...) instead of (0 0 2 0 0 2 0 0 2...) as they do now. This will get them their increases earlier, but overall the same.
Proficiency unchanged.
All will get the initial +3 for Blow/Blast/Edritch Essence.
Enchantment levels for all will be at levels 3, 6, 9, 12, & 15, but Thac0 & to-hit requirement only, no damage bonus(only Claw/Glaive could take advantage of it anyway, and they will have Prof damage)
Here's the final Thac0 values for Claw/Glaive, with no STR bonus, and no other shape/essences taken,
Levels 1-22:
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
16 15 13 12 11 09 09 08 06 04 03 01 01 00 -2 -2 -3 -4 -4 -5 -6 -6
and here's a fighter, 18/00 STR, getting mastery at level 3:
16 15 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -6
The fighter will still get weapon enchantment bonuses, and the Warlock can take more shapes/essences.
- Ooze and Charm duration cut down.
I completed Severed Hand. Having melee lock tank proved to be very effective. He did little more than stand there in most fights, but he was practically invincible and generally able to hold the attention of most enemies. I'm torn on Eldritch Ward. As a concept I love the ability, but in practice I think it is hard to balance. What is the net value in a party of sacrificing a character to have a supreme tank? How does it compare to a Dwarven Defender? (Which I've never tried using) I'm not sure if the ability needs nerfing, but it certainly doesn't need the buffing we discussed before.
Ranged lock's activities were basically unchanged from Dragon's Eye. He stood back and chain attacked enemies, and did it a bit more effectively than before because of some thac0 boosting items I found. He's still less effective than the archer, but as I said before I think he should be. He also just reached level 11 which (I think) will give him another target per chain, so his effectiveness has progressed well.
I found an odd minor bug with Eldritch Ward- whenever I do a zone transition I hear the sound of it being cast again.
Having reached level 11 I'll be doing some experimenting with all the greater invocations before making selections and continuing on. I probably won't get to it until tomorrow though.
Should I head to Dorn's Deep or do Heart of Winter next? HoW is tempting because I've never played it before, but I think the lock testing may be better served by continuing along the game's original progression. My last playthrough of IWD was so long ago I don't remember much of the main story anyway.
01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 - Level
20 19 19 18 17 17 16 15 15 14 13 13 12 11 11 10 09 09 08 07 07 06 - #1
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 01 00 -1 -1 -2 - #2, -1/essence taken
20 19 18 16 15 14 13 12 11 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 01 00 -1 -1 -2 - #3A
19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 03 02 01 01 00 - #3B
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 -1 -2 -3 -3 - #4, -1/Enchantment level
16 15 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -6 - #5, -1/Enchantment level
#1 - Base Thac0 progression, same end value as Priests, used for normal weapons.
#2 - Eldritch Blow, Blast, and Chain - touch-attacks with scaling weapon enchantment, with an extra +1 bonus for each new essence taken, no bonus for taking shapes. 1APR w/o Haste
#3A - Eldrtich Claw & Glaive - non touch-attacks with scaling enchantment and proficiency levels. 3.5 APR max w/o Haste
#3B - Eldrtich Claw & Glaive - non touch-attacks with scaling enchantment, starts&ends only specialized. 2.5 APR max w/o Haste
For reference:
#4 - Pal/Ran/Barb, 18/51 & Specialized
#5 - Fighter, 18/00 & Mastery
The Eldritch Ward casting sound - this sound is the visual effect starting up, which would happen at every transition. Does it get annoying or just a bug concern? I'm not very fluent with .vvc files though, so if I remove the sound from transition it would likely remove it when cast as well.
Eldritch Ward balance - I'll keep the buffs singular for now then, but it is probably only the AC buff that is truly excessive. A sure way to keep it balanced would be to make it a Set Base AC, instead of an AC Bonus, but it would need to scale differently.
Level:
05 07 09 11 13 15 17 19
Current +:
03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10
Set Base?:
06 05 04 03 02 01 00 -1
I've never gone through HoW actually, I never owned the expansions until IWDEE, and just haven't gotten around to it yet.
Being a 3E ability eldritch blast scales up levels 1-20 instead of 1-10. So to make it match warrior progression somewhat it should be boosted at the bottom of the chart and abandoned at the top. For this reason I like having them start with specialization and not gain pips afterwards. The enchantment progression you listed, spread from levels 3-15, matches this theme (and mirrors warrior weapon acquisition) pretty well. Which is a very long winded way of saying I like chart 3B the best.
The other end of this problem is making sure the warlock doesn't totally outclass a warrior at high levels. So I'm going to do a theoretical damage comparison of our locks and wars as they progress. In the interest of not spending all day figuring it out, I'm going to ignore thac0. Looking at the damage progression will tell us how thac0 and/or APR may need to be adjusted. I'm also ignoring gear other than weapons since it is equally available to both. The fighter will use a 2h sword since it's the middle road of his 3 options (sword and board, 2hander, dual wield)
Level 1 warlock with claw (specialized) and 18 str - 1d4 (2.5) + 1d6 (3.5) + 4 = 10 * 1.5 APR = 15
Level 1 Fighter with 2hsword (specialized+style bonus) and 18/9x str - 1d10 (5.5) + 8 = 13.5 * 1.5 APR = 20.25
Even with the most bottom heavy chart level 1 fighter is better, as he should be.
Level 5 warlock with claw (specialized) and 18 str - 1d4 (2.5) + 3d6 (10.5) + 4 = 17 * 1.5 APR = 25.5
Level 5 Fighter with 2hsword+1 (mastery+style) and 18/9x str - 1d10 (5.5) + 9 = 15.5 * 1.5 APR = 23.25
Warlock has already passed fighter. For further levels I'll assume 19 str for both as str boosts become readily available by level 10 in either game.
Level 10 warlock with glaive (specialized) and 19 str - 2d4 (5) + 5d6 (17.5) + 9 = 31.5 * 2 APR = 63
Level 10 Fighter with 2hsword+3 (grandmastery+style) and 19 str - 1d10 (5.5) + 16 = 21.5 * 2.5 APR = 53.75
Level 15 warlock with glaive (specialized) and 19 str - 2d4 (5) + 8d6 (28) + 9 = 37 * 2.5 APR = 92.5
Level 15 Fighter with 2hsword+4 (grandmastery+style) and 19 str - 1d10 (5.5) + 17 = 22.5 * 3 APR = 67.5
Level 20 warlock with glaive (specialized) and 19 str - 2d4 (5) + 10d6 (35) + 9 = 44 * 2.5 APR = 110
Level 20 Fighter with 2hsword+5 (grandmastery+style) and 19 str - 1d10 (5.5) + 18 = 23.5 * 3 APR = 70.5
Now that I've run the numbers it's clear the warlock is too badass. Let's see what we get without fighter APR boosts.
Level 5 Warlock - unchanged, 25.5
level 10 - 47.5
level 15 - 55.5
level 20 - 66
Those numbers look reasonable to me. Actually, except for the level 5 one, they look perfect. I know warrior damage can surpass what I listed, most notably by dual wielding with a +APR off hand, but I think it's a reasonable baseline. (This raises another question of whether you want to focus on balancing it versus a typical character or a fully powergamed character) Also remember the lock will get essences, and much more benefit from haste and gauntlets of extraordinary specialization.
So I'd go with chart 3B boosts and no APR gains at 7 and 13 to start with. From there it will have to be playtested.
Regarding Eldritch Ward I like the base AC idea. I'd go a point better than what you outlined to make sure it compares favorably to wearing armor and start level 5 at AC 5. This would still be significant net loss for my lock.
I'll post about testing greater invocations soonish.
Eldritch Cone: Looks good, we'll see how effective it is in a dungeon
Wall: Initial impression is I love this ability. Precise aoe, lingering damage area, awesome graphic, just cool all around. Ranged lock will be testing it in combat immediately.
Bewitching Blast: Works fine. Potentially powerful debuff with aoe blasts.
Noxious Blast: Works, but the effect doesn't seem good enough for a greater ability. Why would I use this over bewitching, especially when undead are immune? Maybe increase debuff duration.
Vitriolic Blast: The main selling point here is the strong damage type and ignoring MR. Useful but not a candidate for anyone's first greater invocation choice. I assume MR can stop blasts normally. I haven't actually seen it happen yet.
Devour Magic: Isn't adding temp HPs right now. Also, why is it touch range? Hard to rationalize picking this with Voracious Dispelling available a tier earlier.
Painful Slumber: Typical save or suck effect. I think it fits well enough as a greater.
Nightmares Made Real: It works. It looks cool. But why would you use it? I can't think of any reasonable application for this ability.
Chilling Tentacles: The damage on this ability is nuts. Especially since you can layer multiple casts of the effect. My warlock laid down 3 of these, then I walked my party in and they all instantly exploded. I looked up the Black Tentacles spell it is based off, and that is much weaker: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/blackTentacles.htm
Tenacious Plague: Looks good, although being able to layer the effect may be a bit much.
Caustic Mire: I expected to be unimpressed, but the mire is very effective. 1 damage every second just ruins any spellcaster, and the 50% slow + characters constantly stopping to flinch when they take damage makes this really live up to its name. However the -25% fire resistance only seemed to work about half the time when I launched fire spells into the mire.
All 3 of these AoE spell look potentially OP (beyond the obvious excessive tentacle damage) to me. Tenacious Plague and the tentacles have to ability to make horrible zones of death by layering castings. Caustic Mire is so effective against casting and movement that it may as well just kill any enemy that isn't an archer. Is there any way to make it so you can only have 1 zone up at a time? If not, I'm not sure how to fix plague and tentacles without reducing their durations to 2 rds. For Caustic Mire I'd make it hit once per round for maybe 5 damage instead of hitting for 1 every second, and reducing the slowing effect from 50% to maybe 30%. (Compare to the druid spike growth spell) Additionally, I think there's a lot of overlap having all of these as greater abilities. Maybe one of them could be appropriately buffed or nerfed to fit in the lesser or dark tier. Although an AoE lesser ability would have to be very tame.
Claw - 1d3 slashing, +1Thac0/+2Damage(Specialization), 2 APR + Warrior APR (3 total)
-Blast effects: 1d2, 1d3, 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 2d6, 2d8, 2d10, 5d4. 25% chance for secondary effect.
Glaive - 1d10 slashing, +1Thac0/+2Damage(Specialization), 1 APR + Warrior APR(2 total)
-Blast effects: (half normal damage), 50% chance for secondary effect.
Blast levels will be changed to be closer to the PnP values, the current every other level increase was just something easy to automate, but it should be easy for me now. New rate:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 3 5 7 9 11 14 17 20 24
Devour Magic - posted back a few that it was broken, I think it was a typo in the resource reference. Touch range because it was touch range in source, while considering whether making it ranged or AoE effect. I need to rework its effect anyway though, its targeting won't work correctly at times.
Vitriolic - All other blast essences do not ignore MR, or at least should not.
Noxious - Current duration is actually 1-2 seconds on my end, not rounds. Gonna have to see what happened there. It was supposed to be at least 2 rounds by the level it became available. Description doesn't match any of this though. I think scaling towards 4 rounds would be okay though.
Chilling Tentacles - using NWN2 as a reference: bad idea. Lists it attacking each creature 4 times per round - this is where the excess damage came from: [(1d6+4) * 4 = 5-40 = 5d8]. However, if the engine allows it, i think I will combine them: It will still attack 4 times, however, it will attack 4 different creatures once per round, not each creature 4 times per round. So 4 random creatures within the area will take 1d6+4 crushing and attempt to be trapped, and everyone will take 2d6 cold.
Plague - I could try messing around with the clear air effect to see if its possible to prevent layering. It means this spell would be able to clear other cloud spells, but that shouldn't be a problem.
Mire - I'll combine the damage to once per round for now, until hopefully someday we get damage-based concentration effects. I actually did that for the slowing effect, not so much the damage, so that someone wouldn't be able to run through most of it before it triggered. I'll have to restructure the spell, because I want to keep that effect, but no objections to reducing the amount. I'll re-examine the fire resistance debuff, there were bugs getting it to not effect fire-immune creatures, so I eventually had to compromise.
I don't think I could create a balanced Lesser AoE, not one that did damage.
-Out of Time-
Level 1 (with 18 or 18/9x str)
fighter: 20.25
old claw: 15
new claw: 1d3(2) + 5 = 7 * 2 APR = 14
level 5
fighter: 23.25
old claw: 25.5
new claw: 1d3(2) + 7 = 9 * 2 = 18
new glaive: 1d10(5.5) + 10 = 15.5
level 10 (with 19 str)
fighter: 53.75
old glaive: 47.5
new claw: 1d3(2) + 14 = 16 * 2.5 = 40
new glaive: 1d10(5.5) + 19 = 24.5 * 1.5 = 36.75
level 15
fighter: 67.5
old glaive: 55.5
new claw: 1d3(2) + 16 = 18 * 3 = 54
new glaive: 1d10(5.5) + 23 = 28.5 * 2 = 57
level 20
fighter: 70.5
old glaive: 66
new claw: 1d3(2) + 18 = 20 * 3 = 60
new glaive: 1d10(5.5) + 27 = 32.5 * 2 = 65
It works out pretty well. The lock still has that last blast die coming at 24, but that's a minor bonus. The biggest problem I see here is it would only take a small static damage bonus to make claw better than glaive even at high levels, and high level characters will generally have those.
I'd prefer the flat bonus I used for claw damage over the variety of damage dice you listed for simplicity's sake, but its not a significant issue. Gotta go, I'll post about other stuff later.
I went through upper Dorn's Deep and the glacier with Tenacious Plague and Wall of Perilius Flames on my locks. Plague worked out well. It was useful, but not overpowering. If someone were so inclined they could cheese the game into oblivion using it with a thief or invisible scout, but I don't think that is a huge issue because it could already be done with a wizard. The wizard would just need to rest occasionally. I do think it could stand a radius reduction to reduce its propensity for hitting enemies that aren't active though. Maybe skull trap range instead of fireball.
The wall was just as cool as I expected. The hit detection is questionable sometimes, but I'm sure there's nothing a modder can do about that. Also, I don't think the wall's fire damage is actually fire. It didn't kill unconscious trolls. Overall fun and powerful ability, but not too powerful.
I am getting concerned that Eldrich chain could reach OP levels as the blast die and number of targets continues to go up. Now that ranged lock is high enough level to rarely miss, and continuing to accrue targets and dice, he has caught up to the archer in damage with it. I expect with continued leveling he would pass the archer which is a definite no-no, but that brings us to another issue.
The Druid XP chart sucks. My locks hit level 12 while the rest of the party was level 9. Level 13 is a bit slower, then they don't get 14 until around when everyone else does. Level 15 doesn't come till the rest of the party is ~20. So the locks become too advanced in mid levels then stagnate as everyone else advances into high levels. Dark abilities won't even be acquired in normal IWD play and BG2 before ToB. Losing a quick spell slot is crappy, but I think changing to a cleric kit is worth it.
I found some elven chain mail but putting it on covers up the cool glowy bits of my warlock.
For Eldritch Ward I'd probably remove the sound effect. I cast the spell once and just left it there across several play sessions when I was testing the ability, but I heard the buff sound repeatedly shifting areas. It wasn't especially bothersome, but overall I'd say the kit is better off without it.
The Chilling Tentacles change sounds good as long as one creature can't be targeted more than once per round. Caustic Mire sounds good too.
I got my first taste of MR stopping blasts facing the drow in Dorn's Deep, and it definitely raisins the appeal of Vitriolic Blast. I was also thinking the ability could be made a little better by making it do 1d6 lingering damage with no save instead of 2d6 with a save. It fits thematically (why save vs spell when it makes the attack nonmagical?) and its a slight improvement since enemies start to rarely fail saves as you get into the higher levels.
Eldritch wall not killing trolls was reported a while back as a bug, and is reported as fixed in the new 1.4 patch. Previously wall projectiles were unable to hit an unconscious creature.
Chainmail - found another color slot for chainmail.
Vitriolic - The save isn't consistent on my end, the comments say no save while the code says save to negate. I must not have fully made up my mind. Changing it to a save vs. Death for half damage.
Chilling Tentacles - I got it to work exactly like that for the tentacles, while the cold will still hit everyone.
Druid/Cleric - I'm not sure how this will interact with Frightful blasts Turning ability, however it could give that essence some long term use, while being somewhat weaker at lower levels. I would rather forcibly smooth out the Druid EXP table, but that's invasive. I'll switch it to Cleric for now, and work on an optional adjusted EXP table Druid.
Updated the first post with the new build.
Hopefully it should have all changes/additions I have discussed, with the exception of Hammer Blast.
Not sure what I want to make of it right now. I'm trying to fill another Dark tier and Least tier essence slot, and it could go either way with a little adjusting.
It will not be compatible with any existing save unfortunately, switching it from Druid->Cleric threw out any possibility of that.
Ranged lock using Eldritch Chain did indeed surpass archer as my deadliest character, racking up 25% of the kills in the last major chapter compared to the archers 21%. The wall was fun and I used it occasionally, but chain was more damaging and easier to use. Especially considering that the lock will continue accruing blast dice I think it needs to be nerfed. Maybe limit it to 3 targets at any level instead of scaling up. Also, I think sometimes it would chain back to the original target which I wouldn't think it should be able to do. I'm not certain though. It wasn't an easy thing to spot since most groups of enemies all had the same name.
The locks did not fare well in the final fight of the game. For some reason whenever I hit the last boss I would see 'Belhafet: spell ineffective' in the text box and nothing else would happen. This happened with Eldritch Chain, Blast, and Weapon, and switching essences, even to the MR penetrating vitriolic (which I'd specifically learned to try out in this fight) didn't help.
Regarding the xp charts, I'm sure a lot of players would object to a smoothed out druid chart (would this just be the cleric chart?) for the class as a whole but I'd consider it an improvement. Perhaps you could set up install options to make it a druid kit and/or cleric kit and/or change the druid xp chart. I have no idea how much work that entails so it may not be worth the effort.
Why does the base eldritch blast do untyped fire damage instead of magic damage like tenacious plague or magic missile? Copying magic missile's damage type seems appropriate.
I'll test the dark invocations tomorrow. Overall I'm very pleased with the class after my IWD playthrough. Hopefully with a little more tweaking it will be a great permanent addition to my EE games.
Belhafet is immune to direct magic, period. It's not just magic resistance, it is Demi-Lich like immunity to all spell levels. All the eldritch blasts are still considered spells of an appropriate level(2, 4, 6, 8 [Least, Lesser, Greater, Dark]). I do not intend to change this, as it is the intentional content design of Belhafet. Like the Mage and Sorcerer, they must rely on either summoning or shapeshifitng.
The default eldritch blast should do untyped damage, that cannot be reduced by specific damage resistances. It is listed as fire damage because the .2da file that controls the description does not work yet, it cannot add or even change existing listings.
Eldritch Doom: Looks good, and very powerful. Being able to alternate casting this and chucking eldritch chains could allow for some crazy dps. I'm loathe to suggest it, but capping the lock at less than 10d6 blast dice might be needed to keep the damage in line with 2E characters. On the other hand, it's still going to be worse than a wizard with improved alacrity spamming damaging spells. Hard to say for sure what would be best without high level adventure testing, and even then it's probably subjective. Maybe this would be better as a HLA?
Binding Blast: Looks good, except when used with Eldritch Blast my character started chucking electric fireballs.
Utterdark Blast: When tested on my party members the level drain didn't work.
Dark Discorporation: I could not get the swarm to damage enemies. Also, for some reason when I cast this my character would turn invisible.
Retributive Invisibility: Looks good.
Word of Changing: Looks good.
Dark Foresight: Looks good, although I couldn't test backstab immunity. +4 AC is lot, maybe too good for tanky warlocks. By this level the thac0 and save bonuses are less significant. Contingency is a neat toy, but I think the strongest use of this ability is having a party wizard cast timestop and getting to use him and the warlock during the effect. Can you make it only provide immunity to enemy time stops? Potentially OP.
Path of Shadows: This ability did crazy stuff. It seemed to attempt a 1 round time stop for each of my characters, but it would skip the 2nd warlock in my party (coincidence or related to his class? dunno) and instead of triggering once for each character it would go off over and over for several minutes. I left it going while I did something else to see if it would ever stop... when I came back it had finally stopped and I counted 30 triggers. When I tried using it with Dark Foresight it was functionally an infinite time stop for the warlock. Also, it never healed any of my party members. Is it supposed to trigger separately for each character? I'd expect the functionality to be something like an aoe burst around the warlock providing 1 round of time stop immunity to allies and healing, then cast a 1 round time stop. But extrapolating from that the time stop round provides a cooldown for the spell which means you could spam it for infinite healing, and then there's the broken interaction with Dark Foresight. This ability seems very problematic.
For some reason the refresh invocations ability only prepares one dark invocation at a time, so I had to use it repeatedly to prepare all of the dark invocations. Of course in normal gameplay you only get one at a time, so its probably a non-issue.
I was thinking it'd be nice if the blast abilities would tell you when their effect triggered in the chat box. In particular with Binding Blast I could only see who got stunned by looking for characters that didn't make a save in the box, or the stun portrait icon when I hit my party.
As for damaging enemies, did you attack something? It's not like blade-barrior or such effect thats occurs every round, it replaces the standard attack.
Binding - that projectile keeps sneaking in there somehow, its even in the new build I posted, ugh. hopefully thats the last of it.
Utterdark - The level drain is working for me, and I can't find anything wrong with it in NI, so I'm not sure about this one right now.
Path of Shadows - The Time Stop effect had the wrong targeting mode. It should only stop time once per casting, for 1 round, then heal everyone effected after timestop ends. It's still very powerful, and have considered either making it not usable during combat, or removing the heal, or, if I can figure it out, have it only heal if your not in combat.
Dark Foresight - I will look into restricting the Time Stop immunity to only trigger when enemies cast it.
I'll also replace the AC with a Base AC 0 to prevent stacking issues.
Blast chat box - Hellrime, Brimstone, Vitriolic, Binding, and Utterdark needs string displays.
The rest should already display.
Eldritch Doom - I could remove the Party-Friendly aspect or change it to self-targeting(sunfire), and/or further spread the Blast damage progression(1 3 5 8 11 14 18 22 26 30). Making it an HLA would remove it from IWD entirely but only make it stronger in BG2, as it would free up a slot for another Dark Invocation.
Refresh ability - it just restores one of each tier per casting, since that would be the norm, no reason I can't expand it
Path of Shadows - Fixed
Dark Foresight - Changes managed. Time stop immunity only applies to a hostile Time Stop spell(spwi909), and not any other source of the Time stop effect.
Blast chat box - added missing.
Added Leaps and Bounds, Least invocation, Passive: Evasion and Immunity to Knockback. First draft.
New build posted immediately because there were files missing from both the folder and the tp2 COPY commands of the old one. I'm still learning to fix one thing, break another - how fun.
First though, two invocation-feats:
- Battlecaster(Chain and Splint) - This will be available in place of taking a lesser Invocation(and cannot be changed out). It will also be available as an HLA, which if you took it as an invocation it will replace it and let you re-choose another Lesser Invocation.
- Armored Caster(Plate and Full Plate) - This will be available in place of taking a greater Invocation(and cannot be changed out). It will also be available as an HLA, which if you took it as an invocation it will replace it and let you re-choose another Greater Invocation. Due to technical difficulties, it will not include nor require Battlecaster. If you have this but not Battlecaster, chain and splint will still prevent spellcasting.
Other HLA's:
The easiest one: Extra Invocation of any tier. Can only be taken once.
The already existing Alchemy and Scribe Scrolls HLA's, can be taken multiple times for multiple uses per day.
The obvious Hellfire path would not be practical, mostly due to the way damage and HP scale between 2e and 3e.
Eldritch Sculptor - PnP: Use 2 blasts per round. Again due to the damage/HP scaling difference this wouldn't be practical for the AoE blasts, nor do I think implementable. So only the touch attacks(blast, blow, and chain) will get the extra APR, though chain will still be limited to only hitting the same target once per round. Everything else will just get an improved cast time. That said, all the invocations will have their cast times reviewed, as I set most of them to either 3 or 9 for testing purposes. Claw and Glaive are not affected, as they already grant multiple APR.
Energy Resistance - The 2 damage types (acid/fire/cold/elec) not chosen at level 10 may be chosen as HLA's.
Lord of All Essences - PnP: Use 2 essences at once, each affecting half the damage of the blast. This will be done properly, and is relatively easy to implement. If you saw this before the edit - I was short of sleep.
Blasting Focus - Secondary Essence(requires Lord of All Essences), All non-damaging effects of your primary essence gain a -6 to save penalty.
There's still room for more, but thats all I have right now. The next build I post will be usable with BG2EE, except it will be limited to Cleric Proficiencies for that game until they fix the bug relating to them. Won't be until after all of the HLA stuff is actually made and (hopefully)working though.
I like the idea of making Eldritch Doom a party friendly sun fire like effect. It restricts the ability without gimping it and creates interesting play mechanics.
Battle caster and armored caster sound neat. Armored caster may be more appropriate as an HLA only. Plate for warlocks removes one of the few arguments to keep a fighter over them.
HLAs:
Eldritch Sculptor- Doubling the dps on the already amazing Eldritch chain seems OP. I think this ability was created because in 3E warlock damage fell behind other classes at high levels, but moving them into 2E the opposite happens.
I like the others. In particular lord of all essences sounds awesome. How would it work with the essence glow effects?
An idea I had for another HLA is turning tenacious plague into Verminlord. Right now it's unimpressive next to chilling tentacles, but bump up the damage (5d6?) and it could be a good HLA. I'll ponder other possibilities.
Regarding the blast damage type, I used magic missile extensively in BG1/2 and never saw the damage resisted. I didn't use it much in IWD, but I'd be surprised if it were different. Cosmetically I think using that type would be a lot better. The colored damage text is snazzy and the inappropriate Fire keyword would be gone.
Adding the Battlecaster/Armored-caster has had a side effect regarding shields. Due to a bug, the shields will not disable spellcasting if they are already equipped and the armor is removed, though a reload does fix the issue. However, I decided to just alter shields behavior anyway, instead of disabling spellcasting entirely, they will now only disable all the Eldritch attacks except Eldritch Weapon, but will now increase casting time for the Warlock, +2(small), +3(medium), +5(large). The only abilities not affected by the increased casting time will be Eldritch Weapon(this just happened to work), and of course anything with an "instant" cast time.
Eldritch Sculptor - I have 2 separate abilities for each of Claw and Glaive, mutually exclusive to each other and Scluptor. I could do the same for Chain, separating it's APR increase as a 4th option, however, Chain's inclusion was on the assumption that I nerfed its target growth. Currently considering 1 target per 6 levels, so 2(level 6), 3(level 12), and capping at 4(level 18). But it probably should still be a separate upgrade.
The Claw and Glaive options upgrade the respective weapon to Grandmastery Proficiency(+2Thac0, +3damage, +.5APR) from their current Specialization.
So Sculptor would have 4 mutually exclusive sub-options:
Generalist - +1 APR Blow and Blast, -3 Casting Speed
Claw Mastery - Grandmastery Claws and Two-Weapon Fighting
Glaive Mastery - Grandmastery Glaive and Two-Handed Weapon
Chain Mastery - +1APR Chain
The secondary essence glow affects the Major color(the first has always been the Minor color), so it will affect most of the character, but is a slow pulsing effect instead of a constant overlay. This way it will be obvious on activation and reload, but not an eye-sore the rest of the time. Still tweaking it though.
Blast Damage Type - I was holding out for the files to be fixed/activated with the 1.4 patch, but that's come and gone, so for now I will change it to Magic.
Craft Wand - Similar to Scribe Scroll, preset list of low/mid level wands, usable once per day. Wands have 10 charges. About as use(ful/less) as scribe scroll and Alchemy, depending on play style, but it fits their item creation ability better then Scribe Scrolls. Scribe will stay as long as the HLA table has room though.
Verminlord/Tenacious - I have always seen the insect spells as designed for interruption more so than damage, either through constant damage or the direct spell failure opcode, and would like to keep it that way. However, I could add this as specialized upgrade - such that if you know both Summon Swarm and Tenacious Plague, any enemy hit by Tenacious Plague will have Summon Swarm automatically cast on them, representing a part of the swarm breaking off to pursue the enemy.
To fill the role of HLA summon, I have added an essence-based summoning. The creatures are no where near as powerful as the Deva/Planetar, but have unlimited use. They should count towards the normal summon limit, though the party may still only have one at a time. They are classified as "Imprisoned Summons", and the ability will kill any Imprisoned summons each time it is cast, before summoning the new one. Since normal Imprisoned creatures cannot be affected by anything but the freedom spell, this shouldn't have any unintended side-effects. Summoning 2 with a secondary essence will not be possible.
Eldritch - Gauth
Frightful - Nishruu
Beshadowed - Dust Elemental
Permeating - Djinni
Hellrime - Ice Elemental
Brimstone - Fire Elemental
Bewitching - Umber Hulk
Noxious - Mummy
Vitriolic - Mustard Jelly
Binding - Lightning(Air) Elemental
Utterdark - Vampire
Don't let the creature names mislead you, its mostly just an animation, they all have similar, custom stats to keep them in-line with each other. The primary difference between them are their resistances and attack damage/effects.
The chain target reduction sounds good.
For scupltor, separating it into subcategories is kind of a non-penalty because any given character would only want one of the categories anyway. How about making sculptor give the generalist bonus, and then having claw, glaive, and chain mastery as additional HLAs that require sculptor? Although that's still not much of a penalty, considering that a ToB character will end up with every HLA eventually. Either way I'm concerned about the possibility of (Improved) Hasted warlocks with more APR putting any other dps character to shame. Maybe later I'll break out the calculator and do a real analysis.
Craft wand fits the class well I think. Honestly I don't see it being very useful, but it's better than making a random potion at least.
An easy way to make the insect spells more interuptive would be just splitting the damage into multiple smaller chunks per round. Even 2 hits per round makes casting pretty tough.
Essence based summoning sounds great.
I've started testing the invocations in the build. I'm trying out them all, but I'm only going to mention the ones that have issues since most are looking good now.
Least:
Entropic Warding: The graphic for blocking a projectile still appears to be able to trigger off any attack or spell, but only prevent projectiles. The graphic also happens independently of the block, sometimes triggering when an arrow hits and sometimes not triggering when an arrow is stopped.
Eldritch Claw: Currently this makes a one handed weapon, which obviously interacts well with single weapon style. Thematically it should be dual-wielding though, I'm not sure that's possible with a magically created weapon. Which also raises the question of what two-weapon bonuses would the HLA provide?
Summon Swarm: Ranged Locks nemesis from the Vale of Shadows is much improved. I think it may be too much for an ability available at level 1. 12 damage per cast makes a wizard's level 1-2 spells look pretty crappy, and that's before you consider it's ability to spread and interrupt spells. I'd make it do 1 damage per tick instead of 2. Also, the '1 creature' target listing is disingenuous since it can hit more creatures, and the initial target is a spot rather than a creature.
Earthen Grasp: Also hits awfully hard for a least ability. 1d6+3 doesn't shame wizard comparables, but it's at least as good as them and this also entangles and provides a body. I'd go with 1d6, the damage shouldn't be a main feature on this invocation. Also, I see it does non lethal damage now. Didn't it do bludgeoning before? Will undead be immune to it now? Will they still be entangled if they are immune to the damage?
That's it for the least. I'll move on to lesser invocations soon.
For the rest, I may end up having them grant Haste-Immunity while active, or at least Improved Haste, and adding in a few more Movement speed bonuses to other invocations, as with Spiderwalk. This would be the simplest way to handle it, though maybe not the best.
Entropic - the graphic is semi-random, but I cannot control it any better, its either that, always on or nothing. It does trigger to indicate that the next projectile to hit you should be stopped, for as long as the graphic is up, which I think was 2 seconds. But again, anything can trigger it, not just ranged attacks, which is balanced(the % is averaged) by the fact that it can only deflect one missile per trigger(and they don't stack). However, now that the text display for its opcode is working, I'm open to ditching the graphic entirely, or making it constant, as it was mostly a placeholder to show at least "something" happening.
Claw - Created weapons cannot simulate dual-wielding or even two-handed weapons properly, which is sad. I think I actually can remove the Single Weapon Style bonus from it though. The Two-Weapon Fighting bonus is just a necessary freebie, as they use its proficiency. Same for Glaive and Two-handed Weapon Proficiency. I don't think it will cause a power issue though, they won't get much out of those 2 proficiencies normally, and it provides indirect options should you choose to use a staff or dual-wield with Eldritch Weapon.
Summon Swarm - Now that its an AoE the damage can be dropped, and an updated description wouldn't hurt.
Earthen Grasp - no argument against less damage. Nonlethal will only cause it to knock out instead of kill, it is still effective against anything it was before, it was just another way to differentiate it from Stony Grasp.
Will get to Tenacious later...
- Out of Time -
Maximize Chain: Secondary targets take full blast damage instead of half.
Enlarge Chain: +1 maximum targets, can be taken up to 2 times.
The two would be mutually exclusive. I think I have also fixed any targeting issues that were still present, so it should not double-back or double-tap the first target anymore.
I've also looked into Haste immunity, and have found a way to grant immunity to just Improved Haste, while still allowing normal Haste.
Tenacious Plague - Tenacious mirrors its Druid counterpart and causes direct spell failure, so it doesn't need to hit more often. Unlike the other Greater Invocations though, it has nothing to keep an enemy in its area of effect, so I'm gonna skipped the HLA and add the extra Summon Swarm effect for free if both Invocations are known. So even after an enemy leaves the Plague, they will still have a swarm follow them out for 2 rounds. Still trying to get it to work at all right now though.