Porting balance changes between EEs
So there's been some cross contamination IWDee and BG2ee 1.3.
Overall I think it can be positive for the franchise if the rule set can be unified to provide predictability for new players (and old) and generally a more challenging game experience with multiple viable strategies without any particular strategy being obviously superior to any other.
The benefit of the balances that already exist is that they're proven in their alternate game.
Examples that I can think of that id like to see ported across:
- better spell progressions for paladins, rangers and bards. These classes need a buff in BG and this makes them more engaging
- fom rings preventing haste. Web immunity is so powerful before you include haste in the equation, it's just ludicrous with it
- new Druid shape shifting and new Druid spells. Druids need a buff
- new bard songs
- new cleric spells and alignment restrictions on some spells
- BG progression of Grandmastery (as a defacto buff to multiclass fighters and other warriors)
- no bonus xp for higher difficulties (except HoF but that could do to lose the insane bonus)
- consistency between spell effects generally leading to more balance (nerf to sleep) and less tedium (BG duration on PfE).
- ranger/cleric not mysteriously unlocking all Druid spells but instead on spells of the levels the ranger has access to
Obviously I'd be fine if there were options so people can play the way that they want but the default settings should provide a challenging, balanced and engaging experience and the above adjustments would go a long way to realising that.
Overall I think it can be positive for the franchise if the rule set can be unified to provide predictability for new players (and old) and generally a more challenging game experience with multiple viable strategies without any particular strategy being obviously superior to any other.
The benefit of the balances that already exist is that they're proven in their alternate game.
Examples that I can think of that id like to see ported across:
- better spell progressions for paladins, rangers and bards. These classes need a buff in BG and this makes them more engaging
- fom rings preventing haste. Web immunity is so powerful before you include haste in the equation, it's just ludicrous with it
- new Druid shape shifting and new Druid spells. Druids need a buff
- new bard songs
- new cleric spells and alignment restrictions on some spells
- BG progression of Grandmastery (as a defacto buff to multiclass fighters and other warriors)
- no bonus xp for higher difficulties (except HoF but that could do to lose the insane bonus)
- consistency between spell effects generally leading to more balance (nerf to sleep) and less tedium (BG duration on PfE).
- ranger/cleric not mysteriously unlocking all Druid spells but instead on spells of the levels the ranger has access to
Obviously I'd be fine if there were options so people can play the way that they want but the default settings should provide a challenging, balanced and engaging experience and the above adjustments would go a long way to realising that.
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I believe a mod confirmed this recently. @Dee perhaps?
By the way, in the ini file does 'Cleric Ranger Spells', '1' mean I have both lists or do I need to change the 1 to 0?
I just hope that it won't be disabled by default on Ipad.
Racial enemy bonus is almost worthless. Way too specialised. Stealth is worthless since you want heavy armor.
Basically you just have a fighter that levels more slowly.
That being said, pure rangers are somewhat underpowered:
- Their default specials abilities do not compensate the loss of GM
- Their kits are not great either: stalker is OK but clearly inferior to a F/T. Archer is great by itself but archery is not so good in BG2. On the contrary fighter and paladins get great kits with unique powers.
If you MC then you've got a some what slow leveling cleric with a couple extra spells and no grandmastery.
I'd rather go Berserker/Cleric or something. Am I missing something?
They are overrated:
-Levels slow as hell
-Low caster level= easily dispellable buffs
-Iron skin is nice but AC is hardly a problem for any cleric variant (unless cleric/mage)
The main perk is the ability to use the insects to disrupt mages but even then you're losing dps time unlike fighter/mages who will just prebuff (with much stronger buffs) and whack away. Everything else can be done by a pure cleric.
As a melee fighter, they are outdone by every other fighter variant.
As a mage disruptor they are outdone by mages and inquisitors.
As a healer/party utility pure clerics are better.
As a pure spellcaster they are outdone by sorcerers and mages. Pure druids are also much better.
Just because they can solo doesn't mean they're OP. It can be done by thieves, sorcerers, mages and even berzerkers. They level fast enough in a solo game but in a full party they're clearly not overpowered.
Fighter/druid has a bit less utility (on the top of my head relevant spells are negative plane protection and lesser restoration).
Fighter/cleric is now plain better with GM when dualing and faster leveling with multi-class.
Pure Cleric has much faster acces to higher level spells and a better turn undead. You can use kits with no drawbacks.
Pure Druid is basically an offensive Cleric and must be treated as a pure spellcaster unless you use a mod to rebalance shapeshifting. The problem here is how bad shapeshifting is.
This is a fix that should have happened a long time ago. Mod your game if you really want to cheat.
- consistency between spell effects generally leading to more balance (nerf to sleep) and less tedium (BG duration on PfE).
Sleep is largely only useful against trash mobs in Baldur's Gate (Ankheg's being an exception to this). Once you hit chapter 5 its basically only going to be useful in any remaining outdoor areas you didn't already explore and when you get to BG2 its totally useless. So I don't see a need for a nerf. Also the enemies you fight in the Baldur's Gate series are far more varied than what you fight in Icewind Dale, so I don't see the need for a one size fits all approach to how spells work. The default behaviour in BG2EE should be that they have access to the spells. In IWDEE the default behaviour should be that they don't. For the minority of BG2 users of the cleric/ranger who want to play it without access to these spells it should be an option, but I don't see how its so overpowered as things currently stand. I also don't see why it needs to be addressed when the EE's already introduced things that made the games easier on a much more widespread basis (new spells in BG1, Dorn/Blackguards, Stupifier, Baeloth, Joluv as a default merchant, new merchants as part of Neera's questline, etc). The suggestions above would just make rangers, paladins, bards, druids, and clerics generally more powerful but without high level enemies that use any of these classes it just makes the game easier, not more challenging. Especially if those few enemies who do use these classes aren't programmed in to use these new spells (and they likely wouldn't be). The fact that in BG2EE there are 9 joinable NPC's that fit into one of these classes (and that would also benefit from the changes) just goes to show that they would make the games easier.
"As a melee fighter, they are outdone by every other fighter variant. "
How come? Offensively, thanks to cleric buffs, they are better than all pure fighters. Defensively, thanks to ironskin (AC is rather useless late in the game), they are also much stronger than pure fighters
"As a mage disruptor they are outdone by mages and inquisitors." Ok but they are still much better at that (thanks to insect swarm) than a pure fighter or pure cleric.
"As a healer/party utility pure clerics are better." OK, although not by much (especilly at higher level) and a pure cleric will bring a lot less in terms of fighting skill and mage disruption.
"As a pure spellcaster they are outdone by sorcerers and mages." clearly but once again the comparison is against fighters or clerics or druids, not against arcane casters.
Now, I agree that there is now no real incentive to play an RC compared to a FC. But the RC made everything related to fighting and divine casting obsolete, while the FC does not. So, for me this is a good change (although not a critical one)
I just played an SoA with an RC PC and I felt extremely starved spell slot wise. I also felt like it was lagging behind in terms of levels, I was laways like: "If only he had been 2/3 levels higher, he would kick ass".
About fighter variants and combat prowess:
Fighter/mage is stronger
Fighter/thief is stronger
Other variants are with divine spellcasters and have been discussed.
As pure fighters go, multi/dual classes are always stronger especially since TOB introduced such high levels but they can hold their own.
Kensai is a death machine at higher levels just throw a barkskin on him and he'll be fine.
Stalker is a watered down fighter thief
Swashbuckler is actually really good and another take at fighter/thief.
Blade is a much faster leveling fighter/mage (works very well with scaling spells or even simply for spell durations and remove magic resistance).
Skald is really good pre-TOB (the improved song HLA removes its utility compared to other bards).
Monk is OP late game.
All Paladin variants are good but inquisitors are just crazy free True Sight and utimate dispel magic. Carsomyr is one the biggest reasons though.
Dual classing is a different story since they were the kings of divine spellcasting. However, their effectiveness was always limited by their APR (no speed weapons) and 1 spell/round spellcasting restriction anyways.
This change just eliminates most of the incentive to go from a ranger to a cleric outside of maybe the dual classing from the stalker. The default is that now you don't get access to any new druid spells unless you dual class at level 8 as a ranger (and even then the nerfed version of Entangle is the only notable druid only spell there) and fighter -> Clerics and fighter-> druids end up with grandmastery while you are stuck with specialization. At least under the old system Fighter -> Cleric duals had the grandmastery advantage and Fighter/Cleric multi's had the race (shorty saves) advantage and wouldn't fall due to rep loss.
The only thing IWDEE does more consistent with PnP than BGEE is the full extra attack at Grand Mastery. None of them do High Mastery fully-consistent with PnP, since there is no bonus damage in Combat & Tactics for High Mastery (it's a speed bonus and increased critical chance). Also, Grand Mastery in Combat & Tactics does not give a further speed bonus; it gives the full extra attack, a damage bonus (however the damage bonus is an increase in die size, not a straight +1), and an improved knockdown chance (which EEs don't implement until HLAs).
A closer implementation to PnP would be the following for WSPECIAL.2DA (and using IWDEE's WSPATCK.2DA for the full extra attack at Grand Mastery). This implements High Mastery as a speed bonus (there's no column in WSPECIAL for criticals) and approximates the Grand Mastery damage die increase as a +1 damage bonus (e.g., 1d8+1 and 1d10 have the same average damage of 5.5). However, BGEE/BG2EE/IWDEE aren't PnP. I agree that a consistent implementation between the games would be helpful for players, but it doesn't need to be consistent with PnP (and none of them are).
You are correct, IWDEE is the most consistent of the EEs with its original implementation when it comes to weapon mastery, which would be a good reason to leave it as is. AFAIK, the biggest change for IWDEE is that it allows Grand Mastery for ranged weapons. IWD had limited ranged weapons to Mastery (3 pips).
Actually, BGEE's implementation of weapon mastery is still "nerfed" compared to the original implementation in BG1. BG1 gave High Mastery +3 to hit/+5 damage and the full extra attack for Grand Mastery.
While it would be nice to have access to these different behaviors between games via option-menus or ini-files or such, I really think these games should stay different where they have been different and therefore the default setting should always be the behavior of the original game.
The EEs, while offering improvements, should also enable players to play the game as originally intended, or at least as close to that as possible. (I actually think that should be a moral obligation, if they take these games they work on seriously (maybe even as art) and don't just see them as some random product to make money.)
Also I prefer diversity. I want IWD to feel different than BG, that is as different as the original games felt. Why should every bard or druid be the same? I think it's nice when switching between these games, that suddenly classes can do different stuff and not everything works exactly the same.
Consider the changes to the balance of the game that have already occurred with all of the new content.
Consider the value to a new player of the classical values that you have compared to a game that is more balanced and intuitive.
Mind you, I'm only suggesting balance in the spirit of the original game and the spirit of a game that is faithful to (the spirit of) 2nd edition D&D.
I'm simply saying that a more challenging, balanced and intuitive series of EE games will be better for the longevity of the franchise.
The games description for the ranger says "May cast druidic spells starting at level 8."
It doesn't actually say anything about it not being able to cast past level 3 druid spells. Pure rangers have their own spellcasting table, but its not taken into account when tables for cleric/rangers are considered (you don't get bonus level 1-3 spells regardless of your ranger level). A better approach to addressing this would have been to allow all characters who are ranger level 8 and up access to all druid spells (when their cleric level would allow for it).
However in this case the description for cleric/ranger does say that the "These characters can use the abilities of both Cleric and Ranger." In this case the ability granted to you by the ranger would be (apart from stuff like favoured enemies and two-weapon style points) the ability to access druid spells once you hit level 8. Similarly for the cleric half you are granted the ability to use their spell progression table (which you already are doing). Having the cleric half to a ranger character should grant you access to these spells, in the same way that Use Any Item grants cleric/thieves the ability to use items that clerics would normally not be permitted to use.
The game however just doesn't label what is or is not a druid spell (whereas arcane spells are very specific about who gains access to them by stating what school(s) they are a part of). The closest it gets is saying "When a Druid casts this powerful spell" in some spell descriptions, but even that is inconsistently applied in the case of druid only spells (I believe only Iron Skins, Nature's Beauty, and Greater Elemental Summoning say anything about a druid caster). No they can't. These changes make it so that you need to be ranger level 8 before you can cast level 1 druid spells (entangle for instance).
Level 6 ranger.
You'll note Entangle isn't featured here.
Why don't bards get lvl7 and 8 arcane spells? Would you ask for it from Beamdog?
Why aren't spell components included?
Why don't paladin get their right spell progression and specific spells?
Why do Clerics have access to so many spells from different domains?
There are so many differences with PnP that the only way to see BG2 is to have house rules in mind and then almost anything goes. Some kits and classes (e.g.Monk and Sorcerer) are from 3rd edition.
Anyone who claims RC is broken hasn't played with it in a full party if your argument if balance. Hell, take a look at fighter/mage and fighter/thief variations. Even Bards (specifically blade) and sorcerers are stronger overall. Shouldn't they be nerfed according to you?
Even illegal proficiencies/stupid implementations (Haer'dalis and Edwin) are considered features.
If it will help you rest at night, consider the RC a Cleric of Sylvanus and druid spells are his domain spells.
As other posters have pointed out the power of the RC compared to the classes mention above isn't important as power disparity between arcanes and other classes is an important feature of 2e. Rather, the power disparity between RC and FC (and variants) is what is important.
With this fix there is a greater incentive to play a greater variety of class and race options and that is a good thing.
Furthermore, while RC isn't very attractive right now if the Druid spells and ranger spell progression is ported from IWDee then it will still be a very powerful option.