lvl 40 is max?

ameliaboggins

thought i had taken off the exp ceiling.

But no exp gained at 40 ?

this considered MAX lvl in AD&D ?

http://i0.wp.com/shaneplays.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/dungeons_and_dragons_dd_master_set_box_mentzer.jpg

anyone recall reading this one? think it was lvl 40+

sarevok57

well to be honest in ToB you really don't need to go pass level 40, I think it was more of a balance thing, than just being there for the spite of it, for example, bg1's original XP cap ( without tales of the sword coast) was a measly 89 000, so I think its more of a dev choice than a core rule

Lord_Tansheron

D&D rules have changed a lot over the years. Used to be that at lvl40 you were basically a major god, as even the most ridiculous story characters were in their 20s at most. It's different now.

BG has always been a bit different from PnP in several aspects, levels being one of them. That being said, the scaling at these high levels is actually not very impressive. There really is not that much of a power gain from say level 30 to level 40 for most classes (while e.g. 10 to 20, or 20 to 30 are very significant gains). There are mods of course the remedy that somewhat, for example by extending spell level scaling to 40 - that can lead to some very ridiculous things, though...

ameliaboggins

I realise this isnt really related to the BG2 etc games, but can anyone here recall the D&d rules from the 80s?

I mean companion set onwards.

I always wondered why they seemed to differ so much from ad+d.....tho i admit i am not familiar with the 2nd edition onwards rules(pen and paper). Used to play in the 80s.

Then lost my soul to digital reality...... /wail

(am slightly drunk, sorry if that dint follow on well from the flow of the thread)

will repent in ashes and sackcloth in the morn...

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

ameliaboggins

with certain magical items can i get a lvl 40 blade to mem a lvl 7 spell?

normally they stop at 6

am finding lvls 5 and 6 a bit boring for spells. Any favourites?

ahh found this:

http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Reaching_Ring

anything else?

gorgonzola

That ring adds slots, but don't enable to cast spells of a level higher then you normally can cast.
The best that can do for you is 1 more spell at both lev 5 and 6, that anyway is a very good bonus.
You can change the spell table of the game and add lev 7 spells for bards, it should be an easy and fast work if someone (not me ) tells you how to do.

ajwz

yeah as some people have mentioned, levels only went up to 20 in 2ed

Some quasi-official (not actually sure how official some of the sources are if they exist in fan magazines) supplementary materials included levels up to 30 and some of the kits you see included.

2ed breaks down at these higher levels though. Serious HP gain stops at lvl 10. Serious high level spells tend to have their effects and duration capped at around lvl 17-18, and low level spells long before this.

The Thac0 gains you get quickly become irrelevant, because enemies AC stops scaling after a certain point, so your hits are more or less guarunteed anyway

HLA's as far as I'm aware are entirely invented for ToB (I haven't seen any source books supporting them). They are also mostly lack lustre except the spells and UMD.

Some kits have abilities that scale to high levels. These tend to be, but are not exclusively, x uses per day abilities. Even these kit abilities tend to cap out somewhere around level 30 however.

So potentially it's only saving throws that make a difference to how your character improves at high levels.
Beyond a certain point, your characters are much more dependant on high level loot for power, rather than extra levels

Lord_Tansheron

If you fiddle around with values manually and extend progression to high levels, you very quickly realize why things cap - it's beyond ridiculous otherwise. Running around with -20 THAC0 and all saves in the negative, throwing 40d6 Skull Traps... yeah. Not fun.

gorgonzola

Not fun? Why?
Altering the progression tables affects you but also the enemies, is true that you'll cast mega fireballs, but also your enemies do it, same for thaco and saving throws. People have fun using things that let your enemy crazily cheat like tactics mod or overpower him like LoB, at least in this case the buff is for everyone.
Is a different environment, where a skull trap can kill a strong fighter and where the price of each error can be very high, you are forced to protect yourself more, to use spell disruption and antimage tactics, to use good tactics instead of brute force because you will kill very easily but you will be also killed very easily.
I am not suggesting to do it, I will not do it, but for some people can be fun.
And is not giving to charname super thaco, ac, saving throws, stats and weapons leaving the enemies as they normally are.

Altering the bard spell progression table to give at high level a lev7 slot , making @ameliaboggins happy, is another thing, imo not gamebreaking as it opens the same possibilities that he already have using the helm like spamming misleads or lets him cast a RRoR that can be really useful for a bard soloer against modded mages.

Lord_Tansheron

@gorgonzola believe me I've tried, it doesn't work out that way. You just walk around exploding things before they do anything, mostly because scaling is asymmetrical between resilience and damage output and that just balloons more and more the higher up you go.

That's not to say that it couldn't be balanced with a lot of fine tuning. But I imagine that would be quite a laborious task.

Bubbles

In general, bards in my party runs are scroll users mostly, they may not have higher spell slots but they can use the spells directly off the scrolls though. Thus bard that ended up in the party carry most of the scroll cases standing by when mages didn't have certain spells covered in their memories.

@ameliaboggins, I am not sure if any updated overrides are available, removing xp cap alone do not progress you beyond level 40. You will need a level 50 override (with corresponding skills and tables updated in the old BG2 ... otherwise most stuffs still stay at 8mil exp or level 40 in this case).

ameliaboggins

`n general, bards in my party runs are scroll users mostly,`

am in black pits 2....uning scrolls isnt really viable, money wise. need that pp for items atmo I cant get bp2 to work with keeper, so its removing the temptation to cheat )
JUst blew 75k on red katana for my main char primary hand.....gonna take while to build reserves back up.
I dont have an infinite amount of time to sit and build up gold in a computer game, has to balance with reality(sadly)

find am carrying the blade, he is just standing about watching while the real toons do the hardwork. AN easy life for some!

the bard items on the vendors havent really changed since tier 1, whcih doesnt help!(am at last fight in tier 3 now)

ameliaboggins

wobble

Danacm

Lvl 20 is the cap for spells without mod. So after lvl 20, no spell improves anymore, so no 40d6 skull trap, only 20d6, even if you lvl 40 bard.

gorgonzola

@Danacm not completely true. The damage of some spells, like Fireball, is capped earlier, and the duration, when is linked to the level of the caster, goes beyond lev 20.

Lord_Tansheron

Also Dispel/Remove Magic will roll based on level with no cap.

Danacm

I spoke especially skull trap, but yes some lvl dependant spells are not the same, but in game files no spell advance beyond 20, nor duration or damage. But show me spells with caster level duration @Lord_Tansheron, because i dont know any. The dispel magic is rights.

Lord_Tansheron

@Danacm I believe @gorgonzola is the person you are looking for.

Danacm

@Lord_Tansheron sry, i failed it

gorgonzola

I was convinced that the duration is not capped at 20, a little search on the net proved it wrong.

Danacm

I imagine things why designed this way: there were a rule i read sonewhere in adnd high level campaigns or faith and avatars, that spells not advanced beyond 20, or they were lazy, and creating too fast Tob, or at last some mystic balance reason to the multiclass pc will be as strong as single class in terms of spell dmg and durations.

gorgonzola

Weimer created a mod for the original game that allows the spells to advance up to lev 50, but reading the web page of the mod we find:"This mod will change the balance of power in the game in favor of spellcasters. Both your high-level spellcasters and opposing high-level spellcasters (e.g., liches, ToB enemies) will gain a major boost. You should seriously consider whether you want to face a 25d8 Horrid Wilting and whether you will have fun in a game where you can launch a 25d8 Horrid Wilting before you install this."
http://www.weidu.org/spell50.html
As the (arcane) spellcasters are already the most powerful classes of this game (as balance between offence and defence and ability to deal with almost any situation and enemy) a cap at 20 or less keep the other classes competitive. Give to your solo sorcerer the capability to use a CC that deal 75d8 magic damage ( 337 on average) and the only advantage of the fighters, dealing more DPS, is lost.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Lord_Tansheron

Now that I think about it, it does make sense that a system with so many elements based on d20 rolls would have trouble once you go above 20.

Danacm

Thats the point @subtledoctor , and yes level 30 was the reachable maximum in adnd2 , the source book stated that after you will be npc, because this game is the game of heroes not gods

GloatingSwine

ajwz said:

2ed breaks down at these higher levels though. Serious HP gain stops at lvl 10. Serious high level spells tend to have their effects and duration capped at around lvl 17-18, and low level spells long before this.

I think most D&D editions break down once you get beyond about 10 anyway. The class balances tend to get further and further out of whack the higher you go. (Once wizards get their 9th level slots in 3rd the game is broken, the Wizard is now unkillable because he's astrally projecting from his personal demiplane and can shapechange to do anything better than everyone else)

If you read the old levelling tables though, you start seeing that beyond level 9 levelling was less about "your character becomes increasingly personally hitty" and becomes about acquiring different kinds of power. A level 9+ fighter is expected to get a castle and a personal retinue of combat troops at his disposal, whereas a level 15 druid is literally the king of all the druids in the world, and there can only be one level 15 druid in the world at once.

gorgonzola

I think that we must live with the fact that the level gain rate was intended for the original BG1 and 2, and for them is perfect. Low level campaign in 1 and high level in 2. Reaching at the end of the saga the maximum level that humans and the other playable races are supposed to reach. Even the strange Druid's leveling fits perfectly. Mages could taste lev8 spells in the end game, but only using the very rare scrolls, they where capped just before the level needed to cast them from the spellbook.
When they added ToB they had to allow more levels, a whole big expansion ( main quest + WK ) without leveling would be boring. So they allowed godlike casting to the casters and invented HLA to somewhat balance the other classes (GWW, UAI, Hardness and the rest).

Using mods that slow down the xp gain allowing an average party to reach about 3M Xp at the end of ToB transforms the game in something more similar to the PnP DnD. This is giving about the 50% of the normal Xp for a 6 people party. For soloers and small parties even more is needed.
It is as good as giving more power to the enemies to rise the challenge.
Personally I like those lev 9 spells and HLAs, but for who don't like them is a good way to go.

DJKajuru

gorgonzola said:

I think that we must live with the fact that the level gain rate was intended for the original BG1 and 2, and for them is perfect. Low level campaign in 1 and high level in 2. Reaching at the end of the saga the maximum level that humans and the other playable races are supposed to reach. Even the strange Druid's leveling fits perfectly. Mages could taste lev8 spells in the end game, but only using the very rare scrolls, they where capped just before the level needed to cast them from the spellbook.
When they added ToB they had to allow more levels, a whole big expansion ( main quest + WK ) without leveling would be boring. So they allowed godlike casting to the casters and invented HLA to somewhat balance the other classes (GWW, UAI, Hardness and the rest).

Using mods that slow down the xp gain allowing an average party to reach about 3M Xp at the end of ToB transforms the game in something more similar to the PnP DnD. This is giving about the 50% of the normal Xp for a 6 people party. For soloers and small parties even more is needed.
It is as good as giving more power to the enemies to rise the challenge.
Personally I like those lev 9 spells and HLAs, but for who don't like them is a good way to go.

I always use the mod that gives less XP in BG2, that way I finish chapter 2 at around level 12 (about 800000 xp) , do the final battle with jon at around level 15 (2 million xp) and finish ToB with about 4 million xp. Nothing is too easy that way and I enjoy it a lot.

gorgonzola

I guess that ToB is less boring that way. Leveling up is not just one more GWW or ADHW, the party continue to gain real power trough all the saga, dualing at high levels or using multi becomes more difficult, is no more the PG only choice, Wizards become unstoppable later. We see continuous effort from the developers and modders to rebalance, but the reason why so many things seems to be so needing to find a new balance is just the xp calibrated for the end of SoA and not ToB. Reducing the xp gain a lot of things become more balanced almost automatically.

ameliaboggins

who gives a monkeys arse about balance!

I want to grind kobald faces intot he diort with my lvl 40 super POWAS!

smash smash smash!