Pale Master summons are odd...
Tresset
Member, Moderator Posts: 8,268
As I progress through the levels of my pale master I frequently find that as I level up my special undead summoning abilities sometimes call weaker undead at a higher level.
Take the regular Summon Undead feat:
First it summons a ghoul. The ghoul can fight reasonably well and diseases and stuns on hit. At the next stage it summons a pitiful shadow that can barely fight at all, drops like a fly, does next to 0 damage if it ever does hit something, and its only real perk is the strength drain attack. Next summon is a ghast, which is far and away the best thing this ability can summon. Next is a Wight which is far weaker than the ghast and its only real benefit over the ghast is its level draining attack. Downgrade again for the final summon of the ability with a wraith. The wraith fights about as well as the shadow and can drain constitution on hit. Its main perk is the concealment bonus it has, but I would still prefer the ghast, because that can at least hit things.
I haven't gone through the entirety of the Summon Greater Undead feat, but the early stages seem to be just as poorly balanced as the regular Summon Undead feat.
Honestly, the Pale Master seems to be a pathetically weak excuse for a wizard, aside from the fact that it can live longer with its special defenses from its feats. Its haphazard summoning progression leaves much to be desired.
I honestly would have given up on this run long ago had I not heavily modded the power level of this class in an upwards direction.
Anyway, I am curious about what people think about the Pale Master and its goofy summon skills.
Take the regular Summon Undead feat:
First it summons a ghoul. The ghoul can fight reasonably well and diseases and stuns on hit. At the next stage it summons a pitiful shadow that can barely fight at all, drops like a fly, does next to 0 damage if it ever does hit something, and its only real perk is the strength drain attack. Next summon is a ghast, which is far and away the best thing this ability can summon. Next is a Wight which is far weaker than the ghast and its only real benefit over the ghast is its level draining attack. Downgrade again for the final summon of the ability with a wraith. The wraith fights about as well as the shadow and can drain constitution on hit. Its main perk is the concealment bonus it has, but I would still prefer the ghast, because that can at least hit things.
I haven't gone through the entirety of the Summon Greater Undead feat, but the early stages seem to be just as poorly balanced as the regular Summon Undead feat.
Honestly, the Pale Master seems to be a pathetically weak excuse for a wizard, aside from the fact that it can live longer with its special defenses from its feats. Its haphazard summoning progression leaves much to be desired.
I honestly would have given up on this run long ago had I not heavily modded the power level of this class in an upwards direction.
Anyway, I am curious about what people think about the Pale Master and its goofy summon skills.
2
Comments
It wouldn't be so bad if your Palemaster levels could be factored into your effective caster level or spell DCs though.
I did this by editing a switch from the community patch project into the modules I play. The CPP comes with a huge number of other changes to the base game as well, however, so it may not be suited to everyone's tastes. There appears to be something similar on the vault that only changes the Pale Master, though. I have not tried it myself and installing it may be tricky on NWN:EE, but it may be worth looking into if anyone is interested.
In the mean time I decided to change the order of the normal undead summons so that they progress roughly from low CR to high CR, thus starting with the shadow and ending with the ghast. I may try to tackle the greater undead summons later too. I am not sure how to modify the spell descriptions though...
Most of the stuff BW put out "for casters" was pretty gimped by bugs and/or poor balance, largely due to the complexity and inconsistency introducing issues in the spell scripts and the engine support for said scripts. Being chained to DnD 3.0 WotC balance is another factor for many spells' balance etc.
-Dave
First of all, PM requires arcane spellcasting lvl 3 or higher. Bioware for some reason implemented this as 3levels of either wizard, sorcerer or bard... while it should be lvl 5 wizard or 6 sorcerer or 7 bard + corresponding base casting ability, ie 13 int or 13char. If it was implemented this way the PM benefits would be much more costly for martial class.
Second, Bioware for some reason allowed PM to acquire epic spells despite not fulfilling requirements. Epic spells require spellcasting lvl 9. Yet Pale Master can select them all at lvl 15+ ignoring that. If it wouldn't be ignored it would require 17lvl wizard or 18lvl sorcerer and base casting abilitz at least 19 or a combination of wizard/sorcerer + odd PM levels which gives this number (assuming PM would work enhance sorcerer spellcasting in first place which doesn't in vanilla). And since bard cannot acquire lvl 9 spellcasting as well, that means that all these Fighter/bard/PM and similar builds with Epic Mage Armor+Epic Warding wouldn't be possible and the only thing to take PM for would be those immunities, not that powerfull anymore.
If implemented properly, we would have much less building choices. On the other hands, these builds with PM are quite gamebreaker and are commonly restricted or disallowed on most PWs anyway. No wonder.
Third, the class should enhance spellcasting progression and caster level. In vanilla it only enhances spellcasting progression of Wizard, and despite the caster level isn't increased, the combination with Wizard is still very potent on lvl 40 cap since most spells have damage cap at caster level 15/20 anyway and max SR to be commonly seen is 32 for which 25 levels of wizard are enough to penetrate with 100% chance.
Fourth, there is significant difference between 3.0 version which Bioware used and 3.5 version of this class. Bioware used 3.0 version (possibly 3.5 source didn't exist when they were making it) and grafted epic levels (3.5 feature) on it. The result is what we got... a mess.
The class in 3.5 (source from Libris and Mortis The Book of the Undead) excludes bard from taking it (requirement is able to cast vampire touch and command undead spells) and gives +1 arcane spellcasting progression(+caster level) on every level with exception of first (Also the deathless mastery gives immunity to death spells, ability decreases, sleep, poison and level drains.).
Custom content note: as Tresset wrote, in community patch you can enable PM giving caster level. This is not activated by default to activate it spawn item "70_pcwidget" using console then use the item and follow conversation - there are much more choices than that as well (this settings is persistent across all modules you will play). However, PM spellcasting progression remains unchanged from vanilla that is +1 each odd level, if you want 3.5 progression you need to edit classes.2da file. Also, under version 1.69 the community patch includes NWNCX plugin that will apply PM levels into spellcasting of bard or sorcerer - while player won't get to choose new known spells when levelling up PM, once he return to the sorcerer/bard he will be able to select spells that PM class granted.
I know you've reported a lot of bugs already, but that's a really nice summary for a Redmine ticket, imho.
-Dave
if this gets fixed then existing characters turns "invalid" by server character validate script. Players wants their overpowered characters so this should be module builder responsibility.
All we need from BeamDog is customized spellcasting like I did in nwncx_patch for 1.69.
The 3.5 version also makes it far less ambiguous by instead of using a generic "bonemail" it gives examples of different types of undead armor and the only benefit a pale master gets is reducing the arcane spell failure of that armor type by 10% every 4 levels. The 3.5 version doesn't necessarily forbid bard or any other class from meeting the requirement but it requires the ability to cast control undead and vampiric touch as arcane spells. While it's hypothetically possible to circumvent class requirements you still need to pay up 8 points in knowledge (religion) and the feat, so the skill requirement puts to hard limit at level 5.
If you want to change how pale master works then you should and I would too but I don't think everyone would agree with any changes even if ELC wasn't an issue.
In my opinion, you're best served spending 12 levels for the Vampire Rogue, unless you are willing to invest 20 for the Skeleton Blackguard or 22 for the lich.