Change back stunning fist duration

nostalgicsamurai

Hello,

As you may know, the duration of the stun effect from the "stunning fist" feat has been changed from 3 rounds to only one in the EE.

Everyone in my server agrees that this is kinda lame, so I'm looking for a way to change it back to 3 rounds.

Is this possible, and how?

Grizzled_Dwarflord

I must have missed that in their release notes. They changed it on purpose?

nostalgicsamurai

Yes, you can find a bullet point in the release notes saying "Monk’s Stunning Fist: Balance change to last only one round instead of three rounds."

When I first played a monk in the EE without knowing about this, I was surprised by the tiny duration of the stunning fist, then found this in the release notes.

Grizzled_Dwarflord

For balance reasons, eh? I would beg to differ on that point. Once one cites "balance reasons", the slippery slope begins. Instead, the argument should be to "un-hardcode" Stunning Fist and let Devs and Admins choose their own "balance."

nostalgicsamurai

I totally agree with you. I wish there weren't any hardcoded feats.

RifleLeroy

Who suggests these "balance"?

Prince_Raymond

Not to play Devil's Advocate, but while I agree that Devs and Admins should have more control over the way feats and class abilities behave in game, the duration of Stunning Fist's stun effect in P&P D&D 3.0 has always been 1 combat round. The change was made to better represent the 3.0 version of that ability. Personally, I don't mind it so much. It just means my fights while playing a monk are going to be a bit more strategic. Thank you for reading, and happy gaming to all.

nostalgicsamurai

Yes, I'm aware that in P&P, stunning fist is 1 combat round, but this is NWN; lots of things are different from PnP, and sometimes for good reasons. In a game where every warrior can and usually does take knockdown, and even improved knockdown, which isn't limited by uses per day nor crit immunity (not to mention that it's often easier to overcome the opposite discipline check than the fortitude save), this version of stunning fist is of limited value, in my opinion.

Moreover, when I bought the EE, I expected a more up to date game, not a "rebalanced" game. In fact, for the most part, feats and classes have been left untouched, even though there are other things that are much more overpowered and/or not true to PnP, so I really don't see why they felt the need for this specific modification.

tfox

I have to agree with nostalgicsamurai, there's far more broken stuff in NWN in need of rebalancing (and often better left in the hands of those developing modules or servers for others to play through to judge what is and isn't balanced for their particular game), Stunning Fist wouldn't even be on my top 30 list of things to "balance" unless intuitive attack was implemented to allow wisdom to be used instead of strength (or dex with finesse) for AB.

I'd love this to at the very least be turned into a module switch that can be enabled or disabled by the person developing their module if not outright opened up for people to edit to their hearts content.

Prince_Raymond

@nostalgicsamurai and @tfox Both of you make very valid points. I for one agree that certain feats in NWN function differently than the core P&P D&D rules for good reason. For example, I actually prefer the NWN version of the Toughness feat over the P&P version of it. You take the feat one time, gaining 1 bonus hit point for every character level you have. Just like regular hit points, the bonus hit points from this feat are retroactive. A level 21 character with Toughness in NWN gets the same benefit as a level 21 P&P rules character who took the feat 7 times, adding +3 total hit points each time. The difference is the NWN character has 6 more feats to spend.

As far as making things into a module switch that can be enabled or disabled, may I suggest posting your idea on the Trello Board thread? Perhaps a card could be created on the input board if one covering it doesn't already exist. Thank you for reading, and happy gaming to all.