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Rulesets and Rebalancing. Inviability of Spellcasting in Epic Levels

Please don't direct me to Trello as I can barely figure out how to navigate it. I couldn't find anything related to this.
I want to get an idea of when it will be possible to use 3.5 and 5th edition rule sets for NWN EE.
In my youth, I played countless hours on NWN. So much so, It taught me how to type quickly with reasonable accuracy. But there was a very major, glaring flaw. Spell casters become increasingly crippled past level 20. So much so that combat centric classes tend to dominate especially if tis a server which restricts the only arcane spells which allow wizards to stand a chance, Time Stop and maximized Isaacs Greater Missile Storm. This is one of the very few ways a wizard can survive a 1v1 pvp engagement. There are a few highly bizarre builds people have made, which only become viable when fully leveled or close to fully leveled, which mix arcane spell casting with combat. That being said, it's even worse for druids and clerics. players and npcs scale upward with better saving throws, and more health, but magic does not scale past level 20 in any meaningful way. In addition to the lack of scaling for non epic spells, only the defensive epic spells are substantially useful. Both epic and non-epic summoning spells are virtually useless. They spawn comparatively weak allies. And as stated before, they don't scale enough to be very useful, and they don't scale at all past level 20. Necromancer type characters are very weak in part because of this.

Comments

  • FreshLemonBunFreshLemonBun Member Posts: 909
    5e doesn't have epic levels, IGMS isn't a D&D spell. A player is free to mod the rules for spell scripts and itemization as they see fit.
  • Sar_YehudahSar_Yehudah Member Posts: 135
    I wasn't advocating for any one spell. I'm explaining what I view are flaws in either 3.0, NWN, or both. I have not had the opportunity to play table top DND in an extremely long time. I was wondering if any tweaks are at least considered, and if it will be possible or intended to import newer rule sets.
  • FreshLemonBunFreshLemonBun Member Posts: 909
    It's mainly to do with adventure design rather than the core mechanics. For more detailed things you really do need to look into the Trello. Otherwise your other option is to either install a mod that changes the rules as you prefer or to make those changes yourself. If you want uncapped spells you can go into the spells and change it so it doesn't check for a caster level maximum. You can do that today and it's going to be much faster than waiting one or two years and probably not getting what you're asking for.
  • Sar_YehudahSar_Yehudah Member Posts: 135
    Alright. I'll try to get used to trello. Truth be told I haven't done any hard modding since 2011 or so, and that was for an entirely different game. I'll have to look into how modding works for NWN.
  • FreshLemonBunFreshLemonBun Member Posts: 909
    It's not too hard but it does take time to learn how to do it. For spells there are several ways to go about it, like googling the 2da contents for spells.2da and finding the script name under ImpactScript. Then when you've opened up the module in the toolset you open the script editor and search the nwn resource, not just module resource, usually all spell scripts have a "_s0_" part in their name which makes it easier to find them.

    Say you want to edit fireball to keep increasing in level until level 20, then you open "nw_s0_fireball" in the script editor and on lines 55, 56, 57, 58, and 59 you see the following.

    //Limit Caster level for the purposes of damage if (nCasterLvl > 10) { nCasterLvl = 10; }

    Now to increase it to level 20 you do the following.

    //Limit Caster level for the purposes of damage if (nCasterLvl > 20) { nCasterLvl = 20; }

    Lets say you want to increase the dice size of the damage to a d12, then on like 78 you make the following change.

    nDamage = d6(nCasterLvl);
    to
    nDamage = d12(nCasterLvl);
    Lets say you want to now change it now to go up only every 2 levels, then you can make the following change.
    nDamage = d12(nCasterLvl / 2);

    If you want to change one of the official modules you can find them under your install directory (/data/nwm/) then copy the module to your documents folder, in the directory (/neverwinter nights/modules/) and rename the extension of the file from .nwm to .mod, now you can open and edit it in the toolset. To replace the old module file copy the new one back and rename it back to .nwm but make sure to save a backup of the original.

    Alternatively I think you can put updated spellscripts in the override folder if you don't plan to ever play multiplayer. You can export the scripts in an erf from the toolset and then use a program to extract them from the erf.

    If you run into problems then you can ask in the scripting, toolset, and custom content sub-forums.
    Sar_YehudahNeonGothicBloodleeux
  • Sar_YehudahSar_Yehudah Member Posts: 135
    well thanks man. You've put a lot of time into this post I appreciate it.
  • TarashonTarashon Member Posts: 18
    Hello there.

    What we have done in the alangara pw is to make ALL damage and healingspells scale to level 40 besiddes improving them per level often Also. This is all tied into an include system that let us use crits on spells and damage modifier for classes. Also monster have there spelldamage reducer while Some powerfull monster again bonussen. Summons are heavely upgrades etc etc. Point is that beamdog dont need to do this it han be done Even by a garage scripter as myself with a little help and Some effort ?

    /tarashon of Alangara.
  • FreshLemonBunFreshLemonBun Member Posts: 909
    It's true, as far as spells go for the most part. If you want your players to recite Latin phrases to add extra damage effects to their cast spells that's possible, if you want to scale damage, that's easy too. Implementing most of the Unearthed Arcana and variant rules from the books is largely possible also. I highly encourage everyone to play around and see what they can come up with.
  • Sar_YehudahSar_Yehudah Member Posts: 135
    I wish I had time to make a full spell rebalance to scale to level 40. I can't find anything. Alangara is not really populated, and the npcs basically say it's unplayable alone. Even then, I don't have a schedule which permits worrying about parties online.
  • ricoyungricoyung Member Posts: 83
    obligatory comment for future reference
  • Sar_YehudahSar_Yehudah Member Posts: 135
    I've been playing BG1. I am working on beating it. Are there any plans to rebalance spellcasting to make it viable to level 40 in NWN? The biggest thorn in my side is how weak wizards are against fighters with insta-kill criticals. The same problem exists for epic spells. The summoning epic spells are summon monsters which are too weak, the evocation spells usually dont do a lot. I'm really busy and I haven't gotten a chance to look at rebalancing myself.
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