TDN11 Question Thread

Aschent_

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Please provide clarifying questions related to TDN11 here.
 
1.) I was told there would be changes to address the skill cap/skill banking system, requiring a lot of extra planning for multiclassing, but I’m mostly just seeing a lowered skill cap. Can you elaborate if other changes were made to the system?

2.) I’m not sure what it means when BAB is averaged out at 11. Could you provide a table example? Does it continue progressing at your highest rate, does it stop, are 4th iterative attacks still possible?

3.) Will reagents be inventory items, if they have to be used before casting is there a prototype for instant item interactions already?
 
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I enjoy the vast majority of the concepts put forth by the update, however I do feel the cooldowns are a bit aggressive for levels 3-5. However this depends greatly on if a pure caster can effectively nullify the cooldown on them, preferably without reagents.

My reasoning is this: With these changes your average caster is effectively neutered as even with a high modifier you are unlikely to have more than 5-6 spell slots of 1-2, effectively forcing you to cantrips for extended periods of time. The choice is then to exclusively buff which neuters many of the options that have been provided for casters of all types to potentially do more than buff and hide at the back. Particularly options like the evoker specialization will become undesireable. I do overall like the changes to hit die, the idea that you effectively 'cap' at level 11 for the most part, but the cooldowns for levels 3-5 are a bit too heavy in my opinion considering how few spell slots one is likely to have of them in the first place.
 
My main concern is that the cooldowns start at too low a spell level, and get too high too quickly. It'll vary depending on how effective/accessible reagents are, but as-is it just feels very restrictive to playstyle. You're not going to be casting very many spells above level 2, so you have to get the absolute most out of them, so you're usually just going to be casting buffs for better value probably. I get that it's a low magic setting and casters should be weaker, but I'm worried this'll just make them a little tedious to play.
 
I don’t really see how this change would lead to further buffing. It’s already pretty undeniable that the NWN caster meta is to just buff the stronger party members then stand in the back, usually because there’s no cooldown so you can throw out your 10-20 buffs in a few seconds and blow through all of your spell slots before the dungeon has even started. This change should in theory lead to using spells for crowd control and damage more unless you plan on spending inordinate amounts of time in dungeons waiting for cooldowns to come off so you can refresh or apply a new buff.
 
The reason buffs are so commonly used is because they're much higher value. It's much better to give your fighter more damage/defence for a long period of time than it is to cast a control spell which might work well or do nothing. Having the number of spells you cast in a dungeon being restricted by cooldowns means you're going to be wanting to apply high value buffs with those limited opportunities rather than something with a one-off effect. Where before you might cast a few buff spells, then have slots left over for other more fun spells, cooldown means you have to choose one or the other, and buffs are generally going to be the better choice.
 
The reason buffs are so commonly used is because they're much higher value. It's much better to give your fighter more damage/defence for a long period of time than it is to cast a control spell which might work well or do nothing. Having the number of spells you cast in a dungeon being restricted by cooldowns means you're going to be wanting to apply high value buffs with those limited opportunities rather than something with a one-off effect. Where before you might cast a few buff spells, then have slots left over for other more fun spells, cooldown means you have to choose one or the other, and buffs are generally going to be the better choice.
The value of a buff spell diminishes the longer it takes for you to cast it. A buff that was up for 10 fights is more valuable than the buff that was only up for 2. So using CC or offensive spells becomes more disersble when you know the buff isn’t going to be needed for much longer anyways.

It also prevents mass buffing in the moment, like slamming haste on all of the martials.
 
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Will Background Feats be affected by the lower skill cap? Same question for non-Background feats.
 
I'm a math nerd, so let's math this out.

You're an evocation wizard. You're going into a dungeon with a fighter. You're both level 7.

You buff the fighter with an Empowered Bull's Strength, raising their strength to 20. You buff yourself with an Empowered Fox's Cunning, raising your intelligence to 20. You also give the fighter a Magic Weapon.

Using spell reagents, you can reduce the cooldown of 4th level spells to 3 minutes each. You can only prepare two 4th level spells, so you prepare Empowered Fireballs. You also prepare one normal fireball in your remaining 3rd level slot. You have two Shields, being unable to cast Mage Armor, but you otherwise use your remaining 6 1st level slots to prepare Magic Missile, two 2nd level slots to prepare Bear's Endurance for yourself and the Fighter, and the remaining 3 slots for Empowered Magic Missile.

Over the course of a 20 minute dungeon, you go through 100 rounds of combat. You are going to use 3 of those rounds on Fireballs and 9 of those rounds to cast Magic Missile. This leaves 88 rounds wherein you're going to be using Cantrips.

The average damage of a 7d6 fireball is 24.5. Assuming you hit five targets with it, that's an average of 122.5 damage per fireball, or 183.75 with the empowered ones, for a total Fireball damage output of 490 damage throughout the entire dungeon, assuming every enemy fails a DC 22 Reflex save (13 base, 4 Greater Spell Focus, 5 Intelligence). Assuming half succeed, let's knock out a quarter of that damage, bringing it down to 367.5. Still a lot.

Your magic missiles are firing 4 missiles each for 1d4+1 damage each, averaging out to 14 damage per cast, 21 empowered. That's 84 from your 1st levels and 63 from your second levels.

Total damage is 514 from your spell slots.

The other 88 rounds you're doing cantrips for 1d4+1 damage each, or using your Evocation ability for 5d2 damage. That's an average of 3.5 per round for cantrips, 7.5 for the elemental missile. We'll generously give you 21 elemental missiles throughout the one hundred rounds of combat, assuming you use them on the first and last round. 157.5 Elemental Missile damage, 234.5 Cantrip damage.

Total damage output in 100 rounds of perfectly using something every single round: 906.

Now, let's look at that fighter.

That Fighter has a BAB of +7/+2, +8/+3 with Weapon Focus, +9/+4 with Magic Weapon, and +14/+9 with Strength. Their longsword is going to be doing 1d8+5 Strength + 1 Weapon + 2 Weapon Specialization damage, for an average damage of 12.5 per hit. We'll give them a 70%/45% chance to hit, averaging to 1.15 hits per round, outputting an average of ~14.5 damage per round.

Times 100, that's 1450 damage over 100 rounds of combat.

Let's say instead of casting that unmodified fireball, you instead cast Extended Flame Weapon on the Fighter, giving them 1d4 fire damage for 14 minutes. We'll say that'll cover 50 rounds of actual fighting. At 2.5 average damage per round, that's going to output 125 damage. About even on the fireball.

So, in situations where you know there's 6 or more targets you can hit, wizards trying to do damage can get closer to parity with fighters. It's only going to be in later levels with more scaling that they start to eke ahead.

I also don't think the cooldown in this situation would really affect much, as your spell slots are so limited that you're not going to be using many. At higher tiers, the cooldown will become restrictive. The spells you COULD cast if you could would be better than the spells you actually cast.

There is a side-effect of the cooldown change, though. A wizard is now incapable of actually killing anyone in PVP unless they use a save-or-die spell, as they can't output enough damage fast enough to beat those HP. Any auto-attacker can just hit them until they die and there's little they can do about it. There is no amount of skill that can buy you six minutes to cast again if you don't have an instant-win spell. Any damage you did, if you cast a spell and ran away, would be healed up by out-of-combat healing kits long before you could return. That seems kind of unfair to make Wizards and Sorcerers completely helpless if someone wants to just hit them with a stick repeatedly.

I suppose if I had an ACTUAL question to pose in light of all of this it would be: Will wands and scrolls be affected by these cooldowns as well?
 
Throwing a summary of BAB averaging discussion on Discord here as promised:

  • The BAB averaging kicks in at character level 12 and later only

  • The BAB averaging is in effect for both single-classed and multi-classed characters

  • The way it works is that it sums up the floating-point BAB of each class level you have (0.5 per level of half-BAB classes, 0.75 per level of 3/4-BAB classes, 1 per level of Full-BAB classes), then divides that sum by your total character level, and multiplies it again by 11. This final result is then rounded up to determine the character's actual BAB at that level

Aschent_ posted a chart demonstrating this.

bab.png

A few consequences of this system to note:
  • Your BAB can decrease post-level 11 if your characters early levels are in higher-BAB classes than the ones you are taking at later levels

  • The time at which you take a given level in a multi-class character will not matter for your total BAB post-level 11

  • An unforeseen consequence at the moment, characters that are single-classed in a 3/4-BAB class will actually have a BAB of +9 at level 18, unlike what the wiki says. This is because their actual floating-point BAB under the hood is 13.5, which is averaged back to 8.25, which yields a BAB of +9 when rounded up. To quote Aschent_ "I'll look at it, however my gut thought is to be OK with that. However don't take that as gospel"

Personal thoughts:

  • I wish the floating-point summation part of this system would actually be in effect from level 1. It gets rid of weird BAB breakpoints and multi-level stretches where your BAB doesn't increase if you are multiclassing in less-than-full-BAB classes, and would probably make it simpler to understand overall since players don't have to deal with two entirely different ways of calculating BAB

  • Maybe look at two-weapon fighting penalties? The penalties hit a lot harder in a lower-AB environment, especially for 3/4-BAB classes. Extra attacks are powerful so it's possible they are fine, but I don't have the full picture to determine for myself.
 
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If someone begins casting a spell that triggers a cooldown, but they either cancel that spell from being cast or that spell fizzles (such as from taking damage and failing the concentration), does the spell circle still go on cooldown?
 
Are the cooldowns indicative of spells returning after use and the slots themselves *only* being used to dictate spells available/learned?

Can we cast that spell an unlimited amount of times, albeit it on a CD?
 
Are the cooldowns indicative of spells returning after use and the slots themselves *only* being used to dictate spells available/learned?

Can we cast that spell an unlimited amount of times, albeit it on a CD?
Spell slots are still consumed. The cooldown is an addition, not a replacement.
 
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General Questions:

a. Are skill ranks averaged at 11 (so beginning at level 8), or are skill ranks averaged once you reach level 11 (so at 14 skill ranks total)?
  • For sake of ease, I am going to assume it is averaged at 11 skill ranks for my other questions.

b. Are feats and class and racial features also averaged or applied after the skill point averaging?

  • Race Feature: after maxing out perception and taking their +2 race bonus into account, would a moon elf with skill affinity listen and spot have 11 spot and listen, or 13 spot and listen?
  • Class Feature: Would a bard with 11 in all five knowledge skills end up at 11 or 29 knowledge via 18 levels of bardic knowledge?
  • Feat Bonus: Would a character with maxed stealth and the stealthy feat (+2ms, +2hide) end up at 11 stealth or 13 stealth?

c. Are ability modifiers, feats, class and racial stuff added after the averaging of BAB and Spell DCs?
  • Attack Bonus: Does a swashbuckler with 11 levels and weapon focus have an effective 12 attack bonus?
  • Spell DCs: Will spell focus and greater spell focus still raise the effective spell DC by 2 and 2 respectively?
 
I think most questions I had have already been asked, but one more general thing I'd like to ask: What is the idea behind averaging everything out?

This really only seems to complicate things, especially with you being able to loose HP and Bab depending on the multiclass you take, which goes against the idea of progression.

Every little thing now has to be rethought (as evident by all the questions about it.) and some character concepts work best with multiclassing, so those get the short end of the stick now because pure classes seem to be more beneficial. Im not sure what the aversion to multiclassing on the server is about anyway if Im being honest, I get that you can get some overpowered builds from it, but this change (and some before it) kinda blanket nerf multiclassing, even if they aren't overpowered at all. I think just capstones are a good incentive to keep a pure class, without having to nerf multiclasses.

The nerfs to the rogue also seem a bit excessive. the little bit of extra skill points on some skills he gets don't make up for the skill cap and certainly not for the lowered sneak damage. And what's worse is now due to casters having more HP, he has the same amount as a wizard, sorc, etc... but rogues are mostly melee... I really don't understand why they should have the same HP as a wizard. But the discussion in the discord already told me there will be no change to it, which is why Im scrapping my character concept and now Im having trouble finding one I would enjoy, but all the averaging out and other changes have made this really hard.
 
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-- The Problem aka Build studies on Arcane Trickster --
Arcane Trickster now requires 4 levels of Rogue, and 1 level of Wizard/Sorcerer (Bard no longer available due to Ray of Frost requirement). Spellcasting level boosts on AT were changed from "every level" to "every even level". There are two main methods of building AT: Rogue-heavy and Caster-heavy.

Rogue-heavy usually requires 1-3 levels of Caster. As far as I can tell, the optimal way to do Rogue-heavy is going to be Rogue 14 / Caster 1 / Arcane Trickster 3, snagging SA 5 + FA 2, PP 2, and an extra Rogue Bonus Feat.
Caster-heavy will take 4-5 levels of Rogue. For Caster-heavy, this'll mean probably Rogue 5 / Caster 9 / AT 4, getting them the Casting Level Cap (11), Evasion, and SA 2 + FA 2.

The problem is that there is no reason to build for AT 5. While AT 5 offers a Rogue Bonus Feat and Spell Sneak Attack (6/day), the former can be snagged anyways with Ro 14 (over Ro 12) and the latter isn't a concern with a lack of spell attack rolls (especially if it can't be used with the Wizard School Lv1 abilities that make attack rolls).

-- The Fantasy --
The goal behind Arcane Tricksters is to either improve their utility by supplementing their kit with pocket wizardry (Knock [now has Caster Level scaling], Grace) or improve their versatility by having magical solutions if an issue cannot be overcome by mundane means (or vice versa, in a null magic zone). Plus being an all-around handy guy/gal.

-- Suggestions --
Please note that I don't mean you should add all of these. These are just various ideas I have that should be placed at Arcane Trickster 5 to make it worthwhile.
1) Grant Arcane Tricksters access to Rogue's Cunning, either per day or on cooldown. The vanilla spell has a duration of 5 turns, and grants +5 to OL, and +10 to DTrap, Hide, MS, PP, Search, and STrap. Rebalance as necessary, though I suggest making it at least better than Practiced Prowess II since it's an active.
2) Ranged Legerdemain Mastery - When out of combat and not targeting an NPC, PC, or Summon: Ranged Legerdemain can Take 20. (As it stands, I honestly see no reason to Ranged Legerdemain chests when walking up will allow a Take 20, which ruins the fantasy.)
3) Arcane Trickery - Casts all spells as if cast with Silent Spell. (This is probably weak enough to be placed at AT 3 or 4 if you want better goodies there.)
 
Throwing a summary of BAB averaging discussion on Discord here as promised:

  • The BAB averaging kicks in at character level 12 and later only

  • The BAB averaging is in effect for both single-classed and multi-classed characters

  • The way it works is that it sums up the floating-point BAB of each class level you have (0.5 per level of half-BAB classes, 0.75 per level of 3/4-BAB classes, 1 per level of Full-BAB classes), then divides that sum by your total character level, and multiplies it again by 11. This final result is then rounded up to determine the character's actual BAB at that level

Aschent_ posted a chart demonstrating this.

View attachment 208

A few consequences of this system to note:
  • Your BAB can decrease post-level 11 if your characters early levels are in higher-BAB classes than the ones you are taking at later levels

  • The time at which you take a given level in a multi-class character will not matter for your total BAB post-level 11

  • An unforeseen consequence at the moment, characters that are single-classed in a 3/4-BAB class will actually have a BAB of +9 at level 18, unlike what the wiki says. This is because their actual floating-point BAB under the hood is 13.5, which is averaged back to 8.25, which yields a BAB of +9 when rounded up. To quote Aschent_ "I'll look at it, however my gut thought is to be OK with that. However don't take that as gospel"

Personal thoughts:

  • I wish the floating-point summation part of this system would actually be in effect from level 1. It gets rid of weird BAB breakpoints and multi-level stretches where your BAB doesn't increase if you are multiclassing in less-than-full-BAB classes, and would probably make it simpler to understand overall since players don't have to deal with two entirely different ways of calculating BAB

  • Maybe look at two-weapon fighting penalties? The penalties hit a lot harder in a lower-AB environment, especially for 3/4-BAB classes. Extra attacks are powerful so it's possible they are fine, but I don't have the full picture to determine for myself.
Loads of great points here!

One thing to consider with two-weapon fighting is how much harder it's going to be to hit the magical 4 attack threshold for the average character due to BAB capping out much lower and only pure 1 BAB characters (and Divine Power/Tenser's cheaters!) even getting a natural 3rd attack. 4 attacks in a round allow you two attacks with your first flurry in a round which has an incredible benefit in terms of uptime and maneuverability that is hard to put into numbers.

TWF, ITWF and Rapid Shot are all going to go a long way towards hitting that threshold which gives them a lot more power, even at a relatively more detrimental deficit to attack rolls than was previously the case as you mentioned. But this is delving quite deeply into min-maxing building a character around those thresholds and probably not something most players will be spending their time thinking about. I think two-weapon fighting (and Rapid Shot) should still be in an okay place after these changes regardless, but may not be optimal versus very high AC targets.
 
I'm a math nerd, so let's math this out.

You're an evocation wizard. You're going into a dungeon with a fighter. You're both level 7.

You buff the fighter with an Empowered Bull's Strength, raising their strength to 20. You buff yourself with an Empowered Fox's Cunning, raising your intelligence to 20. You also give the fighter a Magic Weapon.

Using spell reagents, you can reduce the cooldown of 4th level spells to 3 minutes each. You can only prepare two 4th level spells, so you prepare Empowered Fireballs. You also prepare one normal fireball in your remaining 3rd level slot. You have two Shields, being unable to cast Mage Armor, but you otherwise use your remaining 6 1st level slots to prepare Magic Missile, two 2nd level slots to prepare Bear's Endurance for yourself and the Fighter, and the remaining 3 slots for Empowered Magic Missile.

Over the course of a 20 minute dungeon, you go through 100 rounds of combat. You are going to use 3 of those rounds on Fireballs and 9 of those rounds to cast Magic Missile. This leaves 88 rounds wherein you're going to be using Cantrips.

The average damage of a 7d6 fireball is 24.5. Assuming you hit five targets with it, that's an average of 122.5 damage per fireball, or 183.75 with the empowered ones, for a total Fireball damage output of 490 damage throughout the entire dungeon, assuming every enemy fails a DC 22 Reflex save (13 base, 4 Greater Spell Focus, 5 Intelligence). Assuming half succeed, let's knock out a quarter of that damage, bringing it down to 367.5. Still a lot.

Your magic missiles are firing 4 missiles each for 1d4+1 damage each, averaging out to 14 damage per cast, 21 empowered. That's 84 from your 1st levels and 63 from your second levels.

Total damage is 514 from your spell slots.

The other 88 rounds you're doing cantrips for 1d4+1 damage each, or using your Evocation ability for 5d2 damage. That's an average of 3.5 per round for cantrips, 7.5 for the elemental missile. We'll generously give you 21 elemental missiles throughout the one hundred rounds of combat, assuming you use them on the first and last round. 157.5 Elemental Missile damage, 234.5 Cantrip damage.

Total damage output in 100 rounds of perfectly using something every single round: 906.

Now, let's look at that fighter.

That Fighter has a BAB of +7/+2, +8/+3 with Weapon Focus, +9/+4 with Magic Weapon, and +14/+9 with Strength. Their longsword is going to be doing 1d8+5 Strength + 1 Weapon + 2 Weapon Specialization damage, for an average damage of 12.5 per hit. We'll give them a 70%/45% chance to hit, averaging to 1.15 hits per round, outputting an average of ~14.5 damage per round.

Times 100, that's 1450 damage over 100 rounds of combat.

Let's say instead of casting that unmodified fireball, you instead cast Extended Flame Weapon on the Fighter, giving them 1d4 fire damage for 14 minutes. We'll say that'll cover 50 rounds of actual fighting. At 2.5 average damage per round, that's going to output 125 damage. About even on the fireball.

So, in situations where you know there's 6 or more targets you can hit, wizards trying to do damage can get closer to parity with fighters. It's only going to be in later levels with more scaling that they start to eke ahead.

I also don't think the cooldown in this situation would really affect much, as your spell slots are so limited that you're not going to be using many. At higher tiers, the cooldown will become restrictive. The spells you COULD cast if you could would be better than the spells you actually cast.

There is a side-effect of the cooldown change, though. A wizard is now incapable of actually killing anyone in PVP unless they use a save-or-die spell, as they can't output enough damage fast enough to beat those HP. Any auto-attacker can just hit them until they die and there's little they can do about it. There is no amount of skill that can buy you six minutes to cast again if you don't have an instant-win spell. Any damage you did, if you cast a spell and ran away, would be healed up by out-of-combat healing kits long before you could return. That seems kind of unfair to make Wizards and Sorcerers completely helpless if someone wants to just hit them with a stick repeatedly.

I suppose if I had an ACTUAL question to pose in light of all of this it would be: Will wands and scrolls be affected by these cooldowns as well?
I think this post succinctly puts into words my biggest concern with this entire change, and you havent even factored in the number of spells that require 3 and 4/CL that are meant to get stronger at CL 12/15/18.


The CL cap at its core is an OK change to make for casters by itself

And the cooldowns are an OK change to make for casters by themselves as well, albiet even if those cooldowns can be reduce by half accross the board, they still make casters effectively useless in any PvP situation, or pigeon hole every caster to focus on using 3 feats in order to increase their damage potential to get around the cooldowns (IE, stillspell, emp, and maximize to, for example cast the same spell 4 times in a row)

Ultimately placing both a damage nerf and a cooldown nerf on casters is a bit overboard and the math here above checks off exactly why it is that casters with the changes as written will have a terrible time coming up.


I do however understand the idea that CDs can be an effective way to reduce a spellcasters immense power, vanilla, in pvp. But;

In game design terms, its ineffective and misguided to do both of these.

You should want casters to fit into 1 of 2 categories here to make them worth playing, either

1. They are a big nuker with utility to support in times of need

Or

2. They have a lot of small damage over time to sustain damage while the melees go in for the kill.


In this instance, i think from talking with the Devs in discord that they would rather mages be picking and choosing the best time to cast spells rather than constantlt flinging spells.


At risk of this seeming like a whine post, ill say this:

My suggestion would be to pick one or the other


Either long cooldowns, or damage nerfs. Not both.


My preference would be, obviously cooldowns. As it requires a strategic use of spells both in and out of combat.

Mages who make it to level 18 should be deserving of that power level in itself.




As for the HP and BaB averaging. When i first read this i assumed that it meant smaller increases to both every level with sort of a reverse expontential curve to it.


So i would suggest personally a table that looks more like this :

BaB
Full bab

11 -> 11
12 -> 11
13 -> 12
14 -> 12
15-> 13
16 -> 13
17 -> 13
18 -> 14


3/4 bab

11 -> 9
12 -> 9
13 -> 10
14 -> 11
15-> 11
16 -> 11
17 -> 12
18 -> 12


1/2 bab

11 -> 5
12 -> 5
13 -> 5
14 -> 6
15-> 6
16 -> 6
17 -> 6
18 -> 7


With base HP per level up being halved after 11.


Thatd mean a barb or warden would get 6 hp base per level up

A fighter would get 5

A bard would get 3

A wizard, 2.


I think thats a better solution that still allows a bit of growth.


Apoligies for some mistakes or misspells im on mobile
 
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