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[Jarno Mikkola]

Lesser Mage Robes

Surely I wouldn't go as far as allowing an easily available and quite comon item complete invulnerability to an energy type. I may think about Raj's suggested value, either 40% or 50%, but that would make these robes far from being lesser, they would share the same "power level" of the knave, traveler, and adventurer robes. Would it be a good thing? Does anyone know how common these robes are? If these robes are much more common than the other ones than I would be much more inclined to accept this improvement.

Sorry, but 80 to 90 % damage resistance(1 type) is not total immunity. If for example we drop a fireball on our feat with a 10 lv mage... 10d6 damage-> average of (10+60)/2= 35 points, off which 10% or 20% damage is caused to the caster, so that's either 4 or 7 points. It might have been an erroneous targeting, but it still didn't cause the casters life... like the 25 might have when someone comes with a bow or something.

 

Now, if the caster has other protections from fire(in this case)...

If he has the Mage Robe and 1 protection ring, the percentage stays the same, as 20+40 is less than 80(%), which means the caster has 80% resistance... and so he needs the Mage Robe of Fire Resistance AND 2 rings of fire protection(+40% respectfully) to have a full protection from the element(2*40%+20%(the cumulative from the robe)=100% (at the worst case)), and yeah the protection the other protection spells will make the mage regenerate, but can you really say that a mage would use every protection item and spell from the whole group just to protect himself, when facing the dragon that can see the exact protection percentage you carry, and might just come and kill everything else first with fire breath and then just melee the mage to death. PS, it's very good at it.

Unless it's the PCs class, and he goes solo and if you forgot the 25% stable is better than 20% stackable.

This also makes the BG1's battles more interesting, as you can't go and nuke everybody(I personally remember killing the mages in here(1-Denak, Diana, Brendan and Lasla) with 2 fireballs, and they had the robes but they just didn't see me coming. )

 

Hmm, when ever was it said that they were Lesser Mage Robes? As the real name is Mage Robe of x* Resistance.

[Raj]

I said 'lesser' referring to elemental dr + knave/traveller/adventurer ones , compared to the 'greater' ones, aka archmage's and larloch's.

[Demivrgvs]

Mage Robe of X Resistance

Surely I wouldn't go as far as allowing an easily available and quite comon item complete invulnerability to an energy type. I may think about Raj's suggested value, either 40% or 50%, but that would make these robes far from being lesser, they would share the same "power level" of the knave, traveler, and adventurer robes. Would it be a good thing? Does anyone know how common these robes are? If these robes are much more common than the other ones than I would be much more inclined to accept this improvement.

Sorry, but 80 to 90 % damage resistance(1 type) is not total immunity.

I was confused by...

Or to make it really appealing, I would make it to have two resistances, 1 stackable, and 1 not stackable. The none stackable(flat value) would be about 80 to 90 percent, and the stackable would be only about 15 to 20 percent, this would make the original intent of the robe clear, that you can't kill a mage in a Mage Robe of Fire Resistance with fireballs, and fortunately the opcode allows this.

...which I interpretated like set 80 + 20 bonus.

 

Anyway combining the two type of bonuses (set and inc) doesn't work well, as the inc one is always applied over the set, meaning you can't cap it like you suggested. A Robe with set 60% + 20% bonus if combined with a Ring of Fire Protection grants a total of 100% resistance, not 60% as you're suggesting.

 

Anyway using 'set' instead of 'inc' is still useful to me to limit the improvement you're requesting for these robes. What about making them set the respective elemental resistance to 50%? It would make their resistance stack with pratically everything except for example Protection from X Element. Thus with a Robe of Fire/Cold Resistance you would have complete immunity from fire/cold damage if coupled with a Fire Shield Red/Blue, but you wouldn't go over 100% resistance if coupled with Protection from Fire/Cold.

[Salk]

Sounds good to me, Demi...

[yarpen]

What do you think about changing Robes of immunity to X into Robes of X? Robe of Fire/Electricity/Cold? And giving to them some additional abilities for mages who are rather more pyromancers, cryomancers than knaves or wanderers ;-) I was thinking about an immunity to ONE most popular spell from element. I'd love to have a wizard who can cast fireball under his feet without harm, even when he have only 30% of immunity to fire. Or twice per day casting 1-st level spell from proper element: burning hands for fire, electrical grasp for electricity and chill touch for cold. Hey, all of them are (for BH nearly) touch-range spells so it looks fine.

 

 

 

In vanilla BG noone uses these robes, so I think that making them more unique (robes gives you a possibility of customize your mage more than only via spell selection) and adding some additional abilities to robes can do the trick.

[Raj]

Some feedback about the strength enhancing belts and gauntlets, because after much playing with them, I think I'm going to comment out those changes.

 

1) First of all, there is the cosmetic issue of the girdle(s) of "big bad guy" strength not giving you the effective power of said creature; just a minor roleplay nuisance but it leads to the other gameplay issues.

 

2) They stack with other strenght enhancing items, even those that set strength to a specific value but it doesn't make much sense that if you wear a girdle of frost giant strenght, and drink a potion of frost giant strenght, you hit like a cloud giant instead

 

3) Changes to belts were motivated ( rightfully, but without much luck ) because one item shoudn't transform a kitty into a tiger, or aerie into a dreadnough: this doesn't mean much in gameplay terms btw, as it's not your 1 attack/round, bad thac0 casters that annihilate foes in malee, and I remember giving the vanilla belts to casters only for carry capacity. Anyway, belts stack with spells so after a divine power (lvl4 divine) or a strength (lvl2 arcane) mages and clerics end with higher values than in the past.

 

4) The npc strength didn't get nerfed by belt changes because almost everybody who hits malee already has a high strength value, of 18+ ( minsc, korgan, anomen, sarevok ) or 17 ( keldorn, valygar, haer-dalis, yoshimo ), while pc, I bet even not powergames because rolls are high (75+ minimum) and dexterity is no longer a must-be-18, usually decide to start at 18/xx str on fighter types. So you usually lose nothing or gain 1 point of str over the vanilla belts.

Mazzy and Jaheira (str 15) are exceptions because they lose two points of str from vanilla after wearing a belt, but the stacking helps because they can wear belt+gauntlets ( well, one is better as archer and the other as caster anyway ).

 

5) About belt+gauntlets option, this lead to the Crom Fayer losing lot of appeal; there's not much competition about belt and gauntlets slots so you always lose two useful items that give the same strength bonus of the completed hammer, while you could get better results wearing the old items and another weapon ( there're no npc with hammer proficiency and its abilities don't shine, the +5 is interesting but you don't need it to hit anything )

 

Conclusion, I think this component has both roleplay and gameplay issues ( point 2-3 are the root of the problem, others were mostly subjective observations ) , and makes the game easier at both early stages ( gauntlets and hill giant belt let you have couple tanks with permanent 20 strength ) and later chapters ( tons of money for potions and many str enhancing items made one of my parties have 3 fighters with 25 str for the whole ToB, without forging the Crom Fayer ).

Strength is the most important stat and the easiest to raise one, game lacks some coherency given how other stats are almost set in stone.

 

Some constructive comment: what about make girdles/gauntlets just have a 1/day power equivalent to the same name potions, while giving them other useful properties ( resistances, bonus to thac0 and dmg, whatever )?

[Demivrgvs]

Robes

What do you think about changing Robes of immunity to X into Robes of X? Robe of Fire/Electricity/Cold? And giving to them some additional abilities for mages who are rather more pyromancers, cryomancers than knaves or wanderers...

 

In vanilla BG noone uses these robes, so I think that making them more unique (robes gives you a possibility of customize your mage more than only via spell selection) and adding some additional abilities to robes can do the trick.

I have to think about it, conceptually it's not a bad idea.

 

Strength enhancing items

Some feedback about the strength enhancing belts and gauntlets, because after much playing with them, I think I'm going to comment out those changes.

The strange thing is that even if I don't agree on most of your points I end up liking your suggested "solution" quite much.

 

1) First of all, there is the cosmetic issue of the girdle(s) of "big bad guy" strength not giving you the effective power of said creature;

I agree with you on this point, though revising the descriptions may "fix" it.

 

2) They stack with other strenght enhancing items, even those that set strength to a specific value but it doesn't make much sense that if you wear a girdle of frost giant strenght, and drink a potion of frost giant strenght, you hit like a cloud giant instead

I don't like too much strength bonuses from belts and potions of x giant strength to be stackable, but I really have no problem if the sources of multiple stacking STR bonuses are different items.

 

3) Changes to belts were motivated ( rightfully, but without much luck ) because one item shoudn't transform a kitty into a tiger, or aerie into a dreadnough: this doesn't mean much in gameplay terms btw, as it's not your 1 attack/round, bad thac0 casters that annihilate foes in malee, and I remember giving the vanilla belts to casters only for carry capacity. Anyway, belts stack with spells so after a divine power (lvl4 divine) or a strength (lvl2 arcane) mages and clerics end with higher values than in the past.

I don't agree with this point at all.

 

First of all, a belt's STR bonus stacked with spells in vanilla too, it's not a "new issue".

 

"Mages and clerics end with higher values than in the past" is not true for most NPCs (Jaheira, Imoen, Viconia, Haer'Dalis, Jan, Edwin), only if the casters already have a STR value of 18 or higher what you say is correct (Anomen).

 

4) The npc strength didn't get nerfed by belt changes because almost everybody who hits malee already has a high strength value, of 18+...

Who said I wanted to nerf characters? I wanted to avoid weak characters easily obtaining more strength than uber strong characters like Minsc. Mazzy, Haer'Dalis, Keldorn, Valygar, Jaheira, Imoen, Viconia, Edwin, Jan, Cernd...all of them in vanilla could reach extremely high STR values as easily as Minsc and Korgan. It is still possible to have multiple characters with incredibly high STR yes, but only if those characters have at least a decent strength on their own, and characters with already high STR can achieve it more easily, which is correct imo.

 

5) About belt+gauntlets option, this lead to the Crom Fayer losing lot of appeal...

Well, Crom Fayer grants the same STR bonuses in a single item instead of two, plus it's a +5 throwable weapon, which stuns in a small area on hit, and deals additional elemental damage. If such a weapon isn't appealing I do think you have too high standards.

 

Some constructive comment: what about make girdles/gauntlets just have a 1/day power equivalent to the same name potions, while giving them other useful properties ( resistances, bonus to thac0 and dmg, whatever )?

I think I really like the idea...it should also allow me to finally make them a little more unique instead of lesser/greter copies of one another.

[Raj]

Psst, about casters I meant, if you have 10 str, +2 from a hill giant belt = 12, then cast a spell that sets your str to 18 ( divine power, strength ), you end with str 20, so there's a advantage over vanilla even for casters, because in vanilla you'd have two values and only the higher would get picked (19).

 

This doesn't matter much if your point was

Who said I wanted to nerf characters? I wanted to avoid weak characters easily obtaining more strength than uber strong characters like Minsc

but for game purposes having a strength of 8 isn't different than 15, even a value between 16 and 18/50 doesn't change much so while the original belts let you easy have midgets with giant strength ( it wasn't very fair, but those characters don't contribute much in malee even with high str ), the new ones are wasted on them and add much more power than before to the fighter pc/npcs.

 

Well, Crom Fayer grants the same STR bonuses in a single item instead of two, plus it's a +5 throwable weapon, which stuns in a small area on hit, and deals additional elemental damage. If such a weapon isn't appealing I do think you have too high standards

Don't misunderstand me, it's a great weapon stats-wise but now that it no longer provides something 'unique' upgrading it looks a lot less appealing because you can get better benefits wearing the bracers/belt ( not a big sacrifice expecially in a big party because there're not many alternatives for those slots ) and another high-tier weapon; not upgrading the weapon gives more gear versatility.

Note: the throwable thing definitely adds some flavour but in bg2 it's a poor option damage-wise; switching between the two versions is somehow impratical during the fight too.

 

 

 

Anyway, I told you that beside the game observations ( that obviously aren't the same among players because everybody plays the game in a different way ) the main issues were related to the 'xxxxx giant' part thing and how it's handled with potions/spells that set str to a specific value, my suggestion was aimed at solve that particular issue and I'm happy you like it

[Raj]

Fortress shield: isn't it a bit overpowered now? It provides the second best ac in the game ( the best one for SoA and 75% of ToB ), and the 10% vs all forms of phisical attacks is ''wow''. I think combining the best ac with the best resistance is too much: consider the other +10% phisical dr items are a smelly bad ac leather, a ring without ac or saves, a flail with +1 ac that could be a decent off hand weapon if such uber shield wasn't a better alternative,a helmet found on a ToB boss without other properties, and some bracers that yes are uber but come near the end of the game; well, this shield is availabe for 13k gold at Ribald. It should deserve to be placed in 'special' stash if nothing is gonna change.

 

Suggestion: what about give Sendai's drows some drowcrafted gear? they come with a variety of elven chainmails and +3 standard weapons that provide tons of gold to the party when sold, and adamantium suits them better.

[Guest Guest]

I'm in a bit of a rush so would like to ask a few quick questions (I did a quick search but couldn't find anything):

 

Why is it that Quarterstaffs have a -2 Backstab Penalty but all other 2H weapons have -3?

 

In the Item Index you mention how the Staff of the Ram +5 gains the physical resistance of the Roranach's Helm, but it's not included in the item description. Is it correct in-game (haven't had a chance to check)?

 

Oh, and the Staff of the Ram +4 has "Damage: 1D6 + 10" but it doesn't say what type of damage the +10 is (should it?). The Staff of the Ram +5 has "Damage: 1D6 + 11 crushing".

 

Regarding the Staff of the Ram and Staff of the Woodlands, is the SotR so much better that a druid would never choose the SotW over it? I guess I'd prefer the SotW to be the better weapon to use if you're a druid.

[Demivrgvs]

Sorry Raj if I reply only now, I somehow didn't notice the post till now!!

Fortress Shield

Fortress shield: isn't it a bit overpowered now? It provides the second best ac in the game ( the best one for SoA and 75% of ToB ), and the 10% vs all forms of phisical attacks is ''wow''. I think combining the best ac with the best resistance is too much: consider the other +10% phisical dr items are a smelly bad ac leather, a ring without ac or saves, a flail with +1 ac that could be a decent off hand weapon if such uber shield wasn't a better alternative,a helmet found on a ToB boss without other properties, and some bracers that yes are uber but come near the end of the game; well, this shield is availabe for 13k gold at Ribald. It should deserve to be placed in 'special' stash if nothing is gonna change.

You're probably right about either toning it down or move it later in the game. In case players prefer to "nerf" it I think we may either reduce its enchantment level by one or the damage reduction by 5%. I probably prefer the former solution.

 

Suggestion: what about give Sendai's drows some drowcrafted gear? they come with a variety of elven chainmails and +3 standard weapons that provide tons of gold to the party when sold, and adamantium suits them better.

I'm not sure it's within IR scope.

 

Staff of the Ram

I'm in a bit of a rush so would like to ask a few quick questions (I did a quick search but couldn't find anything):

 

Why is it that Quarterstaffs have a -2 Backstab Penalty but all other 2H weapons have -3?

Because it's quick and easy to handle.

 

In the Item Index you mention how the Staff of the Ram +5 gains the physical resistance of the Roranach's Helm, but it's not included in the item description. Is it correct in-game (haven't had a chance to check)?

In-game description is fine, and now on-line one too.

 

Oh, and the Staff of the Ram +4 has "Damage: 1D6 + 10" but it doesn't say what type of damage the +10 is (should it?). The Staff of the Ram +5 has "Damage: 1D6 + 11 crushing".

The type of damage doesn't need to be specified imo, as without specifing it's obviosly the "standard" damage type for the respective weapon.

 

Regarding the Staff of the Ram and Staff of the Woodlands, is the SotR so much better that a druid would never choose the SotW over it? I guess I'd prefer the SotW to be the better weapon to use if you're a druid.

The Staff of Ram is very good right now imo, while I admit tha the Staff of the Woodland may be not extremely appealing, despite the great AC bonus is very useful imo. I'm always open to suggestions...let me know.

[Guest Guest]

I don't know enough about the game and its weapons to really be able to suggest something, but am I right in thinking that you could potentially get the SotR and SotW at a simliar point in the game (or maybe even the SotR first)?

 

If so, then doesn't the SotW need to be improved? I would like to start a discussion on this and get other opinions, but for what it's worth I think it's a shame if the best druid-only weapon is worse than another weapon of the same type (i.e. a staff) that any class can use. I can envisage someone playing the game and choosing the SotR every time, perhaps never even bothering with the SotW, even if they are a druid. Considering the restrictions on druid weapon selection, I'd like to see something really tasty for them.

 

So what I'd like is if you're a staff user there are lots of nice ones available (currently the case thanks to IR), but if you're a druid, well, make way, villainy!

[Jarno Mikkola]

How about adding a 7th level druid spell to the Staff of the Woodland. The question comes; Which?

A summon Shambling Mound perhaps? 3 time per day... Yes, that's the same as 1's after 8 hours of sleeping.

[Demivrgvs]

I don't know enough about the game and its weapons to really be able to suggest something, but am I right in thinking that you could potentially get the SotR and SotW at a simliar point in the game (or maybe even the SotR first)?

 

If so, then doesn't the SotW need to be improved? I would like to start a discussion on this and get other opinions, but for what it's worth I think it's a shame if the best druid-only weapon is worse than another weapon of the same type (i.e. a staff) that any class can use. I can envisage someone playing the game and choosing the SotR every time, perhaps never even bothering with the SotW, even if they are a druid. Considering the restrictions on druid weapon selection, I'd like to see something really tasty for them.

 

So what I'd like is if you're a staff user there are lots of nice ones available (currently the case thanks to IR), but if you're a druid, well, make way, villainy!

I agree.

 

How about adding a 7th level druid spell to the Staff of the Woodland. The question comes; Which?

A summon Shambling Mound perhaps? 3 time per day... Yes, that's the same as 1's after 8 hours of sleeping.

It already has Summon Shambling Mound and considering it uses SR's Shambler it's quite a worth summon.

[Guest Guest]

So what are some ideas for improving the SotW?

 

These are just random and probably no good, but it's a start:

 

Increase enchantment level by one;

Add an effect on hit (is this possible or are we at some limit on the number of effects?);

Add some elemental protection;

Increase the number of Shambling Mounds available per day.

 

And regarding the Staff of the Magi, I saw some discussion about you possibly removing the Protection from Evil effect as this is simply the same as if the spell had been cast on the wielder of the staff (and a lot of people like to cast Protection from Evil 10' Radius). Have you had any further thoughts on this?