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Just my humble opinion


DrAzTiK

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Dexterity Penalties...

Dexterity penalties aren't there to lower the AC, they are there to reproduce the fact that a character can't fully take advantage of quick and reactive movements while wearing heavy and cumbersome armors.

...(they already work like that as most early SoA daggers have a +4 total enhancement bonus instead of +3), and by assigning them effects that are particularly tailored to sneak attacks (again something I think I've already done).

=The dexterity penalty makes the archers worse in heavy armor.

And even though most of the daggers are +2 or less, their special abilities are better or they have more of them, so they can be calculated as having +4 enhancement... instead of +3, if the item enhancements(+1, +2, ...) and special abilities are counted equal grounds.

 

Wasn't that what you meant? :) :)

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I just finished playing SOA and TOB to the very end for the nth time with both of your new mods + SCS II + refinements and a few others. The first impression is that short swords are now cool, my favorite improvement. I like the new 2 handed swords, halberds, and bastard swords although bastards and halberds are still a little tough to play as your primary weapon for your fighter right out of the dungeon. But significantly improved from where they were. My big complaint and I've said this before is with staffs and spears, pardon the pun but, they get the shaft. I know there are a couple of good ones but by the time you get them the game is almost over. And you took 3 of the most useful staffs and made them mage only. To be honest, my mage never used any of them. Spears were always hurting and you took one of the more useful ones and lowered its enchantment. I know some of them can be thrown now but so what. If your using a 2 hand weapon, you can also equip bows or crossbows which are much better long range weapons, so its a bonus without any meaning. Have you thought of giving spears a range of 3 for melee. After all the length of spears is one of the reasons they have been used so much through history. Over all I'm pleased with the mod, it definitely gives it a different feel.

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=The dexterity penalty makes the archers worse in heavy armor.

And even though most of the daggers are +2 or less, their special abilities are better or they have more of them, so they can be calculated as having +4 enhancement... instead of +3, if the item enhancements(+1, +2, ...) and special abilities are counted equal grounds.

 

Wasn't that what you meant? :):)

Yes, sorry if I wasn't clear enough.

 

J Beau,

 

- Bastard Swords: indeed they are still lacking compared to most other type of weapon, though still better than in vanilla. Restoring Albruin and Bloodbrand should solve it.

 

- Halberds: I disagree, as I have stated there's a magical halberd available right at the start of the game from Ribald, and two powerful ones in two of the main SoA's quests (Shadow Lord and Unseeing Eye). I actually think halberds are amongst the better distribuited weapons in the game, as after the aforementioned ones you can find two very powerful specimen in the underdark, forge the Wave right in the last chapter of SoA, and then find the extremely powerful Ravager in ToB.

 

- Spears: as soon as I revise the one from the bonus merchant (though I really don't have ideas right now) you'll have three specimen in the early SoA and everything will be ok imo.

Spear of Withering lost an enchantment level but gained a quite powerful ability appropriate to its background, and I generally don't like to allow a +4 weapon to be easily purchased from a merchant.

Anyway, having a throwable spear is far from being "without any meaning", because it allows to have an elemental dealing ranged weapon which also allow strength bonus (e.g. for some characters it may be quite a lot of damage!), all without requiring to spend a single proficiency point in a ranged weapon. I don't think all players will consider it "without any meaning".

 

- Staffs: the staffs you're talking about (Air, Earth and Fire ones) are also usable by Druids, and the intent was to make that underused class more appealing, but I may remove the restrictions. In that case you'll surely have plenty of staves, though in the early SoA the best one for fighters would still remain the Martial Staff imo.

 

 

It seems to me I'm going to "fix" all the issues you have reported, am I wrong?

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Martial staff does the same damage as a +2 short sword and it requires 2 hands. Yes you get +1 apr but no shield and no dual wield option. Kundane gives +1 apr and it does 1-6+2! The 2 handed sword does TWICE its base damage and you can get a +3 model with very useful secondary effects almost immediately out of the dungeon, although the vampiric effects of the sword of chaos rocks. I actually used that a bit more. The martial staff is just not even in the same league. Yes the staff of the Ram is cool but that's TOB.

 

On a side note I have spent years collecting the parts for that damn sword The Equalizer only to look at it each time and think, all that trouble for nothing. I was very interested to see that you had made it useful. I went through the whole ordeal again; I had it assembled and BAM! Only usable by neutral characters. That was quite a let down. Who plays neutral if your not playing a druid? I know your rational behind it but remember the suspension of disbelief. The game is supposed to be fun after all.

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Escuse me but dexterity penality is still disturb me.

 

"The heavier the armor the smaller is the effectiveness of having very high dexterity, in this particular case both character will have the same AC in full plate, but the character with higher dexterity could use the plate mail with pratically the same AC of a full plate but with less penalties, and faster movements (that is why even movement penalties are "needed" to balance armors)."

 

So you are ok to say that this dexterity component is not fair but nice coz a character with 17,18 dexterity will be interessed by plate mail ? So full plate became uninteressing for this character and very appealing for a character with 14 in dexterity (except for movement) ? Is it consistent ?

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Well, I just ended playing a neutral protagonist and it was not a druid :)

Anyway, last time I checked the Equalizer bonus applied to the main hand even if wielded in the off hand so wonder if it still works that way ( because otherwise it's still a pretty sad weapon for all the efforts needed to forge it ).

 

What bothered me about the Equalizer was the description about it being forged by Helm followers. Well, then it was a bit odd that Anomen who passed his knighthood test and was LG coudn't use it. Helm is a LN good with bastard sword as favourite weapon too so what about change that bit of description to make the Equalizer related to Oghma, another greater god but True Neutral and with longsword as favourite weapon?

 

 

 

Draztik it's hard to understand what you're trying to argue, anyway the penalities to dex make sense and are related to 3ed max dexterity bonus in heavy armor; play a game and try gearing up the various npc with different armors and test the balance yourself.

AC is still going to be higher than vanilla BG2, even without installing the component that let you wear one item of protection along with a magical armor, because of higher ac on many armors and the revised shields.

 

Maybe Chain and Splint should be 5%, with Plate and Full Plate 10%.

 

I think penalities should be raised instead; sadly I can't make Refinements work properly along with IR if I don't want to mess the descriptions, but I played with a flat -6 dexterity to full plates and it proved balanced too.

As a example, I just ended a game and Anomen with his crappy 10 base dexterity managed to reach a -21 ac ( before drinking a potion of agility ); in a un-modded game even with gaunlets for 18 dex a heavy armor and shield user ac was around -10/-15

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Martial staff does the same damage as a +2 short sword and it requires 2 hands. Yes you get +1 apr but no shield and no dual wield option. Kundane gives +1 apr and it does 1-6+2! The 2 handed sword does TWICE its base damage and you can get a +3 model with very useful secondary effects almost immediately out of the dungeon, although the vampiric effects of the sword of chaos rocks. I actually used that a bit more. The martial staff is just not even in the same league. Yes the staff of the Ram is cool but that's TOB.
I said the best staff for fighters would still remain the Martial Staff, I never thought about it as the best weapon. That being said, I already said in these recent topics Kundane will be nerfed to +1/2apr in V2 and Sword of Chaos will be nerfed too (and completely changed).

 

On a side note I have spent years collecting the parts for that damn sword The Equalizer only to look at it each time and think, all that trouble for nothing. I was very interested to see that you had made it useful. I went through the whole ordeal again; I had it assembled and BAM! Only usable by neutral characters. That was quite a let down. Who plays neutral if your not playing a druid? I know your rational behind it but remember the suspension of disbelief. The game is supposed to be fun after all.
Druids can't use the it! :) Anyway, only the extremes can't use the blade: Neutral Good, Lawful Neutral, Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, and Neutral Evil. Of the vanilla's NPC Imoen, Valygar and Haer'Dalis are good candidates. Is it so restrictive? If most of you agree I'll remove the restriction.

 

So you are ok to say that this dexterity component is not fair but still ok coz a character with 17,18 dexterity will be interessed by plate mail ? So full plate became uninteressing for this character and very appealing for a character with 14 in dexterity (except for movement) ? Is it consistent?
Actually I do think it's a fair component, and that not having the component make heavy armors not fair imo. As I've shown before, a character with dex 18 will have a better AC than a character with dex 14-17 even while wearing full plate. There are some cases in which both characters would have the same AC but it will never happen the opposite, and the heavier the armor the better the total AC will be.

 

The heaviest armors will always be the most appealing in terms of AC, even for characters with high dexterity.

 

"Dexterity measures hand-eye coordination, agility, reflexes, and balance." If you think that things like those shouldn't be affected by wearing a full plate armor of 60lb than you should avoid this component, but to me unfair is a character with dexterity 19 who can dodge arrows with lightning reflexes, quick movements and perfect balance while wearing cumbersome plates just as well as if he was wearing no armor at all.

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Guest Dirty Uncle Bertie

I suppose the only times you may not want to equip a character with the heavier armors is if they use a ranged weapon to attack, and doing so reduces their THAC0. Correct?

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Sometime a loss of couple points of ac can be a wise choice if the lighter armor has some interesting immunities too, so if you have a npc with high dexterity you might be tempted to trade 1-2 ac for better properties, while in the unmodded game the ac loss between the best plates and the best leathers was so high ( 4-5 points ) that the smart thing to do was always wear the heavy plate. More choices is good.

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It seems that you see warrior with 18-19 dexterity everywhere but it's pretty infrequent, even Sarevok has "only" 17.

 

However, i amust admit that i complain without testing : i 'am playing BGT for the moment so i have no installet your mod yet (only slowly component in heavy armor). If nobody complain about dexterity measures, that it's must be fair :)

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It seems that you see warrior with 18-19 dexterity everywhere but it's pretty infrequent, even Sarevok has "only" 17.

 

However, i amust admit that i complain without testing : i 'am playing BGT for the moment so i have no installet your mod yet (only slowly component in heavy armor). If nobody complain about dexterity measures, that it's must be fair :)

Raj already said most of things I would have said. This component adds to roleplaying (characters wear armors more appropriate to their agility), allow a wider choice of armors (as the medium and light ones are much more balanced and appealing compared to the ever ruling heavy ones), and do help to balance the game (preventing too high AC from combining heavy armors and uber-dexterity).

 

As Raj said, with IR warriors can reach quite higher AC values than in vanilla, especially if the wield shields. This is intended as in vanilla the AC was pretty useless in ToB.

 

I do think characters with dexterity 17-18 are quite common among players, Mazzy has 18 and Viconia has 19 (allowing her to wear chain mails while keeping the full +4 bonus to AC due to dexterity). Furthermore with IR's Gauntlets of Dexterity Minsc could easily reach 18, and Korgan 17.

 

P.S IR is BGT compatible. :)

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Viconia has 19 (allowing her to wear chain mails while keeping the full +4 bonus to AC due to dexterity)
But she looks better in plate than chainmail. Fortunately, it's easy to fix in local game.
What do you mean by "it's easy to fix in local game"? Is there something to be fixed?

 

Anyway, I do prefer how she looks in chain mail, I like her even better in leather armor with the thief avatar! :)

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