Geomantic Sorcerer Kit Balancing and SCS

[Caedwyr]

I am working on a refresh of my Geomantic Sorcerer and am considering giving it a balancing pass.  It is basically a Sorcerer kit with a penalty to its physical stats and casting speed.  In return it gets some druid style polymorph and several druid spells including a few custom spells (wave spray, Summon Shambling Mound, and Tornado).

At high level it gets a bunch of custom HLAs, both passive and as spells.

I would be much obliged if you could take a look at the descriptions in the readme and give me you hot takes on which abilities are problematic from SCS balance perspectives (including abilities that won't play nice with the SCS Ai)

https://gibberlings3.github.io/Documentation/readmes/readme-druidsor.html

I am personally not all that concerned about the Geomantic Sorcerer getting access to already existing cleric and druid spells, that isn't really doing a lot more than what the mage cleric or ranger cleric already allows.  The character will be versatile,  but still limited by their action economy. 

It is more the HLAs, both passive immunities and granted abilities that I suspect will cause problems.  Still, feel free to let me know either way.  

[Guest Iamterminsel]

Hello, how much before you release the mod?
Also, can you make it possible to choose the flaws of the class? For example, I always found the xp penalty a little too harsh.

[LokoMoko]

The kit class looks like a lot of fun!  The xp penalty actually could work well if you plan to swap out the entire party in game.  Has the kit been tested with SCS?  Would the new spells and HLA cause crashes? 

[Caedwyr]

The kit has been around for a long time and works pretty well in the current version 7, though some may find the various HLAs it offers unbalancing.  I'm going to come back to rebalancing the kit at a later date, but don't hold your breath for the meantime, since it has fallen down my priority list at the moment due to other things I have on the go.  The first changes that are going to be made is to the basic shapeshifting system included in the kit.  Changes are going to focus on giving each shapeshift more of a niche.  Balancing the HLAs will come later, and I'll do a first pass before trying to get other people to do my work for me (like I did in the OP here).

[DavidW]

Sorry, I missed this when you first posted it, but in any case you're probably better off doing your own first pass - I probably wouldn't have had a chance for a while.

[Caedwyr]

Yeah, I realized that I needed some more thorough playtesting/looking at all the pieces and present something closer to what I'm looking to change to you to get any feedback on types of abilities/immunities that are likely to cause problems. 

My timeline for this is "next half year" or so though, since I'm just starting a big playthrough (once I get a stable install) and my time is already divided too many ways.

[Morgoth]

Damn, I was looking forward to playing this in my new playthrough. A shame you haven't released a revised version
By the way, there is a bit of feedback here: https://old.reddit.com/r/baldursgate/comments/13ab7h4/standalone_kit_mods_witchlight_shaman_chaos/
I don't know how authorable that is, though.

I will copy it, considering that Reddit Baldur's gate will be going down tomorrow:

The big issue with the Geomantic sorceror I had is it just clutters your spell menu so bad. Especially when you throw in the high level abilities too. Rather than dumping almost the whole druid list (including some things that are totally redundant with things a sorcerer would normally pick), I wish they would have focused on at most 1 to 3 druid spells per level that don’t overlap with the sorcerer list so much.

Another post:

The Geomatic Sorcerer sounded SO COOL hypothetically but in practice... it's kind just a bloated mess. Nevermind having both iron and stoneskins, the HLA paths are so entrenched that unless you're solo. In fact, with 4 different HLA paths each roughly 4 skills deep, I think its actually IMPOSSIBLE to get the full Geo experience in one run. And the balance is BORKED! Tier 3 of the resistance path grants 10% fire/cold/lightning resist. Tier 1 of Druidic HLA path grants +25 to those resists, and acid and some resistances and status immunities. No idea what the best path is, but at a glance the spell casting path looks BUSTED with smatterings of the druid resistances to be immune to almost everything! I'll never probably do an SCS no reload simulated run with it because it makes my head spin nor will I then post an analysis. Witchlight I intend to look at but Warhorn from Artisan is a hard nut to crack for best shaman. 

Also the Geo's EXP penalty is bigger than it may seem. It isnt technically that you need 15% more experience, it means you earn 15% LESS experience. If you spawn into BG2 you will start with 15% less than 89k experience at 75650. If you console code yourself to 500k you will actually be brough to 425k. In a sense you don't need 15% more experience, you technically need to earn 20 experience for every 17 earned or technically about 17.6% more experience So you'll reach lvl 31 at around 9.27mil which you'll never get to in a party as is!

Edited June 11, 2023 by Morgoth