Skills and Abilities Mod

[Guest morpheus562]

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Edited May 17 by morpheus562

[Endarire]

I like physical defense penetration.

What about defortification, or a % to ignore critical hit immunity?

[Guest morpheus562]

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Edited May 17 by morpheus562

[Endarire]

How do your new proficiencies interact with the OlvynTweaks component to remove the limit o 2 proficiency points per proficiency at level 1?  For example, a starting Fighter/Mage is theoretically able to put 4 points into Spellcraft at character creation if S&A is installed before OlvynTweaks.

[subtledoctor]

...sounds like you answered your own question?

[Endarire]

I wasn't sure if these were compatible which is why I checked but thankee!

[subtledoctor]

I don't see why they wouldn't be compatible as a technical matter - I assume the Olvyn mod just overwrites the values PROFSMAX.2da, so if you install that last you will get those values in  your game. Of course, that  doesn't mean the mods are conceptually compatible. Installing Olvyn's mod and overwriting PROFSMAX.2da would destroy the balance design of the mod I'm working on, which specifies its own very particular version of that file. Ultimately it's up to the player to decide how much you want to adhere to the design intent of this or that mod. If you want, you can deviate quite a lot from mods'  intended function. If that makes the game fun, or boring, or glitchy or just weird... that's on the player.

Edited October 6, 2022 by subtledoctor

[polytope]

About your new kits:

On 10/4/2022 at 3:57 PM, morpheus562 said:

BATTLE MASTER: An expert in two-handed weapons, the Battle Master is able to wreak havok on any battlefield. Their ferocity and resilience is well renowned, and enemies fear the endless barrage of their attacks.

Advantages:
– May use the Relentless Assault ability once per day. Gains one use at level 1, one use at level 5, and an additional use every 5 levels thereafter.

RELENTLESS ASSAULT: The Battle Master is able to unleash a flurry of blows and doubles the amount of attacks they can do for 5 rounds.

– 9th Level: Gains the Indomitable passive ability.

INDOMITABLE: The Battle Master gains +1 bonus to all saving throws. This increases to a +2 bonus at level 13 and a +3 bonus at level 17.

Disadvantages:
– May only attain Grandmaster in two-handed weapons.

The Battle Master looks fine, but doesn't really have a disadvantage prior to lvl 9 (when fighters would normally have enough proficiency slots for grandmastery in any weapon) and doubling attacks is really impressive, perhaps delay the "Relentless" ability to lvl 8 and every 4 levels thereafter, whereas "Indomitable" bonuses could be gained at lvls 5, 9, 13.

On 10/4/2022 at 3:57 PM, morpheus562 said:

SHIELD BREAKER: Shield Breakers are a specialized set of fighters whose main purpose is to break the ranks and defenses of an enemy front line. These fighters will rend and penetrate enemy armor and defenses to make them vulnerable, so their allies may exploit this newly exposed weakness. As a result, the Shield Breaker's attacks will not hit as hard since they are made to break armor and shields, not sever bones and sinew.

Advantages:
– Each successful hit bestows a -10% cumulative reduction in the target's physical damage resistance.
– 4th Level: May use Sunder ability once per day and gains an additional use every 4 levels thereafter.

SUNDER: The Shield Breaker sunders the earth before <PRO_HIMHER> striking all enemies within a 15-ft. radius. Enemies struck will receive 2d4 crushing damage, -25% reduction in physical damage resistance for 5 rounds, and falls to the ground for 3 seconds. A successful Saving Throw vs. Spell with a -4 penalty negates the fall.

Disadvantages:
– Weapons receive a -2 penalty to all damage rolls.
– May not use ranged weapons.
– May not use shields.

I have a suspicion that the Shield Breaker's on hit ability will be game breaking: Assuming a buffed fighter can do an average of 19-20 physical damage per hit in the mid game (+3 weapon, GM, strength) the Shield Breaker's -2 damage penalty only matters for the first swing, on the subsequent hit (110% damage) the penalty is negated, and it only spirals thereafter. This assumes that the enemy has zero physical resistances to start, it's even more unbalanced vs highly resistant monsters. For instance, attacking a 90% physical resistant monster (like Adamantine Golem) four hits drop the resistance to 50% and thus all attackers (and not just the shieldbreaker) are inflicting quintuple damage, as good as the Assassination HLA!

The sunder ability looks okay so long as it isn't stackable and maybe should receive less uses/day of it, perhaps, lvls 4, 10, 16, 22.

If you want an "on-hit" ability that's good versus highly damage resistant creatures I'd recommend a simple additional 1d3 extra damage on melee hits through #248, since it will be rounded down to no less than 1.

If you want allies to also benefit from this vs marked creatures it's a bit more complex, you'll need to grant the ability via durational spell with every hit on target type 6. This would call a secondary pair of shell spells through #248, the first protects via 206 from the second and the second inflicts the excess damage. However, any creature directly struck by the Shield Breaker would be temporarily immune to the first spell and thus take extra damage from attacks by any of his allies.

[Guest morpheus562]

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Edited May 17 by morpheus562

[Guest morpheus562]

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Edited May 17 by morpheus562

[Quester]

Cool kits. The Battle Master and Shield Breaker both sound very powerful. I think the BM needs some more disadvantage to balance out the positives. Think about it: if you wanted to make a two-handed focused fighter, wouldn't you always select this kit over the unkitted fighter?

The trick with making balanced new kits is to not make the true class obsolete.

For the SB, maybe increase their damage penalty to -3? Even so, at high levels I suspect that being able to use Sunder repeatedly will make the SB extremely powerful. Perhaps too much so.

The Stormlord: cool, but could maybe use another ability gained somewhere between lvl 5-10 to flesh it out some more. Maybe some AoE lightning ability? Or, increased chance to crit for a couple of rounds, plus some lightning damage added to said crits? Think Thor on the Bifrost, when he got his level up with the lightning eyes and everything. 

[subtledoctor]

I try not to comment on other mod kits, because a lot of other mods are just not to my taste and that is totally fine. Many mods just add a lot of power and there is a long history of video game mods adding powerful stuff and that's fine. So please take this totally as constructive criticism which you can totally disagree with or just have different feelings about!

1. My first impression is that these kind of seem like better fighters? If I wanted to make a fighter using 2-handed swords, what possible reason would there be not to take the Battle Master kit? (EDIT - ninja'd by Quester.) I like character development choices to involve trade-offs - pay opportunity cost X to gain a bonus in Y. Here, this just seems like the "correct" choice, which personally, rubs me the wrong way. At the very least I would apply Archer rules and limit it to simple proficiency in 1-handed weapons. Maybe no ranged weapon use too? I don't know. If it's going to be the clear best in X niche, then it should be precluded from occupying other niches. (Also, Improved Haste from level 4 seems super powerful... see below about it)
2. The Stormlord has both a damage bonus and... another damage bonus. One is electrical, but it kind of seems redundant. This is the only thing that jumps out at me for this kit. Oh, and do they go from 0% electric resistance to 100% at 12th level? Why not 5% per level or something? Shouldn't a 10th-level Stormlord be more resistant to electrical damage than other druids? Hmmm... maybe add something about their spells? +25% bonus with electrical damage spells, -25% penalty with fire/cold/acid damage spells? That would be minor, but distinct and on-brand. Gives the player a slight incentive to choose lightning spells over fire spells, and really play up the kit's theme. (I made a fire-focused druid kit a long time ago, and it was a lot of fun to really push using only that one element.) Maybe also give them extra spells - Shocking Tough/Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning seem obvious.
3. General thing that these kits made me think about: how many combats per day do you expect characters to be in?  The Stormlord can use Shock Weapon 4 times per day at level 9... doesn't that basically mean they can basically use it constantly, except maybe for the trashiest of trash mobs?  And the Battle Master can use Improved Haste three times per day at level 12 which lets them be almost always under Improved Haste? Lately I've been looking at the Bhaal Powers as inspiration: two uses per day is a reasonable boost while still making you decide when it is worth it to get that boost. I have a lot of kit abilities granted every 6 levels, so 1/2/3 times per day. If I'm making an ability that can be used 4/5/6+ times per day, I'll think hard about making it toggleable at-will, or else making it a constant passive effect. So like, I might give the Stormlord +1 electric damage to every hit for each 4 levels, permanently, or something like that. I would tone down the Battle Master's Improved Haste, or make it usable more rarely, or implicitly limit it with some cost - if it's non-magical, maybe using it should fatigue the character?

[Guest morpheus562]

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Edited May 17 by morpheus562

[Satrhan]

I like these new classes. You've had some good feedback above so I won't copy that. 

About the battle master, would it's relentless assault also trigger the bonuses from the swiftblade proficiency? Not everyone might use both components, but it would make it even more powerful. 
Some ideas I had to balance/change it up a little;
- Have relentless assault give a malus to THAC0, so that there is a drawback to using it (the winded effect after is a decent drawback for longer fights though)
- Or increase the chance of getting a critical miss
- Or instead of giving the class a self-haste ability, have the extra attacks come from scoring a critical hit;
- Or make it some sort of AOE effect, scoring a crit will also do damage to another opponent in short range (simulating hitting two opponents with one big blow)

[Guest morpheus562]

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Edited May 17 by morpheus562