Its well known that clerics are the strongest class in NWN. They get spells, good AC, HtH capacity and effictively hold the monoloply on healing and ressurection. There are rumours they are about to get another huge wad of domains. Even if these are very well balanced (and I dont doubt for a seocnd they will be), they will add even greater flexibility to the class that can do it all and more.

Solution. Add 1 ECL to the cleric class.

Look at the races, is the difference between an earth gensai fighter and a human fighter really greater than difference between a fighter and a cleric? Not for my money.

Wow, that is radical. But I agree that clerics are insanely powerful. At least on low level servers.

I'm not sure what I would say to that one.

Honestly, I may not even be so opposed to this idea.

Stamps his Coldburn® 'Seal of Approval' on this idea.

I come froma background of having played Clerics in DnD for years going back to the AD&D.

In the early editions no one liked playing a cleric as all of their spells were dedicated to healing spells and they become very monotonous to play.

In 3rd Editon and on the addition of domains and the ability to sacrifice spells to cast healing caused a resurgence of interest in a class that could now have a lot more variety.

In a low level server they appear over overpowered but once you start to hit levels 6 and 7 the Cleric that continues to act like a front line fighter quickly winds up dead as they do not have the same hitting or damage potential of a fighter of equivilent levels - when fighters start using improved knockdown your cleric is toast.

If Priests did not have a high survivability factor they would never get into the thick of combat to heal someone as it would be too dangerous.

Yes Clerics can cast a lot of buffs on themselves but these are temporary effects - fighters abilities are permanent and always available.

If you were to do anything to balance them out it may be to drop their "to hits" to that of Rogues whouch would leave a clear distinction between Fighters and Clerics.

Or remove the domains all together that would cut a level out.

In the end I am always heappy when there is a good solid Cleric travelling in the group becuase everyone is more likely to survive.

I've been thinking on this, and have to say that I'd disagree.

Firstly, adding an ECL to something is effectively an experience penalty.

ECL additions should be, IMO, reserved for uncommon things (which are usually quite powerful). Clerics are common. Drow (at least on the surface or in Sanctuary), genasi, asimaar, tieflings, halfdragons and all that are uncommon. All these races have unique, special powers over the standard races, which take form in a variety of things:

For example-

Magic resistance Ability bonuses Spells Inherent powers Immunities

Clerics, while certainly powerful, are a common class. Of course, any mortal who can channel the divine power of the gods is defintely more powerful, ICly wise, than most.

However.

Some fighters train and learn so much they can kill almost instantly. Some bards learn to inspire allies to uncommonly great deeds. Some rogues become so sneaky or so precise with their blade that they can kill at will without having to think of beings caught. Then there are mages. I dont need to say how powerful they can become.

Each class has their own skills. If played well, any class can become powerful. Granted, clerics are pretty damn powerful, and more domains to select from will no doubt increase this.

But I dont think they should incur any experience penalties.

Unlike a fighter, or a rogue, a cleric has an IG responsibilty to uphold and indeed spread the dogma of their patron. Becuase of this responsibility, clerics *usually*, IMO, are more exposed to PvP hostility and fighting. Power comes with responsibility, and responsibility has consequences.

Others beleive mages to be the most powerful class...what then, another debate on whether they should accrue an experience penalty? What if others lobby that monks are too overpowered?

Again, this is my own opinion only, and does not in anyway represent the thoughts of others.

A somewhat radical question to this too.

If you're constantly spending your time on thinking which class is the strongest and who is the best, and what stats you need to kill everyone, why do you play on a RP server? And I'm not trying to point at anyone specific here, merely bringing up a question.

I disagree with it. I don't think clerics are the strongest class in nwn, i think they are the EASIEST class, and have a high survivability due to many different factors.

HOWEVER. The experience system in efu gives a slightly higher percentage of experience to the person killing the monsters. As such, fighters, rogues, and barbarians are gaining more experience on average for a quest than your supporting clerics and mages. Thus, they sort of do have inbuilt ECL's.

This was actually taken out, i apologise :)

One of the reasons why clerics are as powerful as they are is because the DOMAIN spell implementation bioware chose is wrong. (which came from BG as well as has never been updated to the actual rules)

You get the ability to put ANY spell you know at the level into what is supposed to be a single slot JUST for your domain spell. (one chosen from the 2 domains you know) Not only that but you can select that DOMAIN spell for EVERY spell slot in that spell level. So if you get negative energy ray at level 1 for evil domain you can fill your entire level 1 allocations with it. That might not seem so strong but when the overpowered stoneskin come into play a bit later you see why. (and thats overpowered more due to the lack of material spell components in this implementation, and the fact it's in more domain lists than it should be)

There is a number of things you could add to "restrain" clerics , like forcing them to only be able to weild their deities weapon of choice in melee, tithing.. Forcing them to pray to their deity at certain intervals(or occasions) But the truth of clerics is, if they focus their powers on others they are much less powerful than they appear when they self-buff. You could even consider limiting a cleric ability to cast on themselves if thats what the problem is.

Another fact for this server than some people arent noticing is that medicinal herbs are usable by nearly everyone thats made healing less needed via clerics so they can spend their spells on other things thats also made them appear to be more powerful than they are.

I'm 100% against nerfing any classes with an ECL or xp cuts, theres so many other better ways to balance them than just giving them xp slashes.

The fact that the "slayers" of creatures get a little more xp than the "observers" or "assisters" does go a long way to slowing the cleric that HELPS others by healing them which i'm not so sure should be discouraged as a behaviour. But it wont stop the self-buffer that will quite happily wade in there with protections and stat boosts, flame blades and chop away.

If you want a world without clerics then you should be looking outside of the forgotten realms because they are a big part, and carry a lot of it's flavour with them (and the deities that grant them these gifts) eberron is less focused on clerics, you might be happier there. I see clerics as the backbone of D&D, (though bioware didnt implement them in as balanced a way as they deserved) the other classes in reference to them, and a party not complete without one.

Next time you get stat damaged, level drained, poisoned or die think about who's helping you get back to normality. Even if it's not a player cleric it will be that grumbar priest in the hold.

If you want a world without clerics then you should be looking outside of the forgotten realms because they are a big part, and carry a lot of it's flavour with them (and the deities that grant them these gifts) eberron is less focused on clerics, you might be happier there.

Erm, I don't think Scrappa was saying anything about getting rid of clerics.

Next time you get stat damaged, level drained, poisoned or die think about who's helping you get back to normality. Even if it's not a player cleric it will be that grumbar priest in the hold.

Nor was Scrappa saying that clerics dont restore/heal/raise people.

The experience system in efu gives a slightly higher percentage of experience to the person killing the monsters. As such, fighters, rogues, and barbarians are gaining more experience on average for a quest than your supporting clerics and mages. Thus, they sort of do have inbuilt ECL's.

*slaps NC with a trout* I really don't think that's true at all, actually.

At any rate, clerics are strong, but if we were to give out ECL to any class I suspect it would be paladins. Fighters with high saves, immunity disease, cure disease (which works on all ability damage 1/day), immunity fear, turning, magic weapon/protection from evil/bless weapon as well as other factors make it quite a class for EfU.

There are lots of ways to adjust a class. As an example, some of the best ambient loot that drops in the game is bard only, and adjusted so that it can't even be used through UMD. 60% of the loot on some quests is not accessible without a rogue in the party. I could go on.

Cleric spells have been adjusted a lot, most noticeably magic vestment has been decreased in power recently as well as sorts of other adjustments to decrease their power.

I like clerics, and encourage players to play clerics, the main thing for me as a DM is really encouraging and helping players to play awesome clerics. Such characters are the living servants of their deity, they should really constantly be preaching and talking about their deity and working to fulfill the dogma.

If clerics ever got 'nerfed' I'd just take away heavy armor. Their pursuit of prayer and meditation has left them unable to learn the finer points of wearing heavy armors.

*shrug*

Nuclear Catastrophe The experience system in efu gives a slightly higher percentage of experience to the person killing the monsters. As such, fighters, rogues, and barbarians are gaining more experience on average for a quest than your supporting clerics and mages. Thus, they sort of do have inbuilt ECL's.

This was actually taken out, i apologise :)

Anyhow, on topic, I think that there are definitely more effective ways to balance clerics -- such as designing our customized ambient loot accordingly, reducing the power of certain spells, making medicine bags available as a source of healing, being active about applying spell failure to people who take the class "just for its power," et cetera -- and that a strict XP penalty would be unnecessarily heavy-handed and quite possibly not achieve the intended goal.

A question on the XP:

When I do a quest, even though I kill exactly the same type of enemy, I get fluctuating XP. Theres usually no big difference, but I still dont know why it happens. If there is a topic about in here, please post me the link. If not, why does this happen?

Thanks in advance.

Depends on the level and number of people in your party.

-Cross

Many aspects of the XP system are randomized, because random XP is excellent and avoids situations where people optimize parties for maximum XP.

So, each amount you get is modified slightly and random every time.

Alright, cheers.