Messages

Ahem. Boa constrictors and their python/viper relatives have incredibly sharp teeth and ridiculous aim. Please do not nerf, just go to your local science museum. Or, better yet, look at this link!

http://www.venomousreptiles.org/data/articles/72/atrox_bite3.jpg

The damage in the picture you showed is caused by the effects of the venom, not the bite. Yes, all snakes generally have sharp teeth, but their teeth are -not- designed to do damage.  

In poisonous snakes, they function like hypodermic needles.

In constrictors, they function as well.... a grappling tool.  They're sharp yes, but not really damaging in the rend/tear/slash fashion.

I can understand giving Constrictors high damage, because there's no good way to recreate their constriction in nwn, but with poisonous snakes.... well give them poison, and take away their longswords.

[not]

I recall, on my other server, empowered evard's throwing out 140 damage in a single round against a mage. (and that spell lasts 1 round/level, so yeah, devastating. :p)




I still don't see any reason to increase the duration of summons.  I know I'm repeating myself, but Summons are not supposed to be Insta-Fighters.  If you make summons last a long time, then fighters become near redundant. (why take a fighter when Wizard X can just summon a nasty creature and buff it)
 
1 turn + 1 turn/3 levels or 4 rounds/level are small increases, yes, but they're unnecessary small increases in my mind.  Why make the Devs go through and alter the duration of every effing summon when it's a small, unneeded change?

*inserts foot into mouth*

Missed that bit.:oops:


To add useful information then, I use the Bat Familiar, which has no conversation, but can be controlled normally via the radial menu.

[wholeheartedly]

If you want to pick out specific spells to prove your point with a druid, well, it's pointless.

Cure Moderate:
Level 3 Druid spell
Level 2 Cleric spell

Yes, they are worse at healing than a cleric, but you can easily pull spells that go the other way.

Flame Strike:
Level 4 Druid Spell
Level 5 Cleric Spell

And,

Hold Monster:
Level 4 Druid Spell
Level 5 Wizard/Sorc Spell



Giving Rangers a boost to their spot/listen/search -fits- the class, because they're designed to be excellent trackers/scouts.

Druids are designed to be subpar to rangers when it comes to scouting, tracking, hiding and so on.  That's why the skills relating to that are cross-classed for them.

And yes, they do get trackless step, which boosts their hide/ms, but that's really just a screwed up thing bioware did.  In PnP trackless step just did what its name implies, made it so druids and rangers could choose to not leave any trail, making them untrackable.




Back on topic though, I wholeheartedly agree with boosting a druid's detection skills when they use certain wildshape forms!  That's an excellent way of adding to the classes flavor instead of blandifying ranger and druid into an even more similar paste.

[haste]

Forgive the double post, but I just noticed this:

I recall one conjurer (actually one of the few conjurers I ever met that was useful) used to go invisible, use a single decently durable conjuration to gather up a ton of critters, haste, then spam fireballs killing the group.

Was this conjurer of yours poping speed potions? (conjurer's can't cast haste) :confused:


Random thought edit: "Poping speed potions" makes it sound like they're doing drugs, doesn't it. >_>

[conjurer]

Just because your a conjurer, evoker, moocowmaker doesn't mean you need to cast the spells from said school constantly!

I recall one conjurer (actually one of the few conjurers I ever met that was useful) used to go invisible, use a single decently durable conjuration to gather up a ton of critters, haste, then spam fireballs killing the group.

Moral of the story, there is more to being a conjurer than just spamming summons which are designed to be circumstantial, hence the short durations!

You have a point, but I think it's flawed.

If I'm RP'ing a conjurer, I'm going to rp a -conjurer-, not a wizard with 1 extra spell slot of each level, who can't cast transmutation spells.

Now, I'm not saying that conjurer's can -only- cast conjuration, nor am I saying they'd be less of a conjurer for casting evocation spells, but if you see a conjurer that "spams fireballs" maybe they should have been an evoker instead?

If you're devoted enough to a school to specialize in it, then you'd damn sure be devoted enough to try and make use of it. I try to prepare at least two or three conjuration spells for every level with my conjurer, personally, and I try to come up with situations to use conjuration spells over other options.

I mean... heck, you could even do that same trick you described by spamming Mestil's acid breath over the cluster of enemies.  Granted Mestil's acid breath is harder to aim and probably less useful than fireball, but:
1.It fits more into the mentality of "conjurer" over "Some wizard that has extra spell slots".
2.If you're a conjurer, you likely have spell focus in Conjuration, which means your Mestil's acid breath DC should be higher than your Fireball DC anyway. :p

And of course there's other options too, besides spamming damage spells, like tossing a web onto a group and summoning a deep spider.



I do agree that summons are situational, though, and there's more to them than just ploping them and letting them roam.  As an example for me, I like to cast a ghostly visage on Marin, get into melee with the enemies, and -then- make some summons to kill the enemies while marin tanks. The flanking bonus really helps them. :p

You can't "talk" to your familiar, but you can still do just about everything you could do with their conversations via the familiar's radial menu. >_>


Use the radial menu peoples! :p

[Libraries]

It doesn't fit, imo.  Druids are more focused on casting, and then assuming a shape that fits their needs.  If they need to search for something, then they wildshape into a hawk or something fitting.


Plus if you argue that druids deserve a bonus to search/spot/listen in nature, then it's a neverending cycle.

"Class X deserves a bonus to detection skills in environment Y because that's their normal terrain."

Then, Fighters deserve a bonus to detection in town.
Then, Barbarians deserve a bonus to detection in mountains.
Then, Bards deserve a bonus to detection in Taverns
Then, Wizards deserve a bonus to detection in Libraries. :rolleyes:



Rangers get this specific bonus because it's part of their flavor.  They're stereotypically Woodland Scouts.  No  reason to dilute the classes more.

[conjuration specialist]

I was doing my best to read the whole thread, but after hitting a couple walls of text my will was crushed.


My thoughts on Summoning: (as a person who played a conjuration specialist wizard)

Summoning is disappointing.

Please hear me out.  Summoning is powerful and extremely useful and all, but it's disappointing to see that any random cleric can be better at conjuring than a conjuration specialist provided that the cleric takes an elemental domain. (Generally, elementals are what you -want- to summon as a conjurer, since they seem to be the best summons overall, so letting clerics freely summon them makes clerics the best summoners.)

Yes, in theory Marin could summon any of the elementals that the clerics pull, but in order to do so, she'd blow through her reagents so fast that it's not realistic to even suggest it.  In practice, Marin's stuck summoning crappy beetles and spiders most of the time, and then she can toss out one elemental for a boss fight, while the clerics toss out their Elementals, like candy from a float.

Maybe let Conjuration Specialist Wizards pick their own default summoning theme?  I.E. I could pick Earth Elemental as the summoning theme for Marin, then I could still use reagents to summon other things, but Marin's "normal" summon would be an earth elemental.  At least that way conjurers would be able to compete with any given Cleric at summoning. :???:



Back on topic, Summon duration is -perfectly- fine as is.  A summon lasts for about a battle, which is balanced.   You're summoning a -temporary- meat shield/damage dealer/caster/whatever, not a semi-permanent pet.  Again this is the perspective of the player of a conjuration specialist wizard.  If I'm happy with summon durations, you should be too! >_>

As a person who's played on the ravenloft server with it's "xp for emotes" system, I can attest that it -really- doesn't make people spam emotes.

It's designed so that:
1. You need to alternate emotes/speech with other players, so a person spamming emotes by themselves gets nothing.
2. The xp is low enough to where people who want to get xp just do the normal dungeon thing, while still being a little reward for people who are having a pow-wow/long discussion/what have you.


Having said that, implementing the chat xp thing is likely more trouble than it's worth.

My suggestion for Contagion:


Target makes a Fort save or recieves 1d4 + 1/3 caster levels con damage and is inflicted with a random disease. (or maybe scale the disease with the caster's level)  If they save, no con damage and no disease.

But Ravens are the only bird-familiars that can talk in DnD! :p


From Ze PHB:
"A raven familiar can speak one language of it's master's choice as a supernatural ability."


Makes me want to make a depressed wizard with a raven that croaks "Nevermore" at him. :)


(and yeah, I'm the rules lawyer for my group. >_>)

[one]

Just to throw it out there, I personally have gotten a lot of rp with my new character, just from writing  -one- sentence about my character's physical appearance, and -one- sentence  ( it's a long one, I'll admit ;))about a pendant she carries.

Granted, I could probably get the same effect if I just went everywhere emoting, *Pauses, taking a moment to shake her hair about in the wind and generally look smexy* or *One -again- pulls out her two sided pendant which features a golden heart on one side and the face of a beautiful red head on the other*  But personally, I'd rather just toss that in my description instead of emoting it -every- -freaking- time.  On the other hand, a person only needs to read/be told what you look like once generally, and then after that they have a mental image.

If you want people to get a nice little overview of what you look like, throw it in your description.  If not, or if you're uncomfortable with writing, don't.  I've never decided not to roleplay with someone over something as frivolous as a description, but on the other hand it provides a nice jumping in point.

I've seen house cat models on others servers. :confused:

(not scaled down panthers, actual house cat models)


Edit: Forgive my ignorance if house cats are difficult to add somehow.

A solution that my old server made was that when an area respawned, it'd destroy and respawn all of the chests.


It'd probably take a bit of work, but it could be done here too.  Set it so when someone accepts the quest it destroys and respawns all the containers in the quest area maybe?  The one thing is that implementing all of that might be more trouble than it's worth.