Thoughts for LOS v. 3

Remove all ads!

Don't worry about it.

If you're willing to use an EG Ring to bump up the WIS to 13 rather than give it to a cleric or druid, I can live with that. I suppose (without looking) that Champ's STR might get you a big enough boost to STR so that you could use the LOS version of CS. But frankly, the (rev1 and 2) LOS version of Cera Sumat is a seriously good offensive weapon. I just don't see why anyone would want to forgo all that offensive firepower just for the spell resistance on a spellcaster that's rather unlikely to need it in the first place (well, unless it's a solo character, I suppose, since solo chars cannot afford the slightest risk of being affected by certain spells).

I could make this entirely moot by simply removing spell resistance from CS. That would only leave offensive abilities.

And BTW, one of the possible items in my list of ideas for LOS rev 3 is a sorcerer's staff, which among other things includes a fairly similar amount of Spell Resistance to Cera Sumat ... simply in a more "proper" non-cheesey package (+1 Qstaff, 13 SR, +2 CHA; min CHA required 16, sorc's only). There's also a wizzy-only staff in the list of ideas (+1 Qstaff, +2 INT, doubles the # of level 1 spells; min INT required 16, wizzy's only). And there are HOF versions of these staves as well.

My thinking is that if there's a sorc's staff that gives the same SR as Cera Sumat, there'll be less reason to feel a need to use CS with a cheesy build.

 

I've only seen that attempted by a mod item ring once, and it's seriously bugged (ring of the grand wizard-something).. wizard's level 1 spells jumped from 4 to 20-something castings, and the numbers increased each time I re-equipped it. Be careful if you create such an item, and test it!

 

Thanks for the heads-up, Coin. I can't say that I fully test *every* item. (Bad practice, I know.) But I can say that I do test every item that's in any way out of the ordinary, and these staves certainly qualify. And if it doesn't work, I can just make the wizzy staff mirror the sorc's staff as a fallback plan.

---------- Added 12 hours, 16 minutes and 32 seconds later... ----------

Alright, Coin, I just tested the Wizzy staff, and you're correct that there's something buggy about the effect that adjusts the # of spells in a wizzy spell slot. So I'm going to dump that effect and redo the wizzy staff, probably along the same lines as the sorc staff, i.e. a bonus to the spellcasting stat, some SR, and a min required value in the spellcasting stat (in this case, INT).

---------- Added 0 hours, 28 minutes and 1 seconds later... ----------

Upon further reflection, I may remove the stat increase from the wizzy and sorc staffs. I never really liked similar effects (like extra spell slots in melee weapons) in IWD1, since I like being able to have my characters use ranged weapons. But this can cause issues when you switch back and forth between ranged and melee weapons. Besides, it's not as if there won't be other items with INT or CHA bonuses.

Spell Resistance in a mage's staff is a pretty safe effect though.

I definitely don't want to go as far as creating an IWD2 parallel to the BG2 Staff of the Magi. That'd be too much, I'm thinking. But I could see a staff with certain spells being able to be used X times a day. It might get tricky creating HOF versions that would be useful for HOF.

 

INT (and WIS) items affect the amount of memorized spells only when resting, afterwards one is free to equip other stuff. CHA is less forgiving.

 

Maybe you should reconsider..

Personally, I think it's a good idea to create a staff with innate castable spells (to compensate for the lvl1 spells that can't be applied), as well as an INT-bonus. That way it serves all mages, but wizards get the most out of it! It doesn't have to resemble the Staff o/t Magi, though in power it should be comparable, to be a significant weapon.
Or just create a single staff, that gives both an INT and CHA bonus...

 

The problem I have with the Staff of the Magi is that the constant "invisibility when equipped" ability is just too over the top, IMHO.


I was looking at the inventory of staves in base IWD2 and with perhaps one exception, all of the standard staves are melee oriented, not mage oriented.
So, I've been thinking about magical staves with innate spells. I'm sort of leaning towards trying to make staves with some less commonly used spells, rather than the most commonly used spells (i.e. magic missile, fireball, etc.).

I was thinking about a couple of "elemental spells" staves (i.e. fire, cold, lightning, or acid spells, not for summoning elementals). I was also thinking about a necromancer's staff.

But as I mention below, it's not really possible to create staffs that are strictly for wizards and sorcs (i.e. with high stat limitations). You can do one or the other, but not both.

I've actually thought about this, but there's a serious problem... if you have a single staff that gives both INT and CHA bonuses, it becomes pretty much impossible to limit the staff to wizzies and sorcs only. With two distinct staffs, you can assign a stat min of 18 INT for a wizzies-only staff, or 18 CHA for a sorcs-only staff. But you can't do a staff with both (well, you "could", but almost no mage would ever have both 18 INT and 18 CHA).

 

In too many of the D&D CRPGs the Staff of the Magi/Staff of Power is the end all of staves. It would be nice for the evil guys to get the best in the field for once. Elemental Staves as well would surely open up options for your Wizs and Sorcs. Almost like allowing your Wizard to specialize without specializing, if that makes sense.

---------- Added 0 hours, 13 minutes and 3 seconds later... ----------

On a side note, my Elf Pally with Bull's Strength got Cera Sumat, though the battle had to be reloaded 3 times. Damn evil-doers couldn't miss a swing and were going thru my summons like butter. Eventually got them. Now, my Pally changes face a little, becoming my damage/spell absorber. Had to move some equipment around and I'm now showing an AC of 34(w/out buffs) plus the spell resistance and high Saves. Still not a super-tank when it comes to dealing damage, except against evil with the new blade in hand. Stoneskin added and I got a nice Elf shield for the rest of the party. My twin Lightfoot Sorcs now unleash their rain of death well protected!

 

I don't recall that the Staff of the Magi was a good-only staff. Heck, in BG2, it's initially carried by an evil (I assume) wizard.

As for the mage staffs that I've envisioned thus far, I've actually been shying away from any alignment restrictions. I guess that I was thinking that making the staves strictly wizzy-only and sorc-only would be more than sufficiently restricting without adding any alignment restrictions on top of that.*


I'm also trying to think of ways to do different themes for the wizzy-only staves vs the sorc-only staves. For example, perhaps the wizzy staves might be more "spell school" themed, while the sorc staves might be elementally themed.


* I do have a couple of ideas for staves with alignment restrictions, but these are much more melee oriented staves, rather than mage staves.

One is an evil-only or non-good only fire-centric "Staff of the Demon" (or something like that). Think of it as similar to the more generic "Incendiary Staff (i.e. +2 staff with +1d6 fire damage) on steroids... probably with a Flame Burst effect (+1d6 fire damage plus 10% of an additional +1d10 fire damage) for starters, possibly also with an x% chance of "casting" something like Shroud of Flame on the target (and giving the staff wielder either an immunity to SoF or just some strong Fire Resistance).

The other would be a good-aligned champion's staff, with some powerful good aligned effects.


===

On a tangential note, one thing that I've been mildly considering (I haven't fully made up my mind) is changing the weapons having disruption effects... that is, replacing the disruption effect with a "bane" effect (i.e. +2d6 damage). The reason that I am considering this is that it has seemed to me that almost all undead creatures seem far too easy in IWD2 because of disrupting weapons. You don't even need to worry about having a decent Turn Undead ability. Just pick up the Club of Disruption, Lucerne's Hammer, and some disrupting sling bullets and you can cut thru the hordes of undead creatures like the proverbial hot knife thru butter. So, my thinking is that changing the disrupting weapons to anti-undead Bane or "Sacred" weapons would make dealing with the undead (and "outsiders") a more interesting challenge.

Thoughts?

---------- Added 0 hours, 7 minutes and 51 seconds later... ----------

Way to go, BoV!

The rev 1 LOS version of Cera Sumat is one naaaasty greatsword (possibly a bit too nasty...). When I created it, I was thinking that CS just didn't seem powerful enough to deal with the likes of Xvim's avatar, and that it's best ability was the spell resistance. Compared to other later game weapons, CS just didn't seem to stack up really well offensively. I wanted to make CS a weapon that true paladins would WANT to use in melee, rather than an "item" that pally wannabes would want for the SR.

Your particular elven pally would probably be better suited to a longsword version of CS. Well, probably bastard sword as well, but given elven love of longswords, a long sword holy avenger seems most apropos for an elven pally.

 

I agree. Multiple weapons that all have the same destroy undead ability make undead worthless as far as challenges go in the game. Undead become a very easy path for experience and cause a lull in the action when regarding the chllenges of the game. Maybe one weapon like the Mace of Disruption is ok, but several make the undead battles a cinch. Or you could make them usable by Clerics only? Or Clerics and Pally's only?

 

Re: Tweaking disrupting weapons to Undead Bane (or similar effects) weapons:

That's a thought. The one weapon that's a tad annoying to fix could be the Hammer of Lucerne, since it has such a lengthy history. OTOH, if I were going to keep a single disrupting weapons, I'd sort of like to have it come after kuldahar.

Personally, I'd rather just either limit their number to 1 (with the usage requirement) or zero.

And on a related note, it's also worth mentioning that from what I've read in the appropriate D&D documentation, the disrupting effect only seems that it should apply to the undead, and not to outsiders.


=========


At this point, I'm beginning to think that I should just start a new thread for LOS Rev 3 thoughts, rather than using this sticky for this discussion.

 

Hey, thanks for moving the posts to a new thread, dmc. I was just sitting down to create a new thread, but obviously I wouldn't have had the ability to move the posts ... so thanks again!

 

Ok, I've created the normal and HOF versions of a Staff of Necromancy.

Normal Mode:

+1 Vampiric (1d6) Staff
+2 INT
Can cast Skull Trap once a day (at level 10)
Can cast Horror twice a day (at level 3)
wizards only, min INT of 18 required
Cost: 26,404 gp

HOF Mode:

+2 Vampiric* (3d6) Staff
+4 INT
Can cast Wail of the Banshee once a day (at level 17)
Can cast Summon Shadow twice a day (at level 12)
wizards only, min INT of 18 required
Cost: 111,216 gp

* Not the normal "vampiric" effect. Instead, it hits with the power of a level 6 Vampiric Touch spell (which is good for 3d6 rather than the normal 1d6 of a "standard" vampiric effect).



Time to look at some other type of wizzy staff...

 

I also have a problem with vampiric weapons. My experience with them, is that they don't grant XP for kills, if the opponent reaches 0HP from the draining effect (if the regular damage killed it, then there's no problem). This has caused me to turn away from weapons like the Massive Halberd of Hate and Greatsword of the Soulless.
I don't know exactly what percentage of kills don't gain you XP from these weapons, but with all the talk about party XP gain, it should be considered a serious issue..
But your HoF necromantic staff uses a different principle, I understand. Perhaps you can apply a similar effect to the normal mode one. Nice castable effects, by the way.

 

Shrug. There's not much that I can do about that (at least, I think...).

Actually, this isn't true. The vampiric effect works exactly the same, regardless of how it may appear. The Vampiric Touch spell uses the same underlying effect as "normal" vampiric weapons.

Thanks. It's difficult doing HOF weapons at times. I initially considered using Horrid Wilting rather than WotB. But then I remembered that this is HOF mode, and that nuking spells, even high level ones, aren't terribly effective in HOF mode. A once-a-day casting of Horrid Wilting would barely even put a scratch on an HOF enemy mob. At least WoTB has a chance of doing some useful damage.

And the fact that Necro spells are almost exclusively Fort save based didn't make it any easier.

 

In my experience, the disruption effect is pretty weak since the DC is so low. If a disruption occurs 1 in 20 hits, and if disruption and HP loss are independent (which they are), then on average disruption is equivalent to a flat 1/40 of the undead's base HP per hit (because on average disruption will happen when it is already halfway to dead). That's anywhere between a bonus +4 to damage for weak undead (150 HP) to a bonus +20 for tough demons like Slayer Knights of Xvim (about 800 HP IIRC). That's not nothing but, coupled with the high variance on results, it isn't usually enough to make me switch the heavy hitters from Big Death to Club of Disruption unless there are a LOT of undead in the area, like Kuldahar.

-Max

 

First of all, the DC for disruption is 14, and disruption is Will save based.

As for the HP numbers, I can only assume that you're talking about HOF mode, since the SK's have 126 HP's according to their CRE files (I don't know what the formula is for recalculating HP#'s in HOF mode).

As for the relative "ease" of undead, I'm thinking more of normal mode. It just seems that a party equipped with the 3 certain to acquire disrupting weapons (club of disr, hammer of lucerne, and disrupting bullets) ((there are other disrupting weapons in the game's inventory, but I think that they're only randomly acquired)) is able to go thru Kuldahar's undead "legions" like a hot knife thru warm butter in normal mode. Frankly, it seems so bad that no cleric ever needs to worry about being even mildly competent at turning undead.



It's been a while since I've played HOF, but IIRC it is a bit tougher in HOF, because the disrupting DC doesn't change. (For whatever it's worth, other weapons' effects that have DC's often do have improved DC's in the HOF versions of their weapons.)

 

126 is what they have before any CON bonus is added in, a.k.a their "rolled" hit points. 200+ actual is closer to reality.

Closest approximation for HOF mode that I've seen so far is something close to the following:

1) Triple the "rolled" hit points in CRE files.
2) Add some (presumably 10) CON to the CON value given in monster CRE file.
3) Recalculate the CON bonus for the given level(s) of the monster.

Note that the early HOF mobs such as goblins presumably get upgraded by the autobalancing system BEFORE their HOF conversion kicks in to account for their ~150 hp totals.

 

Good info, Rechet.

I went back and looked at the Slayer Knight CRE file again, and added in the CON bonus per level, and recalc'd their HP total (Normal mode) to 198 hp.