Pally Changes

You could also up the duration of divine favor based on paladin levels. 2 turns with paladin 20, 3 turns at 30 and so on.

Making divine favor, bless, aid undispellable would be helpful as well. Dispels are rampant end game and paladin's tend to be buff dependant. This would also be great for blade thirst and one with the land for rangers.

i've never levelled a Pally toon, but those i know that have have always said how great they were already when combined with existing widgets and puissant and since that is based on the opinion of people who i know were good players i'm gonna vote no to any changes.

I cant see why divine widget should become a store bought item.

Also Holy Sword already has a dispel feature so why add EB and damage to it? It already offers something different to Barb rage so why change it to offer the same?

Well, my thinking was, and is, pallies are actually underwhelming, and the margin of effectiveness between pallies and, say, barbarians, increases as the environment becomes more difficult. 


The primary issue is that pallies are spread thin.  They need to invest in Str, Con, Wis, and Chr.  Or Dex, Con, Wis, and Chr.  The proffered changes are purity and charisma dependent. They would not endanger puissant builds while allowing the pally as the base damage class to venture forth and breed with other classes.


I think clearly there is an upper tier of builds/classes. My intent is to create more balance. By increasing pally melee damage, utilizing charisma, you are bringing pallies more into line with barbs. The attack model for barbarians does not have to be their signature trait. Their signature trait can be seen as high constitution and constitution tied to their attack values (and terror DC). Terror Rage is a feature they bring to group play. Their ability to gel with the PM, RDD, and WM classes are improvements for individual or group play.

Similarly, the attack model for pallies does not have to be their signature trait. Their signature trait can be sees as high charisma and charisma tied to their attack values, saves, and turn undead abilities. Lay on Hands is a feature they bring to group play. They gel well with a number of classes. And right now I think barbs are little overpowered as melee. Allowing other melee types to have extra attacks doesn't just increase the power of the adjusted class, it brings the barbarian more into line with the average.


Ultimately, I think of the idea of temporary HP and bonus attacks as something all weapon-wielding builds should have access to (although I think barbs and DD should get the most temp HP, and barbs and WMs the most bonus attacks). It allows for pseudo-leveling beyond level 40. It is the method of adding additional 'powers' to melee classes beyond level 40 that has the most positive outcome after looking at the upside/downside from a dev's perspective, and working within the nwn rules and toolkit's limitations: ab and ac have a cap that we have arrived at. There is room to expand with no. of attacks, applied dmg, and temporary hit points.


At some point, I would like to tweak all the classes so they have continued advancement beyond level 40. Then you can have more and more difficult zones. I am trying to look ahead. This is obvious to some, but not others I think. And their are two positions. One is that 3t has gone about as far as it can go. The other is that there is a lot more that can be made. I am of the latter position. And more difficult zones is something that 3t already needs, btw. I party of 5 can go anywhere and do anything, until they are killed by a crazy large spawn or unending chain of spawns. Great for mindless treasure hunting. But mindless it is. No challenge. No point of pride to say "been there done that." 3t needs zones where that party of 5 has to tread lightly (until the gear up or gain more pseudo levels). It is the nature of this type of game - continued advancement. And if there is an issue with 'room' on the mod, then simply recycle underused zones (like Necro, Knife Edge, etc). Make wider margins of difficulty between the current end-game areas (seeing this as Trighton, Spiders, and BC). Bump beholders up, and move the key and widget somewhere else (or at least the key).  Adjusting pallies is the first step towards that.  A charisma build, already fragile, would have less and less a chance of being viable as the environment gets more and more difficult.



 - But, as it stands, I am not seeing popular support for any pally changes, so will not be working on them -

What you are proposing just sounds like to much. I do think pallys could use a boost. Increasing the duration of divine favor and damage of holy sword based on pally levels seems reasonable. Are you able to make some spells non dispellable? Divine favor, bless, aid, one with the land and blade thirst all should be and would help some buff dependant classed like pally and ranger.

Adding extra attacks just seems OP. I don't like them on barbs. It makes duel weilders seem pointless. Boxers and duel weilders should have the most attacks.

My big bone to pick with playing Paladins vs. the module is you can't easily see if divine favor is up or down. I think there is a little graphic that indicates when it's done but it's not easy to see and I often find myself pulling up my character sheet mid combat just to see if it's still on. Compare that to something like a Barbarian's rage where there is an aura and a big flashing sign to tell you it's leaving.  

Currently, playing a Paladin PvM you have to play the game of cast and recast for buffs and I just don't think many will bother doing it when it's so difficult to manage the timing.  Any obvious visual to let you know if your divine buffs are down, increasing the duration, and making buffs undispellable all seem like good ideas to make playing Paladins more fun.  If the divine widget was offered as a store bought item like the divine link tool, this would also help.  The widget just let's you burn twice or three times as many turn undeads to not have to recast divine favor 2 or 3 times in a row. Note that it does not add more turn undeads.  You are effectively gaining nothing from this other than some casting convenience. In my opinion, it's hard to justify taking this widget when you only get four.

Also, if your talking about affecting the length of divine favor, you might be interested to know that when linked with shield or might using the tool it actually extends the duration to your charisma modifier if it's beyond + 10.  For example, if your charisma modifier is at + 11, your divine favor along with shield and might will last 1 minute and 6 seconds.  Normally, divine favor should only last a minute.

Finally, I still think Holy Sword could use a little boost. I remember getting my pally to level where I could finally cast it and thinking what a let down.  Don't get me wrong the 1d6 divine damage is nice and the on hit dispel comes in handy here and there but overall not that amazing in my opinion.  The duration seems too short and the overall effect seems a little under-powered.  As far as the divine damage goes, Shifters get the better deal there as they can cast holy sword pre shift using something like Pale Justice and have their divine damage stick for a longer duration.  With a Paladin, your looking at a round a level.

I have ran a couple of Paladins through the module recently and these are most of my issues when playing PvM.  If we are talking about playing Paladins PvP, then that's a completely different conversation.

Great convo BTW, but on making a buff anti-dispellable, I think it is easy, by making it a supernatural buff or something like that anyway and that shouldn't create lag, IIRC. But I would be more up, if we decide to make certain buffs undispellable, by a percentage chance that goes up per level. Like for an example say, Blade Thirst is one of those anti-dispell spells, make it where its level times say 2.5, so when you cast your buff and your level 40, 40 x 2.5 would be 100 and that would make it 100% certain it is disdispellable, any levels less than that and you take a chance on casting it ungodly like. Other spells that are not so important or key could be less of a percantage chance, like just times 1 or 2 per level.