Discord
Changelog
Thanks for the specific examples to help guide the conversation Pleiade.
I think there's little to no problem with any of the basic classes, except maybe Bard, but I know people play them so maybe that's more my personal prejudice. No offense intended Karilynn :)
I see more problems with PrCs. The 3 most popular are WM, RDD, and SD. The benefits for each are simple to understand and very valuable. WMs kick ass, but it takes a while to get the full benefit of the class (WM7 specifically), so I don't think it's unbalanced. The same thing applies to RDD, the benefits are gained across all 10 RDD levels, plus there's that pesky notoriety requirement, so again... not overpowered. SD probably is a bit unbalanced in that while you have a notoriety requirement, you only have to take one level of SD to get the best feature of the class. Maybe we should change that and they should only get HiPS at a higher level. Though maybe add more skills or skill points to the class to counterbalance that?
I think there are problems with CoT (DC), PDK, and DD PrCs, foremost of which is that they feel way too specific. Like someone else came up with a character conception and I'd be stuck playing it. Frankly I've never investigated them and don't know much about them.
For me though there were two classes that immediately sprang to mind when I read Thayan's original post, Blackguard and Assassin. I'll talk about each separately, but they are both classes that I have considered playing but each time when I've taken a close look at the class features I've kind of come away feeling... meh. They just both feel underpowered/underfeatured compared to other more popular classes. Even if nothing comes of it I like that this conversation got me to take a closer look at doing some deeper comparisons.
So, I'll try to put the "meh" feeling into words as best I can. I consider my play style a little, but not too powergamey, but I'm going to have to talk about the problems I see in a powergamey way here, sorry.
Blackguard - Here's the description of the class: "A blackguard epitomizes evil. They are nothing short of a mortal fiend, a black knight with the foulest sort of reputation. Many refer to blackguards as anti-paladins due to their completely evil nature. A blackguard is an evil villain of the first order, equivalent in power to the righteous paladin, but devoted to the powers of darkness."
I love the idea of the blackguard, especially in Thay but I've never played one here. Why? Because the actuality doesn't really match that description. The idea is really cool but the implementation strikes me as not so great. They're one of only two classes in Thay that get to use poisons, but I've never used poisons so I can't say how good that is. I'd love to hear opinions on that...
Other than that they get some anti-paladin-ish abilities like Smite Good and undead summoning and a few spell-like abilities that aren't really anything to shout about. Looking at the summons, at 3rd level they get to summon a ghast. But that means they're at least 9th level, assuming all previous levels are fighter. The ghast is AC 21, 60hp http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Ghast_(summon) and how long is that likely to last or how much help is it going to be against the creatures you meet at 9th level? It feels underpowered (though admittedly I haven't done a close comparison of that with other classes). BGs get a few spell-like abilities, but paladins get spells up to 4th level. BGs also get some minor sneak attack damage, but since they're pretty likely to be the tank in a party or definitely the tank when soloing, how often will those be used?
To me the problem with the blackguard class is that it's got some good individual features, but they're very specific and don't seem to hang together well. If the existing features and some new ones could be made into BG specific feats so you could customize your BG how you like, that would be amazing.
Some specific ideas:
* Feel free to drop the sneak attacks or make that a BG chooseable feat.
* Bump up the power of the summons or somehow include both BG levels and levels prior to BG in the calc of how powerful the summons are (i.e. even as a fighter you were honing your evil powers)
* Give them actual spell-casting powers like Paladins get
* More/better spell-like abilities
* Give them a sparkly special snowflake feature at high BG levels like the glowing red eyes or maybe an aura of darkness. This could be visual-only or have some actual effect.
Give the class just a couple of those and I'd be first in line to play a blackguard. I hope this is useful. I'll finish this for now and do some more thinking about my problems with assassin.
Oh, another point about Bg... why are Hide 5 and Cleave part of the requirements for the class? Hide is useless if based off a fighter, Cleave is very likely useless if based off anything else.
The requirements should be: Any Evil, Cha 10+ (?), worship of an evil deity, no changing deity or become Fallen (Saved? Redeemed? Wimpy?)
I think there's little to no problem with any of the basic classes, except maybe Bard, but I know people play them so maybe that's more my personal prejudice. No offense intended Karilynn :)
I see more problems with PrCs. The 3 most popular are WM, RDD, and SD. The benefits for each are simple to understand and very valuable. WMs kick ass, but it takes a while to get the full benefit of the class (WM7 specifically), so I don't think it's unbalanced. The same thing applies to RDD, the benefits are gained across all 10 RDD levels, plus there's that pesky notoriety requirement, so again... not overpowered. SD probably is a bit unbalanced in that while you have a notoriety requirement, you only have to take one level of SD to get the best feature of the class. Maybe we should change that and they should only get HiPS at a higher level. Though maybe add more skills or skill points to the class to counterbalance that?
I think there are problems with CoT (DC), PDK, and DD PrCs, foremost of which is that they feel way too specific. Like someone else came up with a character conception and I'd be stuck playing it. Frankly I've never investigated them and don't know much about them.
For me though there were two classes that immediately sprang to mind when I read Thayan's original post, Blackguard and Assassin. I'll talk about each separately, but they are both classes that I have considered playing but each time when I've taken a close look at the class features I've kind of come away feeling... meh. They just both feel underpowered/underfeatured compared to other more popular classes. Even if nothing comes of it I like that this conversation got me to take a closer look at doing some deeper comparisons.
So, I'll try to put the "meh" feeling into words as best I can. I consider my play style a little, but not too powergamey, but I'm going to have to talk about the problems I see in a powergamey way here, sorry.
Blackguard - Here's the description of the class: "A blackguard epitomizes evil. They are nothing short of a mortal fiend, a black knight with the foulest sort of reputation. Many refer to blackguards as anti-paladins due to their completely evil nature. A blackguard is an evil villain of the first order, equivalent in power to the righteous paladin, but devoted to the powers of darkness."
I love the idea of the blackguard, especially in Thay but I've never played one here. Why? Because the actuality doesn't really match that description. The idea is really cool but the implementation strikes me as not so great. They're one of only two classes in Thay that get to use poisons, but I've never used poisons so I can't say how good that is. I'd love to hear opinions on that...
Other than that they get some anti-paladin-ish abilities like Smite Good and undead summoning and a few spell-like abilities that aren't really anything to shout about. Looking at the summons, at 3rd level they get to summon a ghast. But that means they're at least 9th level, assuming all previous levels are fighter. The ghast is AC 21, 60hp http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Ghast_(summon) and how long is that likely to last or how much help is it going to be against the creatures you meet at 9th level? It feels underpowered (though admittedly I haven't done a close comparison of that with other classes). BGs get a few spell-like abilities, but paladins get spells up to 4th level. BGs also get some minor sneak attack damage, but since they're pretty likely to be the tank in a party or definitely the tank when soloing, how often will those be used?
To me the problem with the blackguard class is that it's got some good individual features, but they're very specific and don't seem to hang together well. If the existing features and some new ones could be made into BG specific feats so you could customize your BG how you like, that would be amazing.
Some specific ideas:
* Feel free to drop the sneak attacks or make that a BG chooseable feat.
* Bump up the power of the summons or somehow include both BG levels and levels prior to BG in the calc of how powerful the summons are (i.e. even as a fighter you were honing your evil powers)
* Give them actual spell-casting powers like Paladins get
* More/better spell-like abilities
* Give them a sparkly special snowflake feature at high BG levels like the glowing red eyes or maybe an aura of darkness. This could be visual-only or have some actual effect.
Give the class just a couple of those and I'd be first in line to play a blackguard. I hope this is useful. I'll finish this for now and do some more thinking about my problems with assassin.
Oh, another point about Bg... why are Hide 5 and Cleave part of the requirements for the class? Hide is useless if based off a fighter, Cleave is very likely useless if based off anything else.
The requirements should be: Any Evil, Cha 10+ (?), worship of an evil deity, no changing deity or become Fallen (Saved? Redeemed? Wimpy?)