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General Discussion / Re: Should Quest Areas Be Opened

« on: October 30, 2019, 03:59:42 pm »

To answer your question, ElvenStarr, people don't do the exploration areas because there's often very little to gain from doing them. Very few areas generate loot beyond the very small amount dropped from monsters. Orc Hills has chests with loot in them, but considering the challenge level of the area it isn't much. I can't think of any other examples of areas that have any kind of meaningful loot. After 15 monsters no longer award xp. The exploration markers were good for some areas but they aren't repeatable.

When dying loses you hours worth of time spent doing the quests you have access to, and that's assuming you get a raise or resurrection and aren't taking the full hit, there's no incentive to go out and engage these areas beyond doing them to experience the encounter. Many areas are a blast to check out, but once you've experienced them the imbalance of risk v. reward discourages going back.

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Netherese Library / Re: Research: Legal Inquiries and a couple related but random inquiries

« on: November 25, 2018, 07:25:17 pm »

Follow-up questions:

In regards to question 6 when punishment is to be kicked off of the edge of the Enclave, if the party had actually been able to fly or somehow survived the fall would their sentence have been considered served?


What is the typical format for these kinds of trials? Is there subpoena? Mandatory calling of witnesses? Cross-examination of witnesses? Opportunity to discredit written or spoken testimony by proving that the source is unreliable?



Are past contributions to the community taken into account when sentencing is given? Can leniency of a judge be expected if the accused is found guilty, but has been an exemplary citizen and contributor to the state?

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Feedback and Bugs / Re: The Spell Nerf/Buff please thread

« on: November 25, 2018, 08:10:31 am »

Why Tentacles need to be nerfed:

The spell is either a trivial nuisance to those who are prepared, or a death sentence for anyone who doesn't recognize the signs of the spell. It has one or two rounded countless lower level players who were unlucky enough to be in the same area as something that casts it, often times some random thing in a DM event. It isn't fun to die to, and for the people who usually die to it (low level characters) it isn't a viable option because the potions of it are short lasting and/or expensive unless they're already a caster that can put it up. I'm tired of watching the casting animation go off, knowing that higher level folks will wade through it relatively unscathed while it murders characters who haven't built to stand it or don't have the buffs to deal with it.

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Netherese Library / Research: Legal Inquiries and a couple related but random inquiries

« on: November 24, 2018, 12:30:39 am »

Arkelos and Aubrey visit the Library of Valstiir over the course of several days to pour over its wealth of information regarding Enclave dictum. Arkelos does the bulk of the reading, while the pixie Aubrey occasionally assists in the flipping of a page, eats candy, or points out that Arkelos makes a dumb face when he's reading something. The goal is to learn about statutes involving the charge of treason against an enclave as well as answer the following questions:

1) What prerequisites, if any, are required to act as an advocate for the accused?

2) What position is in charge of overseeing the trial of someone accused of a capital crime within the enclave?

3) What is required to be a recognized minister of the court within Valstiir?

4) Who determines the guilt or innocence of the accused in the instance of crimes against the state? (Tribunal? Single Judge? Jury?)

5) Out of the judges who preside over these cases, which of them has the highest recorded average of rulings in favor of accused traitors or against agents of House Dukarrus itself?

6) Are there any precedents for situations where a party was charged with treason within the Valstiir Enclave for not directly instigating war with the enclave, but rather committing an act of war against a foreign state and inciting hostilities? If so, what was the verdict?

7) Is there any legal recourse for members of House Dukarrus abusing the power of their position for personal gain?

8 ) Is solicitation by a legionnaire for bribes to drop charges legally punishable?

9) What is the balance in regards to burden of proof when a commoner is charged with a high crime by a legionnaire of Dukarrus? Does the court typically favor Dukarrus? Is the accused considered guilty until proven innocent? If so, how much proof is needed?

-------------------------

Unrelated to Legal issues (Likely asked of the clerk in the Dukarrus garrison on Valstiir and not at the library): Who is Legionnaire Tor Fensblood's direct superior?

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General Discussion / Re: Improved Expertise

« on: November 08, 2018, 11:06:37 am »

Could someone do a breakdown of where these metrics are coming from? AC bypassing 40 on an unarmored spellcaster without EMA seems a bit high without utilizing some really weird multiclass cheese that would kind of screw over the stat spread on a mostly pure caster. I'm not arguing against the fact that in bursty encounters mages can get pretty tanky, because they can, but nuking expertise persistence because of it is going to hurt melee builds in the long run. Obsessing over upkeeping expertise was not a fun taking experience and I'd rather let mages have that survivability instead of going back to the tedious and error-prone was expertise used to behave.

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Feedback and Bugs / Re: Should there be ways to get XP outside of DM Events from level 15 onwards?

« on: July 21, 2018, 01:49:57 am »

I personally don't care what the level cap is, but I dislike this 'soft-cap' 'hard-cap' stuff. Lower the level cap if you think it'll bring the server more in balance, just make it so that there's something to do at the top that rewards something, even if it's just enough xp to not delevel when you die or vanity stuff. People can define themselves IG through RP, they don't need superlevels and I don't like how those superlevels are only obtained through the arbitrary granting of xp via DMs. Same with PrCs. Set the limits however you like, but I think they should be obtainable or at least allowed to progress without a DM having to watch and okay every step.

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Netherese Library / Re: Research in Sword of the Lady Library

« on: June 20, 2018, 08:09:18 pm »

Kroznaks is present and speaks to verify Aquaria's authorization to ensure that she can pass by the knights on guard and introduces her to the Archivist with the request of assisting Aquaria with her research. (Spending prestige if needed)

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Feedback and Bugs / Re: Is the current Respawn and ressurection system to punishing?

« on: June 16, 2018, 01:52:53 am »

I'm genuinely happy that you can do all of those things and have a blast, Rose. Unfortunately from my experience that is not the typical sentiment.

15 isn't max level, and I was under the impression that 15 was soft cap. What's wrong with letting people get to a point that you say is possible and then let the 'truly exceptional' characters struggle up the ladder past that if they want to? If you're relying on character death to keep people at a certain level then why not just move the level cap and let super levels start from there? I don't understand what this aversion is to letting people get to soft cap.

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Feedback and Bugs / Re: Is the current Respawn and ressurection system to punishing?

« on: June 15, 2018, 10:50:51 pm »

Here is what I see happen a lot on server.

1) Person logs into game, does whatever little things they do to prepare for their gaming session, says hello to people with a bit of RP and feels like going out and engaging the game's content.

2) Person sends out proclamation or otherwise tries to rally people to go and do things, but there aren't enough people interested or not enough people online to form a group capable of withstanding most content. They decide not to do it right then because they have to do said adventure six times over to recover from the death of ONE of them. Screw going into that half-cocked.

3) They wait, try to find people to RP with, do some crafting, try to solo but realize they're taking awful risks and will probably die, RP or craft a bit until they realize that's all they do and they just want to do something else.

4) Get bored, don't feel like playing with themselves, log out. Repeat to step 1.

XP and character level aren't everything that define my character, I love to RP with people, but there's a point where we've literally RPed the ever living hell out of things and are left needing some kind of new development. There are also times when I don't have anyone to RP with so I'm literally just telling stories to myself and I do that enough in real life I don't need to do it in NwN too.

Once again I don't think anyone's suggesting we REMOVE the death penalty, just adjust it so it scales with game difficulty and level.

My suggestion would be (Current Level-1)*500 = XP Lost. This means everyone loses half what it took to get from their last level to their current level. Raise reduces 25 percent and Resurrection reduces by 50 percent. That means if you get a full resurrection you still lose 25% of a level.

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Feedback and Bugs / Re: Is the current Respawn and ressurection system to punishing?

« on: June 15, 2018, 06:46:53 pm »

Ever since I hit 15 I haven't died to anything save for things that were incredibly unfair (mid-DM event surprise implosion), bugs, and the one time very recently I suicided my character because I was having a RL emotional crisis and took it out on the game.

I used to RP build on this server until I realized that I was spending my entire time playing recovering xp from previous deaths. This was at LEVEL 8. Why did I keep dying? Because I wanted to play a goofy half-orc for the RP and went with a build that wasn't as popular because it seemed fun and within character theme. All it took was a stray fireball during a DM event, a careless spell from backline friendlies, or just looking at something with enough to-hit ALONE to tear through my not-bad but imperfectly built AC and it was right back to the grinder hoping I wouldn't die because of my choice to stay RPure.

I know how to powergame. I'm really good at it. I can enjoy it too but I also like playing goofy RP builds because those are fun too. I play to fit the game I'm in and was hoping that with Netheril I could bust out an old character that was sub-optimal but not awful build wise. Hope didn't work. I was frustrated, rebuilt for power and ever since it has worked. I never even played NwN until EE came out on steam, so I read the hell out of the wiki and looked for every possible edge I could find to get my numbers more buff. I don't even want to say how many hours played I have clocked but I can assure you that I am NOT an example of typical play.

The secret to maintaining higher levels? Don't die, don't take risks, and scrape the bottom of the barrel to accumulate as much stored power and advantage as you can. Every single combat I enter I am staring at my numbers, waiting for buffs to be replaced if they fall off my stack, looking at to-hit numbers, save DCs and alternating through different combat stances to optimize damage and AC balance. Even after all of that there is still a numerical cap to what you can and cannot take on. Retaining higher levels is NOT something I expect people to be able to do unless they've studied the game like I have, play religiously, and even then all it takes is one mistake to wipe away all of that. I can't even count how many times I've gotten to near death because I made a single error (like getting feared because Prot Evil dropped off and getting 10 consecutive fireballs thrown at me) and what for? 300 xp during a DM event? I lose 25 TIMES that assuming I get a full resurrection.

And then there are times you just lose. I have a screenshot of a battle log from the Oggron fight where I died in one round because there were three giants there with +38 to hit that weren't even the boss and crit for 115 damage. I ate that xp hit because it was a big battle despite WTFing the entire time.

TLDR: There will always be people who beat the odds, but that doesn't mean the odds are anywhere close to good. I got where I am because I game the system, am super lucky, and have ABSURD amounts of time to burn. I can do just fine in a game like this, but that is not and has not been the case for everyone else. Too much risk, not nearly enough reward.

People aren't asking for the removal of death penalty, just something that doesn't make you want to rage quit when you die to something meaningless or overstatted. I'm also talking about top end, not the bottom reduction that was 25 to 15% total xp loss. That helped lower levels, and was great, but it still scales awfully at the higher end when 5% of your TOTAL xp is like 6000

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Feedback and Bugs / Re: Is the current Respawn and ressurection system to punishing?

« on: June 14, 2018, 06:15:25 pm »

I'm not seeing a problem with this, since I think the only thing that changes in that equation is instead of spending the time you lost grinding trying to grind out more xp, you're spending it hopefully having meaningful interactions and rp with other people on server. Both are a time setback, but the temp loss would mean there isn't as much of a gap between the haves and have nots (characters who are built optimally versus not).

In the end it all comes down to time spent. I'd rather spend my time doing stuff like crafting or RPing with folks than going back out and having to grind it all back again.

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Feedback and Bugs / Re: Is the current Respawn and ressurection system to punishing?

« on: June 14, 2018, 05:45:33 pm »

I actually really like this idea. What if dying meant you took a penalty to levels for a set period of OOG time. Make it so that if you want to remove it before the duration is up you have to pay XP, otherwise you're out of the fight for a couple days.

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Journals & Backgrounds / Crisis of Faith (Snacks)

« on: June 13, 2018, 08:26:23 pm »

How does one heal heart of a broken land? How does one determine good and evil when faced with society that regards little of morality over progress? Many taught from birth what is right and what is wrong, what is success and what is failure. Does good or evil exist when bias lessons taught from birth exist? Kroznaks knows war. Was born in it, and society teach to aspire to be great at killing so one can survive and protect what is theirs. Anything yours if you can take, and great good can come from subjugate weaker peoples to make them strong.

Hate thinking about this. Convinced no right answer. Netheril is broken like other places broken. We fight and fight and fight and fight for what? We cannot save those who've been killed and all we do is prevent tide of undead from swallow us. Seen more wrong in last few months than ever in life. So much loss of life, and some of it not even act of enemy. Where is victory when it is obtained through defile the dead and sacrifice living? Why keep fighting for something so broken and rotten? All Kroznaks do is fight to live and keep alive society that no care about him. Bleed and broken against armies of horrors to protect them, but can see they still hate him when look into their eyes. Still know they spit when see him, and can hear them say 'savage' or call him pig-face while they bring whip against his friends.

Friends worth fighting for, but they grow and do more good than Kroznaks ever do. Kroznaks good at kill monsters, but not make law or change world, just kill. Does Selune need brute to kill and maim for her? Think not. Where is she when her most devout cannot even follow her decree? Knight-Captains cannot even see past their own prejudice, Pariah tainted by land's way of thinking too. Good people, but still broken, short of example they wish to be. Her light touches us, but it is very dark here.

No direction and no sight. So much war and death and pain that it is easy to lose meaning for it all. Witness so much horror that can do nothing about. Gain nothing, only prevent more losses. Zero-sum game. Watch people die because fear of death. Watch so much evil happen because we want to fight greater evil. Just stand there and do nothing? Fight in war where sacrifice meaningless? Wait for chance to die for nothing?


Kroznaks tired

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Journals & Backgrounds / Re: Blessed Armaments

« on: June 05, 2018, 12:00:44 am »

Reaver Isabeau led a mission to clear out the northern region of the goblin and orc marauders that had siezed land there. We chased them into the hills to a fortified cave network and set out to destroy their defenses. The battle was long and bloody, but by the end of it I'm confident they won't be moving on the land any time soon. I'll be asking for the ability to survey some of what we'd found there  since it appears to also have been used for mining. I'll continue looking regardless in the hopes that I get lucky.

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Journals & Backgrounds / Re: Blessed Armaments

« on: June 04, 2018, 11:51:21 pm »

After rallying a large group of adventurers we began the task of clearing out the orcs from the Great Mine. We started from the orc hills and worked our way into the mine from the main camp entrance. The orcs responded as they usually do, with a thousand arrows and a flurry of black tentacles (let it be known that I hate that spell), but after slaying hundreds and felling their leaders we were free to explore the inside. The top level closest to the Gillian River entrance seems to have a wing that's been blocked off with fallen boulders and sturdy looking doors. Excavating the rubble may take some time, several visits and likely some kind of explosive or magical passage.

Deeper within we found what looked to be a sealed door with a warning that hinted it linked with the underdark, likely want to keep that one sealed. Even deeper we found what looked to be a sealed door showing markings of a non-orcish nature. I suspect either ancient elves or dwarves put it up. I'm no scholar, though, so I might leave the task of finding that out to Celebrithrade, Aquaria, or someone else. I took a rubbing of it so that I could convey what I saw to anyone who wants to look into it.  I've decided that with their constant encroachment on our lands that the orcs need a defining push against their advances. I fear this will take the form of a mass extermination of their forces sometime in the future before they can rally enough warriors to push on the region. As for efforts to locate precious materials, I took several samples from some promising segments of the mine network and will be looking at them later.

Hopefully I find something.