Isles of Purgatory Q&A session #4: Class Balancing

  First off an apology for having the Q&A later then expected, something important came up that had to be handled ASAP. Sorry for the inconvenience of it.


*****Warning*****

We wanted to keep leveling one level in a class to a minimum, meaning some benefits have been moved up in levels. Monks AC is an example of this. We will also be putting in auto fail on ones in. We have plans to put in paths for Monk and Barbarian, these are test paths at this time. If they manage to do well then we will be adding them for other classes as we update things. 


Barbarian:
The barbarians will get two paths. One has to do with throwing Axes the other has something to do with Ancestor shield, which is a spell shield. (Corruption will cover this better below. As I seemed to have missed this part.)

Bard:
We want to make bard more of a support class, so they get things to help out the people around them. We have rearranged a few thing on them. 

Cleric: 
Well the first thing we did was take it out back and shoot it in the knee cap. We took away their ability to use heavy armor, along with a few other things. There will also be a shift in the domains for them. 

Monks:
Monks will have a few paths, The standard one, a marshal which is DPS, and a spiritual Path. (Corruption will go over more details later.) 

Paladin:
Dispell on hit is being tweaked and later on, sometime after release, we will be putting in paths for them. After we see if the other two classes go well. 

Ranger: 
Special abilities are going into favored enemies. Some debuffs, on the enemies, when hit for example. They do get some spell casting, but it doesn't really do much. This will be looked at a little later when paths get put in. 

Rogues:
We've plans to add tricks, such as stun, blind, temporary concealment. and so on. These things to be done from stealth. Looking at trap feats, but problems with it is that it isn't going to be side specific, meaning you can hit allies. It is something we'll have to see how they function before saying for sure.

Wiz/Sorc:
Will be left alone for now, other then some tweaks to spells and such. In the future you might see more changes.  

Assasin:
They will be getting poison

Blackguard: 
Will be full BAB. (Corruption will add more on this later.) 

Purple Dragon Knight:
Might get reworked as a class based tank. Arolith was kind enough to give us a script that will help allow this. (Corruption can explain more below.) 

Harper Scout:
Will need work, but have no ideas right now. It might wait until after release to be fixed.

Pale Master:
Tweaks to crit immunity, as well as a possibility to change bonuses. 

Shadow Dancer:
HIPS will be moved to a later level to help prevent one level from being taken just for that. 

Shifter:
Will be getting love, sadly it will take a lot of time and will be getting it at a much later date. We want to do it right. 

CoT:
Will be getting some small tweaks and abilities moved but mostly unscathed. 


Arcane Archer:
Will be left as is for now. 


RDD:
Will see some shifts in what they get and when. Something to look at is a Dragon line, something other then Red, but it would come later. 


Druid: 
(Cough) Wasn't mentioned at all.... oops. So Corruption will have to go over that at a later date. 


Player Questions:

Phoosy -
What's your priority on implementing alternate class features, a la Cleric class can convert to something like D&D 3.5e Cloistered Cleric (no armor above light, simple weapons only no shield, better spellcasting + extra domain abilities)?

Or Arelith's handling of Warlock (Bard base) or Totem Druid (Druid hurr)

Looking into how they are handled, and we don’t know what they did with warlock (Refering to Arelith). Monk and barb. have different path. Getting everything on a basic level first then going from there with it. Testing monk and barb first then see if they work well then add more. Yes, there may be further alternative classes as long as they seem good. Other then the two mentioned won’t see much more until after release. We need to finish what we’ve got first. Then go from there. 


Aeztorm - 
How will the extra fighter feats be handled. It will be no question that custom feats will come with the server so how do you intend to balance out the fact that Fighter could potentially pick up a very unbalanced amount of feats in a pre 20 meta before other classes can take advantage of their own unique feats.

Corruption Overwhelming (admin) - 
Sure they get a lot of feats, but there's not a lot they can take that makes them super overpowered?

punching in howie - 
i dunno what the flavour of weapon amster is but are they meant to be good with lots of different weapons or just really good at one weapon

They are meant to be good at one weapon. 

That should conclude this conversation of Death and Dungeons if you have any questions or concerns on the topic feel free to ask below. Remember nothing is set in stone until the server comes out and even then it's flexible within reason.
Corruption should be coming in to finish putting stuff in that was missed in the post below. He will be able to add the actual number to bonuses and such so people can see them. 


Other Questions: 

punching in howie - 
is there some way we can implement a jump function so that i can do cool night elf backflips

Sinfar has a lot of emotes and things that can be used though out the game, which means IoP will have them. I do not believe that we have that one however. 


SteeleEidos - Yesterday at 7:04 PM

How will True Seeing work? I feel like that's kind of important for stealth builds to know.

(Corruptions words) "It's really dumb and we'd like to see buffs to stats." such as listen, search, and spot instead. Nothing slated for it at this very moment. 


Kittenfish - 
Brian, keep questions in chat.
Apodyopsis - 
wut why
Phoosy - 
For recording to forum
Apodyopsis -
well, it is a q&a done in a voice program lmao

Why is the question part of Q&A done in the chat and the answering part of the Q&A done in voice? The easy answer is to keep records for the forums. Some would say that it would be easier to due both one way or the other. The problem with doing all of them in one format over the other is that Chat tends to be filled up faster then the information can be given out. Questions can be asked faster then they can be answered in some cases. (Some of us type a hell of a lot slower then others.) Chat also has a habit of getting derailed faster with jokes, GIFs, and so on. So why not do it all verbally? Not everyone has a mic that works, or feels comfortable talking. There is also the problem of people talking over each other and nobody getting a word in edge wise. Also if we happen to miss someone asking a question, we wouldn't have anyway of knowing and catching it later. We also don't have a secretary to keep track of what is being said and keep a record of it. Questions would end up getting lost, and have to be repeated later. We thought this would be the easiest way to deal with those problems. A reminder that we've done something like this when we were making changes on Dread where everything was written out and it didn't work, and the first Q&A was mostly verbal and hard to get a decent record for that one. 


SteeleEidos - Yesterday at 7:16 PM

Much of what we're covering is directly affected by gear. What level of magical enhancements are we looking to see on IoP gear? Will Haste be on gear - perma or use/day/charge? What +Enhancement on weapons are we looking at? Will Greater Magic Weapon be changed at all?

We’d like to have the standard be around +3, with rare drops that can do stuff… Corruption needs to help with this one. 
As for haste on gear, looking at providing haste. Don’t like providing perma haste, and it need to find a nice balance between the two. Providing speed bust. Sprint feat is a possibility. We don't want clerics to have to take domain traveling. 




Phoosy -
In the singleplayer module series Rose of Eternity, they scripted in combination "skills" that triggered special effects if certain criteria were met. For example, if someone using Whirlwind attack had a Cure spell cast on them, the cure spell was "spread" across all allied targets in the range of the Whirlwind attack. This concept taken towards multiple types of combo feats/spells/skills, such as making it so that Dirty Fighting did extra damage to enemies that are under crowd control effects, or Healing Kits used on enemies who have a healing spell cast on them causes it to fortify the target vs. damage for a short period of time. Would systems like this be in consideration for launch?

Umm… something to be consider but not at launch. It would require heavy scripting and Corruption is the only one doing such things at this time. 

Phoosy-
Any changes to summons planned?


We will be looking at it later.


Nostalgia-
Not sure if this has been discussed elsewhere, and it's not entirely related to class balance, but has there been any thought on strong subraces with ECL? Also, epic level progression through years of single character dedication and extensive RP? Not to 40 necessarily but anything 20+?

We've thought of smaller ones, as it stands as of right now it’s for RP flavor not stats, but it could be a reward widget at some point. This is something to consider in a later update.

punching in howie - 
can i be autistic lawful and just go around talking about how the mage elites are trying to corrupt society

Yes, if you want to start a group of monks that believe that mages corrupt and spread chaos with magic, you are more then welcome to do such a thing. We encourage it, so long as it provides good RP. You also have to take in account that you have to obey the laws of the land you set up in. 


Locust - Yesterday at 7:43 PM

What are you going to do when someone complains you're not giving them attention (factions, housing, whatever)? Your intentions are good, but I doubt you can do everything.

Sometimes we can't be everywhere all the time. That is what the forums are for. You can make post of such things there, which won't be ignored since it is checked almost daily if not twice a day unless I'm . Most of the time you won't even know when a DM is on and watching you, this doesn't mean we're watching you do the naughty stuff and if a DM is caught doing stuff like this, they will be kicked off the team for miss conduct. This does mean however that sometimes you will get surprises. If you are out scouting the woods for stuff, a small group of bandits might show up to rob you. Things like that. As for factions, well if you have one (Rules pending) it is going to take times to get things like housing and such forth. These things take a lot of RP to get. If you are doing something like this odds are we're aware of it. 


Nostalgia - 
What came to mind was Fledglings vs a Elder. Previous server had a limit of 3 Elders on the server and required years of dedication to achieve.

Good question. If you wanted to be something like that, you’d have to show good roleplay and prove people willing to acknowledge you as that. The longer you are hear the more likely you are to achieve such things. Starting a Coven would be the first step, from there it would be being active and then getting ranks set up. We encourage such things as this. 


Phoosy-
Class question: expanding on the spell lists for Ranger, Blackguard, Paladin, etc...?

I don't think Corruption answered this one, however it is something to consider, wither on release is a different story. 


SteeleEidos-
Can rewards for excellent RP elevate a character's strength above what's otherwise obtainable in the game? For example, can DM rewards or Shards be used to make your character stronger (better gear, exclusive spells, additional base stats)? Or is the only strength affecting component of the game farmable (dungeons)?

Here is how this works. There will be artifact tear in the game. Standard items will have +3, an artifact will go up to +5 or 6 but it will have a down side. RP rewards, you could find such things but there are down side sometimes items are stolen or murdered. An example would be if a Paladin found an artifact sword and a group of evil doers decided that the sword need to be taken from them and  hidden. 

OnlyChoice - 
Will disarm drop weapons on the ground for anyone to pick up, or will it drop into the player's inventory?

Inventory.


Debo - 
what about racism
is racism banned??

IC racism can be played, but there may be consequences to those actions. Drow are a good example of a raciest class, and when played right it is fine. So long as the Racism stays between actual races and IC it shouldn't be to much of an issue. However OOC racism is not tolerated, at all. If you are unsure about the ability of people being able to separate the two, best not to play one. DM's will step in when needed. 



OnlyChoice - 
Can the forums vote to name your unborn child?
SteeleEidos - 
First tattoo, then?

No, and no.