Palemaster

So, the recent changes to Tough as Bone notwithstanding, Palemaster gets a lot of the benefits that the undead get (AC, crit/sneak or stun immune), and seem to suffer none of the penalties: you can't turn them, they don't take damage from spells like Sunburst/Sunbeam or Bless Weapon, etc. I propose that we change this a bit, because it seems unbalanced to me.

First, Palemasters should take damage from some spells that are specifically designed to damage undead. Bless Weapon, and Searing Light/Sunburst/Sunbeam are good examples. Palemasters should take the same amount of damage from these spells that undead do.

Additionally, Palemasters should be affected by Turn Undead, but not in the way undead typically are (being feared, for instance). Instead, they should be affected in the same way that Constructs are affected by being Turned by a cleric with Destruction Domain: they should take Divine damage of up to 40d3, depending on the Turn check.

None of these options entail Palemasters taking a huge amount of damage - but they may encourage some diversity in building and PvP, and encourage better team strategy.

I would be all for making PMs lose like 2 ac and 2 disc upon reaching lvl 10, and maybe disminish their healing ability (as well as for DDs whose bonus to heal is really too high imo). I still think bard PMs should be really solid and with more people playing they are due to be an essential part of team strategy; at least they'd be more killable, I guess that they wouldn't outheal three tanks bashing on them forever.

Of course in a 2v2 they are quickly boring atm. What about removing the bonus to heal from bard song if you have 10 PM levels?

I'm relatively neutral here, so whichever option works the most is good with me, that being said removing AC from Pale Master actually damages regular melee palemasters more then supports by a colossal degree.(A bard/pm could care less about AC 90% of the time, but a barb/pm is hurting from it a lot).

If the goal here is to reduce healing capability to the point a bard/pm cannot survive 3 bashers hitting it, then the best possible outcome is most likely to set a hard-cap on heal of roughly 50 heal skill. It's just barely enough to survive 2 bashers if they miss more then hit.

Highv Priest wrote:

I'm relatively neutral here, so whichever option works the most is good with me, that being said removing AC from Pale Master actually damages regular melee palemasters more then supports by a colossal degree.(A bard/pm could care less about AC 90% of the time, but a barb/pm is hurting from it a lot).

If the goal here is to reduce healing capability to the point a bard/pm cannot survive 3 bashers hitting it, then the best possible outcome is most likely to set a hard-cap on heal of roughly 50 heal skill. It's just barely enough to survive 2 bashers if they miss more then hit.

As the proud owner of a Barb/Bard/Pm, I agree that nerfing AC for PM's would be hurtful for some melee builds and not hurt support pm bards much.  In fact, my 67ac pm support bard WANTS you to hit it.  It has really good DR, and unless you've got Silence, Wounding Whispers will hurt you.  Heck, I use that thing to tank some bosses and kill them with Whispers.

For your second point, I also think that some kind of hard-cap on Heal skill or limiting the amount of heal kits would be good.  I agree with Lisztomania that DWD's have a bit too much of a bonus to Heal skill as well.

But the reasons why I suggested that certain spells be changed to damage PM's are still valid: they have many of the benefits that undead get, but absolutely none of the drawbacks.  

Simple logic tells me that this is an imbalance.

And I think the issue is more involved than just bashing a PM to death.  Just thinking of the problem of nigh un-killable PM support builds in those terms reveals a bias toward melee.  Should ganking a PM support build with 2 or 3 bashers be the only option?

Why not explore spell and special-ability related solutions, too?  Let PM's have their high AC.  Let bashers try to beat them into the ground with only moderate success.  But also maybe let casters step in to contribute some damage, too.  And by casters, I mean classes other than something like a 38 Sor/Wiz spamming IGMS.

Purple isn't that much better for quotes highv haha

I just consider PM as a quite overpowered class in nwn, to gain 6 AC and immunity to sneaks/crits for just 10 levels is a bit insane, as well as gaining access to epic spells and 4 more AC for just 6 more levels. Of course the melee STR PMs aren't that good, but apart from bard you can do some really annoying builds with a lot of ac, just like cleric pm healer. Also i haven't tested any but i think dex PMs melees, or hell I think even AAs could get also great defense without sacrificing too much.
However I agree that -2 AC might penalize too much some builds which need this AC while the overpowered ones like bard PMs support wouldn't really suffer from it.

Giving more damage to certain spells against PMs is probably more appropriate.
A cap at 50 for heal is a bit too restrictive though I think, if they want to take sf and esf heal or even some wisdom they should be allowed to heal for more as it's part of their build, they just shouldn't be able to heal more effectively than clerics do. If you remove the bonus to heal from bard song for 10+ PMs, the best they could hope for is 60-65, which seems ok to me. I don't think they can survive that long with that healing capacity if they face two melees with reasonable damage, especially if they are busy reapplying scrolls, trying to heal teammates, curse enemies, etc.

Again I don't have that much experience yet on this server about pvp (with bigger numbers especially) so I don't know what others think. Yet I agree that PMs could suffer a little nerf of this kind (like more dmg vulnerability and/or a limited heal skill).

edit : also bards being able to self-curse sounds really stupid to me. I'd like also full pvp curse but meh I guess that doesn't really fit this server.
I think our little fights tonight and particularly the way I survived at near death on a DD just by double healing with a bard pm at my side against three melees before killing them shows that DDs really need to have their heal bonus deleted and bards' theirs dismisnished. That or limiting the amount of heal kits usable between rests, something like 15-20 per char ?

with new dispel system and DC's going in I think pm's are going to get wrecked pretty hard. already having their immune to stun removed will prove very debilitating when those two changes go in. I think DD's should have their bonus heal skill removed and bards should not receive heal bonus if they have 10+ pm levels.