Spellcraft

Remove the save versus spells bonus from Spellcraft?

Casters are nerfed pretty hard (with the exception of say, Mords), and the fact that most builds who have even 1 level of a class that has Spellcraft as a skill can get a +8 or more save bonus versus spells seems to me to strongly discourage anyone from building a DC caster of any kind.

Have a Fortitude score in the low 40's? Take Spellcraft, and you're now basically immune to a 49 DC Implode (excepting 1's, of course). Mediocre Reflex save? Take Spellcraft, and you can easily shrug off all of the versus Reflex damaging Wizard/Sorceror spells!

When about the best you can hope for is about a 45 DC on a 9th level spell, after taking at least 3 feats and sacrificing a ton of diversity in a build to dump all of its points into one attribute, it's kind of deflating that builds that already have decent saves can get a huge bonus from Spellcraft, just by taking 1 level of a class.

9/10 times I prefer to use melee builds, hands down. But I do think that PvP is a little too melee-focused sometimes. 2v2 teams are almost always strictly a bruiser melee build + a healer support build. That's smart strategy, for sure, but it's also really fucking boring after about the 3rd PoB fight that lasts an eternity from nigh-indestructible support builds (full-disclosure: I have a couple of these, and they are just as annoying as any other support build out there).

It would be much more interesting to be able to utilize caster clerics, caster druids, heck even caster bards a bit more. And I think that removing the save bonus from Spellcraft is a step in that direction.

I think most people already rarely rely on spellcraft only simply because you can't just run with like 44 fort when many str tanks have dev. Also it is still costly to take points in it and often there are better choices (maxing heal for example) that are more useful on the whole. Furthermore, as you said most DCs are really low already and I guess you can get enough saves with pretty much every build against most spells with a swap of rings.

So I don't think removing this bonus would change anything in practice really, although I agree with your general idea.

To make fights more interesting and avoid lolspam or stuff like mord/darkness, I think the dispell system should be modified so that dispelling (and then disabling) tanks becomes easier/less random for non mage casters, as well as giving them a way to get better DCs. Investing feats and points into abilities like charisma/wisdom/intelligence can be costly and makes your build fragile, even for clerics who seem to struggle to get high ac and disc atm. Maybe creating an item that gives bonus DCs to certain spells (there could be one for the spells of each school, although spells like implode don't really need a bonus) at the cost of a little disc or granting a little damage vulnerability could add some variety and make it more fun.

I also think that modifying some spells to give something more to druids or make some useless sorc spells useful (some enhancement ones or things like bigby (make it a disc check?)) for instance could be fun and add more variety to our little fights, on BoW for instance elemental swarm (lvl 9 druid spell) makes a ton of damage on a limited area with the bombardment animation around the druid if he manages to cast it three times successively. However I think that improving DCs and changing dispell are the best thing to do first in a place where there are already unlimited scrolls (like nep fom dw mb that can be reapplied anytime) and heal kits, it would be great and make teamwork more important.

Disabling darkness would be a start at least!

on a side note off topic : the server seems to be down atm

Back up, not sure what caused it to go down, but I got it back up again.

As for "smart dispelling" I had mentioned in a previous post somewhere(or perhaps only in-game) that this is entirely feasible if I can get a list of which spells are the most important.(otherwise it's based off what I consider important, which may or may not be in accordance to what others consider important).

Modifications for DCs ARE in the works, it's just something I haven't immediately done because it's immensely tedious. There are 302 spells in nwn(not all of which are normally accessible to players, but a good 200 are). Each spell has it's own file and I can't change them all at once(the first time, after that I can link them to a library and change them all retroactively.)

Something like highest to lowest:
True seeing
NEP
etc.

I have more in mind something still random, but depending more on the caster's caster levels for dispell spells other than mord.
What hexis posted in another thread seems fine to me, it's not complicated but a high level bard or cleric or druid with esf abj will have a fairer chance to dispell the effect that's blocking his dc spells. Knowing that the target can reapply it very quickly, having almost 100% chance to dispell the effect after the 1st or 2nd dispell seems fair to me.

Quote :

Dispels:
Dispeller vs Defender: 1d20 + Dispel_level + Caster_level + Focuses in Abjuration vs 4+(2 for each 5 Caster_levels) + Caster_level + 2 of Arcane Defense in Abjuration
Quantity of checks: Lesser Dispel - 2, Dispel - 3, Greater Dispelling - 6, Mordenkainen's Disjunction - 9
Lesser Dispel: -3 Spell Resistance for 3 rounds
Dispel: -5 Spell Resistance for 5 rounds
Greater Dispelling: -8 Spell Resistance for 8 rounds
Mordenkainen's Disjunction: -10 Spell Resistance for 10 rounds

lol I should change the font color for quotes, that grey is nasteh. Also how does this formula(of which I am using a modification of) help them to dispel the spells they particularly care about?

I may be wrong but isn't the current dispell system pretty much the classic nwn one, apart from bonuses to caster levels given by spell focuses in abjuration?
Giving priorities to what effect should be dispelled first then second etc. sounds interesting to me, but just like that it might be a bit op and complicated to use. This formula, or something close to that one or even different but in the same spirit, would give a high level caster almost a 100% chance of dispelling an effect when the check hits it, which means that after 2 or 3 dispells at most you'll surely have dispelled the effect you wanted to (most chars have like 12-15 effects up at max after they buff?), and once it's reapplied you'll be able to dispell it again immediately because the target won't have enough other effects up. It will also make lesser dispell and dispell magic more useful in a way. It will make greater dispelling useful against other casters as well, because with the current system you have a very low chance of dispelling anything from a high level caster, unless you use mords.

The current system is too random really, you can roll low four times in a row and never dispell the effect you wanted to. Basically this system is increasing the chance of dispelling an effect at the expense of only having a limited number of checks on the target's buffs. It doesn't hurt too much if the effects hit are randomly chosen because after one dispell the target will usually have a low enough number of effects still applied to be sure that the ones you need to dispell will be checked with a second dispell. Hope I'm making myself clear.

What can be added to make this dispell system more precise :
-Spells are for dispelling, not effects. Example: spell Improved Invisibility has two effects (concealment + invisibility).
-Such effect as Tahsa's Hideous Laugh, Blindness, Hold Monster, Bigby's Forceful Hand, Balagarn's Iron Horn, etc can not be dispelled.
-AoE Dispel does 2 dispelling checks to anyone in AoE.

Again, I guess this can be only an inspiration for another formula or the numbers be adjusted. But even if I haven't played here long enough to be sure that it's perfect and if I haven't seen in practice (Hexis has on cormyr), it seems nice to me.