Fantastic!

Okay, I think I finally managed to make the last entirely new spell work properly, so here it is:



This spell should be more useful to people playing on Insane, as it should prevent chunking in most situations, however it can also help in case of an unexpected ADHW or Dragon Breath.

So "Death proof" (?).

Does this work with CC'd ADHW trigger? They count as 3 separate hits, right?

Something like that however it protects only from "hits" which means you need to take damage, stuff like PW:kill should still make the character dead.


Yup, that's 3 different hits.

a few suggestions, from my notes:

Give Edwin the equivalent item to the "Robe of Eloquence", with a little bit limited minuses compared to the original RoE. It would give the possibility for the player to have a 2nd full mage that has different powers than the primary arcane spellcaster (who has most likely Vecna/MotA + max casting time bonuses). Since Edwin doesn't get RvE, can't wear AoP nor can he cast Foreknowledge, he's stuck without casting time bonuses. The ability to have constant aura clensing would make him unique and a different caster than the Necromancers / Sorcerer's in the game. Also, without casting time bonuses the constant aura clensing wouldn't be OP. It would be very powerful without being completely different. Me thinks.(And tweak blessings for Edwin).

The C/M is one of my favorite characters in the vanilla game. I would love a Kit that makes the C/M a viable choice in the game. Ideally a character that should be effective spellcaster and would have usability in combat as well would be awesome. Drawbacks could include things like not being able to cast some very common beneficial divine spells and some very common high level arcane spells. That together with minuses in stats and as I proposed previously. Also I think there's a lot of unused potential in the magical weapons spells (Flame Blade, Spiritual Hammer, Phantom Blade + Black Blade of Disaster). One of the drawbacks could be to not be able use anything else than magically created weapons. This would be be yet again something a lot out of the ordinary, a little bit

Make spiritual hammer to be upgradeable until +5, with a few specific alterations like one could fo lightning damage and another one acid damage. Or something like that.

An interesting and unique idea. Originally I wanted to introduce an improvement for Edwin's amulet, but this is something that should also be considered.


Let me ask you a question guys and girls - what changes to Thieves (apart from Swashbucklers) would you like to see? What could be done to make them useful in IA? What should be the fields in which they excel and what should be their weaknesses?

A few quite "light" ideas. Not thought through, just concepts .

- Let Rogues have UAI
- Add 3* to dual wielding style for all rogues.
- Improve Assassin's "special" powers per level
* gets poison weapon from the start
*at 12th poison / slow
*at 16th poison / slow / slivers (slivers last for a number of rounds)
*at 20th then poison / slivers / stun
*at 26th poison / stun / slivers / elemental damage (continuous for a number of rounds)
- improve "avoid death", or create "improved avoid death" (doubles amount of hp's, gives immunities similar to berkserking, keeps hp's at 1 or so)
- improve alchemy HLA for rogue, so it creates unique rogue-specific potions
- give rogue scribe scrolls HLA, where scribed scrolls are useful ones (say stoneskins (non dispellable), GOI's, remove magic (can only be cast by a specialist mage or rogue with UAI), PFMW, TT and so on)
- give a HLA to Rogues that is "absolute immunity"

Thank you for the answer! And what are your thoughts on that part?

Things like damage, protections, tankiness, etc

Rogues should sort of fit the "jack of all trades and master of none" - slot (that proverb continues though with "but oftentimes better than a master of one")

Wouldn't those proposed changes make rogues sort of generalists, that they have some uses in combat while having a few special powers? And the ability to cast spells from scrolls is huge (and no-one uses that at the moment).

I mean, with the proposed changes, they could get

-with dual-wielding get 6-8 APR under ih? (decent thac0 with TT as well)
-no additional damage modifiers (well, swashbuckler has that already). good enough I think already.
-can tank in later stages for they can skin up (+ can generate those scrolls)
-they have a few special powers, like the ability to breach Ancient Dragon, even though they are not mages. Their dispel would be really powerful, really earl as well.
-can escape from combat with pfmw / absolute immunity if needed
-assassin has special powers that make real damage
-improved avoid death with berserking like immunities would be unique & very powerful
=> oh and Assasin's should get Thac0 bonus as well as increased backstabbing modifier. This would make their backstabbing very useful against some foes.

Would play completely different than the other classes in the game. Not really anywhere near on par with a fighter while fighting but very versatile and useful still. And in case of the Assasin, the backstabbing should do real damage. No other class has that, so it's very unique I think.

Edit:

For different thief classes:

Assasin's get additional superpowers regarding backstabbing when it hits. So it does real damage and really hurts. The side effect is ofc. that backstabbing is useless against a number of foes.
Bounty Hunter, add a few hit types, instead of "poison weapon", they could have "dispel on hit" -> so it would dispel protections on hit. And perhaps 2 other hit types, maybe "maze" on hit or so?
Shadow Dancer, gets additional bonuses while hiding in shadows and has an effect that helps with reaching "invisibility". Shadow dancer could also get a hla that has SI:Divination (or so).

The ability to cast from scrolls is amazing and allows for many different approaches to some battles, that's for sure. However that flavor comes also from scarcity of the resources. If we allow Thieves to scribe infinite amounts of powerful scrolls, then even if they are the only ones who can use them, it becomes just another buff/prebuff for every fight. Also finding those powerful scrolls on enemies (which usually means you have to find a way to defeat them before they can use those scrolls) or in chests won't really be satisfying. We can increase the amount of some scrolls in some places, most notably in stores, to ensure that people who want to rely heavily on those scrolls do have a possibility to use them, but the scrolls should still be considered consumables.

All other protective abilities should also be justified and preferably not overlap with the ones we have. So if a Thief can cast AI from a scroll, then he doesn't need another ability that works similarly.

Thieves have really been neglected and down powered severely. Do you or anyone else knows some encounter or enemies, that can be beaten significantly easier by having an Assassin that can backstab? I think it's a bit similar with poison abilities/spells... And what about traps?

I get that. However, I would argue that the Rogue classes are competing against some extremely powerful characters in the game as in Hexxat and the Kensai/Thief dual, which both are uber powerful, if one is playing with a Rogue in the party. And Rogues, if only minor changes are implemented, do not have any superpowers and it would be very difficult to find any grounds for choosing a rogue outside K/T or Hexxat. So powers implemented should be on par with those characters, a difficult balancing act I think. The ability to scribe useful scrolls would be one way. But ofc. a variety of other powers could be implemented to make the Rogue more powerful.

But I just have no idea what they could be, as Rogues should not be that much developed towards fighters (there's the Swashbuckler for that already). So how should the rest of the Rogues classes play to be useful - this is very difficult.

Some other concepts..:

- Could Rogues gain magic resistance? (Bounty Hunter perhaps?)
- how about undispelable SI:Divination(which is named to something else, that would fit the class description I think)
- is there a way of supercharging the "detect illusion" - skill?
- could the rogues gain something like "field of dark magic" as a HLA?
- Could the rogues be granted some of the already removed super powerful mage spells as abilities? Simulacrum, Skull Trap(?) (edit: the shadow dancer seems to have simulacrum-alike ability by default in the vanilla game)
- How about providing a missile weapon that does crushing damage instead of missile damage?
- Or Rogues gaining an ability that brings a plethora of different immunities?
(Edit: there's actually a few nice HLA's here http://avenger981.github.io/doc/doc/rr_cor...lity_revisions)



Yup.



Well ofc the fihts against humans are easier with backstabbing, or at least can be - there's a variety of them through the game. Some notable ones I think are Samia, Shade Lord (I think), Gromnir, all of the Assasin-fights etc...I have no idea about the traps . I think they don't fit IA's concept overall that well.

The two examples you mentioned are a bit extreme. Hexxat's item has been nerfed to lower that OP-ness a bit and Kensai/Thief probably needs a lot of nurturing in the middle part.

You are definitely right pointing out that the changes done to Thieves need to be far more drastic that what I've done to Clerics to incentivise people to use them. I do have many ideas, most of which have never been used anywhere else, to my knowledge, but bringing them to live is a humongous effort and we will definitely need to focus on other stuff first. Btw, if we implement those changes at some point, then let's say that Thief kits: Assassin, Bounty Hunter and Shadowdancer should become as good of a choice as Swashbuckler (though with different playstyles), but any fight involving 2 or more Thieves will become a real nightmare to players, if all those abilities will become available to the enemies


Well, they do in fact. We have Resist Magic HLA available to all Thieves + all evil Thieves can equip Human Skin to get 20% MR

This definitely sounds like something that Shadowdancer could get at some point.


To my knowledge - no. But we have some ideas for a major rework to some other thieving skills.

What exactly do you mean? I don't remember such skill/spell.


I don't think that Critto touched Shadowdancer at all, so this kit still has stuff that is usually not present in IA, like Simulacrum or Time Stop ability and I don't think it's ever been tested. The kit definitely has some potential that could be explored once we start working on Thieves.

It's been done in IWD2 and such small changes could bring more diversity to the playthrough and party composition for sure. We do have some ideas that could reintroduce ranged weaponry to the game, but sadly we have too many ideas and too little time, so we have to prioritize our tasks.


They'd need to be justified for sure. If you have any ideas, then go ahead When I think of Thieves the first thing that comes to my mind is nimbleness and very high dexterity, so one of the ideas that I have (just an idea, you can tell me what you think of it) is some kind of "Extreme Reflexes" HLA, that would basically grant 2 layers of stone skin per round for 1 turn, the justification is that pushing their senses to the maximum, the Thief can avoid some physical attacks directed at him/her.


A very good source of inspiration, thank you!

I really like the flavour of these. How do you feel about making some of them available to paladins as HLAs?


For me, the unique aspects of the thief are:

• Great at avoiding hits for a short period of time, but bad at protecting allies or tanking. Giving them an ability that gives 100% physical resistance for a round may work, as it will protect them for a brief period and also make the AI targeting logic prioritize other targets instead.
• Good at adapting to the enemy to target their weakness/negate their strengths, bad at tackling generalist enemies. I like the idea of giving them an ability similar to protector rangers that lets them choose one of a subset of enemies to counter.
• Good at fighting in groups, bad at fighting solo. I don't know if it would be possible in the engine, but this could take the form of adding a damage buff (or debuffing enemies) if the thief is standing near an ally.
• Best at battlefield mobility. I don't know how a payoff for battlefield mobility would be set up.
• Strong with ranged weaponry. I know that it is possible to define melee weapons as having a range, but I don't know if it's defined for the whole weapon class or if it can be done at a more granular level, but if the thief can use melee weapons at a short range (kind of like how two-handed weapons have a slightly longer range than one-handed) then it would provide a unique offensive angle.
• Strong against living enemies, bad against undead/golems. It is possible to give bonuses based on the enemy type, but that feels clunky. Given the number of golems in IA, I would be reluctant to give too harsh penalties against golems.
• Good at poisons and debilitating the enemy. Being able to disable an enemy's regeneration would be a good way of implementing this without making other sources of poison damage a problem.

If you like them, then I encourage you to play the new v6.6 if you have enough time for that and please let us know how useful they are, as I am pretty sure (from all other comments that we got) that there's still plenty to improve and rework!


I wouldn't mind that, their abilities are kinda similar, with Paladins being more melee focused and Clerics casting more spells, so it would make sense. However Paladins are generally usable in IA, not powerful by any means, but they have their place in some party compositions. Especially Keldorn with his new upgraded armor!

In general that's a nice idea, do you have any specific details in mind? We wouldn't like to make it too similar to Protector's prepare ability.


Well technically it should be possible, as there are effects that are based on proximity, however I am not sure about the rationale for such buffs/debuffs.

Well, Thieves and especially Shadowdancers could get some + movement speed when hidden in shadows and I even thought of a skill that would allow them to teleport, when they're hidden (just came up with a potential name for that skill - One with the shadows). But I am not sure if it'd be helpful, or just a flavor ability. Or maybe you mean something else by "battlefield mobility"?


As you probably know, ranged weapons are currently nerfed heavily in IA and even when we bring them back, we would like to specify only a few kits/classes that would really be able to use them effectively. One of such kits could be Bounty Hunter, but Assassins and Shadowdancers (and Swashies for that matter) seem like more of a close-combat fighters with their abilities.

Each weapon has its specific range, that unfortunately can't be changed. Creating some weapons with increasing range is how the 6.6v version of Seeking Sword works. If you want, you can even make a IWDII version of Mordenkainen Sword, which creates a sword that can be used for ranged attacks, just like a bow or something, but changing that range through some spells/effects is impossible.


I am not sure that introducing a class/kit that can't do much to the most powerful and the most frequent enemies in IA is a good idea, though it certainly makes sense, that Thieves and especially Assassins should be deadly against living creatures.


This is a brilliant idea! I am not sure how doable it is in Infinity Engine, but your suggestion opened my eyes to some new interesting ideas, that definitely CAN be implemented


In general this is how I see all Thief kits:
1. Swash - very powerful melee combatant, closest to standard Fighter, 2 weapons, high damage and exceptionally high AC, very limited thieving experience
2. Assassin - capable of dealing the highest damage, fast and mobile, but kinda squishy, uses 1 weapon style for maximum effectiveness, focused on hiding in shadows and backstabbing
3. Bounty Hunter - ranged combatant, mainly focused on short bows, throwing weapons and (reworked) traps, lower damage in general, but safer playstyle, focused on traps setting and disarming
4. Shadowdancer - here I have some problems with making him distinct from Assassin, as they both use Hide in Shadows extensively and fight in melee, in general I see Shadowdancer as a bit more "magical" kit, that could have more personal buffs and enemy debuffs, but definitely without things like time stop...

It's a bit tricky, as the protector is already negating the unique abilities of a lot of the enemies. Some thoughts:

• Choose a damage type, gain undispellable protection from that type of damage
• Choose a saving throw type, gain an undispellable bonus to those saving throws
• Have one of thief/protector affect themselves and another affect an ally
• Poisons, detailed at the end of this post

The rationale would come mostly from sneak attack introduced in later editions of dnd - if the enemy is distracted by an ally, it makes them less able to protect themselves from the thief.

I do mean that, but the problem is giving the player a reason to use those abilities - the resistance to ranged damage coupled with the regeneration that a lot of IA enemies have mean that spending your time moving around instead of attacking is going to cost a lot of damage output. Reworked traps would probably be a great way of doing this, but how to rework traps would probably be its own conversation.


I agree. I wouldn't want to give them any explicit penalties against golems, but would prefer giving them bonuses that are less useful against golems. If the blocking of regeneration is possible within the engine, that would be a great solution.



I mostly agree, my personal interpretations:

• Swashbuckler - Highest APR, highest DPS when not in a backstab/sneak attack situation. Does not have any focus on countering enemy-specific abilities.
• Assassin - Highest damager per hit, lowest APR. Highest DPS when in a backstab/sneak attack situation. Has a focus on countering enemy-specific abilities.
• Bounty Hunter - Lower damage with weapons, but higher damage when traps are factored in. Has a focus on countering enemy-specific abilities. Has scouting abilities (similar to farsight).
• Shadowdancer - Highest evasiveness and survivability. Lower damage with weapons, but provides a lot of party support and buffs/debuffs.

Another potential way to give a thief a bonus that would make them feel unique would be by reworking the poison mechanic - give them abilities that function like the ghoul touch line of spells that on hit apply a saveless penalty to the enemy. Making them saveless would make them a very strong ability, but given the weakness of the rest of the thief it can probably be done in a balanced way. it would also help the thief by giving it a unique attack type that feels very different to the other classes. Some potential examples:

• Spellpiercer poison - On hit, dispel the enemy at a level bonus (similar to the inquisitor)
• Spellplague poison - On hit, give the enemy a penalty of increased casting time on their spells
• Dragonbane poison - On hit, prevent an enemy dragon from using Dragon's Breath or Dragon Fear (with similar poisons for other enemy types)
• Lethargy poison - On hit, slow the enemy
• Shieldshatter poison - On hit, give the enemy a penalty to AC
• Lifesteal poison - On hit, give the enemy a fireshield-like ability that will heal attackers instead of damaging them

Such discussions are really stimulating to my brain. I don't want to spoil anything, or give hope for something that won't be doable/balanced, but I think that your suggestions lead me to a very interesting abiility, that could potentially be useful in very creative and strategic ways


If you have any thoughts on that topic that you'd like to share, then feel free to do that! We are still not sure what to do about traps...


If you've read Pekkae's v6.6 journal, then you might be aware of the fact, that nothing beats Swashbucklers in terms of survivability and evasiveness. But that buff/debuff part is almost limitless, as there are so many ways that we can use shadows without making it illogical.



Even more nice ideas, I am really starting to believe, that Thieves can be brought back to IA and shine once more, plus the abilities of each kit are vastly different, unlike those of Cleric kits.

Currently there is a precedent in the game - the spell Agannazar's Scorcher allows you to move to caster to move one end of the ray and "clothesline" enemies in a mob - I'm a big fan of this in BG1, where a wand of fire charge can do 12d6 party friendly damage. If similar abilities could be created, it could be a great way for rogues to leverage mobility and increase damage output in non-attacking ways.


A disclaimer here - Although I have played with thieves in IA, it is only to use them as a multi/dual class to gain access to UAI, so I don't have first hand experience with trying out traps. I am going off the wiki for the effects of the traps, so if they've been changed in IA I won't be aware of it.

Currently in the game, there are three categories of traps:

• Regular thief snares
• Bounty hunter special snares
• HLA traps

Regular thief snares are mostly useless. The main form of damage is missile damage, which any enemy that matters in IA is immune to. At higher levels there is poison/fire damage, which enemies that aren't immune to will heavily resist. The highest level has an insta-slay, but it gives the enemy a save vs death at +4 bonus which means that every threatening enemy will pass (even if they weren't immune to insta death).

Bounty hunter special snares are similar, but with less missile damage and more spell effects. Ironically, the most powerful of the bounty hunter special snares by far is the 1st level one, as that has the biggest save penalty to avoid debuff.

The HLA traps are spike, exploding and time. The time trap is probably impossible to have in the game and be balanced, I fully expect it to get the chopping block. The exploding trap is functionally equivalent to fireball (10d6 fire damage, save for half), and the spike trap is a better version of ADHW (20d6 instead of 20d8, but no save allowed). Unless it's a specific fight that explicitly favours fire damage over magic damage (eg ice golem, chromatic demon) then the spike trap is the only trap worth talking about.

Currently, the best way to use traps is to set five spike traps in the same spot, then lure an enemy into the spot to be splatted by 100d6 magical damage - even for IA enemies, that has a good chance of taking one of them out.

Some ideas on what direction to take traps in the future:

Introduce a restriction on how frequently traps can be triggered. Having a lot of burst damage is a very tricky thing to balance around. If there were a restriction that only one trap per round could be triggered (or maybe that only the first trap each round to trigger does anything) then it would allow for traps to be individually powerful while limiting the burst potential. It would also introduce more strategy around long battles, where the party can retreat from one line of traps to another to get a second wind in a battle.

Make traps inflict saveless debuffs. Similar to the poisoning I suggested in the previous post, I feel that saveless debuffs could be a large part of the thief class identity and give them a unique feeling playstyle. It can also avoid the problems inherent to stacking traps in a single spot - an enemy that is hit by five slow traps is the same as an enemy that is hit by one slow trap.

Make traps area of effect. Imagine traps that don't deal damage, but release clouds of gas. One might release dense smoke, making all creatures in an area partially visible (as if affected by II). Another might release choking gas, making all spellcasting in an area trickier to perform. This could support the battlefield mobility aspect of a thief, and applying buffs/debuffs to all creatures in an area (friend and foe) would introduce more positioning strategy elements.

Make traps buff the party. Imagine a trap of magical necromantic energy - when an enemy sets off the trap their strength is drained, and the party members gain a buff to their own strength.

Make specialized traps. Again going back to the previous poison suggestion, a specialist anti-dragon trap might negate the dragon's breath weapon. A specialist anti-vampire trap might prevent the use of domination abilities.

Introduce a harsher limit on the number of traps that can be set at once. Instead of having five traps set at once, limit it to one or two. Maybe have it increase with the thief level similar to how the backstab multiplier increases.

Improve trap damage. Even if we ignore that missile damage is useless in IA, a trap at levels 1-11 does on average 14 damage. A fighter wielding a morning star with 18/00 STR and two pips of proficiency does on average 13 damage per hit, and will get multiple hits per round. This only gets worse for the traps as levels increase. Increasing the damage or have the damage apply for multiple rounds would help narrow the gap, and changing the damage type would be necessary. At low levels, this may be a bit problematic as five traps hitting at once would be equivalent to multiple rounds of fighter attacks, so this may have to be introduced along with the trap number/frequency restrictions, but I feel that the number of fights that would be ruined by this would be extremely small.

Improve traps with other thieving abilities. Currently thief abilities are useless in combat. Furthermore, BGII starts you with enough skill points and ways to boost them that you don't ever really have a shortage. Imagine if thieves could use their skill at hiding in shadows to set a more effective snare that would take enemies by surprise and deal them more damage (i.e. gain a buff to trap damage for having points in hide in shadows). Alternatively, they might use their magical experience from detect illusion to enhance the effects of a trap that has a magical effect.

As there are a lot of directions we can take the thief in, I suspect that it would be far easier to set aside the task of attempting to balance the existing thief kits and instead create a new thief kit that has abilities on an IA power level.

Thank you for your thoughts. They all revolve around the original way of setting traps, which is - put something on the ground outside of combat (traps can't be used in battle) or better - 5x something, and lure an enemy to that spot. I think that this is extremely restrictive, though your ideas of making traps fire only once per round is a very interesting take on that issue!


Thieving abilities are something that has very limited usage in IA at the moment, but they hold some really amazing potential. Your ideas are very similar to mine in that regard, as what I would like to introduce is an almost complete overhaul of those abilities, so that Thieves become visibly more powerful when they raise them properly. I would also propose that many basic Thief skills, like damage from backstab or traps are dependant on thieving abilities. This has a hidden bonus of making Dexterity more useful and potentially making Halflings player's first race choice when creating a Thief.

Most Thieves should have access to all thieving skills, however some kits should specialize in some specific ones and get special bonuses from them:
Bounty Hunter - Setting and Disarming Traps
Assassin - Hiding in Shadows and Move Silently
Shadowdancer - Hiding in Shadows and Detect Illusions


Okay, I think it's time to introduce my idea for reworked Stealth (it's not implemented, I would just want to know your thoughts on that)

Stealth becomes dependant ONLY on Hide in Shadows (as I have some special plans for Move Silently) and every class/kit that has HiS can try to use Stealth even when enemies are in sight. Though your chance of success are much lower, as every enemy rolls a check to decide if you are noticed, which means that the more enemies are in your line of sight, the harder it is to become invisible during combat. Also if you have more points put in Hide in Shadows, then you can use it more often, something like once every 6s (one round) if your HiS is less than 100, 5s if it's between 100 and 174, 4s if between 175 and 249 and finally 3s if 250 or higher.

I hope Critto will give his approval to these ideas and that we will have enough time to work on that.

I really like the idea of giving kits more clearly defined abilities in skills. I could get behind giving each kit severely reduced flexible skill points but big bonuses in the appropriate skills - for example, an assassin could get only 10 free skill points per level, but start with 50 in HiS and MS, or maybe get a bonus of 5 per level in HiS and MS.


My experience with modding is very limited (just what I've picked up by poking around in Near Infinity), but from I've picked up I think the existing mechanics round stealth checks are hardcoded - HIPS can probably be given to all thief kits by using the appropriate SPL, but I think the cooldown is hardcoded.

I don't know how if spl files can change their effect based on thieving abilities, but I rather hope they can, because if not then I don't think there's much we can do to make abilities relevant.

Math around thief points per level:

If a thief were to gain more powerful combat abilities based on their thieving abilities, then the curve should probably be plotted out compared to power spikes in other classes.

If we consider a fighter's weapon proficiencies to want two pips in weapon style and five in the specific weapon category, then they maximize their bonuses for their first weapon at level 9, the second at level 24, and the third at level 39. The closest thief level equivalents are 10, 31 and 40 (though if we were to continue the pattern of 320k XP per level, it would be level 44). When you factor in the fighter APR bonuses, we can consider the fighter to reach maximum damage output in their first weapon at level 13, which is equivalent to thief 15.

There are seven thieving abilities, with total bonus across the abilities ranging from 45 to 85 depending on race. If we assume that a thief starts with maximum DEX for the race, then this turns into 100 (human) to 170 (Halfling), with the highest ability ranging from 25 (Human pick pockets) to 35 (various halfling skills). If we're happy to depart from the original 2e pnp values, there are seven abilities and seven playable races, so this could be balanced out to make each race specialize in a single ability.

If we consider a thief reaching 200 in two skills to be the same as a fighter maxing out a weapon, then we would want to give thieves 20 to 25 points per level to hit their targets around the same time as a fighter.

If we consider a thief reaching 200 in one skill to be the same as a fighter maxing out a weapon, then we would want to give thieves 10-15 points per level, though I would recommend giving them 10 free points per level plus a large staring bonus of 50-100 total points depending on their starting class.

If it is intended for thieves to have a steeper or shallower power per xp curve, then the points per level should be increased or decreased respectively. Alternatively, the maximum payoff for each skill could be decreased or increased respectively.

Potions of master thievery would probably have to be restricted to not stack, or to become a rare potion.

Wow! So much new stuff that is VERY in line with what I had in mind


It's much harder to calculate when you'd reach 250 in some skills, as it's heavily dependant on your race/items/preferences when distributing points. Not everyone has to get a power spike at the same time, sometimes it might be a bit more blurred... And ofc the real power spike is usually around the time you get your HLAs!

What is more, there are several (and might be more) items that give you either thieving skills, or dexterity. I am not sure I want to give people a choice of "do I put additional 50 points in X now, or do I wait till chapter 6 to forge an item for that", so I think that all Thief items that revolve around those will be available pre-Spellhold. Later in chapter 6 you will be able to upgrade them some more to get other bonuses.

And one more thing - I am very excited about such passive changes, as they should positively impact the balance and give some new possibilities. For example your multiclass Thief won't be getting enough points to be as powerful as a single class Thief, but will naturally also benefit from its other class. Also, if you will really want to, you might even be able to make your Stalker more useful, if you stack him with all items that raise HiS/MS.

Another good point, there will be many things that we'll have to take into account to at least try to properly balance this class.


Hide in Plain Sight is not something you can give to any class. The game checks it internally and it looks at hexadecimal value of your kit, if it's equal to Shadowdancer, then you can hide, otherwise you can't.

I struggled with those limitations that you pointed for years, trying to balance Thieves around them. But there's not much that we can do, which leads me to the biggest and probably the most controversial change, which sadly reduces quality of life a bit... Reworked Stealth will be a separate ability, that tries to mimic original Stealth in many ways, but can do much more. Stealth button will probably become useless (clicking the button won't have any effect) but will still be greyed out when you can't use Stealth.

i am still busy with the cleric run. I only just got to the level where the new spells are introduced. Just a bit more experience with the before i can give some feedback on them.

for thieves, ideas yet unmentioned.
I would like it if detect illusions becomes passieve after 100%,such that if you have 120% you do 20% passive detect illusions.
pick pockets is a flavour skill. it could be nice to give the possibility to steal quest items via alternative paths to resolve quests

Good luck with that! I hope that at least some changes introduced in v6.6 BETA will enhance your gameplay and add new ideas for some battles.


This is an amazing idea! I will try to implement it when I have some time, to see if it's possible without too many potential errors.

hey guys i have a question.

is it possible to introduce the robe of eloquenz to the game ?

perhaps u will do that in the future, but i want to try it on my own.

any advice how to do it on my own ?

i guess i need to have the item file and so on

Hi.

The robe and other stuffs (items and encounters) from The Four are already a part of the core IA experience now, actually. Have been for a while. But the items were slightly nerfed and re-balanced so it might not be what you expect.

I think the only remaining class that's not been discussed that could do with a buff is Monk.

With IA having such a focus on powerful equipment and upgrading characters, the class whose identity is built around not needing equipment gets kind of left out. The few items that monks can use all feel quite samey, so making monks feel distinct is a problem. Once a monk has been built, they don't really have much they can do in combat besides go to an enemy and punch them repeatedly.

Some ideas I have for making them feel unique:

Adding damage types
IA has a theme of different enemies being weak to different types of damage (piercing/slashing/crushing). A monk's fist attack always does crushing, which means that against enemies that resist crushing, they lose a lot of effectiveness. If monks had the ability to swap damage types, then this would avoid situations where they're a dead weight.

Adding stances
The one major monk character that the players interact with in Balthazar, who has a unique fight - every round or two, he will announce a stance that he's changing to, then get a short term buff. This is something that we can also do for the player - give them difference stances that they can move between. This can also be tied into the damage types idea above - each stance can have an appropriate damage type, and stances can be moved between to change damage types.

As players level up, their stances can become more powerful, or they may be able to gain more stances. I like the idea of having the stance buffs only being active for a short period of time, encouraging the player to move between stances instead of sticking with the same one for a long time. This can probably be best implemented by having each stance generate a weapon that the monk equips that disappears after two or three rounds. This way, the auto-pause on weapon unusable can be an easy prompt for the user to know when to switch.

Some examples stances:

• Cheetah Stance - Increase movement speed while active. Inflict piercing damage.
• Rhino Stance - On activation, knock back nearby enemies. Immunity to slow.
• Pacifism Stance - On activation, heal a lot of hit points. Reduce damage output while active.
• Flame Stance - On activation, cast sunfire. Increase fire resistance and add fire damage to attacks.
• Spellbreaker Stance - On activation, dispel self. Increase magic resistance and magic damage resistance. Attacks count as mundane.

Innate buffs
Instead of giving monk a series of item upgrades, they can instead craft special potions that will give them permanent buffs. These would require rare items that are obtained throughout the game. They would have to be not very powerful individually, but once a lot of them are collected they provide a substantial boost to the player. They can also be set up to give the player choices of what buffs to get (potentially restricting on things like alignment) to add some variation between different monk builds.

As an example, beating the Troll Mound or TorGal could drop a new item "Potent Troll Blood". Upon taking this to an alchemist character, the character is given the choice of potions to craft - One gives slow regeneration, another gives a constitution boost, a third may give a hitpoint boost or a saving throw boost.

HLAs
Instead of giving the monk the same HLAs as the other warriors, I would want to give them most passive HLAs, and give them access to more powerful stances via HLA. HLA exclusivity (similar to how the planetar spells are exclusive) would give the player the ability to choose different monk paths to specialize in.

For example, instead of giving monks access to Hardiness HLA, I would want to give them access to a HLA that provides 8% damage resistance, but can only be taken 5 times. This way, the monk will end up with permanent hardiness, but it will come at a very high HLA cost and come a lot later in the game. This will help them have a distinct feel while playing, as well as prevent too much competition with stance swapping for using the monk's actions.

Well... I can't agree with your statement, that Monks need a buff, to be honest. At the moment this is the easiest class to play(we have no data about Monk kits in IA, but they are probably better than pure class) with very powerful abilities, and VERY limited amount of gold needed for his upgrades (only an amulet and items +2, nothing more is needed).

That's true, I remember playing a Monk in v6.2, but you are 100% right that playing a Monk is all about ordering him to pound another enemy, there's little strategic depth in that and you proposed some great ideas of addressing that however to do so we'd probably need to nerf Monks a bit to make those items/abilities useful enough, so that players do pick them, without making Monks too powerful.

Also just some notes:
From what I remember, Monks are immune to slow anyway


Not sure, but I think we already have some blood dropping there and it's used for Barbarian new armor improvement.

Thank you for those ideas, I will write them down and use them to make changes to Monks, but that will probably happen when we sit down and properly raise difficulty for Balthazar fight. Right now the most important thing is to work on v7, then to apply some changes to Clerics based on input from players and then balance some over/underpowered kits/classes, Monks are currently playable and useful.

EDIT
Bards are still very weak

Are monks that good in IA? My experience with them is mostly from vanilla or SCS, where they were definitely an underpowered class - they are weak at the start of the game, lag behind in the middle, and gain power spikes in the late game, but even with the spikes I found that they lagged behind other classes.

Although they can use weapons, they lack the proficiencies to use them as effectively as one of the other warrior classes. The fists get APR bonuses, but as the monk does not get APR from proficiency, the fist does not overtake a fighter's APR until level 15, and the lead peaks at level 18 when they have 1 APR more than an equivalent level fighter (4 APR vs 3 APR). However, when you consider that the monk cannot be hasted, and the party will have access to IH by level 15, the monk is going to stay behind a fighter with Haste/IH.

The monk fists are considered magical weapons, but the levels of the fists increases slowly, at a rate lower than the magic items a party would be able to obtain. As IA has several enemies that require enchantment level to hit, the monk will be lagging behind party fighters here, being unable to hurt Gem/Coin golems until level 15, and being unable to hurt skeleton grandmasters until level 25. A monk's fists do an average of 6.5 damage from levels 9-14, and an average of 11.5 damage from level 15 onwards (plus STR bonus). The monk misses out on proficiency bonus, (which would add 5 damage), meaning the monk has damage output similar to a two-handed sword.

Defensively, a monk has worse AC than a fighter at levels when the AC matters, and worse AC at levels when the AC does not matter. They do have a decent saving throw bonus, and the magic resistance bonus is nice, though it hits quite late. The immunities are good in relevant fights, but situational. These combine to mean that the monk is weaker against physical enemies and stronger against magical enemies.

Item-wise, the monk has two specific IA items (Grandmaster of Flowers and Gauntlets of Devastating). The Grandmaster of Flowers is a very nice defensive item, but it comes quite late (After the sewer illithids). The Gauntlets of Devastating looks has a large bonus to THAC0/damage, but because of damage rounding it effectively only adds 2 damage (though the THAC0 portion is rather nice). Given that the gauntlets have to do the work of both gauntlets and weapon, these feel a bit below par.

Okay, now I can see the problem clearly. You weren't aware that IA v6.2 improved Monks significantly. For starters, they get level and thac0 progression of a Fighter, do they get 0 thac0 at some point. Their progression has been adjusted so they should get their +3/4 enchantment around the time you really start facing enemies requiring it. At lvl 11 they get an UNDISPELABLE Improved Haste (and next usages at later levels). At higher levels they get Diamond Body which improves their physical resistances, gives them some protections and Regen that is also doubled by their IH ability. So yeah, they're pretty good although a bit vulnerable at the beginning and I highly recommend trying them out, especially Rasaad who has his special item, which either is slightly upgraded in v6.6 or will be in v7.


Only +2? What do you mean by that? And this upgrade is actually not needed, the original version of the artifact is enough, so you only need to upgrade the amulet to see a nice result.

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. I don't see these changes listed in the documentation, they should probably be added there (or made more visible if they're already there).


If attacking an enemy with 75% crushing damage resistance (eg gem golem), the +6 damage will either add 1 or 2 damage to each hit (depending on what the rest of the damage roll is).

That's not really true :-) There's a section of the readme located at "Content -> Kits". It lists all new kits and the existing ones, modified by IA. Monks are in there as well.

Ah, so it is - I just have terrible reading comprehension. They looks plenty strong in the new version.

So many great ideas for thieves! I'm looking much forward to trying these out.

I have one additional suggestion for this.

If Assassin is one hit wonder, perhaps the abilities whether backstabbing / poison could be developed even further a little bit. So this Assasin's special abilities would offer a wide range of unique devastating effects.

Would include this types of attacks as well:

- Lowers physcal resistance
- Disables PFMW / spell protections
- Lowers fire/lightning/cold/acid resistance
- Lowers magic resistance
- Lowers resistance to magic damage
- Makes enemy unable to use special abilities (50% failure rate or something like that)

The idea would be to use these types of sneaky stelath attacks to turn the tide of a battle / get over a difficult situation.

These are all very nice ideas that we might explore, if Assassins turn out to be too weak. The problem with this kit is, that Assassins are mainly focused on melee combat, so we need to be creative with their abilities here, since IA is already heavily focused and biased towards melee.

PFMW and other similar spells are a huge part of the balance, so I wouldn't like to touch them, and I have only one single enemy in mind that might have such ability in the future. Affecting other spell protections might be an interesting alternative to Breach/RM though.


Assassins are focused on physical and poison damage, so it wouldn't synergize with such abilities. But some other characters/kits might get such abilities (well, technically some Divine spells in v6.6_BETA already do that, though with 0 duration)


Similar to the previous one. I have not consulted it with Critto yet, but I have an idea to completely rework Wizard Slayer, which is the weirdest kit in the game and not very useful, especially in IA. I'd like to turn his Miscast Magic into something that would reduce enemy Magic Resistance, so that this kit would be relatively weak on its own, however it would synergize well with all magic casters.

Good news, guys! Some time ago I wrote:



With some help from an experienced UI modder, I managed to get some pretty nice results and most probably clicking Stealth button will trigger our improved Stealth ability, so players won't have to search for that skill in Special Abilities tab, when we introduce rebalanced Thief class

its so nice that you guys still work on the mod

i dont know how much hours u invested in this but i would spend little money for ur effort

Thanks for the kind words and for the offer, lappen, but it is truly not necessary. If we had only spent enough time on it, the v7 would've been out a long time ago! So I'm afraid I have not been as diligent and committed to the cause these last few years as you would believe :-)

An idea for a new quest.

The player can follow demogorgon to it's own plane, the 88th layer of Abyss, after banishing it from the prime material plane to end it's threat forever and have an absolute blast defeating armies of monsters and demons. Defeating Demogorgons servants in Ungorth Reddik, the hezrous, sea trolls, icythoids and aboleths/skum. A final battle in Abyss, the demogorgons palace.

(optional, for crews surpassing 10Mexp points).

Interesting but would probably require a ton of new graphics that we aren't really equipped to produce. Unless something relevant be borrowed from PST:EE.

Couldn't the graphic be borrowed from EE content?

Like the final dungeon of Rasaad's quest in ToB? No-one ever playes through it, at least I don't think, so it should be fresh for almost all players. And it even a little bit looks like the part.

Well, it depends. I'm not familiar with any of the lore you speak of. We'd need to research it to have a better understanding of the area, the enemies and so on. I'm generally against the idea of using any random stuff even if it barely fits the concept.

I think that could be an option at least. Obviously I have no idea about modding / required changes so there's that.

What I meant was for the graphics only, the enemies aren't really relevant I think.

Hahaha, isn't the current fight against Demogorgon enough? Why torment the poor baboon even more?

Such second final to WK quest might be an interesting idea, I will need to take a look at all new areas (and finish all new quests from EE!), to see what's possible. PS:T definitely has some outlandish and unsettling locations, SoD also uses such aesthetics in its final parts. We will see, though I think that firstly we need to polish some existing fights, there are a few that can really be made more epic and harder!

It's one of my favourite fights!

And also would like to battle the demos horde, the demogorgons largest army. To me, it sounds like fun

Another idea, this one quite a lot easier, is to improve the drow city. I used to just whacking my way out but it feels rather silly, the whole city is supposed to be on me, after the ritual and there's like 15 npc's to whack.

Another idea (#3) is that there's a lot of potential I think in those EE ToB quests. And I don't think people do those at all (has anyone done Dorn's quest in ToB?). They could be improved & activated for all PC's. The maps are very nice.

For a second fight, one options is something involving the seals. Defeating Demogorgon banishes him to the abyss, but only temporarily, he'll return in a few decades - the Good approach to WK is to do the ritual scroll and reinforce the seals without ever fighting Demogorgon. Similarly, the most evil way would be to do nothing, as he'll escape from the deteriorating seals.

A second WK fight could be to introduce some kind of seal guardian - anyone interfering with the seals (even positively) would summon the guardian, so the good resolution to the quest would have to defeat the guardian to reinforce the seals. Similarly, an evil character might decide to deliberately weaken the seals. This would involve fighting the seal guardian, and the character would get Demogorgon's blessing at the end instead of Helm's blessing.

Alternatively after you defeat Demorgorgon you run into a uber disgustingly strong (Just like you should be at this stage!) party of 6 fellow adventurers outside that have come to watchers keep themselves for the treasure but are too late and try to kill you for it.

I'd imagine it would be hard to balance a fight difficult enough for a party that was strong enough to beat Demogorgon, but it would be fun to go toe to toe with another tremendously strong group of adventurers as well.

That would be fun as well.

A fight against a party with e.g. a properly developed auramaster would be quite something.

I'm in the middle of a run at the moment and I have Jan Jansen along (we needed a thief). I think Jan is quite underpowered and I'm not sure about his personal item. Obviously spell slots are nice, but how can he utilize DR?

Could it be an option to give Jan one of the omitted spells, i.e. project image / simulacrum? That would make him special character and somewhat unique while also obviously upping the power-level quite a lot.

Demogorgon has 5 followers, that all have unique and powerful abilities + hordes of minions are summoned throughout the fight. AI just won't be as good as an experienced player, so there's no chance that a 6 men "normal" party will be a real and interesting challenge after you've managed to beat the demon prince. They'd really need to have 99% resistances to all and each should drink like 5 potions of resurgence And that's not something we'd want to make. But who said that there has to be just 1 team? Maybe there's a guild of sorts, that specializes in impossible tasks, and you've just ruined their chance for solid income, which they really don't like. That's just an idea, that shows the approach that has to be taken in order to make later parts of the game interesting, without going too overboard with unrealistic enemy abilities.


The problem with some enemy kits and classes is that the party usually has little interest in fighting non-evil enemies. So a good excuse would need to be created to fight enemies like Paladins (not Blackguards), some Clerics and even Druids.


Well, when we rebalance Thieves, Jan (as a multiclass character) might have more inclination to go into melee from time to time. There might be times, when his PFMW/Stoneskin is breached/dispelled/finished and that 25% DR might just happen to save his life. And his other gear will probably become more valuable too.

Also, as this is the request of Helm, it will provide the player with a few allies to work with.

My suggestion is that Helm's supreme golem joins the fight on the players side, as well as the helmite ghost. Supreme Golem will spawn elementals, who will spawn coins/gems . Helmite ghost is in awesome Fighter/Mage/shaman with a set of unique superpowers

Also, the allies are ocntrollable (as in charmed) so the player has control over them.

That would be fun, original and quite unique.


We would get to battle these lads, as Belcheresk, Nulonga etc. are already whacked.

"One of Demogorgon's largest armies is known as the Demos Horde. It is commanded by General Tetradarian, a clone of Aameul. The army's second in command is War Secretary-General Gromsfed the Drowned, a uniquely powerful klurichir demon.[5][6"]

Srouce: https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Demogorgon


The reaoning is that because the PC whacked some of it's most loyal servants already, Demogorgon is seeking for revenge.

I completely forgot about the thieves rebalancing. Well, it's super nice if it brings more utility to Jan.

Thought about this for a little bit and came to the following conclusion.

Cloak of Atonement should be nerfed, it's too powerful as it is.

Version 1.

Has 5 charges, reload costs 75.000 gp (or so).

Version 2.

Has 50 charges. No change in costs. But everytime you use it, there's a 5% (or so) chance of the -1 con becoming permanent. But it gives out 60% Armor of Faith and 40% Shield of Archons.

Version 3.

Has X charges (3, 7 or 15 or something).

Can't be reloaded. The charges aren't visible (player doesn't know how many charges are left).

=>

All version aim to keep the Cloak in the game but would effectively make it available to specific circumstances, you have to balance using it & the bonuses very carefully.