I think on one of my old comps I still have the erf's to a couple things I made; few maps and 20 or so fully equipped npc's with custom gvm-grade gear.

Looks like a pretty feasible build for the most part. 64ab is right on the border of what I would consider useful and the damage would be alright I guess, x2 crits with 15-20 range leaves a bit to be desired though. That two bladed sword is a fairly good weapon but without wm levels I think it's too weak.

Try something silly, like a ftr7/wm28/hs5. Ab would be something like 68-69 self buffed (without items or party buffs - imagine a sequencer with tensers/favor...thats 7 more ab for a real time minute.) and the damage would be far better. Ac would be around 80 if you can cop a shield ring somewhere.

Your build as posted would be decent no doubt, but the suggested build would rip.

It's a good idea on the shield ac, just make sure that it can't coincide with the wm dual wield bonus or the shield ring. Dualwielding wm builds can already get 80+ac.

Not so sure about the assassin suggestion though since they already get a big ab bump, poisons, concealment....

All said and done though I'd remove the dual wield penalty with at least 30 class levels. If you do it any sooner than that then basically all you are doing is strengthening builds that have ranger/rogue in them but are far from focused, which defeats the whole purpose.

The ac improvement would be excellent for a ranger. As it stands now to make a str based ranger that dual wields you'll end up with a whopping 55ish ab, 62 with a full Aid spell and worse than terrible damage....and about 55ac. None of those numbers are remotely worth building for and while dex based rangers can get better ab/ac all they tend to do is create a constant stream of 1's and 2's above the heads of npc's.

I had a wm/drow and can tell you that 90+ spot worked just fine.

If you really want to test just have someone use the test area with you.

Those NPC's are a perfect example of things that will hide from someone with 90+ listen. I'm wondering if keen senses doesn't work the same for listen as it does for spot?

I'm guessing this next suggestion might not be viewed with a ton of acclaim but have you guys ever considered using a couple hacked 2da's for the server? I know one of the goals has always been to avoid hakpaks and what not but I think a couple very simple mods to the core 2da's could open up some possibilities.

For instance you could mildly edit a couple class.2da's to include spot as a class skill instead of just listen, or you could edit the spells.2da to give druids Haste or Mass Haste as a non extendable level 9 spell. Again, the downside is that players would need to download the couple hacked 2da's and put them in their override folder but it wouldn't be a huge issue I don't think.

This would also allow you as devs to give specific feats at specific class levels as well, such as maybe HIPS for lvl 37+ rangers or the dual wield feats for high level rogues. Could even give certain classes like rogue Great Dex as a epic bonus feat (should have been there since day 1 imo). I just think it would be a great way to give some of the lesser classes an ability or choice to make them a bit more even in terms of playability. Forgive me for this being so messy but ideas don't always come all at once. If you were to go this route you could also give RDD's free Grt Str feats (or grt Con) at specific levels so there is a point in going past 10.

The only problem I could foresee would be how the Enforce Legal Characters check works. I'm not sure if it checks based on the mod'd server 2da's or if it checks for the base parameters no matter what.

All in all if the ELC wasn't an issue it would be sort of cool and definitely helps to expand things by opening up new possibilities.

No, something is broken with listen, I noticed it on my lizard too and I had around the same total listen score. Even crap npc's would still be able to hide again very easily.

Spot on the other hand works just fine. I had a tenser construct that got 95 spot and saw everything all the time and nothing could re hide once spotted, including marcus. That was a fun incident, 2 lame sd's smashed in 11 minutes, has he even been back since then?

Scaling traps would be awesome but I wouldn't really look at traps as the skill that saved the rogue.

I'd just like to see a melee improvement for rogues for the most part. Not something that would make them the best hitters or anything but something that would at least allow them to be a solid secondary hitter. By making that a reality you could actually use more traps in areas and locks on things since there would actually be rogues to deal with them.

Wouldn't mind seeing the shapes for Polymorph Self and Shapechange allow the use of items like the shifter script does from druids/shifters. Definitely wouldn't be overpowered since it would take high caster levels to not be dispelled and ab would still be pretty craptacular.

I'd really like to see something nice for bards too. I remember mentioning a widget some time ago that gave a small perform bonus for lvls over 20 or 30, was that added? If so, rock on. Thought I saw it somewhere. But..I'd like to see them get a special version of monster summoning 6 since 6th level bard spells are the very definition of useless. Nothing too powerful on the summon, maybe something between the lvl 9 summon spell and the mummy.

Rangers are...well, rangers. They just suck and I can't make a suggestion for improvement without making them like the other classes. Whenever I log on and see people playing rangers i smh till I'm dizzy.

Fighters are sort of ok atm, but not real impressed with changing the widget to make lower total fighter levels better and making higher level fighters worse than what they were.

At one point I remember Red Raisin saying something about trying to make qstaves finessable and allow for monk attacks like a kama. That would open up some fairly interesting builds and keep them from being too powerful since its a 20/x2 range weapon.

PDK is pretty useless. Some better abilities would certainly not be out of the question. Needing 38 base cha for some of the abilties to max is a...slightly impossible to say the least, and not worth it even if you could. Maybe give them a mount summon like Pally/BG except make the PDK's actually grant the character some decent bonuses? Changing one of the abilites to give a +10-20ish perform would be nice, I could see a bard30/pdk5/hs5 being a decent build for party play. Maybe give them a free feat that allows using charisma for attacks instead of dex/str, kinda like zen archery.

Doing something about the alignments would be nice too. The fact that you can't make a evil harper is annoying at best, especially considering that BG's get terrible ab and harper is really the only way to do it. Rogue5/harper5/bg30 smiter? And let's face it, a pally/pm wouldn't be all powerful, nor would a monk/barb. If you can think of a build or two that would abuse 2 classes to the point of insanity then by all means post about it. Even a barb/druid/monk wouldn't overly special.

XP penalty. Never saw a point in that. I've heard arguments against removing it saying that players shouldn't be so lazy and if you can't be patient then you shouldn't make the build. Those arguments came from the same person who campaigned for auto max hp at each level. Makes tons of sense..

Well, i'd definitely like to see Rogues get some sort of bump. Maybe a widget that grants +1ab at rogue lvls 31, 33, 35, 37, 39 and gives an extra attack or 2 when blinding speed is used. This would be far from overpowering since even with a full +5 ab from 39 rogue levels you're still looking at about 57ab max, which isn't all that much. The 2 attacks when blinding speed is used could be rogue only (maybe give other classes 1 attack since they're dexers too) and doesn't stray too far from the dex = speed and therefor more attacks mentality.

5 more ab and a couple attacks would be very useful but all in all still wouldn't make them one of the more played classes since the damage on a dexer is something along the lines of SHIT. Even with 39 rogue levels for massive sneak it still isn't all that massive and most good str melees will hit for just about as much anyways (all of mine hit for more).

If a widget is used maybe 'adding' 2 ab when two weapons are equipped to nullify the dual wield penalty, and adding in 5 shield ac wouldn't be so bad either.

Again, all of those things together doesn't make a pure-ish rogue uber, but makes them playable. Still looking at 57ab/75ish ac. One of reasons dexers are so terrible is that having a whopping 4-5 more ac than a str toon means less than nothing. It's a server where your discipline score is more important than your armor class.

Since they'd still have terrible damage in general and would put up 0's on the crit immune bosses (and how many of those are there now? 100?) maybe they should get a heavily detuned version of the auto-damage ability that the bosses get. Something tells me that when the dev's decided to give the auto damage to bosses that it probably wasn't the bosses themselves campaigning to keep a level playing field. In other words they don't care, but players do.

Doesn't sound bad at all but I'd definitely go for more dex or wis. Pretty sure mine finish with at least 32base wisdom so you'd max at 60ab. It's really hard to work in the skill points for hide/ms too.

Definitely need some changes to classes to make things interesting again since there are only really 3-4 builds that are any good these days.

The 1ftr/38cleric/1monk archer builds are amazingly balanced if you have the correct items. I think on mine they get 66ab, 86ac, 6 attacks, 17 irresistable per hit, all the benefits of 38 cleric lvls (gets about 14 400+ hp heals). Plus it can give the party something like 3ab, 4 dodge ac, 3ish deflect ac, and 2 natural ac.

Probably the best balanced build I have seen since it has uses in every situation, especially as an elite healer/secondary hitter.

Doesn't really matter if NPC's can be affected or not since most of them are well over lvl 40 to begin with, at least the ones you'd want to affect anyways.

PM's shouldn't be turnable unless they receive all of the other benefits of being undead as well. Adding nothing but negatives isn't a very endearing move.

Would make tons of sense if you could actually use them when you are turned for 90% of the time you play.

Rofl, great thread.

The best thing about killing the monk/sd players is that they always seem to genuinely have their feelings hurt when they die. Then come the tells..."you got lucky"..."I'll hunt you now"..."you just made an enemy"..."you're lucky my vibrating panties shorted out mid fight"..."I lagged because my mom won't buy me a new wireless card for the computer in the basement".

And speaking of panties, maybe its just me, but I've always sort of seen the quickslot icon hak as being about 1 step from lipstick and mascara.

Well, keep in mind that making magic missile do up to 50 damage as a single missile will lessen the use for items with 5 magic resist.

IGMS was pretty good in it's standard form, it just needed a simple reflex save. Maybe keep the max of 10 per target but definitely just add a save. Also a simple +1/2/3 damage for focus feats would be good since even a max'd IGMS with all 10 missiles hitting is only 120 damage...the same as a failed horrid save and still subject to the magic dr items.

He has good items and I think he's appropriately powered.

Sure he wears dex items and has high strength, but that doesn't mean he has shitty dex. And besides he's a boss!

Plus his will save is shit, and I emphasize the word SHIT. I used to farm him with a standard cleric melee using the crappy stun hammer from moria, and the stun landed EVERY time.

Don't get me wrong I very much understand the slight annoyance of how a npc can have epic dodge and yet do so much non sneak damage. But all said and done he's soloable by about 20 different builds, so needless to say his versatility doesn't matter all that much.

There should be a handful of bosses in the mod that are extremely difficult, he's one of them.

When you go there you know a handful of things beforehand. You need a bard, you need some semblance of a tank, and you need to be able to dispel his damage shield (simple lesser breach wand works great). Low 60's ab is more than enough if you can curse/taunt.

And then there's the irresistible damage component. You can still get near 70ab and have 7 attacks with at least 15 irresistible per hit. The "hitters" that people tend to make, such as the barb/wm variants, are great for low level stuff and destroying annoying mobs fast. But when it gets to crunch time they just don't stack up.

Some people know what they are doing and some people don't, that's never going to change.

I'd suggest making a good hitter. 10 damage means it was just a typical barb/wm or something silly like that. The game has had ways around DR since its inception...use them.

Seriously, just turn GvM into a pvp mod and post it in the arena section. GvM has enough culture that it would draw a lot of attention and many people would play there so long as things were relatively balanced for pvp and the story/goal for each map was well thought out.

It's sad things have gotten so bad but then again I think most really expected it to be like this. There was a huge thread in the old acid rain forums about what would happen if there was a wipe...and POOF! It happened.

But just in case the server continues on I'll give a suggestion or 50..

Mid level bosses don't need both 90ab/ac. They don't need 30 other npc's with them if they have the 90's either. Eomer with 87ab? Really? What is the reason for that? The overpowered conceal tanks and the 70ab/95ac shifters? Raising boss stats to compete with overpowered classes isn't the way to go as it just makes the other builds useless and forces people to play the small handful that actually have a chance.

People bitched prewipe that the server was based too heavily on items and builds suffered. Well guess what, now almost all of the items are crap and its based purely on builds....all 3-4 builds that are worth a damn. At least before a certain item set made otherwise crap builds great. Now there are about 10 items actually worth having and the rest are truly terrible. And really its sort of still the same, except now ALL of the builds are crap, you actually need those 10 items to make them work. How many people have seen a conceal tank get absolutely murdered because they aren't draped in the great red lettered items?

Most of the stuff is REALLY easy to fix.

Tone the shifters down to manageable levels. When i first started playing again towards the end of summer I was very impressed with what the shifters could do, but after about 2 weeks it became very obvious that it was just straight up pointless to play anything else. Ability dc's are far too high as are the final ab/ac on most forms.

The sd conceal is way out of hand as well. 75% should be the absolute most at lvl 30 and I wouldn't give more than 50% until at least lvl 18-20.

The weapons are another huge factor in limiting builds. I've seen so many posts and threads about why certain weapons and why all one handed weapons are so weak. Dumb, simply dumb! Nobody uses a single weapon and a shield. And why is that? Is it because the single weapons don't do jack shit for damage (good 2handers literally do 4x as much)? Or is it because even with +10 ac from a shield you still get cut down in 5 seconds anyways? Kamas are TERRIBLE! Why? Because dragons and monk shifters can abuse them? Have you seen a shifter that doesn't use Eomers spear? I mean, is there really anyone who would worry about a 2d12 magic damage Acu kama when you just got smashed by a spear with 3 2d10's? Umm, no!

Get rid of the cursed items. Get rid of any area that is just ridiculously hard and unused because of it. There are a ton of things in that mod that never should have been allowed in at all. Anything that is anti player is just that, anti player. Nobody should ever have to bring that to anyone's attention.

The new spawn system is pretty bad.

And the AI. Man. I'm sure this will offend some people but whatever. When i started playing again after the wipe and found that players had voted to keep the new AI all I could think was "Wow, what a bunch of idiots". Why would anyone want to play a fantasy game where everything of equal level can kick your ass because they have the godly ability to see exactly what your weaknesses are and use them against you over and over. Is it cool to be cursed by a bard npc? Yeah kinda. Is it cool to have the asshole mages spam bigby spells after they search through your gear with there f'ing ESP and find you aren't immune? Uh, no. Same for the kd spammers and the auto stealth, its really lame. Oh and the issue of the bats using bolts in house of stewards, that was no accident and we all know who put that in.

If you play now you need specific builds doing specific things. See, that was fun a few years ago because it while it was very effective it also wasn't necessary! Now you are forced to if you want to go anywhere or do anything, kinda takes the fun out of it all.

And the "cheating" of course. This game and server have had so many huge exploits for so many years. But one thing i can definitely tell you is that most of them were rarely abused because it was fun to play the game in normal fashion. I'm sure finding out that the shifters were being heavily abused was quite frustrating, but then again had the difficulty of the mod never gotten to that point it wouldn't have been used very often if at all.

But whatever.

Just make it into an arena server with a cool layout and some of the same npc's items and scripts. Modding the character scripts/abilities would be pretty minimal and a ton of people would enjoy it.

Well given the fact that 90% of the server were playing shifters and then suddenly poof the server is dead as can be I'd say the number of abusers was well into majority status.

The server is dead because there isn't anything to do. With so much focus and so many changes put on anti-soloing it really rendered many areas/things totally useless.

Pvp is pretty much the same as it's always been. With the exception of the bigby immune items being completely necessary an experienced player can still kill anyone even if they have junk gear. No complaints there as i'm guessing that was the goal to begin with.

One of the problems is that there isn't anything to do until you hit level 40 and even then you need a small group. When it gets to the point where a player would rather level from 20-40 in stingers because there isnt anywhere else to go then i'd say things have gone a bit too far. Every area is full of either dispelling npc's or the never should have been scripted 7 attack barbarians, which means you can't do much of anything alone...ever.

The 2nd primary problem is that there are only 3-4 builds that are useful. A couple shifter variants, a couple harper/wm variants, and the conceal tanks. Absolutely no point in playing anything else unless you just like to respawn a lot. After not playing for roughly 2 years or so I played for 3 months. In that time I conquered pretty much everything there was to conquer, took at least 20 toons from lvl 1 to 40, and raided over and over anything worthwhile. So when I say that 99% of what can be done is a waste of time you can take it for face value.

[Tono Did It]

Tono Did It:
Event Type:All vs Tono Full PvP
Summary: A list is made of problems that can easily be placed on tono (server crashes, lag, rising oil prices, global warming, etc etc...) Afterwards a full count is made and we get to beat on tono for a number of minutes equal to the total number of complaints. This might require quite a bit of dm raises.