Suggestion regarding smiters & PvP

[Khaine]

I'm not sure if this is the right section for this, but I'm guessing it is, since the description said suggestions about the future of GvM (which I suppose this is).

So, I've been leveling a smiter, and so far 99.9% of the players I've fought with (disclaimer: may not be entirely accurate) have been neutral alignment. Now, my toon is able to hold his own in a PvP situation, due to a bunch of good items, but from what I've been told, they're cannon-fodder at lvl 40 in PvP.
I assume this is largely due to the fact that they can't smite any player who didn't have to be evil/good because of paladin, bg or assassin levels.

I've been thinking a little (contrary to popular belief, I do that sometimes), and I came up with an idea that could potentially make smiters viable for PvP, without making them 1shotters (1k+ smite crits, anyone?).

What I'm thinking is for the charisma bonus to smite AB to also work vs neutral aligned characters, and a % of the smite damage to work on them (not full damage, for the aforementioned reason). I'm not sure what would be an acceptable percentage, but I'm thinking around 30-40% (since it can only be used 3 times per day, and since almost everyone has concealment of some sort, they can easily all be wasted).
I'm not sure if this type of change to smite evil/good is possible, though, but I hope it is, since other spells/abilities have had extensive changes made to them.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Any input is welcome, but please do try to keep it constructive.

PS: This is in no way related to my other topic regarding NPC alignments. Gondor bosses should be good aligned, and Mordor bosses should be evil aligned. Either that or make all bosses neutral aligned, not just Mordor bosses.

[NLawson]

I suppose since they're aligned with Gondor/Mordor by faction they must be "Good" or "evil" in a general sense...since you're not going to get someone supporting and fighting on the front lines for Mordor who is "nicer" (in the general, good/evil way) than someone who fights for Gondor (because they wouldn't fight if it wasn't important to them).

So I suppose making a 30-40% damage bonus for Neutral characters wouldn't be totally a bad thing. I can't honestly say I've ever fought a smiter, but since they seem to be pretty weak compared to other builds in normal neutral pvp or against neutral bosses it does seem fair that they be given just a little leeway to make them more viable, especially Good smiters (because really the only people they can smite are evil PCs, if most of the mordor bosses seem to be neutral at the moment).

I don't think the full charisma attack bonus should be used though, maybe half of it - since you're not smiting good you need to still give them a better chance at dodging it, as well as reducing the damage...it's all fine saying "yeah make it 40% damage", but when you can smite for up to 1k damage on a crit, that's still a possible 400 damage in one hit (which would kill most non-melee types in one round, if not one hit), with the same ab as attacking a normal goodie.

If the balance was maybe say 33% (a third) of the cha bonus to ab, and of the damage, I'd say that was fair enough. It wouldn't overpower them to the extent that they could kill anyone in 1 or 2 hits, but it would give them a significant power advantage (and ab advantage) even when fighting neutral things, to counterbalance the disabilities inherent in playing a smiter.

That is, that you have to focus a lot of energy/feats/etc into making a decent smiter, since you really need a few (I'd guess probably 6-10 would be the norm?) great smiting feats and a high smiting class level.

[Abimael]

I think it has been proposed before but the problem is that those feats are hard coded so... no way to do that.

[Terrorble]

Too bad it wasn't just called smite.


I'm not aware of any way to change smite feats.  NWNX possibly but I've never used it.

[Khaine]

That bums me out. Is there at least any chance you could fix alignments of Mordor bosses?

[calbrenar]

The primary reason people go to such lengths to make neutral characters is to make smiters.  One of the drawbacks to putting say paladin or assassin/bg in a build is that it makes you vulnerable to smiters.  this is a huge drawback because frankly smiters have stupid ridiculous crazy unbalanced damage. 

[charliebuckett]

One shot killing in PVP rocked!

[Rade]

Hard-coded, as mentioned, so it's not possible.

I feel your pain, in a sense. I play a BG smiter, and whenever my target is good aligned I'm more than certain to win - simply because in 2 hits I've dealt more HP than they can possibly have unless they're a dragon.
If not, I have a real challenge on my hands and I divert to other tactics - such as taunting them.

I try to make my characters good/evil simply because I've played a smiter, I know it can be hard, and I have the faint hope that I will actually find an item restricted to good/evil that is actually really powerful.... *wink wink DMs*


You are playing a "kill or be killed" toon (massive damage output, low defense), expect not to win every time and/or have your main technique be ineffective. Welcome to the elaborate game of nwn rock, paper, scissors.

[Khaine]

Well, true that. Though I've got me 11 kills tonight so far. xD
And yeah, adding a few really nice items lvl 22+ for good/evil only would certainly help, methinks, since they can't be used by UMD.

[nwnolan]

The Executioners Scythe is....

[NLawson]

You know, Rade, that doesn't make me feel happy - because that means that even in a 1v1 with a low defense toon I couldn't take it down 

[Terrorble]

I feel that bosses should generally be evil or good.  If they aren't, well like I just said, I think they should be.  I'm a bit tied up however so unless someone else adjusts alignments you might not see the change come around right away.

I support good/evil restricted items because they offer a benefit for being evil/good.  Neutral has the benefit of not being smitten which for builds that it is convenient has always been like a free extra.  I thought there were a few strong evil/good restricted items but I can't think of what they are so maybe not.

[Khaine]

Well, if Turril, Olle or any other DM (don't know how many of you there are who can do updates) have a little bit of spare time, I've been testing smite good on as many Mordor bosses as I can, and updating them in this thread:

http://www.gondorvsmordor.com/gvm2/forum/index.php?topic=826.0

So you won't have to check every boss one by one. So far the only major one I've found is Sistra.

[Rade]

You know, Rade, that doesn't make me feel happy - because that means that even in a 1v1 with a low defense toon I couldn't take it down 

Low defense maybe, high damage very likely. You simply got out-damaged, don't feel bad.

[Nobutadas]

I don't feel this should be changed at all.  You knew when you created a smiter that you could not smite neutral.  The trade off for sucking at pvp is that you are irreplaceable when facing bosses that you can smite.  If you add the ability for a smiter who is extremely powerful against bosses to be able to smite neutral as well, that gives a smiter even more of an advantage and thus begins to throw off the balance of the game.  Every build has its weaknesses and advantages.  We should not be getting rid of a build's weakness.