Shattered Kingdoms

I know before I even post this that a TON of people, probably 100% of you, will be against this, but regardless, I still am going to post it.

Lately, it's been seen a lot that melee has been overpowered and such. While melee itself does need toning down, I agree, I propose a somewhat different solution as well. Completely in thinking stages, so add your own ideas..

As things stand now, any swashie, barb or anyone can go out and get vials and get a priest to brew for em etc. Word of Recall, heal vials, cure blindness etc. This provides a fairly big boon to melee. I propose we somewhat nerf it in a sense in the fact of giving a sort of "overdose" to it's use. That way giant barb A can't just whip out 2890489032809423 heal vials and be good to go against an entire group (as long as he could quaff that fast etc.).

The way it would work is possibly, start out mild. Ie after say, i dunno the 10th vial quaffed, the vials (medicine) would start to dumb down on their affects. Less HP being restored etc. As more get used, eventually it could cause the person to be rendered weakened or even unconscious? This would keep people from just literally going from 28% to 100% hp and still have heal vials to spare and such. Just an idea to throw out there, but I think it would help dumb down the "MELEE IS OVERPOWERED" outcry that we hear every so often. Feel free to put your ideas in.

I think this will shorten combat which i dont think is what D wants. Also melee needs toned down compared to spellcasting really. This affects that but only in an indirect way. Sure that fighter wont be able to heal as much now while your spelling on him, but honestly, how many times would he normally be doing that? As it stands, its usually pretty obvious whose gonna win. If he gets the jump on the caster he wont need those heals. If the caster gets him, hes likely bashed from a pet and dead before he can do anything anyways.

Good idea, but I dont think it addresses the situation well enough and it shortens combat so I dont think its the right solution

Hm, I never thought about that to be honest. Shorter combat though isn't always a bad thing. If melee damage ever is lessened, then we may be seeing 20 round+ battles. If that ever happens, which isn't very likely, then it'd boil down to the point of who had the most heal vials.

In one versus one battles, it would also boil down to who has the heal vials. Also, I think that it would make people use their vials a bit more sparingly instead of quaffing like a mad man. Imagine a penalty against quaffing vials to where if you quaff say, 10 heal vials, the rest of your vials lose their effects temporarily so you wouldn't have that word of recall vial to get you out. I think that would be neat if the vials had a bit more tactical practice is all rather than q uaff em as fast as you can.

You could easily tone down melee without making the battles last ages. Joseph hit the nail on the head with his assessment of the situation however. Melee needs to be toned down in direct comparison to spellcasting, not to other melee.

The simple fact of the matter is any warrior class has the ability to do more damage in one round of combat than any caster could hope to do in multiple rounds vs a target with average resistances.

It takes a hell of a lot of prep time to constantly have a ton of vials. If you, or your ally, wants to put that amount of work into it, I don't see why you shouldn't be rewarded.

I have yet to see a lock full-on spam magma spray against a PC, a sorc spam acid blast on a PC. To be honest, though, I would think it would hurt a -lot-. In fact, probably near if not more damage than a melee fighter. (Against an average suit, that is.)

IMO casters just need to be quicker. There's a lot of damage that is lost when a caster isn't spamming a damage spell in PvP.

Spamming gets you killed.

Or we could default to the traditional system of hardcore D&D, in which case drinking a potion makes you vulnerable to attacks (for example, not being able to shield block, dodge, parry) and unable to attack for a certain amount of time, rendering them a desperate choice at best for mid-PK use.

That's a [REDACTED] in NWN. I swear, if you quaff one heal potion you take enough damage that you're worse off than you were before.

Okay... how about continually casting then? I guess I've just seen a lot of casters go into combat and spend half the time just sitting there staring at the fight instead of constantly using their spells. Whenever a sorc -does- start stacking acid blasts, a lock starts stacking magma spray, a hellion starts stacking hellfires, it really does hurt, unless said person has an exceptional suit of armor.