re-examine the heal spell changes with priests

[Casious]

I have been pondering over some changes with priests' healing spells and a few things are not adding up to me. I have a few suggestions based on what is, in my opinion, broken.

Let me start with an Example:
I believe it is reasonable to assume a level 20 fighter in D&D to have 200HP. (give or take, but 200 is reasonable) A level 20 cleric can cast cure critical at 4d6+20 at max, or 24-44 points. That would equal out to 8.3% to 22%. What I am hearing from just about everyone is that cure crit is only doing about 8-9% now, at GM on high level fighters or characters with high level and high con. That is roughly 2.5 times less than D&D standards. But... here at FK, we go to level 50, or 2.5times higher than level 20, thus I believe we had a 2.5 mulitiplier system in effect to balance out the level differences. I believe that 2.5 multiplier was removed recently.

The problem is that priests healing abilities are really weak now, and they can barely keep their own HP under control, let alone act as a decent group healer now. In my experience with another of my characters, I dont even bring a healer along with me anymore, fighters are better. Mobs do a lot of damage, and I don't think healers can keep up very well with it. I have heard many priest players say such.

I surmise that the changes were to control the power level of priests in some way. I would like to point out that Priests are the most powerful casters in the game, even with reduced healing and they are completely overpowered. Thus, their balance issues have not been addressed. Lets compare with a wizard. A mage cannot GM any spell, and each spell level up the difficulty chain, the lower they can max it to. A specialist wizard can only GM spells in their guild and there are few of them. Their non guild spells are weaker than even those of the mage. I like this system because it gives some identity and uniqueness to the wizard, even though D&D gives wizards all spells at GM basically, and power level is related to character level. Priests, (read divine casters) on the other hand, can GM all their spells. Wizards are primary casters, yet they are significantly reduced in terms of spell power, yet priests have no such limitations. This is a huge imbalance, if a priest ever decided to grind up their attack spells they would be more devastating than any wizard could ever be. To solve the balance issue, I really think the classes should be balanced against each other. Priests really should get their 2.5 modifier to healing back, but I would suggest limiting what spells can be GM'd based on their faith, and /or domains. To be honest, Paladins, Rangers, Druids, Bards should also be considered in this discussion. I know this is a lot of work and will bring up huge debate and possible anger but a balanced game is just more fun. Priests, Paladins, Rangers Druids, and Bards(I dont know anything about bards but I'm guessing) use a D&D-like system to some extent, wizards do not. I would think that some individual variation in divine spell casting would also make for a very interesting set of unique characters along with great RP themes that can be associated with them.

Anyway, I'm just throwing things on the plate as I think they should be. Not looking to start a fight or angry debate.
C

[Brar]

Going to play devil's advocate again :p

Lvl 20 fighter, without toughness feat and naked.
20 x 5.5 (20 times 1D10) + 20 x 4 (18 Con) = 190hp

At level 20 you can barely considered to be naked so let's consider you have this +4 to Con due to magic items.
Means 40 more hp

We are already at 230hp and it is not considering toughness feat, other hp raising magical items that you should have at level 20, wish spells, ect.

Second thing, in DnD you get a fixed number of spells per day. With my 50 cleric, in a standard challenging fight, I gain back at least 3 spells.
And can meditate 2 minutes between each fight to earn back at least half my missing spells.

And don't forget that cure is not everything, there is heal (even if I find it hard on the cast time considering it requires component and can't be spontaneous casted), there is all the protection spells.

So I find it nice as it is now, it is powerful enough to be challenging, don't forget you can add metamagic to spells also which helps a lot, try to spam some quicken cure critical when in dire need and you will see the health going up like mad, but to be really efficient you need to have good aliases at hand that is a fact.

About the balancing things, there were never such things in DnD for a sole reason in my eyes, each one should fits a different role and you can't do that with a balancing against each other system.
It is a party game, not a competition to see who is the most powerful in solo. But again, there should be near zero solo but lvl 10 areas if you listen to me, so my opinion is probably biased.

Brar, in his hardcore mode again

[Selveem]

Really depends on what you're fighting, Brar.

Ever tried that versus a Dragon? Good luck.

If the mob is a heavy hitter or has a lot of HP as well as offensive shields that, on the tank, hit 5x/round (five attacks a level 50 fighter has) at the same time as being subject to three attacks/round as well as being cast upon by powerful spells, what Casious's saying is that healing is practically useless and spells are best reserved for in-between battles. In D&D there's more spell selection for a Priest to choose from that they have access to automatically, provided your DM approves of all the spells you intend to use.

[Brar]

Well..ever tried fighting an ancien dragon with 2 or 3 lvl 20 characters in tabletop? I wish you good luck then.

But one thing I can really see as a boost for heals would be to make the "heal" spell actually do what it is supposed to do (heal you fully) and usable in fight. This would be a real boost. And yes, against a dragon, I would try to have one priest spamming cure spells on the one who will take the hits, and another one spamming mass cure for everyone taking breath damage and supports for the main healer.
Maybe we could ask the imm to plan testing group combat sessions to see how really effective is it.

[Selveem]

That is kinda what I meant by 'more spells in D&D' - in FK a lot of the spells that would be really handy to have are not available.

Yeah, I know fighting a Dragon is rough, but not all Dragons are extremely powerful. I was just using that one as an example, but there are plenty of other areas where the little bit of healing that you would do just wouldn't be all that helpful. OSOW may have changed since I last visited it, but there are mobs with a lot of HP and shielding spells that shred your fighter. It was rough in the past even, sometimes, with fully geared and powerful characters if you remember. That was back when healing healed a lot more than it does now. To be keeping up now would mean a lot of wasted heal spells in anticipation of heavy damage. Resting in a place like that isn't very feasible, either, with so many wandering monsters.

I have priests, but I hardly care about them as much as I do my fighters. But with healing nerfed, it lessens my fighters' chances of survival.

[Casious]

Brar,

Thanks for the discussion. As you said, everyone has a role to play in the party. I was simply suggesting that priests are not effective healers as they used to be. Top that off with the fact that mobs do a LOT of damage, hit fast and often, land a lot of their hits...and they move at the speed of the mud, not a player typing commands. And priests now have the potential to be better battle-casters than healers which seems... weird to me?

[Selveem]

I think you made an extremely good point there Casious..

I'm all for class flexibility. If someone wants to tailor their priest to be a cannon, I'm all for it.. but to just automatically be that way seems a bit hard to swallow.

[Brar]

Yes, my views is that they were too good healers before, and yes, a priest can be a fearsome battlecaster, it all depends on which spells the specialize in, and it is the same in tabletop. Evil do not gets spontaneous cure for a reason.
Yet, I think (as in it is my opinion only) that our problem with group fighting is more of a player habits problem than a balance or amount of healing problem.
I mean, it is not because you have a healer that you should not quaff a potion in a tough fight, you can have one spellcaster dedicated to buffing (bard song anyone?), you also have the debuffing (dispel, sorrow, fatigue, ect), those parts are not used enough in my eyes, all that matters for most is the direct damage/healing, but the indirect one is most of the time far more important. Is it better to throw a cure critical that heals 8% when you can cast a stone skin that absorb the equivalent of 40%? or a sorrow that makes him miss 2 attacks for a sum of 15%? ect ect
One thing I completely agree with you is the typing against the machine, for me the best would be to be really turn based but it's only a dream, now I would sell my kidney to have a full round given twice or thrice the duration it has today. And as I said earlier, alias are a must for spellcasters.

It will of course makes the fight last longer, but it will give more times to do thinking during the fight.

Brar

[Selveem]

Yeah, I dunno if it's changed, but innate spells couldn't be dispelled.

And, yeah, it'd be nice to always have a full and balanced party available to go adventuring, but that's generally not going to be the case.

Ultimately, a Priest should be able to perform the classes' primary function by design. I think the point's valid and whether or not it's agreed with by anyone else, I support raising the healing priests can do to the proper percentage that would occur in D&D.

[Brar]

Ultimately, a Priest should be able to perform the classes' primary function by design. I think the point's valid and whether or not it's agreed with by anyone else, I support raising the healing priests can do to the proper percentage that would occur in D&D.

Agree, we give them the same amount percentage, but then you have to give the same numbers per memorization. Which means without stat modifier you get only 32 cure crit instead of the 49 we have right now.
If we do that, I'm all for it

[Nysan]

Not going to get into the class balancing issues. I'll leave that discussion for better minds than me.

I am concerned with healing spells since the multiplier bug was fixed. Be it one of my holy rollers' healing or Gilain quaffing a potion, there a real question mark on the results. Granted, I am not expecting results similar to pre-bug effects but I agree that trying to heal a group in many situations is near impossible... "mass cure l/s/c" can only go in so many slots.

Yes, GM'ed cure spells are close to desirable effects (still low in heavy hitter situations), but consider how long it takes to GM a spell. Expecting a young priestie to sit in a dark hole and spam "cast 'cure serious'" 5,000 times before they are barely effective is a bit extreme in this kind of mud. Perhaps the multiplier can be adjusted a bit? Not pre-bug stats, but hopefully some change.

[Khelebhzed]

A few observations with issues like this is an argument of numbers versus percentage. At the end of the day FK goes to level fifty and PnP goes to 20. Example: You heal X amount of dYs, do you take those numbers straight from PnP, or do you look at the %HP that they would heal on say a level 20 char in PnP, and use whatever dice numbers equal that percentage on a level 50 character?

One issue with numbers is that if our total HPs are different than PnP.

However, no changes are made lightly, presumably there was much discussion on the healing, such as it is now, before implemented. Part of the modifier was bugged, and I definitely agree on not doing as much damage to Undead.

If healing is to be very strong, are there other ways to balance it? Should improvement be slower than it already is? Or maybe if we keep healing where it is now, can we adjust the rate of improvement? If we need a far higher skill level to be useful, then higher trainers or faster improvement could be an answer.

All other arguments aside, at the core, it does seem the current motivation is for group RP. If that means healing is not such as it was, to encourage more grouping, so be it. Yet, at it's most basic, if healers cannot heal as functional members of the group to the point where people are overlooking them, then it definitely is a problem that needs to be carefully reconsidered.

[Mask]

Greetings!

Interesting issue, really - the point is that all dice should be calibrated with respect to each other using 3.5ed ratios. The problem is that we have deliberately increased the number of hit points that people have significantly to allow for link loss, slow links etc. A solution to this that I have been pondering for some time is to remove the increase in HP and slow combat down by the same factor, which would give people more time to actually do things during a combat, but would also make combat *much* more deadly.

I'm not sure how people would feel about this kind of change? It would be a relatively easy change to make, and revertable, so maybe we should just try it for a day! Slow combat thursday, anyone!

M

[Brar]

Greetings!

Interesting issue, really - the point is that all dice should be calibrated with respect to each other using 3.5ed ratios. The problem is that we have deliberately increased the number of hit points that people have significantly to allow for link loss, slow links etc. A solution to this that I have been pondering for some time is to remove the increase in HP and slow combat down by the same factor, which would give people more time to actually do things during a combat, but would also make combat *much* more deadly.

I'm not sure how people would feel about this kind of change? It would be a relatively easy change to make, and revertable, so maybe we should just try it for a day! Slow combat thursday, anyone!

M

You're my hero!!!!!

So when do we remove natural healing?
Edit to add another pun : So when do you introduce tactical combat? (ie movement grid inside a room)

Cheering Brar

[Nysan]

Slow combat... That makes me think of the built in delays currently used in mining and other trades. That about right? One action per combat round with a 5-10 second between rounds, maybe tells and communications during delay period?

If that is the idea... sure. Gives folks with slower connections or slower reaction-typing skills the chance to get off a heal or fireball before that NPC spams 5 rounds including kicks.

Would be a good idea to test out at least.

[Selveem]

Party on the test port? I'll bring the chips and salsa con queso.

[Khelebhzed]

Sounds potentially awesome, that augmentation to combat is worth consideration at the very least.

[Kallias]

It'd be neat to try - but combat will be entirely too deadly for a game of this medium. To counter how quickly pc's would die, an increase in magical equipment with high end +'s to AC would be needed.

[Raona]

Perhaps combat rate could be auto-calibrated to the nature of the threat? That is, if any member of the group drops below 80% HP, has a body area turn red, or drops a weapon, say, then the game goes to a turn-by-turn mode (my preference), or slows the combat rate? Players could also opt for this before a fight by setting some sort of flag, say when they know they are coming up on a challenge.

I agree wholeheartedly that if the level of player combat control goes up, the hazard of combat should also increase. I have a slow connection and when I try to use a combat move like stun or disarm, it generally executes at the close of combat, unless I type it anticipatorily. If I am disarmed, I'll generally stay that way until combat ends...unless I'm expecting it, and then I'll still likely go 10 rounds before I pick it up. I'd much prefer to have a more realistic response (I get disarmed, first thing I do is draw another weapon, or try to get the one I lost), with controls put in place to ensure that I can still only do what time should permit me to in a round. (I can't punch, kick, bash, and cast a spell just because I can spam all those commands in the [new] time of one round.) I think the latter issue has already been coded in...so I think slowing down combat and reducing (all) hitpoints would be a valid thing to try.

[Alvirin]

Sign me up!

BTW in D&D in the same unit of time it can be done more damage than healed, unlike MMPORGS where healers are expected to keep people alive through spam healing, clerics in D&D sure make sure people don't die in a battle, but more often than not they do their healing between battles.

Also slow combat might lead to the need of better magical items, that could lead to magic item creation feats