Spells - Why was TS removed from creature abilities?

[darkpriest]

Why True Seeing (TS) was removed from creatures’ abilities (ex. Umber Hulk)?

I can understand that the spell TS was tweaked (although not entirely as it was somewhat balancing the game mechanics ability to sneak in plain open space in a bright light), but why to remove –racial- ability from the creature that you change into? Those creatures perceive world differently, as for example lizards see in the infrared (and think of a dragon who has such an ability enhanced magically), some have ultra sharp smell sense, some use ultrasounds to locate things around them and last but not least, some can just locate mind waves (as brain emits in fact tiny and constantly pulsing electrical currents). If you take a form of a creature that uses such forms of detection it is absolutely possible to see someone even through the walls or in a complete darkness and so on. Sometimes I think that in changing some things certain changes are unreasonable. (still there is an imp which is vulnerable to fire yet resistant to cold). The ruling is that what you see in game cause of game mechanics, it’s there (or is not), but NWN originally had some designs that maintained balance cause some weird abilities were simply negating each other (for example TS spell vs. stealth ability).

I fully understand the spell tweak and together with some other spell a caster can get a total of temporary +20 to spot (which makes sense for a standard playable humanoid race), but why the tweaks or removal of –racial- and –permanent- ability of TS where it does not make sense?

[Rex]

The Spells not supposed to give you that ability anyway.  (Book version that is).  Shape Change would of course but not Polymorph.  Me, I'd give it back to them but then I really don't care much if some uber sneak gets turned into a pancake by a shifted Umberhulk....the More Pancakes the Better.

You do still get something.  Just not True Sight.

~Rex

[EO]

It's a matter of balance, no more. A level 4 or a level 9 spell that could spot even Mask, god of thieves, is unbalanced.

[Psyche]

Umber Hulk True Sight isn't really True Sight, it's Blindsight.

[Rex]

It's a matter of balance, no more. A level 4 or a level 9 spell that could spot even Mask, god of thieves, is unbalanced.

A Player Character that can exceed Masks levels of Hide and Move Silent is Unbalanced.  As for the Umber Hulk.

     Umber Hulk
Large Aberration
Hit Dice: 8d8+35 (71hp)
Initiative: +1
Speed: 20 ft. (4 squares), burrow 20 ft.
Armor Class: 18 (-1 size, +1 Dex, +8 natural), touch 10, flat-footed 17
Base Attack/Grapple: +6/+16
Attack: Claw +11 melee (2d4+6)
Full Attack: 2 claws +11 melee (2d4+6) and bite +9 melee (2d8+3)
Space/Reach: 10 ft./10 ft.
Special Attacks: Confusing gaze
Special Qualities: Darkvision 60 ft., tremorsense 60 ft.
Saves: Fort +8, Ref +3, Will +6
Abilities: Str 23, Dex 13, Con 19, Int 11, Wis 11, Cha 13
Skills: Climb +12, Jump +5, Listen +11
Feats: Great Fortitude, Multiattack, Toughness
Environment: Underground
Organization: Solitary or cluster (2-4)
Challenge Rating: 7
Treasure: Standard
Alignment: Usually chaotic evil
Advancement: 9-12 HD (Large); 13-24 HD (Huge)

There is also the Truely Horrid Version, which is Truely Horrid.

Truly Horrid Umber Hulk
Huge Aberration
Hit Dice: 20d8+180 (270hp)
Initiative: +0
Speed: 20 ft. (4 squares), burrow 20 ft.
Armor Class: 22 (-2 size, +14 natural), touch 8, flat-footed 24
Base Attack/Grapple: +15/+36
Attack: Claw +26 melee (3d6+13)
Full Attack: 2 claws +26 melee (3d6+13) and bite +24 melee (4d6+6)
Space/Reach: 15 ft./15 ft.
Special Attacks: Confusing gaze
Special Qualities: Darkvision 60 ft., tremorsense 60 ft.
Saves: Fort +17, Ref +6, Will +15
Abilities: Str 36, Dex 10, Con 29, Int 10, Wis 13, Cha 15
Skills: Climb +23, Jump +15, Listen +21, Sense Motive +5
Feats: Great Fortitude, Improved Natural Attack (claw), Improved Natural Armor X3, Iron Will, Multiattack
Environment: Underground
Organization: Solitary
Challenge Rating: 14
Treasure: Standard
Alignment: Usually chaotic evil
Advancement: -
Level Adjustment: -

And for the Icing on the Cake.  Tremor Sense, isn't quite like Blind Sense but close enough for government work as they say.

~Rex

[Chrisman888]

It's a matter of balance, no more. A level 4 or a level 9 spell that could spot even Mask, god of thieves, is unbalanced.

A Player Character that can exceed Masks levels of Hide and Move Silent is Unbalanced. 

There is no characters that exceed that anymore with the new changes, at least not to my knowledge. Unless you can provide us with a screen-shot or something similar of these 80 + hide/ms. Just because "X" player sense you a tell saying : "MY HIDE/MS is 90!!!!" doesn't mean it's true.

[Delphinidae]

Stay on topic. Don't want this derailing into another stealth debate or it will be locked.

[failed.bard]

The main balance reason as I understood it, is that true seeing is a 6th level spell for wizards, so why should a 4th level polymorph spell give them true seeing plus other abilities?

[darkpriest]

well, because you have to pay the price of turning into an umber hulk, which isn't a popular creature among any people (and even more so if any of the locals would witness your shapechanging). So to speak i didn't shift into any dragon form, so those forms are also without -real- true seeing?

All in all i would rather see some -price- (i.e. components) added to what others could perceive as powerful or unbalanced (i hate this word) instead of making many spells much different to what they were originally in game (otherwise there are many things that should be revamped as well - rolling hit points on level up with out rerolls, making stealth system properly, proper trip rules, speed movement etc.) or even in some cases to what they should be per book description (i.e. animating and creating spells), but thats some other topic.

So all in all there is no -true seeing- as it was designed by developers at all?

(as for stealth, i heard about someone having ms and hide close to 70s, soooo.... how to counter that in game uhm? ) +20 from spells won;t help much

[darkpriest]

Oh and btw, wouldn't this reveal anything that moves be that invisible or stealth creature?

Tremorsense (Ex): A creature with tremorsense is sensitive to vibrations in the ground and can automatically pinpoint the location of anything that is in contact with the ground. Aquatic creatures with tremorsense can also sense the location of creatures moving through water. The ability’s range is specified in the creature’s descriptive text.

If no straight path exists through the ground from the creature to those that it's sensing, then the range defines the maximum distance of the shortest indirect path. It must itself be in contact with the ground, and the creatures must be moving.

As long as the other creatures are taking physical actions, including casting spells with somatic components, they're considered moving; they don't have to move from place to place for a creature with tremorsense to detect them.

So technically it would have the same effect as designers TS?? because all creatures in game are moving on the ground, unless they emote something else? (as per rule, what you see in game it is there)

[EO]

Reread my post. It was done for balance purposes, it was a deliberate choice by developers because we felt that in a PW such as POTM these abilities un-nerfed were too powerful.

You can argue that the shape in PnP may do it, but in PnP, you're not in a PW where people can abuse it and usually in a party you work against NPC's and the DM can, if he wants, ignore that ability with whatever reason.

[Heretic]

As EO said, it was a deliberate choice and wont likely change.

Trust me this is but a little detail that's not worth giving of your time and attention to, when you've the whole world to explore and stories to tell with your character, there's a lot out there that's worth discovering and spend time on. 

[darkpriest]

Oh, well… So it seems that when shapechanged or polymorphed I will have to count on DMs and other players good will to RP different creatures abilities.

I would rather avoid a situation like this:

A group of adventurers moves through some corridors, in front of them one prods a large beast in front of him.

-hey, is it safe here?

[The umber hulk turns around, chatters and nods; few seconds later a blade sticks out of its belly and the last view are his comrades being ambushed by things, that he didn’t sense their approach]

It would be good though that the duration would be brought back to its original state.

[failed.bard]

Oh, well… So it seems that when shapechanged or polymorphed I will have to count on DMs and other players good will to RP different creatures abilities.

I would rather avoid a situation like this:

A group of adventurers moves through some corridors, in front of them one prods a large beast in front of him.

-hey, is it safe here?

[The umber hulk turns around, chatters and nods; few seconds later a blade sticks out of its belly and the last view are his comrades being ambushed by things, that he didn’t sense their approach]

It would be good though that the duration would be brought back to its original state.

  The umber hulk doesn't have tremor sense either.  True seeing was used by Bioware for simplicities sake, and it was removed from polymorph version of the creature here for balance reasons.

[darkpriest]

Actually if my eyes do not play tricks on me, i see tremorsense 60ft. on umber hulk. unless you are speaking of the in game current version of that creature.

[failed.bard]

Actually if my eyes do not play tricks on me, i see tremorsense 60ft. on umber hulk. unless you are speaking of the in game current version of that creature.

  That would be why I said:

and it was removed from polymorph version of the creature here for balance reasons.

  It was removed here, from the polymorphed version of the umberhulk, for balance reasons.

[darkpriest]

Actually if my eyes do not play tricks on me, i see tremorsense 60ft. on umber hulk. unless you are speaking of the in game current version of that creature.

  That would be why I said:

and it was removed from polymorph version of the creature here for balance reasons.

  It was removed here, from the polymorphed version of the umberhulk, for balance reasons.

Hmm what if the umber hulk received a see invisibility AND +30 listen skill instead of that -unbalanced- (another word i hate) TS?? This would somewhat emulate the tremorsense, because if someone would not be moving he would not be detected, and it would still leave some room for those godly sneaksters with ms 50+. Hmm, wouldn't this be an acceptable tweak?

[shadymerchant]

What I don't get is why umberhulk trueseeing was removed completely, rather than just given the nerfed spell variant of 10 + caster level

[failed.bard]

You aren't supposed to get the creatures abilities with polymorph to begin with.  It's another spell Bioware overpowered for single player use, and is part of the reason the DEVs have shortened the duration of it while they get feedback on how to balance it.

  That being said, I do think they should have gotten darkvision added to offset it, though.  Having an umber hulk be lost in the dark in tunnels is just silly.

[Rex]

They're speaking of the computer game.  Like I said it still gives you something like a bonus to spot and what not anyway, unless they removed it completely instead of changing it, don't know don't care since I try not to play a caster in a low magic setting unless I'm forced into it.  By the Book you shouldn't get anything but it's shape and physical stats.  You wouldn't get anything else considered "an ability" unless you get up to the shape change levels.  Bioware didn't do horribly bad but some of their directions are bit off to people that are used to book ways.

~Rex

[darkpriest]

then again, as you said it is a computer game and many of the things were not designed as it is per book rules, but removing  some and leaving others intact doesn't help much. I do not know how the shifters forms are handled here, because i do not have a shifter to play with, but if those creatures were also tweaked, then something is not right hmm? I do not know why we stuck on the umber hulk subject as it was not the main point (although quite interesting).

This topic refers also to the spell shapechange (lvl 9) which -gives- you supernatural abilities of the creature template. (and in fact in game this spell is nerfed already to what it gives normally). The thing is that there is some inconsistency in changes being made, because some changes are made in the theme -in PnP this spell does not function like that- and it gets hit with a nerf bat, while the other is made even weaker than its already not perfect and lacking adaptation of a PnP spell, because it is too strong. It should be either you leave the spells as they were by game design but throw out some really broken concepts (like stacking shields or some bigbys spells) or you tweak all to resemble the PnP rules and add special spell components to some of them.

I know that it is a low magic server and in fact i would be all for this that you should -request- for all spellcasting classes if we were to maintain the Ravenloft setting atmosphere. Aside of a wizard i also have a pure fighter because to be honest it seems that such a character is something special in a world filled with clerics, druids, paladins, wizards and sorcerers and in fact recently i enjoyed it more at lvl 3 than my lvl 7 wizard. (what's the point in hiding your skills if majority of people you meet are using magic, be that divine or arcane). At least i know that my bounty hunter will have a lot of work when he will become a professional witch and monster hunter.

[EO]

We change things as we see fit for server balance. You likely won't like all changes, but I'm sure you like a majority of them. Other players will like the changes you dislike and dislike others, etc.

We don't aim to please each and every single player, but rather look at the entire playerbase.

[darkpriest]

We change things as we see fit for server balance. You likely won't like all changes, but I'm sure you like a majority of them. Other players will like the changes you dislike and dislike others, etc.

We don't aim to please each and every single player, but rather look at the entire playerbase.

True that i like most of the changes (GMW, flame weapon, most buffs duration etc.) and in fact few others could be downed a bit as well (i.e. armor enhancment spell downed from +5 to +3 at lvl 20, same with shield of faith - I do not have a cleric developed much yet, so it's hard to say what's changed good enough and what's still a bit OP for the setting)), but some i dislike (two things actually 1. animate and create line of spells and polymoprhed (duration), shapechanged/shapeshifted creatures (duration and abilities))

I have to admit that the general design and balance is good when it comes to the items power level and general creatures design. That's some great work you did there. I only have a feeling that with some changes you will make arcane casters a bit too dependand on other classes and their role will be downed to buff givers and maybe sometimes an occasional crowd control spell (although that function would be really much better developed if scribing scrolls and creating wands was implemented and arcane casters could walk also with some really heavy altillery).

[failed.bard]

I have to admit that the general design and balance is good when it comes to the items power level and general creatures design. That's some great work you did there. I only have a feeling that with some changes you will make arcane casters a bit too dependand on other classes and their role will be downed to buff givers and maybe sometimes an occasional crowd control spell (although that function would be really much better developed if scribing scrolls and creating wands was implemented and arcane casters could walk also with some really heavy altillery).

This part is really off topic, but...  Why exactly is making it so mages need to be in a party a bad thing?  They shouldn't be able to Kill the entire server on their own, including the PCs, which, by the way, some of them could do before the changes.

[shadymerchant]

Personally, I like traveling with people my character is comfortable with, neutral to, or that somehow enhances the story I'm telling. If I don't see those people around, I solo instead. I did the same thing with my weapon master. What I don't get is why everyone is out to change how I play, particularly when it's a witchhunt that is unlikely to work until wizards have been downgraded to ray of frost. Of course, they'll have long since ceased to have been fun to play.