[Prestige Class] Blackguard/Paladin Spell Duration

[zDark Shadowz]

Imagine playing a paladin and going to cast Greater Magic Weapon at level 20 for a +2 bonus while people are slathering on strong magical varnish to their swords next to you. Or waiting until level 18 to cast a +3 divine favor that the cleric blackguard rival was already doing from level 9+ (depending when they multiclassed).

I don't mind if a paladin's spells are at half for the purposes of dispel checks, or even duration, but I think some spells should be looking at the class level rather than caster level.

I can't believe paladin had that footnote in its blurb. May as well stick with bless weapon for the whole expected career from 1 to 12 and extend spell it.

[King Pickle]

Imagine playing a paladin and going to cast Greater Magic Weapon at level 20 for a +2 bonus

At least you'd have Greater Magic Weapon. Unlike Paladin/Blackguard.

[Zyemeth]

Extending spell durations is a no brainer. Having spells last less time normally just causes people to rush rush rush through every dungeon with little to no rp. I can't even imagine how terrible it would be if spell timers got shorter before you can rest for a full ten minutes at high levels. I'd drop those classes in a heartbeat. Why would I want to beat my head into my desk before I can effectively play my character in a dungeon?

[Zyemeth]

In a pen and paper (which these rules were designed for) you don't even NEED to ward most times unless against specific creatures. You can go through most of your existence and never touch a mage armor. That's really not the case with this server. As well as that you can skip an uneventful day as the DM moves from one scene to the next. You don't have to physically wait time until the DM says "The rest of the evening passes and then you rest" which you have to do in a video game with rest timers. People hate having to sit through unskippable 30 second youtube ads so imagine have to stop every 15 minutes in a dungeon to wait for another ten minutes just so you can enjoy the character build you've spent an irl year working on. That's madness and would feel like playing some mobile game with timers before you get more action points.

[transcend]

In a pen and paper (which these rules were designed for) you don't even NEED to ward most times unless against specific creatures. You can go through most of your existence and never touch a mage armor. That's really not the case with this server. As well as that you can skip an uneventful day as the DM moves from one scene to the next. You don't have to physically wait time until the DM says "The rest of the evening passes and then you rest" which you have to do in a video game with rest timers. People hate having to sit through unskippable 30 second youtube ads so imagine have to stop every 15 minutes in a dungeon to wait for another ten minutes just so you can enjoy the character build you've spent an irl year working on. That's madness and would feel like playing some mobile game with timers before you get more action points.

I agree with this. In pen and paper, time is elastic. When you are playing NwN, your time is real time, and distraction or a single failure to extend a spell implies your party is at significant danger. Requiring people to  wait to rest 10 minutes after every 15 of activity is also detrimental to certain dungeons. Not every pen and paper rule is applicable to a video game's persistent world server; there are other logistics to be considered.

And from a RP standpoint, you WANT to make people's sacrifices and efforts feel worthwhile, the destination, while not as important as the journey itself, is what drives people toward pursuing stories or not. Some literary resources work better on paper than they do when applied to a roleplaying situation.

[Derek Jeter]

Blackguards have other advantages, and ultimately, no one is forced to pick that PrC. If someone feels the class is so weak they do not want to pursue that path, they don't have to pick it. A fallen paladin can multiclass into another class if they want to.

Fallen paladin blackguards are already substantially more powerful than other blackguards, and if they fail a Powers Check on top of that, they don't even need to meet most of the requirements. Since they are implemented as per PnP and aren't particularly weak, there's no reason to review that class.

edit: Actually, as Bad_Bud reminded me, if we go by the 3.5 rules, the paladin's (and ranger's) caster level is half their class level. This is something we could consider to rebalance paladins and blackguards since a level 20 paladin would thus cast as a level 10 character.

Probably a bad idea, the pitchforks and torches would go on sale.

You'd have to rebalance every other class, otherwise those two will just die, and everything is okayish right now.

I like how you can take your time in a dungeon compared to say arelith, thus creating more rp. This isn't a great idea.

[Eruheran]

Blackguard is taken for the RP, and it is taken for DM/DS and Dark Blessing. That's it.

Well said. People shouldn't be taking PrCs simply for the sake of power alone. Any PrC is a manifestation of the character's journey. It may be "feels bad" if one is only looking at the PrC as a stat block, but it is (in my opinion) moreso an accolade to represent the player's dedication to the story and character. Stats should be secondary on a roleplaying server, but I'm getting the impression that this is being lost in the background noise here. It's for that reason that I also vehemently disagree with the decision to remove the application gate for PrCs in general, but I will leave it at that for the sake of remaining mostly on topic.

People should not chose a PrC for sake of power alone. I agree wholehaertedly with that. Perfect.

However, the Blackguard is described as an Epithome of evil, whoe consorts with evil in exchange for power.

Come on: a champion of evil who is frankly weaker than the other classes? Why woild he consort with devils and the forces of evil?

Because guaranteed the character isn't sitting there in-game considering if he/she should should follow that darker path in regards to how strong the spells are that he/she is going to get.

Why consort? Well that would be up to the character, not oocly as the player. Time and time again players forget that this server is rp focused. One need look no further than the FAQ or roleplay manifest on these forums to know this. The player is not deciding for themselves why the character is going that path. The player is meant to be playing a faithful portrayal of the character.

If the character was going to be a 'champion of evil' then they are going to be that, regardless of how the player views things in a meta-gaming aspect, if they are playing as intended. So in other words taking blackguard or any other PRC for that matter is meant to be done for the sake of the characters roleplay, not to min-max or any other build related issues. That is why the DM's are not submitting blanket relevels with their latest updates - RP comes first.

In a pen and paper (which these rules were designed for) you don't even NEED to ward most times unless against specific creatures. You can go through most of your existence and never touch a mage armor. That's really not the case with this server. As well as that you can skip an uneventful day as the DM moves from one scene to the next. You don't have to physically wait time until the DM says "The rest of the evening passes and then you rest" which you have to do in a video game with rest timers. People hate having to sit through unskippable 30 second youtube ads so imagine have to stop every 15 minutes in a dungeon to wait for another ten minutes just so you can enjoy the character build you've spent an irl year working on. That's madness and would feel like playing some mobile game with timers before you get more action points.

I do think that 'balancing' down other classes to a half-caster level approach would be a big step away from quality of life on the server. It would make things extremely irritating and would worsen the 'ward duration anxiety' players feel when in DM events. You'd end up seeing players of these classes with less experience wanting to rush through the content laid out quicker than ever before, which would be detrimental to the rp and atmosphere of the scenes.

As for Blackguard spell durations, I personally think it would be fine if paladin levels and the Blackguard levels determined spell duration together, but not any other class combination.

As to how possible that is from a dev standpoint, I would not know. And I'll be leaving my opinions from this thread at this point.

[EO]

First of all, I never said we would, I said it was an option. That being said, we've greatly altered both of these classes (paladin/ranger) to make them much more powerful than they are in base NwN, so toning them down is not out of the question. We will always readjust things, sometimes to buff, sometimes to nerf, and every time we nerf people get upset, so we're used to that, and don't mind it.

As for buff duration, they're not meant to be permanent fixtures; some are, which is why they last hours per level (which in our system means permanent unlike in PnP, since people can rest every 3-4 in-game hours rather than every 12 hours), but others are round/level. It's not a quality of life argument, it's a balance one. If you were meant to be permanently warded, these wards would be part of the class' normal features and be permanent.

There are no plans to extend the duration of buffs, blackguard or otherwise, beyond what we've already done, and we've already extended pretty much all wards by the equivalent of 10 levels already, as most of you seem to forget.

[Dardonas]

As for buff duration, they're not meant to be permanent fixtures; some are, which is why they last hours per level (which in our system means permanent unlike in PnP, since people can rest every 3-4 in-game hours rather than every 12 hours), but others are round/level. It's not a quality of life argument, it's a balance one. If you were meant to be permanently warded, these wards would be part of the class' normal features and be permanent.

As was pointed out, in PnP, while you may wait 12 hours to rest, you also can have your DM fade that rest.  You aren't literally waiting twelve hours for your DM to okay your rest or a translation of 12 hours on a timer.

In NwN, let's assume you're high enough level to wait 3-4 hours for your rest, which translates to 18-24 minutes.  If your buffs last a fraction of that time a few things can occur:

- Your wards run out while your party's don't and you keep going with a less warded character that now has less damage, AB and AC.
- You and your party wait upwards of 10-15 minutes for you to rest to re-ward yourself
- You rush through the dungeon, encounter, or scene and can't afford to take a second to roleplay

Even if the spell duration were extended, you aren't permanently buffed in any situation.  You're buffed for 15-26 minutes depending on your level.  Possibly double that if you extend your spells.

This doesn't just go for Blackguard, this goes for Paladin and Ranger if you are seriously looking to cut their caster level by half.   You mention yourself that the longer lasting buffs (1 hour + 1 hour / level) wouldn't be affected by buffing the duration of the other spells because they're already permanent.  What we're looking at realistically are buffs that would be used instead of people just deciding its not worth casting your own bull's strength over drinking a potent bull's strength potion. 

What happens (beyond mechanical effects) when you increase spell durations:

- People can roleplay more in dungeons without feeling their wards are going to fall off
- People can roleplay more in Dungeon Master events without trying to hurry up and use their wards before their vulnerable
- People can roleplay more with AMPCs without feeling like they have to engage before their wards run out

[BraveSirRobin]

Don't Paladin caster levels already combine with Blackguard caster levels? I could've sworn this was already a thing, which affected duration and the power of the spell. So GMW from a 10 Paladin, 10 Blackguard should be the same as a level 20 Paladin's.

A Paladin/Blackguard still counts as a fallen Paladin (and thus loses access to all their Paladin abilities), but gains bonus abilities as a Blackguard (some of which are some of the same abilities they lost as a fallen Paladin), so they are not able to cast their Paladin spells anymore.

Yes. I meant, the Blackguard spells. They don't use a combined caster level from the Paladin levels?

[EO]

- People can roleplay more in dungeons without feeling their wards are going to fall off
- People can roleplay more in Dungeon Master events without trying to hurry up and use their wards before their vulnerable
- People can roleplay more with AMPCs without feeling like they have to engage before their wards run out

I wish it were true, but we already know it isn't. We actually did increase buff duration; that's why you get that extra hour/turn. The purpose of that extra hour/turn is to allow people to roleplay more, rush less. Now you're asking for even more time? From what we've seen, people usually don't use the extra time to roleplay more but rather they use it to clear more content since it lasts longer. It becomes the new meta. So, extending durations even more won't achieve any meaningful roleplay effect. This is like the extra lane argument for highways; adding an extra lane never meaningfully decreases traffic time because people adapt.
As I said, buffs, wards, both in PnP, and NwN, are not all meant to be permanent or last until your next rest. Some are, they last hours/level, and since people can rest every 3-4 hours here, they are essentially permanent, others are meant to be short-lived and last through one or a few encounters. When unbuffed, you won't be optimal, so you can either press on and take more risks, or wait and thus slow down the pace. Ideally people would roleplay in the downtime, sometimes they will sometimes they won't.

[Revenant]

I was going to say a lot of stuff, but frankly it's pointless.

The barebones: duration for longer buffs is quality of life. Dungeon design means buffs are beyond mandatory. If your buffs run out in a dungeon you should be doing, you either retreat to re-ward or you rout. It doesn't make the dungeon harder, just more time consuming waiting on rest timers. Maybe that's an opportunity for more RP - except in my experience, most people just use that to get a drink of water, stretch their legs, pet their cat. Doesn't make them bad players, or mean that I only play with bad roleplayers. Dungeon entrances are simply not fertile fields of RP. If you want people RPing, dungeons taking longer is absolutely the last thing you should want.

PnP expects much less out of warding and a given adventuring day than NWN does, and players have the liberty to be much more efficient with their actions under the given timer.

[Bad_Bud]

I feel like people are getting dragged down into the mud with this thread. Cutting caster level in half for Rangers and Paladins is not something under any kind of consideration. The original suggestion has been said and heard, and I think this thread has run its course and turned into something else.