Topics

[In Particular:]

Nailed prominently beside the entrance to the Maestros' Hall in the Souk, this message is regularly replaced and updated...

The Maestros' Hall will always buy all manner of Alchemical, Herbalist, and Tinkering supplies or sundries at the best prices in town!
In Particular:
Ash, Smouldering
Tool Schematics
Flawless Alchemical Crystals
Shimmering Tears
Positive Energy Crystals


We accept Barter for goods of sale, and will buy noteworthy and exceptional items outright!
Aspects of Particular Interest:
Dancer
Politician
Priest
Scholar


Our Catalogue rotates regularly, if you have specific interests feel free to inquire with one our representatives, less than half our stock is on regular display!

ARCANE BREWS AND WANDS SOLD HERE.

I was thinking about random stuff and realized that another nice feature you could add for Rogues (maybe make it Pure Rogues, but could just be Rogue Levels) to sorta help incentivize them would be to add a /c togglemask type command for them that swaps to the masked hooded head instead of the regular hooded head. This way they'd get an extra option to utilize for cosmetics, although the command should come with the proviso that the rest of your gear and whatnot could totally be recognizable, so the command itself is not a magical "you can't recognize me now!" disguise like Clark Kent taking off his glasses.

The new weapons are super cool, and super evocative of a lot of what monks are traditionally all about in D&D.  They're really balanced, look rad, but unfortunately are only available to people with Exotic prof.  Monks already get a bunch of exotic weapons as part of their proficiency, and these seem in-theme to just be part of their default options.

This is NOT a request to make them Flurry weapons, though I think in the case of the Ankus, this would actually be very cool, as that would give Monks solid options for Flurry weapons in Light Blades, Close Quarters, and then Hammers.



EDIT: War Fans are already a monk prof weapon!  Sweet!

[charity auction]

Chancellor Khel:

We do not know each other at all, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Shania, the current Union Chief of the newly formed Maestro's union of Ephia's Well. I am not sure if any of your current or former students have informed you of our organization, but we are a conglomerate of trade and craftsmen who have decided to band together in service of the Well and supporting its efforts in the war against Iakmes. To that end, we have pledged to donate 50% of all profits directly to the War Council.

In the interest of this goal, we have been in talks with various members of the Accords as well as other prominent citizens on the prospect of holding a charity auction to support the war effort on Maribeh 19, IY 7788. We have already amassed a sizeable collection of adventuring items and oddities to auction off, however outside groups are welcome to participate, as well. We will be charging a modest 10% commission on all sales, all of which will go to the War Council at the conclusion of the event.

I write to you to humbly make two requests, if the Sandstone College would approve:

1- If the College would like to donate any artifacts or interesting works or specimens which can acceptably be auctioned off due to minimal cultural or historical importance.

2- If the Sandstone College would be willing to allow us to host the auction in your spacious lecture hall, which is optimally designed for such an event.

While our by-laws prohibit his current active membership in the Union so that he can focus on affairs of state, we still count Legate Gloamingdaith amongst our number, and your recent graduate, Itri Ablator, has also joined our cause. Both speak highly of the College, and we would be honored and most grateful if you allow us the use of the premises.  All setup and operating costs would be handled by our Union as well as staffing for the event, though if you would prefer your own College staff to be present to oversee affairs, they would be most welcome. This will be a meeting which includes the Accorded factions, and no weapons will be allowed on the premises for the duration of the auction. I am in the process of requesting the presence of a few Jannisaries to help keep the peace in case tempers flare, as they often can during competitive auctions.

Thank you for your time and attention, I look forward to hearing from you.

Best Regards,

Shania, Union Chief

[What is it:]

What is it: 
A Trade/Crafting Union/Collective

Where is it: 
The Souk

What is it about:
The Maestros are a faction centered around economic issues facing Ephia's Well, as well as acting as a crafting and merchant guild. The main focus of the group is to make dinari, yes, but ultimately that dinari is meant to be used for political clout and capital as we get involved in the goings on of the city. The faction also serves as a legitimate face to secret information brokering.

Is this a Stele faction?: 
Yes, we are on the Stele of Law and therefore count as a full faction. This means you cannot be a member of another Stele faction, such as the Accords or a group like the Scribes, however you may be a member of (any) political league. This is meant to be a primary faction.

Who would be a good fit: 
Any crafter, brewer, wandmaker, or merchant is more than welcome to join our ranks, of course, but we are not limited to just that. We also take on salespeople and security personnel, as well as couriers and, most importantly, information gatherers and brokers.

Come find us IG to get more info and see what it's about!

There was some discussion on the discord about adding some bonuses to the actual Craft Wand and Brew Potion feats to reflect actual expertise in those things.

What if the Pack capacity for each thing was passively increased with the respective feat?

Wands could get a bonus +2 wands bringing your total to 10.
Potions could get a bonus +10 potions bringing your total to 160.

This would also facilitate selling either item without being slammed with the snail speed.

[pocket sand!]

So Dirty Fighting has always been a weirdly mediocre and garbage feat for 99% of characters with melee mages being the sole exception where maybe it's sorta useful but still actually isn't that good.

Given that no one takes it and the fact that as far as I know, Beamdog did not fix it so that you can actually change the way it interacts with number of attacks per round, what if instead it was just either renamed or shifted into a completely different type of maneuver?


My thought is channeling Dale Gribble and turning it into a pocket sand! type ability, which would be really fitting given the current setting.

Basics would be it foregoes ALL damage to instead throw a small cone of sand that can only affect 2-3 opponents directly in front of you, and they make a Reflex Save vs AB-3 or get temporarily blinded for 1d3 rounds if they fail. To balance out the spam potential other than losing all your damage output, you take a -3 AC penalty for the round you use it because you're gathering up sand to throw, and yeah the range needs to be excessively short - you need to be actively engaged with the targets or right next to them. Any targets not actively attacking the user (as in they're facing someone else and attacking them) are either immune or just get a nice bonus to their save.

Another option is to make it trigger Attacks of Opportunity, but I think that would turn it back into being a terrible feat that no one would ever take.

Let's discuss.

Over a decade ago on Avlis, they had a nice system for guild armors to let PCs customize their armor to their PC while still maintaining the Guild look. You would have the ability to use an ability ONCE on your guild armor to absorb up another armor of the exact same type, and your guild armor would gain all the stats of that armor permanently and you'd never be able to do it again... that was now YOUR guild armor. It was tagged plot and attached to your character.

I was thinking that with the new "flavor" guilds like the Blackjacks, Weavers, and Accountants, we could implement a similar system since I've been seeing some complaints both IC and OOC about how the armors aren't great and people use other armor instead. Why not add the "Guild Armor Tailoring" service to the existing tailors such that you could actually transfer the appearance of a guild armor over to another set (in actuality your guild armor would BECOME that set, but the IC methodology would be the reverse)  by way of "having the armor tailored and dyed." It would allow people to use the gear they want to while still rocking guild looks, so it's a QoL win-win for everyone.

So apparently in Thay they just rip your clothes apart to remove tattoos, which is really unfortunate since I was wearing a custom tailored and enchanted outfit at the time and now it's basically ruined.

Pics:

BEFORE



AFTER


Reequipping and whatnot doesn't fix it. If it's not fixable, could we at least get a warning dialogue (also how about the NPC tells us how much it will cost, to boot?) telling us to remove any armor that has a part on the affected area, because it could be permanently changed?

While I do love me some repeating techno, I feel like this would be more fitting (and hilarious)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3seHGNoh2jI

[Spell Modifications -]

Thought it warranted its own thread for a few suggestions. Firstly I'll just paste the entry so it's easier to refer to:



So I've been playing an Infuser for a bit and noticed it really flags behind many other Perks (particularly compared to Hydromancer, its counterpart "elementalist" perk). Part of this is limited spell selection, sure, though the addition of electric damage to Horzi's is great and honestly I think that's the least of the Perk's issues. Most of the tweaks I was thinking are more stylistic while also just improving overall utility. Starting from the top:

Spell Modifications -
These all rule and are fine so far, though I'd say Horzi's shoudl do 1d6 electric instead of 1d4, just to make it line up with how much charge it generates. The extra d2 of damage is pretty minimal but would help at low level, which is kinda the only point at which that spell is useful.

Flame Weapon -
With the new theme options on the server, this benefit is sorta minimal since they can do it anyway, but yeah, they shouldn't have a choice in making it another element, that's silly.

Infuser Orb -
This is a big one, and I don't know if it's possible or if it's hard coded based on NWN wonkiness with spell levels on items, but the caster level of the spells on your orb NEED to be matched to your actual level. The Orb has Gedlee's at level 3 (useless over level 4ish), while Lightning Bolt and Scintillating are both Level 5 (more useful, but still really, really underwhelming later on). Considering this thing is supposed to be the main class feature and essentially your primary mode of damage output with very, very limited ammo, that's REALLY underwhelming. If the caster levels can't be changed, then maybe the total number of charges or the number of charges restored via Horzi's could be increased? Also at level 9 they should get a cast of Lightning Ball from the orb for 10-12 charge or something like that, could also help.


Electrical Shield -
This is the interesting one and where I think it could be expanded a bit thematically and be the "major" change added. The Level 1 power level of it as is is perfect, the issue is you don't stay down there very long and once you get to level 5+ (which isn't overly challenging here) the feature is basically worthless since you don't want to be getting hit in the first place, and even if you do a 1d4 electric hit isn't gonna help much. I was thinking that maybe around level 6ish it could get an upgrade to turn it into a Capacitative type of shield... essentially, think of a Resist Elements but ONLY for electrical damage, and it's charged by ANY source of electricity, including, say electrical damage from weapons.

Conceptually it would be the opposite of how we think of Resist Elements, however, namely the thing can store 30 points of electrical damage before it overloads. In essence, it'd be a buffer for the excess electricity your electrical immunity (which you don't get until 8, sothat's 2 levels where you're REALLY exposed) can't stop, so when the "hp" on the buff hits zero, you would explode in a burst of electricity hurting everyone around you and taking flat magical damage (thus not affected by later immunity or electrical resistance) to yourself... you burn yourself out. Now you might say this sounds terrible, why the hell would you want a power so dangerous? Well, the benefit would be that once you have the shield it would work zap people attacking you to dissipate said shield... essentially heal it back up so it won't overload. This could scale up aggressively by level to 1d6 and then 1d8 electrical, maybe even higher to 1d10 once you're up near level 10. This is great if, say, someone with an electrical weapon is hitting you in the face. It is terrible if, say, you're fighting another mage who is shooting lightning at you, though.

Another thing you could do with the charge buildup would be to manually channel it through yourself, into the Orb. This would again cause direct damage to you, though in a MUCH smaller increment compared to the overload explosion, and it'd be an alternative, high risk way to recharge your orb. Probably something like 1d8 HP damage to recharge an equal amount of charge into your Orb. Another alternative could be that you don't recharge the orb with it, but while the shield is up it will supercharge your Orb powers and they get cast at 1 or 2 levels higher, damage and DC wise, or something like that. This is a touchy balance thing which would have to be explored.

The duration is another factor that could fluctuate... it's the kind of buff where sometimes you want it to last awhile, but often you probably wouldn't. 2 Turns as a flat duration before the extra charge "dissipates" would be fine, honestly, though that's a discussion topic on whether it should be longer/shorter. Any shorter and I think it'd be very hard to overload and die, which is not the goal, you want the whole setup to be dangerous and risky. Any longer and it becomes an albatross where you're stuck lugging around all this extra charge that could kill you at any moment, which is also not great.




The ultimate goal of the suggestion is to sort of make the Perk more focused in on a crazy electrical manipulator type of theme... you can redirect and channel lightning through your orb and around you, but it's freaking lightning - it's extremely volatile and can easily blow up in your face and hurt/kill you and everyone around you. This kinda helps to supplement the fact that unlike the other two "elementalist" Perks, there REALLY are not many lightning spells in the game (and all the good ones are at a level that's beyond the scope of this server... namely, Chain Lightning), nor would converting fire element spells to lightning make sense for them like hydromancer already does. So instead, where it lacks in variety, it makes up for it in funky mechanics. Ultimately, the shield mechanics and whatnot wouldn't necessarily come into play most of the time (unless some particularly crazy PC intentionally employs it, like intentionally standing close to scintillating spheres when they go off, but that's on them and also a totally valid high risk/reward way to play if they want), but it would make Infuser battles or an infuser battling anything with lightning supremely unpredictable but also very cool and strategic... a clever infuser could manipulate the electricity in such a way as to power flex and put on a fancy lightshow, while one with less skill might end up just blowing him/herself up, along with everyone around them. Either way, it's entertaining to watch and seems pretty fun.

And yes, I realize the shielding mechanics could be a bitch and a half/entirely impossible to actually code given the limitations of NWScript... but here's hoping.

Thoughts?


EDIT:
I fully acknowledge this is a total pain in the ass to code and is a bit much for a single power for a single Perk of a single class, but I'd say it could be reused for planar electrical enemies where overloading their electric DR so they explode could be a valid tactic (and safer for the meleers who would be taking electrical damage with each attack otherwise) or it could be used for puzzles/quests a la that planar defense Rift one where you charge tesla towers or some sort of Ring Device up with wants of jolt or something as part of the puzzle mechanic, and making it overload could be some sort of boss damage mechanic or I don't know what.

An alternative idea could be to make it a simple Electrical Shield ability they can use once/day or something like that, and it has a decent level of electrical damage it can absorb, but once it "breaks" it will explode on the caster and damage them. While it's up, it could give the electrical damage Death Shield (or Death Field, even) effect, or even at high level it could, not unlike the tesla coils in that quest, randomly discharge and chain to a couple targets nearby, friendly or otherwise, sort of like an area denial lightning power. That could be a neat compromise option too.
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