Gameplay -- Underpowered

[Variaz]

Things that you think are underpowered, and should be improved.

Make sure you explain why you think it's underpowered, and please, make sure you have some descent equipment and are at least level 20, preferably 25-30 before judging. Some builds starts off slowly but catch up later in the game. Some are also more dependent on equipment than others.

[Gando]

Not sure about this but it seems a 6 power spell should not be easily stopped by a level 1 monster. I could just be not understanding the feedback messages the game gives.

It seems all CR 1 monsters can and do block direct spells and indirect spells as well. The only thing the spell kills is 'I's. Though Scorpions are fairly hard to kill needing 3-4 hits.

[Variaz]

Had no problems with this with my mage. Enemies DO have magic defense skill now, and to bypass it, you need spellcraft or a specialized skill. To_h also helps spells hit rating as well.

Early game enemies won't have much or at all, but later, they start having it as a regular skill. But I played my mage, and it wasn't a problem. Make sure you raise spellcraft or a specialized skill, and that should help.

Power is irrevelant. It's only used for calculating damages. Whether the spell is stopped or not depends entirely on your skill versus the monster's mdef. Check the formulas guide, the formula is there.

[Gando]

Ive got spellcraft 10 now. That seems to have alleviated the auto stop problem but still the incidents I refer to happened on level 1 and 2 with CR 1 monsters at most a level higher (level 2) so it is something to look at. It is easy to break the game by making a particular level too hard combat wise so I am paying attention to difficulty as I level.

[Gando]

Strength through spirit at level 4 (4 points) seems to have 0 impact on damage or Strength (10% of 22 wisdom = 2.2 x 4 = 8.8 or rounded off +8 strength. But my total strength is 8 with a base of 7.)

[Variaz]

Sorry I have forgotten to rename it as you had suggested. (just did that now)

It doesn't raise your strength. It allows you to use Wisdom in place of strength, which later helps other Wisdom-related abilities of the Monk. It also gives a passive buff to all unarmed damages.

The idea is that by using this ability, you put your points in Wisdom instead of Strength. With 10 points, you get to use Wisdom as if it was strength, and you also gain +100% to your melee damages.

Check the abilities guide. It includes all five classes + Monsters of the alpha. It should describe the ability pretty well.

[Gando]

Yeah 2 things happened there. I misread the ability description to say it buffs strength. Also had a dagger somehow equipped though I am positive I did not press any key combination to do so. *shrugs*

I see now that with 5 points in the ability I have 51-170 damage per hit with 26 Wis (total).

[Gando]

Did you change the costs for healing spells? If I remember right it didn't used to cost hundreds of mp/wis to cast a power 10 heal.

[Variaz]

Nov 1, 2010 16:59:28 GMT -5 Gando said:

Did you change the costs for healing spells? If I remember right it didn't used to cost hundreds of mp/wis to cast a power 10 heal.

The cost of all spells has been raised.

This goes with ranged multipliers being lower, and extra blows being harder to get.

Damages and power have been lowered. So it costs more to cast spells, including healing spells, but then, maximum hp is also lower, so you don't need healing spells to be as powerful as before.

[Gando]

OK well I haven't been testing much since my last death so I will have to do more before I am certain but I think Healing might be overcosted. It is a vital/crucial spell but it is also less directly threatening to enemies so it might not need such nerfing. Spell damage/power seems on target for players. My spells often don't kill my enemies but they can still crowd control the weaker ones. Whereas in earlier editions the spells either wiped everything out or failed to do anything significant.

[Gando]

After finishing a tough fight vs a 'u' boss on level 20 Ive come to realize that my physical attacks do not hold a candle to my spell abilities even though my Martial Arts skill is 20 points higher than my Spell Craft (60 real MA vs 40 SC). With 10 points of Strength through Spirit Id have thought my abilities would be about even but the fact is my Spells deal 10x what my hth does. This might be because my gloves haven't be upgraded since I found them on level 6 but they are the best Ive been able to find

Pair of Hard Leather Gloves (+8 +4) [3 +6] (+35 Light)
Type: Gloves
Damages Type: Physical (should be "Damage type:" by the way for proper English.)
Depth: 5
Value 946 gold

It affects your Wisdom by 3
It affects your Martial Arts by 3
It sustains your dexterity.

Now that said I still think there is a huge inequity between spells and physical. Spells are barely useful against some monsters but physical attacks seem to be almost useless against most nongrunt monsters. (I mean monsters that are either elite/bosses or are naturally a bit tougher such as anything you can't throw.) I do believe the problem is that monk's damage is entirely based on gloves and there are no good glove drops to be had. At all.

Another caveat is I haven't found any steel armor at all and so perhaps that is part of the problem (but honestly would a real monk wear steel anything?) Also no blues except a few staves which sold for a meager amount of gold at the rare store.

[Variaz]

With 60 MA, you would get 2d4 base damages, +1-3 from the gloves. If you raise your MA to 80, however, it will rise to 3d5, which should make a difference. Also try to get better gloves, these are outdated. Even buying a pair of steel gauntlets from the armor shop will probably give you better results. Or look for purple ice gauntlets in the black market. Just Rest a couple of times(for like 5000 turns) and that will rotate the shops inventory. (normally, it rotates when you leave and reenter the town, but you can't do that in the alpha)

Another thing to consider is that up to that point, many enemies did not have Magic Defense at all, while all enemies have some AC. This means that often, your spells did 100% damages, vs maybe 60-75% for your melee attacks. From depth 20 and higher, Magic Defense becomes more common.

And I think you're playing a Celestial too, right? Don't forget that +25% bonus to Light attacks, which is multiplicative, not additive, so this will make a difference too. You're getting it for your spells, but not your melee attacks, unless they were Light. (well, except for that +35 brand, but it barely counts at this point)

To be honest, with my own Monk, my melee attacks were stronger than my magic attacks. But I had a greater focus on MA than on my Elemental skill, and was Half-Elf, so no bonus to Light, but bonus to MA skill. It seems like your build may have a greater advantage magic-wise.

[Gando]

OK race is a difference but even minus the bonuses from that and adding them to MA I have 70 REAL MA (93 with bonuses/class %) and my damage is still far worse. I did find a pair of Bronze Gauntlets which gives me better damage but still not on par. Now I am not complaining too much as the ability to cast after swinging = dead monsters for the most part but it does seem to me there is a balance issue between magic and melee. It might be this relates to the AC problem you talk about in Chall's thread.

[Variaz]

Indeed, there was a huge problem concerning monsters AC. It was a LOT higher than their MDef skill.

I have now lowered it to the same growth rate as MDef, and so it should help with melee and ranged damages.

[Gando]

Having tested primarily with the monk I have some comments on the abilities.

1) Power Through Spirit This ability is the core ability for beginner monks and should probably be at 10 minimum.
2)-4) Unnecessary combat tricks that do not really help much. That is really the problem though with abilities in general is they will not all be equally useful/efficient/effective and some will seem unnecessary until you reach a point in the game where you have to redesign from scratch. So it may be that my choices made these not worthy and thus when I reincarnated I put no points in them.
5) Ki Restoration - Useful for beginners but quickly outmoded by heal spells as Wisdom rises. This is not to say Wis Healing is any good (it still basically restores about 10% max hp at a time but it is easier to keep up with it at that level than putting points into this ability. I would say this needs more power.
6) Spiritual Warrior - can't say I cared much for it's bonuses but it was worth putting a few points into.
7) Body and Mind Synchronization - The cornerstone of the advanced monk. Not really sure if more than one point is good or not.
8) Paralyzing Strike - a useful combat feat ability this can be fairly decent to control crowds if you have numerous combat feats. Worth at least a point.
9) Ki Resilience - It might be that it just had no visibility impact on the game but I could not tell if it was even a little useful which is generally a bad indication so in my reincarnation I put 0 points into it. Probably needs more power.
10) Perfect Union - this seems like a combination of several earlier abilities and it did not perform as I expect a level 10 ability to (I was still doing the same general damage and not really seeing an impact with it even with multiple points in it. I am not certain this fulfills it's role.