Items like Ash-covered cloak, breathing mask, ring of abyss, and back brace really shouldn't exist. They allow characters to nullify things they should be worried about, espescially the back brace. The counter to super decked high dex chars was call, and thunderstorm. Allowing them to use an already amazing item (saves, hit dam, resist, and good ac?) that nullifies their 1 real vuln doesn't make much sense from a game balance perspective. Also things like ash-covered cloak. A druid using ash covered cloak can run around with fire shield up 24/7 without worrying about the drawbacks, same thing goes for a certain evil cleric religion. Taking an already powerful class to a point where it is nullifying it's drawbacks is overall bad form. The ring also allows you to skimp out on saves to pump hit dam, or ac/hp even higher without any real drawback. I am of the opinion that for the sake of keeping the game balanced these items should either not exist, or give you a vulnerability in exchange. You resist lightning, but are now vuln to water. Resist fire, now vuln to ice etc etc. It forces using them to be a bit more tactical instead of them just being best in slot.
Resist items
I somewhat get this, but if we are going to go that route, then you might as well go all the way. Resist items, items that let you have permanent flight, items that give you skills your class shouldn't have. Basically, Invoker's should be worried about attrition tactics, but currently any one but an evil can pretty much heal themselves somewhat at will as well as cure any mals on a limited basis. Giants, who should be terrified of being tripped to death as much as a halfling is of being bashed to death, can grab one of two items and never worry about it again. If we are going to get rid of resist items that allow a class/race to ignore some detriments, then we should also get rid of beneficial items that allow races to ignore their obvious vulnerabilities.
Perhaps, I agree with giving all resist items a drawback. Fire resist and ice vuln sounds good. Mental resist and afflictive vuln. Etc. etc. etc. One of the problems I see with this is that it affects some classes more than others. Classes who have a little of everything worry less about just one resistance because they can punish you a different way. Necromancers come to mind. Resist mental? They plague/poison and acid blast you to death.
I would venture to say preps like flight on limited quantity, or a halfling carrying 5 venom sacks are a little diff. than a toon wearing an abyss ring. Granted perhaps the trip to the horror is considered, rewarding you and your group with the task at hand vs. collecting mats through perhaps a generally equal time investment. Of course the abyss ring, back brace prove invaluable though as a pretty big boon to your set up- until someone gets it from your corpse :P.
I also will say Necromancers do have access to alot of schools of magic that really don't make sense RP wise.
im all for removing items in general that cover racial weaknesses tbh. And I also don't think you can really talk about balance and necros. They are so good at so many things. They can burst you with spell damage, their passive melee damage is nasty, they can mal you, they can spam dispel (which is the current go to tactic). They really can do just about everything.
5 hours ago, 'tarako said:
im all for removing items in general that cover racial weaknesses tbh. And I also don't think you can really talk about balance and necros. They are so good at so many things. They can burst you with spell damage, their passive melee damage is nasty, they can mal you, they can spam dispel (which is the current go to tactic). They really can do just about everything.
Technically speaking, there are no items that cover racial weaknesses.
- The ash-covered cloak cannot be used by ferals.
- No race has a lightning or disease weakness.
- The Ring of Abyss cannot be used by gnomes or giants.
Please know that I'm not trying to be unnecessarily pedantic; however, all of the issues that have been identified in this thread are related to either classes or race/class combinations. And I think that is an important distinction to make.
I would also recommend refraining from diving too far into your thought process with necromancers in this thread, in order to allow proper attention to be paid to the core discussion item you raised. ☺️
1 hour ago, Gifnab said:
- The Ring of Abyss cannot be used by gnomes or giants.
This isn't exactly true. I don't know if it was an oversight or simply not considered, but at least the id of the item does not list that gnomes cannot wear it.
Your mind strains to recall the details of the spell.
Object 'ring abyss dark' is type jewelry, material rock.
Extra flags: nolocate burnproof.
Weight is 22, value is 2, level is 60.
Affects ac by -30.
Affects savingspell by -5.
Adds resistance to mental.
You have a feeling the following races can't use it:
fire stone storm ogre.
Unique item.
54 minutes ago, Archbishop Monk said:
This isn't exactly true. I don't know if it was an oversight or simply not considered, but at least the id of the item does not list that gnomes cannot wear it.
Your mind strains to recall the details of the spell.
Object 'ring abyss dark' is type jewelry, material rock.
Extra flags: nolocate burnproof.
Weight is 22, value is 2, level is 60.
Affects ac by -30.
Affects savingspell by -5.
Adds resistance to mental.
You have a feeling the following races can't use it:
fire stone storm ogre.
Unique item.
That is the old ID; however, you are also correct! Gnome is not included on the list.
As the “new guy”, I haven’t looked into the why of that, but I imagine it has something to do with the ongoing discussion of whether gnomes actually need and/or deserve the mental vulnerability quite the same way as giants.
Either way, you are correct as things stand currently. That is indeed a racial vulnerability that is explicitly covered by an item.
It's not strictly just a racial vuln. Its overall class balancing. Disease resist takes a large portion of a shamans game away, as well as dks. Back brace takes away the balancing factor of being super decked. Ash cloak leads to some busted synergies like I mentioned before. Invokers, druids, and discord clerics can indiscriminately use fire shield without worrying about the drawbacks. It takes away any need for tactical use, and makes it a no brainer. A wolf druid who uses ash cLoak is basically adding jaguar transform ability to themselves without needing to be a jag. They then get fire resist and physical. Toss in abyss because beasts can easily solo desolation, and youve got a mental fire and phys resist beast. Toss in cabal choices like savant druid, or warder and you now havr damage reduction as well. These type of items just create some nasty synergies that I don't think where accounted for
1 hour ago, 'tarako said:
Disease resist takes a large portion of a shamans game away, as well as dks.
I'd agree with some of that, but once you start throwing in cabal abilities it gets more complicated. Cabal's add a ton of synergies to class other than just equipment. So, focusing on class skills and armor alone, I personally think it is too easy for some classes to cover their vuln while difficult for others to do similar. But, I'd agree that a fire giant discord cleric with the ash cloak would be OP. An elf warrior will have a VERY hard time covering their bash vuln to giants with the current equipment and their low strength will keep them from wielding a lot of the good weapons. They won't have it much easier against mages either even with their high int because getting the damage to put pressure on them enough will be hard.
If you add in cabal skills, then there is too much to talk about in this.
And, as @Wade said, there are edges that take so much away from certain classes. Imagine an edge that made all melee hitting you with weapons -10 levels. That is pretty much like what shaman got hit with. On the other hand, it's one of the ways you can actually prepare for necromancers as then you can at least stack for mental/afflictive saves AND -ac.
I never was a top tier player, but even when I poured a lot of hours into this game I was excited about the combinations offered by class, race, cabal, and equipment. Some races cover certain weaknesses better. Some cabals cover others. And in some cases, a particular suit of equipment will either play to your strenghs or try to compensate for your weaknesses.
Resistance items shouldn't exist? What about spellvl items? What about permanent spell effect items (prot_evil, detect_invis, flight, etc)? What about certain usables (air lance)? Spellforge?
What is the thought process behind deciding when an item should or should not exist? Is it too good for anyone that wears it? Is it too good for a certain combination to wear it? Boots of stomping comes with certain race/class restrictions, and it wasn't included in the list of items here.
I am not saying that this idea is bad, I just want to challenge it for a moment. As a more medium-tier player, I *hecking *loved the feeling of having a super rare/powerful items in my hands. I wouldn't usually get to keep it, but there's this satisfaction of adding that one piece to your suit that really juices you up. Of course, this feeling is less important than game balance, but ideally you can have both.
4 hours ago, Archbishop Monk said:
An elf warrior will have a VERY hard time covering their bash vuln
Cant really go into depth here but they CAN nullify it through a lore and a piece of best in slot eq (again)
And items that grant buffs im ok with ay a base level because you can get those buffs anyway. Im not a fan of them, but if push came to shove I also dont have a huge reason to say remove them. There are just a couple items that put a couple combos over the top is all im saying.
Make only 1 of those items instead of 2 and I think you tip the scales back into balance. With a small number of players, you are right it doesn't make sense that 50% of the toons are wearing resistance items. Limit those things to 1 of each in-game (and fix the monthly rare purge system) and I don't see what the problem is. I was speaking with @Archbishop Monk in-game with Aelythuen about the back-brace and we both agreed it probably doesn't belong on clerics. As for the ash-cloak and fire shield, I don't see that as nearly the same problem as defensive classes having even more resistance.
8 hours ago, Archbishop Monk said:
This isn't exactly true. I don't know if it was an oversight or simply not considered, but at least the id of the item does not list that gnomes cannot wear it.
Your mind strains to recall the details of the spell.
Object 'ring abyss dark' is type jewelry, material rock.
Extra flags: nolocate burnproof.
Weight is 22, value is 2, level is 60.
Affects ac by -30.
Affects savingspell by -5.
Adds resistance to mental.
You have a feeling the following races can't use it:
fire stone storm ogre.
Unique item.
As @Gifnab said, that ID is old. Gnomes can no longer wear this item. I don't recall when I changed the item, but the item was changed recently.
21 minutes ago, 'tarako said:
Cant really go into depth here but they CAN nullify it through a lore and a piece of best in slot eq (again)
Why can't you go into depth here?
Are you alluding to shield lore? That's lag reduction, not lag negation.
A piece of best in slot equipment? Do you mean the slab? That's damage reduction, not lag resist.
The two together means you're lagged less and take less damage, but in no way do one or more of those negate it entirely.
halfling with venom sack shield lore, I believe is treated as giant sized when bashed so long as it's holding its shield
4 minutes ago, Atticus said:
halfling with venom sack shield lore, I believe is treated as giant sized when bashed so long as it's holding its shield
Yes, shield lore treats you as if you were two sizes larger when being bashed and holding a shield. Which means an enlarged giant has an equal chance for 1 to 3 rounds of bash lag on the halfling rather than a 50% chance for 1, 2 or 3 rounds of lag and a 50% chance for 4 from a 3 size difference as per normal.
It is still not negated.
aye wasn't speaking to negation, just the size buffering.
3 minutes ago, Kassieti said:
Yes, shield lore treats you as if you were two sizes larger when being bashed and holding a shield. Which means an enlarged giant has an equal chance for 1 to 3 rounds of bash lag on the halfling rather than a 50% chance for 1, 2 or 3 rounds of lag and a 50% chance for 4 from a 3 size difference as per normal.
It is still not negated.
1 hour ago, Kassieti said:
Why can't you go into depth here?
Are you alluding to shield lore? That's lag reduction, not lag negation.
A piece of best in slot equipment? Do you mean the slab? That's damage reduction, not lag resist.
The two together means you're lagged less and take less damage, but in no way do one or more of those negate it entirely.
Shield expertise treats you as a size category larger, and boots of stomping are usable enlarge effectively negating your size.
9 minutes ago, 'tarako said:
Shield expertise treats you as a size category larger, and boots of stomping are usable enlarge effectively negating your size.
You're negating the size advantage, not the lag entirely. If you successfully bash someone one size larger, your victim will be lagged for 1 to 2 rounds.