Actually I think the more likely culprit is Griff's Champion levels are not being included in the Great Smiting (and possibly for regular Smite Evil as well before he got Great Smiting). He's got 8 levels of Champion, so x4 (for Great Smiting III), equals 32 pts of damage. This is roughly the same as my inital computation of 33pts if he's only getting x3 and not x4.
Thanks again for looking into this.
Edit: I added an "Issue" entry for this and linked that Issue to this thread
Hi, could someone please let me know if this feat is working properly. Seems the great smiting formula is not including Champion levels or the multiplier is off somehow. Thanks for looking.
Also, this may also affect Turn Undead if for some reason Champion levels are being overlooked in game formulas.
Also Also, this may affect Champion of Toran, Corath or other Champions and not just Vorax.
Tx,
Davidhoff
This is only in reply to part of the questions you asked, the "Also and Also Also."
Per Turn Undead entry: http://forums.layonara.com/nwn/turn-undead and my understanding of DnD/NWN Champion classes Champion of Toran/Vorax do not add their levels to turn undead ability. However Unholy champions do (this was news to me.)
As for the Great Smite, that remains beyound my abilities to answer. It is obvious all the paladin and champion levels should be combined, as to to what degree they are, or other factors, I can not say.
Right so...
Smite Evil/Good are hard-coded feats, and as such, we cannot modify how they work. At this point, only the Champion of Toran PrC and the Unholy Champion of Corath will gain bonuses from Great Smiting, because we used the Champion of Torm and Blackguard class IDs for our custom PrCs (respectively, of course). All of the other Champion classes (Vorax, Pyrtechon) are new and fully custom for Layonara, and as such are not taken into account by Bioware's Smite Evil/Good implementation.
It's regrettable, but there's really not anything we can do about this feat. It's unfortunately working as-designed (by Bioware) but not working as-documented Layonara.
So, because of this, there's really only two options to "fix" this:
Griff will still get the bonuses of being a Paladin from Great Smiting III, but his Champion levels will not be added into the mix. Because it is not working as we documented (and as someone apparently expected many years ago), I'll be open to approving a character edit for Griff to replace the three Great Smiting feats taken with three other feats. It's up to you, and if you want to go that route, please submit a grievance for it. As I said, he'll still get benefit from Great Smiting, just not as much as expected.
Thanks for getting back on this Dorg. Really a gut-wrencher for me and Griff, because I sacraficed alot on his base build and progression to enable him to get this really cool feat for a Champion.
I would respectively like you to consider another alternative for the fix. The Champion of Toran and Champion of Vorax classes are identical, except for the deity name. The Champion of Toran was successfully built off the NWN Champion of Torm class. Can you remake the Champion of Vorax class off the Champion of Torm base? You could basically just copy what you did for Champion of Toran and just change the name to Vorax.
Please I hope you seriously look into this as I feel its the best option and a better option for going forward.
Thanks for getting back on this Dorg. Really a gut-wrencher for me and Griff, because I sacraficed alot on his base build and progression to enable him to get this really cool feat for a Champion.I would respectively like you to consider another alternative for the fix. The Champion of Toran and Champion of Vorax classes are identical, except for the deity name. The Champion of Toran was successfully built off the NWN Champion of Torm class. Can you remake the Champion of Vorax class off the Champion of Torm base? You could basically just copy what you did for Champion of Toran and just change the name to Vorax.Please I hope you seriously look into this as I feel its the best option and a better option for going forward.Davidhoff
Unfortunately, your idea will not work either, and permit me a moment to explain why. Also, please pardon me if this veers too technical. I'll try to keep it simple and not assume any level of familiarity with NWN custom content. And hopefully I am correctly understanding your suggestion, otherwise the below explanation won't be relevant.
Every class in game, whether standard or PrC, Bioware-created or custom, has an ID that uniquely identifies it. There are several which are built into NWN and those exist at specific and known IDs (e.g. Fighter is ID 4, Wizard is ID 10, etc.). For all those classes that Bioware has created, the classes exist in specific locations. The engine makes some decisions based on that ID. We can rename those classes all we want, but any class with the ID of 4 will be treated like a Fighter by NWN. Each ID is unique and non-repeating, meaning each ID can only be used once.
The Bioware-standard Champion of Torm PrC has an ID of 32. Bioware knows that Champion of Torm exists at this ID and it will treat the class at ID 32 as the Champion of Torm, no matter what we name it. When making the divine champion PrCs for Layonara, we took Champion of Torm and renamed it to Champion of Toran, giving the Champion of Toran the ID of 32.
Since Smite Evil is hard-coded into the NWN engine, it looks for Paladin (ID 6) and Champion of Torm (ID 32) levels to figure out the total effect, taking into account any Extra or Great Smiting feats that may also be present. In this way, it will correctly calculate the effect for any Champion of Toran levels that someone may have.
Champion of Vorax is, essentially, a copy of the Champion of Toran (and by extension, the Champion of Torm) PrC, but it has an ID of 52. Smite Evil does not recognize this class as one it should include when calculating the net effect. It's not a matter of what Champion of Vorax is or isn't, what abilities/settings/configurations it has or doesn't have or anything else besides that simple class ID. There can be only one class with ID of 32; I can't assign the same ID to Champion of Vorax, and that's the only thing that would make it work.
This is all very regrettable. I surely didn't realize things were like this, as this was set up well before I took over module development, and I suspect that when these classes were crafted and/or when the documentation was written, no one realized this would be the case. I did my research on modifying Smite Evil, both within our code and online. It's hard-coded. It cannot be modified. There is no way to make this work for any other classes besides the ones Bioware has chosen.
I deeply sympathize and understand what you are saying. Given the choice, I would gladly adjust the code for Smite Evil/Good to take our custom PrCs into account, as this would be the ideal solution, but it simply is not in the cards. I cannot force Champion of Vorax to take full advantage of Great Smiting. I wish it were otherwise.
Thank you for the explanation Dorg. I have a question, if you do not mindHow is the rest of the custom scripts around the two Champion classes written? Would it be possible to rename the class "Champion of Toran" to "Divine Champion" and adjust the scripts accordingly, and then erase the class "Champion of Vorax"? Or is the whole setup written in a manner that would not allow for such or make it vastly inefficient (lost of scripts to write and test again)?
That's an interesting idea Aphel. Just remame "Champion of Toran" to "Divine Champion" and only have one Champion class for both deities. The only thing that might cause problems is the Prerequisite of Weapon Focus in longsword, but maybe you could change that to be Weapon Focus longsword or axe.
Update: Checked NWNWiki on Champ of Torm and the only requirement is Weapon Focus in a "melle weapon" so looks like that won't be a problem on the hard-coding. Good idea again Aphel...and thanks.
I considered this, yes, and it would work after a character edit, though it may actually require an extensive re-level (i.e a re-taking of all Champion levels). It actually used to be "Divine Champion" long ago, before we diverged them for naming and identity reasons...which is to say a visible identity differentiating Champions of Toran and Champions of Vorax rather than the generic "Divine Champion". Something similar can be said for the Unholy Champions (though technically they are still "divine champions", but mechanics...). Actually, when I joked about converting Griff to Toranism, this is what I meant, though from a different direction.
The good news is there aren't many Champions of any sort and Griff is the only one of Vorax (and there's also one of Pyrtechon), but such a change will affect them too. Again, as observed, it's not a mechanical issue but one of identity. Champions of Toran and Vorax alike will have a simple, generic and undifferentiated label. Since such a change impacts more than just Champions of Vorax, even if the impact is minor, it's one that needs more consideration.
In the meantime, you should still consider alternatives to Griff's mechanical build in case we do not proceed as described above. Either option is a fair amount of work for me, so that's not even a consideration. I have to make decisions based on what's best overall, not what's best for one player.
Hello,
I know this is still under consideration, but it's come to my attention that I think the Champion feat "Sacred Defense" may not be working for Champions of Vorax. I'm not sure I can confirm this (though I've tried), but it looks like Griff isn't getting the +1 to saves for every other level of Champion.
To add to the general discussion, I really think the best solution to this is to group all "good champions" into the single presitige class of "Divine Champions" as has been suggested. I think something similar could be done to the "evil champions" as well. It's obvious the Champion of Vorax class is not getting all the benefits it is entitled to. In addition, there may be other things that are not working as intended that I can not see readily see (such as the Sacred Defense issue).
To me it makes a better decision to make one working Divine Champion class, then to have bugged Champion classes out there with all these asterics in Lore. I understand that titles are important, but being called a Divine Champion is still a very identifiable title and in a roll play server maybe its better that someones specific diety be found out "in game" through rollplay, as opposed to checking some character's level breakdown on the website. In addition, folks that want there titles more known in-game can have their "write-up/biography" to indicate so when you click on the identity area of the radial menu.
I know this would mean a re-level for Griff, but I'm not so sure it would require one for Champions of Toran. All you have to do is change the name of the Champion of Toran class to Divine Champion; I don't think a simple name change would require a relevel for those folks, but I'm not a Techy.
In summary, I think that's the best result. I specifically built Griff to take advantage of the Champion of Vorax class and put alot of work into attaining that. I think in all fairness, considering everyone affected, there should be just one Divine Champion class.
Respectfully,
OK, so here's how this is going to happen...
I've decided to cope with this in two phases. For the first phase, I'll have an update fairly soon that renames the base Champion classes to Divine Champion and Unholy Champion. The specific variants for Vorax, Pyrtechon and Ca'duz will remain, though I will rename them as well to indicate both that they should not be taken (though unlikely to have an issue) and to encourage those who currently have those custom classes to change.
During this time, I am leaving it up to each of the players with a Champion of Vorax, Pyrtechon or Ca'duz to contact a GM and re-level your characters, going back down as far as you need to in order to get rid of all old Champion levels and replace them with ones of the more generic type. While a character edit could likely work in this case, I'm not 100% sure it would unlock everything that a Champion should have; since Bioware hard-coded some aspects, it would stand to reason they might hard-code other things that may have been missed due to not having the "right" Champion class. It may be more trouble than it's worth to attempt an in-place edit.
Sometime after that, Phase 2 will involve removing these classes completely, making them impossible to select but also causing anyone who still has such a class to result in an illegal character. Anyone caught by this will find the affected character unplayable, and they will be the target of frowny faces and a litany of I-told-you-so's.
Hereafter, Champions of Toran or Vorax will simply be "Divine Champion" and Unholy Champions of Corath, Pyrtechon and Baraeon Ca'duz will be "Unholy Champion".
As a little update to this, I have made all the first round changes, but RL took a turn (nothing serious, just consuming most of my time), and I have not yet been able to verify it. Rather than toss it in with obvious and simple bugs, I'm holding off on putting the update in place. Please bear with me little longer.
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Topic: Great Smiting not adding damage as described (Read 964 times)
