custom combat feats..

[HooD!uM]

i know there had been a few posts complaining about mages vs melee floating around for some time, but i was wondering why couldnt we have some nice combat feats.

example : shield bash (you will need a shield of course)
            : pommel bash - stuns for a short period
            : elbow smash - could possibly blind them (ever been smashed in the nose, teary eyes anyone)
       
well something similar to these, and to be fair the DC would be helped with your strengh modifier so would not be too handy for mages..

just a thought tho, i dont know how these would be made if they could be, or the time associated in making such, i just thought i would be a good idea, and hopefully lessen the melee vs casters argument.

[Acacea]

I love melee feats! I could seriously spit out a list of a hundred and one melee and caster feats/skills and clerical domains that would just be fun and useful for customization and style.

I could never play a tank in NWN, though. The absence of anything resembling tanking skills (no provoke ) just makes me sad. I tried switching taunt to fighters but it doesn't work that way... Sniff.

[Hellblazer]

Please do

[Guardian 452]

Some kind of actuall taunt to pull things off others is what is needed most by tanks here.

[Acacea]

Please do

Making lists is different from balancing and scripted/inputted and bugtesting, all of which are required (in varying amounts) for discards and implementations...

Some kind of actuall taunt to pull things off others is what is needed most by tanks here.

I completely agree (that is what I meant by provoke), but while someone else may have come up with something better, mostly I have found that the AI is just too scatterbrained for any attention-getting ability to work reliably. You've probably found that sometimes a person that didn't even touch a monster is targeted and three fighters desperately beating it have trouble pulling it off as they run away. One aggro-pulling skill would be worth a thousand little combat customization moves, but you would probably have to combine it with a cheating force-disengage or something just to get it to stop wailing in the first place. Even if that kind of hacked thing worked, if you got in a hit it'd be flatfooted and everything from being disengaged... which then makes it more than just an attention getter.

If someone can really make something that only pulls attention I'd say definitely... it's just probably not going to work.

But I'll linger around here hoping for someone of knowledge to say something to the contrary regarding a provocation ability... Waiting for a moment of brilliance!

[ShiffDrgnhrt]

Have to remember NWN was more or less designed during the days of "Single Player" Dominance.  Multiplayer isn't that well supported.

[Acacea]

That was kind of the point of it not working, yeah

[Guardian 452]

Ok, how about a different approach?
How about something for the non fighters to make whatever is attacking loose its intent to come at them.

in EQ2 this was threat or aggro..... and non fighter classes had ways to reduce their threat "hate" when somethng came at them

That may not be possible either with NWN... but I was just thinking from another angle.

[Acacea]

It's still pretty much the same thing - make monster change targets. Other places have actual threat/aggro ratings to adjust, but such a table does not exist in NWN. Hostile/Non Hostile/Party is pretty much as complicated as it gets - the same goes for organization faction settings on anything but paper.

DMs can force disengages selectively and there was an epic reward at one time for all peace and harmony juju that stopped combat, so maybe if you combined it with a taunt skill or something, I don't know. It wouldn't be anything like "lessening threat" because there is no such thing as threat, but it's the only thing I can think of at the moment. Because of the nature of it, even if something was hacked together from it, it wouldn't be an easy skill for using all the time...

We can barely get things to stop attacking when they can't see us anymore, so getting things to stop paying attention when juicy targets are still standing there is kinda hard, at least in the current game.

[Hellblazer]

Making lists is different from balancing and scripted/inputted and bugtesting, all of which are required (in varying amounts) for discards and implementations...

of course but without a list or new feats, nothing to balance

[Guardian 452]

I figured it is all limitations on NWN's side of the equation. Just tossing things out as they came to me.



G-452

[s0ulz]

Ok, how about a different approach?
How about something for the non fighters to make whatever is attacking loose its intent to come at them.

in EQ2 this was threat or aggro..... and non fighter classes had ways to reduce their threat "hate" when somethng came at them

That may not be possible either with NWN... but I was just thinking from another angle.

Call me crazy, but a lot of mid-epic, epic-CR mobs do change targets. Actually I've even noticed it with a few lower-CR spawns as well. The problem is, I don't know whether this is intentional or not, but they take some time to switch around. So the rogue inflicting huge sneak damage usually cuts it down by the time it reacts - if at all. It seems rather random at times.

But yes unfortunately NWN lacks any threat mechanism to calculate aggression. Something I do hope goes into the MMO though - a well thought out and implemented tanking system with pulls, releases, challenges and escapes.

[Hellblazer]

yes they do.

[HooD!uM]

Call me crazy, but a lot of mid-epic, epic-CR mobs do change targets. Actually I've even noticed it with a few lower-CR spawns as well.

ive seen them to this also, but i believe it may be the AI since most of the mobs that do do this type of thing do it to use their own sneak attacks.

[darkstorme]

As far as I know, looking through the improved combat AI scripts written by Bioware, there's nothing to account for this behaviour as an intentional technique.  It is possible, however, for an NPC/creature to "forget" about the person it was just attacking.

In that case, its onPercieve or onHeartbeat script will trigger, and it will acquire a new target.  There doesn't appear to be anything that makes creatures with Rogue/Assassin levels seek out creatures who are already engaged in combat or flat-footed, however (and nothing that takes advantage of Shadowdancer levels, more's the pity), so creatures switching targets and employing their own Sneak Attacks are likely doing so by chance, rather than design.

On the thread's original topic - coding feats is tricky; balancing them is harder, and, of course, making animations to go with things like an elbow blow or a shield bash would be extremely difficult and time consuming - ie. unless someone in the community would like to give it a try, it won't happen.

If, however, you want to propose the prereqs/effects/duration/uses per day, and so forth of a feat/feats in which you'd be interested, that would be a starting point.  If you (or anyone) would like to write the code for the feat as well, that would doubtless help your case.  If you are so inclined, I recommend the NWN Custom Content Guide 3.0.  Formatting leaves something to be desired, but it's an excellent resource.

[HooD!uM]

when the mountains where ulgrids fortress was called berhagens, the giants there would swap targets all the time, even with two warriors taking one each, the giants would "swap targets" with eachother, and hence get there sneak attacks. So i assumed it was part of some AI setup *shrugs*

[Guardian 452]

What about a super short durration HIPS (Hide In Plain Sight). Im talking almost instant in and out (to reduce exploitation). It should break the attacker off.

Then again... it could be used by rogues to kick the cr@p out of things solo...

[darkstorme]

What about a super short durration HIPS (Hide In Plain Sight). Im talking almost instant in and out (to reduce exploitation). It should break the attacker off.

Then again... it could be used by rogues to kick the cr@p out of things solo...

Also, due to peculiarities with the NWN engine which have given us things like the Invisibility and GSanc bugs, it would not likely break attackers off.  Moreover, given the nature of stealth in NWN, "in and out" isn't, in fact, possible to code without hex-editing the engine (server AND client) itself.

And HiPS is broken enough on its own as part of the SD PrC, let alone in giving it to any class willing to take the feat.

[Guardian 452]

Yeah if it couldnt work as like a micro burrt of HiPS then it would be far to exploitable.

Was just another random idea.