Keen will never be made permanent. Period. The recipe was created to balance the power of the ability. It is at this point what the team considers to be fine, powerwise. So the recipe will remain as it is for now, these components can be obtained all in mass quantities.
So I have been testing Dev Crit in vanilla NWN and it is really not all that nuts. Once in a while the stars come together and you get to kill a few bad guys in one one round. On layo fighters with Dev Crit who ran into a pack of bag guys (level appropriate) without all the needed buffs would still have a very very high chance of getting mushed. So in short: 1. Dev Crit is not all that powerful since it is chance based and needs a lot of good rolls to line up. 2. Fighters with Dev Crit will still need to be buffed up to survive the majority of the time that Dev Crit does not fire off.
I have been testing it on a number of builds the most powerful of course are the fighter/wm ones. And at no time has there been a test fight where everything got dropped in one round. You dont need one good roll you need a lot of good rolls in a row for it to happen.
Also to address another issue that this brings up for me is that it seems that the dev crit req was pumped to aviod what could happen with a super power build. I thought we were not about super power builds. So it seems those of us that dont build super power builds are being punished because someone MIGHT do a super power build.
Lastly it does not matter the mix of magic and a fighter with dev crit. Since when you have a mage with you you dont need to have dev crit, the mage will stun, kill, blind, or KD the bad guys for you and the fights are over fast. So the only time it really comes into play is if you are in a gorup of melee PCs (which we dont have much of on layo for all the reasons already stated) or if the casters in your group go down.
On point one you made my point even stronger.
On point two, first of all this idea of it taking sacrifice to get to Dev Crit is way off. A fighter/wm who take 24 levels of fighter then 5 levels of wm then 3 more fighters can get to Dev Crit with many many feats to spare. Next It is very very clear that the req was raised to prevent power builders from getting out of hand, thus it was done to address the few bad eggs at the expense of the rest of the community.
As to point three I see what you are saying but Dev Crit is not really going to make that much of a difference in a well balanced group fighting a difficult spawn. It will make the melee PCs more useful in the fight that is true.
32(!) levels of focused character development, effectively denying your character of any absorbtion and hit point pool, getting less essential feats than a full-breed fighter could and therefore losing out most multi-classing opportunities and flexibility is my idea of sacrifice, yes.
The 5 levels of WM far out gain the 5 levels of fighter. The special abilities, especially the increased multiplier is HUGE. The Hit Dice of a weapon master is the same as a fighter and so is the BAB. Weapon Master is hardly a sacrifice, in fact it is one of the few prestige classes in all of D&D that is a direct improvement with little to no multiclass negatives. The path of feats you have to take is about the only argument IMO as to why it is a sacrifice to be a WM. However, the dodge, mobility and expertise are great feats on layo.
So it seems those of us that dont build super power builds are being punished because someone MIGHT do a super power build.
It's not the same though. Even the most powerful of sorcerers only get a number of spells a day. Then they have to rest or use other resources. A melee character with devastating critical (especially properly built to have a lot of crits) can do this endlessly.The fortitude save against it is 10 + 1/2 Character Level + Strength Modifier. You do the math... That's stronger than any spell out there.You asked a question originally though and directed it at the development team, and though soulz answered it rather eloquently and with all the proper arguments that such a feat deserves, I will simply add some Layonara history.Way back like five years ago, a bunch of us balancer folk had to look at all the epic progression because the level cap was raised from 20. We had limited resources as we pretty much always have had in here. As the epics were slowly being passed, we had to balance out an overpowered feat to fit with Layonara's power level at the time. In time, there were a whole lot more epic leveled people and so caster progression was looked at because unlike a fighter or a rogue whose damage always goes up, for casters, only very specific builds would scale upwards.Was it the best approach to do things? Nope. I will say however that there were a lot of background projects that were planned that never took fruit because of lack of personnel and other similar issues. However, all that said, from a development standing point, Devastating Critical is still the same. Extremely overpowered.If we would lower the requirements, once again, soulz is quite right. We would have to reduce the save, we would have to change it from a constant thing. It would be too powerful as it is.I know its kinda hard to always have to hear the same litany. But in this case its unfortunately true. The real way to bring melee and physical damage classes up to par would be adding things like the PRC content which has over 50 feats, not to mention a bazillion new Base and Prestige Classes. However, once again... Lack of people... People focusing on the MMO... And all that.
Here is another idea, well more a compromise. Since Jrizz makes the argument that he made his character based on old requirements for Dev Crit. How about we make it that you need complete a CDQ to get Dev crit early. I say early but I mean the original requirements. The requirements for the CDQ would be that you would need to have created the character before the higher requirements for dev crit were added. Like being a dragon called.This I believe would solve the issue and add a RP reason to the devistating attack.
EDIT: Also, using Wren and making some assumptions on buffs and equipment, as he stands now, his DC would be something like 39 on a Dev. Crit. for the insta-kill. A similarly-spec'ed out caster tossing in a PWK, would have a DC of 38 (assuming I did my calculations properly), which is not that much different, but also remember that PWK is death magic, meaning one can have both immunity to the effect and resistance to the spell overall. Dev. Crit. has neither weakness.
doesn't immunity to critical hits negates dev crit? so it does balance itself in a way when you compare it to the death immunities.So yes it would actually be more balancing issue to work into the spawn. But if you put a few critical immune foes, then you ensure that the feat is not killing every thing in one spawn.
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Topic: De-nerf Dev Crit thread (Read 1706 times)
