Crafting weapons...

[Garek]

I am going to walk back a bit on this. I thought about this and I am going to change the way damage and skill works.
Currently, it doesn't take skill into account at all. I will change this to where skill will influence damages.

But, it still will be random. What this means is, only the highest skilled player gets a chance at getting high damage rolls.
If you have a low craft skill, then you will always get the lowest roll. It is only when your skill goes up, that you start getting a chance at higher rolls.

-driller

Please don't turn the server into one that caters to whiners.

The ending point of this type of whine/request is a bunch of easy buttons in town for xp, gold, items by request. How fun is that?

The randomness provides some unknown outcome and experimentation...........and chance. It also can generate interaction in game. Someone with a 2d12 doesn't want just 2d12 when there are some good uses for the 2d6's.

The days of everyone getting a trophy are really starting to penetrate today's games.

Does nobody enjoy the satisfaction of a random roll...........why are you playing a D&D based game with "rolls" determining so much? The forge cannot use the same principles as the game? It has to be press this button for the outcome, etc. Doesn't sound like D&D based outcomes......or fun.

Sorry for the rant but driller could also allow imported characters and you wouldn't even have to level. Fun?

[Kane0]

Please don't turn the server into one that caters to whiners.

The ending point of this type of whine/request is a bunch of easy buttons in town for xp, gold, items by request. How fun is that?

The randomness provides some unknown outcome and experimentation...........and chance. It also can generate interaction in game. Someone with a 2d12 doesn't want just 2d12 when there are some good uses for the 2d6's.

The days of everyone getting a trophy are really starting to penetrate today's games.

Does nobody enjoy the satisfaction of a random roll...........why are you playing a D&D based game with "rolls" determining so much? The forge cannot use the same principles as the game? It has to be press this button for the outcome, etc. Doesn't sound like D&D based outcomes......or fun.

Sorry for the rant but driller could also allow imported characters and you wouldn't even have to level. Fun?

I can't speak for everyone (or anyone) else, but I like knowing the mechanics behind things. I have no objection to rarity, difficulty, randomness, etc as long as it is being clearly conveyed. Especially since NWN is such a mechanically dense game already.

I would have no interest in the game if for example I could not figure out why I keep hitting for next to no damage whereas I keep getting hit for lots of damage no matter how high I get my AC. Hiding the mechanics of Damage Reduction, Miss Chance, etc behind a wall of 'Roleplay it' does not sit well with me as in my mind the mechanics determine how I interact with the game, not how my character acts within it.

For me, understanding how things work is a major portion of the enjoyment I derive from the game, both NWN and D&D as a whole. And that is different from using that knowledge to manipulate the game in order to make everything easy for myself. Knowing what things I need to have a chance and that the chance I have is 15% does not impact my ability to change those odds.

I don't ask for you to dumb things down and make it easier, I ask to know what I am supposed to do with what you have made.

[Graves]

I am going to walk back a bit on this. I thought about this and I am going to change the way damage and skill works.
Currently, it doesn't take skill into account at all. I will change this to where skill will influence damages.

But, it still will be random. What this means is, only the highest skilled player gets a chance at getting high damage rolls.
If you have a low craft skill, then you will always get the lowest roll. It is only when your skill goes up, that you start getting a chance at higher rolls.

-driller

Please don't turn the server into one that caters to whiners.

The days of everyone getting a trophy are really starting to penetrate today's games.

Your post amounts to, "What, you don't like this kind of randomness that I like? Damn millennials!"

It's fine to disagree with someone, but calling them a whiner and complaining about "everyone getting a trophy" and then appealing to tradition is not an argument, it's just an emotional rant. You need better reasoning to convince anyone with at least 1 oz of critical thinking ability. This server is not the old server you used to play on. It's a new server set up for a new game, with a completely new playerbase. The way the old server used to be means nothing to the droves of new players coming here; all they see is what it is now, what they like about it, and also what problems they observe. If you think it's a good idea to alienate them, then you are clearly of the mindset that 5 players logged into a server with the rules you want is better than 50 players logged in with rules that work for everybody. Driller obviously agrees with the latter, at least partially, or else he wouldn't have made these great efforts to address people's concerns.

You -almost- had an argument when you spoke about other things being random rolls, too, but I think Kane0 dealt with that pretty well. To add to his comments, also consider that not everything is a random roll in this game. Damage resistance is not random. Spells per day are not random. Level required to equip an item is not random. You are seeing just the parts of the game that support your argument, and not the others that have been there all along. Saying something should be random roll just because other parts of the game are also random roll is whataboutism.

[driller]

Let's cool this down please. The rolls will still be random, it's just that skill will have an influence now.

-driller

[Wing--Zero]

In the spirit of arguments as far as the randomness not working or being "fair enough". I have tested with 12 reds on a weapon trying to get 1 specific viable good role from a red 2d8 slashing or Bludgeoning. My rolls were as follows:

1) 2d4 Acid
2) 2d12 Fire
3) 2d4 Sonic
4) 2d12 acid
5) 2d4 cold
6) 2d10 Bludg
7) 2d12 Acid
8 ) 2d8 Piercing
9) 2d8 Fire,
10) 2d12 Cold,
11) 2d8 Bludgening,

.......and the final 12th one was the exact 2d8 Slashing roll I desired. If your trying to get 1 specific roll or damage type of course its gonna take multiple stones to make it work but, it will. These weapons are still on my crafter minus the 2d8 Bludgening roll. I keep the rolls I don't want for weapons for in the future. Its all about the way you look at things. You guys see wasted rolls I see potential for Trade! You can take these weapons and post them into the Market and wait for someone who needs a roll and trade a red for it. Someone may be needing your 2d12 roll or 2d6. I personally like using 2d6 so I can up the mass crits. My thoughts on the matter are as follows:

-If we are to change this function that Driller has ALREADY made it so we NO LONGER get: 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10 rolls.....So there really is only 1 bad roll left that thats a 2d4 and now everyone is asking for that to be pulled out of the loop....why? Because with your 3-4 reds you can't get the 1 specific roll of 2d8-2d12 roll every time you want?? If this is the case a drop down menu needs to be created instead of altering the Forge Script and causing Forge bugs (like my fully crafted +6 ab Heavy Flail that I took the first hit on by testing the first ever blue crafted.....Your welcome for that one lol). Just make it a choice of 2d8, 2d10, 2d12. So than EVERYONE can have a good fully rare forged weapon?

-Also just wondering but, how do you guys plan on making your craft skill move up and down by the way??? Forcing dependency on a Item, is not a good answer just to get that out of the way ahead of time. In order for this change to work now instead of only having to make one crafter now I gotta make 2 or possibly even 3 JUST for a weapon??? One that can craft in the 50s-60s and other from 70-80 So from what I've seen most people are making there 120 craft builds around a hammer that has +15 to craft. That hammer only servers one purpose and that is so you don't have to level your "Feat Starved"(btw if you do it right not really Theres 4 differnt versions I have and 2 others have made.) crafter build early. You can level them to 32 than stop. Anything beyond 80 craft is WASTED Skills just like if you put 80 points into Tumble your only gonna get a return of 8 ac not 16.

-I really looked at the pro's and con's on this one and yes being able to pick what I want from a menu sounds nice and easy but, it diminishes the value of my really good damage rolls I've gotten and will get in the future. That has always been a slight increase in dopamine for me because it I'm always excited and nervous when crafting any weapon. You dont know and nothing is more fun than the unknown! Just because I get my 2d8 forge roll doesn't mean I was home free on that weapon. After that I had to put Mass Crits on it which is random and has the same risk/reward. Than even after I get everything perfect on the weapon (I got 2d12 or 2d10 on that weapon) There's still the added threat of adding the blue which has a small chance of turning into EB (which is still good and usable it only needs to be buffed to a +10 with cleric buffs and its like a +10 damage bonus). Point being Every other stone has a random feature to it and once we start down this road its a slippery slope. Next you'll want to be able to pick a ability from a yellow, you'll wanna choose your Mass Crit roll as well because, if were gonna do red why stop there. We can Make purple have fixed values so its a random not so random stone. If Driller does go down this route as I said a Drop Down Menu would be more preferable just rip the whole craft skill away and just give us the Menu.

P.S.
-All those weapons are Rapiers and are for sell while supplies last

[Rakash]

You can easily manipulate the crafting stat by equiping and unequiping int, crafting, and perform gear.

[Wing--Zero]

What 10 points? can you subtract 30 points easily? Perform and intel mods is only -6 to craft skills and -6 on perform which will only subtract -1 skill point per 5 perform so it would amount to -7. if your all bard you could no use your bard song and maybe get -17 to all but, how do you drop it but, than you make that the ONLY build that can craft weapon.....so now we took a system based around multiple builds and narrow it down to only the 1 build or you gotta make 2 different crafters. That just sounds counter productive to me personally.

[Rakash]

Gear- +30 for 2 hammers, bard song can give you +13, and int for another +6. That gives you an adjustable range of 49 skill points.

Bear in mind that with int and perform gear you can adjust your bard song bonuses, or just get it to a point where you can cast it when you want a high crafting skill and not cast it when you want it lower.

[Graves]

Also, red forge stones are not that plentiful. For those who can't loot chests 4 different times, getting 3 or 4 red forge stones usually takes a considerable amount of time. Especially for those who work or have other RL obligations. It isn't feasible for most people to perform 12 rolls for a single optimized enhancement, for one weapon, for one character. The difficulty inherent in the low drop rate of forge stones, and the added low probability that it will be red, is a considerable obstacle on its own. It's not trivial.

[gniht]

Regarding adjustments of skill level, in my opinion there should never be a real reason to lower your skill. Instead of specifically requiring less skill it should be changed to require a separate stone or a dialog option with the construct.

A master illustrator doesn't have to forget any portion of their artistic skill to draw a simple smiley face if that's what they desire to do, nor would an accomplished wordsmith need to dismiss any of their advanced lexicon to simply say "Hi" to a friend.

[driller]

No artist produces a masterpiece every time he creates something...

-driller

Regarding adjustments of skill level, in my opinion there should never be a real reason to lower your skill. Instead of specifically requiring less skill it should be changed to require a separate stone or a dialog option with the construct.

A master illustrator doesn't have to forget any portion of their artistic skill to draw a simple smiley face if that's what they desire to do, nor would an accomplished wordsmith need to dismiss any of their advanced lexicon to simply say "Hi" to a friend.

[gniht]

No artist produces a masterpiece every time he creates something...

-driller

Regarding adjustments of skill level, in my opinion there should never be a real reason to lower your skill. Instead of specifically requiring less skill it should be changed to require a separate stone or a dialog option with the construct.

A master illustrator doesn't have to forget any portion of their artistic skill to draw a simple smiley face if that's what they desire to do, nor would an accomplished wordsmith need to dismiss any of their advanced lexicon to simply say "Hi" to a friend.

I completely agree... everyone has bad days and good days. I definitely think that masters don't make the same mistakes that novices make, but they still perform sub-par for their level sometimes. Bobby Fisher wouldn't have fallen to a 3-move or a 4-move checkmate even on a bad day, but may well make other more advanced blunders on a bad day.

But I think you're misinterpreting what I was saying here... there was discussion of purposefully lowering skill level to achieve certain effects, and I don't think it ever makes sense for that to be necessary.

I'm also not making any claims that it is necessary currently, but there is a general consensus among those I know that it's actually an advantage to deliberately lower skill level for some objectives. This doesn't make sense to me.

Example: say you want to get +20 ab on a weapon... if your skill is too high, it seems to be the case that +10 eb will roll instead, which although it may be a great effect, is not what you desire. Now there is absolutely no issue if getting one or the other is purely random, but if it's actually more likely to get 20 ab over 10 eb by lowering your skill? That makes no sense.

Again I am not making claims that things are one way or the other. I simply do not know with any certainty, my post was in response to the talk of deliberately lowering skill level and I do not think there should ever be a reason to do that.

[Wing--Zero]

That's probably the start of us as players understanding the way the mechanics of the forge work. Being how the engine functions itself what random craft chances. Yes nothing is random truly its all linked to a algorithm somewhere stored in some directory(my opinion) but, Its intentional for there to be a random chance of EB. I doubt its intentional that if you lower the skill that it increases the likeliness of it becoming EB for example: it will fire off for someone with 70 craft 7/10 times versus someone with a max craft getting it 5/10. This good be a very helpful find for us as we move forward crafting and learning with the forge. It may help other players target and remove some of the randomness themselves. I'll give this a test myself at some point its diffidently worth looking into I.M.O. That was a good find Gnight!!

[Garek]

Also, red forge stones are not that plentiful. For those who can't loot chests 4 different times, getting 3 or 4 red forge stones usually takes a considerable amount of time. Especially for those who work or have other RL obligations. It isn't feasible for most people to perform 12 rolls for a single optimized enhancement, for one weapon, for one character. The difficulty inherent in the low drop rate of forge stones, and the added low probability that it will be red, is a considerable obstacle on its own. It's not trivial.

Complaining that you don't get red forge stones very often is a fact, complaint or whatever you like calling it.........I call it a whine. Your likelihood is the same as anyone else's, but you are the one who is whining about it.

It's tough, I'm unlucky, I don't want to get a lucky drop is all I hear from your post.

Yes it's an opinion, but it's not just mine. How many others do you see simply asking to not have to get random rolls because they don't like the outcome. We were unhappy with the very few reds we wasted on some weapons.........but we moved on and will get more. Asking for Driller to change the game because you don't like the randomness is exactly what your post has been about. That's the POINT!

There's not other way to spin it. You got unlucky and are complaining to Driller about it. Simple enough.

Any all that I know of playing right now have jobs, families and RL obligations.

[Garek]

I can't speak for everyone (or anyone) else, but I like knowing the mechanics behind things. I have no objection to rarity, difficulty, randomness, etc as long as it is being clearly conveyed. Especially since NWN is such a mechanically dense game already.

I would have no interest in the game if for example I could not figure out why I keep hitting for next to no damage whereas I keep getting hit for lots of damage no matter how high I get my AC. Hiding the mechanics of Damage Reduction, Miss Chance, etc behind a wall of 'Roleplay it' does not sit well with me as in my mind the mechanics determine how I interact with the game, not how my character acts within it.

For me, understanding how things work is a major portion of the enjoyment I derive from the game, both NWN and D&D as a whole. And that is different from using that knowledge to manipulate the game in order to make everything easy for myself. Knowing what things I need to have a chance and that the chance I have is 15% does not impact my ability to change those odds.

I don't ask for you to dumb things down and make it easier, I ask to know what I am supposed to do with what you have made.

I totally understand your point and I actually agree. I also enjoyed understanding the game mechanics, etc. I am against taking the good and bad randomness out of a D&D based game because someone is not happy with their bad luck. We all deal with the luck factors in this game. How many 1's have you seen in a row! Have you been drowned by a water elemental due to failing a save.

Explaining how things work is much different than making them work the same way every time so there's no surprise outcome.

My post was not pointed at explaining things, only against selling forge stones at a store, getting exactly what you want every time you forge, etc. That would be much more boring!

Many of us have had "the perfect weapon" only to have 1 random item mess it all up. That's the way the cookie crumbles!