Banish Bugged/Nerfs

Mephistophelina · Post by **Mephistophelina** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 3:19 pm

I realize after the... ah... banishing of Kay in Mirtho, the need for adjusting the Banish psionic ability was sensible. However, it appears to be broken now.

Things that I successfully banish do not in fact go anywhere. They remain where they are with just the visual effect and some weirdness. At the end of the banish cycle, they are simply moved from wherever they ran, back to the point where they were banished from, but they never actually leave the area.

This has occurred several times, the most notably painful was when Laamelilan was overtaken with confusion and began trying to shoot Elvanbryn. Liss banished him successfully, but he stayed and kept shooting, which resulted in much RP badness and general mayhem.

Please, pretty please, fix this so that I can have it back? It is a very useful feat for saving people's bacon, especially mages.

Also, after looking at balance issues with Xan, it seems that Molecular Agitation is a bit over-nerfed. At my level, I think I should be doing more damage per round than I do, given the comparable spells and attacks that fighters/mages/rogues have. 4 spells from a wizard, maybe a quarter of their daily power would be me unloading all of my PSPs completely with molec agitate assuming every damage was maxed (which it doesn't usually, sometimes I do like 4 damage), and worked. So even on a good day with this feat, I'm doing less half the damage of a wizard of the same level.

Maybe someone could explain it to this simple southern girl? I hope I'm not being nerfed because someone else was naughty. Y'lissana longs to be useful as well as ornamental, but right now, she just has occasional bouts of utility while she is generally surrounded by people who are all about pwnage.

Thoughts?

- M.

Xanthalas · Post by **Xanthalas** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 3:27 pm

I actually ran a bunch of numbers on all of it, and well. probably bored poor Mephistophelina to tears with it.. but I do back this message nonetheless.

Mephistophelina · Post by **Mephistophelina** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 3:31 pm

Description for Banish:

With this power, the psionicist can teleport a creature against its will to a pocket dimension and hold it there. The pocket dimension is a featureless area with a benign environment – it may be hot or cold, dark or light, but not so much that it will cause injury. After 1 round, the banished creature makes saving throw each round to determine if it returns from banishment. The creature does this until it passes the save, or until the duration expires. Friendly creatures are banished for the entire duration.

I should not have a problem banishing my party members who are of similar level or lower, in theory, unless I'm running some kind of mystery check of Save vs. Arkon. ;D

- M.

Xanthalas · Post by **Xanthalas** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 3:46 pm

Xanthalas wrote:I actually ran a bunch of numbers on all of it, and well. probably bored poor Mephistophelina to tears with it.. but I do back this message nonetheless.

Sent her some numbers, but nothing extreme. mostly ike a +1 per level for Planar Energy, but I do want to mention that, I know little to nothing of 3.5 ed,

Post by **Arkon** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 5:46 pm

So far as I know, no nerfs have been done to either one of these powers as of yet.

Banishment may or may not get adjusted, but at this point I am going to say, if you intend to banish someone, set them to hostile first unless you have already arranged it with them ahead of time or you know that they would not consider it a hostile action.

Auto-banishing someone just because they are a friend of yours is rediculous. If they allow it yes, just because they are your friend? No. So since we can't set it up where the friendly says yes or no, do people a favor and make sure they wouldn't consider it a hostile action prior to your doing it or if they are a very very good friend of yours. Otherwise, set them to Hostile.

Druid523 · Post by **Druid523** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 7:33 pm

Regarding the use of banish against "friendly creatures", I would like to give my point of view:

Scel has, on occasion, banished someone in his party when they were on the verge of dying (being chased by many monsters and such). As they are being overwhelmed, and are probably wishing to themselves that they could be anywhere else but here right now, I assume that this "Friendly creatures are banished for the entire duration" would apply.

However, if someone in your party is confused, they are not in their right mind at that moment. So Banishing them should not be something they would agree to. Banish goes against someone's will: while not confused, I'm sure they would submit themselves; while confused, they would resist.

Setting them to hostile, however, would drop you from whatever party you're in. I suppose it's up to each individual person whether or not this inconvenience is worth maintaining a sense of "reality" in a situation with and an implementation of this power.

As for Molecular Agitation, I have found that it is only effective at higher levels, or against certain creatures. Assuming Y'lissana is a level 8 psionicist, she would do:
4d1 fire damage in the first round (save vs. fortitude for half)
4d4 fire damage in the second round (save vs. fortitude for half)
4d6 fire damage in the third & fourth rounds (save vs. fortitude for half)

The DC for it would be 16 + Y'lissana's Wisdom Modifier (let's say she has 20 Wisdom). That would be a DC of 21. (A wisdom of 30 would give a DC of 26). So this power would be effective against undead (who have a weakness to fire and a low fortitude save) and the Frost Giants (who have a weakness to fire but a high fortitude save for half damage, which would cancel each other out sometimes). Mages have low fortitude saves, I think, so they would be hurt by this, unless they have Prot. from Elements, or something similar.

Stick with low fortitude creatures and creatures weak against fire. The power will become more useful as you gain in levels. I'll admit, being a low level psion isn't glamorous, but we get the unique class and powers, so we still win.

Druid523 · Post by **Druid523** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 7:42 pm

P.S., Psionic Powers' Descriptions

Xanthalas · Post by **Xanthalas** » Sun Nov 19, 2006 9:23 pm

"Friendly" is too subjective to implement correctly in NWN simply. For easy refrence, Y'lissana to do it? Yeah. She's saved my cake a couple of times.. Someone like, Scel? uhm.. might be partied, but he wouldn't expect it, or naturally be willing, No way to script that. :/

As for the damage, I was mre looking at the Summon Planar energy, but to be honest, i have never ever played a psion to any kind of mid level on CoPaP. nor a pure one. I'll see what I can come up with if it's requested, otherwords, my opine is there, and done in the manner of someone ignorant of psions in general. I am only real familiar with 1st ed rulings on them, and even then only vaguely.

Mephistophelina · Post by **Mephistophelina** » Mon Nov 20, 2006 12:46 am

Arkon:

It seems like this banish thing is a trust issue, really. I'll have our team look into it to see if there's a way to have it scripted to work the way you're describing, but in the mean time, I see what you're saying and agree totally.

Banish is something I use very infrequently. Generally it is a last resort to try to save a mage in the party who is getting pwned beyond sensibility, and as you probably know from observing me, I only party with close IC friends and family. I have remarked on this IC, and I'm fairly certain that this is not a major problem for those "friendlies" who I have or would do it to, because while it is startling and disorienting, it is done in the interest of their lives and we have implicit trust (though I'll double-check and ask everyone again IC). But that's just me.

Other psion's mileage may differ.

The Molecular Agitation thing is largely just confounding to me, because it involves complicated things like math, which everyone knows I'm bad at. So, I will just nod and smile and leave it at that.

- M.

Jskee · Post by **Jskee** » Mon Nov 20, 2006 2:06 am

Druid523 wrote:Regarding the use of banish against "friendly creatures", I would like to give my point of view:

Scel has, on occasion, banished someone in his party when they were on the verge of dying (being chased by many monsters and such). As they are being overwhelmed, and are probably wishing to themselves that they could be anywhere else but here right now, I assume that this "Friendly creatures are banished for the entire duration" would apply.

However, if someone in your party is confused, they are not in their right mind at that moment. So Banishing them should not be something they would agree to. Banish goes against someone's will: while not confused, I'm sure they would submit themselves; while confused, they would resist.

Setting them to hostile, however, would drop you from whatever party you're in. I suppose it's up to each individual person whether or not this inconvenience is worth maintaining a sense of "reality" in a situation with and an implementation of this power

Scel has also banished a party member against their will because they were involved in a altercation that Scel didn't agree with. Niko was "friendly" and thus didn't have any chance to save against the Banishment. IIRC, Scel has done this a few times to Niko when they were partied together. Banishing a friendly with no option to save against it is abit overpowered IMHO. This power can be abused.

Mephistophelina · Post by **Mephistophelina** » Mon Nov 20, 2006 3:49 am

Not everyone abuses it.

Mephistophelina · Post by **Mephistophelina** » Mon Nov 20, 2006 4:10 am

I'm going look into whether this is something that can be adjusted in the script (for my world at least, if not Hala, though I'd be happy to pass it along if you like) so that it only figures the no-save on party members. If you are partied with someone who does hostile acts like you describe Jskee, I'm left wondering why...

It seems like the most fair way to fix this would be to change that aspect so that it is not a "friendliness" issue, but a "party" issue. Setting someone to hostile just to perform an act like that which may not actually -be- hostile in the circumstances that it is being used is hard to do, as it is not something that can be hotkeyed. It should be harder to do, of course, but banishing someone is not an inherently hostile act. I've used it every time to save someone (banishing Kay was actually a misclick, I was trying to aim for the wyrmling, but Kay ended up under my cursor thanks to being huge versus small).

Changing this whole thing because of one or two acts of abuse by an individual player may ruin a perfectly good feat that adds a lot to RP, and certainly has been appreciated by everyone I've done it for in parties.

Okay, end of my contribution to this subject. Arkon, let me know if you want to look at the script if I can get it done.

*flees*

- M.

Jskee · Post by **Jskee** » Mon Nov 20, 2006 4:48 am

Mephistophelina wrote:I'm going look into whether this is something that can be adjusted in the script (for my world at least, if not Hala, though I'd be happy to pass it along if you like) so that it only figures the no-save on party members. If you are partied with someone who does hostile acts like you describe Jskee, I'm left wondering why....

Well, IC'ly Scel is fairly neutral on most conflicts, so if he see's two of his friends fighting, and is in a party with one of them, he can banish the party'd member with that character not having any possibility of a save. What you wrote here, "no-save on party members" is not realistic and is extremely over-powered in the psion's favor IMHO.

Example:
A tenth level psion is partied with several 30th-40th level characters, yet the 10th level psion can Banish these characters at will. Not really realistic. This bypasses all mind immunity spells, will saves...yadda yadda yadda. There's no way a 10th level psion should be able to auto-banish anyone.

Hala has many psion's and honestly this is the first time this has come up. I don't think it's an issue of abuse, but of fairness. I think Arkon's post was spot on. Again, nothing against you Mephistophelina just my .02.

*edited for spelling and added example

wyldhunt · Post by **wyldhunt** » Mon Nov 20, 2006 5:33 am

Well... I won't join in the argument of whether or not I want to stay banished long enough to heal and go invisible when I'm saved from pwnage, but I will say that being able to banish any non hostile target without a save is a bit much. And, it sounds like everyone here agrees that a neutral character should get a save. So, here is the change to make it friendly only are able to skip the save (I'm fairly sure that non partied PC's are also considered Neutral by default...). Keep in mind that I haven't tested this at all. Just saw this and figured I'd be doing it anyway... Here is the altered bit of code that will likely be used in Mephistophelina's world, barring any unexpected behavior. Note that this isn't the full script. Just the altered bit. My version only makes a single save for the full duration... But, theoretically, these script mods could be used to begin saves at any time if they drop out of the party after being banished with fairly minimul effort. Feel free to use it, or ignore it... or delete this post, etc.

Code: Select all

//   Wyldhunt Mod: Changed it from hostile only making a save,
//   to any hostile or neutral having to make a save.
     //if (GetIsReactionTypeHostile(oPC, oTarget)
     if (!GetIsFriend(oTarget, oPC)
     && ReflexSave(oTarget, nDC, SAVING_THROW_TYPE_NONE, oPC))
        return;

Here is a second possibility that is more strict. It will only skip the save if they are the same faction... Which is how, I'm pretty sure, it keeps track of parties. Again, not tested. The only real limit to this is DM controlled npc's during events that can't be partied, but can be friendly... Regardless, this will definately work as a 'party only' limit for the no save thing.

Code: Select all

//   Wyldhunt Mod: Changed it from hostile only making a save,
//   to any non party member having to make a save.
     //if (GetIsReactionTypeHostile(oPC, oTarget)
     if (!GetFactionEqual(oTarget, oPC)
     && ReflexSave(oTarget, nDC, SAVING_THROW_TYPE_NONE, oPC))
        return;

This all assumes, of course, that your version and mine are similar enough to even use this... =p