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Bethany Derzelas, Minor Salandran priestess and Battle Surgeon novice

I don't think heal kits need any boosts. From a roleplay perspective I believe they already make little sense in that they are usable in combat without provoking attacks of opportunity. The inventory management and the need to stock up on them are one of the few reasons they are not used in a continuous loop.

I actually think the heal kits are somewhat detrimental to the role of healer clerics in a party. When I played a Salandran she would only heal the party after each skirmish, being quite extreme in the neutrality perspective. More often than not, the other party members would have slapped on a few heal kits before she could put to use her massive amount of healing spells. Less access to healer spells would force the 3.5 edition overpowered clerics and druids to put some of their resources in healing the party instead of offensive or buff spells. But that is another discussion and not even something I would advocate for the server.

I feel your pain Apo. All my characters take heal skill and inventory management is rough in battle.

But heal kits, even as they are now, are way overpowered. They're not only a never ending stream of healing, they are also completely unexplained by lore. The same kit works on humanoids, undead, elementals, even constructs. Doesn't make logical sense.

That said, I'll give you my best tip: Have two or three heal kits in quickslot. But don't use them all. When you get down to 1 or 2 left in each stack of 10, open the bag with your kits and drag a fresh stack on top of the ones with 1 or 2 left. Dragging healing kits on top of another stack in the same bag is WAY faster than dragging a whole new kit to the toolbar.

It seems like it'd be hard to not use them all the way up, but you'll get the hang of it. I tend to replenish the quickslotted stacks between each group of foes, no matter how many I used during the fight. Then I never run out.

They already are used in "a continuous loop" and whilst they do not provoke attacks they do as I stated make the user flat footed, which is why when you see some character trying to self heal in a desperate fight they often get rekt not knowing they are making themselves a massive target mechanically with the huge list of penalties and vulnerabilities that condition brings.

So they are hardly free at the point of use, and actually this fact is what makes them so useful as a means of healing when applied by a healer with a heavy stacking of the heal skill.

Like it or not its a function of the game just like discipline and knockdown and all the little oddities that were created for NWN that have no direct example in PnP and the play and builds have evolved around them.



Couldn't disagree more, Salandra isn't "extremely" neutral for a start but neutral good who tries or wants to help everyone a not so subtle difference, and your choice to have your character heal between fights is perfectly valid but its not dogmatically correct or incorrect anymore than using healing in combat is or is not dogmatically correct. It is this room for maneuver on the exact duties and restrictions on what is and is not correct that is built into the lore that appealed to me, it allowed me to create a character concept with more of a free hand than I imagined Ilmater would.

Point of fact it is exactly the Battlesurgeons role to heal in the midst of combat, and according to the lore mundane means are preferred to magical where possible so whilst I'm not negating your characters way of doing things it does appear that Bethany's is just as valid.



This doesn't make sense, giving clerics less access to healing spells would force them into less buffs. Or would it just make their buffing more important as their ability to load up on healing is so reduced thats what left might as well be something that lasts 10-15 minutes rather than a few cure wounds?

I would argue that the way Cleric spells list is filled with every cleric spell by default is an issue but not one relevant to this topic so yeah another thread if anyone wants to explore that topic.

In any event this suggestion isn't a boost, but a streamlining of a cumbersome UI issue, the fact I can't hotbar a skill nor stack heal kits into 100s or 1000s is not an IC issue but a mechanical one I seek to resolve.




Lots in NWN doesn't make sense, but yet we build around it and invent ways to use it or avoid it in game all the time, not a reason not to do so here imo. You can heal all those things with healing/curing spells too or their negative equivalent in the case of undead, this doesn't make sense either as a construct doesn't have organics to heal or cure but still the spell works.

I have no explination Amia lore wise why that is, if it is even explained in the lore or just accepted as as mechanical limitation of a computer game I don't know!



I do all this already but due to her build and play style she goes through kits real fast, especially with the zerg mentality of Amians and their game busting overpowered nonsensical addiction to haste potions but never need to pee, notice that? But as I said above its a mechanical and UI issue here not an IC one.

Hence my suggestion.

If indeed it is deemed to strong on a sever that trends to powerbuilds *contradiction in terms?* then assuming it's even possible to do I will still request it as a DC in time, heal kit use being the entire core of her build, lore, rp and style. And just like everyone else I want to get the max out of my build, with the added context that it also makes entire sense with her backstory, lore and rp.

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Bethany Derzelas, Minor Salandran priestess and Battle Surgeon novice

Nobody wants to rp the toilet.

Heal kits don't need any functional improvements, they're very powerful.

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bad man

Hey...for the record. I hokd the distinction of dropping out of a boss battle to take a piss, stating: "Where did you expect all those potions to go?"

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Jace Fenneril: Cleric of Sharess.

Michael Harcourte: Painter, Scribe.

Sebastian Mayartte: Gambler, MercenaryDeceased

This looks more like an inventory management tool, not a boosti nto heal kits. I don't see the big deal, as the way we view stacks of heal kits is very "video gamey". Consider that this character is party focused and very intent on being effective at her job. As far as powerbuilt or op goes, you can flush that as she doesn't even have a tumble level. The character, itself is very vulnerable. I don't think this is a very overpowered request as the player is looking to reduce the number of hotkey items occupied by one type of item

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Jace Fenneril: Cleric of Sharess.

Michael Harcourte: Painter, Scribe.

Sebastian Mayartte: Gambler, MercenaryDeceased

I never stated this is the dogma or how the faith should be played. This was her personal interpretation. I was telling of my experience of playing a healer in a world where easy access to heal kits makes this classical d&d role less essential.


Off course it is equally valid. However, I do wonder to what extent the healing kits can be considered mundane. I do not believe that a few herbs and some cotton instantly heal wounds and make someone fit for battle. This my own opinion and not relevant to the discussion of heal kits.


My bad, I meant to say access to healing kits. If this was reduced, the cleric and druid healing spells would become more important and they would fill more spell slots with healing spells.
But as said, this is not a change I am advocating.

Part of the balance of heal kits is having to keep stocked on relatively heavy, inventory spanning kits. This scripted item is time better spent elsewhere. Magical Bandage Bags exist to help ease the inventory burden, along with bags of holding, which can put over 100 kits in a 2x2 space. If you're full into healing like a cleric is, those 100 kits will probably last you quite a while considering they'll lkely be supplemented by things like Mass Heal and Greater Restoration.

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Davion Telemos - Monk of the Four Winds
Korthan Isharnos - Dragon Shaman of Thunder Spirit Zamasham

Hey Tormak thanks for your input, sorry to have to disagree with your suggestion that poor programming and ancient UI is a balancing feature.

I've been mulling over this notion that heal kits are over powered, because to my mind for something to be over powered it must have an incredibly strong or insurmountable advantage with little or no risk of counter play.

Let a review the key points around healer kits

Pros
Skill plus D20 health restored that can't be interrupted.
Relatively gold efficient with skill/gear investment in health skill ranks.

Cons
Makes the using character flat footed http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Flat-foot whicheck pretty much renders the character dead in the water and easy meat and even feats that mitigate some of the penalties of flat footedness don't help much.
Full round action even hasted (vs and extra attack or spell)
Stationary to perform (in a game of monks, mass haste,hasted monks..)
Touch range (Stacks negatively with must be stationary and flat footed)
Due to ancient UI and lazy coding of original game they can only be stacked in 10s which is strictly an OOC concern and has no IC justification.
The healing character must invest skills, feats, gear slots and build options to make it truly effective and worthwhile to use heal kits. All of which severly gimps damage or defences or both.

I could probably list some more cons but I'm posting from my mobile and it's torturous lol, but I believe the reader will see where I'm coming from.

Also 100 kits doesn't necessarily last very long and really depends on party size, level range and a bunch of other considerations.
Not least of all being that sometimes they need to be over spammed on a target to in effect heal preemptively given you get one heal roll per turn versus X number of mobs attacking multiplied by X number of attacks per mob and you need to get the animation started BEFORE the damage is applied to avoid target being downed in the middle of the animation.

Which is all very interesting and something I consider in depth as I tend to play healers and supports in games that have them.

But it's a tangent to my proposals both of which eliminate and OOC nause that has been eliminated in nwn2 where skill use is correctly coded and supplies properly used in the use of a skill. And my first concept does not remove the need to carry kits in any way shape or form.

I must admit the level of fear over healer kits is surprising me on a server where heal pots are spammed by multimillionaires like alcopops and a level 5 cleric spell can be bought and read by a level 1 character with neither magic class or UMD. (Raise Dead)

But what I want to know is if it's actually possible to do because even if heal kits fear sinks this as a server idea it's still something I would pursue as a DC request for a character whose entire build, lore and RP is built around healer kits.

Much the same way some build around dev crit or epic dodge etc.

P.S. will check this for auto correct and grammar when I get home tomorrow

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Bethany Derzelas, Minor Salandran priestess and Battle Surgeon novice

Some inaccuracies here.

Being flat footed is bad, but not always. Against things like IGMS, you can just sit back and heal and render the spell pretty harmless. You can also just run away from a mob and use your 1/2 action to heal and then re-engage w/o actually taking a flat-footed attack.

It's also a 1/2 round action not a full round. You can spam them easily. With heal skill it's a LOT of HP, even more with wisdom.

Stacking to 10 isn't that bad and you can just put four or five onto your quick bar which is what all my characters do making it pretty irrelevant. I guess it could stack higher but who cares. You can put so many in a bag of holding it's really irrelevant.

I don't see 'stationary to preform' as a thing because everything in this game requires you to not move to use.

It's also only 30 skill points, no feats or gear slots or build options to get basically maximum use out of them. With just 30 heal you're looking at an average of 81 hp a round healed in combat. That's a lot of HP.

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ANT ALARM

ANT ALARM

Countless times I have healed myself in the middle of combat and not died, even when really low on HP and even in mid-range areas. If someone invisible is doing it for you, it's even less of a drawback. When I played my first cleric people loved having her in party because she buffed everyone to the teeth then spammed healkits and sometimes healing spells. People didn't die with her in party (unless lag or something) because even in combat I healed for around 90 HP a pop which is insane.

Healkits don't need this imo.

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Whomst've'll'd'mn't I play:
Salema Nefahri :: A penny for your thots
Zrae'a'stra'fryn :: That which nightmares are made of
Khasir :: From the East a storm is coming

You're not mentioning that poor AI means the character doing the healing often isn't the one taking damage, making healkitting making you flat footed only relevant in certain situations. you also don't add in things like flatfootedness simply not mattering very much to a fully buffed 50% concealled dexless character, at least, in a PVE situation. Against spellcasters, being flatfooted is generally going to mean even less. The IGMS spammer simply doesn't care that you're flatfooted, he's just clicking Max IGMS on you over and over.

Meanwhile the dedicated healer is doing 80-100 every 3 seconds completely uninterruptible and unstoppable. Being stationary is largely a non-issue - any sort of healing is gonig to render you stationary long enough in a mobile game for people to catch up to you - or eat your full round's worth of actions forcing you to be behind in te action economy for a round anyways. The exceptions are going to be hasted monks or shadowjump/flight, but these are exceptions to the rule and don't really count in the main argument. This is also why Heal is really good for monks, though, because you can simply blip away if anything looks at you.

Investing skills into it is necessary, but investing gear? you can simply make 2 daggers with +2 wisdom and +5 heal and hotbar them when you heal to gain another +12 to your heal checks. Very little gear needs to actually be invested, especially if you do the usual thing of healkitting after fights and potting during them - the exceptions tend to be mages healkittin gtheir summons (the AI magnets to summons - the mage is in 0 danger) or dedicated Healing clerics (who aren't losing anything by being flat foote,d but can also simply use Mass Heal and Heal midfight when it's actually needed)

The argument isn't that healing kits are overpowered, per se, but rather that having to carry the weight and deal with inventory is the necessary price you pay for how powerful they can be wih the investment. Poor programming and an old UI can absolutely be a balancing feature - diablo 2, for example, is absolutely balanced around the idea of inventory space and management being a core function of its game. old Amia spell components were specifically made to be unstackable as part of their balance, just like Dusts of Disappearance - the price you pay for being able to access these things by paying a GP cost that's irrelevant is by paying in inventory space and inconvenient hotbar swapping.

You are vastly overstating the power of mobs and AB on the server and are showing your lack of generla server knowledge and mechanics in doing so.

It's not a "fear of heal kits", as you overdramatically state, but rather that heal kits, with investment, are perfectly fine the way they are, and do not need to be removed from the game entirely with an invisible item that just vamps GP out of your character's invisible bank around to heal. That's destructive to the game environment.

100 heal kits not lasting very long is your character's problem - if you choose to not do adequate buffing, if your parties cannot adequately handle the area you're in, and if you're deliberately choosing not to use magical healing and are instead only relying on healing kits, you can't e surprised when you're going through them faster than everyone else is. The only characters that really have a right to complain about supplies on Amia are, IMO, archers, because that's something that'a critical to core character functionality, whose mechanics are handled by an inventory RNG that's out of their control.

n.b. your DC request will fail because custom scripting is no longer a thing on the server.

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Davion Telemos - Monk of the Four Winds
Korthan Isharnos - Dragon Shaman of Thunder Spirit Zamasham

I could see the DMs allowing you to maybe buy a item spawner that spawns them for a cost at the same as NPCs or slightly more if your argument was to lower your max item numbers to avoid you keeping multiple bags full.

Given I have like 50 bags/boxed and am sitting at like 764 items.... and I know that that's way over the 500 item limit but how can I get rid of stuff I might need.... I may need the 15 or so emeralds of earth in case I have nuke a place with like 75 uses of level 20 earthquake! 14stacks of heal potions.... don't judge me!

But given you could with no effort by 5 boxes and fill them with nothing but heal kits, I think the DMs rather you keep a single box and if your paying the same cost to spawn them its not really balance effecting and only helps server keep file size down from you not having to over stock.

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================-<Cory ShadowFlame>-================
Risenlord-Shifter(OMG a Non-Dragon Shifter that can hold his own in PvE)

Quite hinestly, even a dexer shouldn't care about flat-footing. Uncanny Dodge is pretty much a must-have on a dexer. And you are playing a dexer wrong if you don't go a class that gets it.

It ends up being: 'you lose your dodge AC', which is like 5 AC from boots. And, ok, you can be sneak-attacked. But both usually are not as dangerous as you would make it seem.

Bad heal-kitting was the reason pitt died his second death.

You lose tumble ac (6) and dodge ac (5), which is a huge difference... and I consequently died in 3 attacks to the skeleton knight, due to not realizing it would be an 11 AC swing, 2 were crits. I didn't want to heal pot because I was only missing 1/3rd of my HP and like being cheap. Jokes on me.

It's still a big AC swing, even with uncanny dodge.

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ANT ALARM

ANT ALARM

Shit, sorry. Forgot ble AC.I still don't think it is that big of a deal.

Also, it's pretty crazy. If I really was crazy about heal kits, I could go up to 121 +d20. And that is pretty insane.

And even if we take out the balancing aspect, I think there are bigger problems that Devs could take care of than changing heal kits.

I have the invisible/transluscent GUI override for my nwn, it makes keeping my inventory open during battle much easier, and I can quickly slot kits if need be.

I find I almost never run out of my spells and kits... people really like healing themselves in battle, Amians want to feel strong Outside of DM events, or being a lowbie, you won't feel very useful I'm afraid.

You'll have to be creative to do more 'healing' things. But I understand everyone wants a balance of RP and battle fun.

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