Spells not landing.

[zurcon]

Yea, I'm having a lot of fun with the Psi, I just know he's not going to win pks... which isn't a problem

Just to address Burzuk. His calculations are way off, especially for an illithid psionic.

I can't wield weapons, which means the weapons I've got I can only practice to 75%. I have to parry with my bare hands, which is pretty hard. Assuming it works 25% of the time is an astronomical guess.

My easy to exploit vuln also isn't considered.

[Burzuk]

[Phostan]

Yeah, weapons that exploit racial vulnerabilities actually only do 150% damage of the weapons average damage, from what I've been told. I mean, that's cool if you're using a battlemasters on an illithid, or a dead black blade or a withering scythe or some other high average damage slash weapon. Consider though, illithids are immune or resistant to lightning or something or other like that. They're resistant to blunt as well. I can at the drop of the hat rape any illithid out there with a hell-blade and a rusted iron sword, or a holy avenger and a claymore. But, well, illithids actually get a boatload extra hp from converts as compared to other psionicist races. Consider a half-elf psi compared to an illithid psi. half-elves have one more constitution, but illithids pump out a shitload more hp in the longrun. The extra damage you do with a weapon they're vuln to probably only barely makes it harder on them as compared to them having no racial vulns and no huge gains from converts. And then if someone isnt using a slash weapon, because, let's say, they're a healer, then the hp converts makes them even better then average. So, let's say my figure of 150% is right, and you have a hell-blade and a marmalade orb. The orb is average 25, the blade average 18, but if 150% is right, it'd act as a average 27 damage weapon. So 2 average damage more. Which, is, well, not bad at all. And so forth and so on and blah blah blah.
Illithids pwn, and do okay as psi's. I'd like to see a spell that does damage, and at the same time send enemies reeling, maybe making them miss a round of attacks occassionally. Or a spell that makes them slow people by using telekenisis to hold them back. I think an area attack psionic blast that lets them target a specific group of individuals rather then everyone in the room would be good too. You're not sending out a wave of psionic attacks that hit everything, rather then multiple attacks at all of your enemies at the same time, because you can multitask that good. Oh, and it's easy to bitch about nothing to parry with even though you have a natural parry that cant be disarmed and that cool hand weaponry stuff. Oh, and that displace image shit or whatever that can make any attack or spell miss completely, yeah, that spell can toss my salad.

[zurcon]

chance = get_skill (victim, gsn_parry) / 2;

if (number_percent () >= chance + victim->level - ch->level)
return FALSE;

You assumed I had 100% parry. I don't. With stock I start at 40% chance of parrying with this clause.

Apparently in this version, parry ability depends on your % in the weapon you're using, and the weapon your opponent is using. Because of this, I am at quite a bit of a disadvantage with parry. My % in hand to hand is about 80. My % in swords is 0. Based on my experience with CF, I think this is quite a bit of percentage out of my favor.

case (IS_VULNERABLE):
dam += dam / 2;
break;

According to stock, I take 150% damage from slashing weapons. This effectively reduces 400 hps to 267.

267 x 2 (sanc) x 1.25 (prot) x 1.5 (displacement) x 1.25 (parry) = 1251.56 hps


But in pk battle, I won't stay in combat with less than 150 hps, unless I've got a very good reason. This is not a considerable buffer, but it means that realistically I've got 400-150 = 250 hps to play with.

250 x 3.125 = 781.25 hps of unparried undisplaced hits a warrior has got to do against me. (which is the unit you worked in).

Now, at my level a lot of fighting classes have dual wield, second attack, and third attack.

(primary attack)
(second attack)
(third attack)
(dual attack)


chance = get_skill (ch, gsn_second_attack) / 2
chance = get_skill (ch, gsn_third_attack) / 4 (only when 2nd attack works?)

I can't find dual wield. is 50% adequate?

(primary) = 100%
(second) = 50%
(third) = .5 * .25 = 12.5%
(dual) = 50%

I was getting hit for about 70 damage per strike.

1(70) + .5(70) + .125(70) + .5(70) = 148.75 per round.

781/148 is about 5 rounds of action I've got against a warrior, unless he gets a double initiation round or something. Which is effectively 2 rounds for the price of 1.

In short, I exaggerated slightly. It's more like 4-5 rounds I've got against most people to do something.

Your estimate is too high, mine was too low, I think this is closer to the ballpark.

[Davairus]

Consider these design choices:

I) each mortals hp continues to rise as they rank
II) a mage's spell damage gets stronger, and they get their best spells as they rank
III) a warrior's damage output remains pretty much same as it was at rank 15, all the way to 50, being eq-based

This is the obvious consequences of these design choices:

I) ranking means it takes more damage to kill you
II) mages turn into killing machines as they mature (which begins getting noticeable by 35th rank, earlier in some cases), and obviously most sane people with mages are dying to rank them ASAP.
III) certain people multi red dragon to warriors all the time, and some are even willing to die multiple times at low rank to the red dragon, just to get it, and use it to kill low rank mages (who'll have their day later), instead of gradually becoming more and more mediocre as they level those mages toward a balanced level 50

Psionicists, sold as mages by their coder, defy their condition, namely II, and hence are nowhere near as susceptible to III as they should be. Your psi is "suffering" from having every good spell in its repertoire by the 26th rank, which seems to be causing you to think its worthless. If the skill progression wasn't so messed up you'd be continuing to rank and (possibly unwittingly yesterday, but hopefully not now) gaining hp while you try to get the spells.

You have made incorrect assumptions about the illithids innate parry ability - it is not a run of the mill "parry" skill. You assumed you had a stock (or close) parry. And you're on the wrong track when you're saying its the low-rank psionicists defences which need to be buffer, as long as II and III are still true on AR.

Consider this football analogy:

strikers - easily injured, but slippery
defenders - big brutes, not too bright, but there's several of them, making them a formidable defence
midfielders - support for the defenders & strikers (the team captain is usually one of these)

Your post, in saying that psis need better defences, is akin to saying strikers should be just as good at defending as defenders are. Its not realistic.

Have you considered making a shaman? This class seems like what you are looking for to me.

[jaran]

I'm not sure why everybody thinks that Psi's are incabale of pk'ing.

I was able to PK ok with mine, I once fought 2 warlords right after each other (as a specific challenge) and killed them both, ok so that was before purge was decreased for giants but I would still think you would be able to kill pretty well if you know what your doing.

My Psi killed warriors/serkers/healers/thieves/ninas/shamans/rangers (well one ranger) - only classes I really had problems with were Pally's, Necro's, Illusionists (who doesnt...) and Rangers.

Even then I was able to fight to stalemate most times.

[Eldorian]

[Davairus]

Almost forgot.

You....
* started a balance gripe thread with the goal of buffing your own class, or weakening other people's classes
* threw the RACIAL illithid slash vuln into a CLASS balance gripe
* completely botched the way illithids parry, which is too wrong to be ignored after introducing illithid into discussion
* refuse to use the characters last 150 hp, even though illithids have shock to return that much when they hit 0, allowing them to do exactly that
* posted a home-brew mathematical analysis with way off figures for everything involved besides sanc, due to it being from stock ROM

*wiggles a tentacle angrily*

[Burzuk]

[Niktoo]

I think I'm going to change my prompt to show percentages on my characters... the actual hitpoints number does throw me off quite a bit with my psi... I'm so used to 600-700 hps then I look at 400, it makes me think I'm losing more often then I already do.... when in reality, I'm probably just the same.. psi's can tank pretty darn well..

[b00mslang]

[Sebryn]

[dblthnk84]

my gnome is lucky to last a full round of combat.