First - my analysis had nothing to do with "role-playing" or fun, lol. It was merely an analysis of the character classes that should be modified (IMHO) or are not as useful as their counterparts.
People who love monks - I invite you to do a test. Build a lvl 18 1/2 Orc Kensai with dual wield or two handed wield. Build a LEVEL 36 monk (obviously u need to remove the cap adn use the cheat for XP).
Give the Kensai some decent weapons. Give the monk the guants of crushing and girdle of giant. Kensai used Kai, monk used Quiv. The kensai will make his save almost every time and will wipe the floor with the monk.
I did the same thing with my regular 1/2 Orc fighter from the end game (Ac -9, Vorpal).
The Kensai won 20 out of 20, my regular fighter also won 20 out of 20. I invite you to test for yourselves, don't take my word for it. It will only take you an hour or so.
I read up on the assasin, and he does get a higher level backstab, so he actually is kind of nice, plus the poison IS great to interrupt spellcaters. I went and tried him out to see, and I agree with the people who posted earlier. The assasin and assasin/mage combo is great.
People who don't believe specialization means that much - once again I invite you to try it. Go full dual wield with a fighter all long swords or two-handed sword with two-handed wield. It matters not. Then build a ranger or a paladin and try to take them on. In my testing, the pure fighter (lvl 19 vs lvl 17 Pally or Ranger, capped) wins almost every time (18 out of 20 Ranger, 17 out of 20 Pally with Holy Avenger). Once again, try it out, don't take my word for it. As for the Archer, I think it should be a fighter sub-class. I made a full bow specialization Fighter vs. an Archer and they went head to head with +1 composite bows and acid arrows. Lvl 19 vs 17 (cap again) - the fighter won 13 of 20. Well, that ain't much, and the other benefits of the Ranger gives the Ranger a little edge overall, but my point was if he was a Fighter sub-class he could get the bonus and specialization.
For specific tasks, Pallys and Rangers come in handy. For a woodland quest with lots of animals to charm, the Ranger is great. For fighting racial enemies the Ranger is great. The Undead Hunter is nice for this game since some of the hardest battles involve undead, plus there is a +5 boss sword only he can use.
But when you all join Neverwinter Nights campaigns and go PvP, you are gonna ditch your rangers and pallys for pure fighters. Monks Low HPs and inability to wear armor makes them bad tanks, and QP requires a save which most high level creatures will pass. Plus they have Clerics THACOs which REALLY sucks. If they got Fighters THACO they would be great. But they don't.
It's fun to try all this stuff out, do some testing with it and see the results. If you get different results, I will revisit some of these things, but I saw it with my own eyes (me and some testers). One thing that people didn't mention about Monks which I think is their best ability is MR. That lvl 36 monk I made could EASILY destroy ANY mage, he had 60-somthing MR plus after that he gets to make a save. I tried this a lot and none of my mages could beat the monk. So if your monks purpose is to combat Wizards you have a winner. In about 2 rounds your monk should be able to kill almost any wizard.
Here's how to fix the following IMO:
Monk: Give them Find AND Remove traps. To me, that would be enough.
Archer: Fighter class, no specializations except for ranged.
Barb: Advanced Specialization in melee weapons only. Cannot use ranged weapons.
Sorc: Increase # of spells able to cast per level.
Pally: Advanced specialization in ONE weapon only.
Ranger: Advanced specialization in ONE weapon only (this could also be a remedy for the Archer situation).
Bards: I still don't get this class. In the heat of a battle, the last thing I need is some fool singing in the background, hehe.
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