A Poll ~Item Upgrade Mod~

[Dundee Slaytern]

Is it balanced? Truth be told, I like what I see and I want to try them out, but I have two sides, powergamer and roleplayer. Right now my roleplayer side has doubts on whether the items are overpowered. I definitely did not want it for my solo Sorcerer, because to give him the Sorcerian Ring in conjunction with the Ring of Gaxx... ...

I plan to play a party of six Mages soon though, and it is going to have a storyline( hopefully). From a roleplaying perspective, are the items overpowered?

[Alson]

I like the Item Upgrade mod, myself.
Most of the Items are well balanced.

Exceptions are Impaler +4 (give your Kensai Whirlwinds and Grandmastery in Spears... !), and Soul Reaver +6 (Come on... Soul Reaver +4 and Carsomyr, COMBINED!).

[SixOfSpades]

Each item must be weighed separately; each has its roleplay value and its powergaming value. The Rings of Preservation, for instance, make a lot of roleplaying sense. Whether or not they're overpowered is up to each individual player--I think it's a little bit over the top, but not notably so. Certainly less powerful than the Ring of Gaxx--but then, what isn't?

(For the record, Weimer actually made my Holy Buckler of Amaunator more powerful than I'd intended: I had thought that one False Dawn per day was enough.)

-- Alson, you have a point with your note on the potential abuse of the Soul Reaver: The existing most damaging weapon, the Staff of the Ram, cannot be Whirlwinded in this way because of the Knockback factor.

-- Also, now that I think about it, a Kensai under GWW, using the Impaler as a THROWING SPEAR 10 times per round, is just broken. Turning the Spear of the Unicorn into a Throwing Spear is OK, the Impaler is not.

-- quote from the README:

Staff of the Woodlands +5 Old Woodlands abilities. 5% chance of creeping doom on hit, staff recharges overnight

10% chance of Summon Insects would be more reasonable.

-- Combining all the Thief items into the Gloves of the Master Thief seems overpowered as well, not to mention the fact that they also set your base AC to 3.

-- Another quote:

Q: What are the stats for the original Kitthix? A: 44 HP, Base AC 4, Attacks 3/2, Saves 12/14/13/14/14, 10% MR, 2 Hit Dice, 14 STR, 9 Other Stats. Attack: +0 weapon, 1d8 piercing, save vs. poison at +1 or take 3 hp per second for 14 seconds. Immune to Web. Lasts for 2400 seconds or until killed. Q: What are the stats for the Improved Kitthix? A: 80 HP, Base AC -2, 4 Attacks, Saves 6, 25% MR, 10 Hit Dice, 18 DEX. Attack: +3 weapon, 2d4 piercing, save vs. poison at -3 or take 5 hp per second for 12 seconds, save vs. spells at -2 or be webbed for 7 seconds. Immunity to Web, 50% melee damage resistance. Regenerates. Lasts for 2400 seconds or until killed.

-- The Sorcerian Ring is, essentially, 3 Rings and an Amulet all worn on one finger. That's too much. I would knock the Ring of Protection out of the equation.

-- The Ring of Elemental Mastery incorporates the "hidden" +1 bonus to Saving Throws included in the Ring of Earth Control, even though BioWare confirmed that the Earth Control's Save bonus was an oversight that they forgot to correct. (BaldurDash fixes it.)

That makes a total of 7 items that I think are definitely overpowered, and need to be toned down. The rest of the items are OK; my opinion of them seems to vary directly with the number of component items combined into the finished product. For instance, the various Boot upgrades are fine, as they all combine only 2 pairs of the original Boots, and SoA Boots only; the Sorcerian Ring, and Gloves of the Master Thief, however, both combine at least 4 items, with no weakening of the original enchantments whatsoever.

So, 7 overpowered upgrades out of 42 total upgrades equals a result of 85.71% legitimacy. (By my standard of "overpowered," anyway.)

[pcgiant]

I like it.

Some items are overpowered, but there are some drawbacks to getting these. For example, the belt which combines the belts of crushing, slashing, and piercing will combine. Therefore you have one really good belt, instead of three normal ones. If you are playing with a party you might prefer to have one of three characters.

In my opinion, however, Cromwell should not be able to upgrade any items. Save that for ToB.

Overall a good mod.

[Lord Lothar]

I was going to download this MOD but some of the items listed seemed to powerful. I mean a +5 katana in Chapter 2?!?!?

[Dundee Slaytern]

I won't be making up my mind until I finish my current solo Sorcerer. The ToB forum is quite bare anyway, will take some time before more people give their opinions.

A question though, what is the Water's Edge +3?

[True_Moose]

I think that there are some overpowering items in the mod. I really question whether there shouldn't be something more necessary than money, after all, you're drowning in it partway through chap 2, so there's really nothing to stand in the way of getting those items WAAAAAAAYY too early. In NWN they have a lvl requirement, but I mean, a +5 katana in Chap 2 is a tad too much, especially when the only other +5 weapon in SoA is also guarded by...well, you know who.

[LennonCook]

Originally posted by Dundee Slaytern: I won't be making up my mind until I finish my current solo Sorcerer. The ToB forum is quite bare anyway, will take some time before more people give their opinions. A question though, what is the Water's Edge +3?

A scimitar (sp ??) that you find in Ust'Nathar; in the House Deirex (the one with the lich).

[pcgiant]

I thought it was in Spellhold.

[chrisofthedale]

theses items are like cheating to me [img]smile.gif[/img]