Upcoming Pale Master Changes - Discussion Thread

[Maverick00053]

We have been working on these changes and they are going to be passed to our testers soon to work out bugs etc but I wanted to give everyone a sneak peak and a chance to comment.

Pale Master Rework

New Bonus Feats:
Pale Master will gain Toughness 1-10, EDR1-3, and Armor skin as new epic bonus feat options.

New Point System:
There will be a point progression system for PM. One point per PM level, and half a point for Bard/Wizard/Sorc/Assassin. Level 20 PM will receive a bonus point. The points will correlate to summon amount / summon strength.

10 Wizard / 19 PM / 1 Bard = 24 Points

10 Wizard / 20 PM = 26 Points

20 Bard / 10 PM = 20 Points

20 Wizard / 10 PM = 20 Points

New Summon Details:
These abilities compliment the Pale Master's magical skill with front-line toughness. Animate Dead and Summon Undead both summon henchmen style summons, which means they stack with each other and normal summon. Summon Greater Undead functions as a normal summon, and as a result competes for the same slot as Level 1-9 Summons, EDK, EMD, etc.

• Animate Dead [Duration: Unlimited] [Summon Type: Henchmen]
  
  • 0-7 Points : Mohrg
  • 8-10 Points : Mohrg x2
  • 11-13 : Lesser Skeletal Archer, Ghoul
  • 14-16 : Skeletal Archer, Ghoul Lord
  • 11-13 : Skeletal Archer x3 (Customization unlocked)
  • Customization: You can select any combination of Skeletal Archer, Ghoul Lord, and Allip. Also you can select an additional RP option to summon ten basic skeletons or zombies for labor, etc.
  • Every 2 point past 17 creatures get a +1 AB and Damage buff
  Create Undead [Duration: Unlimited] [Summon Type: Henchmen]
  
  • 0-8 Points : Wraith
  • 9-11 Points : Wraith, Mohrg
  • 12–14 Points : Wraith x2
  • 15-18 Points : Wight x2
  • 19-21 Points : Mummy x2
  • 22+ Points : Greater Mummy x2 (Customization unlocked)
  • Customization: You can select any combination of Greater Mummy, Lesser Vampire, and Blaspheme. Also you can select an additional RP option to summon ten basic skeletons or zombies for labor, etc.
  • Every 2 point past 22 creatures get a +1 AB and Damage buff
  Create Greater Undead [Duration: 1 Turn / CL] [Summon Type: Standard]
  
  • 0-12 Points : Dread Wraith
  • 13-15 Points : Wight
  • 16-19 Points : Mummy
  • 20-23 Points : Greater Mummy
  • 24+ Points : Winterwight
  • The summoned undead gains +6 to Turn Resistance.

Reanimation Details:
A Pale Master has reached into the depths of necromancy and learned of the arts to maintain and rebuild an army of minions with ease. Pale Masters now have a 10% + 1% per PM level to reanimate their fallen minions automatically when they fall. This ability applies only to Henchmen style summons. At 20 Pale Master they gain an additional +20% to this chance for a total of 50%.

[Opustus]

The wee nerf to melee PM

Just by looking at the numbers, I suggest PM is due for a wee nerf at least while at it. As it's a public forum, the PM players are sure to object but I'll try to convince you too, you bastards.

Make the PM AC bonus Dodge instead of "other". The reason is that PMs, and especially melee PMs, reach egregious AC scores otherwise. The AC being typed Dodge would add a weakness to the PM's defensive panoply by capping it with enough PM and other sources like Bard Song and Divine Might, while also making the darn thing hittable with due preparation to flat-foot the sucker.

Just to showcase the numbers, Bard4/PM16/BG10 gets 77 AC without Expertise/IE on and 47 AB. With PM AC typed as Dodge, the AC goes down an even 10 to 67. Still respectable without being a flagrant overkill.
AC = Base 10 + Armor 14 + Shield 8 + Nat 5 + Deflect 5 + Tumble 3 + Armorskin 2 + Dodge 5 (EMA) + Dodge 5 (boots) + Dodge 10 (D.Shield) + Pale master 10 // other sources for Dodge would be Mage Armor +1 and Haste +4
=77 AC

AB = BAB 21 + STR 12 + EWF 4 + Prowess 1 + Weapon 5 + Bless/Aid 2 + D.Favor 2
=47 AB

Mind you, nerfing the PM AC from "other" to Dodge wouldn't make it pointless. You could swap boots to +6 CON, consider other epic spells like Hellball and Greater Ruin in place of EMA, reduce reliance on buffs to cap Dodge AC.

The buff and QoL for caster PM

Right now being a dedicated caster PM with e.g. Wiz10/PM19/Bard1 includes a world of pain with the CL10 for spell duration for any salient buff in the game. Because nobody wants to play an epic caster whose existence is pain (no, not even a pale master is that masochistic!), I suggest that Wizard would get half their PM level added to the CL of all spells instead of the current zero. This means that a Wiz10/PM19/Bard1 would cast a Mass Haste that lasts in rounds (10 Wizard + 9 Pale master halved)*2 extended = which is already a good 4 minutes.

Apart from increasing QoL by increasing buff duration, it would also give meaningful offensive spells for alternative strategies. This makes caster PMs more powerful especially in PvM, giving them more tools to deal with opponents. Investing in Epic Spell Penetration would allow it to bypass some spell resistance in PvP as well. For an offensively oriented PM caster, you could consider Wiz19/PM10/Bard1 that gets CL24 for most non-Necro spells, adding to the diversity of plausible PM playstyles.

Feats

I like the expanded feat list because it makes sense. If you're looking to avoid buffing melee PMs, consider dropping Armorskin as this would be the top pick for any PM-heavy melee build.

I think it makes sense to give PM casters some love in the feat department too.
1) Unlock Spell Focus to PM and add Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus to the epic bonus feat list. In pre-epic, PMs can't take regular Spell Focus on PM levels, which seems blatantly an oversight.
2) Add ESF:Necromancy to the epic bonus feat list and make PM able to select it on any epic PM level. Seems silly to play an epic PM that is unable to be epically focused in Necromancy. This is a chunky buff to PM, but I think well worth for correcting the ancient wrong of PMs not being masterly necromancers.

[The1Kobra]

I do agree that PM AC probably needs a looking at, but remember it's one of the big features of a PM along with the crit immunity, we don't want to hose it too hard.
It wouldn't make sense as dodge AC though, it's more like an extra natural AC. Keep in mind that dodge AC is applied to touch attacks and not applied if the character is flatfooted.
I'd recommend simply applying an AC penalty similar to dragon disciple in order to adjust properly to the correct amount. That would need to be made non-restorable but that's doable.
For amounts, even if halved, PM still provides quite a bit to melee builds. AC, sneak attack and crit immunity, and a few other immunities. The summons generally aren't /that/ strong on a melee PM but one should still keep them in mind, especially if bard levels contribute to them now.

I do agree though that PM levels, especially if the AC is nerfed, should contribute something to non-necromancy caster levels. 1/2 PM level sounds appropriate (round down, since the odd levels provide spellslots, it could make even levels provide CL).

[Maverick00053]

The upcoming tweaks further is this.

Removing Armor Skin from the epic bonus feat list. Going to make sure spell focus to epic spell focus for necromancy is in the list.

On top of that the PM AC progression is going to be shuffled and nerfed a bit. At the 1st, 14th, and 18th level AND every 4 levels the PMs boneskin intensifies granting a +1 Bonus to AC. PM AC is going to max out at 8, instead of 12. The AC is also favored on the back end for heavier investment.

[Avengedbegneva]

I think that a nice boost to the caster focused PM or winion PM would be to allow Spell Focus - Necromancy, Spell Focus - Greater Necromancy and Epic Spell Focus Necromancy to contribute points to the Summon Point Total. Perhaps 1 point each. I think this would fit well into the playstyle of a caster focused PM as they're likely to pick up the feat and melee focused PMs are not likely to pick up these feats.

[GreatPigeon]

I do not like these adding extra points. I played with the numbers and combinations quite closely. We want to make Winter Wight a capstone and it is now at 24+ PM points. Allowing feats to add points gives a new cap.

If this new cap is all the levels + the feats are the only way to get the highest PM we’ve forced extra feats to get what many have accepted as a class standard feature.

If we use the points as you’ve said it opens up the possibility of taking 20PM for the 21 points and the 3 feats that’s 24 points. Now you only need 3 caster levels to get the PM PrC and have 7 free levels but still get winter wight.

I understand the sentiment. I don’t think it’s actually a direction we should be going.

If we used necromancy focus at all to determine power of summons in would look into making this apply regen to your horde or something ancillary to the level progression we’ve currently built.

[mccarthy00]

regen to your horde or some other Buff would be a good idea, the other option is to add one more cap stone above Winterwights that only a 20 pm and feat invested PC can get

[The1Kobra]

Palemasters have a few spells which they can use to heal and buff their undead, negative energy ray and negative energy burst being examples.

I will also note that the summon changes are pretty nasty to sorcerer PMs. Not that Sorc/PM was a very common combo, because PM doesn't give spell selections, so the standard 20/10 Sorc/PM (or 19/10/1 Sorc/PM/Bard) doesn't get epic spells, but this change nerfs them even further since they won't get the winterwight. Just thought I'd point that out.

[Avengedbegneva]

If the intention is to make winterwight only absolutely accessible at the end of the class leveling, then adding the extra points would defeat that purpose. However, in its current implementation, the Palemaster caster very much pales in comparison to its melee counter part and any nerfs to the melee counterpart are going to affect the caster in some way. Which means the best option is to buff selections that only the caster PM would take. Spell Focus for sure. Maybe spell focus should increase minion stats, as you said, perhaps redistribution the resurrection chance of minions from say, getting level 20 in PM and getting 20%, to getting 10% at 20 PM and 5% per spell focus? Any caster PM is absolutely going to pick up the necromancy focus while battle PMs don't really benefit from it, so using that feat to incorporate buffs to the caster PM in some way I think is something worth looking into.

[DeathProphet]

I really like the idea of a minion based class. If PM could get longer spells IE CL, then that would be nice. Even if it was just the buff spells.

[Jagger]

I have to say, I am ambivalent to a lot of the changes proposed. I'll crunch the numbers later when I'm not exhausted. I always considered Palemaster to be pretty powerful as is. You could build some of the best tanks on the server, or a necromancer with a high tier ( You can get EMD too) summon and several one shot options that can almost erase half the server in PvP if they aren't prepared. Admittedly they aren't the best in PVE...and these changes also don't change that. Enemy Fort Saves are still too high for a PM caster to make a dent in PVE encounters. With Crit immunity, all that EDR and toughness....you are also opening palemaster/ defender combination that with enough regen, just farts at everything, much like pidge's old risenlord. I do think the changes to summons and being able to rez them is pretty sweet. Maybe don't make it a percentage chance, rather some black diamonds that are a lootbin item with PM only restriction?

[The1Kobra]

There is one thing I've thought of that bothers me about this change, namely it seems to more strongly force 19 PM builds in order to make the most of it.
Meaning, it used to be you could go 10/19/1 Wiz/PM/Bard, or 11/18/1, or even something like 13/16/1. But 13/16/1 even if it rounds in the player's favor misses out on Winterwight, while this combo with the old PM didn't, and could be nice because of the extra CLs to the PM's buff spells. The 20/10 Wizard/PM or Sorc/PM build is completely hosed, not that it was great before due to missing epic spells, but it's even weaker now since it won't get the good PM summons either.

[Gers]

I love the ideas that have been presented so far. I'd also suggest adding in some special PM-only functionality to certain necromancy or undead-related spells. Here's a few suggestions; these should only work if cast directly by a PM pc, and not if used from a wand or scroll:

Ghoul Touch: Automatically casts as maximized, so the paralysis lasts 8 rounds. Noxious cloud effect extends to 10 feet, doesn't affect undead or PMs

Fear: Doubles the Amia-fixed duration and when cast by a PM, can also affect undead.

Negative Energy Burst: Also damages CON, but at half the amount it does to STR. Raises STR/CON on undead minions.

Death Armor: Uncapped damage or damage cap raised. Duration becomes turns/level with epic necro focus.

Vampiric Touch: adds an extra 2d6 damage/drain.

Enervation: Negative levels gained becomes 2d3, inflicts "shaken" effect: -2 to AB/saves even on a successful save for 1 turn

Circle of death: creatures of up to 12 HD are affected, +3 HD per spell focus, to a max of 21.

Undeath to death: Not capped for PMs. 29/30d4 levels of undead killing power now possible.

Finger of death: Damage is now 5d6 + 2 points per caster level

Horrid Wilting - Applies half of damage dealt as healing to undead minions/pets caught up in the spell

Energy Drain - Targets lose 3d4 levels, inflicts "shaken" effect: -2 to AB/saves even on a successful save for 1 turn

Wail of the Banshee: adds 5d6 sonic damage, will save to avoid being deafened for 1 turn

[gobbhob]

I love the ideas that have been presented so far. I'd also suggest adding in some special PM-only functionality to certain necromancy or undead-related spells. Here's a few suggestions; these should only work if cast directly by a PM pc, and not if used from a wand or scroll:

Ghoul Touch: Automatically casts as maximized, so the paralysis lasts 8 rounds. Noxious cloud effect extends to 10 feet, doesn't affect undead or PMs

Fear: Doubles the Amia-fixed duration and when cast by a PM, can also affect undead.

Negative Energy Burst: Also damages CON, but at half the amount it does to STR. Raises STR/CON on undead minions.

Death Armor: Uncapped damage or damage cap raised. Duration becomes turns/level with epic necro focus.

Vampiric Touch: adds an extra 2d6 damage/drain.

Enervation: Negative levels gained becomes 2d3, inflicts "shaken" effect: -2 to AB/saves even on a successful save for 1 turn

Circle of death: creatures of up to 12 HD are affected, +3 HD per spell focus, to a max of 21.

Undeath to death: Not capped for PMs. 29/30d4 levels of undead killing power now possible.

Finger of death: Damage is now 5d6 + 2 points per caster level

Horrid Wilting - Applies half of damage dealt as healing to undead minions/pets caught up in the spell

Energy Drain - Targets lose 3d4 levels, inflicts "shaken" effect: -2 to AB/saves even on a successful save for 1 turn

Wail of the Banshee: adds 5d6 sonic damage, will save to avoid being deafened for 1 turn

Don't do any of this, thanks.

[Opustus]

Meh, gobb's reply is such lame.

To Gers, I like the idea of just buffing existing necro spells. PM is really boring to play because you only have Neg Energy Burst, Finger of Death, Horrid Wilt, and Banshee to spam for offensive spells. I'd definitely target spells that aren't in the current spell rotation for variety and more supply of usable offensive spells.

[waswar]

Buffing the spell side of things would make an interesting trade-off for toning down the lavish defensive components of PM.