Yep. In a nutshell, essentially, all Hidden Kits are Multi-class advancements that rely only on XP for one class (the Active Class). In other words, you're getting 2 levels for the cost of 1 level. Further, as a Cleric (inactive) / Thief (Active), it means that it costs you the XP cost of 1 Thief level to increase your Cleric class by 1 level. Since Thief levels are the easiest levels to increase, you are getting a considerable XP improvement just on this alone and nothing else. That being said, you do lose some XP on each level up, so it is about gaining 2 levels for the cost of 1.5, if I recall my 2DA correctly.There are some great benefits from this... like that your dualed character actually gets not just the active classes level up, but also the once he dualed from... so a mage that dualed to a thief at level 13, and then levels up to the 14th level as the thief while the script was running will receive the Eldritch Phantom kit... and all that comes with it... and when he then levels up further as the thief, it's mage class will also level up one level behind...
There are however, some hardcoded restrictions in the game, that are giving me a real shocker. One is the inability to Open Locks / Disarm Traps, for this I would probably want a summoning ability so that when I gain the Cleric class, I don't just lose my Thief ability down the drain.
Anyone have any thoughts on this combo ? What would you like to see for a Cleric Thief Hidden Kit that would NOT be already done for Shadow Blade or Eldritch Phantom?
Above is the opening sentence for this topic. Currently, the theme for the other hidden kits as follows
- Shadow Blade - backstabbing champ
- Eldritch Phantom - magical assassin, semi-perma improved invisibility makes him difficult to target with spells, has magic resistance, etc
Nightlord would need to be something detracting away from these. I don't play PNP so none of the Hidden Kits are based on PNP, but you may have noticed on paper and without their special abilities, Hidden Kits have a little more significant weakness than their multi-class version.
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As it stands, the Nightlord has no significant disadvantages. With the summoning of an lockpicking / trap-disarming creature, the Nightlord is better than a Cleric/Thief. The concept behind the Nightlord is someone who is good at
- controlling / detecting the things of the Night
--> Nightguard : guarding against the effects of backstabbing (BTW this spell CAN be cast on others)
--> Nightwatcher : applies for spotting thieves / disabling their invisibility
--> Nightwarden : summon-stealing. this may be altered to NOT apply to creatures of Good alignment, ie Deva and Planetars cannot be "stolen", but Fallen Deva and Fallen Planetar can
Taking your (Ming-Ming) feedback to consideration, myself am a big fan of Backstabbing, so instead of disabling Backstabbing, though KO makes more sense and could indeed be more powerful at later stages of the game, we could alter the kit this way :
Advantage
--> Nightblade III to VII : Cleric spell. There are 5 versions of Nightblade, Night III to VII, the number behind indicating the spell level that it has to be memorised at. This ability can only affect the Caster, lasts for 2 hrs and is undispellable, grants +3 Thac0, sets Backstab = Spell Level. (note it sets Backstab modifier, it does NOT stack
)Disadvantages
- Backstab Modifier defaults to 1 when Nightblade is not active
- -3 Thac0
This is also a concept taken from PNP Shadowstalker (I think? forgot the class name) ability called Sacred Strike (if memory serves right, the ability adds damage, actually, based on spell level sacrificed, and only for 1 blow), thanks to Eric P. for this feedback on MSN
Note also that even if Nightblade is permanently turned on (ie lasts forever), it maxes at x7 Backstab, which is roughly equivalent with an Assassin. Sacrificing a level 7 spell is also a question-mark, of course. Nightblade can (naturally) be stacked with HLAs such as Assasination.
And yes, you are indeed sacrificing something to gain a fairly basic use of the class.
PS : an alternative and preferred implementation is Nightblade as an innate ability with one use every 4 levels, starting from level 6. (so at level 13 gaining the Kit you have 2 uses, and it increases to 3 at level 14, so on so forth). It has 5 versions for sacrificing spell from level 3 to 7. I'm not sure how troublesome this would be to implement, I have to experiment to find out, but it would certainly grant a greater amount of flexibility for the Nightlord.
Edited by Zyraen, 17 June 2010 - 07:43 PM.
