Seperating Combat experience with Crafting Experience

Hello all,
Most of you probably don’t know me because I am new. But I have come across a few things in my short time of playing this server that I feel need some reworking to make it more efficient, balanced and fun. So in this post I will be shooting some ideas at most of you guys to see what you feel. I am a long time role player, over nine years of experience. I’ve even ran my own server, DM’d, built and tried at scripting. My main deal with this post is balance, and RP. So here we go.

I see that you guys already utilize the Neverwinter's crafting skill in your system and I don’t want to talk about drastic changes to that by utilizing the CNR system or something. But, what I do want to point out is that the crafting system seems a bit unbalanced role play wise and in functionality. Instead of giving combat experience for crafting, why not give crafting experience for crafting? It makes more sense role play wise and in functionality. I feel that crafting should be a specialized profession, just like being a merchant, or a Politian or an adventurer. The ultimate issue people will have with this is: “You will have to give experience for other professions too” And “But then I won’t get really strong and uber and QQ moar.” I have a solution to both of these challenges, fret not.

For role play professions instead of awarding combat levels give role play perks and “profession points”. These perks might include but are not limited to: Specialized gear, more fame, specific henchmen(s), more money, land, etc. The “profession points” are something that we did on my server. What we did was very simple, no scripting just a lot of creativity. What we did was made stackable tokens to indicate profession expertise. When they acquired enough points they could do specific things. Pretty simple, that’s how we liked it.

Now for the issue of becoming “stronger”, most people that think they role play and play Neverwinter limit this term to one thing; Combat levels. But, anyone who is a bit more experienced would quickly correct them in the fact that there are different types of strength. For example, most successful modern merchants would not necessarily be strong in combat but would be strong in the market with their corporations and tons of influence and lots of employees and resources. As in other terms a modern day solider would have combat experience and have way more skill in weaponry and killing people than the merchant would. So, what’s keeping the more combat hardened soldier from taking out the merchant? Well, lots of things. For one the merchant would have supreme security hindering the soldier from harming them. And if they were really smart, they would have doubles etc.

As for crafting goes, characters that specialize (get max skills, crafting feats, and skill specialization) they should be able to craft the good stuff. As opposed to the adventurer that casually crafts. Crafting characters should be able to make some potent stuff like maybe skill bonuses, additions to attack bonus and physical damage, damage immunity or reduction, and like a signature special ability or something like that, just a few ideas. Now when it comes to enchanting items spell casters should be the leaders in that. Wiz, Sorc, Druid, Bard, Cleric these classes should be able to add elemental damages, spell charges and the like. Let me point out, just because someone is a spell caster does not mean they are good at crafting. Being a high level in terms of Neverwinter does not mean you are good at crafting. Neverwinter in itself does not take into account specialization, that’s where role play comes into the mix. A combat level 14 wizard who has not spent time crafting should not be good at crafting just because she reads books a lot and can cast crazy spells. She may have a lot of knowledge in the subject but without practice she would be just as good as a beginner. She may have a slight advantage over a person who has never read about the subject and just learns from trial and error but this advantage would not be significant.

And for the final issue of “twinking” (giving low level characters powerful items), this can easily be fixed with an item level restriction. No, not turning on the item level restrictions that the game issues, but a DM monitored and enforced item level restriction. With level ranges for certain item enhancements example: +1 damage or attack bonus from levels 1-8, +2 from levels 9-13, +3 15-21 etc.

With that said I would like to get feedback from the community, DMs and players. I would consider myself a hardcore role player and I am assuming that most of you are as well. Though I find that casual role players make the majority of most servers. A lot of you probably won’t agree with me, maybe I’m wrong I don’t know but as someone who would like to see the merging of hardcore role players with casual role players I felt like I had to give my input on the matter.

Crafting respects specialization, those with more skills in the area get better results and are capable of adding more to an item. The crafting issues XP based on what is left of your crafting skill total after the dice roll is removed, this was PCs who are crafters can increase there level (with it the skills and feats that help them craft) with out having to resort to go and kill a lot of stuff just for the level. Its possible for them to level with just RP and Crafting awards. The more dedicated to crafting the PC is the more they get in return for crafting, so its possible to level this way thus acumulating more skill levels.

Those that specialize in the arcane have a far wider range of abilities they can add to an item (One of Zammi's PC crafters made Arrows of Combustion for example)

Weapon Masters get a wider selection and control over crafting of their chosen weapon.

Craft skills, class, race, deity (The deticated crafter would no doubt choose a deity who is most suitable for crafters), quality of materials, previous experiance crafting are all taken into account when the rolls are set as are limits adjusted accordingly.


The new merchants carry persistant stock, the crafting stamps from the crafter remain on the item and records are kept within the system, its possible for crafters to gain good reputation, in response the price of their work increases, thus they can sell for more. Also the crafting quality effects wear and tear, not so good crafted stuff dosn't last long, where as stuff crafted by a very good crafter may last indefinatly.

The POH system's latest things which are on my test list allow a player to hire a merchant for their POH residence, thus their own shop to sell their goods. But until the player base or the crafter is rich enough, probably best to sell to existing merchants since you don't have to pay their wages .

Giving Craft Skill/Experiance based points only in relation to crafting is doable, however it would hamper their increase of Level, which would hamper the arcane crafters considerably when they need to get fresh parts. Have always treated the NWN XP as being overall experiance rather than just H&S experiance. Since its awarded by DMs for RP at end of events, and stuff of this nature too. Since the OC only gave XP for killing it was probably more because of the difficaulty in awarding role play to a lone PC who can't talk to anyone but a bunch of NPCs who have nothing more than 'scripted' responces, no other PC or DM to interact with. PnP used the Experiance counter as overall character experiance, I always assumed NWN's XP counter was supose to emulate this as the best the program can.

I'm not really fond of the level restriction item thing, that would hinder my rogue/SD a lot since he currently has +7 daggers that he dual wields and they are his only way to even harm a lower level players since that player can shift into an adult dragon so you need a real high enhanced weapon to even hope to hurt him... and that's only one reason out of quite a few

+7 daggers? Holy cow. I guess nobody will confuse this with a low magic world.

+7 is more or less the maximum a player can enchant, I made such daggers, was only able to with a level 34 character, with a LOT of craftig skillpoints and talents with that.

i think the maximun in any place is +10, so this server except for a possible DM toolset item is probobly capped at +7, and even gettign +7 is rare, since you can't find it out in the game, only make it or get as a DM award

my daggers were rewarded in a event each with a good rp reason to it too

Back when I was a DM in pnp D&D games, game rules generally covered PCs out to level 20-ish, and the max items were +4 or +5. I extrapolated from that to establish that PCs generally are OK to handle items with ONE power per five levels of the PC. Hence your PC from lv 1-5 will find +1 gear, PCs of lv 6 to 10 will find gear with a +1 to hit and maybe one extra power, or a +2 overall enchantment. PCs of lv 11 thru 15 will find gear with a max of three powers or +3 max, PCs of level 40 might actually find gear that is +8 or so, and yes, some godly items can go as high as +10 here.

In that light, I still consider the server a low to mid magic server, but it is a subjective judgement to be sure.

Be well. Game on.
GM_ODA

Oh, no offense intended, I hope none was taken. If the server is balanced for players running around with a pair of +7 weapons then that is all that matters. My fault for being shocked, in all the time I have played online I think I have had a +6 once and was level 35. +5 is pretty common though.

Wow +7 items? Was your character at least level 40 when they received them? If +7 is available here then maybe I am in the wrong place. To be honest I have never even seen a +7 item ever in game unless I was building something and was fooling around with the items. Even on the high magic places that I had... looked over (never was really interested in high magic myself). But I am a dying breed. Oh and in response to Eriniel I think it was, I think you are misunderstanding the goal of my original post. I realize that the neverwinter experience system is really supposed to emulate over all experience. My issue with this is that it is too general. And gaining "levels" or "leveling up" in these terms usually means to increase in saving throws, attack bonus, ability scores, skill points, etc. My post was to suggest an attempt to move away from said "leveling up" method with a more specific experience system catered toward crafting and other types of professions. With the execution using tokens instead of spending alot of time scripting. Simplicity is easily duplicatable and easier to execute.

The crafting skills here is tied to college courses. So if you take courses and become licensed, that adds as well. Also just because you have high skills does not mean you will make an uber weapon as there are no "recipes"  Its trial and error and dice rolls.  

Cygnus wrote:+7 daggers? Holy cow. I guess nobody will confuse this with a low magic world.

It is all relative.

In my old D&D games way back when, characters topped out at level 20, and the D&D game included +5 weaponry as the top-end gear too. NWN supports higher levels, and so the progression of items here scales to accommodate.

We actually do have a system here where no ill happens so long as the PC carries only modest gear for their level, this means:

Not more than -

+1 per five levels of the PC, nor
1 special power per five levels of the PC.

Carrying gear more potent than allowed will triggers scripted responses over time - culminating in 'hunter NPCs' pursuing the PC in question (as in game rumors of the easy-gained loot begins to spread).

By default, low loot drops are mundane gear, medium loot drops go to +1, high loot drops go to +2, unique loot drops go to +4, all else must be crafted or DM placed or builder placed (as in specific boss has gear item specified). In the early days of the module these loot drops were more generous - giving us a chance to sort thru how items impacted game play spcifically on this server (while we do look to other servers' lore on what works we also have to acknowledge that we have some significant differences from other servers too).

We try to keep it IC as much as we can, DMs are and have been encouraged to maintain this sort of limit on magic items in game by similar IC means.

I have to agree with the staff here.

XP is XP ... , it's "earned knowledge" , it's developed skill, it's social interaction and growth, it's just simply a lot rolled into one convenient package.

My Barbarian, can go out and hack through hordes of monsters , never craft a thing , and get up there in levels fairly quickly... as long as you know where to look. ( she only knows a few places atm, lol )
But my other character, could eventually enchant, scribe, ect ... as a basic wizard, combat is not something she wants to just rush out and go do.

So why is it , in the suggested changes, my wizard shouldn't gain as much xp to increase her skills and levels, as my barbarian whom can take and dish out the hits in a fight?

I don't see a reason , to change anything ... , xp is xp, ... it's should be up to the player and DMs on how that xp is earned , not enforced by hard coded , unthinking/unbending embedded rules. < Those do not promote role-play ... xp is a tool that enhances role-play after-all.