Well, that was one of the rudest posts I've seen on here. I'm not going to waste much more time here, but I AM going to respond to a few things so that other readers are not mislead. Ralkain, you have a bad habit of talking yourself into intractable positions and then refusing to admit that you're wrong. Which is ironic really, since despite what you seem to think, given your claim that I create straw men to strike down in order to win 'arguments' against you, I was posting to contribute what information I had on the topic, not to win an argument. Granted, part of that involved pointing out one of your previous mistaken assessments, but that was merely an attempt to educate. And if you think my 'educating' you sounds condescending, well, I'm sorry, but from some of the stuff you posted - specifically, UD being useless, and losing 32 dodge ac - you need it. Hell, you didn't even know how UD worked until this thread.
Besides educating, which was, of course, what you ASKED me to do in your first post on this thread, I am also trying to learn. Because I'm busy building much of the time, I no longer have the time to test all the things that I once did. I'd been kicking this once back and forth with archmage over the last few months as we played, and I shared with you what I had observed. Instead of taking it in, and acting on my advice to experiment some more, as hiryuu did, you assumed that I had no idea what you were talking about - "Flanking is no big deal, unless you know some nwn bug/change that somehow improves it. FF is a big deal and what we're talking about" - and spread some more disinformation. I'm going to try to clear the water you've managed to muddy, but don't expect me to respond to any more requests for information - I can do without the abuse. With that unpleasantness aside, I'll move on to pointing out the errors, briefly.
Thankfully hiryuu already pointed out one major flaw in ralkains '20 dex doesn't matter in the big picture' analysis.
Though if he'd have done the analysis himself, he would have seen that he was wrong, the -5/attack was included.
No, it so obviously wasn't included in your analysis that it didn't seem like it needed explaining. Your EXAMPLE did include it, but your overall ANALYSIS, in which you conclude that UD is not worth picking one class over another for, clearly did not. The logical flaw in your argument was taking from one example, 'monster needs 19 to hit', the general principle that losing 20 points ac is so bad that losing another 20 matters little - the same 'magnitude', as you put it. Monsters do not always need 19 to hit. What if it needs 10? What if it has your ac covered by 30? Hiryuu's drow pickpocketing scenario was a clear-cut example of this, but apparently not clear enough. Of course he also said it flat out: "You also assume the attacker's AB is on par with you, which isn't always the case." Given this oversight, it's rediculous to assert that your analysis included the 5 per attack drop either. Without accounting for variations in the ab to ac ratio, and looking at various 'number needed to hit' scenarios, you fail to provide any other baseline numbers from which an additional 5 could be subtracted after each additional attack. And you totally neglected to consider scenarios with more than 5 attacks per round, as did hiryuu, though I can't really fault either of you for that oversight. Losing 20 vs 40 ac matters a LOT in a LOT of situations. Situations which I've found myself in, time and again, on this server. Duh.
There is something worse than a false accusation - a vague one. Why? Because they are much more difficult to refute, and therefore potentially far more deceptive. Just who is supposed to be accusing whom here? And of what? I was correcting hiryuu's mistake here, and no one was accusing anyone of anything. I would've though that was clear from my quoting him. It's not always all about you.
Again, here I was responding to someone else, hfb, and not you.
You know, that first sentence almost rises to the level of a Bushism, congrats. Again with the vague accusations. HOW did I mislead about your meaning? You certainly stated that 'Str didn't turn out to be the uber stat they feared Dex seems to have turned out much better'. I merely suggested that you should reevaluate that conclusion, after you learned that UD didn't protect dodge. And you certainly seem to have, since in this thread you recharacterized your position: "dex seems to be as good if not better".
And what position might that be? I've looked at it and haven't a clue what you're talking about. Frankly, I tire of your vague and groundless accusations that I am misconstruing, warping, or otherwise attempting to decieve, and I take great offense to them. As I said at the outset of this post, I am posting here in an attempt to educate, and to learn. Deception serves neither of those purposes, morality aside.
Whuhuh? You're actually going to help puzzle this one out? SWEET! No doubt you'll provide one or more helpful examples in an attempt to advance the debate.
Ehhh. Ok, bald assertion, unsupported. I'm sure you'll support it with an example, though.
You WERE going to give a concrete example to back all this up right?
Ok, still waiting....
STILL waiting for that example. Or am I supposed to believe it just cause you typed it? You sure as hell didn't extend me that courtesy.
Guess what? I don't give a rat's ass what you care about when playing these characters. What I DO want to know is whether you SHOULD care about being flanked. And after all the the above, you still haven't touched on that. All you've done is offer up some flat denials.
Holy crap, you're actually addressing the substance of the debate! That's a correct restatement of my theory. A level 10 DD's DR is a fart in the wind to ssithrak damage. And no, I don't think +2 really accounts for it. Nor would I expect YOU to, given your evaluation of UD's utility.
Fortunately, I don't have to trust you. This is as patently obvious as the wrongness of your UD analysis. Then again, I've at no point disputed this. This wouln't be an "attempt at giving me a position I don't hold", now would it? LMAO. In point of fact, it is THIS that leads me to conclude that flanking results in flatfootedness, or some other fairly severe penalty. Because he WAS going down fast, and I wasn't.
Ooooo-kay, back to flat denials and bald assertions. They're getting pretty tiresome as well. I'm gonna stop pointing them out, though this was by no means the last, not even close.
The fact that you are singling out dodge bonus here, just because YOU thought that UD did protect it until recently, ought to tip you off that you're heading down the wrong path. By your misguided theory, it should be useless in any mod with a lot of ANY ac bonuses. Dodge holds no pride of place here.
You mean like accusing someone of "false accusations", or of thinking that you "thought PnP rules hold sway in NWN", when in fact they were responding to other posters? You really had to work to misconstrue that second one, too, I was clearly talking to someone other than you: "Rather than assuming that 'its like it is in PnP', test it out, as I suggested to ralkain in my last response." And of course in that response I suggested that you test it, not that you thought PnP held sway. And you're right, it is bad form. It's even WORSE form when you have the unmitigated gall to give this advice when you are the one doing it.
Oh now my ideas are silly. Not an ice cube's chance in hell they're actually based in HUNDREDS upon HUNDREDS of playing hours. Certainly not. I actually come up with this stuff in a deliberate attempt to throw you off the trail. Tee hee. We'll, if you want to ignore me, that's certainly your prerogative. Though it makes you look like an idiot, from where I'm standing, since you did ask me for the information in the first place.
It was, I don't, and I didn't.
I've already explained the flaw in your UD argument.
I never said that flanking was worse than FF, in fact some of what I said directly contradicts that. What I did say, that you rephrased to suit you: "I suspect the real reason your getting pummeled is not flat-footing but flanking." To be fair, I also said "but getting flanked is the killer", though I can't find that at the moment - I was in part referring there to the fact that no one EXPECTS it to be a big deal - I certainly didn't - and in part to the fact than when you're flanked, by definition you are facing at least two foes - and often many more. Of course, I also wrote this: "flanking seems to cause flatfootedness. It is a distinct phenomenon, and has other attributes, like allowing sneaks, but the engine apparently also treats the target as flatfooted." I view them as pretty much the same, from my experience. The sneak vulnerability is a nonissue in my book, at least from a PvM standpoint - if you don't have sneak immune, you have other issues.
I also already addressed the PnP rules nonsense - I was responding to hfb, not you. And amusingly enough, the desire to go pound my head against a wall was not, until your latest post, derived in any greater part from your posts than the others. Again, it's not always all about you. Though I must admit I can see WHY you thought I might be talking about you, given your obdurate insistance on the system having a rule that I'm sure just HAPPENS to match 3.0 PnP exactly, when those rules are mentioned exactly zero times in the NWN books - not even in the section describing the DD ability.
In closing then, I'm still not sure about what flanking does, but I can offer another anecdote. My bard, in the ssithraks. Ac is only 2 lower than the DD/Ranger/HS. When she has EV up she's fine, as soon as it's dispelled she's in real trouble, if facing more than one foe. Not flatfooted, at least not in the conventional sense, since she's attacking, but in real trouble nonetheless. Flanking is again the only explanation I can think of. But a difference of 2 in attacker ab doesn't seem to account for it, not at all. She DOES have fewer hitpoints, so that's something, but again I think not the whole story. Hiryuu, I'm curious to hear what you discover.
{Edit} Oh yes, she has UD, btw.
Funky