Weirdness re Divine Power

[Lord FlashHeart]

After the discussion with Mish on the benefits (or lack of them) that divine power gives I ran a few tests. Now I was of the opinion that divine power gave you no more attacks if you had a BAB of 16 by level 20 and that it would only raise AB by 4 with said BAB (this is what it should do according to the description.)

Now I created Mish's build and did a test on the novice to epic character creator module and attacked a generated lev 40 fighter and lo and behold div power worked exactly the way it should (+4ab and no extra attacks).

But then I thought i'd test div power out using my new cleric on the server in the training rooms (on the combat dummys) and I found that div power worked the way Mish said it would (2 extra attacks and +14ab).

Thinking this was a bit weird I then trawled through the patch fix descriptions to find where I read that div power had been fixed, I found it in the description for 1.65 (on bioware site nwn.bioware.com/support/patchdetails164.html ):

# Fixed the way the BAB increase was being calculated for the spell Divine Power (nw_s0_divpower.nss).

I also noticed that many of the patches claim to have fixed problems that I still know exist on the server - such as circle kick attempting to attack characters out of reach and whirlwind attack sticking in combat mode.

So I was wondering why patch fixes seem to work in the single player game but not on the server? Is this because mods built before these patches were released cannot incorporate the changes? If so why do we have to have the latest patch in order to play?

I have this nagging feeling I'm missing something obvious and will have to go sit in a corner with a dunce cap on my head.....

Yours Confusedly,

Lind.

[hiryuu]

nw_s0_divpower.nss was overridden for the improved STR bonuses, so it was probably never updated with the patch version. I'm not sure about the other two.

[FunkySwerve]

Actually the only Bioware updates since I made the spell edits were 1.65 and 1.66, and I explicitly adopted all the changes to spellscripts. Divine Power must've already been edited when the 1.64 patch came out (those are the 1.64, not 1.65 notes). Fixing it this update. Please alert me to any other issues of this kind that you may have noticed.
Thanks,
Funky

[Ironfang]

Does this mean Crimson is going to take a hit after the next update? Will I be losing an extra attack?

[FunkySwerve]

All that trouble from a switched '<':

   if ( nTotalCharacterLevel < 20 )
   {
       nAttackIncrease = 20 + nEpicPortionOfBAB;
       if( nBAB - nEpicPortionOfBAB < 11 )
       {
           nExtraAttacks = 2;
       }
       else if( nBAB - nEpicPortionOfBAB > 10 && nBAB - nEpicPortionOfBAB < 16)
       {
           nExtraAttacks = 1;
       }
   }
   else
   {
       nAttackIncrease = nTotalCharacterLevel;
       nExtraAttacks = ( ( nTotalCharacterLevel - 1 ) / 5 ) - ( ( nBAB - 1 ) / 5 );
   }


nEpicPortionOfBAB = 10 for a 40. A pure 40 was getting +15 ab and 3 attacks per round added.

Funky

[Bakchuda]

To clarify for those who don't know what all of those variable names mean, can anybody summarize what divine power did before, and what it will do now?

[FunkySwerve]

I accidetnally left this line off the end:

nAttackIncrease -= nBAB;


Basically, if your pre-epic BAB (base attack bonus) was below 16 you get an extra attack, if it was below 11 you get 2 extra attacks (it brings you up to the max standard #of base attacks of 4). Pure 40 clerics are at 15 pre-epic BAB, so they get 1 extra attack.

The attack bonus for a pure 40 caster would be calculated as follows:

nAttackIncrease = 20 + nEpicPortionOfBAB;
That equals 30, all characters get 10 ab from epic levels regardless of class.
nAttackIncrease -= nBAB;
Thats 30, from above, minus the pure 40's bab of 25 (15 pre-epic, 10 epic), for a total ab bonus of 5 for a pure 40 cleric.
In non-scriptese, it gives you the ab of a fighter of your level, bringing youre pre-epic BAB up to 20.

So, instead of +15 ab and 3 attacks it'll be +5 and 1. Note that the diffrence in ab bonusd is really negligible, since its subject to a +20 bonus cap including all scripted bonuses and weapon bonus. Pure 40s were probably only netting 5, or less, bonus from this spell already.

HTH,
Funky

[Lord FlashHeart]

funkyswerve said:

(those are the 1.64, not 1.65 notes).

Oh yeah duh!

Oh well guess I've now put an end to all those over powered battle clerics muwahahahahahahahahaha!.

[Balduvard]

Funky could always put it back in as the LL-upgraded version

[Phantanya]

explain this "extra attack" thingy. I see my monk has 6 attacks per ...but the highest 2 are usually the only 2 to ever actually connect so will my cleric losing an attack a around really meant anything? Just wondering if I am understanding this correctly. I mean asside from looking really cool on the stat sheet what use are all the extra attacks if only one or two of them ever hit the target? Mayhap I am confused on this issue.
Peace,
Phantanya

[mishimayukio]

wonderful, my favorite character is getting nerfed, i guess thats the last time i post a build on the forums.

[Ironfang]

phantanya said:

I mean asside from looking really cool on the stat sheet what use are all the extra attacks if only one or two of them ever hit the target? Mayhap I am confused on this issue.

I beleive with Divine Power the extra attacks are at your highest Base Attack, so yes this was signaficant. I was happy ol' Crimson seemed to be able to hold his own fighting in the Epic areas, will have to see how I fare now, may have to pull out that Dachy staff after all.

[FunkySwerve]

balduvard said:

Funky could always put it back in as the LL-upgraded version

Heheh you are beginning to think like me.

mishimayukio said:

wonderful, my favorite character is getting nerfed, i guess thats the last time i post a build on the forums.

Lol calm down Mish. LL changes will be putting most of the oomph back into the spell at high levels, since I am not a fan of making useful spells useless. From the fixed version, expect an added attack bump at 45 and 55 casterlevels, is my best guess at this time. I'll be returning to that spell after I finish the first round of LL changes, both for that and to check on duration/extend spells issues raised a week or so ago. Of course, it it was reported instead of having a build made around it, you wouldn't have risked all the wasted effort...but then again, someone may have mentioned this one previously.

Funky

[Lord FlashHeart]

I think we may need to think about the harper scout secret a bit tho - this also gives 2 extra attacks and it would not be fair to beat this with what is essentially just a level 4 cleric spell.

[mishimayukio]

funkyswerve said:

Of course, it it was reported instead of having a build made around it, you wouldn't have risked all the wasted effort...but then again, someone may have mentioned this one previously.

I actually didn't notice the extra attacks until fairly recently, long after Yumika hit level 50. So I didnt make the build around it, but now that I know about it, I do consider it her best feature.