People keep posting builds without it and also people seem much happier to live without it these days.. any idea why you'd wanna sacrifice your succulent 1 hit kills for some other meagre thing like.. uhh 2 Great Str or Improved KD?

Curiousity.. I'm now a firm believer that dev crit is evil because if you roll a natural 20 you can finish some builds easily enough.. this is basically "why have people started making builds that don't have dev crit when it's perfectly feasible to add em "

-DaMouse One of the reasons is that people post builds they use in PW's, and they have usually banned it. Another thing is, IMO that it takes most of the fun out of soloing. I have used the feat once, and releveled it away. It is so overpowered i got silly. Why would anyone want to play with that. It is like having Harm or finger of death, except that you do it a couple of times pr round, and everlasting...... And it never properly kills a player who is smart enough to avoid it's range, or build to survive it. On Athas Reborn it's your @$$ if you don't plan ahead for the occasional devcritter. There are tons of easy solutions for folks who dont want to die;
1: improve your AC and use improved invisibility
2: palemaster levels (crit immune)
3: shapeshift to construct/undead/elemental (crit immune)
4: disabling spells (dev's are often hella defensless)
5: melees take CoT levels for saves and take fort feats
7: use a ranged weapon/spell and use called shot leg
8: distract him with elemental or undead summons
Quote: Posted 08/15/05 16:47:48 (GMT) -- DaMouse404

People keep posting builds without it and also people seem much happier to live without it these days.. any idea why you'd wanna sacrifice your succulent 1 hit kills for some other meagre thing like.. uhh 2 Great Str or Improved KD?

Curiousity.. I'm now a firm believer that dev crit is evil because if you roll a natural 20 you can finish some builds easily enough.. this is basically "why have people started making builds that don't have dev crit when it's perfectly feasible to add em "

-DaMouse

Dev Crit builds have been done to death. Quite frankly, I agree with the previous poster who wondered why you'd bother. I used it on one character and felt it was too overpowered for my taste, so never pursued it again. I also find you can build a far more versatile character if you don't worry about getting Dev Crit in the build, and many PWs ban it anyway.

Any of the high STR builds I post without it can usually be changed at the player's whim to get it if they want, but I never build with it in mind anymore.
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It's rogue, dammit, ROGUE!!! Ending a fight with one stroke and taking zero damage sounds like a good fight to me. Sounds like this thread is more about personal taste than sounds tactical planning. I command you all to flame me.....NOW! But as Cinnabar said you can build much more verstitile builds if you're not putting those feats into getting Dev Crit. Personally I'm not too worried about it being overpowered. Not when you compare it to arcane casters with Maximised IGMS but it tends to dominate a build and most of the builds suited to it have been done already.
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Teaching men a lesson in combat etiquette. I recently switched to a PW that allows it and I have to say that I'm getting used to it, but its still a little overboard. Yet like you all said, so is harm, FoD, and maximized IGMS. So far as Im concerned, theres too many cheap and easy "I win" buttons in NWN, and pure casters have a significant leg up in this game anyway; dev crit just makes it more even for melees. That being said it does indeed dominate a build, and Id much rather that all abilities/spells that take the strategy out of fighting be banned. As for the high saves/AC argument, theres always a 5% chance to fail a save no matter how high ur fort is, and that goes fast against a dual-weilder. Exactly right, which is why the autofail on 1 should be turned off if Dev Crit is allowed.
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It's rogue, dammit, ROGUE!!! I've always thought of the nerf stick as an everything or nothing venture. Remove autofail and pallysorcs get devcrit immunity as well. Sounds like that tilts things even more in the caster direction to me. just remove dev crit altogether as a feat then.. and leave the auto fail on 1.. therefore you just wail wail wail wail wail WAIL WAIL WAIL WAIL WAIL WAIL *breath* WAIL WAIL WAIL WAIL WAIL WAIL *breath* FoD!

-DaMouse
Quote: Posted 09/12/05 21:52:33 (GMT) -- Deltutammatre

I've always thought of the nerf stick as an everything or nothing venture. Remove autofail and pallysorcs get devcrit immunity as well. Sounds like that tilts things even more in the caster direction to me.

How so? I can see the Pally SOR cheese having the great saves, but how does it make things even more in favor of the casters? With autofail turned off, you have a much better chance of surviving a lot of the mage spells (if you've built a character with decent saves). With autofail turned on, it doesn't matter how good your saves are, you're going to die to a spell that shouldn't affect you.
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It's rogue, dammit, ROGUE!!! Provided said mage is dumb enough to cast anything that can actually be saved against.
Quote: Posted 09/14/05 20:50:28 (GMT) -- Deltutammatre

Provided said mage is dumb enough to cast anything that can actually be saved against.

Well, that brings up a whole new barrel of cheese called maximized IGMS and Bigby spells.
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It's rogue, dammit, ROGUE!!! Nice thread. Just realized this forum existed. I fall on the side of making builds without them. Occasionally I'll make a character with it when I powergame with a group, but when I solo or duo, I throw Dev Crit in the trash.
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Ariel, Ookla, RIDE! it's banned everywhere i play these days, so there's no point considering it for my builds any more.

for PvM, it is an utterly ridiculous feat. It is not banned on my PW (nothing is) - and Auto-fail on a 1 is turned off (for the reasons that Cinn mentioned, and others).

Works well enough.

For some things, I find Dev Crit quite acceptable (like carving your way though m0bs, to get to the Boss at high levels, especially the ridiculous HP m0bs on some PWs...into the tens of thousands per critter - and you get m0bbed by around 8-10 of them at once! ) - and again, on other PWs, Dev Crit can be too overpowered.

I guess it depends on how the PW is built, right? It's just an overpowered skill in NWN and DnD in general. It's one of those skills that breaks the epic level system. Why should a fighter get the ability to kill a monster in one hit on a critical while a rogue only get a bit of extra damage to their sneak attack? It's just not balanced.