Time in ALFA

[Stormseeker]

Is it possible to have a spell "pause button" ? Set it up so as long as the player is not moving or doing anything physical, then the spell's timer does not "tick".

[FoamBats4All]

Is it possible to have a spell "pause button" ? Set it up so as long as the player is not moving or doing anything physical, then the spell's timer does not "tick".

Unfortunately, no. At least, not without digging heavily into the guts of the server/client and doing some really janky modifications that no one likely wants to spend time doing.

[wvincenti]

Personally I'm more concerned with increasing the spell durations than the length of the day, though I won't cry about both being done.
In PnP, time is exceedingly flexible in that a single turn can take half an hour of real time and a DM won't have your spells expire just because you're discussing something with him.

In NWN/ALFA, time is of the essence and it's rare for a DM to hit the Pause button during a session because it will discomfit Players elsewhere on the server. Lengthening the spell durations would give us some leeway to get ourselves together before diving into a situation.

-Bill

[t-ice]

Longer spell durations (maybe about twice) would probably be better, but no biggie. The problem with time is that a DM cannot use it for storytelling right now. In fact time glaringly flies in the face of storytelling often, and you just have to cringe and pretend that starting a leisurely trek out from city A at 03:50 is just business as usual.

What I really want as a DM is to be able to say "it is now dawn/day/dusk/night", and have the server show as such. Vampire lords are one marginal thing, but there's hundreds of thing that goe on that don't make any sense happening at the times they do when we play. About every single time a group goes on an adventure, unless there's some pressing reason to do it right this instant (like vampire lords attacking), should be at dawn.

We have a DM tool to change the time server-wide, but apparently that has its drawbacks and you're not supposed to liberally use that (I'm not clear on the rules). What I'm looking for is to leave the actual server clock running in the background, but force areas to show "always dawn/day/dusk/night" when I'm there DMing my group. The group lives on plot time anyway (besides, even without DM, travel between areas generally force comic book time in any case). Something like the DM being able to leave behind markers per area, and remove these markers when the DM who left them has been logged off for 15mins. There is that "always show as time X" option in area properties, right? But can we set that dynamically?

[kid]

What does change it for spells mean?

Having 1hour last 1 RL hour would not be prudent nor anything close to real DnD session.
We do not play 24h game here.

We play a few hours each day.

Casting a spell going to sleep in RL then waking up tommorow and having the spell still on while you character had enough time to explore about half the server with just that single spell on does not make sense.

If there's anything that needs to be done is shorten the 10/min spells to something rational.
like 5mins or something. (not gonna 1/6 game hour becuase that would be too silly.)
and maybe make 1/hour spells slightly longer. (like 10min/level or something)

That so each spell would at least serve in the way it was intended.
The more powerful the buff/efffect the shorter it should be.
Having the stronger 10min buffs last forever is kinda meh.

Enjoy.

[rorax]

This thread feels like the "time tunnel" itself.

[wvincenti]

Kid,
The time durations were not as short as they are now in NWN1/ALFA. Admin got it into their heads that we were trying to recreate PnP when at best D&D played through NWN/NWN2 is some sort of hybrid confection, especially when it comes to time issues. I'd love to see us go back to the old durations.

Would some of that be accomplished by changing the clock from 7 minutes / game hour? Yes. (I wouldn't suggest a 1:1 time scale though.)

Would I rather see it be accomplished by changing the spell durations? Yes.

-Bill

What does change it for spells mean?

Having 1hour last 1 RL hour would not be prudent nor anything close to real DnD session.
We do not play 24h game here.

We play a few hours each day.

Casting a spell going to sleep in RL then waking up tommorow and having the spell still on while you character had enough time to explore about half the server with just that single spell on does not make sense.

If there's anything that needs to be done is shorten the 10/min spells to something rational.
like 5mins or something. (not gonna 1/6 game hour becuase that would be too silly.)
and maybe make 1/hour spells slightly longer. (like 10min/level or something)

That so each spell would at least serve in the way it was intended.
The more powerful the buff/efffect the shorter it should be.
Having the stronger 10min buffs last forever is kinda meh.

Enjoy.

[Swift]

Few things I hated more in ALFA 1 than seeing wizards walking around lit up like Christmas trees because their spells lasted all day but that was equally due to the spell effects as well as the time scale we used.

[Ithildur]

Personal preferences, hatred, whatever aside, ALFA1's timescale wasn't that much slower than ALFA2 iirc (might've been almost exactly the same actually); the biggest difference between alfa1/nwn1 and alfa2/nwn2 is the spell durations of many spells such as the animal buffs being changed from hour/lvl to minute/lvl, which is a 3.0e to 3.5e thing and has nothing to do with alfa's ruleset.

So that folks are clear, the current plan according to TA is that most spells will be changed to match canon 3.5e durations in ALFA. This means that many spells which are currently hour/lvl or 24 hours will be nerfed to shorter durations (Protection from Alignment, Protection from Energy, Death Ward, Stoneskin are some of the ones off the top of my head). There aren't that many spells that are canonically hour/lvl in 3.5e; the handful of spells that are, are meant to last a long time; i.e. a midlevel caster should be able to cast such a spell and forget about it for a good majority of the 'adventuring day', that's how these spells work, that's why they last so long and why there aren't that many of them.

Not that complicated.

[Brokenbone]

I'd forgotten Protection from Alignment is only supposed to be minute/level, boy that'd change some tactics. Got to go all the way up to Magic Circle vs. Alignment to get the hourly.

I am sure I've heard before the idea of "let's shorten the hourlies where appropriate", but then a lot of people saying "yeah, by shortening you mean lengthening right?" As taking say, Stoneskin from minimum 7 IG hours (49 minutes) would go to RL 70 minutes if considered as a 10 minute x CL spell, not hourly x CL. Anyhow it'll settle out however it settles out.

There is probably a major "good old days our buffs lasted forever" hangover feeling from our NWN1 game though, but that's a 3.0 vs. 3.5 thing as noted. Not "ALFA dicked around with the clock."

[Adanu]

I'm all for changing spell durations to match pnp.

[t-ice]

Few things I hated more in ALFA 1 than seeing wizards walking around lit up like Christmas trees because their spells lasted all day but that was equally due to the spell effects as well as the time scale we used.

You can override the visuals on your client.
http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=nw ... tail&id=12
For me it's far second in annoyance to every adventurer sitting around taverns and walking city streets always decked in their huge arse armors and weapons. Wizard having their spells on is just the same.
Like has nobody seen the AT note that say "It's very strange to go about your daily business in full armor"?

And I guess I'll just continue using the "set server time" tool from dmfi then...

[Darkmystic]

Then again, it has always been strange for a person to focus their lives on travelling doing nothing but killing, sending post cards and causing trouble/solving trouble.

[Swift]

Then again, it has always been strange for a person to focus their lives on travelling doing nothing but killing, sending post cards and causing trouble/solving trouble.

^^^

Not a very long lasting career in most cases.

[kid]

I am sure I've heard before the idea of "let's shorten the hourlies where appropriate", but then a lot of people saying "yeah, by shortening you mean lengthening right?" As taking say, Stoneskin from minimum 7 IG hours (49 minutes) would go to RL 70 minutes if considered as a 10 minute x CL spell, not hourly x CL. Anyhow it'll settle out however it settles ."

...

Then lets at least make hourly spells last 7 mins and visa versa. Otherwise shortening in order to actually lengthen spells kinda feels like cheating.

Matching to pnp is not all that's important. There are major differences. You don't have DM on at all times, time is different, no cost, etc.

Claiming to go closer to pnp but doing so in such a away... Bah, why am I wasting my breath? Do whatever you want folks.