A Land Far Away

Many NWN spells have graphical effects they simply do not have in core D&D rules. We need to decide wether such effects stay, or go. Off the top of my head, some such spells include, barkskin, stoneskin, protection/endure elements, protect from good/evil, freedom, spell resistance, see invisible, true-seeing, ultravision.

Please vote on weather or not these effects should be removed, and try to choose the strongest reason you feel the way you do.

1) Yes, remove them all.
2) No, they should all stay and be treated as being IC information.
3) No, they should all stay and be treated as being OOC information.
3) Only remove certain spells (please explain which ones bellow), and treat all remaining effects as IC.
4) Only remove certain spells (please explain which ones bellow), and treat all remaining effects as OOC.

Note this poll is NOT about removing the graphical effects of spells that should have them (shield, globe of invulnerability, elemental shield, ghostly visage, discplacement, shadow shield etc).

1

Get rid of them all. I don't buff half the time cause they're goofy. And they lag like hell.

I voted for option 1. Frankly I'm sick of my PC looking like a glowing, stone christmas tree (and as a mage, he depends on these buffs to survive). In a hardcore RP world such as ALFA, I think these effects are rather silly. Seeing as how many mage PCs dispell all their buffs to get rid of these annoying graphics relatively often (especially stoneskin and protection from elements), removing these effects may make things safer for those players, IMO.

But then I am in the habit of noticing when my effect bar shortens or flashes in combat, and I don't feel the immediate knowlege of exactly which buffs have been dispelled is very IC either.

Also, I find the brief moment of lag and the sound effects produced when a buffed PC walks onto the screen a bit annoying.

Option ONE

As long as we still can have the cool fireball, lightning and all the nice graphics with the offensive spells.

Nothing like shooting a fireball at a party of greenies all bunched up patting each other's behinds on a job well done when BOOM! God! Numbers everywhere! Anguished tells, screaming curses, and with that lovely fiery effect to soil the pants off any paladin!

Gotta keep that.


But the rest of the barkskin prot from evil Christmas tree light show .... gotta go ....

Get rid of them all except the ones that make sense (i.e. have a physical changing property like barkskin).

ayergo wrote:Get rid of them all except the ones that make sense (i.e. have a physical changing property like barkskin).

Does barkskin actually change the appearance of the skin/clothing of the person? I was under the impression they didn't actually do that.

Stoneskin should remain, but not barkskin. The rest of the buff vfxes should go.

1

Superfluous eye candy.

PHB doesn't specify that it changes appearance or not, but it is transmutation, and given the description i dont' think its unreasonable there is a change in appearance to go with the physical change.

ayergo wrote:PHB doesn't specify that it changes appearance or not, but it is transmutation, and given the description i dont' think its unreasonable there is a change in appearance to go with the physical change.

FR "novels" do not mention any such change with the spell. If it is treated as IC, the results would be significant (mostly in the ability to recognize people).

please get rid of everything including barkskin and stoneskin

I voted 4, to get rid of everything except barkskin and stoneskin, which is how it is in TLR already.

Looks like there might need to be some sort of a run-off election dealing with stoneskin and barkskin

Stoneskin, Barkskin, et al are certainly IC visual effects and should stay. True Sight, Ultravision etc are not, and should be removed.

Prot. Elements should likely be an IC que, but the effect is taxing on older vid cards and looks seriously silly anyhow. Nuke it.

I'm pretty sure there's an ERF on the DMFTP that already does this (I think Cres or Sanc did it).