Slayer's Hellfire mod - Based on Marsh's Hellfire 1.02 mod

[Hammerskjold]

Well the reason why I increased the bard's attack speed was just to make it so that she could actually stunlock things in melee combat. From all the testing I did, it just didn't seem right for her to not be fully capable as a melee combat character. Same reason for the block speed thing.

IIRC the increased speed for stunlock applies mostly vs advocate type monsters. If the char meets the dmg requirement and to hit etc, stunlock is do-able for everything else.

Now I'm not saying kings speed haste weapons etc are not nice. I'm just saying what I found to be the minimum. VS advocates types, dmg for stun and speed, since iirc their AC was 0, %to hit is not a real concern. VS most other monsters it's %to hit and dmg, speed is usually not a minimum requirement. Obviously with low AC char builds vs fast monsters that sorta goes out the window.

Blocking speed for bard iirc was not changed in vanilla HF, it's identical to the Rogue natural blocking speed. Same with her casting, and melee attack speed. Only reason I mentioned this, is if you wanted your mod to keep most of the basics of HF intact.

I'm asking how it plays out in your testing because it seems a potential balancing issue. Bards requiring a +speed block shield to match a Warrior\Barb block speed is IMO, a fair trade off as well.

There is a glitch iirc in HF:F, that allowed Bard with a mace type weapon in main hand, to attack as fast as a Warrior's speed\haste (providing the mace is a speed\haste as well etc).

However at least in my own play\testing, it wasn't as overpowering as I would've thought. Because again iirc, the dmg was less than sword using bards, and you needed to reach a relatively higher clvl to really see the benefit. Even then a dual sword bard usually still have a higher dmg range.

So it wasn't that big of an upset IMO. I do think that might change if it was applied to both mace and swords, without the dmg restraint.

I've played low ac bards, high ac, dual wield, sword\shield, shield\mace, mostly melee, mostly magic, melee&magic builds etc. Really fun character class.

She's also IMO, very easy to trip into overpowered mode.

Anyhow, good luck on the modding. If I had any coding skills the first thing I want to do, is to bump up the Warrior's melee speed into speed\haste. A rogue's natural attack speed is sufficient to stunlock advocates if she has enough dmg. A sorcerer casting speed is built in turbo all day every day. Monks kick, ditto. Warriors...has fast block built in. I always thought this was a bit of a shaft.

HF brought in sweep dmg for melee, which is great. Except in only applies to Bards dual swords, Barbs 2handers, and Monks staves. Warriors..got bupkus.

But that might only be my complaint and bias. Again, good luck with your modding sir.