Nope. Never played D&D tabletop or any other rpg based strictly on D&D rules like Baldur's Gate or TOEE. Anyway I will try to go with some of the most popular builds on that site that Fenris linked. (thanks)
VoD's Guide to NWN2 (MotB in particular) combat for noobs:
=============
Casters might be powerful but they require knowledge of the spells to play well. If you're new to DnD combat you should perhaps just stick to a warrior character. Playing a warrior character only requires knowledge of the basics. MotB is a game where having access to more skills and more skillpoints per level might come in handy, so something simple like Rogue 2/Barbarian X probably plays quite well. The rogue class will unlock lots of useful class skills (use magic device, tumble, the social skills like persuade and bluff and so on) and you can take the able learner feat to keep increasing these skills as cross-class skills for the normal cost. Barbarians get more skill points than most other warrior type classes so if you start as a human with 12 INT you will have enough skillpoints to succeed at the dialogue checks in MotB. Get the amulett of the master and/or Finch's Finest Hat in Mulsantir for a significant dialogue skill boost.
Without further ado, the basics, which apply to pretty much any character. In DnD combat you have to worry about defense and offense. Your defense consists of several different stats, namely, armor class (AC), saving throws and spell resistance (SR).
Spell resistance
Having spell resistance is great, because more often than not your character will just resist a hostile spell or spell-like effect and take no damage whatsoever. The best way to gain this is by playing a race that has innate SR like the drow, yuanti or deep gnome. Those races have 10 or 11 + character level SR which for the purposes of MotB means hardly any enemy spell caster will harm you with spells that allow for SR unless they have spell penetration feats or significantly outlevel you or seriously luck out on their roll trying to beat your SR.
The monk class gets SR eventually at lvl 13 (SR=10+monk level). Another way to gain SR is using the divine spell called Spell Resistance, which divine casters like clerics, druids, spirit shamans etc. can cast. That one has a fairly long duration. Finally, there are plenty of items that grant varying amounts of SR but most have too low an amount on them to be really useful.
Saving Throws
You can see on your character sheet that you have will, reflex and fortitude saving throws. Those values are used to help you defend against all kinds of hostile effects, sometimes avoiding them completely, sometimes taking reduced damage or effect. Your saves continue to improve naturally while leveling up. It is in your best interest to have saving throws as high as possible. There are plenty of ways to increase one's saves, mostly with equipment and buffing spells, increasing stats like Wisdom (will), Constitution (fortitude) and Dexterity (reflex) is another way to improve your respective STs.
I'll list some the most important and common items and spells to be used for this purpose:
- Cloak of Resistance and/or Cloak of Fortification
- Ring of Resistance
- Protection from Evil (arcane and divine spell)
- Greater Resistance/Superior Resistance (arcane and divine spells)
- Prayer (divine)
- Heroism, Greater Heroism (arcane spells)
Armor Class
Probably the most important and most easily neglected by nabs. Your Armor class (AC) is your defense against all kinds of weapon attacks, if your opponent cannot beat your AC value with his to-hit roll you'll avoid being hit entirely. Hardly getting hit at all greatly reduces the damage you'll take - I know, that sounds crazy - so you'll be well adviced to make that AC number as big as possible.
Your armor class is represented by a single value but actually consist of different, cumulated types of AC. I'll list the different types of AC and how to get them with items and/or spells:
- DEX AC, AC gained by Dexterity, for every 2 points of Dexterity above 10 you will gain 1 AC, so for instance when you have 14 Dex you have a Dex modifier of 2, hence you get +2 AC. Note that armors usually limit the amount of Dex AC they allow to benefit from, e.g. a full plate armor allows for only 1 Dex AC, whereas an mithral chainshirt allows for 6 Dex AC. Naturally items or spells that increase Dex will increase your AC as well unless you're wearing an amor that forbids more Dex bonus AC.
- just the straight armor value of a given armor, full plate gives 8, a breast plate gives 5, leather armor gives 2 and so on
- armor enhancement bonus, this is the "magical" armor enhancement indicated by the plus part in armor descriptions, e.g. leather armor
+5 (<- here it is). This bonus to AC can be acquired from different sources but does not stack, i.e. only the biggest one applies. The sources are: 1) the enchantment on the armor itself as in the case of that leather armor +5 which already comes with +5 armor enhancement bonus, 2) bracers of armor and 3) the spells mage armor/greater mage armor (arcane) and magic vestment (divine)
- Deflection AC, again this can come from different sources but does not stack (only the biggest value applies) , typically you would get this from rings of protection, cloaks of protection, cloaks of fortification but in MotB in particular a lot of other items might have deflection AC on them like Efrem's stag helmet for instance which you might have gotten from Kaelyn's brother in Mulsantir. There's a cleric spell Shield of Faith which also gives deflection AC up to +5.
- Shield AC, this type of AC can be produced by the spells Shield (arcane) and magic vestment (divine, when cast on a shield) and of course by wearing a shield, e.g. a heavy shield +2 gives 4 shield AC (2 from the heavy shield, +2 from the enchantment)
- Natural AC, the natural AC bonus some creatures get stacks with the AC gained from items/spells but the AC gained from items/spells don't stack with each other, e.g. bark skin won't stack with an amulett of natural armor. Ways to get this type of AC: from amuletts (like the mentioned amulett of natural armor) and spells like bark skin (druid), tortoise shell(druid), spider skin (arcane), shadow shield (arcane)
- and last but not least dodge AC. Unlike most other forms of AC dodge AC stacks. there are some feats that increase this type of AC like the aptly named Dodge feat or the Luck of Heroes feat. You'll also gain +1 dodge AC for each 10 ranks in the Tumble skill. Typically items you will want that grant this type of AC are boots of hardiness, boots of the sun soul, gargoyle boots. Bards have songs/inspirations that grant a boost to dodge AC. The wizard spell haste gives +1 dodge AC (Safiya can cast persistent haste as a lvl9 spell, holds all day).
Now, for the sake of completion, some classes get additional bonus AC, e.g. monks can add their wisdom modifier on AC as long as they're not wearing armor, swashbucklers and certain prestige classes can likewise add their INT modifier on AC.
Additionally their are certain feats like Divine Shield which can temporarily increase your AC further.
Applying this valuable knowledge, here's an example how a typical ~lvl 20 character starting into MotB might be equipped:
10 - base AC (everybody starts with that)
15 - AC from a mithral breastplate +5 while having 20 Dex (mithral breastplate allows for 5 dex bonus, the breastplate itself has an armor of 5 and is enchanted with +5)
7 - heavy shield +5
5 - amulett of natural armor +5 or being buffed with the bark skin spell from Gann
5 - wearing a Cloak of Fortification +5
7 - boots of hardiness +3 + 20 tumble ranks + haste + Luck of Heroes
=== Final AC: 49
It's easy to improve upon that for there are better armors in MotB or you could enchant that armor further, there are better shields to be found, even just having Gann buff you with tortoise shell would be an immedtiate +4 gain in natural AC (use Freedom of Movement first to avoid the slowing effect of tortoise shell). However, an AC around 50 sounds like a good start.
Again, just for the sake of completion there are addditional ways to avoid getting hit, namely concealment (by spells like concealment, improved invisibility) and mirror image (illusion spell). You can also gain permanent true seeing and 50% concealment by maxing out your spirit hunger.
Stay tuned for the next episode of VoD explains DnD for nubs in which we'll talk about offense or "Do you even BAB, bro?"
*BAB= base attack bonus
tho.
