In NWN you can also fail your lockpick attempts, but instead of a half second animation of pushing your hand forward and twisting the pick, it takes SIX seconds for every attempt.
Of course it takes six fucking seconds, Open Lock is
"a full-round action", and RTwP gives you a real time rendition of that round. It doesn't work the same way as it does in Baldur's Gate because, while in that game multiplayer was just an extra feature, in NWN it was one of the core pillars for design and players being able to open containers with a click and then scurry away would be a departure from the ruleset economy.
The reason that Open Lock and Disable Device formed a painful memory for some people isn't even the fact that they take a real time round to execute, but the shoddy level design of the OC which left a poor first impression. Room after room lined with multiple chests, all locked and trapped, taking at least twelve seconds to open up and loot some generic, RNG-spawned crap. But the expansions and PMs that followed didn't have this problem, they placed more meaningful loot in fewer containers, mindful of the challenge and process of getting at it.
What you lot keep obstinately ignoring is what NWN was meant to be, not just a singleplayer cRPG but also "internet D&D on your computer", meaning online multiplayer and DM support, both in said multiplayer and in the form of module-building. It's a complete package to that end, influencing significant aspects of its design. Even RTwP plays a role in this - while it's less tactical and ruleset-accurate than TB and undoubtedly a big part of the choice was BioWare's recent experience with it, it does also present major advantages in online play with potentially distinct parties or just the practical reality of co-op with randos you picked up in a multiplayer lobby. The only legitimate capital criticism of BioWare's overall design is the lack of direct henchmen control, a decision that was also informed by co-op focus, but the
wrong one, and Beamdog haven't gone far enough to remedy it either.
But most everything else has good reason to be the way it is, the downsides being legitimate tradeoffs rather than failures, and at the end of the day, you're bitching that a Porsche 911 is a terrible motorcycle.
Maybe if someone made a proper full party control mod for NWN, Swordflight could be fun to play.
Multiple points here, even though I might be wasting my time:
1) There is such a mod offering a scripted solution that lets you direct henchmen via point-and-click,
Balkoth's Minion Control, and a further iteration on it,
Companion Control System by ShadowM. You can't switch your currently-controlled character, but you can direct either one or all of your companions to move somewhere, attack something or someone, deal with a specific trap, pick up an item, unlock or open a door or activate an object. The latter comes in the form of a demo module you can try for yourself, but here's a video:
These are
not overrides, however, they're supplied as builder's resources and have to be integrated into a module. Balkoth mentioned maybe making an override version, but he never did. It could be hit or miss depending on what script sets a given module's henchmen use and there is reasonable argument that some of the more advanced features could break modules that weren't designed for 'em, such as if you have a henchman activate a lever that's scripted to do a thing on the assumption that only a PC will ever activate it.
2) Swordflight already
has Balkoth's Minion Control integrated (since Chapter 2 if I recall?) in the form of the Bugle of Command, but RK decided to make it consume your action via item activation for balance purposes. Personally, I disagree with the rationale on this one, I think ordering your henchman to "kill that thing" should be a free action, just like the default "attack nearest" is, but it's his module to balance.
3) Aside from these scripted mods, Beamdog's developed an engine-level solution in the EE. It doesn't do any of the fancy stuff, just move here and attack that, but it works on everything from the OC to Swordflight and should be safe on any properly-scripted module. The downside is that it's not fully UI integrated, gotta use key modifiers (and should issue a Stand Your Ground before you send your henchmen somewhere, or they'll come back) and you have to enable it manually in the config file:
- open
settings.tml in
/Documents/Neverwinter Nights/ and set
player-party-control=true
- in-game hold
CTRL and click a henchman or portrait or drag marquee to select
- hold
SHIFT and click where you want them to move or what to attack
