NWN Neverwinter Nights (NWN & NWN2) Modules Thread

[Lacrymas]

Monk/Ranger/Weapon Master (Kama) sounds scary. Haven't tried such a build, however. Ranger mostly for the free dual-wield feats, as WM builds are usually feat-starved as it is.

 

[Nerevar]

Someone convinced me to try ADWR and I really wish I hadn't, really not my cup of tea. I guess I'll try to finish up SF:2 instead.

 

[cowking]

I've been meaning to try swordflight 2 but even the thought of replaying part 1 makes me cri inside. What level do I need for part 2? How much gold should I have? What level of gear in terms of enchantment etc... I've forgotten all about part 1 except that it sucks ass. I'll probably play a wizard, are there any specific spells that are intentionally unavailable in part 1 that I should not have and so on?

 

[rogueknight333]

Not sure why you would want to play Ch. 2 if you disliked Ch. 1 so much (many players do seem to think Ch. 2 is better but I doubt it is that different an experience), but an appropriate character to start Ch. 2 would be at Level 5, have no better than +1 bonuses on gear, have a decent supply of healing and buffing potions and other consumable items appropriate to class (e.g. wands and spell scrolls for a Wizard), with both potions and wands, etc. being of the cheaper and less powerful types, a fair number of the less powerful weight reduction bags and 5-10k gold on hand. No spells are unavailable, though a couple of them will be slightly modified in terms of how they work (such changes will be indicated in the readme), the main one being the Gate spell, which you will not need to worry about until reaching a level where you can cast 9th level spells.

 

[Lilura]

Perhaps the Buried Ruins crushed his spirit, and perhaps he didn't mean to say Chapter One "sucks", but that HE sucks at crawling dungeons at low level that feature limited resources and rest restrictions? Which would be a lil' more understandable, because it can be quite a shock to new players.

But yeah, in Chapter Two you've got a few levels under your belt and a few items at your disposal that you might not have consumed, but the design principles carry through, and, while most Codexers would enjoy Chapter Two more due to the open, explorative nature of Calimport and its outskirts - reminiscent of Chapter Two/Three of BG2 - it's not like it doesn't have it's fair share of dungeons to get lost and killed in, as well.

And I think all three chapters, taken alone, stand as examples of monocled design; so much so, that if you don't like Swordflight I'd say that you don't like traditional D&D campaigns, and are probably a popamoler who should look elsewhere.

 

[Inf0mercial]

Low level combat is kind of trash when it comes to RNG but there are ways to mitigate it, abuse of summons and bows/crossbows are one, i will admit those Specters are a pain on certain builds early on but abusive use of missile wand and running away fixes that with low hp of low level combat.

Summon scrolls are cheap enough and last 24 hours that unless your being super retarded i don't think you can really get stuck.

Maybe the Lizard guy or the mummies at the end but both of those can be done with proper pulling and summons with some bows.

Mages kind of get Fucked in the first chapter but i managed to finish it with a necromancer spec though so idk maybe people just don't like reloading and re doing encounters if they fail three times, i know it took me i would say about 4-5 deaths to take out the optional end boss guy, i enjoy that though, getting the right combo and seeing how to finish a fight with minimal resources expended, but i know that's not for everyone.

 

[hell bovine]

I've been meaning to try swordflight 2 but even the thought of replaying part 1 makes me cri inside. What level do I need for part 2? How much gold should I have? What level of gear in terms of enchantment etc... I've forgotten all about part 1 except that it sucks ass. I'll probably play a wizard, are there any specific spells that are intentionally unavailable in part 1 that I should not have and so on?

Level requirements should be in the mod description, idk about money, but the spell shop was well equipped, from what I remember. The wizard side quest was one of the more interesting ones (rogue was also good).

 

[TheEntitledOne]

Perhaps the Buried Ruins crushed his spirit, and perhaps he didn't mean to say Chapter One "sucks", but that HE sucks at crawling dungeons at low level that feature limited resources and rest restrictions? Which would be a lil' more understandable, because it can be quite a shock to new players.

Babysitting level 1 bard with NWN's AI is the worst part of the mod.

 

[hell bovine]

Yeah, the dungeon crawling in Swordflight is fine despite having to take care of a plot device NPC, who isn't even a particularly interesting or likeable character.

 

[Lacrymas]

Since you get a bajillion resurrects for Zarala it doesn't matter that you have to babysit her. Treat her as a buff-bot and that's it, if she dies resurrect her, big deal.

 

[Lilura]

Oh yeah, that mummy encounter was no walk in the park. And then Ramurg, who was thankfully optional. I still haven't got around to beating him, but a few people apparently have.

I want to see someone do a speedrun of Swordflight. Maybe Balkoth would be up to it..

 

[Nerevar]

Just finished up SF:2 (using the same character I beat SF1 with) that was amazing, it really reminded me of playing BG2 had a similar feel during the game. What an ending I want to see how part three plays out looking forward to kicking quite a few peoples asses that escaped maybe there will be a way to stop them from teleporting away this time. Hardest fight for me hands down was the goblin sub-boss Gorav I wasn't ready for that scimitar of his.

This is my dude at the end of part 2, I really want to fix him up a bit it for the next chapter.

 

[rogueknight333]

...because it can be quite a shock to new players.

Ch. 1 was indeed quite a shock to NWN players when initially released. At least to the few who dared to even play at the time after an initial response of multiple pages of comments going on and on about how hard it was.

Low level combat is kind of trash when it comes to RNG but there are ways to mitigate it, abuse of summons and bows/crossbows are one...

Exactly, I was saying stuff very similar to this in response to those pages of complaints. It is true that D&D rules are hard on low level chars, and especially low level mages, but resources enabling them to succeed are there if you look for them.

Just finished up SF:2 (using the same character I beat SF1 with) that was amazing, it really reminded me of playing BG2 had a similar feel during the game. What an ending I want to see how part three plays out looking forward to kicking quite a few peoples asses that escaped maybe there will be a way to stop them from teleporting away this time. Hardest fight for me hands down was the goblin sub-boss Gorav I wasn't ready for that scimitar of his.

This is my dude at the end of part 2, I really want to fix him up a bit it for the next chapter...

Gorav can indeed be really tough if you are not ready for him (and he was even tougher in the initial release, I toned him down a bit in v.1.02). The two Hobgoblin bosses are a bit of a subtle joke on my part, in that I tried to give them capabilities and tactics similar to what Player Characters often have, including even a technique for coming back from the dead, so that players accustomed to sweeping trashmob goblins aside with ease in other games and modules would instead end up feeling a bit like those trashmob goblins presumably do when they have to go up against adventurers. Putting the shoe on the other foot as it were.

Is there anything in particular about your character you think needs fixing? I cannot see what feats or skills you have, but from the information visible, the chief issue that appears is that with only one early level of Bard you could not have done much in the way of Tumble skill dumps and thus might have a lower than optimal AC. Personally, I would also have been inclined not to min/max quite so much and put a few more points into INT and CHA for more skills and the ability to cast a few Bard spells (since one would normally take mulitple levels of Bard anyway for the aforementioned Tumble skill dumps), and also taken Bard at 1st level for more skill points, but that may be more personal preference than something unambiguously better. If you are trying to make a character who is basically just a Fighter, but with RDD ability increases, what you are doing could work well enough. Some power builders might have put off the last two (or more) RDD levels for epic levels so it would penalize BAB less, but that would mean going for a much longer time without those Ability increases, so that also would not be unambiguously better. Some power builders tend to think a little too much in terms of Lvl 40 builds, I suspect, and forget about what one needs to do to survive until reaching 40.

As an aside, it is something of an oddity of NWN/D&D rules that THE skill a melee warrior would want to take, Tumble, is not a class skill of Fighters and other warrior classes, and that two of the Prestige classes that best complement a Fighter or similar warrior-type, RDD and Palemaster, require a rather irrelevant dip into a spell-casting class, a situation that heavily encourages weird, cheesy builds.

 

[Lacrymas]

As an aside, it is something of an oddity of NWN/D&D rules that THE skill a melee warrior would want to take, Tumble, is not a class skill of Fighters and other warrior classes, and that two of the Prestige classes that best complement a Fighter or similar warrior-type, RDD and Palemaster, require a rather irrelevant dip into a spell-casting class, a situation that heavily encourages weird, cheesy builds.

I suspect this was done for balance reasons. Not to mention that prestige classes don't have an inherent obligation to be convenient for everyone to pick up. This was "remedied" somewhat by NWN2's ability to pick 4 classes, instead of 3, which made some builds incredibly overpowered compared to others and to those in NWN1. F.e. Cleric/Bard/RDD/Stormlord; or Cleric/Frenzied Berserker/Stormlord/Fighter; or Monk/Rogue/Fighter/Shadowdancer; or even magekillers like Wizard/Arcane Scholar/Divine Champion/Shadowdancer.

Tumble is also not given to heavy armor classes much for the same balance reasons since it stacks with armor AC, it's a DEX-based skill AFAIR, so only lithe, dexterous classes have access to it for flavor reasons as well. I may be completely wrong, but I think I'm not that far off from the truth.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I tried to give them capabilities and tactics similar to what Player Characters often have.

I always liked this idea and wonder why more game developers and mod authors don't use it. In theory, it seems like it would make for a great, challenging experience for any game genre with AI. There was a fan mission for Thief called Equilibrium that pitted you against a single adversary that had the exact same deadly stealth abilities you had.

 

[Haplo]

As an aside, it is something of an oddity of NWN/D&D rules that THE skill a melee warrior would want to take, Tumble, is not a class skill of Fighters and other warrior classes, and that two of the Prestige classes that best complement a Fighter or similar warrior-type, RDD and Palemaster, require a rather irrelevant dip into a spell-casting class, a situation that heavily encourages weird, cheesy builds.

Tumble is also not given to heavy armor classes much for the same balance reasons since it stacks with armor AC, it's a DEX-based skill AFAIR, so only lithe, dexterous classes have access to it for flavor reasons as well. I may be completely wrong, but I think I'm not that far off from the truth.

Indeed. It is poor coding that the AC bonus from Tumble is not reduced by the Armor Check Penalty (relying on base ranks prevents over-buffing of the bonus... but also negates heavy armor/shield impact). Note that actual Tumble skill checks suffer from ACP.
Including Armor Check penalty in the AC bonus would make it far less attractive to plate wielders, particularly pre-epic, and promote it further as a DEX-based skill, which it clearly was intended to be.

 

[Lilura]

This is my dude at the end of part 2, I really want to fix him up a bit it for the next chapter.

For comparison, here is my malefactor:

I took EWP to open up special abilities on EWs; in retrospect in was a waste. This char isn't perfect but it was heaps of fun to play thanks to UMD and campaign itemization.

 

[rogueknight333]

I suspect this was done for balance reasons. Not to mention that prestige classes don't have an inherent obligation to be convenient for everyone to pick up. This was "remedied" somewhat by NWN2's ability to pick 4 classes, instead of 3, which made some builds incredibly overpowered compared to others and to those in NWN1. F.e. Cleric/Bard/RDD/Stormlord; or Cleric/Frenzied Berserker/Stormlord/Fighter; or Monk/Rogue/Fighter/Shadowdancer; or even magekillers like Wizard/Arcane Scholar/Divine Champion/Shadowdancer.

Tumble is also not given to heavy armor classes much for the same balance reasons since it stacks with armor AC, it's a DEX-based skill AFAIR, so only lithe, dexterous classes have access to it for flavor reasons as well. I may be completely wrong, but I think I'm not that far off from the truth.

If balancing was the goal, forcing warrior classes to take irrelevant caster levels to qualify for their best prestige classes, while providing dedicated casters ready access to prestige classes they would be well-advised to avoid, apart from certain specialized builds (e.g., mages whose strategy is to cast Elemental Shield & Acid Sheath on themselves, and get mobs to kill themselves attacking them, and thus want Palemaster's crit immunity to reduce the damage they take in the process) was a confusing and convoluted way to do it. Though whether intentional or not, that may indeed have been the end result, as your NWN2 examples suggest. As for Tumble, I expect you are correct that it was intended to be an alternative armor system for classes without access to heavy armor (and that flavor/lore reasons played a role - in the previous case too for that matter) but it is not clear how well that actually works out given that Dexterity AC bonuses serve the same purpose, and at high levels these alone will exceed the benefits from heavy armor. Thus dexterous rogue builds often end up being better tanks than the classes theoretically designed to tank, and Tumble only aggravates that tendency, or at least would if it worked as presumably intended and was not often taken by Warrior classes anyway due to cheesy multi-classing.

I always liked this idea and wonder why more game developers and mod authors don't use it. In theory, it seems like it would make for a great, challenging experience for any game genre with AI. There was a fan mission for Thief called Equilibrium that pitted you against a single adversary that had the exact same deadly stealth abilities you had.

I can think of at least several reasons why it is not often done, and perhaps should not be done as a routine matter:

1) In a typical RPG combat encounter, Player Characters are outnumbered, sometimes heavily, which could be problematic for them if the mobs were equally powerful.

2) Abilities that are useful for players might be used by an AI in ways that are stupid or weird.

3) Giving mobs defensive capabilities, in particular, equivalent to those of PCs, and in general making them as hard to kill as players try to make their own characters, would tend to make combats long and tedious. On the other hand, making mobs weak on defense and strong on offense, relative to PCs of an equivalent level, can keep combat challenging without causing it to take forever to resolve. Unleashing mobs with super-strong defenses occasionally, as a special challenge, could work, but it would make for long and grueling games if encounters of that type were the norm.

 

[Sabotin]

Originally in dnd you can't save skill points at levelup (there's half ranks for cross class skills), but I guess that would be too complicated to mirror in a computer game. Nwn2 tried to remedy this by only allowing 5 points saved at lvlup. Furthermore, skills that provide a constant bonus to stats are much more lucrative than those that depend on the whims of a module maker.

I think a lot of shortcomings of the system can be remedied by customizing the challenges a player encounters, but that's again a lot of extra work that might not even come into play in the end. For example being flat-footed denies dex/dodge/tumble ac (ok, not dex if you have uncanny dodge as most dex builds do) or various poisons can exploit a low fort save. Although it gets more and more difficult to rely on anything but attack/dmg/ac/hp as the levels go up and the immunities pile up on everyone.

The class requirements are imo a pretty good thing. If you want something you must sacrifice something else. I mean in theory you could make a bard/rdd/wm but in the end it would probably end not as good as something simpler. I'm not sure what's up with the mage prcs for them to be so melee oriented. Maybe it would be harder to program something that modifies spells or were gish builds so popular? The prcs are probably so loaded because they make casters lose their main abilities (spellcasting) in favor of secondary ones (melee). If wm granted some spell progression for whatever reason I don't think warriors would focus on that when taking it.

 

[Lacrymas]

If balancing was the goal, forcing warrior classes to take irrelevant caster levels to qualify for their best prestige classes, while providing dedicated casters ready access to prestige classes they would be well-advised to avoid

It's not so much forcing warrior classes to take irrelevant caster levels, but more limiting their third class. I suspect this is how NWN is so surprisingly well balanced. Casters also don't really have dedicated caster PrCs, neither Pale Master (apart from very specific cases) nor RDD are a complement to either Wizard or Sorcerer, Arcane Scholar and Red Wizard are a NWN2 thing. That's why 39 Sorc/1 Pal is considered to be the best Sorcerer build.

 

[Haplo]

Or Druid 39/Monk 1

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I can think of at least several reasons why it is not often done, and perhaps should not be done as a routine matter:

1) In a typical RPG combat encounter, Player Characters are outnumbered, sometimes heavily, which could be problematic for them if the mobs were equally powerful.

Yeah, best reserved for boss encounters or mano a mano, like in the Thief Equilibrium fan mission I mentioned about.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Some power builders tend to think a little too much in terms of Lvl 40 builds, I suspect, and forget about what one needs to do to survive until reaching 40.

Very true. I played two different characters lately that differed greatly in that regard. After you've mentioned Arcane Archer as being good, I've read about a build somehwere Monk 9/Wiz 1/ AA X that apparently can reach very high AB as well as AC.
Fair enough. After playing it I can vouch that this character sucks donkey balls. Everything before lvl 14/15 is pure AIDS. I had honestly no idea how hard even standard campaigns like SOU can be with such a gimped char. I started with 17DEX yet could hardly hit the enemies and when I finally did land a hit: 2 damage!!! That's what I call a successful full attack men. Thanks, you 1d8 longbow, you, it's a real bliss using you at low levels. Another constant annoyance was the need to re-activate Rapid Shot, since every click on the ground would disable it and because I'm playing this game zoomed out+ point and click...
This character started to become good once I had the first few AA levels under the belt and was really quick killing things in HotU from lvl 20~ or so onwards but if you encounter stuff with significant damage reduction like Mithral golems, or golems in general, you're fucked.
Verdict: AA = suckitude for a long time and when it's finally ok-ish it still sucks against hard enemies.

Then I made Rogue/Fighter/Weaponmaster. At level 20 this character was Rogue 4/WM 7/Fighter 9 and had all WM feat prereqs, weapon spec, blind fight, power attack, Cleve and Great Cleve, knockdown. 20 Tumble, 20 UMD. Rogue skills. At level 21 taking epic weapon focus and epic weapon spec. At 23 (fighter 12) Great STR and Overwhelming critical. From then on only Rogue levels for more sneak dice. I used a GREAT SWORD starting with STR 17. Never during the time until lvl 28 when I finished Hotu felt this character weak. And he only became stronger with each level up. Once getting a golden circlet so the shit will saves didn't matter anymore I stopped buffing. Never was neccessary, never had to rest. Nothing would survive a full attack unless immune to criticals and even then it would take 2 combat rounds instead of 1. Mithral golem kill-time= 2 rounds. Large amounts of damages even to all crit immunes because big ass sword. 150 dmg Cleve/Great Cleve criticals obliterating 5-6 ppl at once. The Lulz were real. A great char that was great at every point in time.

 

[Lilura]

150 dmg Cleve/Great Cleve criticals obliterating 5-6 ppl at once.

It's about 350 dmg on crit with Tebimar Scythe upgraded by Rizolvir to +10/acid, so you end up Great Cleaving epic mobs like they're diseased gibberlings. From start to stop a plain old Fighter/WM is extremely powerful in HotU. Half-orc with 20 starting STR gets Dev/Over crit at 21st. And yeah, DR is bane of AA. Took 50 arrows and 4 mins to drop HotU demi-lich with fully enchanted bow...

 

[Lacrymas]

Why would you use Monk for an Arcane Archer? Fighter or Rogue seems better, even Ranger for that undead favored enemy. Zen Archery hardly seems enough to get Monk on top.