NWN 2 : No forced attack on NPC option?

[Ahzaruuk]

DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nick, Do us all a favor(and save yourself from being eaten alive) by avoiding posting here in the future. :

 

[Top Hat]

(and save yourself from being eaten alive)

Sorry, only the LARPers on the Elder Scrolls Forum would do that.

 

[RGE]

IMHO, it should yield the same amount of xp. Fighting is a skill, too. It should be up to the player to decide how he wants it done. The end result should be the only thing that counts. Talk to it, sneak by it, kill it... whatever. You resolved the situation by using your character's skills and are rewarded xp points that you will probably use to further the advancment of said skills, effectively making it seem like you advanced them through practice.

Fighting does yield XP though, and the more fighting skill you need, the more XP you should get, although it's of course difficult to balance since some fighters have an easier time vs some opponents. But clicking a non-skill dialogue option requires no skill on part of the character, only on the player (the find-the-best-option-skill). While I prefer result-based XP awards, if XP are awarded for specific actions, then I believe that more difficult actions should yield more XP. And an action which requires skill is more difficult than an action which doesn't require skill.

Why would the developers want to "trap" and punish the players that are trying to roleplay their character?

Because they hate me and laugh at me for playing their stupid game? Not that I am playing their stupid game, because stupid NWN campaigns (and some annoying NWN modules I played recently) have burned away my desire to play.

Another excuse I can think of would be if the non-skill option might not require skill in the dialogue, but is only availible because of previous actions which did require (an even higher) skill and wasn't rewarded with XP at the time of those actions (such as combat would surely have been).

You lost me. I don't see how it would apply to this case. You basicaly plow through the bandit camp and the "headquarters" killing everything on sight (and geting the xp for it) and finally meet their leader where one of the 3 scenarios I described develops.

I see. I was just speculating on possible excuses, because I haven't played the game. The whole thing reminds me of a bandit quest in Arcanum though, where you can either kill all the bandits in combat (they're not hostile until you attack them) or you can kill them with poison and receive a heap of evil alignment. Makes sense? I don't think so.

 

[Wulfgar]

....that still makes no sense when a thief who doesn't kill but spent time just pickpocketing for a year doesn't 'level up' in-game. If it's PnP I can understand some DM giving a little XP so players would take risk when using their skills (I'm not familiar with PnP) but what I argue is DND CRPG is just flawed. Fallout does reward successfully pickpocketing n first aid, so yes it's good.

PS:T breaks it by introducing huge reward thru dialogue. But that game focused on different things.

True, but this is DnD, not "Thief". Just pickpocketing for a year is hardly a classic DnD adventure. Howerer, I agree in a way that characters should be rewarded for the use of their class specific skills. In BG2 you would get experience for disarming traps.
I'd say the developers are what's flawed, not the system.

Fighting does yield XP though, and the more fighting skill you need, the more XP you should get, although it's of course difficult to balance since some fighters have an easier time vs some opponents. But clicking a non-skill dialogue option requires no skill on part of the character, only on the player (the find-the-best-option-skill). While I prefer result-based XP awards, if XP are awarded for specific actions, then I believe that more difficult actions should yield more XP. And an action which requires skill is more difficult than an action which doesn't require skill.

Well, in a way, that was what I was complaining about. The fact that you would get the most xp for choosing the option that doesn't use your character's skills or your skills as a player. I see what you're saying, only, in this situation, there was nothing to be gained in the sense of solving the quest in a better way by using your speech skills or killing the bandit leader. You talk to him, he promises to play nice and that's it. If the quest was set up differently and there was something further to be gained, then acomplishing that/those goal(s) by killing/talking along with the main one should net you more xp. But that's not the case here. Anyway, in this case, this this is how I would do it:

1. Talk to the bandit leader, work it out without using combat or speech skills = fixed xp.
(the obligatory noob-crybabie-bad-build way)
2. Talk to the bandit leader, work it out by talking + use your speech skill to extract an extra reward = fixed xp + 300 gold (which would be even cooler if this game's economy wasn't fucked up).
3. Talk to the bandit leader, choose the option to kill him = fixed xp + ph4t l3wt.

And it would at least make sense, which in its curent state - doesn't.

Of course, more options (like sneaking in the camp and poisoning the well :D) would be very welcome.

Because they hate me and laugh at me for playing their stupid game? Not that I am playing their stupid game, because stupid NWN campaigns (and some annoying NWN modules I played recently) have burned away my desire to play.

Which modules have you tried? I played through the Shadowlords/Dreamcatcher/Demon campaign, and overall, didn't think of it much. Have you tried the "Tortured Hearts"? I got it some time ago and still haven't tried it...

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Which modules have you tried? I played through the Shadowlords/Dreamcatcher/Demon campaign, and overall, didn't think of it much. Have you tried the "Tortured Hearts"? I got it some time ago and still haven't tried it...

That campaign sucked. There are far better ones out there.

 

[Wulfgar]

Pray tell, good admiral, which ones?

 

[sabishii]

I liked Lord of Blight.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Pray tell, good admiral, which ones?

Ooh... been a while, but I can recall a few.

Tales of a Mage and Perchance to Dream, not for the RP side, but the fucking awesome mage duels. Never used spell breach and the like in NWN? You will now.

Tales of Arterra 1 + 2. Good old fantasy fare, but done really well, good plot, decent RP, cracking quests. Lovely stuff.

Darkness over Daggerford is decent. Gets the BG2 feel down pretty well.

Elegia/Excrucio Eternum were wonderful, creepy, original modules. Well worth playing.

The Hex Coda is great, but the series is sadly discontinued.

Tales of Celts was wonderful. Make sure to read the documentation... all of it.

Never actually played Tortured Hearts, but someone here - Jasede? - described it as "Fallout lite". In a good way.

Saleron's Gambit is a great low-level series, though the ending of the last module was atrociously stupid.

A Dance with Rogues 1 is great, and sets the way for a brilliant sequel. Sadly, the sequel sucks horrible amounts of ass and made me vomit a longcat. Just play the first one.

Crimson Tides of Tethyr and Tyrants of the Moonsea are good fun.

Almraiven was an excellent low-level mage module. Very little combat, a lot of investigatoring, good plot.

Return to Ravenloft and Ravenloft: Beyond the Gate are well worth playing. RtR is fairly average, but Beyond the Gate is winsauce.

Penultima Rerolled might be worth your time, for the Wacky Humours and surreal atmosphere. Pretty hack-n-slash, though, but not quite as bad as the original Penultima.

Give most of thegeorge's stuff a try. Stormy Night, Angel Falls, Neuropolis. Hard to describe, but... fucking great.

Honour Among Thieves and Prophet 0/1 are both brilliant. HAT (r00fles) is one of the best rogue/city modules, if not THE best, and Prophet is Epic Adventure And Prophecy Done Right.

Exile of the West is a translation of some degenerate heathen language module that the degenerate heathens have been harping on about in their degenerate heathen tongue for years. Haven't played it, since it was made by degenerate heathens, but it might be good and gets great reviews.

An Ancient Heart 1 + 2. Good old epic adventuring again.

A Halo of Flies + Shadow From a Soul on Fire - These modules exist for one reason - to tell a story. And they do so better than almost any other module. Chris Huntoon knows how to set atmosphere and does so masterfully. Shadow in particular is very good.

Midwinter Festival, a Midsummer Knights' Dream and The Third One Whose Name I Forgot. Eh... might sound redundant, but again, really good. The first is the best.

Necromancer... er, good necromancy system.

There's more. Find them yourself, I can't remember them all.

 

[aboyd]

Tales of Arterra 1 + 2. Good old fantasy fare, but done really well, good plot, decent RP, cracking quests. Lovely stuff.

Darkness over Daggerford is decent. Gets the BG2 feel down pretty well.

I'll vouch for those, also. ToA was excellent in the sense that I loved the NPC companions, and I loved the writing, and I loved the planar travel, and the strange almost-PS:T feeling.

DoD is just as you suggest -- BG2. So if you like that kind of thing, it's very good. If you don't, well, now you know what to avoid. But I enjoyed it a lot. I never finished it, so I'll have to go back. Lots of quest goodness.

Surprisingly, the premium modules are very good. Some of them, anyway. Kingmaker has awesome NPCs. The wererat is hilarious. Pirates of the Sword Coast was great just for the change of pace -- very piratey, lots of crafting, enjoyable plot. Wyvern Crown of Cormyr is known for the horses (you can ride & joust). I used them mostly as extra summoned monsters to help in battle, and as pack mules. But regardless, there is actually a story to the module, and it's good. One bad thing about it is that you can't go back. For example, once you leave the initial wagon-attack area, you're not revisiting the area. So doing the quests there is paramount. One good thing about it is that quests do open & close, based upon who you are. I read an interview (or maybe it was just a series of posts, I don't recall) with the lead on the project, and one question was something like "why can't I solve quest X?" And the guy said, "sorry, your class/alignment means the answers will never be available to your character. Deal." I liked that, although they could probably handle it in a less crazy-making fashion. I spent hours & hours talking to everyone and retracing all my steps before I realized a quest was unsolvable.

Anyway, I got probably over 100 hours of gaming out of the modules I mentioned, and it was all fairly satisfying.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

I never played any of the premium modules. I had no idea what they were going to be like, I might have been paying for a shorter version of the NWN campaign. They might be good, but... I'll take my chances with the free mods, thanks.

 

[Wulfgar]

Darkness over Daggerford is decent. Gets the BG2 feel down pretty well.

DoD is just as you suggest -- BG2. So if you like that kind of thing, it's very good. If you don't, well, now you know what to avoid. But I enjoyed it a lot. I never finished it, so I'll have to go back. Lots of quest goodness.

I loved BG2, so I think I'll finally give DoD a try. Got it a few months ago, and seeing how I'm pretty dissapointed with NWN2 so far it might be a good time to try it out. Only, if it turns out to be at least half-way decent I'm gonna be a sad panda they botched it at 45-55% of completion.
Thanks, everyone. I'll see about trying out ToA and a few others also.

 

[RGE]

Return to Ravenloft and Ravenloft: Beyond the Gate are well worth playing. RtR is fairly average, but Beyond the Gate is winsauce.

RtR was the last one I played, and while we weren't going to play more modules because the one player who took the initiative was going to start playing NWN2, we all agreed that we didn't feel like playing the next module since that one wasn't much fun.

We also played through The Wanderer and Island Adventures, and neither of those lived up to our expectations, so we chose to not play the second modules in those series. Could be that one of the others expected premium module quality, while I expected the thick atmosphere of Small Village Woes and Valthar Keep (I obviously never gave that guy enough credit at the time ). When I'm stuck having to dress my character in default NWN armours, I get irritated, both at BioWare for having shit for art direction and at the modulemaker for not doing something about it. Sure, it's just a visual thing, but I have to watch my character all the time.

I suppose that single player modules may have better atmosphere, but I was stuck with multiplayer since I was going to play them with two friends. I remember playing through Shadowlords with NeverwinterConnections-people, and it felt like NWN1 OC lite or something like that. Competent, but not fun or memorable. Also played through An Ancient Heart 1 with a group, and that wasn't so bad I guess. Except for all the dying due to overpowered enemies which had to be killed with traps.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Return to Ravenloft and Ravenloft: Beyond the Gate are well worth playing. RtR is fairly average, but Beyond the Gate is winsauce.

RtR was the last one I played, and while we weren't going to play more modules because the one player who took the initiative was going to start playing NWN2, we all agreed that we didn't feel like playing the next module since that one wasn't much fun.

I considered not playing BtG. I'm glad I did. I don't tend to trust the Top Rated modules list at the vault, but the fact that BtG is in the top ten and RtR isn't even in the top 100... well, it makes sense.

 

[Stalin]

It won't even allow you to create a nasty name for your character during char creation and that makes me feel real free. I had to settle for Liquid Fart because the other options got censored: I am talking about the OC Sp not MP

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

I always took a hum'rus deity name.