Please help me understand something about Neverwinter Nights

[Volourn]

You can also use scripts to have enemies 'autobuff' as well using triggers. I believe BIO has certain enemies use this (much like BG series has mages that insta buff ) but NWN doesn't make it so it looks like an obvious cheat. In the OC, this is limited to certain boss characters not just 'normal' human mages. Nor does it explain this stoneksin spamming he speaks about. Maybe he other mods replaces the basic NWN AI.

In my mod, I have my share of mages who are 'pre buffed' before the PC gets there but I don't cheat as I only have them cast memorized spells

"My real gripe is that the stats and attributes for Disarm, Called Shot and Knockdown on monsters do not always come optimized. The only place were Disarm worked in the game for ME (or rather against me) was the Formian queen in SoU."

Knockdown should always work unless monster description outrights says they are immune. ie. Dragons.

Called shot should always work as well. Barring discipline. Monsters will only combat feats that give them a - to hit if they can still hit or ac. ie. If the monster has an attack of +10 and your ac is 25 meaning they normally need a 15 to hit they ain't using their feats since tehy'd never be liekly to hit you.

Called shot works but I think for the OC, BIO basically made all enemy weapons 'undroppable' making them immune to disarm which is LAME. Obviously, they feared the even more ph@t lewt people would get. Any decent mod (ie. mine) allows these feats to be used 99%. Basically anything using non naturalw eapons can be disarmed. As it should be.

 

[Lilura]

By the way, started Shadows of Undrentide and played through the intro + town area. It's hard to believe this was made by BioWare after suffering through the original campaign. Writing that's actually fairly good and entertaining? Skill checks that matter? Varied quests with non-combat options? Even if it's not great by some standards it's refreshing to play something not horrible again.

Probably less awful because it was co-deved with Floodgate.
Protip - Xanos is more useful as a barb, just make sure you toggle spellcasting in the menu, though, or he'll sometimes start casting cantrips... as a barb.

 

[Captain Shrek]

You can also use scripts to have enemies 'autobuff' as well using triggers. I believe BIO has certain enemies use this (much like BG series has mages that insta buff ) but NWN doesn't make it so it looks like an obvious cheat. In the OC, this is limited to certain boss characters not just 'normal' human mages. Nor does it explain this stoneksin spamming he speaks about. Maybe he other mods replaces the basic NWN AI.

In my mod, I have my share of mages who are 'pre buffed' before the PC gets there but I don't cheat as I only have them cast memorized spells

"My real gripe is that the stats and attributes for Disarm, Called Shot and Knockdown on monsters do not always come optimized. The only place were Disarm worked in the game for ME (or rather against me) was the Formian queen in SoU."

Knockdown should always work unless monster description outrights says they are immune. ie. Dragons.

Called shot should always work as well. Barring discipline. Monsters will only combat feats that give them a - to hit if they can still hit or ac. ie. If the monster has an attack of +10 and your ac is 25 meaning they normally need a 15 to hit they ain't using their feats since tehy'd never be liekly to hit you.

Called shot works but I think for the OC, BIO basically made all enemy weapons 'undroppable' making them immune to disarm which is LAME. Obviously, they feared the even more ph@t lewt people would get. Any decent mod (ie. mine) allows these feats to be used 99%. Basically anything using non naturalw eapons can be disarmed. As it should be.

My Princess! <3

 

[Volourn]

"Probably less awful because it was co-deved with Floodgate."

ERROR!

FG was suppsoed to do it themselves but it was so shit that BIo shitcanned thier asses and redit with 1 dev per chapter in about a month's time. The only FG legacy is certain scripts, placeables, and other small stuff. The actual campaign is BIO. Funnily enough, it's the worst of the NWN campaigns.

 

[Lilura]

ERROR!

FG was suppsoed to do it themselves but it was so shit that BIo shitcanned thier asses and redit with 1 dev per chapter in about a month's time. The only FG legacy is certain scripts, placeables, and other small stuff. The actual campaign is BIO.

Not really, they had a significant impact on the game. Hence, co-deved. Just a few things said by Rick Ernst in an interview:

focus on the strengths of CRPGs as we see them.
choices and character development.
effort into accommodating all different alignments
play as completely evil villain
integrate the henchmen more closely into the story.
added more tactical commands to the henchman repertoire

This stuff can be seen immediately in the first place you're at, Hilltop, and some of them are the reasons I prefer it over the OC and Hordes (Hordes has these things but isn't as intimately done).

Funnily enough, it's the worst of the NWN campaigns.

Meh, I think its the least worst, NWN1 is snoozefesty and Hordes is too epic.

 

[sea]

Quickened spell is not instantaneous spellcasting, which is what sea described (akin to what is possible in nwn2 via ActionCastSpellAtObject function).

EDIT: http://www.nwnlexicon.com/index.php/ActionCastSpellAtObject
Woops, turns out there is Instant flag for this function in nwn1, too, but it wasn't added until later expansions, thus unless there's some kind of AI override, then it shouldn't be utilized in OC.

I wonder if this is it. I am playing with the 1.70 community patch. On further reading however, this patch was apparently done by 1 person, and unknown to me before downloading, changes the way some rules operate as well as AI scripts for monsters. Some people do not like this particular brand of "house rules" D&D and were even upset by the guy including their work without their permission and/or making it sound like they endorsed the entire mod because he included one of their fixes. I'm gonna reinstall the game now that I've learned that.

It might also be buggy animations and multiple casts per round, it's true. What I am describing is basically: whittle down stoneskin to 0 points -> next attack says "200 points remaining" or whatever, sometimes in the same round. As this happened with specific mage bosses (you'll forgive me if I don't remember their names), I suspect cheating AI, but it could just be that they are very good at queuing up spells so they renew their stoneskin at the exact time the old one is lost.

Speaking of, are there any mods/fixpacks that are actually worth using, i.e. fix actual bugs in rules and campaign?

 

[Infinitron]

Speaking of, are there any mods/fixpacks that are actually worth using, i.e. fix actual bugs in rules and campaign?

Yes. You must install this: http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Hakpaks.Detail&id=7935 (use Mediafire link at bottom of description)

As suggested, you may want to remove the GUI mod.

 

[sea]

Oh man, that Baldur's Gate GUI is almost uglier than the original. Almost. Thanks for the link.

 

[Roguey]

"NWN must have the award to the dullest boss fight ever, in the form of the intelect devourer."

No.

That was the fight that made me give up on it. 158 hp with 5/+3 DR, 15/- electrical resistance, immunity to fire damage, can cast invisibility up to six times, can likewise cast confusion and stun bolt six times each which are ranged touched attacks with no SR or Save. They deliberately wanted it to be a long grind so I decided I wasn't going to let them waste any more of my time.

 

[Volourn]

"That was the fight that made me give up on it. 158 hp with 5/+3 DR, 15/- electrical resistance, immunity to fire damage, can cast invisibility up to six times, can likewise cast confusion and stun bolt six times each which are ranged touched attacks with no SR or Save. They deliberately wanted it to be a long grind so I decided I wasn't going to let them waste any more of my time."

All you did was list the stats of the basic iNWN intellect devourer found in the strategy guide. There was no long grind.n Why make stuff up? Perhaps you just suck. My god, people are actually crying that an enemy can be a challenge. Pathetic.


"Not really, they had a significant impact on the game. Hence, co-deved. Just a few things said by Rick Ernst in an interview:"

He's full of shit. The SOu campaign was redone by BIO. FG's effct on it is minimal. They were shitcanned for a reason - they sucked the big one. Stop beinga fukkin' delusional fanboy.

 

[Infinitron]

He's full of shit. The SOu campaign was redone by BIO. FG's effct on it is minimal. They were shitcanned for a reason.

Source?

 

[Roguey]

"All you did was list the stats of the basic iNWN intellect devourer found in the strategy guide. There was no long grind.n Why make stuff up? Perhaps you just suck. My god, people are actually crying that an enemy can be a challenge. Pathetic."

Those aren't the stats for a basic intellect devourer. They have 39 hp and 20/+3 DR (yeah good luck with that at level 5). They also don't have confusion or stun bolts but do get dominate person (which can be countered by SR or Will). And that's not even accurate compared to IDs by the rules, which use psi-like abilities instead of spells.

It's also not a challenge. Drink potions and hit it until it's dead, how difficult is that? It just takes too long because of a) high hp with dr b) it likes to go invisible and c) it likes to stun and confuse you so you just have to stand there and do nothing for a few rounds while it hits you for a measly 1-3 damage per hit.

 

[sea]

Master Jumper. Ox stampede. Alignment shifts for in-game gameplay actions instead of simple dialogue choices. Entertaining and well-written dialogue. Babies dying.

BioWare couldn't have made this, it's too good.

 

[Infinitron]

Finally I have an ally in my struggle to prove that the NWN expansions are overlooked gems. Write a review when you're done with it, please?

 

[Murk]

huh? It's been pretty commonly expressed that the two expansions were far superior to the original game and worth playing.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

Overlooked gems? no. OK RPGs when you have nothing else to play? More or less.

 

[Volourn]

"a) high hp with dr"

It has a DR of fukkin' 5. FIVE. That's not hard. So what if goes invisible. FFS Once it attacks it becomes visible. Or just cast see invisible. The stun doesn't work that often. 8shrug* Stop being a crybaby that enemies have abilities that can be sued to make you work to win. FFS


"Master Jumper. Ox stampede. Alignment shifts for in-game gameplay actions instead of simple dialogue choices. Entertaining and well-written dialogue. Babies dying.

BioWare couldn't have made this, it's too good."

Except they did. There's a reason why FG got shitcanned and BIO had to redo the entire campaign with one dev per chapter for one month. Plus, you overrate SOU. It's not that good.


"Source?"

Do a search. This is an old topic. BIO covered this, the Codex covered this, it's all covered. I know Gaider and the punk who did Witch's Wake each did one of the chapters.

Deal with it morans. L0L People are afraid to give BIO praise so they keep making up shit. It's really funny in this case since SOU is overrated to begin with no matter who did it.


R00fles!

 

[Lilura]

It has a DR of fukkin' 5. FIVE. That's not hard. So what if goes invisible. FFS Once it attacks it becomes visible. Or just cast see invisible. The stun doesn't work that often. 8shrug* Stop being a crybaby that enemies have abilities that can be sued to make you work to win. FFS

Just like the bloated dire spider, its not so much about the "difficulty" so much as how wearying the battles are, if you wanna even call auto-poking mooks twice every 6 secs (assuming henchman) "a battle" ("L0LZ"). At least in BG1 you had a party of six and could set AI updates to 60 so that there's actually something going on.

Just a ballpark conservative figure but at level 1 with this setting you could have 6 collective attacks going for every three seconds. That's alot more lively and eye-widening, especially when coupled with the variety of enemies (no, not just "Xfarts L0LZ") and items/spells at your disposal. Take the example of the bounty hunters when you first get out of the Nashkel mines, think about how many ways this encounter can be approached, and now try to think of the first time you come across a fight offering nuance even in the same league as this in NWN OC ("L0LZ").

NWN OC is just so goddamned wrist-mutilatingly DULL, and even your bro Gaider referred to it as "casual" compared to SoU, which I find fucking hilarious because SoU+Hordes are themselves absurdly PUERILE and I'm honestly blushing to be arguing about which one's the least shit, with you, in this sad thread ("R00fles!").

 

[Volourn]

l0l

 

[RK47]

There's a lot of hard counter to boss gimmicks, even if you are a fighter, u can still consume potions of clarity to make immunity to stuns readily available.
but really, a boss fight that boils down to drinking potion and autoattacking if you're a fighter isn't going to convince me it has interesting mechanics. Nobody would even try Imp. Knockdown feat cause by mid game you're already spamming crit and Great Cleave to squish trash trains.

 

[Lilura]

Great Cleave to squish trash trains.

Yeah, cleave/great cleave is vital if you don't wanna get bored out of your mind as a meleer, I think Daelan doesn't get cleave until lvl 7 (lol), does he ever get GC?

Another wearying thing in NWN is the damage reduction on chests, some you need to PwrAtt crit or chisel away at with pissy elemental damage. And even if you did take Tomi, a little sleep-inducing bar popped up to show the unlocking progress. Its not that I have ADHD, its just that coming off the pacey and reactive BG1 made this sort of stuff hard to stomach.

 

[Volourn]

"nother wearying thing in NWN is the damage reduction on chests, some you need to PwrAtt crit or chisel away at with pissy elemental damage. And even if you did take Tomi, a little sleep-inducing bar popped up to show the unlocking progress. Its not that I have ADHD, its just that coming off the pacey and reactive BG1 made this sort of stuff hard to stomach."

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Just take open locks and problem solved. WAAAAAAA! I cna't bash chests easily. BOO FUKKIN' HOO!

Take your lame azz overrated BG1 and its billions of xfartz and shvoe it up yer candy azz!

 

[RK47]

"nother wearying thing in NWN is the damage reduction on chests, some you need to PwrAtt crit or chisel away at with pissy elemental damage. And even if you did take Tomi, a little sleep-inducing bar popped up to show the unlocking progress. Its not that I have ADHD, its just that coming off the pacey and reactive BG1 made this sort of stuff hard to stomach."

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Just take open locks and problem solved. WAAAAAAA! I cna't bash chests easily. BOO FUKKIN' HOO!

Take your lame azz overrated BG1 and its billions of xfartz and shvoe it up yer candy azz!

Fighters taking open locks when he can just use Imp. Power Attack -
not sure if trolling...

 

[Lilura]

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Just cast sleep. WAAAAAAA! Too many xfartz. BOO FUKKIN' HOO!

Fighters taking open locks when he can just use Imp. Power Attack -
not sure if trolling...

Meh, my fighter needed his skill points for Discipline and Heal.

 

[RK47]

Well yeah, since Fighters skimp on SP while swimming in feats.