My personnal thoughts on NS4 characters

[Æ]

Who's insulting you, get over yourself man...

If your self esteem comes from how long you've been playing D&D and you took that as a personal insult, you need help... or a girlfriend

Besides, maybe I haven't played since '75 (I'm 24), but I DMed an organized D&D club which, rented a space and collected membership dues for supplies and rent and everything, for over 6 years (and it's not a matter of time, it's a matter of how much experience and learning one did during that time... just as maturity in a person is not a function of age, but one of experience) And this club has existed in New York since 1980, and voted me into that position....

My point; I DO know what I'm talking about, regardless of whether you've played longer or not... and if you took that as an insult, pull whatever that is out of your bum and go get a life

And I'm not talking about stat increases, I'm talking about reserving the physical immunites and resistances for melee'ing classes, and giving better weapons to those classes than any mage of equal level and 1 fighter level, or cleric, can use

[Chimaira]

You see this is where the real problem lies.
NWN is not PnP DnD, it is merely a computer game based on DnD.
In NWN bioware has made it clear that the individual is more important then a party. Why do you think the original campaign only allowed you to just have a henchman? Why not a whole party? Why didnt you start out like the good ole FF on the NES with a screen with 4 slots where you could pick classes, names and races for your characters? Because this is not a game based on a party, it is based on an individual. Why nerf? You might aswell make those CR 18 giants with 17 fort use an armor with +5 AC and +5 universal saves instead of an armor that has +3 AC, 20% immunity to slashing and 10/- resistance to slashing rather then tell mages "You may only attempt FoD once every 24 hrs", since the second is stupid and a waste of scripting time. Either way, it will not prevent a mage from collecting 6 giants and running around nuking them with area of effect spells, and he will certainly not need a cleric, rogue, fighter OR any form of a super special dream-team that the NS4 Devs seem to have in mind. You can encourage partying, but making monsters completly gimped with resistances and immunities just so a fighter cant kill them without having a caster buff him is stupid. The same with items available for PCs.

[Alexiagold]

My level 12 WM scyther soloed 6 cr 17 giants at one time, without any problems. Apparently you don't know how to build a fighter if you can't hurt them, die a lot, or have issues. Believe me, I'm new to playing a fighter, but for the sake of the beta I'm playing one, and they are just as easy, if not easier to play than my sorc was BEFORE half my spells were nerfed.

[Chimaira]

And runar, nobody here is saying something about the ability pts on items, as long as they go up to about +8, barbarians have an advantage with rage, spell buffs and potions have a use, and are available to everyone. We saying something about how powerfull the defensive properties on armor are compared to the offensive properties on weapons, and that it makes casters even stronger compared to non casters.

[TC-GTRF]

You see this is where the real problem lies.
NWN is not PnP DnD, it is merely a computer game based on DnD.
In NWN bioware has made it clear that the individual is more important then a party. Why do you think the original campaign only allowed you to just have a henchman? Why not a whole party? Why didnt you start out like the good ole FF on the NES with a screen with 4 slots where you could pick classes, names and races for your characters? Because this is not a game based on a party, it is based on an individual. Why nerf? You might aswell make those CR 18 giants with 17 fort use an armor with +5 AC and +5 universal saves instead of an armor that has +3 AC, 20% immunity to slashing and 10/- resistance to slashing rather then tell mages "You may only attempt FoD once every 24 hrs", since the second is stupid and a waste of scripting time. Either way, it will not prevent a mage from collecting 6 giants and running around nuking them with area of effect spells, and he will certainly not need a cleric, rogue, fighter OR any form of a super special dream-team that the NS4 Devs seem to have in mind. You can encourage partying, but making monsters completly gimped with resistances and immunities just so a fighter cant kill them without having a caster buff him is stupid. The same with items available for PCs.

If you talk to Georg Zoeller or David Gaider about this, and I have, they will tell you that the reason that NWN OCs were built for a single-player is because that's who they expected to buy the majority of the games sold. No one ever predicted that NWN would be used in a PW, and they think that it's a miracle that the Toolset was good enough to be used for this.

In addition, they said that NWN never was, isn't, and never will be balanced for PvP. If a PW can do that, more power to them, but there *never* was any attempt to make it balanced for different character classes to fight each other.

In addition they included henchmen because they never expected a single class to be able to solo the modules.

TC

[Chimaira]

You could kill them at lvl 12 with your fighter, I could kill them at lvl 8 with my sorc. Not to mention they die in 1 spell most of the time, your fighter needs a rough 12-13 hits to kill one. Thats at least 3 rounds.

[Æ]

Exactly... Icewind Dale 2 was party oriented, you could make up to 6 characters and control them all or control 2 while two other players control 2 each (or any other combination-- and you could also have 6 summons lol)... but the icewind dale and bladur's gate games, while being party-based, didn't turn out to be very multiplayer friendly. When they then set out to design NWN, they did so with the idea of it being more multiplayer friendly and the individual character being more important.

And you make a good point chim, making mobs and players resistant to physical damage just so a fighter needs a mage isn't going to encourage partying, it's going to encourage mages to solo and fighters to be helpless. Maybe if there were as many elemental,magical and/or holy/positive/negative resistances going around as commonly as these physical resistances, this would work because then the mages would need melee'ers, as well as the latter needing the former for magic. But as things are now, this doesn't work and I see the only solution in that regard to be removing the physical resistances or adding comparable magic resistances.

Oh and my fighter can beat everyone on giant mountain and in the caves with no problem (just have to be careful of the mage ogres), so I build a good character, the point is it takes a few minutes of hacking for each whereas it takes one or two spells to take out whole groups of them

And saying this game wouldn't be used for a PW is silly too... It's a D&D game designed for dungeon masters to design their own campaign settings.... Of course it's going to be used for ongoing D&D campaigns

[Chimaira]

*looks at first post*
*looks at what his post did*

lol this topic is SO gonna get locked when RadPro gets back.

[Alexiagold]

You could kill them at lvl 12 with your fighter, I could kill them at lvl 8 with my sorc. Not to mention they die in 1 spell most of the time, your fighter needs a rough 12-13 hits to kill one. Thats at least 3 rounds.

Prove it.

[DrakhanValane]

Hmm I just made a Fighter with a 25 fort save (28 vs. death spells) at level 20... naked. 28 (31) with just a +5 CON belt... and then I can hunt down death magic save items. And it only gets better as I get into epic levels.

Level 30: 37 (41) fort save naked.

Level 40: 44 (49) fort. Not much a chance of failing against wail now... is there? Again, naked. Would have been 45 (50) but I decided on perfect health and epic will instead of two more Great CON.

[Daltian]

Best solution to it would be. Lose the imunities on armors and shields. They are too big. Give some items that buff the saves.

That shouldn't be too hard, and people would have some chance to survive death/mind spells, and mages would actually die after 25 sneak attacks/ knock down of rogue/fighter their lvl. Not after 100-200 we need now! If we ever kill them.

[dond]

You could kill them at lvl 12 with your fighter, I could kill them at lvl 8 with my sorc. Not to mention they die in 1 spell most of the time, your fighter needs a rough 12-13 hits to kill one. Thats at least 3 rounds.

how do you kill 6 cr 17 giants at the same time with a lvl 8 sorc?
i'd really like to know too

the summon would be mince, there's no death magic then either...and they have enough hp to absorb all your spells...

[Paulz]

Hiya,

I do a mix of partying and solo'ing I'm doing ok, level 8 now and still climbing nicely

I normally create a fighter and then go with default everythign when I level cause I mainly like exploring, the fighting is soemthing in the way. However NS4 is the ebst server I've played on yet, it is very very cool

Anyway, my question is, where is the best palce to learn more about character creation, skills, abilities and so on. I choose default cause I don't know what any of it means and what it means to my char?

Thanks

Paulz

P.S. Scary as it may be, I have completed Boulder's Gate 2, Ice Wind Dale and all the NWN expansions and oringial game goign with default Time to learn though I think

[Æ]

That's easy to prove...

Should every fighter be running around with a scythe or halberd just because it does 2 types of damage and is two handed? Maybe it takes less hits for you because you're a scythe master.......

but first of all sctyhes are bull in this game, they're probably the least practical weapon and are the only ones with such a massive crit range. I've trained for years in medieval/renaissance weaponry (in real life under a master swordsman in a reenactment group I've been member of for years), with polearms swords and daggers and shield, and I know that I'm ten times more dangerous with a broadsword than a halberd (I'm probably just as dangerous with a quarterstaff and in this game it's a very weak weapon).

and second of all, if all of us chose our weapons just for the damage potential and made mages for our first characters to collect gear for the others, then it would be a very boring world with no character develpment for RP purposes (I really chose rapier becase I'm a "finesse fighter" in real life and it's a weapon I relate to... although I've trained with saber, and every rapier I've seen in NWN should be called a saber and used for slashing damage)............ and that's power playing and now that NS3 is over those are suddenly evil words

And I won't get too much into that other practical stuff because I could go on for days about all the faults in the combat techniques in the animations alone }: P

AND yay! let's make fighters sacrifice all theri good offensive feats for save bonuses and all their strength and AB in exchange for CON so they REALLY suck at fighting and do NO damage after resistance }: P that'll be fun!

At this point though, I surrender, warrior classes will never be fun to play in NS4, so I'll just make a cleric, my second favorite class (and was before NWN, so it's not just because of their exploit-ey potential to be better fighters than fighters in NWN)

One final point... I have a party of 6 in Icewind Dale 2 (wizard, cleric, rogue, pally, barbarian, fighter) and the mage and cleric could not survive without the others to protect them while they cast (and my mage was as melee tough as he could be with 8 HP per lvl and magic chainmail with no casting failure -- the cleric was a cleric of tempus which was the most melee tough out of the cleric choices)... it wasn't the warriors that needed the mages, it was the mages who needed the warriors (and they would all die to traps and ambushes if it wasn't for the rogue scouting, but that's another matter}: ). And my barbarian and fighter could kick the rest of the party's [censored], including the paladin, if they could run up to them fast enough (kind of relied on haste items for that chance *cough* lol)

dond: max and empower all your spells instead of using all the higher level ones at normal strength and casters kill everything fast

paulz: best place to learn about character abilites is right in the game, when you choose classes, skills feats and all that, there are descriptions to all of them to read, you can cross reference that with the basics in the manual and if you really want to go nuts, go to the bookstore and buy an AD&D 3rd edition players handbook }: )

[RunarSterk]

And I won't get too much into that other practical stuff because I could go on for days about all the faults in the combat techniques in the animations alone }: P

Have you checked out the alternate combat animations? Not sure if they're at all accurate or anything. I've been using them for a while now. They're kinda fun.

http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/models/dat ... 5277.shtml