Neverwinter Nights; Is it worth it?

[stray]

I really wanted to try an evil wizard -> Sorcorer.

Hmm, bad choice. I suggest evil wizard -> Sorcerer if you really want to get anywhere. 

[Strazos]

I've been going through BG1 again, and lemme tell you....

Low-end D&D is Tough. At least in IWD games I can make most of my characters start as fighters and than dual-class them into the class I really want.

[Samprimary]

I played through NWN as a 50/50 split between warrior and rogue. The combination was excellently complimentary and the capacities of both classes augmented each other significantly. This means I progressed in all skills every two levels as opposed to one (thankfully, you can save skill points between levels. I only ever bought one skill during the warrior level turns, this being Discipline).

By the end, I was dual-wielding Weapon Focus'd Weapon Specialization'd Improved Critical'd Improved Two Weapon Fighting'd bastard swords with 5d6 sneak attack damage who would sneak up right next to you and get X number of sneak attacks on a flatfooted opponent. This as a character with essentially maxed-out sneaking capacity, maxed out disable device, maxed out sensory capacities, maxed out lockpicking, etc. Warriors also benefit extraordinarily from improved reflex saves and Uncanny Dodge, to say nothing of Evasion (and eventually Improved Evasion)

I played without henchmen, and never really saw a need for having one. I figured it would just be overkill.

When I got the underdark expansion, I re-did this, but then did it again where I started the rogue/warrior progression upon reaching epic level.

[schild]

Go go team munchkin.

[Fabricated]

Jesus, the most I did was playing a Rogue specialized in Kukris. They start with an increased threat range to begin with, and with weapon focus/specialization, and eventually a keen Kukri, you crit nearly every hit.

[Samprimary]

Go go team munchkin.

Naah, munchkin would've been if I was a cleric, runnin' round casting Harm on anything that caused me problems.

... a dual-bastard-sword wielding cleric. Yeah.

[Llava]

Jesus, the most I did was playing a Rogue specialized in Kukris. They start with an increased threat range to begin with, and with weapon focus/specialization, and eventually a keen Kukri, you crit nearly every hit.

Kukri rogues are fun, especially when you kill that one Kukri wielding rogue boss and pick up his two glowy Kukris- Hate and Strife.  I kept those weapons until the end of the game, just upgraded them in the underworld.  Tons of fun.

[Ironwood]

Dual Rapiers for Teh Win.

Oh, and Fighter/Rogue/Assasin for the double + Gud.

That was part of the problem of playing through the good campaign in NWN.  You loved the journey and the fun, but when you killed that last demon at the end (OMG SPOILERZZ) you looked at your character and his godlike abilities and powers and equipment and you thought :   "I am a huge munchkin Douche."

Still.  I have no shame.  I made the same guy for ToEE.  At least in that I got to flank the mofos.

[Kail]

Dual Rapiers for Teh Win.

Seriously?  About half of all my characters used rapiers, 'cause they're the strongest weapon you can use with weapon finesse (as far as I know) and I was always being outdamaged by the rest of my party.  I never got the funds to upgrade it to a plus ten or anything, but all the named rapiers I found were all cardboard pieces of crap, and I couldn't keep up with people using longswords (say nothing of the heavier stuff).  Was there some awesome one I missed, or something?

[Samwise]

Rapiers work better if you've got a few levels of rogue, since the extra sneak attack damage more than makes up for the lower base damage.  Weapon specialization also helps a lot, since you get that +2 damage with every attack, and if you've got Improved Two-Weapon Fighting that's two extra attacks per round on top of the four or however many you get normally.

My uber swashbuckler build, FWIW, was something like 11 fighter/5 rogue/4 ranger.  Rogue for evasion, sneak attack and uncanny dodge, ranger for two weapon fighting, and fighter for BAB, weapon specialization, and bonus feats.  When I started the build I expected to be pretty gimped compared to a straight-up fighter, since I'd never made a swashbuckler character work in D&D just using existing classes, but the combination worked really well.

[Ironwood]

Dual Rapiers for Teh Win.

Seriously?  About half of all my characters used rapiers, 'cause they're the strongest weapon you can use with weapon finesse (as far as I know) and I was always being outdamaged by the rest of my party.  I never got the funds to upgrade it to a plus ten or anything, but all the named rapiers I found were all cardboard pieces of crap, and I couldn't keep up with people using longswords (say nothing of the heavier stuff).  Was there some awesome one I missed, or something?

Yeah.  There were two exceptionally good rapiers in the game as far as I can remember.  I'll maybe reinstall and copy my character over to have a look.  Bear in mind also that Rapiers have a bigger threat (I think) and if you couple that with weapon finesse and Keen and improved crit, you're really steaming in there with 28-30 Dex.  Also, due to NWN and it's SHITTY SHITTY Sneak attack, you'd be regularly maiming on your first attack - which had about 19 strikes.  OK, maybe not that much, but it was a lot.

I took the fighter levels for the Dual weilding and cool combat feats, like combat reflexes and the like, the rogue levels for the skills and the sneakiness and the assasin levels because it was just going that way anyway.

To be honest with you, if you really want to talk about the effectiveness of the classes, you'd be better referencing ToEE.  It was the most faithful adaptation I've seen yet and the stuff my rogue could pull off at LEVEL SEVEN was totally Gud.  Tumble was in and worked - so you could just somersault over the fighter and combatants head, flank em and sneak their arse for ungodly threat.

So much geek, so little time....

[Alkiera]

In my latest run, I'm playing as a half-elven paladin.  I'm just starting HotU, and even with the subpar equipment I've been able to pick up since I was robbed, my resists and AC are pretty high.  Crank up the Str and Cha, and I regularly just walk thru traps, because I save 95% of the time, and the damage is only so much against my fighter-class hp.  By the end of HotU, I exxpect to have something in the mid 40's for AC, and somewhere in the 30's for most of my resists.

Alkiera

[Llava]

Yeah, by the end of HotU your character is a huge munchkin douche, sure, but you can enslave the demon to take over the world so at least they let you munchkin the right way.

[Bunk]

My HotU Munchkin was something along the lines of Ranger 1(for free dual wield) Rogue 9 and Shadowdancer 10. Dual weild rapiers that critted on 13 - 20, massive sneak attack damage, and the ultimate munchkiny skill of all: Hide in Plain Site. You sneak up, hit for a sneak attack crit, immediately hide before they hit back. Rinse an repeat. Add in a pack full of lev 9 mage scrolls that I could use as a rogue.

Good times.

[Strazos]

NECRO


Just picked up the Diamond compliation, which includes NWN, both expansions, Kingmaker, ShadowGuard, and Witch's Wake.

I know there's still at least one person around here who putzes around with this. Any suggestions on good modules, especially for 2 players? Got a buddy who I'd like to play this with, and I need good modules, dangit.

[Fabricated]

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=4562.msg112116#msg112116

Dunno how 2 player friendly they are overall, but those're my favorite modules.

[Strazos]

Ugh, I tried going through Kingmaker. Very early, towards the end of the first conversation you have inside the Keep walls, someone comes up to me to start a conversation after the 3 other people leave...and the programs just dumps me to the desktop.

These are supposed to be the "professional" modules...wtf is with the bug (and yes, I ran the update)?

[El Gallo]

I just played the pirate module; it was pretty decent.  I didn't have any bugs when I played Kingmaker, so can't help you there except to say that the pirate one is better.

[Kitsune]

I'm probably gonna pick up the diamond version with all the expansions tomorrow, the shifter prestige class sings a siren song to me.  I played a friend's copy back at release and saw first hand just how shitty the original game's quest was, so I intend to play with the expansions and fan modules.  Does anyone have a recommendation of the best order to play them in for a decent level progression?  I wouldn't wanna be facing level 3 orcs with a level 23 angel of death, sorta spoils the challenge.

[Alkiera]

I'm probably gonna pick up the diamond version with all the expansions tomorrow, the shifter prestige class sings a siren song to me.  I played a friend's copy back at release and saw first hand just how shitty the original game's quest was, so I intend to play with the expansions and fan modules.  Does anyone have a recommendation of the best order to play them in for a decent level progression?  I wouldn't wanna be facing level 3 orcs with a level 23 angel of death, sorta spoils the challenge.

If you start in the first expansion(SoU), then move to the 2nd expansion(HotU), that should take you up to 22 or 24 or so.  As for those other modules, depends on what the level recommendations are for them.  If they are above level 1, the easiest way to do that would be to, when you go from one module to the next in the expansion compaign, export your character just after arriving in the next module, then go play the random module, export at the end, then restart the compaign module you'd exported from with the newest version of your character.  You generally can't start a campaign module in the middle until you've gotten to it normally, so you need to do that first export after the module switch(you can usually tell due to Bioware putting videos at the begining, among other hints).

Alkiera

[pants]

Ugh, I tried going through Kingmaker. Very early, towards the end of the first conversation you have inside the Keep walls, someone comes up to me to start a conversation after the 3 other people leave...and the programs just dumps me to the desktop.

These are supposed to be the "professional" modules...wtf is with the bug (and yes, I ran the update)?

I found similar problems after installing Diamond version.  A bit of forum digging found that the Diamond version has some new graphics shinies, and they can be cantankerous in particular on ATI systems.  So for a while my system was really instable - complete with a few hard crashes (ie reset button at front of pc).  After a lot of pissing around (including a new Win XP install, it was due for a refresh anyway), finally updating the chipset drivers on my motherboard (nForce 2 here) got it working fine, and has been rock solid ever since.

[Strazos]

Ah ha!

For the past few weeks I've had horrible XP desktop problems, hangs, etc. Oddly enough, even though the occurances are somewhat random, once I get a game to launch, the system still performs perfectly - it's only when I am playing with things on my desktop that things get wonky.

I already ran an extensive diagnostic on my RAM modules, and they check out. I have no viruses/spyware, and I even repaired my XP boot sector. I imagine any problems with the CPU itself would simply cause the system to not work.

Which nForce2 drivers would you suggest? I'm currently using a Asus A7N8X mobo.

[pants]

Which nForce2 drivers would you suggest? I'm currently using a Asus A7N8X mobo.

I just did the boring newb thing and went to my MB manufacter's site, EpoX here in my case, and just downloaded the latest version of the drivers for my particular MB.  Installed em, rebooted, and its all sweet now.

[Tebonas]

Neverwinter Nights on my computers has a glitch that can detect the wrong amount of RAM on my ATI cards. If you change the amount in the ini per hand it runs rock solid and hasn't all those graphics glitches and freezes. Never found out if its the game or a particular set of mobo drivers. I edit it, it works (2 different Asus Moterboards and two different ATI cards, one AGP, one PCIe).

[dusematic]

Necro.  Hey I have a question about this game.  If you want to get a feat that requires a prerequisite of a minimum stat level, does that need to be the base stat or will magic items boosting the stat at the time of the level up allow you to select the feat?

[geldonyetich]

Base stats are all that apply to all aspects of advancement.  Otherwise we'd have people donning intelligence gear right before every level up in order to max out their skill points.

[dusematic]

Shit.  So that mean I can never be a weaponmaster since I have 10 intelligence.

[Rasix]

Shit.  So that mean I can never be a weaponmaster since I have 10 intelligence.

I imagine there's a console cheat.

DING DING DING.

[Cheddar]

Let me see if I undersetand correctly; this is like NWN1, but with a better plot? 

Wrong thread, my bad.

[Rasix]

Let me see if I undersetand correctly; this is like NWN1, but with a better plot? 

Wrong thread.

BTW, CLOWNS SCARE ME.

[Cheddar]

Let me see if I undersetand correctly; this is like NWN1, but with a better plot? 

Wrong thread.

BTW, CLOWNS SCARE ME.

Christ you greens are fucking FAST.  30 seconds; you are closing in on Schilds record!

[Yegolev]

When you turn green, you get a tub of lube as well.