Neverwinter Nights 2/Mask of the Betrayer/Storm of Zephir

[Meneldil]

I've tried playing BG2 some times before, but never really got into it because the bad graphics and old school interface just drove me insane.

Blasphemy !

What do you mean by "kick me in the nuts?"

Basically, something like "as freaking damn awesome as Baldur's Gate".

[frogbeastegg]

The main campaign does have a BG feel to it IMO. If you staple both BG games together you end up with an outline fairly similar to that of NWN2, in that it's about an innocent person from a backwater being thrown out into a harsh world by mysterious events, then struggling to survive and make sense of what's happening. You collect allies along the way, relish every level you gain, get excited when you finally find some decent gear, run off chasing sidequests, etc etc.

I didn't like the game at all the first time I played it. Now, with patches, expansions and the AI mod, it has become very enjoyable. Far, far better than the lukewarm NWN1.

[FactionHeir]

I think that while the story of NWN2/MOTB is intriguing, the difficulty level is not adequate.
The difficulty level of the OC seemed pretty well scaled with some fights towards the end a tad too easy (defending CK) but MOTB was a complete walk in the park if you used your OC character, mainly due to the high magic and crafting system employed in both campaigns (you know, starting with a mithril full plate with 30/- cold and electricity and immunity to criticals and sneaks with a praetor shield or custom heavy shield with 3 other resistances buffed with magic vestment +5... add to that your MOTB crafting of 15d6 elemental and +8 enhancement...).
I played those the first time with a human fighter/wm, second time as drow wiz/ek and third time as aasimar fs/bg.

SoZ on the other hand was a nice change of pace where really every skill is relevant at the start for survival, but towards the end, you only really need a few due to your keep income going through the roof (anyone for going afk an hour and coming back to see your character is now a millionaire - or simply resting a bit more for the same effect?). Battles there were scaled nicely though the last act was a bit of a slashfest with nothing being able to stand up to your party (even if you got rid of all your cohorts and played with only 2 PCs as I did for the extra challenge). Was fun to have a few places where sneaking was encouraged though and of course an epilogue that you can dictate.
Played that with a yuan-ti fs/dc though i was disappointed at not having a lot of roleplay opportunities with that race as I should have had IMO outside of a few "I am yuan-ti too" which didn't even elicit a response most of the time.

And a hint:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

There are no decent morningstars in the game outside of crafted ones. My FS type characters found that out after a while but luckily there's always flame weapon and gmw5

[Meneldil]

I'll definitely give it a try then. I'm really looking for a good RPG, and playing Secret of Evermore/Mana or Seiken Densetsu for the billionth time isn't that entertaining now.

Hope the difficulty level isn't that easy for a beginer. I really liked the fact I had to load quite often in BG (1, the 2nd became quite easy as your characters leveled), because each NPC group you'd meet could easily tear you a new one

[Vladimir]

I think that while the story of NWN2/MOTB is intriguing, the difficulty level is not adequate.
The difficulty level of the OC seemed pretty well scaled with some fights towards the end a tad too easy (defending CK) but MOTB was a complete walk in the park if you used your OC character, mainly due to the high magic and crafting system employed in both campaigns (you know, starting with a mithril full plate with 30/- cold and electricity and immunity to criticals and sneaks with a praetor shield or custom heavy shield with 3 other resistances buffed with magic vestment +5... add to that your MOTB crafting of 15d6 elemental and +8 enhancement...).
I played those the first time with a human fighter/wm, second time as drow wiz/ek and third time as aasimar fs/bg.

So basically they're like the NWN expansions? Tons of cash and easy ways to get superpower weapons. Do you think it reasonable to go through NWN 2 without using crafting skills?

[FactionHeir]

Yes, the equipment you find in the OC is reasonable without being overly powerful. You should be able to beat the game just fine with a bit more challenge that way.
As for MOTB, the equipment you find is just about as powerful as your crafted equipment (well, not in terms of 15d6 elemental damage, but in terms of enhancers, immunities and the like), so it can't really be challenging I suppose unless you go around more or less all by yourself with minimum amounts of companions (which means though, that you lose out on some dialogue and RP)

Its reasonable to play the game on Very Hard difficulty for the OC and MOTB.

[Vladimir]

Ah, thanks. The main reason I drifted away from the Paladin is because in normal campaigns it's too simple to wade through the masses of baddies, hacking and slashing. Maybe I'm too old but I don't understand game developers allowing so much uBer 1337 stuff in what should be gritty, dangerous games. I mean, ya it's fun when every hit has a 50% chance to decapitate but it then becomes a game about stuff and not a party adventure. And really, who the hell can carry around 100,000 gold pieces?

[Meneldil]

Tried it for a few hours today. Looks okay, though the fellows aren't that bright (I'm gonna have to download the AI pack), and the game is sometimes quite confusing, gameplay-wise. If find it hard to click on characters and items, the camera sometimes go crazy, etc. etc.

Only have two characters now, can't say much about the dialogues and roleplaying between them. The voice acting isn't that bad, but I'm not really impressed by the "farmer who comes out of nowhere and is actually an important dude" plot. I would have prefered a more original begining rather than a copy/paste of BG1 (and a billion other games) starting plot but heh, I guess it's much easier to introduce a story in a RPG that way.

My wizard is already level 3. Kind of surprising, given that it would usually take hours to level up in any other DnD game. I plan to multiclass him Wizard/Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep/something else (Pale Master or Eldritch Knight likely, I'm neutral good so I can't be a Red Wizard of Thay, saddly I must add, I would have enjoyed being as annoying as Edwin was in BG1/2)

[FactionHeir]

Yeah, I'd go with strategy camera mode (left most one) and ignore the whole target thing. That's how I manage to play it

[Zenicetus]

I bought NWN2 a while back, but bailed out about 30% of the way through the OC. It was a combination of things, with these being the most annoying (I've played through all the earlier games by the way; the BG series, IWD, NWN1 so I'm familiar with the format):

* Sketchy system performance that should have been a lot better considering the fairly basic look of the graphics.

* Fussy camera control. In battles and dungeon crawls, it seemed like I was spending as much time trying to get the right view angle on the action, as I was on tactical commands. The camera can't cope with something basic like walking up a hill. I know it's been improved from the first release, but it still seems unnecessarily clumsy.

* Tiny map areas outside. You'd walk your partly for what felt like a few hundred yards and hit the edge, having to pause for another scenery load to another tiny area. If you didn't find whatever you looking for, but knew it was on the current area map, then you'd know it was right over there a few paces away because the map was so restricted. There's a pause for loading when you go into any doorway from outdoors to indoors, and often indoors as well. I could live with the indoor loads, but the tiny outdoor areas just felt very cramped, not like moving through a big fantasy world at all. It kills the incentive for exploration.

* Archery seems useless, due to very short engagement distances for combat.

* The commands to control your party are very limited. If you're playing a squishy class like Wizard as the party leader, there isn't a way to tell your tank to open a dungeon door and go in first, without actually taking over that character and being the new party leader. This leads to a lot of frenzied mouse clicking just to get the whole party through a door and into the tactical arrangement you'd like (casters and archer types to the rear). This has been a limitation in earlier BG/NWN series, but I was hoping for some improvement. There's too much incentive to play a stronger class that can lead from the front instead of the rear. I ended up playing as far as I did into the OC as a Warlock to get around that (i.e. ability to wear medium armor), but Warlock is a somewhat boring class as a caster.

Does the AI pack improve that last complaint? I hadn't heard about it before this thread, since I don't hang out on the NWN forums. I might give it another go, if it does. About the only thing that seemed better than NWN1 was the overall look of the world, with fewer repeating/tiled objects like that first game. In other respects, like the small area maps, it felt like a step backwards.

[frogbeastegg]

I can answer 3 of those. I don't use ranged weapons so I can't answer that one, and I'm not 30% of the way through the main campagin so you have seen more of the game's maps than I have.

* Sketchy system performance.

I had terrible problems with the game when I first tried it. Now it's smooth as can be with all settings maxed. The two expansions make some performance improving tweaks, and the various patches make a lot more.

* Fussy camera control.

It's a fix which costs money, but the first expansion adds a strategy camera mode. Think Baldur's Gate style top down view. In that mode you can leave the camera alone except to spin it around occasionally to get something which a wall is obscuring from view.

* The commands to control your party are very limited.

The AI mod adds quite a few new options, and makes the in-built commands much more useful. With a bit of experimentation I have been able to find commands for most of my needs. For example, you can set a melee character to guard your character, attack anything which attacks you, and to keep a short engagement range so he doesn't go haring off after an archer on the far side of the map. There are no party formations.

[TevashSzat]

* Archery seems useless, due to very short engagement distances for combat.

Well, its not so much as the short engagement distances, which won't matter as much if you have a good tank, but that archery itself is underpowered.

In MotB, you can craft these extraordinarily powerful melee weapons, but iirc, you can't craft bows and the ones you find are mediocre at best.

Dexterity doesn't add damage, only strength and mighty does and even then its capped at +5 mighty which is extremely low when you are level 20+.

Basically, you can be a fully maxed out ranger/arcane ranger/bard with all of the feats for improving archery and be perfectly optimized and still won't be able to outdamage a poorly planned melee fighter wielding an incredibly powerful crafted melee weapon

[FactionHeir]

Well archery is great for SoZ at least

[Zenicetus]

The AI mod adds quite a few new options, and makes the in-built commands much more useful. With a bit of experimentation I have been able to find commands for most of my needs. For example, you can set a melee character to guard your character, attack anything which attacks you, and to keep a short engagement range so he doesn't go haring off after an archer on the far side of the map. There are no party formations.

Hmm... maybe I'll try it again with the AI mod and see how it goes. It's a shame there's no party formation; some way to get the party through a dungeon door and into a room of bad guys, while keeping the player at the rear when playing a caster or archer. You'd think that after all this time, and all these games, someone would have figured that out. I wonder how Dragon Age will handle this, or if they'll just follow the same format?

Well, its not so much as the short engagement distances, which won't matter as much if you have a good tank, but that archery itself is underpowered.

(snip)

Basically, you can be a fully maxed out ranger/arcane ranger/bard with all of the feats for improving archery and be perfectly optimized and still won't be able to outdamage a poorly planned melee fighter wielding an incredibly powerful crafted melee weapon

I take your point, but I still think the engagement distance is part of it. You have to get pretty close before combat can begin, so you don't have time to fire a couple of volleys before enemies get in melee range. That's one of the main things you want an archer for. If you can get in several shots before an enemy touches you (or your tank), then it makes up for relatively low damage. And an archer should be able to interrupt or damage casters at the rear of an enemy formation very early in the fight, without having to wade forward to get in range. The use of archers just doesn't feel right. If archers were ginned up for more damage, then they still wouldn't be much different, tactically speaking, than playing a melee character. They don't have a true stand-off function in this game engine.

Not to keep harping on archers... but this really screws up playing a Rogue/archer class, which should be a lot of fun with the sneak attack bonus. It just isn't that much fun in this game. This is another area where I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with Dragon Age. With current equipment specs, they should be able to do larger area maps, and (hopefully) larger-scaled battles instead of these little compact fights we get with NWN2.

[Meneldil]

So, I'm more or less halfway through the main campaign (not MotB), and I'm already planning my pary for SoZ.

I've always played good guys, and my current character is a lawful good Sun Elf Wizard/Arcane Scholar (I'm planning to pick Eldritch Knight or another caster prestige class later on, too bad I can't be a Red Wizard).

So, now, I want to play some evil dudes.
Obviously, a female drow cleric/warpriest/favored soul/whatever sounds obligatory (Viconia woohoo), just as a Red Wizard does (Edwin ftw).
Then I'm kind of lost. The Blackguard actually seems interesting on paper, but from what I've understood, it's a bit lacking in the pure awesomness department. So either an human blackguard or an half-orc/grey orc Frenzied barbarian with a huge ass sword.
Finally, I have to look for a short range DPS, and there, I'm absolutely lost. The bard seems interesting, for role play reasons, but as for a prestige class? Assassin? Shadow Thief? Arcane Trickster (this one look fun, but not really effective) I want a guy who sneak behind people and hit them with two +8 Katanas for a billion*(1d6 damages).

Damn, I really hope they'd bring the party limit up to 6 characters again. 4 is definitely not enough to make an arse kicking group.

[FactionHeir]

There's a feat that brings up the number of player characters you can have in SoZ. Plus you can always have 2 or 3 cohorts too I think.

[Lemur]

I picked up Storm of Zehir, thanks for the recommendations. My all-dwarf party is carving a bloody swathe through the lands ...

[FactionHeir]

Play with fewer characters then Two characters make a fine challenge. More than two, and the difficult goes down the drain as combat isn't scaled.

[Gregoshi]

This is all good to hear. I recall less than spectacular reviews when NWN2 came out. I'm watching the price of this game tumble at Circuit City. If the sole copy at my local store survives until the 50%-60% off mark, I may get it.

[Meneldil]

Yeah, it's afterall, a decent game, that reminds me of BG2.

The conversation options are often too clear cut, but there are definitely more of those than in any BG game.

The only thing that really bothers me is the freaking hideous AI. Allowing customization of the AI was a nice idea, but the basic one is so bad that you can't really do anything with it, no matter how hard you try.
Even worse, I installed the AI pack from Nwn2 vault, but it somewhat screwed up when I installed SoZ, and now, I'm like 'wth ?':

- only one of my character (Neeshka) will follow the leader if I don't ask "Follow me", even though nobody is in puppet mode
- weird behavior each time I'm fighting. Like my tank is actually trying to tank. I click on my wizard to cast a fireball of black death, the tank stop fighting, run to the wizard and wait for new orders.
- the opponents' AI is also as hell. While I appreciate the effort made so all mobs don't get stuck hitting on the tank, and actually try to attack weaker characters, it only ends up with monsters running everywhere and getting sneak-attacked to death. Or even worse, casters being killed 5 seconds after the start of the fight, because no matter what happens, the 10 orc archers are shooting at him, even though a paladin, a fighter and a rogue are beating their arses.

[frogbeastegg]

As far as I remember from when I was installing, there's a specific version of the AI mod for Storm. The expansion definitely makes changes to the base AI files as it contains a cut down earlier version of the mod. Logic suggests that could cause problems with files not matching up correctly, and that would result in the garbled behaviour you are experiencing.

If I were you I'd download and reinstall the mod, checking for a Storm version. If that doesn't help, delete the game and reinstall it plus the expansion, and put the mod on last of all. Just keep your savegame folder somewhere safe so you don't lose progress.

[English assassin]

Warlock is okay power-wise, but it's a terribly boring class to play - using the same few skills over and over and over and over again gets stale very fast. I'd say that selecting a Warlock as my PC was the single most important thing that turned me off NWN2, haven't been able to touch it since.

That was very much my experience too. Click, wait, repeat.

No one mentioned a Druid yet? Druids rock. A Druid/Stormlord would rock even more, if the prerequisites for Stormlord weren't a bit rubbish. (Specifically, what sort of Stormlord is not allowed to use a warhammer)

For me, NWN2 is like a girlfriend you still quite like, but really ought to have broken up with. The AD and D stuff is comfortingly familiar, but the gameplay is dated, and the story pretty average.

I know I'll wind up getting SoZ, but I'll feel guilty about waking up next to it in the morning.

[Meneldil]

I'm currently playing MotB, (currently at Act II), and I have a few questions:

- My main character is a Wizard 10/Arcane Scholar 10/Pale Master 5, and well, he feels really underpowered.
First of all, his damage output is quite low. For some reason, most of the level 8/9 spells are 'save or die' spells, and are thus pretty much useless against most opponents, as they're immune to death spells.
So I'm stuck with completely uninteresting spells like Gibsby's Grasping Hand, that deals little damage and might (once every two days) stun the target, or lower level area of effect or multitarget spells such as Fireball, chain lightning, incendary cloud, etc.
Thing is, while these spells were okay, and even everpowered in the main campaign, they now kind of blow. Maximazed chain lightning deals 120/60 (and sometimes 60/30, dunno why). Not nearly as good as it used to be when every random monster has like 300HP.
Secondly, he dies really quickly. Like, even though he has 150 HP and about 20 AC, he will get kill in one or two hit every once in a while. It gets really annoying given that he's always insta-ported to a PNJ when there's a dialogue, making him the first target when said dialogue ends in a fight. And I'm not even talking about the (hopefully few) times he has to fight alone (or with the Red Wizardress only): I spend 5-6 rounds to buff him so he doesn't get instaggibed.
It could be that he's not well optimized, but thing is, the Red Wizardress from the MotB campaign is even worse. Less HP, less AC, only a few (mostly useless) spells.

On the other hand, Okku deals like 150 HP of damage each round, has 440 HP, 38 AC (without needing expensive equipment), and basically can take care of any fight by himself. Even Gann and Kaelyn actually deal probably as much damages as my two wizards (thanks god, Kaelin gets some awesome area of effect lvl 8/9 spells).

So, are casters just plain bad in MotB or am I just doing something wrong?

[FactionHeir]

Well, my favored soul did just fine
And I played it before that with a wizard/EK which wasn't too bad either.

IMO maximized spell is rather useless (unless you got that feat which makes it +2 rather than +3).
My 9th level would usually be something along the lines of empowered delayed fireball and wail of the banshee. 8th level is empowered disintegrate and horrid wilting. 7th extended greater heroism and empowered firebrand.
You get the idea

[Meneldil]

Yeah, as an Arcane Scholar, I got the Improved Maximize and Empower spell feats. I'm gonna try with level 6/7/8 maximized/empowered spells rather than level 9 normal spells are those are severely lacking in my opinion.
Granted, it's fun to one shot 4 guys with a single power word : death or wail of the banshee, but it happens so rarely that I basically gave up on using these spells.
My main complain is that it looks like a warrior can not only take much more hits, but can also dish as much if no more damages as caster, thanks to the uber MotB gear.

As for the favored soul, how is it different from the Cleric, or from the Spirit Shaman ? I first had the feeling it was a kind of sorcerer class for divine spells, but it looks like the spirit shaman took that role. Or is the Spirit Shaman the sorcerer version of the druid class, while the FS is the sorcerer version of the cleric class? I'm tempted to make one my main character for SoZ, but I can't really get how the class works.

[FactionHeir]

FS is the sorcerer version of the cleric class with very high saving throws and automatic weapon bonuses
No spontaneous conversion though.

I would go for PW:D as it requires the enemy to be very low on health at which point you probably won't need the spell anyway. Its great for MP but not so much for SP.
The only level 9 spell worth using is actually meteor swarm and sometimes wail. The targeted meteor swarm in particular is rather devastating.
Outside of these, go for the spells I mentioned.

[Fixiwee]

One thing that still bugs me with NWN2 even though I dont play it atm is the hardcore rules setting. See I am a pen and paper D&D player and I know the rules pretty good. So I tend to set the rules of NWN on hardcore because I am more used to those rules.
But I somehow feel that the game is not ment to play that way. If you wanna throw a maxed fireball into hordes of evil goons you probably will hit your own people half of the time. After all, NWN is not turn-based like real D&D so it makes it real hard to plan AOE spells. Hence I always feel that my mage is completley useless and is only good for spawning haste or something like that.

[FactionHeir]

I prefer lightning bolt for that reason. And of course because the higher level decent spells are already fire based

[Veho Nex]

I'm playing the NWN2 campaign and barely past fort locke I think is the name. But Keep getting my butt handed to me by the undead and bandits. Its like as a Dwarf Swashbuckler I can own them one at a time but after three or four come I get owned :/

[FactionHeir]

Bandits are quite tough at the start. Chances are you will have 1 person dying at least. Try to attack archers as those deal the most damage. And make sure you use those potions.