Darth Frog

I am having a couple of problems understanding how the Awareness vs. Stealth skill checks work in this game. Based on past experience with d20 games like KotOR, NWN etc. I thought that it would be something like awareness_roll = roll(d20) + effective_awareness_skill + movement_mod stealth_roll = roll(d20) + effective_stealth_skill + movement_mod detected = awareness_roll >= stealth_roll where effective_xxx_skill is the effective skill rank as modified by items and attribute mods as usual and movement_mod is +5 for standing still, 0 for walking and -5 for running (at least in the case of Awareness). However, during an outing on the surface of a certain planet one of my NPCs was unexpectedly detected while on the way to recovering some mines, and the feedback log showed Sentry Droid successfully detects Bao-Dur awareness 26 vs. stealth 29 WTF? IMHO the droid clearly failed the awareness check! On a related note, for me the number one cause of workplace-related accidents in this game was the fact that all cutscenes and similar things cancel Stealth mode and many of them teleport your whole party to where the controlled character is. So if you see a bunch of thugs standing somewhere and stealth close in order to recover any mines or just generally scout the area then you will suddenly find yourself and your whole party standing there looking at the wrong end of half a dozen blasters. Or you stealth up to some door and suddenly the game tells you to look for an override or terminal nearby, unstealthing you right in front of a bunch of thugs who are very expertly wielding some very sharp things. I would not mind a character getting detected because of a failed Stealth check (or, conversely, a successful Awareness check by the enemy) but getting dropped out of Stealth into a situation with severe tactical disadvantage simply because of mindboggingly stupid scripting is rather annoying. The worst such incident was when my second-tier team was visiting a certain tomb while the primary attack group was busy elsewhere. Upon spying a triplet of dark Jedi at the end of a very long corridor I sent the stealthed party leader to scout out things and maybe disable/recover any mines. When she got close to the enemy she triggered a cutscene, at the end of which she stood completely de-buffed and uncloaked in front of three light sabre wielders. As she was not cut out for this kind of odds I decided to have her run back and lead the enemy to the other end of the long corridor, where T3 and a soldier were lying in ambush for just such an eventuality. However, she ran into an invisible wall and by the time I realized that it was the game that prevented her from going to the corridor and not merely some ineptness on my part like trying to make her run over a pot shard or some other obstacle, several combat rounds had passed. However slim her chances of defeating the three Dark Jedi had been to begin with, now they were zero, and down she went. Okay, so I used the soldier's (meager but sufficient) Stealth ability to split the enemy group and lured two of them into a trap that consisted mainly of T3 hiding behind a pillar. With only one enemy remaining, frontal assault was as good an option as any and so I had T3 and his companion charge down the corridor. During the commotion, the last enemy had advanced roughly to the middle of the corridor and my party leader had regained consciousness, so I healed her up and sent her to attack the enemy from the rear. Bad move. She ran into the invisible wall again ("You may not leave the battle at this time" or something like that) and the rest of the attack group was teleported to where she was. And so my entire strike group was on the wrong side of an invisible wall, unable to get near the last enemy that had to be struck down in order for the story to continue ...

Same here - level 29 during my first run, strictly in 'smelling the roses' mode without any power-gaming. I finished a solo power-gaming run of KotOR I (light side) with 330.000 XP, which corresponds roughly to the same level I think. So KotOR II seems slightly bigger.

I voted for "Equal". In many ways KotOR II is more refined and has more depth but there are also many areas in which it is lacking and unrefined. The most prominent short-comings are the scarcity of situations that require you to think about what you are doing instead of simply running forward and mowing things down, and that the game creates many, many questions but answers only very few (if any) in a satisfactory manner. The original KotOR offers more replayability as a 'tactical' game, even if you have already consumed the adventure component many times.

It is dead easy unless you make it a rule not to use cheats like shields, grenades, med packs etc. pp. If you have such a rule then it becomes very difficult because at that point in time very few character builds have the ability to deal with half a dozen hard enemies efficiently from a de-buffed state. And it really should be very, very difficult, if you consider the situation.

In some other game, perhaps. In KotOR II there are only three marginally different shades of 'easy'. In KotOR I you could make things difficult simply by going solo and not using cheats like med packs, stims, shields, grenades etc. In KotOR II this does not work unless you purposely stunt your character (by choosing bad attributes, feats and equipment) or if you invent new modes of play like reaching the end with the least possible level or the least possible amount of XP. On the positive side, the game does the work of selecting bad attributes, feats and skills for you if you select automatic levelling.

And Telos was also the main reason for Carth's vendetta against Karath, wasn't it?

Yes, that is strange. But you still get the XP - just look at the character stats before and after. However, when I went to check this I noticed that the XP you get is commensurate with your level. I had a level 3 character open a simple lock on a footlocker and this yielded 30 XP. Then I levelled her up in order to try something and opened the other footlocker, which yielded 40 XP. This is very strange indeed, as the DC of the lock was unchanged at 26 - so the XP awarded should have gone down, not up. Also, I think the same lock yielded 10 XP when I opened it with a level-1 character. What's also strange is that the XP seems to be tied to the taken level (i.e. actually levelled up), not the level corresponding to your XP. I think this bears some investigation ...

Right, since it is a trained skill. But you can still have skill rank 0 even if you paid a point into the skill, if the governing attribute is left at 8. Which is not exactly uncommon, if the attribute in question is INT and the character is a Guardian. :cool: Okay, I went and experimented a little. Result: in order to recover a minor mine on easy/normal/difficult you need an effective Demolition skill rank of 0, 5 or 10 respectively. In order to open a simple lock you need effective Security 0, 1, or 6. Odd, innit? So, let's see what we need in order open simple locks and recover simple mines without help while still on Peragus... Available boosts: the safety harness or whatsitcalled gives Demolition +1, and the Valor spell boosts any skill by one. This means 8 points Demolition and 5 points Security. There may be other goodies like Infiltration Gloves somewhere but we cannot count on that. The last chance for touring the halls of first location freely is around level 5 or so, but when entering the dormitory section the character is probably level 4 and we don't want to backtrack later. So level 4 it is and this means a Guardian with 8 INT doesn't have a chance. Level 4 @ 8 INT means 7 skill points (4 at creation, 3 x 1 for level-up), and the -1 INT mod actually increases the number of skill points required. 10 INT doesn't help much because it removes only the -1 mod but does not increase skill points. So I think we need at least 12 INT. This gives a +1 INT mod and 8 skill points at creation, with 6 more skill points arriving until level 4 for a total of 14. If we account for the +1 INT mod this gives 14 - (13 - 2x1) = 3 skill points to spare, so we can even pay a little into Persuasion... A Guardian will need the Security cross-class feat and a Sentinel dito for Demolition, of course. Dunno about Consular. So, INT 12 instead of 8 means two mods have to be stolen elsewhere at creation. STR and CON must get 14, and WIS should also be 14 (Force points), so DEX and CHA have to make do with lower mods (AC isn't terribly important if your character can dish it out). Sounds like a plan, doesn't it? :D Note: this only applies to playing on 'difficult'. On 'normal' even a normally intelligent Guardian (INT can get there without trouble. Valor will negate the -1 INT mod, so only 6 skill points total are needed (4 for Demo since there is a +1 item, 2 points to get 1 point Security as it is a cross-class skill).

I agree completely. Wading through the bar with the bad air (on the Smuggler's Moon) was somewhat relaxing after all the running around and talking and running around, but apart from that the combat was more a chore than anything else, precisely because there was no challenge. It was still miles more fun than, e.g. Dungeon Siege or Morrowind, though. I think for 'normal' difficulty a game should hand us our hind parts on a platter if we play poorly, and on 'difficult' it should be impossible to just muddle through. Try playing the original KotOR strictly solo - without buying any super toys in Yavin, without using the non-fighter shortcuts (computers/droids), and without cheats like med packs, stims, shields or explosives. In at least one place the game script requires the use of explosives, and in two places there is no other way (Rancor in the sewers, the triple

Have a look at the combat feedback in the message log. If there are enemies that have higher defense than attack + 2 on your weaker hand then it might make a certain amount of sense. How much sense this is depends how big the gap is... There is no benefit to boosting attack higher than enemy_defense - 2: a roll of 1 is an automatic miss and your strike connects when (attack + roll) >= defense, so you have to roll at least a 2 in order to hit in any case. If I remember correctly then you have at most one strike per round with your off-hand, while the main hand can strike up to four times (Flurry + Master Speed). So the off-hand is not quite as important as the main hand. Also, there don't seem to be any hard-to-hit enemies in this game except for one or two bosses, which means having high attack is less important than in the original KotOR. So, watch the combat feedback.

Is there documentation somewhere that says how skill checks are modified when playing on 'difficult' instead of 'normal'? For example, the DC for recovering a minor mine on 'normal' difficulty is documented as 20. Out of combat you automatically roll 20, so you need an effective skill rank of 0 to be able to recover a minor mine. On 'difficult' difficulty this doesn't work, so obviously the difficulty setting must be changing skill checks somehow. But how much? All I know is that my Guardian with an effective Demolition skill of 7 cannot recover a minor mine, and he cannot open a minor lock with an effective Security skill rank of 1. Both work on the 'normal' setting.

As the others have already pointed out, the skill points, feats, powers and boni are determined by which class you are levelling up in. If you add a Sentinel level then you get the Sentinel benefits, if you add a Watchman level you get the Watchman benefits. Skill points are a bit of an oddity in that you can save them for later, so that you can collect skill points while levelling up in one class and later spend the saved skill points while levelling up in another class (which may have other class skills) or after taking one of the cross-class skill feats. Still, the amount of skill points you get when taking a level is fully determined by which class you level up (and your natural INT). Of course, in KotOR you cannot choose which class to level up - once you have chosen a prestige class you can only advance in that prestige class. Contrast this to other d20 games - like e.g. Neverwinter Nights - where you can multi-class more or less freely and at level-up you decide which of your classes to advance or which new class to pick. But you still advance in only one class at one time. KotOR does not allow free multi-classing but on the other hand it allows you to pick your feats from any of your classes, not only the one you're currently levelling up. This is a bit odd but I think it's a good trade-off.