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Nope, and they never restock their gold either (unless you buy expensive items from them) so it's possible to "bleed a shop dry" if you continuously sell items to a single merchant (i.e. Sand).

Ah, welcome to NWN2's Insta-Spawnfest of Death

Ah, so that's what really happens. I've picked up a few hints about an alternative solution on the BIOboards but they didn't go into much detail. Nah , just have your main character stand near the pallisade enterance and the prisoner's won't move from that spot as they only follow the PC. Then order Khelgar, Neeshka, Elanee and her badger to attack the insta-spawned bandits untill they are all killed and you can walk out safely with all of the prisoners unharmed.

IMO, crafting makes the game a whole lot easier. While you can get along fine with the weapons you find/purchase there's only a few of them that can measure up to a Holy Adamantine weapon, especially later in the game when you'll be facing undead opponents 90% of the time. BTW, there's plenty of resources to go around so feel free to craft +2 and +3 weapons, you can always upgrade them later on or make new ones if you prefer. Also, besides the other advantages, armor crafted from Mithral properly counts as one category lighter in NWN2 so it can be quite useful for characters with fewer armor proficiencies like warlocks, bards and druids.

You might want to take a look at Even's mods. He has a 3.5 edition hak which brings the game a bit closer to PnP and an AI hak which makes the henchmen behavior more tolerable. There's also the Complete Craftsmen which lets you customize items even further.

Sawyer? :D I kind of thought that was an in-house Obsidian joke as his nick used to be Bishop, IIRC. Never tried this myself, but I've heard that you can convince some of them to join the Fort Locke guards if you visit the Graveyard first and discover the shadow priest's plans. In the beginning you can buy most molds from the smith at Fort Locke and once you get the stronghold you'll have a nearly unlimited supply of molds and metal bars. Sand and that merchant near the Temple of Tyr have most of the component's you'll ever need.

Or maybe they just play on widescreen monitors.

I think both of those were fixed in patch 1.31. Personally, I never used the Creative trait for my custom races. It was simply much more fun to trade/spy/steal/pillage technologies from other races. :D

Master of Orion 2 is still my all time favorite as well. The sheer magnitude of its tech tree and the resulting slew of possible ship combinations you can build makes the game incredibly fun to replay. Add to that the possibility to create your own fully customizable race with balanced upsides and downsides and you're in replay heaven! For example, it's a lot of fun fun to create a Borg-like race governed by Unification or a Subterranean Mind Controlling race somewhat similar to Babylon 5's Shadows. :ph34r: Oh and, you can eventually terraform planets from barren wastelands to Gaia-level paradise environments with proper techs. You can even create artificial planets from asteroid fields and/or Gas Giants. :cool: Anyway, what I really enjoyed the most in MOO2 was its tactical turn-based space combat. As I've already said, the possibilities of designing any kind of ship you like are simply unmatched by any other game I've played. And even better, you get to experiance the benefits of your meticulously researched techs first hand. One of my favorite strategies was to lower a ship's shields with targeted blasts, make it immobile, board it with elite marines and finally take it over. After the battle I would repair it and use it as my own or sometimes scrap it to get a hold of some obscure tech which it had installed on board. Good times.

Hmm, it seems to work fine in my game. I've tested it with a generic Rapier +3 vs. a generic Club +3, both purchased from Jacoby in the keep's courtyard. When wielding the Club Neeshka used her STR modifier (+1) and when wielding the Rapier she used her DEX modifier (+5) so it worked properly. This was reflected both on her character sheet and in the combat log. No problem. BTW, xUI's my favorite simply because it's completely modular and you get to choose exactly which elements of it you want to install and use.

I just noticed the list of planned changes for patch 1.04 on the official NWN2 forums. Sounds pretty good, especially this part:

In your NWN2 installation folder there should be several text files called "patch_notes_v103.rtf" or similar. You can use Wordpad to view them.

You misunderstand. A one time Diplomacy check would never be required to advance the plot in my NWN2 module, but it should be the proper way for a diplomatic character to handle the situation. Of course, there would always be plenty of other options to advance the plot in case that fails but I simply want to avoid forcing dedicated diplomats into a task which is unsuitable for them (i.e. combat) so I choose to make them auto-succeed without rolling if they posses a certain degree of skill. Under this system rolling the dice is reserved for the less dedicated players who have invested some points into Diplomacy but not enough to auto-succeed. Instead of automatically failing (as would be the case if I only used a fixed skill check) they get to roll the appropriate dice (once only), add their skill rank to the roll and, if successful, they pass the Diplomacy check otherwise they must follow a different route. That way I make the diplomatic path a sure win for a CHA 16 Half-Elf Bard who maxed his Diplomacy skill but the CHA 12 Dwarf Fighter who put a few spare points into Diplomacy has a (small) chance to succeed as well.

Good point but, as already said, I'm primarily concerned with one time skill checks i.e. when no retries are allowed. A fighter who rolled a 2 and missed because he needed a 3 to hit the Orc can simply try again in the next round, but that doesn't work so well for conversation related skills, IMO.

Yup, it's pretty good for situations where melee is required. Although the claws seemed to do less damaged than I expected (it should have been 2d6+10 but it felt more like 2d4+5) the innate 10/Good and Silver DR and the 5hp/round regeneration will keep you up for a long time. :cool: BTW, I'd advise against the Utterdark blast as you'll mainly be facing undead creatures for the rest of the game.

I had Qara buff up my PC before the battle and then used Word of Changing right after talking to LoH. Her Knockdowns simply bounced of my Horned Devil's 32 STR and the 5hp/round regeneration pretty much negated any damage she managed to do. Still, it took me a long time time to defeat her because she seemed to have several uses of Lay on Hands for some reason and thus kept healing herself to full health over and over again.

I think that's a great idea for a PnP session and I've considered implementing a similar (though less refined) method for the module dialogue. For example, if the player has acquired some additional information about the conversation subject, a high INT/WIS score or simply chooses the right lines at the right time the original skill check DC can be lowered a bit.

This's pretty much how I feel as well, and that's precisely why I've proposed no rolls for dedicated diplomats. I think the trick is managing the DC properly so that it is balanced for the player's level. For example, under my system it would be fairly unreasonable to have an important DC20 check for a level 1 player when his absolute maximum diplomacy rank would be 12 (4 ranks +3 from Skill Focus + 5 points bonus from 20 Charisma if Aasimar) under ideal conditions. Instead, I plan on balancing the DC so that it accounts for the player's current level range. I.e. DC5-11 for levels 1-6, DC12-18 for levels 7-12, DC19-25 for levels 12-17, and DC 26-32 for levels 18-20. Note that this is just an example, it's not actually finalized, but that's approximately how I'd like it to work. Under those conditions characters with (nearly) maxed Diplomacy skill and without a negative Charisma modifier will always auto-succeed any Diplomacy check without having to roll, while characters with moderate Diplomacy ranks (possibly those who take it as a cross-class skill) will auto-succeed most of the minor Diplomacy checks and they'll still have an opportunity to roll for the more difficult ones instead of auto-failing, as would be the case with a completely fixed check system. IMO, it's a bit fairer this way. EDIT - I forgot to mention that characters will no longer be rolling a d20 all the time. Instead, they will roll a dice which is equal or slightly lower to than the current DC i.e. for DC5 they would roll a d4, for DC10 a d10, for DC13 a d12...etc.

In my first game I got Khelgar, Elanee and Shandra and on my second playthrough I got Qara, Neeshka and Bishop. Quara and Khelgar both offered to take my place and Neeshka wanted to sabotage Lorne's armor. Although Bishop didn't volunteer to fight for he openly laid out the whole the "run away and hit him once he's out of frenzy" strategy, in great detail I might add. Sorry, my bad, but since warriors have pitiful will saves as well it's still a good strategy. Anyway, the trick is to get him slowed before he goes into Frenzy. That way he'll be crawling around for the rest of the fight and that'll make it easy for you to stay well away from him and pick him off with ranged attacks or spells. I did this with my Warlock by using a few scrolls of Slow (courtesy of Sand and his Scribe Scroll feat) and it worked out fine. :cool:

Disclaimer: this rule was primarily designed for use in a cRPG environment (more specifically in a NWN2 module) but I suppose it could also be used in PnP games so I'm posting it here. Anyway, I've never been a fan of "randomness" in games, particularly when it comes to important one time skill checks conveyed through dialogue (i.e. a Diplomacy or an Intimidate check). The "roll 1d20 and add your skill to the score vs. a fixed DC" approach irritates me because with lower DC's (i.e. < 20) almost anyone has a chance to succeed no matter if he's a CHA 16 Diplomatic Half-Elf Bard or a CHA 6 Half-Orc Barbarian who never bathed since he was born. :D That method simply offers way too much randomness in this matter for my tastes. Increasing the DC above 20 solves some of the problems but it also makes it much more difficult for diplomatically oriented characters to succeed at lower levels. IMO, it's unfair for a character who focuses entirely on diplomacy to fail a moderately difficult check just because he rolled a 2 and needed a 3 to succeed. <_< So, in order to eliminate such and similar annoyances I first thought about resorting to fixed skill checks i.e. the games checks your skill rank and if the value is equal or higher than required you automatically succeed. However, after some more thought this method appeared flawed to me as well since it effectively enforced maximizing skills. So, I thought about making a compromise and opted for the following system. I'm thinking of using both fixed checks and rolling vs. DC and this is how it should work out. Let's say we have a Challenging DC 20 Diplomacy check. If the character's Diplomacy rank is equal or higher than 3/4 of the required DC (i.e. Diplomacy rank 15 and higher) he automatically succeeds. If it's lower than 1/4 of the required DC (i.e. Diplomacy rank 4 and lower) he automatically fails. In all other cases he normally rolls vs the DC. The numbers should be rounded down so a DC 15 check would require 11 (from 11.25) or more ranks to auto-succeed, less than 4 (from 3.75) ranks to auto-fail and a roll for the 4-10 range. IMO, this system is flexible enough to allow dedicated diplomats to succeed at their preferred task, give characters who invested a few points into Diplomacy a fair chance to succeed while keeping the uncharismatic thugs from making all but the most basic DC checks. I guess another issue would be properly balancing the DC's according to the character's level. As I've already said, this is primarily meant for use in a cRPG environment for one time skill checks conveyed through dialogue. Other checks which are used out of dialogue and can be retried freely (i.e. Listen, Search and Spot) should still use the regular roll vs. the DC method. So anyway, what do you people think, is this method suitable for use in a NWN2 module? Do you see any potential difficulties with the implementation? Fell free to comment. :cool:

Actually, it is. Although they share the setting and the skill system they are not all that similar. Check a few Fallout fansites like NMA or DAC and do a little research. You'll find that the majority of the people there prefer FO1 to its sequel (with right IMO). Heh, that's why I said nearly perfect. And as Tigranes mentioned, there are mods that fix that. Besides, what's the point of having the option to talk to your companions if they say the same stuff over and over again? For example, seing the line "Who are you again?" in Khelgar's dialogue near the end of the game was a huge immersion breaker for me. IMO, it's more interesting if the NPC's initiate dialogue by themselves most of the time, like in BG2, but there should also be an option for the player to talk to them and explore their character in greater depth like in PST.

My thoughts exactly. IMO, Baldur's Gate 2 implemented companions in a nearly perfect way. Of the 17 potentially joinable NPC's only 2 (Imoen and Sarevok) were directly involved in the main plot. However, each of the remaining 15 companions was very well developed and had distinct personalities which were reflected by their own outlook on may in-game events. For example, every NPC had an opinion/comment about most quests and, in some cases, their presence in the party would additionally enrich the quest experiance. Furthermore, most companions had a few personal quests, non of which were plot critical, but they often deepened the player's understanding of the companion's character i.e. Cernd's lost child, Keldorn's cheating wife, Jaheira's Harper ties, Edwin's Nether Scroll mishap, Anomen's knighthood trial, Nalia's fight for her keep... etc. The point is, non of the companions were ever forced on you, yet if you decided to take them along anyway they would neatly integrate into the main plot as well as the optional quests. However, the player could also ignore them completely or even outright kill them and the plot would still continue without hinderance. Furthermore, the companions also had interactions with each other where they would compliment one another, argue, leave the party or even outright fight if their outlooks were drastically different (i.e. Keldorn and Viconia). In short, the BG2 companions felt like independent persons who could think for themselves. This is one of the main reasons which made BG2 the most fun game to replay for me. Going through the game with a different party and seeing their reactions to the plot/each other was always a great motivation to start a new game for me. :cool:

Since you're an arcane spellcaster thy this: right at the beginning of the fight hit pause and quckly enable Defensive Casting. Next, try to hit with a Slow spell before he goes into frenzy. Since he's a warrior his Reflex saves are low so he's fairly susceptible to it. Follow that up with a Haste spell on yourself and the fight becomes ridiculously easy. In the end, just finish him off with a few evocation spells.

Note that is Frenzied Berserker and he has the "Deathless Frenzy" ability so you have to wait until it runs out before you can actually kill him. Remember the story about his duel with Cormik? Just run around and wait it out. An easy way to do it is to craft a Holy Greataxe +3 and give it to Khelgar along with some Strength enhancing gear and a few Haste potions. He'll rip him apart. :ph34r: