NWN2: Discussion

[roshan]

I also remember fighting succubi in another area, I believe before fighting the githyanki leader, and that area was also easy, just had to chop away. Now some of my party members may have become dire charmed but as soon as the succubi were killed, the dire charm wore off. Thus if anyone was dire charmed you just had to kill off the succubi quickly so dire charm was never an issue. Stoneskin was never an issue with my main characters huge damage output.

 

I do't recall charm wearing f when the caster is dead. But I could be wrong on this. I agree that stoneskin was only a nuisance and nothing else though.

 

There is Disintegrate in the game as well, although I'm not sure if any enemy ever use it. But I absolutely hate spells that kill without resurrection in the IE games so I'm fine with that one being nerfed. Worst of all was Imprisonment. I really hated that spell. I can live with no auto-resurrect (like I said it's only a preference), but if so let the characters that go down actually be resurrectable. Or remove resurrection completely from the game.

 

(strange as it may sound, that last one is actually my favorite option, since I always felt resurrection as it works in D&D is a bit retarded)

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Even if dire charm didnt wear off after the succubi died, it did wear of eventually, and the game didnt end when you were only left with only dire charmed characters. So the solution was always to simply let you dire charmed characters kill your uncharmed characters, and then wait till the dire charm wore off and all your characters resurrected.

 

For me, whether a character was killed with or without the ability to be resurrected, it didnt make a difference since I never bothered with the spell. Any game with resurrection is going to be broken as it will become too easy. NWN2 doesnt even give you the option of not using resurrection - it actually forces resurrection on you!

[Spider]

For me, whether a character was killed with or without the ability to be resurrected, it didnt make a difference since I never bothered with the spell. Any game with resurrection is going to be broken as it will become too easy. NWN2 doesnt even give you the option of not using resurrection - it actually forces resurrection on you!

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So in a roundabout way we both actually agree that the best solution is to have no res at all?

[roshan]

Keep in mind I never said I felt Sarevok was a good character. but he filled his role in the plot (as it was), did what he was supposed to do and didn't annoy me. Irenicus annoyed me. It really is as simple as that. I see people claiming that Irenicus is such a good villain and all (not you though) and I just don't get it. I think most everything about him was poorly made and never bought into his motivations. Me and jonny-boy simply didn't click. I even liked Bodhi better, and I wasn't particularly found of her either.

 

As a character, Irenicus was decent. Perhaps better than Sarevok. But as a villain? No, I dont think so. Villains are characters that should be feared or at the very least hated. I never feared Irenicus - I believe that there were multiple times where the PC fought him in the game and beat him. Irenicus never incited any hatred either - he was a pathetic and pitiful character.

[Gromnir]

"Even if dire charm didnt wear off after the succubi died, it did wear of eventually, and the game didnt end when you were only left with only dire charmed characters. So the solution was always to simply let you dire charmed characters kill your uncharmed characters, and then wait till the dire charm wore off and all your characters resurrected."

 

last thing. this kinda stuff is maybe the difference 'tween what Gromnir considers difficult and roshan's/spider's notions. if we lost party member(s) during a fight, then it werren't easy. auto-resurect made painless, but fight were not easy from our pov. sure, we had on highest difficulty setting, but based on our reading there not be much difference'tween hardcore and highest, not really.

 

lose a party member in a d&d game is not an easy fight. we lost party memebers in the warehouse battle and the second warehous battle with githyanki and blade golem... as well as a half dozen or so other battles... more frequent deaths as game progressed. if you had been playing bg1, or any other d&d game you woulda' been replaying those battles numerous times, and they woulda' seemed hard 'cause of replays.

 

oh, and 'cause we didn't craft, and we almost never used gith or warlock 'less we had to, the end portion o' gam,e were ridiculous... 'cause equipment makes the character. gith and warlock were pretty much butt naked after keep battles, and there were no opportunity to re-equip party before endgame section... and we weren't gonna replay whole keeps battles again just to re-equip.

 

also, restoration AFTER a battle not so much help during battle. is the debilitating effects of poison, disease, life drain DURING battle that makes more difficult.

 

gonna have to wait til after 5:00pm to get more from Gromnir.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited December 1, 2006 by Gromnir

[Spider]

last thing.  this kinda stuff is maybe the difference 'tween what Gromnir considers difficult and roshan's/spider's notions.  if we lost party member(s) during a fight, then it werren't easy.  auto-resurect made painless, but fight were not easy from our pov.  sure, we had on highest difficulty setting, but based on our reading there not be much difference'tween hardcore and highest, not really. 

 

This is pretty much spot on I think. Even though I didn't go to such extremes as Roshan did, I'd never let a charmed character mow down the rest of the party.

 

As for poisons and such. Disease doesn't to anything at once, it takes a little while for it to kick in. by that time any give battle is typically over. Poison does have an immediate effect, but all it does is lower your hitpoints some, so it's practically just damage. Level drain is more annoying, but it depends a bit on how far you're drained. One or two levels don't make that much difference in a single fight.

 

Also I always keep at least one restoration spell memorized (especially since there is one at level 2 where there aren't that many useful spells, at least not once Bull's strength becomes obsolete).

[deganawida]

Level drain is more annoying, but it depends a bit on how far you're drained. One or two levels don't make that much difference in a single fight.

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Heh, during

the fight in Lord Tarivok's manor with the big demon

, I had 8 or 9 levels drained off of my PC. He couldn't hit squat. I'd have killed for level drain protection at that point.

[roshan]

ps  keep in mind that auto-resurrect also meant that some of the most horrible weapons of enemies were not available to the baddies in nwn2.  no disintegrate or petrification effects 'cause those gots a duration that lasts beyond death.  no wonder we not see no beholders.

 

HA! Good Fun!

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Just a small correction, but petrification is one of the effects of Prismatic Spray, and the only one triggering in the non-1.03b version of the game. Petrification, though, does go away similarly to death. I learned this when Neeshka failed a Will save vs. confusion, attacked Sand, and Sand hit her with Prismatic Spray. It's happened a couple of other times since then. The petrification effect seems to last longer than death, though I might have been kept in combat for a while and not known it.

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good to know. we never seen a baddie use any disitegrate or prismatic spray effects, so we assumed they were not in oc bag of baddie weapons. though it is kinda lame that petrification wears off, just as does death.

 

btw, we would post more at bio regarding nwn2, but derek french and the mods there seems to have decided that people who simply wanna complain 'bout game bugginess or performance must needs do so in a specific thread. get locked otherwise. got nothing 'gainst lockage when a guy wants to spam board with "I HATE OBSIDIAN!" posts, but lock any thread started to complain 'bout game is somehow more than a little disturbing to Gromnir. am hopeful that obsidian not take a similar approach in this place. you can complain, but all complaints must be type-written and deposited in the round file next to josh's desk? that would be unfortunate.

 

HA! Good Fun!

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Well it is pretty much the same over here as all NWN2 discussion is being limited to just these 2-3 threads by the mods. Start a new topic like Soulthief did and it gets locked.

 

I can see that there may be a reason for this, that this is a general RPG discussion forum and therefore they dont want too many NWN2 topic here, but a spade is still a spade and the end result is a restricted environment just like the Bio forums.

[Xard]

"Well it is pretty much the same over here as all NWN2 discussion is being limited to just these 2-3 threads by the mods. Start a new topic like Soulthief did and it gets locked."

 

It was locked because it decreased into trolling

[kirottu]

It was locked because it decreased into trolling

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[Musopticon?]

[roshan]

BTW I can see the point that any fight where a party member is lost is a difficult one. However, I equate difficulty with failure, and having to try hard in order to succeed. Whether you lose no one or your entire party except for 1 character, the end result is the same as your dead characters will automatically resurrect. So there is no difference and either way you have succeeded. A real difficult battle is one where failure is possible, a battle that you need to play multiple times in order to achieve success. The one and only battle in NWN2 where I actually failed and had to reload was the battle with Zaxis.

 

In NWN2 I eventually got tired of the fighting the clumsy interface and the awful AI and towards the end just put my casters on powered casting mode and let the AI manage my fighters as well. I fought through the fire giant area without ever even selecting any of my characters except the PC. Khelgar and my PC were pretty much invincible in melee and took more damage from Sand and Elanee than the giants. Neeshka on the other hand kept dying from Sand and Elanees AOE spells. I think Elanee may have also killed Sand once, or maybe it was the other way around and Sand killed Elanee. It was only during the final battle that I actually gave the NPCs commands. I sent my PC to kill the giant king, set Khelgar against some giants, set Neeshka against another giant and ordered Sand and Elanee to cast spells at the dragon. After the giant king dropped dead, I sent my PC to fight the dragon and to my surprise after just a couple of hits the dragon dropped dead as Elanee ice stormed him. That battle was such absolute crap, it was perhaps the most anticlimatic battle I have ever played in any game.

 

I dont know about you guys but entire areas of fire giants that can be cleared by my party without any input from me does not count as difficulty. In fact during the early areas of the game the only thing that led to battles feeling "difficult" was my excessive micromanaging, a habit from the IE games - which in NWN2 was extremely difficult due to the interface, and compounded due to my framerate problems. As soon as I started relaxing and decided to play NWN2 as NWN2 and not another IE game, battles became easier than eating cheesecakes.

[roshan]

"Well it is pretty much the same over here as all NWN2 discussion is being limited to just these 2-3 threads by the mods. Start a new topic like Soulthief did and it gets locked."

 

It was locked because it decreased into trolling

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

In case you havent noticed, all topics regarding NWN2 except for a few are being locked by the mods, irregardless of the thread starter or the content.

[Darque]

In case you havent noticed, all topics regarding NWN2 except for a few are being locked by the mods, irregardless of the thread starter or the content.

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As has been explained more than once, this is being done to prevent board clutter.

 

These aren't the official NWN2 forums, and this is a general computer and console game sub-forum, not a NWN2 specific sub-forum.

 

If a thread is started that's more or less a duplicate of an existing thread it gets locked, otherwise it will probably be left open unless the discussion could also be covered by an existing thread.

 

Thank you, the sky isn't really falling, and have a nice day.

[roshan]

I know that the reason is to prevent clutter, but the fact remains that the end result is the same: being limited to just a few threads.

 

 

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Uploading an attachment with some thoughts on the interface over here since images cant be uploaded to the Bio boards.

Edited December 2, 2006 by roshan

[Dark_Raven]

Level drain is more annoying, but it depends a bit on how far you're drained. One or two levels don't make that much difference in a single fight.

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Heh, during

the fight in Lord Tarivok's manor with the big demon

, I had 8 or 9 levels drained off of my PC. He couldn't hit squat. I'd have killed for level drain protection at that point.

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OMG I hate level drain. I will search every store to find something to protect me from that if I know a forth coming battle will have enemies that do that damage.

[Darque]

Uploading an attachment with some thoughts on the interface over here since images cant be uploaded to the Bio boards.

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I'm not sure about most of those, but I definately agree about the mini-map.

 

I spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out how to expand it before I discovered you can't. Or at least if you can I can't figure it out.

[Gromnir]

poison can do more than constitution damage, and cure disease during battle is not always so easy to pull off... nwn2 disease incubation periods seems to take rounds rather than hours or days. more than once we seen disease incubate while battle were still continuing. poison, disease and level drain is all a real pain for Gromnir, though level drain is worstest.

 

elanee, the only priest available til more than mid-way through game, is a druid, not a cleric. as such she cannot cast full restoration. she gots access to lesser restoration and neutralize poison and cure disease, but those are all 3rd level spells... same level as call lightning. do you honestly load elanee up with cure disease, lesser restoration, and neutralize poison if you not know you is gonna need those spells?

 

reload.

 

btw, death ward is a 5th level druid spell. clerics get at 4th level.

 

oh, and these boards ain't quite same as bio boards... yet. not really. 1 "sour-grapes" thread as they call it at bio... just 1. threads here get closed when they becomes flamefests, but derek french and chris priestly simply close such threads at bio as soon as they get started.

 

in any event, auto-ressurect seriously nerfs game. whatever rationalizations roshan or spider wants to use, if you were playing bg1 or iwd2 or bg2 and half you party gots killed during battle, chances are you would reload and no doubt you would thinks battle had been tough. maybe you thinks that such death and raise from death rules is too burdensome for crpgs, but such rules does factor into CR and basic notions of relative difficulty of battles. take out such things and you gimps CRs.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[roshan]

If you can "win" a fight with half your party dead, and then have them autoresurrect, then the fight was not difficult irregardless of whether you lost any party members. Whether a fight is difficult or not must be judged using the games criteria for victory(which is what actually matters), not your own personal ideas.

 

BTW there is a very simple solution to disease in NWN2. Let an enemy kill the character, when the character resurrects, POOF! Good as new. Not sure whether this affects level drain as well, but I never had to bother curing level drain or disease for any of my characters.

[Sand]

That is one of the things I hate about this game. No Permadeath. Also I don't wussify my games. If half my party died because I did something stupid I continue on. I would either loot their corpse and bury the dead or resurrect them at the nearest temple (or do it myself if high enough level).

[Jorian Drake]

That is one of the things I hate about this game.  No Permadeath.  Also I don't wussify my games.  If half my party died because I did something stupid I continue on.  I would either loot their corpse and bury the dead or resurrect them at the nearest temple (or do it myself if high enough level).

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I vote the 'loot their corpses' option

[roshan]

I have never used resurrection except perhaps for the novelty of trying it out a few times in BG1. It is utterly idiotic that in NWN2 resurrection is forced on your characters.

[Dark_Raven]

Every one should be able to be resurrected unless they were chunked like in the BG games or if a spell was cast on them that destroyed their body.

[Jorian Drake]

Every one should be able to be resurrected unless they were chunked like in the BG games or if a spell was cast on them that destroyed their body.

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need for resurrecting isn't same as sleeping in the middle of the battle and then awaking after it

[Darque]

They aren't dead, they're just sleeping soundly.

[Sand]

If I had a choice I would leave Bishop for dead.