My MotB thread

[Rhomal]

Got about 5 hrs into MotB and thought I would gave some impressions. (I Don't mind discussing spoilers but NOT beyond the point in the game I am at though please, thanks!)

 

Kinda pissed my warlock/barbarion hottie PC was violated like that. Rip that damn shard out of my chest THEN have the gall to curse me with the spirit eater infliction?! Someone is going to be hurt... badly...

 

Then add insult to injury, they rob my blind, all the l00t in my backpack gone (My 100K magick bastard sword!! NO!!) PLUS my silver sword! The ass clowns! thankfully they left me with most of the equipment I was wearing.

 

So far got a Red Wizard of Thay, Bear spirit and a spirit shaman in my party. I like the Red Wizard, shes a keeper however for a Red Wizard she didn't have much of a range of spells, Ive been spending some of my l00t buying up scrolls she can scribe. Plus, like Sand she cant cast summon spells. WTH is up with the designers against NPCs who can cast summons? A GENERAL wizard NPC that does not specialize in a school would be nice! That gripe aside the spirit shaman (who I am assuming is going to be my token cleric for this module) is a interesting character. Not sure if I can trust him, however as long as his ego does not get in the way of his loyalty I'll stick with him and see where it leads. The bear, well I give OEI a A+ for being original. Not sure if hes my cup of tea (personality wise) as I just picked him up, but we'll see. My PC will give him a shake and see how he does. If he cant be a good tank I'll cut him loose.

 

I'd like to find, hopefully another tank class NPC in case the bear does not work out. Not sure how many NPCs are in this NX1 but a similar selection as the OC would be welcome.

 

As far as the overall story; so far I like it, I am very curious what happened to my PC and why someone wanted that shard so bad. (With the silver sword bonded back together I don't see what use it has but then again who knows...) I am certainly looking forward to also finding out what happened to the OC companions.

 

when I played table top D&D I never really read about or had a campaign in this region of the FR. So this setting is quite new and interesting to me. Very much a harsher, primitive, more fitting setting IMO then the sword coast. Which I always felt was too... civilized and (over) developed.

 

Anyways as I said I just got the bear to join me (hell of a battle) and now I think I am going to go looking for that missing girl with the wings. See where that leads. So far though a very good story and I love all the new assets they included (HORSES!).

[Pop]

hmm, there is a spoiler subforum right up there, you know. And my beautiful, awesome, beautifully awesome spoiler thread might very well make this thread superfluous.

 

And there are no other tank NPCs. Or, I should say, there's one potential tank, but he's mutually exclusive with Old Father Bear.

 

And as far as I know, there were horses in NWN2 proper. You just couldn't ride them. And you can't ride them now. So.

[Gromnir]

1 quick observation about transmuters:

 

disintegrate is the all-time most underutilized d&d anti-undead spell... evar. in previous incarnations o' d&d disintegrations would make 1007 disappear, but that ain't the case no more. kill the critter and his goodies remain intact. particularly noteworthy is that disintegrate is NOT death magic but it does require a fort save. is almost unique in that it requires a fort save but ain't one of the numerous things undead is immune to. undead, with few exceptions, have relative crappy fort saves... 'cause when you add the various undead templates to a creature you reduce constitution to 0... is one o' the seemingly few drawbacks to being dead in d&d.

 

red wizards gotta specialize. if you is gonna have a red wizard npc in a game with loads o' undead, transmutation is the primary school Gromnir would request so that we can spam the heck out of the baddies with empowered and maximized disintegrations. you thinks clerics and paladins is the best undead killers in d&d? bah. given turn resistances and new divine and sunlight protection feats for undead, a red wizard mage who overkill specializes in transmutation is possibly the most efficient killer o' undead we can come up with.

 

yeah, Gromnir would prefer a generalist as an npc... but maybe the red wizard angle were considered vital. in any event, while we always hear folks talk 'bout necromancers as being super-groovy-keen, Gromnir would choose a transmuter any day o' the week to watch our back if we knows we gotta confront powerful undead.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Rhomal]

hmm, there is a spoiler subforum right up there, you know. And my beautiful, awesome, beautifully awesome spoiler thread might very well make this thread superfluous.

 

And there are no other tank NPCs. Or, I should say, there's one potential tank, but he's mutually exclusive with Old Father Bear.

 

And as far as I know, there were horses in NWN2 proper. You just couldn't ride them. And you can't ride them now. So.

 

I didn't like your thread so... No offense. Was like reading a declassified document with all the blanked out text. heh

 

As for horses they WORKED on them but never included them in NWN2 proper. The mentality, at the time, was the typical player would get 'confused' or be 'teased' if they added them but couldn't ride them. From what I was told, a estimate was done on the manpower/art assets needed to do riding/combat properly and they number crunchers came back with a number way too big. So per Ferret (and prob others at OEI once they saw the $ involved) at the time, it was axed 1/2 though development. Apparently for NX1 they polished the existing horse resources (nix the riding as it is still cost prohibitive I am sure) as ambient life only. Which, I might add I fought for when I ran nwn2news/nwn2worlds. Glad to see they changed their mind!

[Rhomal]

1 quick observation about transmuters:

 

disintegrate is the all-time most underutilized d&d anti-undead spell... evar. in previous incarnations o' d&d disintegrations would make 1007 disappear, but that ain't the case no more. kill the critter and his goodies remain intact. particularly noteworthy is that disintegrate is NOT death magic but it does require a fort save. is almost unique in that it requires a fort save but ain't one of the numerous things undead is immune to. undead, with few exceptions, have relative crappy fort saves... 'cause when you add the various undead templates to a creature you reduce constitution to 0... is one o' the seemingly few drawbacks to being dead in d&d.

 

red wizards gotta specialize. if you is gonna have a red wizard npc in a game with loads o' undead, transmutation is the primary school Gromnir would request so that we can spam the heck out of the baddies with empowered and maximized disintegrations. you thinks clerics and paladins is the best undead killers in d&d? bah. given turn resistances and new divine and sunlight protection feats for undead, a red wizard mage who overkill specializes in transmutation is possibly the most efficient killer o' undead we can come up with.

 

yeah, Gromnir would prefer a generalist as an npc... but maybe the red wizard angle were considered vital. in any event, while we always hear folks talk 'bout necromancers as being super-groovy-keen, Gromnir would choose a transmuter any day o' the week to watch our back if we knows we gotta confront powerful undead.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

Interesting, wasn't aware of that...

 

Didn't realize Red Wizards had to specialize. As for undead, in the OC I took casivar the paladin and the gith cleric to help defend the walls in the defense of the keep. It was pretty much a cake walk. with them turning, killing undead like it was going out of style, I could focus on destroying the siege towers. they were the perfect combo IMO of handling that encounter. (For the courtyard defense took the gith again and my #1 tank khelgar. with the ironfist artifacts and all the feats for a warhammer the dwarf is a wrecking machine!)

 

So no other tank huh? Thats a little disappointing. Would have been nice for a khelgar like NPC to be kicking around. Not that my warlock(13)/barbarion( (at this point) is a push over but be nice to have a dedicated (human like) tank. Without spoiling me too much what other classes can I look forward too finding?

[CoM_Solaufein]

Moved to the correct forum.

[Gromnir]

"As for undead, in the OC I took casivar the paladin and the gith cleric to help defend the walls in the defense of the keep. It was pretty much a cake walk. with them turning, killing undead like it was going out of style, I could focus on destroying the siege towers. they were the perfect combo IMO of handling that encounter."

 

the cleric available to you in motb has ridiculous high wisdom and charisma. even so, your clerics won't be able to turn much of anything in motb... the undead have too many hds. at epic levels turn attempts is useful for little save to power various feats. storm of vengeance is fantastic, and firestorm is solid... sunburst/sunbeam is okie dokie if less efficacious than you might s'pose... and mass death ward is pretty much essential. a paladin with mega charisma and epic divine might is a serious weapon 'gainst undead... and anything else for that matter, but the cleric & paladin turn attempts and spell arsenal is increasing useless as you level.

 

disintegration. no 20d6 max like many other damage spells... tops out at 40d6. boost the red wizard's int as high as possible, and make sure to take epic transmutation focus... her spell DCs will be in the 40s. undead trying to make a +40 DC fort save? maxed igm and empowered disintegrations is far better undead killers than anything the motb clerics got available.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Cantousent]

Since it's easy to get Safiya improved (or is it greater? Whatever) empower means that she'll cast that disintegrate at one level higher but with a much higher damage spread.

[Gromnir]

yeah. disintegrate is simply a nifty spell... particularly at high levels. every boss, not only the undead ones, is seemingly immune to death magic. disintegrate is not death magic.

 

mass heal and storm o' vengeance is the cleric spells we thinks is arguably in same league as disintegrate for high level undead slaying... but as eldar notes, disintegrate is cheaper; more bang for the buck.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Tale]

Seriously, Vampiric Feast. Kills not just one target, but all of the ones around you. Isn't Death Magic.

[Gromnir]

epic spells is nukes... 1 shot per day. not very efficient. also, technically speaking, vampiric feast has the evil descriptor. good casters should not be able to use w/o cost.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Tale]

But, there is no cost. So who cares?

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Gromnir]

But, there is no cost. So who cares?

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

as has been noted many times, there is a cost for resting in motb.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Tale]

But no extra cost on the account of one being good while casting an evil spell, which is the point we was trying to make.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Gorth]

But no extra cost on the account of one being good while casting an evil spell, which is the point we was trying to make.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Oh, but it does. It costs you a lot of your social standing among your fellow forumites when they know that you are doing evil deeds while pretending to be good...

 

How can you even sleep at night?!?

 

Anyway, notes duly taken regarding usefulness of disintegrate.

 

Edit: Atrocious spelling.

[Cantousent]

Vampiric Feast has a lot of problems. Lack of penalty is only one. Not only did I have Safiya memorize disintegrates, my character did as well. I don't think Disintegrate is broken, merely very effective. Vampiric Feast is broken, but it's so broken I tended to look at it as either an "oh no!" button, or a simple way to bypass boring or tedious fights. I probably used disintegrate more often than any other spell, mostly because it's available at low levels and can frequently one-shot specific monsters. I relied a lot of Wail of the Banshee and some other spells. I agree with you, Tale, in that Vampiric Feast is much more powerful and useful than any other spell. If I had as many uses per rest as I did the lower level stuff, I would have used that. I hadn't really thought about why I used disintegrate so much. I guess, in retrospect, it really had a lot to do with the types of opponents we faced, as Gromnir says.

 

...But yeah, there isn't a spell that competes with Vampiric Feast.

 

Come to think of it, while it isn't as bad as the Vamp spell, The clenched fist is pretty damned broken also.

Edited November 6, 2007 by Cantousent

[Atreides]

Does Disintegrate destroy gear in MOTB? If not I'll start spamming it.

 

Also I'm a little disappointed that stuff like Wail of the Banshee, Turn Undead is useless because the enemies have such high HDs and saves etc.

[Pop]

In MotB, Disentegrate does not compromise the entigrity of inert objects.

[Rhomal]

Thank you all for the suggestions and info about spell selection. Very helpful.

 

Question, the spirit bar is annoying as all hell! what is the console command (I have to assume one exists) to max out my spirit bar?

 

Thanks!

[Xard]

I never understand how people find it so annoying, it's easy to deal with

[Tale]

I was able to deal with max craving the entire game. Though, there was frustration:

1) Getting adjusted to it. It's new, so you get kind of paranoid when you first start dealing with it.

2) There's a bug where a specific 2-day travel takes more spirit energy than it's supposed to 9/10 times.

Edited November 6, 2007 by Tale

[funcroc]

Super-Easy-Mode Spirit Eater Curse

[Azarkon]

Undeath to Death with high DC is the way I got through most of the undead heavy fights in the game. Kills death knights instantly and you don't even have to empower it. Only elder vampires gave me trouble, but then they're a pain for just about any caster-heavy gtroup.

[Rhomal]

I never understand how people find it so annoying, it's easy to deal with

 

It drains way to fast, and I feel like, simply, I am playing the sims (spending most of my time working on keeping my food, hygiene, rest meters to a reasonable level then actually doing non-critical tasks, ie fun activities). I like the concept, and how it plugs into the story just not polished enough for my taste. I rather just play and enjoy the game/story rather then feel like I am playing sims expansion #853 'D&D fun' where I am constantly distracted by the meter and its level.

 

M2C

[Cantousent]

Actually, in all the discussion about the Spirit Eater mechanic, this was something I suggested. Not that QA had a lot of sway, and I had virtually none, but I suggested that the spirit eater concept be confined to the story and not be a mechanic in the game. In the end, I rather enjoyed it, but I knew some folks would still hate it.