Didn't fancy Hellfire Warlock as I never liked playing with Warlocks, anyway. Just wasn't much fun. They're all evil-ish/neutral and I will probably go that route, which is unusual since I usually do the 'Good' route first.

Warlocks can also be Chaotic Good. Also it's worth pointing out that there are no alignment shifts in SoZ (that I ran into, anyway). The way you set your character is the way he / she is going to be for the rest of the game. So you can make a party of several disparate alignments with no conflict, and you'll probably get a good cross section of alignment-specific dialogue.

Yep, and I also feel Warlocks come into their own a bit more with SoZ with their non-limited casting. If you try a Warlock, make sure to grab Hellfire Warlock though (think you can get it by level 9 Warlock). It adds a bit more (much needed) variety to the Warlock class. Summon Baatezu is fun and the Hellfire abilities can be useful.

 

I never tried building a Swashbuckler myself (had the Swashbuckler cohort for a short while). Does it work well?

I finally got my copy of the expansion. Started off with a party of halflings. Got my butt kicked in the first fight. *sniff*

I just picked up SoZ yesterday myself.. did not get far myself just a few quests into the story. My party:

 

human ranger/barb

moon elf warlock

dwarf druid

human rogue (going for assassin)

 

Will post more once I can talk about the game in detail, however first impression, whoever the sound eng was for the voice acting needs to be fired. Not only do the ambient sounds/music wash out 1/2 the voice acting so you can hardly hear it but some of the actors seemed to speak with their mouths right on the mic and you hear the reverberation of speaking P's for example.

 

So far interesting story, love the party aspect, good AI when I let the other 3 party members fend for themselves, and the overland map is nicely executed. Just the poor voice acting quality is huring my expereince thus far..

With my halfling rogue/swash as the party leader I'm not forced into any encounter - they're easy enough to avoid while going my way. But there *are* a lot of them, so I imagine a 'badly' made party would have a lot of frustration.

 

I never tried building a Swashbuckler myself (had the Swashbuckler cohort for a short while). Does it work well?

 

Currently only at Rogue 4 / Swash 1, which means the halfling kind of sucks at close combat. The problem is I have no idea how high a level SOZ can take you (I'm assuming 15), and I'm not really convinced by some of the Swashbuckler's higher level benefits. I'm not one of those who can dissect the minutiae of D&D classes easily, but from what I can see in broad chunks, level 8 for the +4 flanking bonus is only as far as you need go - or even just level 3 for weapon finesse and the reflex bonus, since rogues can (I think?) easily match the forthcoming dodge/reflex extras. The swash does have a high BAB though, so I suppose later on they turn out more meatier than rogues. I might just crank up the swash levels up to 8 now, and see what happens. I was sort of envisioning a dextrous melee fighter with small weapons doing a lot of flanking (with sneak attack bonuses thrown in), but we'll see.

 

Combat seems a lot more difficult, especially with stabilising dying party members. Kind of sucks that my sorceress is a yuan-ti and I'm compromised by the level adjustment, though.

With my halfling rogue/swash as the party leader I'm not forced into any encounter - they're easy enough to avoid while going my way. But there *are* a lot of them, so I imagine a 'badly' made party would have a lot of frustration.

 

I never tried building a Swashbuckler myself (had the Swashbuckler cohort for a short while). Does it work well?

 

Currently only at Rogue 4 / Swash 1, which means the halfling kind of sucks at close combat. The problem is I have no idea how high a level SOZ can take you (I'm assuming 15), and I'm not really convinced by some of the Swashbuckler's higher level benefits. I'm not one of those who can dissect the minutiae of D&D classes easily, but from what I can see in broad chunks, level 8 for the +4 flanking bonus is only as far as you need go - or even just level 3 for weapon finesse and the reflex bonus, since rogues can (I think?) easily match the forthcoming dodge/reflex extras. The swash does have a high BAB though, so I suppose later on they turn out more meatier than rogues. I might just crank up the swash levels up to 8 now, and see what happens. I was sort of envisioning a dextrous melee fighter with small weapons doing a lot of flanking (with sneak attack bonuses thrown in), but we'll see.

 

Combat seems a lot more difficult, especially with stabilising dying party members. Kind of sucks that my sorceress is a yuan-ti and I'm compromised by the level adjustment, though.

 

You can go as high as you want in SOZ - the level cap is still 30, just like MOTB. Of course, beyond the high teens you won't gain much experience from quests and monsters.

I've done two complete playthroughs of SoZ and on both of them I ended up around 16-17 or so (with variations depending on ECL). This is with parties that I fleshed out to 6 members as soon as I had the possibility to do so. Mileage will vary depending on how many members you decide to bring along.

I think the addition of the new death system is the greatest boon to NWN2 combat. Just having it there makes it feel like much more is at stake in battle. I don't like those Coins of Waukeen though, but I think I read somewhere that OEI was forced to add them or something. Kind of a shame since they feel a bit "cheap".

I really like that they went with a completely non-scaled gameworld, since you can really go right into trouble right away.

 

I agree with Rhomal about the voiceacting though. Now, for the most part I like the acting. But the sound quality seems to be lacking for some characters. Unfortunately this is true for both Volo and Sa'Sani (who are the biggest characters). MotB didn't have this problem, and so I wonder if the SoZ dialogues were recorded elsewhere. The big characters were actually voiced by OEI people. Volo was voiced by Alex Brandon, Sa'Sani by Fryda Wolff, Annie Carlson did a number of characters (including the tiefling in Samargol). Maybe these were recorded elsewhere? I don't know, but it's a MYSTARY to be sure.

As average as the voice acting may sound, I think they have the potential to be better through further practice. Sasani's voice has tremendous pontential afterall to me.

The Thread is getting a bit long... continued here