Lazy man needs help with Neverwinter nights 2

“Hit-dice” refers to the number of base hit points that you get per level.

It’s just another Quake game but with stats and clicking.

LOL

I know you didn’t want to mess with too many particulars, but I’ve heard that going cleric with 1 level of fighter makes everything that much easier. Almost all weapons are then available and you still get all the perks. Now having said that, I usually prefer other classes, so I haven’t really messed with this too much.

Yes, if you compare it to the Bard, they get more spells, more hitpoints, and better armor. However, they don’t get “use magic item” (which lets Bards use any magic item, even class or alignment restricted ones), perform (which has some pretty cool things like adamantium armor party affecting songs), sleight of hand (steal shit), or tumbling (avoid attacks of opportunity, when you move away out of melee or into melee range of an enemy).

So Rob which one did you chose? Inquiring minds want to know.

Cleric.

I’ve only just stared. I’m looking for “the shard” and I don’t see the techinical issues with the game that others are. I did the auto update befopre playing and have a lot of options at medium but I’m running with most shadows and effects on at 1680x1050 and its running fine.

One suggestion: Try to get your charisma pretty high, and put points into Diplomacy (if you’re playinjg a good guy) or Intimidate (if you’re bad). This will give you lots of dialog options you wouldn’t otherwise be able to utilize.

I would say though, dont expect to get a ton out of the talking skills (bluff, diplomacy, intimidate) unless they are class skills and you keep them maxed. Some skill checks for those skills are low but some are really high. Of the three, I have found Diplomacy to be the most used but YMMV.

You might consider Able Learner or Skill Focus:Whatever if you want to focus on one or more talky skills that are not class skills.

Looks like picking a class with charisma as a core attribute is a good idea
for people like me who want to see most of the dialog options :)

Can anyone explain the rules of Sneak Attack to me? Obviously my first attack out of stealth is a sneak attack, but after that it seems really random. In the first NWN game, as long as my target had another player or NPC also attacking it, I’d perform sneak attacks automatically everytime. Now, I can’t determine why I do sneak attacks sometimes but not others. Is there a facing requirement? Do I have to be standing behind my target?

If you are positioned so you are facing your enemy’s side or rear while they are engaged with a different opponent, you get sneak attacks. Taunting with Khelgar (or just starting the fight with him first and doing the most damage) and putting Neeshka to the side works fairly well on bosses. Seems to work with ranged attacks as well, so you can keep her out of harms way if need be.

Is that new in NWN2? Granted, it’s been over two years since I last played NWN1, but I don’t remember having to position myself accordingly.

[Edit]
Also, I think I might have really gimped my Halfling rogue. I only put 10 points in Str and 18 in Dex and then took the feat (Weapon Finesse) that allows me to use my Dex bonus for melee attack rolls. That’s all well and good when I can perform sneak attacks, since they form the bulk of my damage, but when I don’t get a sneak attack (or can’t because I’m fighting an undead or whatever) I’m only hitting for 1 or even 0 damage with my two dagger +1s. I just went through the section where you fight the zombies along with the Lizardman, and I felt really useless, barely hitting for any damage at all. If it wasn’t for the rest of my party (and the Dwarf fighter in particular), I never would have completed that area. Should I have taken more Str?

Missed this earlier. The primary reason for my recommending a cleric is because, as yet, there don’t appear to be any healer NPCs in the game. This may change later on, I don’t know, but not having to worry about skill overlap in your NPCs is an awesome thing. That, and access to HEALING and TURN UNDEAD abilities should be nice. Worse comes to worse, Rob could take a level or two of Fighter for extra melee action.

Substitute the phrase “action RPG” then. At the moment, NWN2’s about map clearing and loot gathering with an absolute minimum of roleplaying going on. But again, I could be just cranky since I’m one of multiple rogues.

You have to be flanking a target that another character is also attacking. So moving to the other side of the enemy is very important. Basically any occasion where the enemy doesn’t get a dexterity bonus (it’s surprised because of stealth/invisibility, or held paralzyed, or being flanked) allows you to perform a sneak attack – D&D 3.0/3.5 makes rogues very powerful as a result.

Flanking is never adequately explained in D&D computer games, and it’s the most important combat rule to know.

Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s the way it seems to work in NWN2.

Generally I kill stuff faster that I can pay attention to what’s going on though. Charm one or two enemies, throw a radius daze spell, a fire wall, and a few fireballs, call lightnings, etc and it’s over before you know it. Anything left is entertaining a very excited dwarf’s mace.

Yay, I’m a game reviewer now!

Also, I’m in Neverwinter…and it’s pretty boring. I’m going to continue on because I’ve been told it gets mucho better after the docks, but it’s so boring I wish they’d just give me a dungeon to clear or something already. If I was giving a review at this point, I’d give it a C, maybe C-. Here’s hoping everyone is right and it picks up past this point.

And the only two buildings can you actually go inside thing kills me. Here’s this whole city setup and the merchants and everyone else hang out in the streets. And they have all of those nice houses they could be in. Bluh.

To be fair to that last comment, I don’t want to have to go into every single house, but I think they over did loading screen avoidance and lost a lot of immersion with that…at least for me. The tutorial felt all right, even though you couldn’t go inside most things because the setting fit everyone being around outside. The Docks are a big break in immersion.

Oh, and the Dungeon Siege engine has ruined me. I can’t WAIT until someone makes that engine with all the goodness of modern engines. I expect to be able to go into everything without loading screens now.

Well any real time RPG is an action RPG isnt it? It is to me. The combat in NWN can be more tactical than Diablo or Titan quest but it doesnt have to be (and sure as hell isnt if you leave the AI to its fuckery).

/mourn the death of turn based tactical combat

Ok, so after reading all this I got really curious, and instead of continuing my campaign for now, I created a Cleric.

Holy Choices, Batman!

No one said anything about having to chose between over a dozen things on which kind of cleric to become. Air/Water/Earth/Good/Evil/Strength/War, etc., etc. Wow, lots and lots of choices. Were there any that you would recommend over others, or are they all equally good? The War/Strength option is what the “recommend” button came up with when I tried to customize a Warpriest Cleric build. Heal and Protection sounded neat too, since they allow you to buff and heal more.

Plus, I’ve heard that haste in this game is super powerful because instead of a targetted spell, its a spell that affects the whole party. So maybe going after the type of Cleric that will get haste faster would be really powerful? (I forgot which one that was).

Yeah, healing is great because…you heal better. You heal as a higher level cleric and you have access to bigger heal spells sooner.

Anything that lets you use Haste is great. Haste isn’t as good as it was in 3.0, but it’s still pretty damn useful for the melee types.

And both Strength and War are really good options.

Just think of it terms of being a melee character, what’s going to be most effective and easiest to use while you stand in there whoop things down.

And if you decide to go Cleric, go ahead and add a level of Fighter at some point. It’s awful nice to be able to use all weapons and armor in the game and cast some of the best spells while using them.

On top of what everybody else has added, don’t forget you can’t sneak attack non humanoid creatures, the undead, or constructs like golems. They just don’t have the anatomy of weak points that sneak attack is ment to take advantage of. Or that’s the theory anyways.

While I didn’t dislike all the quests in Neverwinter, I didn’t really like them all that much either. I think it gets significantly better, especially when you get the keep.

As far as comparing it to an action rpg, you first definitely need to put it on hard core rules. That eliminates most of the cheese that allows you to play it like an action rpg. For easier battles you can still let the AI do it’s thing, but for quite a few fights later you will find yourself pausing every turn to issue commands.