NWN: Weird design, or am I missing something? (long)

As addressed in my original post, the XP penalty doesn’t usually apply to most people. Humans and half-elves never get hit with it; the other races avoid it if either their primary OR their “one level” class is the favored one. It’s a consideration and somewhat of a limiting factor, but not much.

Reading Ben’s and NI’s posts, though, I can see how the take-one-level approach is actually cooler than I thought. I was seeing it as kind of a cheesy min/maxer tactic, but I guess it works for some character conceptions.

However, I still say that you can’t effectively multi with a spellcaster (note to NI: when I say “multiclass,” I don’t mean take a single level. I mean divide levels equally, the way a multiclass used to to work). In 2nd ed, that kind of character was worse than a SC character in the specialty (e.g., a fighter/thief was worse than a straight fighter at fighting or straight thief at thievery), but was more rounded and slightly better overall. Magic using classes can’t do that in NWN, and I think that’s a shame. I disagree with NI’s ideas about multiclassing spellcasters, for the reasons stated above; the only one that kind of works is fighter/cleric, although you’d still be better off as either straight fighter or straight cleric (because your cleric abilities are really weak). Stuff like wizard/monk doesn’t work at all (I tried it), and wizard/rogue wouldn’t work too well either.

And for Sean: my recommendation would be to either stick as a straight wizard, or take one level in another class if you can do it without getting the XP penalty. Some good choices are fighter (allowing use of many weapons, plus extra feat); barbarian (weapons, rage, dodge, and bonus movement); monk (weapons, dodge, and a couple things you’ll probably rarely use), or druid (scimitar, animal companion)…all of them get you some extra HP, too (especially barbarian).

Off-topic.

But since we’re discussing imbalances in 2nd edition, let’s not forget psionics.

GM: “Oh, the illithid stuns all members of your party.” (3 surviving minotaurs come up and slay 3 of the 4 members.)
Me, OOC: “Stuns me? What? How? How did he ignore the magic resistance spell that Jon cast on me?”
GM: “It’s psionics, not magic.”
Me (irritated): “Well, where’s my fucking saving throw?”
GM: “You don’t get one. He just checks if he has enough energy and can do it… and he passed.”
Me (flipping through monster’s manual): “Christ, this thing is worth less XP than a dragon and it killed the whole party in one round.”
GM: “Oh come on, don’t exaggerate. The five minotaurs did their part and one of you is still alive.”
Me: “Dude, he appeared for one round, got initiative and took us all out. The minotaurs were just scratching our armor. A dragon couldn’t do as much damage as he did.”

I had an interesting idea, and I wonder if you guys can tell me whether it works or not (I can’t think of any reason why not, but can’t be bothered to re-start my NWN campaign to try it). What if you played a human or half-elf (no XP penalty for any classes) and you wanted to be a fighter type…so you take one level in EVERY non-spellcaster class? I think it would work. You end up as like a 1/1/1/1/1/1 fighter/ranger/paladin/barbarian/thief/cleric. Your HP and combat bonuses all stack (and all the fighters get a combat bonus for their first level), as do your save bonuses, so you fight just about as well as a 6th level fighter or ranger or whatever.

You lose out on the higher-level damage bonuses, but to make up for it, you get an amazing array of abilities: rage, fast movement, dodge, cleric domain abilities (which can include a kick-ass familiar), a bonus feat, immunity to disease, +4 to hide outdoors, ranger favored enemy, ambidexterity, two-weapon fighting, and backstab. Wow.
That doesn’t even take into account minor abilities such as getting a couple cleric spells and 1st level turning and the paladin lay hands and CHA bonus to saves. Add a druid level and your combat is a little worse but you get animal companion and +2 when fighting outdoors.

You’re at least as good as a straight 6th level fighter or barbarian or whatever. The only limiting factor that comes to mind is the level restrictions on magic items.

Well, alas in NWN you can only have up to 3 classes. The other problem with this approach is if you check out the saving throw chart, fighter types don’t get increase in their will or reflex throws until 3rd level, so if you have a 2 fighter/ 2 ranger/ 2 paladin you’ll have +0 will and +0 reflex saves, whereas a 6 fighter will have a +2 will and +2 reflex save. Not a huge hit, but definitely a hit. As it turns out, mixing in thief and cleric will make up for this as thieves have high reflex throws starting at lvl 1 and clerics have high will starting at lvl 1. The cost to adding in thief and cleric levels though is they have a +0 base attack bonus at level 1 so they will cost you in terms of combat ability. A 2 fighter / 2 rogue / 2 cleric will have a +4 attack bonus. A 6 lvl fighter will have a +6 / +1 attack – not only a better first attack, but a second attack as well – a fairly substantial improvement.

I’ll have to admit I did throw in a level of Druid into my Barbarian/Thief just to increase his will save–he kept on getting hammered by mages (I justified it roleplaying-wise because he took in in Chapter 2 right after doing the druid quests so I wasn’t “entirely” min-maxing). Anyway, I’m still not sure it was the right move, because as you point out, low level spell casting is almost useless for a high-level character and he’s losing 20% of his XP because now he’s something like a lvl 10 Barb/ 4 Thief / 1 Druid. But his will saves are better.

For NWN I’ve mostly been multiclassing in Rogue (I have a Ranger/Rogue and my Barbarian/Rogue) because someone has to open all the damn chests. I think that’s the biggest downside of NWN single-player. DnD is a party system and you just can’t play without a rogue. I’ve also found adding in Fighter useful for the feats (and it’s easily justified from a role-playing standpoint, since let’s face it mostly everyone spends their time hacking on things).

The thing I like about the new 3rd Edition multiclassing is that it really opens up possiblities for Human players. The 2nd Edition dual classing for humans (as opposed to multi classing for non-humans) was just messy. Like in the original Baldur’s Gate, I had to worry about how many levels of thief I was going to give Imoen before I changed her over to a Mage. And then I had to deal with the temporary time where her thief capabilities weren’t working. (By the way, I think the thief/mage combo will still work in 3rd Edition, maybe not as powerful as a 2nd Edition thief/mage, but still useful).

I also do think it makes sense from a role-playing perspective and along with the feats, really allows people to customize their characters.

Won’t work, I’m afraid.
Barbarians require nonlawful alignment, while Paladins require lawful alignment. In addition, NWN-characters are limited to a maximum of three different classes.

Also, humans and half-elves have their highest-level class as their favored class, not “no XP penalty for any classes”. Check page 126 in the NWN-manual for the details.

As for my ideas for multiclassing spellcasters, most of them came from characters created by players in a pen&paper D&D group where I used to be a DM. They worked pretty well there, although I don’t know how well they would translate into NWN.

Right, but as long as Rywill keeps his classes even, I think he’s okay. So I believe a level 3 Paladin / level 3 Cleric / level 2 Fighter / level 2 Rogue / Level 2 Bard would not face XP penalties (assuming NWN supported this many classes). The human / half-elf favored class rule means that in addition to the previous example, a human level 8 Paladin / level 3 Cleric / level 2 Fighter / level 2 Rogue / Level 2 Bard would also not face XP penalties as he could use Paladin as his favored class.

With my Dwarven Ranger I believe I could train in enough roguish skills to almost elminate the need for a thief later in the game. I had Tomi with me for a while though.

– Xaroc

That’s not quite true – they don’t get hit with it if they are dual classed, but can get hit with it if they have more than 2 classes, and the level difference between the secondary and lesser classes gets too great.

Stefan