[NWN2]Help me with a caster build.

[Malroth]

I'm playing through Neverwinter Nights 2 Original campaign agian and am wanting to go through as an arcane caster this time instead of my usual druid or rogue. I'd also like to be able to be the designated item crafter if doing so won't cripple my build too badly since the two NPC casters you grab are built so horribly.
The rules:
No LA greater than 0 unless completely unavoidable
No alignment shifts. I'm fine with a build requiring lawful good, or chaotic evil or anywhere in between but no changing mid stream
No forbidden school conjuration.

[Eldariel]

I'm playing through Neverwinter Nights 2 Original campaign agian and am wanting to go through as an arcane caster this time instead of my usual druid or rogue. I'd also like to be able to be the designated item crafter if doing so won't cripple my build too badly since the two NPC casters you grab are built so horribly.
The rules:
No LA greater than 0 unless completely unavoidable
No alignment shifts. I'm fine with a build requiring lawful good, or chaotic evil or anywhere in between but no changing mid stream
No forbidden school conjuration.

You can run a fairly solid straight Wizard in the game; Scroll access is somewhat limited but meh. You'll want Focus, but keep in mind that later on you probably want access to Isaac's Greater Missile Storm due to game engine limitations so banning Evocation isn't really viable. If you know the Tabletop D&D, the same basic build and spell selection works in the OC very well, especially since you'll have Big Stupid Fighters with you pretty much inevitably.

If you have Mask of the Betrayer, you have a decent bundle of Prestige Classes to choose from, Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep and Red Wizard of Thay are both solid. Human is probably the best race either way. From 20-30, Palemaster isn't bad either since the game doesn't really model epic spellcasting very efficiently.


If you're going to play without Mask, just go straight Wizard tho; the base classes aren't terribly interesting.

[Craft (Cheese)]

If you know the Tabletop D&D, the same basic build and spell selection works in the OC very well, especially since you'll have Big Stupid Fighters with you pretty much inevitably.

Now, keep in mind I haven't actually played NWN2 yet, but I have played through NWN1 (OC, haven't started the expansions) all the way as a single-classed Wizard, so I can comment from that perspective. Most of this from what I've read about the game should carry over.

- Conjuration is nowhere near as useful as it is in Tabletop. You can only summon from a very restricted list (Dire Animals and eventually a tiny handful of outsiders at high levels), and only one at a time. All the stuff like Fabricate is also gone, so you're left with only stuff like Grease and Web, which are still awesome, mind you.

- Neither is transmutation. You can forget Polymorph cheese as you can only choose from a small handful of (sucky) forms.

- I understand the situation might be different in NWN2 (due to having more than one party member) but I don't think I could have lived without evocation in NWN1: I tried to play a battlefield control wizard and it just didn't work. Your pet fighter and summons are way too inefficiently built (and just plain stupid) to kill things effectively before the duration on your control spells runs out. Any debuffs with AOE (like all of the useful ones) while you have allies are right out due to friendly fire (LEROOOOOY). And don't even think about wasting your spell slots giving out buffs! Half the time once they get a buff they'll just stand there doing nothing until it runs out while they watch enemies swarm you. (Helpful tip: Never use Improved Invisibility on anyone except yourself.) With groups of mooks it's a hell of a lot less stressful to just walk around by yourself, casting fireballs everywhere. Bosses are a different story, but in the early game they have immunity to everything you can cast at them. (Strangely, the endgame bosses have almost no immunities for some reason: I killed Klauth with a single Finger of Death before he could even do anything.) Am I the only one who thinks making the best way to play a caster being a boring blaster (like every other CRPG in existence) a serious waste of potential?

[Eldariel]

- I understand the situation might be different in NWN2 (due to having more than one party member) but I don't think I could have lived without evocation in NWN1: I tried to play a battlefield control wizard and it just didn't work. Your pet fighter and summons are way too inefficiently built (and just plain stupid) to kill things effectively before the duration on your control spells runs out. Any debuffs with AOE (like all of the useful ones) while you have allies are right out due to friendly fire (LEROOOOOY). And don't even think about wasting your spell slots giving out buffs! Half the time once they get a buff they'll just stand there doing nothing until it runs out while they watch enemies swarm you. (Helpful tip: Never use Improved Invisibility on anyone except yourself.) With groups of mooks it's a hell of a lot less stressful to just walk around by yourself, casting fireballs everywhere. Bosses are a different story, but in the early game they have immunity to everything you can cast at them. (Strangely, the endgame bosses have almost no immunities for some reason: I killed Klauth with a single Finger of Death before he could even do anything.) Am I the only one who thinks making the best way to play a caster being a boring blaster (like every other CRPG in existence) a serious waste of potential?

Well, I found mooks not challenging enough to bother with; I don't see the point in wasting spell slots against opponents with ****ty attacks, a huge sack of HP and nothing passing for a brain. Most dungeons are just rightclick to win in both games; low levels I use Sleep but beyond that I don't really bother with spells since my own mooks, if properly outfitted, could beat the monstrous mooks. Easier with Druid of course since you can just rightclick to win yourself, but meh. I generally only used spells against boss fights, particularly large masses and all that.

Mind, I played with party AI set to none; I manually controlled everything. Because the AI is frankly too stupid to deal with. Chasing enemies into billions more, pulling everything at once, giving a dozen AoOs for no reason, running into AOEs, I don't think they have artificial intelligence so much as artificial stupidity in that game. So there's that.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Mind, I played with party AI set to none; I manually controlled everything. Because the AI is frankly too stupid to deal with. Chasing enemies into billions more, pulling everything at once, giving a dozen AoOs for no reason, running into AOEs, I don't think they have artificial intelligence so much as artificial stupidity in that game. So there's that.

Wait wait wait, you can control your party members aside from your own character in NWN2?

Oh **** yes! I've gotta play this game now.

[Tengu_temp]

Making a spell permanent is just a +6 metamagic in NWN 2, as opposed to +7 in DND. This means that you can use it with Haste, or Divine Power if you're a cleric with a correct domain. If that sounds broken, it's because it is.

At least Isaac's Greater Missile Storm is not as overpowered as it was in NWN1, but casters still dominate the game regardless.

[Eldariel]

Making a spell permanent is just a +6 metamagic in NWN 2, as opposed to +7 in DND. This means that you can use it with Haste, or Divine Power if you're a cleric with a correct domain.

It's actually +6 in D&D too. 7 is the common number 'cause Divine Metamagic costs one Turn Undead use to activate in addition to the mitigation count. Also, I tried but was unable to Persist Divine Power with appropriate the domain for some reason; I don't think the engine understands to count from the earlier spell level when counting what level Persistent Divine Power is (or I ****ed something up).

[imperialspectre]

It's a known engine bug; you didn't do anything wrong.

NWN2 loot sucks for the most part, so you want your crafting bases covered between your different party members. This largely means you can just stack all of the casting feats on a couple of characters, though.

[Douglas]

It's actually +6 in D&D too. 7 is the common number 'cause Divine Metamagic costs one Turn Undead use to activate in addition to the mitigation count. Also, I tried but was unable to Persist Divine Power with appropriate the domain for some reason; I don't think the engine understands to count from the earlier spell level when counting what level Persistent Divine Power is (or I ****ed something up).
No, the engine understands what level(s) to count from just fine. The problem is that the game doesn't judge metamagic eligibility the way we do.

One of the game's data files is an enormous table of basic data about every spell in the game - stuff like whether it targets yourself, a creature, or an area, what range it has, what level it is, whether spell resistance applies, etc. One of the columns in that table is which metamagic feats are compatible with the spell. The game's criteria for metamagic feats go entirely by that list rather than any unifying principles. Divine Power is marked as not compatible with Persistent Spell in that table, so no matter what level you get it at you will never be able to cast Persistent Divine Power.

This can be changed by editing that data file, but doing so requires referencing another file (to look up what value to use) and understanding a particular piece of computer science knowledge. I did it myself for my own local copy of the game, but I used a bunch of other mods too (both self-made and from community downloads) and it was a long time ago.