Thought on NWN

[LibraryOgre]

So, I've been playing Neverwinter Nights, and ruminating on how they treated the system, and something keeps occurring to me:

In the game, they have every 5 ranks of Tumble give you a +1 to AC, and every 5 Ranks of spellcraft give you +1 to your saves... which is REALLY sweet if you're playing a bard-type, as I am. But, they also tossed in the much-maligned skills of Discipline and Parry, and I keep thinking that, rather than giving these neat special abilities to Tumble and Spellcraft, which are already highly useful, they should've given them to Parry (an AC bonus) and Discipline (a save bonus).

Good. Maybe now I can stop thinking that every time I level up.

[MCerberus]

I've always thought of Bioware games of being good with the rough edges and silly seeming oversights. It gives the feeling of something actually made by a human and that kind of beauty through imperfection. NWN also has "you can turn into a dragon anywhere" followed by "I'm stuck" and end-of-chapter rewards that out-level your character and thus prevent you from starting the next chapter on the same server you're on.

[DigoDragon]

In the game, they have every 5 ranks of Tumble give you a +1 to AC, and every 5 Ranks of spellcraft give you +1 to your saves...

I'm... actually shocked that I never noticed that. Huh.

I never used the Discipline or Parry skills. I think your idea would have made then worth something.

[Winthur]

I'm... actually shocked that I never noticed that. Huh.

It's actually an important enough mechanic that many builds account for having a designated "Tumble / UMD / Spellcraft / Discipline / Concentration dump" every so often. So, for instance, a dedicated heavy martial build might want to put a level into assassin, monk, rogue, bard or even harper scout just to max out your Tumble. Like for example the cookie-cutter Fighter (X) / Bard (1) / RDD (Y) - you only care for Bard as a Tumble-dump and as an enabler of the RDD prestige class.

[DigoDragon]

It's actually an important enough mechanic that many builds account for having a designated "Tumble / UMD / Spellcraft / Discipline / Concentration dump" every so often. So, for instance, a dedicated heavy martial build might want to put a level into assassin, monk, rogue, bard or even harper scout just to max out your Tumble. Like for example the cookie-cutter Fighter (X) / Bard (1) / RDD (Y) - you only care for Bard as a Tumble-dump and as an enabler of the RDD prestige class.

That makes good build sense. I just never knew Tumble/Spellcraft skills gave bonuses, or I would have used them more liberally.

[FilipePassosCoe]

guts me to thats that NW2 was so much poorer versus the original, but the original hasnt aged... nicely.
A remake would be amazing.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Honestly, I'd be interested in a new NWN, one built on 5e's mechanics instead of the horridly abusable 3.0-3.5-ish-with-other-stuff. Granted, 3.5 was better than AD&D 2nd ed, but it was still by no means balanced.

5e is, I feel, a reasonably balanced game. Sure, there's exploits (2-3 levels of Warlock tacked onto any Cha focused build), there will be in any system, but at least it isn't as subject to 'linear fighter, quadratic wizard' as 3.5 was.

[Anteros]

guts me to thats that NW2 was so much poorer versus the original, but the original hasnt aged... nicely.
A remake would be amazing.

NWN2 wasn't too bad if you used a mod to fix the awful companion AI and another mod to fix the awful camera.

[Renick]

Long time NWN persistent world player here. I can't exactly say why or why not the developers did or didn't do something-However I can say that in base-game nwn (Meaning, no mods or rules changes put in), discipline is already one of if not the-most NEEDED skill in the game. Even someone playing something like a wizard would want their last level or so to be in a class that has discipline as a class skill (And have saved up a bunch of skill points to dump in it) because if they 'don't', any mob that has knock down or disarm as an ability will spam it over and over.
More importantly (In MY opinion) most melee builds USE knockdown, and usually can hit you. So unless you're on a server where KD immunity is something you can have on your gear (None existant on popular servers) you just absolutely want it as high as you can possibly manage.

What does this have to do with anything? Simply that putting increased saves on discipline would take it from being the most used and useful skill in nwn to being purely "Broken". Atleast this way, someone wanting to have discipline and saves needs to cross class.

As to having it on parry instead of tumble.. I guess I could see that? In nwn neither skill would be useful at all without the 5 point ac bonus (Tumble could be useful for like.. Pre-teen levels I guess? But after that attacks of opportunity mean very little to anything that isn't a squishy caster. Who shouldn't ever be in melee range anyway.)

Hope this helps, and I hope to see you on one of the persistent roleplay servers sometime :)

[Daremonai]

There was already a game (allegedly*) based on 5th ed - Sword Coast Adventures. It didn't sell very well, and I suspect it will mean no D&D CRPF for a while.

*Any actual resemblance to 5th edition D&D was entirely coincidental. The two were NOTHING alike.

[GungHo]

SCA was an extraordinarily lazy effort.

[Anonymouswizard]

guts me to thats that NW2 was so much poorer versus the original, but the original hasnt aged... nicely.
A remake would be amazing.

Honestly, the biggest problem with NWN2 is the lack of autopause. In terms of mechanics I personally think NWN2 is probably slightly better than NWN1, if only because you can control your party members (although no autopause makes it difficult).


There was already a game (allegedly*) based on 5th ed - Sword Coast Adventures. It didn't sell very well, and I suspect it will mean no D&D CRPF for a while.

*Any actual resemblance to 5th edition D&D was entirely coincidental. The two were NOTHING alike.

The same happened with the (first?) 4e game, D&D: Daggerdale. Which is a shame, as you could do a passable 4e game either in turn based mode or the pseudo realtime Baldurs Gate to NWN2 used. Although Neverwinter seems to be a fairly faithful recreation of 4e as everything goes, I would try it but my PC freezes at the thought.

There seems to be a problem in that WotC licences D&D to make a game but the ruleset isn't used, so most people into D&D games look at the game, see that it doesn't use the D&D rules, and decide not to buy/play it.

[LibraryOgre]

Honestly, the biggest problem with NWN2 is the lack of autopause. In terms of mechanics I personally think NWN2 is probably slightly better than NWN1, if only because you can control your party members (although no autopause makes it difficult).


That and very dumb companion AI.

And, TBH, I am always terribly surprised that 4e was not made into a good CRPG. Cooldowns and number crunching are something computers do very well.

[GloatingSwine]

I think the issue is that there's just no need to.

4e incorporated balance elements from computer RPGs, which means they were already there for the people who wanted those sort of things.


(Ironically I actually think that computer mediated 2e isn't a bad thing because the computer does all the counterintuitive bits for you).

[Aotrs Commander]

I always felt that 4E would actually have been rather cumbersome to model as a CRPG even in a turn-based system, despite it leaning in that direction. There seemed to be a very larger number of "attack does this, and grants this bonus to one ally" that's easy to do around the tabletop, but probably not nearly so to do as a computer game, since you'd have to basically have two targets for a lot of attacks.



NWN1 was, I felt, always the weakest of the Black Isle Bioware/Obsidian RPGs, and really only gained in being in the sweetspot for easy customisation for the fanbase. NWN2 never seemed to grab quite the same level, despite, in my opinon, being a better engine and a better campaign (though the fact it was a more complex editing engine was in and of itself, probably part of that problem).



Personally, I'm awaiting the kickstarted Pathfinder game based on that one adventure path whse name escapes me and it is too early in the morning for me to care to look up; plus Deadfire 2, of course.

[Anonymouswizard]

That and very dumb companion AI.

Yeah, although I consider the lack of autopause worse because having it would make micromanaging this darn party easier and make companion AI less of an issue.

I also think that once I move onto Mask of the Betrayer and rests become more limited it'll be even more of an issue.


And, TBH, I am always terribly surprised that 4e was not made into a good CRPG. Cooldowns and number crunching are something computers do very well.

Certainly it could have been done in a simplified form. Begin your design focusing just on the Cleric, Fighter Rogue, and Wizard to have one of reach role, then add other classes as you have time.


I always felt that 4E would actually have been rather cumbersome to model as a CRPG even in a turn-based system, despite it leaning in that direction. There seemed to be a very larger number of "attack does this, and grants this bonus to one ally" that's easy to do around the tabletop, but probably not nearly so to do as a computer game, since you'd have to basically have two targets for a lot of attacks.

Resolve attack, then automatically activate a second ability that grants the boost?

[Aotrs Commander]

Resolve attack, then automatically activate a second ability that grants the boost?

Doable on a turn-based-ststem, but how do you do it in a realtime or realtime-with-pause system?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Doable on a turn-based-ststem, but how do you do it in a realtime or realtime-with-pause system?

We weren't discussing Realtime (with or without pause) systems, though? NWN has always been turn-based. I see no reason to not continue this trend.

[LansXero]

Doable on a turn-based-ststem, but how do you do it in a realtime or realtime-with-pause system?

you could have it apply a buff to your 'focus' (like WoW), and be able to freely select a new 'focus' whenever.

[Aotrs Commander]

We weren't discussing Realtime (with or without pause) systems, though? NWN has always been turn-based. I see no reason to not continue this trend.

Eh? Unless we're talking about different games, NWN was the same psuedo-turn-based-but-actually-playing-in-real-time system as all the previous Infinity Engine games.The only PC D&D games I've played am and aware of (there may be more prior to BG1, but I have never played those) that were actually turn-based were Temple of Elemental Evil and Pools of Radiance.

[Winthur]

We weren't discussing Realtime (with or without pause) systems, though? NWN has always been turn-based. I see no reason to not continue this trend.

If Baldur's Gate was real-time with pause even though it had an obvious turn system under the hood, then NWN is also a RTwP game. That's generally what people mean by RTwP.

[KarlMarx]

NWN2 wasn't too bad if you used a mod to fix the awful companion AI and another mod to fix the awful camera.

Or just gave companions commands individually. It's time-consuming, put you can pull off some nasty tricks.

[veti]

I only ever took discipline on martial characters, and only then because there was not much else to use skill points on. Parry? Don't make me laugh. First aid was about the only other skill with any kind of utility.

With spellcasting or sneaky characters, I'd take a meat shield, and get knocked down maybe once in a campaign, if that.

[Opsimath]

In my "virtual tabletop" NWN 1.69 game (players I know and live DM only) I did make a kludge for Parry skill to give that bonus to AC, only if the character in question had a parry-capable item in hand or if they were barehanded and had the Improved Unarmed Strike feat.

That last bit was because I wanted monks et al to parry barehanded, but also to make IUS a more useful feat, after learning that equipping anything in the bracer slot would prevent AoO just like IUS did.

I forget if I made it Natural or Deflection type or whatever. It's been a few years. I remember much thought went into that, too.

I even gave every item that was "parry appropriate" a Parry AC bonus in the item table, from +0 (fist, dagger, torch, etc.) to +3 (finally a reason to use a trident!) to differentiate them.

Of course, all this jiggery-pokery had to happen in the event that fires every time a PC equips or un-equips an item in their hands, and another bit of code to do the same for NPCs, so I can't imagine if it would work for a server with more than a handful of PCs at once.

Edit: Oops, forgot: It also worked with shields, which had great Parry AC bonuses themselves. Really been a long time, for me to forget that.

[ArgentumRegio]

Opsimath - here here! I _love_ how easy to mod the NWN engine really is - we do (on our server) all sorts of fun stuff with the on equip/unequip script, similar to this system you mention and i may just steal the trident notion too lol. Thanks for that. :D

[ArgentumRegio]

guts me to thats that NW2 was so much poorer versus the original, but the original hasnt aged... nicely.
A remake would be amazing.

Have you seen NWN:EE from beamdog.com ?