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Neverwinter Nights 2 Forum News (Aug. 09, 06)

Discussion in 'Game/SP News & Comments' started by chevalier, Aug 13, 2006.

  1. chevalier

    chevalier Knight of Everfull Chalice ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran

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    Here are today's Neverwinter Nights 2 forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

    J.E. Sawyer, Lead Designer

    on the turning of the un-dead and the attacking of the powerful variety and expertise of combat
    You're essentially making every melee characters ability to fight creatures with DR weaker to compensate for one particular PrC's class feature.
    I really think you guys are exaggerating the effects of this on a character's ability to fight creatures with DR.

    Somehow I see a clot of undead just standing there with their collective thumb up their rump as less than inspiring. Fleeing in terror towards the closest exit from the room or area transition should be the default. Sorry, J.E. Sawyer, but this one's a bad call.
    Just so you know, the entire QA department literally broke out into cheers when we announced this change. It was that annoying to them. We didn't just make this change on a lark.

    More: BTW, Improved Combat Expertise has also switched to -6/+6.

    More:
    In 3.5, power attacking with a two handed weapon gets an increased benefit. If it's -3/+3 with a long sword, is it -3/+6 with a greatsword? Or is that rule not implemented?
    Yes, it is. That's why it is quite powerful even at its "reduced" benefit.

    More:
    Secondly the whole idea with the cap is a bad idea. This only makes all melee fighters weaker. Yeah, I agree the FB is insane, but he has a heck of a lot of weaknesses too.
    No they don't. Not really. The FB is incredibly powerful, period. And almost all of the melee-oriented characters in NWN2 are very powerful even without being FBs. Our "power testers" are still quite capable of destroying things in the game with their melee characters. Now it's just gone from "laughably trivial" to "usually easy".

    Quote: Oh well, at least there is still knockdown. They seem so quick to fix an unbroken feat, but forget one of the most broken feats in NWN, knockdown. What are you guys going to do when the FB gets that? I see that being much more of a problem than PA and IPA.
    I am the custodian of the design of NWN2, not its architect. Excepting my first two months at Obsidian, I've been on the project as the lead since March. Re-working Knockdown is significantly more complicated than Power Attack, and Power Attack is what has been demonstrably unbalanced for many testers.

    Quote: Lastly, I don't have much to say about the whole turn undead thing. I understand why it was done, but using rebuke instead wasn't the answer. Thats ok, clerics really needed to be more powerful because they are so weak to begin with.
    Do you think it's a good idea to maintain the "balance" of a class by leaving in an ability that irritates almost everyone who uses it? I think the rebuke change makes some things easier for clerics and some things more difficult. Personally, I think the "flee for ten rounds and come streaming back one by one" effect of turn usually makes picking off the turned undead really easy -- just annoying. The only time when it's a challenge is on those occasions when the undead run into another pack of enemies.

    More: Well, to be honest, we practically tore the heart out of the IE to make IWD2 work the way it did. I know a lot of people didn't like IWD2 or dismiss it as a partial implementation of 3E rules, but it was actually pretty thorough. We had a few of the "variable level" feats in IWD2 and they allowed the user to set the trade-off value and store it per character.

    More:
    But it sounds like they are actually implementing an effect more like panicked:
    Actually, what we are implementing is by-the-book cowering.

    Cowering: The character is frozen in fear and can take no
    actions. A cowering character takes a –2 penalty to Armor Class and loses her Dexterity bonus (if any).

    Familiar & Animal Companion (FAC) Time, Part III
    Of course, Obsidian could save us all a lot of trouble and make sure that the appropriate inventory slot was accessable...(hint hint) :good:
    I'm pretty sure all creatures have inventory and standard slots, but slots shouldn't even be necessary for something like this. We have the ability to apply effects when an item is simply in inventory (not even in a specific slot). I think you could script it, but I'm not sure.

    It's one of a million tasks we could do that would take two hours to implement and test in a quick-and-dirty fashion. There are a just a lot of other things remaining to fix and balance.

    Patrick K Mills, Production Tester

    on the turning of the un-dead and the attacking of the powerful variety and expertise of combat
    If you don't like the new turn undead behavior it's very easy for you to edit it back. You comment out my lines ( :( ) and then switch the Rebuke script for the fear script in the statescropts.2da. It takes less than 15 minutes and you can do it with a text editor.

    You will, however, make me very sad.

    Also, rebuke is more fun than turning, and destroying is more fun than rebuke.

    More:
    At least we can set it up how we want. I won't be totally removing it, but I would want both. Turning/destroying for good clerics and rebuking/commanding for evil clerics. I'll still need to figure out a way to handle the "choice" aspect of neutral clerics. So definitely two thumbs up on the change.

    And just what exactly does statescripts.2da look like and what does it do? :D
    Because the EffectTurn() function is passed through the statescripts.2da (which is just a text file that references another script, in this case the rebuke script rather than the fear script) you wouldn't be able to make it an option just by commenting out my stuff and swapping some scripts around.

    The choice method isn't impossible by any means, it's easy to check the caster's alignment and then have a particular effect play based on that value. It's not as easy as the situation I outlined above (which was just switching it back to always turn,) but it's not hard.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 3, 2018
    chevalier, Aug 13, 2006
    #1
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