Black Isle Studios Board Update

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(Originally posted by Darien)

Just a quick update for now from the BIS message boards.

Neverwinter Nights

David Gaider, Senior Designer:

Fallen Paladins: There is a provision for something like a fallen paladin in the 3rd edition rules. The 'Blackguard' prestige class seems to cover what most people would call a paladin. And the 'Divine Defender' is a prestige class that allows someone to be paladin-ish but be a holy warrior for any kind of god (including the evil gods). That said, prestige classes aren't going to be included in NWN (at least initially...later on, who knows?).

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

Module Map: Question: "Is Never Winter Nights going to be like Counter-strike/Half-life/Quake, where you have to have the map (In Never Winter Nights case Module) installed on every players PC playing on the server?"

Yes, everyone playing your module will be required to have a copy of it.

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design:

Rogue Shuriken attacks: We had this discussion at work one day, and we're unsure until we found the following information:

quote:

Masked Avenger: A shuriken does 1 point of damage, but three of them can be thrown at once. If used in a sneak attack, what would the damage be, with sneak included?

WotC Dave: Terrific question! Here's the deal: Three shurikens are a single attack, so you get the sneak attack damage only once. It goes with the first shuriken of the three.

WOTC Mel: And here’s a related question. . . .

Sir Thundersmash: Why are shurikens the only ranged weapons with a Rate of Fire greater then one? Was it just balancing?

WotC Dave: Pretty much, and it mimics how they tend to be used in the "source material" (if not in reality).

Abelared_DM: If a thief hits with three shuriken in an attack that qualifies for his sneak attack bonus, does he get one bonus or three? That is, does a first-level thief get 3+1d6 damage or 1+1d6 three times, for 3+3d6?

MonteCook: The rogue makes one sneak attack per attack, and the three shurikens count as one attack.

Marc Taro Holmes, Art Director

Helmets: The only reason you have not seen a screenshot of a helmet yet, its that they are sitting in Source Safe right now with no textures(!)...coming soon my friends....patience of a grasshopper..there is a LOT of art in this game...

Aribeth: Hello all...glad my little pictures are sparking a bit of conversation...(no really...) I can't say I can really argue with all the points...she is very very very into that blade...some kind of adventurer thing I guess...this one was a CGW cover a while back...They had a 'ressurection of rpg's' theme going, so the sword-as-cross thing was kind of what we were after (it was their final choice anyway)...I don't think broadswords are razor sharp - you *might* be able to get away with this...but hey, it's fantasy....

I don't know if she's going to be on the box or not (somebody up the thread asked)... Aribeth is part of our campaign - she is one of the people you will meet and adventure with in Neverwinter.

Personaly I'm leaning for more of a graphic design solution to the box...but we have bit of time to decide...game comes first!

Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal

David Gaider, Senior Designer:

ToB Easter Egg: I was wondering when someone would post about this. When you're doing the spirit maze in Watcher's Keep, if you pause really quickly and bring up the area map, instead of the map there's a picture of the dev team.

(Not me, though, I was in Europe at the time.)

Everyone looks real tired, as I recall.

Making a Downloadable Expansion: Throne of Bhaal was a tremendous effort that added both the final chapters onto the story of BG2 (and ended it) as well as a dungeon that was larger than Durlag's Tower in TotSC.

It adds 30-50 hours of play-time (depending on how you play, naturally) onto BG2 and we are immensely happy with how the expansion turned out. Black Isle has its own reasons, I'm sure, for expanding HoW...but we have not had the same outcry over the length of ToB that there was for HoW. The fact that Black Isle was willing to put aside some people to work on a free expansion in response to their fans is to their credit.

There are people who have commented that they wish ToB was a full sequel rather than just an expansion...who doesn't? It would have been great if we could have done that, of course, but it wasn't realistic...and for an expansion, ToB is just about as large and complex as an expansion can be.

But now the story is done, the Infinity Engine is done and we can rest our tired little brains after putting in what was a tremendous effort for a labour of love and move onto other things. So, no...sorry, but there will be no expansion for the expansion.

Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter

Kevin Osburn, Line Producer:

International Version of ToTL: There is no *official* release date. We will release them when they are finished going through QA. As we speak, they are almost finished so hopefully you will have it downloaded before this week is over with. If anything changes, I will let you know.