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(Originally posted by Darien)

Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter

J.E. Sawyer, Designer:

Difficulty levels: Difficulty levels are extremely subjective. Unfortunately, at least in IWD and HoW, we were not able to find a blend that satisfied people. BG2 seemed to be reasonably well balanced.

Why not an IWD with Drizzt?: Out of respect to Mr. Salvatore, we try not to tread on his work too much. I spoke with him briefly around Christmas and told him the same thing. There is a certain feeling and style that goes with an author's work, and "overlapping" that story with your own can cause bad impressions among fans.

Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal

Dave Gaider, Senior Designer:

Multi-classing: I think the ability to go up in more than one class at the same time is pretty special, regardless of whether it's a normal ability of demi-human characters or not. I wasn't being flippant. My answer was short, but I thought I was still giving an appropriate answer. Since you perhaps misinterpreted my intent, let me take the time to give you the long answer.

Multi-class characters do get plenty of advantages as it is. You will also still get access to at least a couple of the high-level abilities, as well...but the splitting of your XP between your classes is part of being multi-classed. You knew that when you became multi-classed, and personally I don't see much use in saying that it's unfair now that you're at higher levels when it probably benefited you plenty at the lower levels.

But, again, while you won't get access to all the high-level abilities like a single-class character would, you will get access to a few. A multi-class character reaches levels they never could have, before, and with a couple of high-level abilities is certainly not being 'excluded' from some of the new features in the expansion.

As for dual-class characters, I agree that they can be very prone to min-maxing by power gamers. But this is the way dual-classing is set up in the D rules. How would you propose we limit them?

A dual-classed character can't ever go back and get some more levels should they want to later. Imoen and Nalia can't ever go back and get more levels in Thief...even though some of the traps and locks are tougher at this point. When facing the toughest opponents, are the abilities given to say a Magic User by also being a 9th level fighter all that useful?

Maybe, depending on the play-style, I guess. One should probably keep in mind that they had to go through the entire leveling-up process in their new class without the benefit of their old class's abilities, as well...not the easiest task in most cases.

Triple classing: Unfortunately, it really can't (be done). The reasoning is the same that various other combinations of classes for MC or DC aren't included...each class combination requires its own entries on every item and spell for whether or not that item can be used by that class-combination.

I'm not sure of the specifics, programming-wise, but waaaay back when this subject came up on the original boards I talked briefly to Mark Darrah about it and the problem seemed to be that the files were simply not formatted in a way to allow us to expand the 'usable by' selections indefinitely. Regardless, each new combo added would require us to go back through all the items and spells all the way back to BG1 to mark them properly.

I remember that an easier solution was to find those class combos that mimic already-existing combos' item and spell usages exactly and have them use the same flag. But there aren't many that do that...certainly not enough to make the effort worthwhile.

Besides all that, could it still be done? Probably...with a significant amount of effort. While I wouldn't mind seeing the dual-classing rules allowing for more progression (although the capacity for most characters to have ridiculous stats makes the supposed limitations to dual- and triple-classing fairly moot...there are many who argue that the DC class situation can be incredibly abused), I think that's probably something that's beyond the scope of a simple expansion.

Non-offensive weapon attributes limited to primary hand: The program isn't set up, currently, to do this sort of thing, no...weapons either have their bonuses or they don't. Mind you, I can't imagine it would be very difficult to hard-code certain restrictions on a weapon when it is placed in the off-hand slot...but only Mark would know for sure.

As to whether or not it would be a good idea, that's a completely different question.

Bringing Yoshimo back?: As I said before in another post, we COULD bring Yoshimo back. I can think of any of a number of valid and/or interesting storylines where Yoshimo could be brought back to life. Thing is, not everyone had Yoshimo in their party. And for those who did, I don't want to invalidate the impact of Yoshimo's story.

We could still do it, I suppose, but I think it's best to let Yoshimo rest. We chose to pursue the Sarevok storyline...and for those of you who choose to jump to conclusions about THAT...well, you haven't even read the story, yet, have you?

The Edwin Problem and Anomen's annoying comments: We weren't able to script changes to the NPC voices until later in development, and at that time we were only able to do it with Edwin (who uses an entirely new voice in his female form) as opposed to Anomen and some of the others who change...their VO was already recorded. That said, Anomen does have new VO, now, for when he's CN. No need to spaz.

As for Edwin, no he won't be changed. Those are the bonuses a wizard of Thay gets (and regardless if he's not a member anymore, he still has their training).