Icewind Dale 2 Forum Update

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(Originally posted by TBR)

J.E. Sawyer, Lead Designer

Human skill points: In IWD2, human characters start with 2 bonus skill points and get an additional skill point every level. This gives them a larger advantage than they would have in PnP, but we couldn't do it the way I thought would best represent the skill (2 bonus sp at first level, 1 bonus SP every other level). Similarly, it would have been nice to give characters with an effective "0" sp/level (due to low intelligence) fractional sp (1 every two, three, or four levels).

Turn undead: Turn Undead is a quick action, not a modal state like it was in previous games. You make a quick cast animation, and that's it. This is "the 3E way".

Bard songs and pickpocket: The bard songs are essentially the same, except that War Chant of Sith has changed to heal 3 hp/round, but only when enemies are visible. Pickpocket will definitely be worth it. You can pickpocket a lot of creatures for a lot of loot.

Damien Foletto, Junior Designer

"Unique" items: Yes, there are unique items in the game. Even unique items that tie into the story, which is why we cannot show a lot of them to you folks. Some of the ones I posted in my designer diaries are unique, but do not tie into IWD2's story - so those were safe to show.

Mind Flayers vs. undead, elementals: Undead and elementals are unaffected by illithid's mind sucking. I used elementals and undead when playing through the area of the game that the illithids were found - my mindless posse kicked butt.

Avatars: Unfortunately, it takes much more animation and rendering time to do new PC avatars than NPC avatars. That's because there needs to be a separate render of every possible weapon, clothing, armor, shield, etc. combination. Given the amount of time we had, coupled with the 3E changes and the lack of available animators, we didn't update the PC avatars. Sorry.