Neverwinter Nights Forum News

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(Originally posted by Veldrin)

Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. 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.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Beholders: Our new beholders have 10 eyestalks, they drunk some magical grow- 5 -totally -natural -stalks -w ithin- a-w eek elixir they found in the art department a while ago. And yes, spells are originating from the beholders eyes, we got some shiny new MONSTER_NODES on them. They are running their own "mini-AI", optimized to their special abilities and their weaknesses ... and your weaknesses.

You can not target body parts in NWN. You can, however, use spells like blindness to make the beholder happy I guess.

Placeables: There is a placeable hobbyhorse object as well....

Color Names: Color names were removed because people were abusing them in various ways (which we will never discuss as colored names are still out there in some fashion), impacting other peoples gameplay experience and server stability, and that is something we *care* about. To make them work without these side results would require programmer and qa time, which we rather put into something more important for us and most of our fans. People may disagree about this decision, but that is how decisions work, right? We rather put in a new head, a new weapon or something similar in the game, allowing people to customize their characters without impacting other peoples gameplay performance, than trying to make something work for players which was never intended to work for them.

David Gaider, Designer

Merchant System: I believe some big changes are, indeed, due for the merchant system very soon now. I think they are in an upcoming patch courtesy of the Live Team, however, and not particular to HotU. The details on that will have to come later, though.

Ghost VFX: The ghost VFX means that we have a ghost in the game that I didn't want all glowy. Mirror Image is a resource-hogging, very difficult-to-implement spell that has very little pay-off.

Quote: something like mirror image should have been small beans.

Not really. There's nothing in the engine that could create a bunch of "alternate images"... which would have to be models that copy the main model and move exactly as the main model is moving. I mean... I guess it could be done, but we're talking a whole new kind of animation-copying system put in that doesn't currently exist, all for one spell. Magic Missile is even just a custom projectile graphic, no biggee, it's not the same at all.

Quote: How would old characters be handled? Let's say you had a bard with a persuade of 23. Would he also get a Intimidation of 23 and a Bluff of 23?

Of course not. He wouldn't be changed at all. He'd have a Persuade of 23, and an Intimidation and Bluff of 0.

Quote: How would a new character be handled? You create a new bard. Do they get additional skill points to put in bluff and intimidation?

No, you do not get any additional skill points. And, as was mentioned above, the thing we're doing (currently) is having 2 of the 3 skills used in any persuasion instance, though with possibly different DC's. So if you wanted the secret password out of the guild doorman, you could trick it out of him or threaten it out of him (a bit more difficult because he feels pretty safe behind that door) but you couldn't convince him nicely to give it to you.