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

Quickbar: No new quickbars for HotU.

Rogues & Reading Scrolls: Won't be changed. In any case rogues need to have a decent amount of skill points in Use Magic Device now (25+) if they want to have any chance to cast scrolls on hardcore+ difficulty, as they need to win a skill check against DC 25 + Spell Level to read a scroll now. (And there is no Take20 for that).

Spell Cap: There are spells that do not cap out however (flame arrow being one of them) ...

Shifter: Ok, some good news for you shifter freaks. I've taken a look at mr_bumpkins idea and found that the original problems I had when trying out that other approach a while back are no longer existing. Thus, for certain shapes (basically shapes that wear a weapon or armor - like all the humanoid shapes, the minotaur or the drider shape), the shifter's equipment will merge with his new form. Creature forms like the Manticore or the wyrmling forms are not affected by this change. This means that if you wear wielding a flaming scimitar +3, boots of speed and an amulet of protection +3 equipped before, the minotaur's greataxe will have a +3 enchantment, fire damage and his hide will have an additional +3 bonus to AC and grant the benefit of the boots of speed. This whole thing should make shifting into these forms much more viable, especially in higher levels. Note that this is still a bit experimental and we may encounter problems that would force us to drop this addition, but it looks pretty cool at them moment ... Fear the mighty Kobold Commandos!

Some of the undead shapes also gain benefits from these changes, as for the rest, this is still subject to balancing. A few might forms my inherit properties from the shifter's armor and items but not weapons, others will be pretty strong on their own (dragons) or because of their special abilities. Another nice benefit from that new system is that the new item property spells are now pretty useful for the shifter. Casting Flame Weapon before changing to one of the forms affected by the change will add those properties to the weapon equipped when shapeshifted as well.

According to the rules, if you have a creature hide with damage reduction on it equipped, your creature weapons should be able to penetrate this damage reduction and lower. So if you were a mighty dragon with DR 20/+5, you would be able to penetrate +5 damage reduction with your claws. Not sure about it, could be 20/+5 or even 30/-. Its a very high level ability to shift into those wyrms.

* Most Monk feats do transfer.

* If the creature is fighting with bare hands (i.e. no melee weapons, creature weapons), you have the advantage of a monks unarmed combat feats (iirc).

* If you shift into one of the aforementioned forms (minotaurs, drider, humanoid forms, a few others) and do not have any weapon equipped, your new form does not have a weapon as well, so monks are free to fight as unarmed minotaurs, kobolds, etc.

* Boni of weapons of different type (ranged/melee) will not transfer, so you should equip a nice ranged weapon when shapeshifting in a form that has a ranged weapon equipped.

* Greater magic fang does not work on a shifter, but casting greater magic weapon will help

Quote: So..does that mean anyone with Dragon Disciple levels will look exactly the same?

No, the wings change is hardcoded and is performed by the game engine on levelup. There is no access to it through the scripting language.

Quote: I've got a question for you Georg, though it may have already been answered...Is there any way that you could set a PC to have certain graphical enhancements like the wings or skeletal arms through scripting rather than levels in a certain class without a hakpak? How about with a hakpak? What exactly would be required to do so?

No access to creature appearances apart from SetCreatureAppearanceType (which does not allow access to single creature parts)

Quote: Yeah, I know, what my general drift was is that you could make cloaks appear when you put one in your cloak slot without having to make two copies of every armor. In respone to Mr. Gaiders, I may have worded it wrong, but I believe someone in BW (Georg maybe) said that item part appearances were dynamic, so you could change armor pieces dynamically, thus, you could change the neck slot of the armor (not the PC part, so it wouldn't work if you were naked) to another slot with a cloak upon equipping a cloak via script.

The command used for this is called CopyAndModifyItem and it can be used to create a copy of an item with one part changed. With a bit of scripting, this does indeed allow you to do what you propose, yes.

David Gaider, Designer

Half-Elves: No, no unique half-elf models.

You mean uniquely half-elf heads? Nope, you're still "stuck" with the same old heads.

3 Class Limit: The three-class limit is a hindrance to roleplaying? Sorry, I don't buy it. I've yet to see anyone "roleplay" their way into four or more seperate classes without specifically arranging their character to do so, and that always seems to be for purely powergaming reasons. If you tell your player to give you a roleplaying reason to justify whatever it is that they currently want, they can always think up something dramatic that suits the purpose. Heck, I run a live RPG where I get this all the time... a player wants to take the overly-powerful Ambidexterity/Two-Gun Mojo combo and comes up with some fantastically far-fetched story why their character has this. I say no and suddenly I'm "limiting their roleplaying!" I just say "No, I'm limiting your powergaming. There's a difference." There are several reasons not to have the 3-class limit in NWN, best of all just because the limit does not exist in PnP... ideally it would be up to the DM to roll his eyes in disgust when some player hands him a character with 5 classes just as in real life. "Roleplaying", however, is not one of those reasons.

Quote: You could set the neck to a certain piece so that a cloak appears when you have a cloak equipped.

How could you "set the neck" to another body part choice? We have already stated that SetCreatureAppearanceType does NOT allow you to select variable body parts for PCs.

Quote: Will there be any Drow towns? That'd be cool.

There is one Drow town, yes.

Quote: 1.A few towns, besides Waterdeep?

Nope. We are going to the Underdark, after all, not traipsing about Faerun.

Quote: 2.A lot of role-playing w/ multiple ways to solve problems/quests, like in SOU?

There's some, sure.

Quote: 3.Sharywn as a NPC?

Maybe.

Sorry, no bordellos or "relaxation" of any kind. This is D&D.