NWN Forum Update

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(Originally posted by Z-Layrex)

David Gaider, Designer

Bows: You can fire the bow in melee, yes but do so at -4 to hit unless you have the Point Blank feat and will suffer an Attack of Opportunity if you are at Hardcore Rules or Very Difficult difficult setting. You don't actually strike someone with the bow itself.

DMs changing stat point values: The number of points is set at 30, for now. The Dungeon Master has the ability to alter stats permanently via the DM console after their character is made, however. The only problem with that is that skill points from Int can't be added/subtracted retroactively for the first level. If we're going to allow an in-game setting for the point system, of course we're going to have to put in a filters server-side regarding it. Might be something we could look at in an expansion, perhaps.

Encounter Triggers: Encounter triggers are still tripped off by hidden or invisible characters... though the creatures that spawn in won't necessarily see you. As for casting True Seeing, fortunately in NWN we have different levels of perception available when scripting. Someone wouldn't cast the spell unless they somehow became aware of your presence (succeeded at a Listen roll or were attacked) and couldn't see you.

Skill Points: You don't have to spend all you're skill points when you level up, but any you don't spend are lost... they aren't stored until the next level....

Actually, Bob just told me that in the current build skill points you don't spend at level up actually can be stored until the next one. Just goes to show you that development continues. I'd tried it before and that wasn't so. Tomorrow it may be different.

Locked Campaign: You don't have to play through the whole campaign in order for it to be unlocked, just each chapter/module as you complete it. Really it's to prevent you from spoiling it for yourself too easily. If you really want to, I'm sure you can figure out how it's 'locked' or will be informed somewhere quickly enough how to unlock it. Like we've said before, it's not all that obscure.

Bob McCabe, Designer

Load Times: I think my system is pretty similar to yours (I posted my specs recently (yesterday?) in a thread about benchmarks) - regardless, moving through an area transition to, what I think, is the largest, most script-heavy area in in Chapter 1 took me exactly 5 seconds on the ol' stop watch. To move to a smaller area took just under 2 seconds. Saving my game took just under one second (in the smaller prelude area, saving my game takes an almost imperceptible fraction).

Brenon Holmes, Programmer

Hearing Invisible Creatures: I'm just going to say that through playtesting we find different things work better or worse than we expected... sometimes a change is required, other times a change is not required. Other times, there's a bug in code which causes bad misconceptions about how powerful an ability is... so when it's fixed, generally things revert back to how they were... fixed and good. ie: Ranged Sneak attack range: 10m.

To clarify my earlier statement on being able to hear invisible creatures... if the invisible creature gets close to a creature, that creature is then allowed to make listen checks against the invisible creature... and at that point, most spellcasters are pretty much going to be heard... unless of course they're in active stealth mode *and* have at least a small amount of skill invested.

Edit: Also, I should note that any time a creature speaks the speech bubble will appear over their current location... regardless of their current visibility state.