NWN2 full run

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Thanks, some great suggestions there. I'll have a more in-depth look at the Favored Soul then decide. I'm tempted by some of the divine prestige classes too. The Doomguide gets some nice abilities for reduced HP/level and the Stormlord has no disadvantages that I can see and lots of very nice perks. Alternatively I could sacrifice some spellcasting and turn my cleric into another tank with Warpriest... lots of options there.

For the Rogue/Ranger I'm starting as Rogue, then giving him at least 11 levels of Ranger to get the most out of the combat style. I haven't decided if I'm turning him into an archer or a dual-wielder, but I'm tempted to take the latter and let him deal insane critical damage (I had Neeshka do this in the OC and with Weapon Finesse she did very well). After CL 12 I'm not sure where the rest of the levels should go. More Rogue levels will give me nice critical damage, more Ranger will give me higher BAB and HP. I may at least get to Rogue 4 for Uncanny Dodge. I'm most probably going to give him the Able Learner feat so that he can level all the Rogue skills when taking Ranger levels.

I'm also probably turning the Sorcerer into an Eldritch Knight. With more HP and high BAB, and Tenser's and Greater Stoneskin I can see him being a very effective damage-dealer even if he runs out of spells. I did this with my PC in the OC and he did rather well, especially with some of the stat-boosting spells. Then again I'll have to sacrifice one spellcaster level, so I'm not fully decided yet.

The druid cohort seems like a good choice, especially if my cleric takes something like Warpriest. I like the offensive spells druids get too, especially at low to mid levels. The second cohort will be either a wizard or some warrior, depending on whether I need more melee power or more spellcasting.

For the XP, I meant if the settig on the difficulty slider affects how much XP you get from kills, like it did in IWD. But in any case thanks for telling me about the summons cheese, I may exploit it to ensure my characters get to level 18

 

Any time.

Well, you can get a Doomguide as cohort in a very significant quest, so I think you would waste your time building one yourself.

The Stormlord on the other hand, you won't encounter as cohort, and it is an interesting Prestige class with several benefits as you say.

But I think you misunderstand something. A pure cleric is certainly a tank when build right. The cleric might only get medium BAB, but he got all those nice buff spells good for melee use, nice saves and other advantages. Take some of the good cleric domains like I.E. War. You get Weapon Focus in deity's favored weapon, just like Favored Soul, and you get access to Flame Strike earlier, and Power Word Stun as bonus spell. Then take the Earth Domain also, and you get the Toughness feat for free, plus access to Energy Immunity earlier, and get Stoneskin as bonus spell.

As for the Rogue, there's not so many creatures as in OC and MotB that are sneak attack and crit immune, so a pure Rogue can deal enough damage by himself. And if you want cheese, take one level of Shadowdancer and get the Hide in Plain sight ability. Nasty.

Personally I would have one arcane caster that is pure so I wouldn't multiclass your Sorcerer. Let him spam destruction at any given opportunity. The more spells the merrier. And besides, you already got 3 tanks.

If you create a 4 char party, you can't take more than 1 cohort unless you give the Leadership Feat to one of your created chars.

I actually don't know if the difficulty slider does affect XP gain in combat, but I do know I didn't have to resolve to cheese to get to level 18. I did all the sidequests and picked some random high level encounters on the OLM. It didn't took long. However, if you want all your chars to reach level 30, that's another ballgame...

 

I am not even going to think of level 30 18 is more than enough! That means my Sorcerer will have level 9 spells for the finale and that's all I want.

So I went ahead and created the following party:
Tiefling Rogue/Ranger
Shield Dwarf Fighter/Dwarven Defender
Human Cleric/Stormlord
Human Sorcerer

I don't know if the Tiefling was such a good idea after all, but the boosts to INT and DEX are both useful for this character. I loaded him with skills, he'll take care of everything except Lore, Heal and the talking skills (which are spread between the cleric and sorcerer). The cleric got War and Earth, which gave him 2 free feats that I need for Stormlord anyway. Nice! I also like having Stoneskin, it will free the Sorcerer from having to use it and allow him to spam more offensive spells instead.

 

Oh there is some exploits to get to level 30, especially if you're evil....

That party will suit you just fine!

Don't worry about the Tiefling. The preferred class for that race is Rogue as you know. And like the OC with Neeshka, you won't notice the one level your Tiefling char lacks behind the other chars. IMHO the Tiefling is a good race to choose for that, for the reasons you gave. And there's one quest where the Tiefling's Darkness ability will come in handy...

 

In DAO you have an option not to kill yourself or you can send the other Warden do die instead of the MC. You should give DAO a second chance.

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I have actually played through both the OC and MotB with all options. I wasn't all that impressed with the morale outcome of the selection. I like DAO better because things are shades of Gray and not clear black and white like 90% of the things you do in any D&D grame.

 

Got that quest yesterday. I had completely forgotten about your advice, but from the description of the door I could tell that's what I needed. Naturally I was about to rage thinking "where the hell do I get that spell/ability?" until I saw the option to "use Darkness ability"

 

I've never been a fan of murky sides for an RPG. While I think it will be fine in Alpha Protocol, which look awesome, I'd rather things be relatively clear in something like NWN/DA.

Started SoZ yet Ziad?

 

I have! I've been quiet because progress has been very slow due to dreaded RL but I've made it quite far into the game I think. I'm on the Sword Coast, and I think I can initiate the quest that moves into the end game. I started on it, but then reloaded and decided not to because I have a lot of unfinished business left, namely the quest related to Port Llast, various side quests scattered around and I think I haven't found all the locations on the Overland Map. My characters are only level 14 so I also expect I still have quite a bit to do even if I initiate that quest.

I was hoping to recruit a Wizard cohort and saved all mage scrolls to have him scribe them, but I haven't found one yet. Should I just sell the scrolls or will he show up eventually?

 

I bought NWN 2 right after it was released and played through the official single player campaign, then played it for a month in multiplayer mode and decided to return to NWN 1 until NWN 2 becomes better. In my opinion NWN 2 has a much better single player campaign than NWN 1, so you could buy the game, complete the single player campaign and then wait for more patches for multiplayer

 

And Storm of Zehir is finally done. Aside from a few annoyances and engine-inherited shortcomings I liked it a lot. The overland map is great fun to trek across, you can FINALLY create the whole party, some of the encounters were very challenging without being too frustrating, and the final area deserves special mention. I managed to get through the entire Temple without a single fight (until the big one at the end of course) and that was so much more fun than the typical hack and slash fests at the end of just about every other NWN game (even Mask of the Betrayer suffered from this). The final battle was glorious: tough and challenging, but it doesn't feel too drawn out and it only took a few reloads before I got my strategy right and won.

All in all I'm very impressed with the expansions for NWN2. They're so different from each other yet I thoroughly enjoyed both. It's a shame the base game wasn't anywhere as good.

 

My favorite is SoZ mostly because of party creation. I still have yet to try out MoW, but I'm looking forward to playing it. I'm hoping that Purgatorio will get finished soon, the demo is really fun, and I can only imagine the finished module would be even better.