The Neverwinter Nights Megathread - Still stuck in the Orc Caves

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Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

The Crotch posted:

Man, I feel like such an rear end in a top hat for stealing the glowstone from the goblins. There's no way to explain the situation to them, is there?

Why steal it? You could just kill the evil druid and take the evidence you need from her corpse.

# ¿ May 13, 2013 21:33

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 15:34

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

If you're morally opposed to killing both evil druids and innocent goblins you could walk away without the evidence. You can finish the game with no problems even if you make a complete dog's breakfast of your defense.

# ¿ May 13, 2013 23:49

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

Regarding the druid I think you can bluff her into giving you the evidence if your PC has a high bluff rating. (The fact that you can't have the party rogue bluff for you is pretty annoying. Despite its flaws, the fact you can use every party member's skills in conversations was one of the things I liked quite a bit about SoZ.)

TerminusEst13 posted:

And then they're gonna learn it changes nothing.

I suppose you can get a title out of it if your PC is a good lawyer. Not that it really matters in-game.

# ¿ May 15, 2013 17:16

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

Brave New World posted:

Ditto. I absolutely love the first chapter of NWN1, even though I'll agree that the rest of the OC is pretty terrible and repetitive.

I never liked the fact that you can't have a party in NWN1 and the fact that you lacked real control of your hireling. With a Wizard you could take the barbarian hireling and use a fairy familiar (which you fully control) as a rogue (a cleric was less necessary since you could rest and fully heal whenever you wanted) so you could have close to a party but otherwise it was rather limited. And at least the barbarian was a class which was simple enough to be able to run with the commands verbal you can issue; the lack of precise control was much more annoying with spellcasters and rogues.

Overall I have to say I enjoyed much more the NWN2 OC than the NWN1, though the former did have a pretty bad ending.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2013 15:40

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

I was thinking about trying to go through the official campaigns using a lightly-armored, Dex-based, dual-wielding warrior with spellcasting capability (mainly for self-buffing). I wanted to see whether people think that this build I came up with viable and if so whether there are ways of improving it. I went with Swashbuckler for the Dex-based fighter, Wizard for the Int synergy with Swashbuckler and Eldritch Knight for the good BAB and spell progression.

Race: Human
Initial Stats (at level 1): Str: 10, Dex: 16, Con: 14, Int: 16, Wis: 10, Cha: 10
Final Stats (at level 30): Str: 10, Dex: 26, Con: 14, Int: 18, Wis: 10, Cha: 10
Skills to focus on: Bluff, Concentration, Diplomacy, Lore, Spellcraft, Tumble, Use Magic Device.
Weapons: Rapier in main hand, dagger in off-hand.
Armor: None

Levels (10 Swashbuckler/10 Wizard/10 Eldritch Knight):
01 Swashbuckler (Spellcasting Prodigy, Able Learner)
02 Wizard (generalist)
03 Wizard (Two Weapon Fighting)
04 Wizard (+1 Dex)
05 Wizard
06 Wizard (Spell Penetration)
07 Eldritch Knight
08 Eldritch Knight (+1 Dex)
09 Eldritch Knight (Weapon Focus (Rapier))
10 Eldritch Knight
11 Eldritch Knight
12 Eldritch Knight (Two Weapon Defense) (+1 Dex)
13 Eldritch Knight
14 Eldritch Knight
15 Eldritch Knight (Improved Two Weapon Fighting)
16 Eldritch Knight (+1 Dex)
17 Swashbuckler
18 Swashbuckler (Greater Two Weapon Fighting)
19 Swashbuckler
20 Swashbuckler (+1 Dex)
21 Swashbuckler (Great Dexterity)
22 Wizard
23 Wizard (Great Intelligence)
24 Wizard (+1 Dex)
25 Wizard (Great Dexterity, Great Intelligence)
26 Wizard
27 Swashbuckler (Perfect Two Weapon Fighting)
28 Swashbuckler (+1 Dex)
29 Swashbuckler (Great Dexterity)
30 Swashbuckler

# ¿ Jan 6, 2015 22:38

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

CaptainPsyko posted:

The main way you fall behind is skills, which is annoying, but manageable.

Thanks for the feedback. I made an improved version of the character. Yuan Ti Pureblood provides better base stats than Human (though I did have to mix up the leveling of my classes to avoid XP penalties). I dropped Two Weapon Defense and Improved Two Weapon Defense since the Shield spell provides a better shield bonus than these feats. The higher base stats enabled me to drop two Dex-raising epic feats in exchange for Epic Prowess end Combat Insight. Combat Insight replaces the Str bonus to weapon damage with a character's Int bonus and this according to the wiki stacks with the Insightful Strike class feature from Swashbuckler. This means that the character gets double his Int bonus as extra damage on his attacks.

Race: Yuan Ti Pureblood
Initial Stats (at level 1): Str: 10, Dex: 18, Con: 14, Int: 18, Wis: 12, Cha: 10
Final Stats (at level 30): Str: 10, Dex: 26, Con: 14, Int: 20, Wis: 12, Cha: 10
Skills to focus on: Bluff, Concentration, Diplomacy, Lore, Spellcraft, Tumble, Use Magic Device.

Levels:
01 Swashbuckler (Spellcasting Prodigy)
02 Wizard (generalist)
03 Swashbuckler (Able Learner)
04 Wizard (+1 Dex)
05 Swashbuckler
06 Wizard (Two Weapon Fighting)
07 Swashbuckler
08 Wizard (+1 Dex)
09 Wizard (Spell Penetration, Improved Two Weapon Fighting)
10 Eldritch Knight
11 Eldritch Knight
12 Eldritch Knight (Iron Will) (+1 Dex)
13 Eldritch Knight
14 Eldritch Knight
15 Eldritch Knight (Greater Two Weapon Fighting)
16 Eldritch Knight (+1 Dex)
17 Eldritch Knight
18 Eldritch Knight (Combat Expertise)
19 Eldritch Knight
20 Swashbuckler (+1 Dex)
21 Wizard (Epic Prowess)
22 Swashbuckler
23 Wizard (Combat Insight)
24 Swashbuckler (+1 Dex)
25 Wizard (Great Dexterity)
26 Swashbuckler
27 Wizard (Perfect Two Weapon Fighting)
28 Swashbuckler (+1 Dex)
29 Wizard (Great Intelligence, Great Intelligence)
30 Swashbuckler

# ¿ Jan 7, 2015 00:10

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

Poil posted:

While I don't know much about good character builds I doubt you're going to reach level 30 with LA+2.

I once ran a Drow Wizard/Arcane Scholar/Eldritch Knight character who, if I recall correctly, got to level 30 right at the end of MotB. The ECL +2 doesn't seem to count for XP awards from killing things, meaning that the character will end up getting more XP than an ECL 0 race.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2015 00:26

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

Vermain posted:

Roll a straight Dex Bard. It covers every single base you've requested and it consistently much better than any kind of cross-class build.

I already played through the game with tha Yuan-Ti Pureblood Swashbuckler/Wizard/Eldritch Knight 10/10/10. Only difference from that second character plan I had posted was that I replaced Iron Will with Practiced Spellcaster. It worked quite well. At level 30 with Combat Expertise, Bracers of Armor +8, a Belt of Agility +8 and casting Shield, Mirror Image, Greater Invisibility, Shadow Shield and Premonition this PC gets an AC of 46 and that's before the miss chances and damage absorption from his buffs. And, thanks to dual wielding, the character gets two sets of 5 attacks that start at +45 to hit and do 1d6+16 and 1d6+13 base damage respectively. And this PC can cast every Wizard spell in the game, which gives him a fair bit of flexibility. The character does admittedly do less damage against enemies immune to sneak attacks due to the fact that this negates the extra damage from Insightful Strike, but with all his buffs can still steamroll through them since enemies can't really touch him when he's fully buffed.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2015 00:45

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

CaptainPsyko posted:

You'll get more epic feats faster, as well as increases to caster level which are important for offensive casting if you stick with Sorc after 20. That said, you'd get more out of, for example, 10 levels of Arcane Scholar of Candleleep, for super-metamagic with no caster level loss.

Agreed. Caster level is very important. It makes spells last longer, increases their damage and is vital for getting through enemy spell resistance. Taking both wizard and sorcerer levels is a terrible idea. The character will have low caster levels in both classes. Better to mix things up and take levels in a non-caster class if one wants to multiclass, since that will give one's PC a different set of skills. Arcane Scholar of Candleleep is very nice, but 30 levels of Sorcerer will make a very effective character as well. The latter has the advantage that you are completely free to spend your feats however you like without worrying about meeting prestige class requirements.

PS: I played around with my Swashbuckler/Wizard/Eldritch Knight PC and it's quite impressive what you can get if you exploit crafting to its full capacity in MotB. A Greater Amulet of Health, the Dread Wraps robe, the Heart of Rashamen and Mourningring rings, the Bracers of the Inner Planes, Dragon Slippers (enchanted to provide +8 Dex), Ceremonial Uthgard Belt (enchanted to provide +8 Str, and +9 to Fort saves), the Shroud of the Elder Doom (enchanted to provide +8 deflection AC bonus) and a custom headband (enchanted to provide +8 Int, +8 Con, +8 Cha and +9 to Will saves) resulted in my character having a 48 AC and 350 HP, +39 Fort, +29 Ref, +33 Will saves, as well as immunity to sneak attacks, paralysis, knockdown, fear, disease, level/ability drain, poison, death magic and also have freedom of movement, haste and improved evasion. And all that is before applying any wizard buffs.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2015 20:39

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

Praetorian Mage posted:

That's the thing, though. I did take 30 levels of Sorcerer, and my spells were still underpowered. Everything was saving against everything and the damage output was very low. If a higher caster level is supposed to make spells do more damage and be harder to save against, I haven't seen it.

It's been a while since I played NWN1, so I don't remember things so clearly. I had played through SoU and HotU with a pure Wizard and had no problems, though I'm not sure how relevant that is to you since this involved having a henchman and the enemies were presumably different from whatever you're up against. Spell DC is 10 + spell level + Charisma modifier + feat bonuses. If you can't affect enemies with your spells you either botched your character development (which doesn't sound like it based on what you've said) or that server decided to punish spellcasters by giving enemies huge saves.

As far as Evocation spells go, Isaac's missile storms don't have saves and do magic damage, so these might be a good option if you all your enemies keep making saves or if they're resistant to elemental damage. Bigby's hand spells also don't have saves and are a good way to immobilize an enemy. Do enemies automatically fail their saves when attacked by spells under a Time Stop? I can't remember anymore how that spell worked in NWN.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2015 21:32

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

Praetorian Mage posted:

Is a spell cast from a scroll as good as one of your own spells, or does it have a lower DC for some reason? It seemed like spells I cast from scrolls or items got blocked more often than the ones I cast from my own spell reserves.

The NWN wiki doesn't say anything about the DC of spells cast from scrolls. In D&D however a scroll has a DC that is 10 + the level of the spell + the ability modifier of the minimum ability score needed to cast that level of spell. So a 9th level spell would have 10+9+4, i.e. a DC of only 23. Also in D&D the caster level of a spell cast from a scroll is normally the minimum level necessary to cast the spell (e.g. 17 for 9th level spells). So if NWN follows D&D rules in this, then spells cast from scrolls will be weaker.

Maybe the creators of the modules were worried about caster supremacy and deliberately beefed up monsters against spells. Of course managing balance is pretty tricky so it sounds like they overdid it.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2015 22:20

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

Praetorian Mage posted:

Well that just sounds absolutely terrible. Did 3e only become the "caster edition" because every game was running a fuckton of house rules or something?

No. Magic in 1st and 2nd edition AD&D was really dangerous for the caster and his allies. E.g. every casting of Teleport had a chance to teleport you underground, instantly killing you and everyone with you. One bad roll could lead to a total party kill. Haste would magically age your body by one year. After a few weeks of adventuring human fighters would have to go to a retirement home. Additionally, in 2E every magical effect that aged the target also triggered a system shock roll (a percentile roll based on Constitution). Fail that and you'd die. In other words characters could die from being hasted, particularly if their Constitution wasn't high. And there were plenty of spells that magically aged the caster or their target. In other words earlier editions still had very powerful spells, but actually using them could result in instant death, which wasn't very fun. 3E removed that limitation.

Regarding caster supremacy as a whole, much of the stuff I've seen involves abusing questionable spells and abilities from supplements such as the Book of Vile Darkness. Spellcasters can be very powerful and do things that a straight fighter cannot do, but much of the extreme cheese you saw involved things no sane GM would allow. And while casters can use spells to replicate the abilities of other classes, spells are limited in number so a caster couldn't really replace them all. In the end I also think it depends on the players. I'd that a good caster PC should buff and help his allies rather than try to hog all the spotlight, just as a rogue PC shouldn't constantly run off to try and loot houses or pickpocket important NPCs.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2015 09:02

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

prometheusbound2 posted:

For instance, in Baldur's Gate 2(not 3rd edition) combat scenarios basically boil down to wizards throwing up really powerful defenses and other wizards countering them.

Personally I never really bothered engaging in spell duels in BG2. My prefered tactic was to move my tanks around the buffed Wizard, have an Inquisitor (which is a paladin subclass) drop a Dispel Magic on him and then watch the Wizard get chunked within seconds.

Hypocrisy posted:

No it applies to wizards too because Wizards get all the spells and spells in D&D start doing silly things from...level 1 upwards. Clerics/Druids just get to cast in full armor or cast when as a giant bear. That's cool and all but it doesn't match up to the Wizard spell list.

There's a reason the term CoDzilla (CoD referring to Cleric or Druid) was used in 3E. Clerics get some really good buffs, such as Divine Power which lets them have a Base Attack Bonus equal to that of Fighters. Druids can mitigate skimping on physical stats by wildshaping into an animal form which good stats and then buffing themselves. Wizards could be powerful too, but Clerics and Druids were really good.

bewilderment posted:

Caster supremacy is pretty much there in the 3.x core, no special rules fiddliness requires.

I agree that Wizards have more flexibility than melee classes and can do things the latter cannot, but even with buffs they could never match a melee class. E.g. a Wizard with Tenser's Transformation will have a good Base Attack Bonus, but without the feats, physical stats, skill in weapons and armor and gear of a dedicated warrior he'll be a really subpar. I guess a wizard could put a ton of buffs on himself first to be more effective (such as Haste, Displacement or Bull's Strength), but most of these would only last a single battle, require multiple rounds of prep time and would have been vastly more effective if applied on an actual tank instead. Save or Die or Enchantment spells are limited by the fact there are spells that counter them and the fact there are plenty of enemies that are simply immune to them, not to mention the fact that many enemies will have high saves and might simply resist them.

And some of the suggestions I've seen elsewhere, such as that Diplomacy or Bluff is useless because the Wizard can just cast Charm Person make no sense to me. A Wizard who goes around casting enchantment spells on NPCs will certainly get caught (ether because someone will make his save, which results in the person realizing that an attempt was made to control his mind, or that he'll be seen doing it by someone with Spellcraft) and the fact he tried to mind-control people will probably not make him very popular with them.

Fly is good, but melee characters can benefit from it as well, especially if they can do ranged attacks. As for Rope Trick, enemies can still detect the extradimensional portal and the spell is limited by the fact you can't take bags of holding or similar items in it, which most higher level parties will use for storage.

In my experience playing tabletop D&D, Wizards can do some very impressive things but are fairly poor at actually damaging and killing enemies. And I guess that a high level caster might be able to replicate a Skill monkey class like a Rogue in an emergency with say Moment of Prescience, but that is a high level spell that works for one check, so it would be much more effective to leave that sort of thing to those classes instead. And many of the more effective spells a wizard can cast in 3E actually make other characters more effective (hasting the party is much better for dealing damage than throwing a fireball unless you have a large group of enemies all bunched up together), so an effective wizard will actually work by enabling other characters to cool things instead of hogging the limelight himself.

I agree that warrior types getting more varied special abilites is a good thing, something that to be fair 3E did try to do with feats, but if one tries to limit casters too much then the party as a whole loses the option to come up with creative solutions to the challenges presented to them. E.g I remember one game I was in where the party's solution for dealing with an extremely powerful enemy was to have the Rogue trick him with Bluff into picking up the trigger object that the Wizard had cast Trap The Soul on. Trying to restrict casters too much would render that sort of thing impossible.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2015 13:36

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

Really Pants posted:

So he trapped the bad guy's soul with a spell that was made for trapping souls. That is creative as gently caress.

More creative than running up to him and hitting him with swords until he stops moving. And the spell needs a fair bit of setting up and subtefuge for it to be effective.

Agnosticnixie posted:

One thing that disappoints me a lot about NWN2 (both OC and MotB) is how much it seems that the silver sword of Gith is made into such a centerpiece that it's just not possible to consider anything but a longsword melee focused build for combat; even my purest caster ended up being turned into an Eldritch Knight to avoid getting pasted by Akachi after the king of shadows woke me up.

I never used the silver sword (other than on the portal at the end of the OC) and had no problems with the game. It's a good weapon but not necessary to complete the game. A pure arcane spellcaster can easily deal with the final MotB boss by immobilizing it using Bigby's hand spells and then unleashing damaging spells from a safe distance.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2015 14:34

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

bewilderment posted:

Well, a wizard will never have the feats of a fighter, no, but they don't really need it when they've got summon monster and similar spells as well. Summon cool dudes to help when you feel like it. Clerics and druids get it too, of course, because in the core they're the ubermensch. Druids don't get to summon things that are as cool, but they get to turn into a bear and get superstats while also still being able to cast via natural spell so that's something.

I thought that summoned creatures were pretty weak in 3E to be honest. They tend to be useful as a distraction at best. And summon spells take a full round to cast, meaning they're easy to disrupt (and the spells don't last very long either). I agree that spellcasters have more options than non-spellcasters and that non-spellcasters would benefit from more special powers to make them flashier, but I do not think that means other classes are useless. You can always throw magic-resistant or even magic-immune enemies to the party for example, and the ability to have a consistent damage output no matter what is pretty useful.

I think that for wizards to be really broken, they need foreknowledge of what they are facing, prep time to buff up and the willingness to go all out (which will result in them being of limited use the rest of the day). I imagine that they wouldn't get those most of the time and the final point means that they need to conserve spells since they can't know whether something more dangerous isn't lurking around the corner.

bewilderment posted:

Even if we accept your conclusion that a wizard won't be as good at the niches of other classes - other classes don't even get to be in the niche of a wizard or cleric or druid without magic items. The casters get to be in their own club where they can to some degree duplicate each other's abilities (although only divine casting gets healing for no real reason in 3e) but the fighter or rogue don't get to chuck out big fireballs, or fly, or even get dispel magic or magic resistance for themselves. Hell, to get a magic item of any kind, you literally need a caster to make it for you rules as written.

Paladins and rangers already get limited spellcasting though. Doesn't that count as them encroaching into the spellcasting niche? Or are you advocating that all classes should have high spellcasting and attack abilities? Wouldn't that erase the distinction between classes?

Praetorian Mage posted:

See, this is my big problem. I want to be a spellcaster who is good at killing stuff with magic.

I've never used a Warlock, but aren't they good at dealing damage using magic? Maybe that would be a good choice.

Praetorian Mage posted:

I don't see how a wizard being able to kill stuff on his own would be "hogging the limelight". If that's not what you mean, I apologize.

D&D is built around the idea of it being a cooperative game where there are niches the various classes can fill. If one class can do everything, then it will overshadow the other ones. Someone interested in killing stuff would be better off playing a class specializing in that.

Praetorian Mage posted:

Wow, all that stuff sounds monumentally unfun. So all 3e did was remove fun-killing downsides from spellcasting.

The way 2E tied to balance things was truly awful. E.g. they tried to balance more powerful classes by making it harder to qualify for them by having high stat requirements (which is why paladins had a minimum Cha of 17 while fighters don't). Of course that simply meant that anyone playing that class would have very high stats in addition to the more powerful abilities. Or the attempt to balance the fact that the non-human races were more powerful by both stat requirements and applying level limits at which point the would stop leveling up. E.g. an elf wizard would stop gaining levels once he hit level 11. That meant that non-human PCs would be overpowered at low levels and then rapidly fall behind human PCs at high levels. Not to mention the fact it made no sense from a story perspective; these fantasy settings for example tend to have elven archmages that surpass humans in ability, something literally forbidden by the rules. I could go on, but you get the idea.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2015 01:20

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

bewilderment posted:

As for the second and third questions - have you read or played fourth edition DnD? Your opinion of it will probably answer those questions. Or probably any video game that involves class balance - World of Warcraft? Dragon Age Inquisition (ignoring the more broken specialisations)?

I had played 4e, though I have to admit I never bothered to become as familiar with it as I had been with 3e. I thought that the added abilities warrior and rogue classes got were a good thing, though I didn't like the fact that 4e removed certain aspects of spellcasting such as buffing other characters or some utility spells that could provide added flexibility to a party such as teleport.

Agnosticnixie posted:

I have never seen or heard of anyone who actually used racial level caps, ever, and most 2e and a lot of 1e setting books ignored them completely as well.

It was still part of the rules. The fact everyone ignored them doesn't mean it wasn't in the game. Same with e.g. the fact that the default character generation system was "roll 3d6 6 times keeping track of the order of the rolls; these are your stats", which meant that if you played by the default rules then both the race and the class of your character was literally determined by a roll of the dice since they both races and classes had minimum stat requirements. Wanted an elf but rolled a Cha of 7 or a fighter but rolled a Str of 8? Too bad. If we went with that infamous article on house rules Gygax had written at one point, we could say that you weren't really playing D&D if you didn't use the rules exactly as they were in the books.

(Which is something I found interesting in 2e vs. 3e edition wars; defenders of 2e would always defend their own house-ruled version of the game they had been playing for years and with was suited exactly to their tastes rather than the default game. I think it's natural that one would prefer the version of the game that they had developed for themselves, so that seemed like a pretty unfair comparison.)

# ¿ Jan 21, 2015 01:55

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

Agnosticnixie posted:

And the 1e standard was 3d6 in order; the 2e standard was 4d6 drop low assign to taste.

Actually 3d6 in order was the default in 2e as well. 4d6, drop low, assign to taste was presented as an alternative character generation method for groups who wanted to play more powerful characters.

Agnosticnixie posted:

Also that Gygax article is weird in a lot of ways since Unearthed Arcana was literally Gygax publishing his own house rules and outside of convention modules he apparently didn't care how the players rolled their stats so long as there was no blatant cheating (and IME, the most hardcore supporters of 3d6 in orders tend to cheat). 2E is chock full of optional rules all over the place as well which ultimately made it impossible for a game to not be house ruled if only to say which optional rules applied or not (including at least 3 optional rules to handle racial level caps in a softer way).

There's also the fact that Gygax loved to break his own rules all the time. E.g. when he had created AD&D stats for Conan the Barbarian, he had him be a Fighter/Thief multiclass; something forbidden by his own rules since humans were supposed to only be able to dual-class. Then again AD&D was the product of Gygax making things up when he was a GM and then sticking it into the game with little thought of how one rule would affect the others. Since I mentioned dual-classing, that for example came about when his son's PC, who was a Mage, lost his spellbook while on an alien planet and was forced to fight since he could no longer cast spells. The ad hoc arrangement Gygax came up to permit that became the dual-classing rules (which of course were completely arbitrary in their implementation only for humans).

# ¿ Jan 21, 2015 02:22

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

Poil posted:

Ehum, sorry about that but I feel very strongly against it after my own experiences of rolling up stats for pnp. To make a comparison to ancient Greece, it's really not fun when you roll up a powerful Spartan when everyone else rolls up Heracles.

I agree that point buy is the best system, especially if it has progressively more expensive stats in order to help mitigate min-maxing.

But as 2e might have put it, having a gimped character would give you a unique roleplaying opportunity to play as someone useless; something you wouldn't do if you had control over generating your own character.

Agnosticnixie posted:

I'm pretty sure both Ravenloft and Darksun encouraged it above all else but you're probably right on the core, GH/FR stuff being 3d6 drop low still.

Quite possibly; I'm just going by what was in the 2e PHB.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2015 02:39

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

Fuzz posted:

D&D is such a poo poo system.

1e and 2e were pretty clunky, but to be fair most RPGs from that era were that way. Rolemaster (or as it was often called Rulemaster) was ridiculously complicated with rules for everything. Traveler, a sci-fi RPG, had you rolling stats in order and also had the feature that your character could die during character generation. You had to simulate your character's career and for every year he worked or served in the military there was a chance he'd die. (Which meant that many players would send characters with bad stats to be asteroid miners, one of the most dangerous professions, until they died and then start over making a new character.)

# ¿ Jan 21, 2015 08:30

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 15:34

Factor_VIII: Feb 2, 2005; Les soldats se trouvent dans la v�rit�.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Part of the reason 4d6 style rolling became the standard in a lot of places is because D&D generally seems to lead to people wanting to be the heroes of the story so they want to, you know, be heroic.

I fully agree. I think that players should be allowed to create the character they like to play (provided they're not trying to rules-lawyer their way into playing something broken) and that their character should be able to be effective. If their PC is useless they'll feel bored and frustrated. I was being tongue in cheek and parodying the way that 2e effectively told the players to make a virtue out of necessity with regards to being forced to play a race or class they didn't want to. E.g. here's a quote from the 2e DMG: "For example, if Kirizov has the scores he needs to be a half-elf fighter, does he really need to be a half-elf ranger? Encourage the player to develop a character who always wanted to be a ranger but just never got the chance, or who fancies himself a ranger but is allergic to trees. Encourage role-playing!"

# ¿ Jan 21, 2015 22:53

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