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That armor is really going to screw up Deekin's casting. Are you going to leave him with armor anyway, or see if you can find a set of Bracers of Armor?
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Jan 3, 2016 01:16
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The logic for removing Sharwyn's equipment is that she went down into a dungeon and got killed. So whoever killed her behaved in the traditional adventurer fashion and looted her. Sharwyn is a bard/fighter, so she's got the same "watch the arcane failure" thing as Deekin, although to a lesser degree because her Plan B is stabbing, which armor doesn't stop, and Deekin's Plan B is casting, which armor can mess up. I noticed you have Deekin wearing armor and bracers of armor, too. Those don't stack: they both give an Armor bonus. There's Armor bonus, Natural Armor bonus, Deflection bonus, I want to say Insight bonus? Shields give an Armor bonus which is different from and stacks with regular Armor (it was changed to a Shield bonus in 3.5 to make it make more sense). Tower shields are a bit of an odd duck. They have all kinds of restrictions and rules in the tabletop, the bottom line of which is that they're a pain in the rear end and not really worth using. Here they just have a colossal armor check penalty.
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Jan 3, 2016 15:29
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A couple of things I noticed, one you can do something about, the other you can't. The one you can do something about is that Deekin is wearing a belt that boosts dexterity, in addition to the bracers: these do not stack. Multiple bonuses of the same kind don't stack, so an Enhancement Bonus to Dexterity (which they both provide) will not add up. But you can do stuff like have a Divine Bonus to Dexterity and an Enhancement Bonus to Dexterity, and they stack. (I don't know if there's a source of Divine Bonus to Dex in NWN, or even at all, it's just for the sake of example.) By the same token, you can have an Enhancement Bonus to Strength, and an Enhancement Bonus to Dexterity, and both work. If you have to pick, go with the belt: it provides the Freedom effect, while the bracers are just more dexterity. The one you can't do anything about is that most of the companions are morons with bad builds. Sharwyn, at least in vanilla, was a Bard that burned three feats on using the double bladed sword: Two Weapon Fighting and Ambidexterity for dual wield style (one feat is useless without the other, this is part of why they were combined into one feat in 3.5), and Exotic Weapon Proficiency so she can use the two bladed sword. And it's not even that great a weapon, which is the other reason that Two Weapon Fighting and Ambidexterity got merged for 3.5: dual wielding is usually about on par with just using one bigger weapon. Now, you can really gently caress poo poo up with dual wielding if you get damage bonuses, like sneak attack or elemental weapons, but Sharwyn is a bard/fighter so your only hope is finding a good dual bladed sword. And good friggin' luck with that, I don't know if any non-poo poo ones exist. On top of that, she's Dex heavy and using a Strength weapon? She's not as bad as the original campain's Grimgnaw (a monk burning four feats on all the armor proficiencies and shields, especially when you couldn't alter their equipment, is so bad that I will outright call it sabotage), but still, these aren't exactly put together by Character Optimization's top flight superstars, you know? As for the AI, well, you saw how that went in the room where the floor had only narrow paths through the traps. She charged right through all the traps and died. I also forget if the AI can switch between ranged weapons and melee weapons without you telling them to, but I wouldn't be surprised if they suck at that too.
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Jan 8, 2016 18:28
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As you noted, Daelan would be a better henchman, for the reasons I outlined of "Sharwyn's build is poo poo, Daelan's is less poo poo." He does have a problem, because he's using that stupid double axe instead of going all in on a two hander, but oh well, at least he's better with his double weapon than Sharwyn is with hers. He also has the advantage of being able to wear heavier armor. Sure, Sharwyn is proficient with heavy armor thanks to her Fighter levels, but her Bard levels mean that wearing it is a bad idea. Daelan can wear any medium armor you find, so you can save the best heavy armor for yourself, give the best medium to Daelan, and maybe light to Deekin if you aren't giving him robes or whatever. The cloak will be better on Deekin, because Charisma is a main stat for him, since that's what controls his bardic casting. You mostly use it for Turn Undead, so it's not like you're wasting it, but I think Deekin can make better use of it. So could Sharwyn, in a pinch, but I suspect she's not long for the party. The role she fills right now is "meat shield," and you can just cast Summon Creature VI for a dire tiger or something to do the job about as well, but way more expendable. Natural Armor is a different type of bonus from Armor, the name is just poorly chosen. Natural Armor and Worn Armor stack, because they're different kinds of bonus. The enhancement bonus on armor works, and while I can't speak for the nuts and bolts of it, the reason is that if it didn't getting magic armor would be worthless. The point is that if you were wearing, as an example; a suit of +3 Leather Armor, a +4 Amulet of Natural Armor, and a +1 Ring of Deflection, your final armor class (and we're ignoring dexterity here because this is enough of a pain in the rear end already) would be 20: the Leather Armor gives you 5 from Worn Armor (two for itself, but it has a +3 enhancement bonus), the amulet is +4 from Natural Armor, and +1 Deflection. The different types do matter because they apply to different things, but quite frankly I don't think it's worth micro-managing and the game will handle the difference between regular, touch, and flat-footed armor, so who gives a poo poo, especially because you're probably going to want a Periapt of Wisdom for your neck instead of an Amulet of Natural Armor anyway. Worst case, you can just shuffle equipment around and see which way the numbers jump. You can order your henchmen to blow their buff spells before a fight. I don't know what Deekin and Sharwyn's spell list looks like, but surely they've got something so they get right to handing out the beatings (relatively) instead of wasting their time buffing you.
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Jan 11, 2016 07:28
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Being able to detect while moving at full speed is an elf thing. Detect and Stealth each halve your movement speed, so using both quarters it. But you're a dwarf cleric, so "stealth" is not a thing you're going to have to worry about. That Rod of Resurrection only has so many charges, and it's great for emergencies, but as a cleric, you can cast Raise Dead yourself. Because you know you're going to find more stiffs down there, but Raise Dead is a fifth level spell that's only good if one of your teammates dies, it's up to you which method of bringing people back you want to be the main one, and which one will be the backup. But hey, at least you don't have to worry about losing levels, right? I don't remember all the changes switching from Normal difficulty to Hardcore difficulty would bring, but I do know that one of the big ones is AOE spells can't hurt allies on Normal, but on Hardcore, they can. So you can Flame Strike and Fireball without worry on Normal. I don't remember what Hard does, but I remember it being a bunch of gratuitous difficulty bullshit, and do not suggest it. I think the reason that Sharwyn and Daelan are using double weapons is because double weapon rules were new to D&D. And, to be fair, a double weapon isn't completely lovely. After all, if you don't use a double sword with its twin 1d8 attacks, then you can use a longsword/shortsword pair for a 1d8 and 1d6, or paired shortswords for 1d6 if you want to make sure all your feats apply to both hands. The problem is that, like I said before, dual wielding is lovely. But what the hell, Daelan already spent the feats on getting good with the thing, may as well get all sunk cost in here and keep him with the double axe. By this point he's too far in to go back, and trying to pick feats so he can use a greataxe or something isn't worth it. He's not there to actually kill anybody anyway, he's just there to hold attention while you do the heavy lifting. Speaking of Daelan, his gloves are super nice. Like, the only reason I'm not saying you should steal his gloves is because they have race/class requirements that you don't meet. At least now you can free up both his ring slots, since you won't need a Ring of Deflection for a good while, but gently caress if I know what he can wear instead. And since the game didn't explain it well (or at all), that secondary thing about "soak 10 +3" or however they phrased it meant that any attacks from mundane, +1, or +2 weapons will deal ten less damage. Attacks from +3 weapons do not give a tin poo poo and will inflict full damage. Or, as it's put in the actual books, DR 10/+3. I don't know if there's anybody watching this who wouldn't know that but gently caress it, why stop overexplaining every drat thing now, am I right? Linu's a pretty solid henchman, and with help from the core game mod that lets me give her gear that isn't underpowered garbage, my team of her, my NE elf ranger/rogue, my ranger/rogue's panther animal companion, and my summoned dire boar, I was able to clean house. She'd be redundant for you, though, because you're already a cleric. You could swap out Daelan for her, though, since she's just as sturdy (her higher AC maybe makes up for her lower hit die, and she can self-buff to overcome her lack of base attack bonus), and there are arguments to be made for clerical redundancy. And if you ever get that talking longsword, she can make use of it! Which is good, because the NPCs currently available to you either can't use it or are specialized in some other weapon. There's a companion who can maybe use it, but I don't know their feat layout, and you'd have better stuff by then anyway. You had Linu ID all your poo poo, but maybe Deekin can do it too? He's also a Bard, but I don't know how good his Lore skill is. If nothing else, I think one of your domains is Knowledge, so you have Identify on your spell list. Now that you've found Tomi, though, you've got some thinking to do. Tomi is a straight rogue (although he can PrC into Shadowdancer if you let him), so he's good at sneaking around and finding traps and picking locks and poo poo. Unlike Sharwyn, though, he'd actually be good at it. So now you have to decide if you want to bring him. Throwing out Daelan for him means you'll have to tank yourself (or summon a bear), but there isn't a lot Daelan brings to the party that you don't already have. Throwing out Deekin means that you'll lose Deekin's Bardic Music ability and spellcasting, but in exchange you'll get someone who can pick drat near any lock, disarm drat near any trap, and deal tons of sneak attack damage, because Tomi also has dual wielding (since dual wielding isn't very good unless you get tons of bonus damage, which Tomi does via sneak attacks). Or you can just tell Tomi to go gently caress himself sideways, because he's an obnoxious rear end in a top hat and his combat utility isn't worth putting up with the irritating little twit. Personally, I'd boot Daelan for Linu, and the only reason I didn't suggest that earlier is because I didn't know you'd be getting to her so soon.
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Jan 15, 2016 00:44
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The bottle lets you whistle up a merchant with consumables, which is okay, I guess, but mostly it's for unloading heavy loot that you know you won't use. Like if you find a nice suit of plate armor, maybe someone can use that, because plate is fairly generic. But if you find a named halberd? Hell no, that's worthless unless you've made the character to use it, you may as well sell it. Speaking of things that may or may not be useful, the sickle Renewal might be worth picking up. It's kind of crappy as a weapon, sure, but it deals 2d6 fire damage. That'll gently caress up a door or chest nicely, since you're having a hard time overcoming the hardness of the door. (Hardness is like damage resistance for objects, but it's not damage resistance because reasons shut up.) It's pretty light, but also expensive, so who knows. There's always Knock, right? Bards are indeed Charisma-based casters. Boosting intelligence doesn't do a lot to help most of your team members. It boosts a handful of skills, and you'll probably want to wear it before dealing with merchants because Appraise controls prices and it's an Intelligence-based skill, but that's about it. Speaking of bards, you may want to hit Deekin with Haste when you tell him to get to buffing. Haste is one of the most absurd buffs in the game, to the point that you might want to load up more of them. Haste is available to Bards, but I don't know if you have control over what spells Deekin can pick up, so I don't know if you can make him learn it, or its bigger version Mass Haste. Which is basically what you'd expect from the name. I think there's items that give you permanent Haste, and they're as wackily overpowered as you'd imagine, but gently caress if I know for sure if they exist in Hordes of the Underdark. The double sword you found is actually not a half bad weapon, it's just that there aren't any NPCs who can use it. See, Sharwyn has Two Bladed Sword proficiency, but she is a bard. And bards, by definition, cannot be Lawful. And you must be Lawful to use the thing. On the bright side, at least you can sell it for a nice chunk of change. You got most of the NPCs. I don't know how long it will be before you find them, but I know one of them you can safely jettison as trash, one has a lovely build that puts a big-rear end dent in their effectiveness, and the last one...eh, we'll see when we get there.
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Jan 20, 2016 06:26
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The gear rundown at the start of the video was super handy, because gear is super important in this kind of game, and it lets us know what kind of stuff you've got on your characters. The Mirror Shield isn't a bad piece of equipment, but Spell Resist 12 isn't going to do much to help you at this point. Still, it's a +3 Large Shield, and better to have a +3 Large Shield with SR12 than a +3 Large Shield, right? For the belts, I give the ones that are always active to my NPCs, and keep a full set of the damage reduction belts on me and hotkeyed. That way I can swap over to being practically immune to slashing, stabbing, or crushing as needed. It's pretty funny when a dragon is going full ham on you and only doing two or three damage per hit. For the rest of the gear, I don't know what Deekin's got, but the fire sickle on the summonable merchant should be a very good weapon for him. It's a +3 Sickle that deals 1d6 slashing damage and 2d6 fire damage, and as a bonus, also gives some fire resist. For comparison, a flaming greatsword would deal 2d6 slashing damage and 1d6 fire damage, so this thing can really ruin someone's day (and, as previously stated, makes a hell of an improvised lockpick). I'd also hook Linu up with that Armor of Freedom, since the +2 Wisdom it provides is overwritten by the +3 Wisdom from the Periapt, and the Freedom effect is more important than some light and +2 saves against certain effects. (I am pretty sure they don't stack, go ahead and test it; and if they do stack, keep her robe.) If you can't get that magic sword from the Tomb Room, then I'd get her a regular +3 longsword, because maces aren't good weapons. All it has going for it is that it deals bludgeoning damage, which is great if you fight skeletons, but I think the better damage die and crit range of the longsword is more important right now. You might be able to use a rapier if Power Attack is compatible with it. I'm reasonably sure that it isn't in tabletop, but who knows here. I don't think Great Cleave is that great, unfortunately. It's pretty sweet when you chop down three guys in one attack, but most of the time you'll chop a guy down, get Cleave and hit another guy, and it's not nearly enough to finish the job. I guess if you're fighting absurd swarms of crappo dudes, it'll be okay, but since the only thing I know about this module are the NPCs, I couldn't say. Speaking of which, you have met the NPC that I was thinking of when I said "lovely build." See, she's a Wizard/Rogue/Assassin, the problem being that she never boosts her Intelligence. This means she is limited to level 4 spells, and I doubt she's using them on buffing and utility, which is all they'd be remotely good for at this point. But it's largely academic, because I doubt you're going to to kick out Deekin or Linu for her. When getting buffs, throw a Haste on the buffer so they can crank out spells twice as fast. I'd also only go for the long-duration buffs unless the enemy you're going to fight is right there, because the short duration stuff will probably run out first otherwise.
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Jan 23, 2016 10:37
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Linu getting that sword is a nice boost to her combat ability, because it deals more damage than her mace and is also vampiric, but alas, she is no longer one of our possible goons. I hope you can get the original crew of flunkies back, because Nathyrra's build makes her suck, and Valen is the guy I said was trash. See, the problem with him is that he's using the Weapon Master prestige class, which in theory isn't too bad, or at least no more so than a regular fighter. The problem is that his weapon of choice is the heavy flail. In tabeltop, the heavy flail is a two handed weapon that deals 1d10 bludgeoning damage, and deals double damage when it crits on a natural 19 or 20. To make up for the fact that it has worse straight up combat performance than other two handed weapons like the greatsword and greataxe, you get a +2 on rolls to disarm enemies, and you can use it for Trip attacks and drop it to avoid being tripped yourself if you blow it. Neither of these properties made it to Neverwinter Nights, so the heavy flail is just a sub-par weapon. So I'd bring along Nathyrra, because at least her roguery will let her deal out a crapload of damage via sneak attacks, because the conditions for getting sneak attacks in NWN are super easy: just be attacking a thing that's already in a fight. As long as she focuses on your target, she'll do a crapload of damage. Another reason you can safely ignore Valen is because summoning spells are supposed to have a finite duration. For some reason, they don't here, so you can just load up a summoning spell of whatever the highest level you won't miss is and make that one of the first things you cast after resting. That Hound Archon was kicking rear end, so a Planar Ally ought to do the job nicely. The Talisman of Pure Good is a fantastic find, and thanks to it, you can now wear a different cloak if you find it, since it doesn't stack with your current cloak. I guess you can give it to Nathyrra if you bring her with you (which you might as well, Valen sucks and just from our first meeting I don't like him), and while she doesn't use Charisma, gently caress it, may as well give her something. It also renders the Spell Resistance on your shield redundant, but Valen uses a two handed weapon (and loses all of his Weapon Master features if he isn't using a heavy flail), and Nathyrra and Deekin should not be using shields, so there you go on that front. The deflection bonus from the Commander's Ring is useless to you since you have the Ring of Deflection +5, but the +2 to all saving throws is pretty great, so it's worth wearing just for that. The belt is also nice, because it grants a +4 Strength bonus, but I think your gloves are also strength boosting items, so they don't help you any. If they do something else, well, there you go then, but I don't think you ever showed us what they do. Or if you did, it was in one of the earlier videos and I can't remember it. Speaking of non-stacking things, Deekin needs his gear adjusted: the cloak, helmet, and ring don't stack (or aren't supposed to). The +5 Charisma from the cloak overwrites the +3 from the ring and the helmet. The helmet doesn't do anything, so you can dump it, but the regeneration from the ring might be nice. It's not much, but it'll let you top up after a fight without having to spend any resources. As before, if they test it out, and if they do stack, by all means keep all that on him. Speaking of which, due to a bug, you're going to want to fire and rehire Deekin. And due to strength limitations, take some of the gear off him, the poor little guy is overloaded.  I really like that there's a nice big WARNING, BOSS BEYOND THIS POINT door, and you're given a room where you can buff up in whatever manner you see fit in peace. Pity it's to save that railroading jackass Halaster who straight up cheated with his insta-cast Geas, that poo poo's supposed to take ten minutes. This LP is making me want to reinstall this and go right to Hordes of the Underdark. In theory, the player character went through the Shadows of Undrentide campaign first, but you get boosted to 15 right away so gently caress it.
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Jan 26, 2016 09:41
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Monte Cook had kind of a "caster supremacy" thing going on during development of 3E and 3.5, and it shows through with how a team of casters can do pretty much anything. There was also a thing for "system mastery," which is why there's a lot of lovely feats. They are deliberately lovely to be newbie traps, and I wouldn't be surprised if the fact that dual wielding in 3E takes two feats is one of these traps (and a way of saying "if you want two swords, be a ranger" without explicitly restricting it to rangers). I know he's changed course on the newbie trap feats, I do not know if his caster boner has subsided. I can't speak for most of those RPGs, but Pathfinder has been called D&D 3.75, and if you take this as a compliment or insult depends on how you feel about the d20 system. Lamentations of the Flame Princess is going back to AD&D, and some of the worse ideas of the day like the adversarial GM, with a dose of woman issues on top.
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Jan 26, 2016 23:10
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We just got into a new chapter and the game has to tell us what's going on. Sure, you could dash out and get right to kicking asses, but you may as well see about upgrading your gear first (and seeing what's going on, this ain't Diablo). I am pretty sure that firing and rehiring Deekin like you did is what's needed. I honestly don't know, I've been digging around the wiki for mechanics information so I could back-seat game more effectively and that's where I found it.  Combat Casting is a fine feat if you actually cast defensively, which is a modal thing. gently caress if I remember how to do it, though, it's been dog's ages since I played the original NWN1 (although I did reinstall so I can play Hordes, and I will never understand why you have to fiddle with .ini files to run the fucker full-screen). I do remember that you can get more hotbars with the Shift, Control, and Alt keys, though, so hold one of those for a fresh set of bars, for a total of 48 hotkeyed abilities. I think. Maybe you can't use them all? gently caress if I know, we'll find out. Deekin's items stacking surprises me (obviously, or I wouldn't have told you they're redundant). They aren't supposed to stack, but if they all give different bonus types, there you go. Or maybe someone hosed up? But no matter, they all work, so pile them on Deekin and be in awe of his amazing THIRTY CHARISMA, which he can use to cast, uh...bard spells. Oh well. They can't all be winners, I guess. Speaking of Deekin, upgrading his crossbow a little bit is nice, but I wouldn't put it too high on the priority list, on account of the fact that he's mostly throwing buff spells and rocking the gently caress out. The crossbow lets him do a little something, at least. Maybe put a branding on it so it actually hurts? Just keep in mind that a crossbow only fires once per round. The "infinite ammo" thing is potentially neat, but you can buy a mighty fuckload of bolts for 100k. I think this gives you infinite +5 bolts, but I am still pretty meh on that particular upgrade. Speaking of upgrades, setting yourself up with a +5 axe is pretty solid. I have no advice on what energy type to stick on there (other than to note that there is no +2d6 energy brand in tabletop), so just go with whatever floats your boat. You may even be able to stick on multiple, and if you can, you can really gently caress a dude up with that. If you stick Haste on your axe, then the bad news is that you have to use that axe or no Haste, but since the only other weapon you own is a crossbow you never use, who cares? The good news is that this will free up your Boots slot, so you can give your Haste boots to Deekin and grab some of those Boots of Striding for yourself. Also, I would like to point out that the price for straight enhancement has gone up, from 50k per point to 70k per point. This is because under normal rules, weapons only go up to +5 enhancement bonus (with +10 enhancement bonus total, using systems that got thrown out and rewritten for NWN so who cares). Once you go Epic, though, the sky's the limit, so have at it. Speaking of which, Keen is indeed a good thing to have, as it doubles your weapon's threat rating. So your axe, which normally threatens on a 20 for triple damage, now threatens on a 19-20 for triple damage. A sword would go from 19-20/x2 to 17-20/x2, and scimitars and rapiers go from 18-20/x2 to the mildly absurd 16-20/x2. I know that Keen and Improved Critical don't stack in later editions of the game, but I think they do here? It's been a while. I think I had a crit-fisher build that used a keen rapier with improved critical back in the day that could crit on a 12 or better, but since she was using a branded rapier and had a ton of sneak attack dice, I think I was wasting my time. As for Nathyrra, well. I know she has those nine wizard levels, so you'd think she's a wizard. But you can talk to your flunkies to guide where they put their levels (you didn't do this for Deekin, so he's splitting his levels between Bard and Red Dragon Disciple), and you should guide her into Assassin, because her base Intelligence is 14, and she never increases it. When you want to prep a spell, you need a base casting stat of 10 + that spell's level, so her 14 only lets her prep level 4 spells, and Wizard 9 gives her two level 4 slots, the best she can cast (and a single fifth level slot that could be used, but I doubt the AI knows what to do with it). Giving her the +6 Int ring gives her another fourth level spell slot, so I guess that's something. Fourth level wizard spells can be fine if they're backing up your sneaking and shanking, but as I'm sure has become abundantly clear by now, I don't trust her to know her rear end from a hole in the ground. Speaking of which, dual classing and multiclassing are concepts from AD&D that don't really apply here anymore. The way dual classing worked was that if you were a human, once you got to a point, you could decide to change your class to something else that you met the stat requirements for, and all of the experience you earned went to the new class. You lost all of the abilities of your old class until the new level exceeded the old one, at which point you get all your old class abilities back, but it's basically frozen at that level, and if that sounds kind of silly and complicated, welcome to AD&D. Multiclassing was only available to non-humans, and the way that worked was very straightforward: you were multiple classes at the same time, experience was divided among them evenly, and they all went up at their own rates. You got all of their abilities, although you worked with their restrictions (so a fighter/mage/thief could use all weapons and armor because of Fighter, but couldn't sneak or backstab with any gear a Thief couldn't use, and couldn't cast spells in any armor at all). Which combinations of class you could take were dictated by your race, so if you wanted to be a dwarven thief/cleric, haha gently caress you no. Contrast to how it works now, which is "gently caress it, you gained a level, take it in whatever class, I don't care anymore." There is, of course, a wrinkle, and that is the Favored Class. The way that works is that if your classes get too far out of step with each other, you start taking experience penalties, because gently caress you, that's why. If you're rolling around as an elven Fighter 5/Cleric 10, you're taking penalties. Add a level of Rogue? Oh poo poo, even more penalties! But Nathyrra has Rogue 3, Wizard 9, Assassin 6, how is she not getting completely boned by experience penalties? There's two reasons in play here. One is that she is an Elf, and as such her favored class is Wizard (okay she's actually a female drow so her favored class should be Cleric, but we work with the engine we have). When looking at your levels to see if you take a penalty, it doesn't look at your favored class. And Assassin is a prestige class, which is also not factored into experience penalties. So when the game looks at your levels to determine if you get a penalty, it sees someone with three levels of Rogue and doesn't penalize her. It looks at you and sees fifteen (I think?) levels of Cleric, so it lets you off the hook too. The favored class of Dwarf is Fighter, so if you took a level in Fighter (which you shouldn't, but for the sake of example), the game sees fifteen levels of Cleric and ignores Fighter and Dwarven Defender. Now, if you added a level of wizard to this (which haha holy poo poo that's a horrible idea with your stats), it'd see fifteen levels of Cleric, one level of Wizard, bellow LEVELS OUT OF ALIGNMENT and hit you with a 10% experience penalty, because gently caress you, that's why. (The favored class for humans and half elves is "whatever's highest," so a Fighter 10/Rogue 5/Wizard 5 wouldn't be hit, but Fighter 9/Rogue 9/Wizard 2 would.) But none of this actually matters because you have very limited control over the leveling of your goons, and you are presumably not going to take any levels that aren't Cleric or Dwarven Defender. Anyway, for the rest of Nathyrra's gear, her leather armor is fine, since a 10% fail chance isn't too bad. I might go as heavy as studded leather for something really good, but probably not. Giving her the bracers is a good call, although I think Deekin's carrying a set of Bracers of Dexterity +3 already, isn't he? I think her rings are fine, and her amulet is just an Amulet of Natural Armor. That cloak is loving awesome, though, and it'll be a while before you find a better one. For her weapons, since she can dual wield, stick that rapier in her main hand and the short sword in her off hand. Sure, it's just a +1 shocking shortsword, but you can get it upgraded. She should also be able to use that nice bow you found but didn't really show, because she's an elf, and elves have proficiency with all bows. She has to be within 30 feet to get her sneak attacks that way, but it's not that big a deal, and she's better off dual wielding. Also, for that spell with "Fortitude partial," the "partial" means that even if they make the save, bad things still happen to them. So with Destruction, the target makes a Fortitude save. If they blow it, they die on the spot. And even if they make it, they take 10d6 damage. For the +20 Spell Resist on your axe, it might be useful. The way that works is "if the target has Spell Resistance, roll 1d20, add your caster level (and any applicable feats), and if that number is higher than their SR the spell works, otherwise it doesn't." SR 12 will only stop casters that aren't a threat to you anyway, SR 20 is so unreliable as to not be worth the expense. But maybe if you can get two doses of it, it'll be worth a poo poo? I don't know if you can get a second stack of it on there. If you can get SR 30, that'd be good. SR 40 would be fantastic but is not happening. I like that they have "my furnace burns gold" as a way to explain why you aren't being given deals in the face of destruction. It's not the cleanest answer I've seen, since it's pretty clear they pulled it out of their rear end (especially because it explains why he can't give you upgrades, doesn't say anything about why he can't cut you some slack on the gear he has ready to go), but gently caress it, gotta keep the economy churning, such as it is. MechaCrash fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Jan 28, 2016 |
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Jan 28, 2016 09:27
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No, defensive casting is a specific thing. If you attack within melee range of an enemy, they get a free attack of opportunity on you. If they hit you, they get a chance to disrupt your spell. If you cast defensively, they don't get the free attack, but you have to make a Concentration check with a DC of 15 plus the level of the spell you're casting to not gently caress it up anyway. The idea being that you can focus on the proper finger twiddling to tell the laws of physics who runs Barter Town or you can focus on the people currently trying to introduce some sunlight to your insides, but you can't give full concentration to both.
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Jan 28, 2016 22:34
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When you right click your character, there's a menu for spellcasting. Most of the nodes take you to the casting menus for your various classes, but one of them is Spell Special Abilities. One puts you into Counterspell mode, and the other puts you into Defensive Casting mode.
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Jan 29, 2016 02:14
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It's too bad you don't have finer control over what Nathyyra does with her levels, but then again, if you did, you wouldn't be in the fix you're in with her crappy leveling choices. Say what you will about Neverwinter Nights 2, but the fact that you had total control over your companions once you got them made them a lot more useful. There's still problems with them taking lovely feat choices before you met (dammit Elanee why'd you have to waste your first feat on Dodge when you could've had a loving dinosaur companion), but usually there's time to correct course. As for the videos where nobody gets stabbed, I think they're okay. Not as a "change of pace" thing, although they are, but because they're a part of the game. And since this is an RPG, an important part of the game. Where the problem comes in, I think, is that it's interesting to do, but not always interesting to watch, so I guess you could give a plot dump warning and summarize at the start of the next set of videos where the horrible violence resumes. Deekin's crossbow isn't doing a whole hell of a lot in combat. It's too bad he can't use that electric shortbow you found, because bards are supposed to be able to use them, I don't know why they were given Simple proficiencies and that's that. But I think that sticking the sickle in Deekin's hand would be a pretty good idea, because it's a very nice sickle that does very good damage. Leave the crossbow in Deekin's inventory so he can use it if he has to, but the sickle should be his first choice, especially since he's going to be getting strength bonuses from being a Red Dragon Disicple. The Heal skill is kind of a waste in the best of circumstances, unfortunately, and doubly so for clerics. If you're playing from level 1, having a few kits around early so you don't have to burn your precious few castings of Cure Light Wounds can be a godsend, but by this point you have spells to burn, and you can trivially turn all your level 1 and 2 spells into Cure Light and Cure Moderate to top people up, because what the hell else are you going to do with spells that low level? Plus there's the fact that healing spells are an infinitely renewable resource, and even if you run out, you can just rest pretty much at will, which refills your hit points. In tabletop, resting restores some number of hit points that I don't recall because it's a tiny useless bullshit amount, and the smart thing was "have anybody with healing spells burn them all before crashing for the night." (This was one of the behaviors in Baldur's Gate 2, you could say "burn all the healing spells, then rest until they're back, repeat until everybody is at full health.") But then, you're a cleric, there's only so many useful skills to get in the first place. Maybe if someone gets diseased or poisoned, and you don't have the spell to fix it prepped, and are unable or unwilling to get it prepped? But that's kind of a niche use when potions and scrolls to fix disease and poison exist too. As you've noticed, yes, the winged elves are Avariel, and Aerie the mage/cleric from Baldur's Gate 2 was one of them. You kind of zip through the dialogue, and that's fine because there's always the pause button, but when you use the number keys to pick your response, there's only a brief flash to indicate which one you did. Maybe expand the dialogue box a little bit? Just drag the black bar on top of it to expand it. Clicking it will toggle between "completely collapsed" and "whatever the hell the last size was," I think. The strength damage you took at one point was probably because of a drow poison. Fuckers love to poison. Fortunately, being a dwarf, you get a bonus on saves against poison, and as a cleric, Fort is one of your good saves! So you shouldn't have to worry about it too often. The fights you had just brought home how bad the AI is. If you had finer control, then you could fill up Nathyrra's spell slots with utility stuff and tell her to not waste time with loving Magic Missile, just get in there and start loving shanking people. See, getting off Sneak Attacks requires certain conditions to be met (Nathyrra's levels in Assassin give her Death Attack, there are differences but for these purposes they don't matter), and the relevant one is "if multiple people are attacking a person, you can get your Sneak Attack damage on them." So if she just joins in the fight and dogpiles whatever it is you're hitting, she'll be dealing loads of damage thanks to her dual wielding. Unfortunately, she'd rather hang in the back and crap out the occasional Magic Missile than get in there and ruin faces. At least, I assume that's what she's doing, because when you zoom in really tight, I can't tell what anybody else is doing. You were popping Cure Critical Wounds potions when you were injured. That'll do up to a point, but you're a cleric. If you fire a Heal (while casting defensively; Combat Casting does nothing if you aren't casting defensively) then you get all of your hit points back. I don't know what your HP total is off the top of my head, but the potions look to do maybe a quarter of your life on average. Another consideration is Harm, which reduces whatever it hits to 1d4, but it has to overcome spell resistance and also hit. The spell resistance is the bigger problem thanks to those levels of Dwarven Defender, so turning yourself into a face-wrecking machine that won't die is the slower but safer bet. Speaking of spells, because of the duration of summons, you should cast Planar Ally as soon as you're done resting. Just keep in mind that the Hound Archon is starting to fall behind, but it can still distract things, do some damage, and absorb hits that would have otherwise landed on less expendable party members. You can summon bigger, meaner things, but that obviously requires using higher level spell slots, so it's your call if it's worth the trade-off. Speaking of trade-offs, I'm going to go off on two small tangents. One is Why Haste Is Awesome, the other is How To Dual Wield. For Haste, the reason it's so awesome is that, in tabletop terms, it gives you an extra standard action. Most spells have a casting time of one standard action, so you can get off two spells per round (three if you use a Quickened spell). This is, of course, on top of all the other benefits it provides. In Neverwinter Nights, that's not quite how it works, but the relevant bit is "you can crank out twice the spells." Combine that with the caster boner mentioned much earlier and you can see how this turns into problems. Haste was changed in 3.5, granting an extra attack instead of an extra action, and made AOE to compensate. So it's still a pretty good buff, but not at "get this and win forever" levels. For dual wielding, there's three ways to do it: using a dual weapon like the Two Bladed Sword, using a one handed weapon and a light weapon such as a long sword and a short sword, or using two matched light weapons such as two short swords. They all have their ups and downs. If you use a double weapon, then that gives you a little more flexibility and hitting power, because a double sword is basically two long swords glued together, and they get 1d8 damage. So you have 1d8 in each hand, compared to the 1d8/1d6 pair for 1h/light combo, and the paired 1d6 for matching lights. In addition, you can use it in two hands to get 1.5x your strength mod to damage if you need to punch through damage reduction, but that's just in tabletop, you always use it as a dual weapon here (just like you can't enchant the two heads separately here, in tabletop you can). You have to spend a feat for this, of course, but that's not as big a deal as you'd think for reasons we'll get to. There is also the problem that going far in the Two Weapon Fighting tree requires either a lot of dexterity or being a ranger who gets it all automatically, and if your dex is going to be that high, why not just use something that works with Weapon Finesse? The alternative is a one handed/light combo. The advantage to this is that it does not require you to use a feat on Exotic Weapon Proficiency, which means you can spend that feat on other stuff. If you're using a long sword or something in your main hand, well there you go, but if you're using a rapier instead (which would be the smart way to do it if you're taking this path), you can get Weapon Finesse, and apply your monstrous Dexterity to attack rolls. The benefit of doing it this way is that either you save a feat on Exotic Weapon Proficiency, or leverage your crazy huge dex for a rapier and crit all day, every day. The downside to this is that if you take Weapon Focus, Improved Critical, and other stuff like that, it applies only to one of your two weapons. Taking Weapon Focus: Rapier doesn't do poo poo for your off-hand short sword, after all. If you aren't taking any weapon specific feats (and Nathyrra probably isn't, I'd dig in the toolkit if I knew how; I don't know any story stuff and don't want to but "which party member is the least sucky choad in a sea of sucky choads" is kind of important), then you might as well do it this way. The third way, and what I'm going for, is matching light weapons. You can use anything you want as long as it's light. Short swords are the classic, but you can use hand axes or light picks or whatever (light picks aren't in Neverwinter Nights, before you go poking). You get the "any feats apply to both hands" benefit of the dual weapon, and the "can use Weapon Finesse" benefit of the mixed style. The downside is that light weapons are generally less impressive than one handed weapons. A short sword is, strictly speaking, not as good as a rapier. And while that's true, the reason I picked this style is because who gives a poo poo? I'm a rogue, the bulk of my damage isn't from the 1d6 my sword deals, it's from the 5d6 I get for stabbing you while you're distracted, and that part isn't multiplied by criticals. The dual wielding infodump has no bearing whatsoever on a dwarven cleric/Dwarven Defender, but I'd been thinking about it lately so there you go. Maybe next time I'll bitch about why the Arcane Archer is so loving awful and how the Pathfinder version is so much better (and still sucks compared to the Eldritch Knight). As for the money, the reason it's been going out so fast is because the game isn't that generous with cash, but that million from character creation is lasting a long time. I don't know how much you were expected to have if you imported a character from Shadows of Undrentide, which is what you're "supposed" to do, but even so, there's a whole new tier of stuff to blow money on, and not nearly as many ways to get it as there are to spend it.
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Feb 1, 2016 09:28
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Shadows was pretty faceroll because you're supposed to start that with a new character, as you no doubt figured out pretty fast. I think that Shadows and the original campaign take place around the same time, so the Hero of Neverwinter and whatever grandiose title they give you in Shadows so they can refer to you specifically without using a name can't possibly be the same person. Also, unrelated to anything, but that intelligent sword Enserric? He can change shape. If you say "sorry, I don't need a longsword," he says that he can change into a dagger, short sword, or great sword, but I think you need to pick him up during that conversation. So you need to do any pre-battle buffing before you get within conversational range. Fortunately, a long sword is what was needed anyway, so there you go.
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Feb 1, 2016 12:36
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I won't be doing my usual giant essay. If that's good or bad will be up to you. As you noticed, Heal restores all of your HP, but that's all it does. If you're diseased or poisoned, that's Remove Disease (level 3) or Neutralize Poison (level 4) to fix it. Greater Restoration fixes everything, but it's overkill. I'd keep a Remove Disease and Neutralize Poison prepped just in case, because by this point, level 3 and 4 spells are just not going to cut the mustard, so you may as well have those in your back pocket for emergencies. That's a hell of an "ambush" you laid for the drow.  Although I notice you still aren't casting a summon right away. I know I've harped on it before, but unless they fixed the duration for Hordes of the Underdark (and I am pretty sure they didn't), those spells are permanent, so summons should be one of the first spells you cast. You have Summon Creature VII prepped, which I think gets you a random elemental (but not an Earth elemental, they caused pathfinding issues). That'll put out plenty of extra damage and absorb plenty of hits for you.Speaking of swings, you also still aren't in Defensive Casting mode. The way it works is that if you cast a spell, and someone is close enough to you, they get to take a free swing. If they hit you, then you have to make a Concentration check to avoid loving up the spell. If you cast defensively, then you have to make a Concentration check anyway at a DC of 15 + spell level. If you've been putting points into Concentration, then especially combined with Combat Casting, you should have no trouble making the roll. The benefit is that they don't get a free attack. You activate it by right clicking on your character, then...I think it's in one of the special options on the bottom left? I covered it in a prior post, and it's a toggle, so you can set it and forget it (I think). That's one of the things NWN2 did right with the interface, they put that poo poo on a dedicated button in the corner. Anyway, the point is that unless you do this, Combat Casting was a completely wasted feat. Scoring that Destruction kill on Sabal was super lucky. She needed a three or better to not die, and got a one. She died on a 10% chance, and that's not even taking her spell resistance into account, which you also managed to beat. Still, a win's a win, and given just your sheer numbers and the fact that you've got a few Dwarven Defender levels, you could've just rolled up to her and killed her with your axe eventually. Changing gears entirely, I said I was going to bitch about Arcane Archers, so now I'm gonna do it. The short version of why the Arcane Archer sucks is because it requires arcane casting to get in, but it does not advance your casting at all. None of the Neverwinter Nights prestige classes do, so taking them as a caster is actually not a great idea (unless you're doing crazy poo poo like monk/druid/shifter). All you get as an Arcane Archer, at least at even numbered levels, are some abilities that don't do a whole lot. Imbue Arrow at 2 lets you use your bow's range and targeting for a spell instead of the spell's native stats (in NWN, this translates to "cast a better Fireball 3/day"), Seeker Arrow at 4 lets you ignore cover and concealment once per day (NWN version is "1/day, arrow that doesn't miss"), Phase Arrow at 6 lets you ignore cover, concealment, and armor modifiers once per day that unlike Seeker Arrow, does not need any path to the target (and in NWN, is "the arrow that doesn't miss is now 2/day), Hail of Arrows at 8 lets you shoot at one target per AA level once per day (the NWN version actually acts exactly like this), and the capstone ability Arrow of Death lets you spend a day to make a super arrow that makes anything it hits roll a Fortitude save, DC 20, or die (NWN version is actually better because you can just bust the arrow out once per day). So those abilities are very limited in utility because of how rarely they can be used, but the odd level ability is basically poo poo: arrows you fire automatically get an enhancement bonus. The reason this is such poo poo is because when this class was first made, enhancement bonuses on bows and arrows stacked, so a +5 arrow fired from a +5 bow gets +10 on attack and damage rolls. But that got nerfed in 3.5, mostly because of archer cleric builds, so now you only get the higher of the two bonuses. NWN still runs on third edition rules, so I am pretty sure the stacking applies, but that change kicked Arcane Archers down a notch in tabletop. The advantage, at least in theory, is that now instead of having to worry about a +5 bow, you can just make it +1, and load up the rest with various other bullshit. Want a +1 flaming frost shock distance seeking longbow? Go nuts, you've still got the +5 on attack and damage rolls thanks to your arrows! Of course, "free magic arrows" isn't good enough to make up for the other issues, but oh well. Pathfinder, as previously mentioned, is basically D&D 3.75, and that means it used a lot of the Open Gaming License content, and that includes the Arcane Archer. Here is the Arcane Archer for D&D, and here is the Pathfinder version. I would invite you to compare them, but that's a pain in the rear end so I'll go over the differences. There aren't a lot, but they're pretty big. One that you could count is the change to skills. Pathfinder combined Hide and Move Silently into Stealth, and Spot and Listen got combined into Perception. The D&D AA had all four of those skills, so the PF AA has the two combined ones. But that's a system-wide thing, and not class specific, so for these purposes I don't count it. Same with the saves: they crunch the numbers differently, so this is system wide, not class specific. No, there's only a few actual changes to the class itself, some of which are huge. The little ones are that you don't have to be an elf or half elf to become one, which doesn't matter much to the final performance of the class, and you get a d10 hit die instead of a d8 hit die. Seeker Arrow and Phase Arrow gain an additional use per day for every two levels beyond the one where you get them, for a maximum of four Seeker Arrows and three Phase Arrows per day. Hail of Arrows is unchanged, and Arrow of Death got a minor tweak in that now the DC is 20 + the AA's Charisma modifier instead of a flat 20, which may be worse if Charisma was your dump stat (but it's fantastic if you used a charisma caster like Sorcerer as your arcane class). The change that's way better mechanically than effectiveness-wise is the change to the stuff you get at odd levels. At first level, your arrows become magic just like the D&D AA, but instead of just going up in enhancement bonus, now they get useful brandings. At third level, every arrow is Flaming, Frost, or Shock (I assume you pick at the time you fire the arrow), at 5th level they all get Distance so you can shoot twice as far, at 7th level the branding gets upgraded to elemental burst (so you deal an extra 2d10 energy damage on a critical, since bows have x3 crit), and at 9th level all of your arrows become aligned, as long as it doesn't oppose yours (so a LN AA could fire Good arrows, Evil arrows, or Lawful arrows, but not Chaotic arrows). Now, on paper, this isn't that big a change, since what's it matter if I have a +1 lawful flaming burst distance bow firing +5 arrows or a +5 bow firing +1 lawful flaming burst distance arrows? But in practice, the difference is that you're going to find a hell of a lot more weapons with straight enhancement bonuses and maybe one modifier than you are weapons with low enhancement bonuses and a fuckload of utility enhancements. If you can make magic weapons, then either bow is easily within your grasp (although straight pluses would be easier to pull off, since that just requires enough caster level and not specific spells), but if you can't, then a +5 bow just needs a good roll on a loot table, a bow with a fuckload of random upgrades is not happening in the wild unless your GM throws you a bone. But the real huge change is that the PF AA advances casting. All levels except 1, 5, and 9 give you another level of casting as if you'd taken a level in the appropriate arcane class. And given how super important casting levels are, that makes sure that the arcane archer can actually do some poo poo, and as a bonus, it means that Imbue Arrow is no longer basically pointless, because if you can only cast first level spells, what the gently caress are you going to put on an arrow that made it worth jumping through all these hoops? And with just that one change, the class is largely unfucked. The funny thing is that the very first time I tried playing Shadows of Undrentide way back when, I thought I'd make an arcane archer because I thought it advanced casting in addition to its tricks, but fortunately I found the error of my ways before I did very much. I just really like Arcane Archers which is why I'm going off on this tangential rant in a game where there's only an Arcane Archer if you make it. And speaking of advancing casting, here's where the ugly reality of Arcane Archers crops up: the Eldritch Knight is better, because both the D&D version and the Pathfinder version increase casting by nine levels instead of seven, and the two extra caster levels are worth way more than the handful of extra abilities that Arcane Archers get from 5 to 10 in Pathfinder, and in D&D? It's not even a contest. I just want this cool class to actually be good. Oops, looks like I essayed anyway, just that most of it doesn't have much bearing on the current playthrough. Well, good to know if you ever decide to do an Arcane Archer, I guess. (Don't do an Arcane Archer, I just spent five paragraphs on why they suck.)
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Feb 6, 2016 18:23
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You can make characters that do things that straight up casters can't do. The problem is that those things may not actually be worth the hassle.
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Feb 7, 2016 15:09
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The game expected you to rush off into the dungeon with whatever garbage you could scrounge, instead of exploring around the (presumably safe) town to buy better equipment?
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Feb 10, 2016 20:43
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Nathyrra is one of the romance options, I think. So tread carefully or you'll wind up in a Bioware Romance, and nobody wants that. That flail you found actually has some nice enchantments on it. +5, bonus 2d6 damage, and it can cast Flame Lash (short range, 4d6 3/day, Reflex for half) is pretty nice, but flails are kind of poo poo so who cares? Risktaker is also a pretty nice dagger, being +8 and granting permanent Haste and stealth bonuses, but unless you make an assassin yourself, only Nathyrra can use it. And the hit to Intelligence means that's a no-go. She would become completely unable to cast. Although given what a lovely caster she is, maybe it'll be worth it to make sure she stops chucking magic missiles around and starts stabbing people. The Planar Mace is nice in theory, but why use a bad weapon that gets +4 against specific enemies when you have a good weapon that gets +5 on everything? Speaking of weapons, upgrading Nathyrra's weapons to have more elemental brandings would be good. I posted a big long thing about dual wielding, I think, but the relevant bit is "to see benefits, you want bonus dice of damage, either from sneak attacks or weapon brands." Sneak attacks won't help you against golems, unfortunately. The ioun stone you sold is actually pretty great. The way it works in tabletop is that when you use it, it starts floating around your head, and it just gives you its bonus without taking a slot. Handy if you want a little extra strength or whatever but your belt and bracers are being used for other things. The way it works here is that you use it from inventory, and there's an effect, and the stat goes up. I think that it provides an Enhancement bonus that won't stack with the rest of your stuff, though. I organized my stuff by putting consumables of all kinds on the last page. If I couldn't fit them all, then potions and scrolls went on the last page, ammunition and wands went on the next to last page. That will help you find stuff and keep your inventory a little cleaner, especially that merchant bottle. Speaking of the merchant, I have nothing to back this up, but I suspect that the stuff you were selling was worth more than ten grand, but ten grand is the max he could give you. The way Damage Resistance works is that first it lists how much it reduces it by, then what breaks it. So Electricity Resist 30/- means "this stops 30 points of electrical damage, nothing overcomes it." 10/+2 means "reduces physical damage by 10, unless struck by a +2 weapon." 30/+3, which is what iron golems have, technically means "damage reduction 30, unless you have a +3 weapon." What it means in practice is "have a +3 weapon or don't bother." That's one of the things that 3.5 changed. See, when it comes to damage reduction, it's a linear progression. A werewolf, for example, has 5/silver (I think 5, anyway), which meant that unless you used a silver weapon, its damage was reduced by 5, but a +1 weapon could overcome it too. At the bottom rank were material types, then +1 weapons, then +2 weapons, and up the line. So having DR whatever/silver didn't matter, just get a +5 Sword of Hit loving Everything and it's a complete non-factor. 3.5 changed damage reduction in two ways. The first was that damage reduction was drastically reduced across the board, so that it was "bring the right weapon or this fight will be super hard," rather than "bring the right weapon or don't waste your time." A damage reduction of 15 is incredibly hard, but doable, a damage reduction of 50? Nope. The other change was to not make it linear. If something has DR 5/cold iron, it doesn't matter if you swing at it with a +20 Sword of Godwrecking, it will take five less damage every time unless your sword is cold iron. The major DRs off the top of my head I know are cold iron for chaotic-type stuff, silver for lawful-type stuff, adamantine for constructs and golems and junk, plus alignment-based stuff, and it could stack. So like a crappy devil could have nothing, a mid-tier could need silver or good aligned, a higher tier one could need silver and good aligned. There was whining about "golf bag of weapons," but eh, gently caress 'em if they're angry that they actually have to think about what kind of weapon they're packing instead of "more pluses and call it a day." The wand of fire is honestly not worth using. Even overlooking that it's throwing around fireballs that only deal 5d6, Reflex 13 for half, there's the bigger problem that I don't think the AI is capable of operating items this way. And even if they were, do you trust them not to be complete fuckups with it? I sure as hell don't. For your rings, its a toss-up. The Commander's Ring is +2 to all saving throws. I know there's cloaks that give saving throw bonuses, but I don't know where you'd get one, so you may as well hang on to that ring for now, unless you're going to give it to one of your flunkies. And I still think you should give Deekin a melee weapon of some kind, because he can only fire the crossbow once per round. I think he'd be up to at least two attacks per round with a melee weapon, or at least three, with the benefit of not provoking an attack of opportunity every time he attacks. You know how casting spells brings in attacks of opportunity? So does firing a ranged weapon. Pity you sold the sickle, I think it would've been a much better weapon for him. The deurgar lady was not impressed by your massive charisma, because by this level, +5 or +6 due to that isn't going to be enough. It can help, but if you haven't been investing in the relevant social skill, you're probably wasting your time. Charging in to grab or fight the golden suit of armor and then getting wrecked by the traps was fantastic. I know dwarven clerics aren't going to have great Search or Spot scores, but "untouched valuable thing surrounded by corpses" is kind of a red flag. Speaking of which, you might want to compare the armor and helmet you got to what you're wearing. The armor you have on reduces incoming fire damage by 20 and is super light, but the Searing Armor will automatically blast anybody who hits you with a retaliatory casting of Searing Light at caster level 5. It has to make an attack roll (no idea what numbers it would be using), but it'll deal 2d6 to constructs, 2d8 to most things, and 5d6 to undead. It should be 5d8 to undead but the spell is implemented incorrectly. The helmet boosts Concentration by 6, and also lets you cast Firebrand once per day, which could be described as a "smart fireball." (You didn't look at them during the video so I took the liberty of using Google.)You should prep a Heal or two. That way, the next time Deekin is getting his rear end kicked (because it'll probably be Deekin, since he keeps trying to cast in combat without doing it defensively and doesn't have the AC to get away with it like you do), you can just drop one spell on him and have it done, instead of having to keep burning Cure Critical after Cure Critical on him. It's too bad you don't have finer control over what the AI does. It'd be nice if you could smack Deekin and Nathyrra upside the head and say HEY, PULL OUT YOUR MEAT SHIELDS YA DINGUSES, WE NEED MORE BETWEEN US AND THEM.
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Feb 15, 2016 04:28
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Well, to qualify my statement, yeah, a +4 to +6 from charisma is pretty good. But it isn't nearly enough by itself, because stuff that was being put in for you to talk your way out of was done on the assumption that "talk your way out of it" was one of the things you were built to do, which means you were investing skill points in it. So you're getting a +5ish on things that assume you're swinging around a +20 at least, maybe +25 to +30. And the way the Pathfinder version of Skill Focus works is that it gives +3 on the relevant skill checks, +6 when you have ten or more ranks.
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Feb 17, 2016 01:54
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You're overestimating the depth of the conversation system in Neverwinter Nights. There are no degrees of cooperation, it's just "I want you to do this thing, I will now roll the relevant skill to see if you comply." I don't know if it's a fixed "you must have this much skill to get result" thing, or if there's a DC and you roll against it, but in either case, an 18 charisma is not nearly enough to make up for not having any skill points in the social things. I couldn't tell you how they calibrate the DCs, but I assume that a charismatic person who doesn't necessarily invest in the skills (such as a sorcerer) can get through on pure stat bonuses at first, but it quickly comes to the point where you need the actual skill. There might be some challenges that someone who's dabbling or investing cross-class skill points in it can pass, but there's presumably going to be challenges you can only clear if it's a class skill and you've been investing in it every level. Otherwise, what's the point of keeping your talky-skills up to snuff?
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Feb 17, 2016 05:46
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Yeah, I get what you're saying. That's one of the things that Fallout 3 hosed up and Fallout 4 did right: In FO3, there came a point where if you weren't investing in the lockpicking and hacking skills, you should just not even bother, because you weren't going to get the shiny. FO4 still had stuff that you had to really focus on those skills to do, but they'd throw bones to dabblers and people who hadn't invested in it at all with lower skill rating locks and terminals. I don't know what the point of that would be in a D&D campaign, though, which is supposed to be a multi-person experience. I guess have the occasional locked door that your dabbling wizard (or whatever) can open up while the rogue is otherwise busy? The problem is having it be a common enough thing that the team wizard doesn't feel like a schmuck for spending points, but not so common that you wonder why you bothered bringing a specialist at all. Finding the middle ground between "go big or go home" and "eh, nobody has this as a class skill but who cares" is tricky.
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Feb 17, 2016 07:56
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I think it's relevant, because I may have used a couple of Fallouts, but the example holds true here. Like in this campaign, we're seeing it in action with the Deurgar lady, after a fashion I tried looking up the Persuade and Intimidate DCs to convince her, and while I still don't know how to get those numbers, the fact that a "success" state isn't even in the scripts tells me all I need to know (and I'm only saying that because we're past the point where it matters). We're seeing calls for skill checks, and they are pretty clearly "if you didn't specialize in this, don't waste your time." Like even if Material had put skill points into Search, do you think he would've been able to find what looked like four layered traps that instagibbed him when he went for the golden armor? It's not a problem for a single class build, because you pick however many skills you can max and just max them out, but it's a problem for for a multiclass build. Like when did my ranger/rogue, I'd save up skill points so I could put two into the rogue-only Disable Device on my rogue levels to keep it maxed out. The skills that Ranger has but Rogue doesn't are Animal Empathy and Concentration, the skills that Rogues have and Rangers don't are Disable Trap, Open Lock, Persuade, Pick Pocket, and Use Magic Device. I couldn't just pick a suite of skills for each class and max those class's skills out every level, because if I did, then I wouldn't have enough lock picking and trap disabling to matter. (We will, for the moment, overlook that half the function of the Rogue class can be replicated by two spells, and the other half -- massive combat damage -- is easily obtained as a caster, to say nothing of "save or die" spells.) So the dabbling thing is mostly an issue for multiclasses, because they have to hold on to their skill points until the levels where they can spend them where needed. Which is a huge difference from how it works in tabletop. You have to spend your points immediately, even having useless half-ranks in skills until you can raise them again. Which is another thing Pathfinder cleaned up: you just spent skill points, one point is one rank, class skills you spent points on get +3.
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Feb 17, 2016 11:13
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It's "good" to see Nathyrra displaying her keen tactical prowess by, instead of getting in there with her two potent weapons with plenty of bonus damage, hanging back and throwing first level spells with crappy DCs and catching you in the blast radius (and the only reason you weren't getting hurt is because the difficulty setting isn't high enough). No, wait, not good. The other thing. I don't know if she was doing that because the AI is bad about "if you have spells, use them" or if it was going "these things are immune to sneak attack, go for the nukes," but in either case, I'm pretty sure stabbing them would have hurt more. It makes putting the dagger that dings her intelligence in her hands pretty tempting, though, if only because it will make her stop sucking all the rear end. There's only so much a dual wielding rogue can do against things immune to sneak attacks, though. In the library with the dead Deurgar rogue, there was some treasure by the body. I don't know what it was or if it's worth going back for, but it's the kind of thing you can probably do off camera if you give a poo poo. The phrase you were looking for on your stat is "ability modifier." However, an important thing to note: while your bonus spells look at your modified casting stat, the highest spell level you can use is determined by your base stat. So you won't be able to use ninth level spells until you get another point of wisdom. The major thing I know about Pillars of Eternity, other than I need to get around to playing the drat thing, is that the game mechanics were designed to be run on a PC. Neverwinter Nights, like Baldur's Gate before it, is an adaption of a tabletop RPG, and all the simplifications necessary to make that not a complete pain in the rear end to play (see: Rolemaster, Rifts, FATAL...on second thought, don't see FATAL). Pillars of Eternity, however, is written on the assumption that all the super fiddly bullshit will be handled by a computer, so it can do stuff like "wearing this armor reduces attack speed by 10%" and "this weapon makes eight different attack/damage rolls every time you use it" without making someone at the table chuck their books out the window. It tells you what all the fiddly stuff is, of course, because having a ton of fiddly poo poo and not telling you about it is incredibly obnoxious at best, but the numbers are pre-crunched. A demon flesh golem is pretty loving metal, but even for that, I can't help but wonder if not taking the notes with you so you could show them to him kept you from having a peaceful resolution. Ah well, I suspect you would've had to bust him up anyway. I did notice a few things in that fight, though, namely that Deekin won't put away his loving crossbow. I know I keep saying it, but you really should switch him over to a melee weapon, because he can attack much more effectively with it, won't use up expensive ammo, and also won't deal with eating an attack of opportunity every time he fires. I also noticed you kept swinging at the boss you couldn't hurt instead of mowing down the minions. If you're going to take the time to get Cleave, you might as well use it to cut down the crappy little guys, you know? Even a Level poo poo guy can roll a 20 now and then. Pity you didn't use any of the sweet anti-golem items on them, that probably would've hosed him up right proper. I think if you right click on one of your flunkies, you can give them orders to deal with traps. I don't know if Nathyrra has the stats/skills for it, but it's worth a shot before you blow a spell on it. Or maybe not, it's only a second level spell that's massively upgraded from the tabletop version which just gives you a bonus on finding traps and lets you do it like rogues, it doesn't even help you disarm them, let alone just do it, but I guess anybody who's not a caster just isn't allowed to have nice things. Not that I'm bitter.
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Feb 22, 2016 05:31
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I wouldn't get rid of Deekin's crossbow entirely. Just put the sword in his hands, see if he keeps it in his hand. He's not going to be a damage powerhouse either way, but at least he can help flank, and won't get his face wrecked via attacking. I'm pretty sure that "stop advancing as a wizard, go pure assassin" was already taken care of, the problem is that she's already a wizard when you find her, and she sucks at it, due to a combination of poor stats and poor AI. A wizard/rogue/assassin can be pretty solid, just...not this one. The companions are often pretty bad, like the previously cited example of the monk that spends four feats on armor proficiency and shields.
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Feb 22, 2016 22:31
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I thought you might have missed one of the lab notes, but I guess there's no way to end it peacefully after all. But given that Aghaaz wants to stay and the Silver Golems want to leave, there's kind of no way to compromise on this one: someone is going to get hosed, so it's not surprising that the demon-meat Frankensteins get the short end of the stick on that one. I'm surprised that you still have the Yawning Portal Dagger. It's a lovely weapon, and while it won't sell for much, it's going to be more useful than what you have now. On a related note, bards having hosed weapon proficiencies is a thing I had forgotten in this game, and that's going to make equipping Deekin a little bit harder. Still, I didn't realize Deekin had taken weapon focus in the crossbow and Rapid Reload. That helps a lot with his offensive abilities, and given his choice of feats, he's actually way better with it than I thought he would be. All of my "give him a melee weapon" talk was based on the assumption that he hadn't been choosing feats based around using a crossbow, because that would be kind of stupid, but you'd think I'd learn not to overestimate the ability of these characters to pick feats. Anyway, my "Deekin will contribute a lot more to combat with a melee weapon" stuff is no longer valid (at least, not with what you have available), but there's still the "he eats tons of AOOs in combat." Maybe give that crappy dagger to Deekin? It sucks, but it's at least some kind of melee weapon he can use in a pinch, such as when surrounded by giant robot minotaurs that carry axes with heads as big as the rest of him. Speaking of bad builds, I knew Nathyrra's build would be poo poo, because all of their builds are poo poo, but holy gently caress, no anti-trap skills? I understand that trap stuff is only half of what rogues do, and she's technically an assassin which is all about the shanking, but that is mind-bogglingly awful. It's great that she's super good at sneaking up on people and ruining their poo poo, but it's not like you really need someone to do that. And it's great that you shut off her spells so she'll get in there and start shanking, but alas, that is only of so much utility against golems, not that she did anything to help against the Greater Minogons. At least it's just one sub-dungeon of one chapter full of things that shut down rogues so far, I hear that Neverwinter Nights 2 is really bad about things immune to sneak attacks towards the end. Although even if you don't have an actual trap-springer, or the stupidly overpowered version of the trapfinding spell, you at least have good ol' Cleric's Disarm, a close relative of Cleric's Feather Fall. As you said, comparisons between Pillars of Eternity and Neverwinter Nights can be made, but they're awkward. The thing is that one of the complaints about Neverwinter Nights was "why does everything in this game rely on rolling dice," which went over about like you'd expect. Pillars of Eternity is what happens when you design a game from the ground up with those comments in mind, which is not to say that the "ugh why is everything d20 based" people weren't point-missing morons, but they did have a point about the fact that with a computer taking over for the DM, you could afford to have things work in real time and have a fucktillion fiddly bits that would make the most battle-hardened accountant cry at the notion of running the clunky piece of poo poo. The bar for "so complicated it's no fun to play" is set way, way higher when you don't have to do the math yourself, after all. Deekin dying is indeed a tragedy, but Raise Dead is a fifth level spell, and by this point I don't think you'd miss the slot too much. Raise Dead brings the target back with one hit point, so it's best saved for after combat. Resurrection, which is what the rod casts, is a seventh level spell, and brings the target back with full hit points. An argument could be made for having a single Resurrection ready to go, but I think that even at level 20, seventh level spells are still a significant resource better spent on making sure nobody dies in the first place. As soon as I saw the sling, I figured shooting the mirrors would be the solution to the puzzle. Why else would there be a mundane ranged weapon with some mundane ammo that anybody can use? And needless to say, there's a way to not have to fight two very large angry mithril golems, but just handing you the solution seems unsporting. Especially because if you wanted it, hell, you have the same internet I do. I guess it's a question of if you think "track down the Word" or "fight the golems" would make for a better show.
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Mar 6, 2016 00:40
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This is the same length as a regular episode, isn't it? About half an hour, but I can see how the technical oopsies would make you just say "gently caress it" and do the one. I think that +6 Small Shield is better than the one you have, which is a +3 Large Shield that gives Spell Resist 12. The new shield will have a better armor check (irrelevant) and lower arcane failure chance (also irrelevant), but it will give you +7 armor. The Mirror Shield is +5 armor. You'll lose the Spell Resist, but SR12 is worthless by now anyway, for reasons I've already covered. It's kind of funny that the hammer is meant to gently caress up constructs, and gives a bonus to critical hits, but constructs are immune to those. Oh well! Still, the massive criticals work on non-golem things, but even if you were specced for warhammers, you can do better by this point. I think it's okay for the golems to be really hard. You only fight the golems if you don't know the password, after all, although I'm not sure if "there's a password, and you're in for a hard fight if you don't know it" is adequately conveyed. To put an actual number on it, I looked at the challenge rating in the tool kit, and it's 39. Your level, at the time you fought them, was 20. And you had to fight two of them at once. Demiliches, as you've seen, are fairly high-octane foes. One of them is an optional superboss in Baldur's Gate 2, and the prize is one of the best rings in the game (you can get two if you pick his pocket; a bug that may or may not be fixed in the HD Remaster version). You don't fight their likes again until...I want to say you fight a pair of them in Throne of Bhaal's optional superdungeon Watcher's Keep, on the fourth floor out of five that leads to the expansion's optional superboss Demogorgon. So it may just be a floating skull (or hand, or spine, or foot; the skull is popular but not required), but it's still really dangerous. Not as dangerous as the two golems, though (this guy was CR 31). Although it makes me wonder, is there a way to talk this guy down? The SRD describes the process that turns you into a lich as "unspeakably evil," and since a demilich is to a lich what a lich is to a regular caster, you can see where this tells me that a peaceful resolution is unlikely. You probably could have ruined his poo poo if you managed to stick a Heal. A demilich is undead, after all, and if you tag an undead with that, they're reduced to 1d4 HP. The tricky bit, of course, would be actually landing the hit (it's just a touch attack, but a touch attack on a floating skull) and overcoming spell resistance.
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Mar 7, 2016 21:49
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The problem with putting levels into a non-Cleric class is that a lot of the stuff that you do has your caster level factored in pretty heavily. By taking classes that don't advance your clerical casting, which in Neverwinter Nights 1 would be "everything that's not a cleric," you're weakening your ability to magically wreck faces. The undead you're going to face in the next area are a decent example: you're rolling in there thinking you're a level 21 cleric, but the problem is that you aren't. You're a level 17 cleric, and that may not be enough to actually turn anything in there. And spell resistance is also going to be a problem too, because the way that works is you have to roll a 1d20, add your caster level (and any modifiers), and the result is compared to their spell resistance. You're getting a +17 on the roll and the things were built assuming a +21, so that's a lot more of your spells that are going to bounce off them. Not only that, but once you hit epic levels, you can start taking crazy powerful epic spells, like "40d6 in a huge radius" or "summon a dragon to fight for you," but only if you can cast ninth-level spells, and while you have the levels for it, I don't know if you have enough unmodified Wisdom, plus you have to take an actual cleric level to be able to pick the feat (or, I assume, any other casting class, but taking a non-cleric casting level at this stage would be a catastrophically bad idea). On the bright side, your buff spells don't have to pass any checks or anything, and if all else fails, you can hit stuff with your axe until it falls down. When Nathyrra cast Knock to unlock those chests, I was pretty shocked. She actually had a useful spell prepared! And she cast it in an intelligent manner! That's the kind of poo poo she should be doing with he spell slots, not friggin' Magic Missile. Speaking of which, that Wand of Missiles is basically garbage at this point, because a CL3 Magic Missile is not going to make a noticeable dent in anything you'd want to burn expendables to fight. You'd get what is basically couch cushion change at this level for it, though, so eh, sell it or give it to a flunky, it doesn't really matter. Do note, however, that Deekin can only use it if he has enough ranks in Use Magic Device, and I don't know if he has any at all. But Deekin can use that Lichskull thing, because he's a Red Dragon Disciple. I don't know what he's got on his noggin right now, though, if anything. If it boosts charisma, leave it there, if not then think about swapping. He can also make use of the Concentration gloves, because "cast defensively" seems alien to him and he keeps dropping his spells when he gets hit. It's your call if that's worth swapping out the dex gloves, though. My initial assessment of the Searing Armor kind of missed the "no shorties" part of it. Oh well, at least that makes it easy to decide between it and the dragonscale! v vMighty on a bow is pretty nice if you have the strength for it. It adds your strength bonus to ranged damage attacks, up to its rating. There's no downside to using a bow with a higher Mighty rating than your strength here, but in some editions you take a to-hit penalty for trying to use a bow with more pull than you can handle. Which reminds me, you can and probably should ditch that crossbow you're carrying. Crossbows are not as good as longbows, and because of your Dwarven Defender levels, you can use those. Not that you're using any ranged weapons, but y'know. Good to know for the future. Speaking of equipment, yes, giving Deekin that shield causes him to suffer from arcane failure chance. The fact that bards are built to wear armor and then punished for it was one of the things that 3.5 fixed, because now bards don't suffer arcane failure for bard spells while wearing light armor. Cleaning up armor proficiencies in general was one of the things 3.5 did, because 3E had a lot of stuff like "this class can use up to medium armor but loses a bunch of class features if they wear anything more than light." Feels like a waste of time, you know? And I know I spent the past however the gently caress many episodes saying GIVE DEEKIN A MELEE WEAPON but now that I've seen his actual feats, I think you should go back to his crossbow. And take that light shield for yourself, it's better than what you have. And I will admit to laughing when you upgraded the crossbow and then searched around in your inventory and couldn't find it, because it was still in your hands. I did like the conversation Deekin and Nathyrra had about how Deekin's survival defies logic. But let's be fair here: Deekin has, in fact, died. It's just that he has a cleric buddy to make sure that doesn't stick. And did you see the kind of damage Nathyrra was cranking out? When you fought the Umber Hulks on your way to the mind flayer place, I saw her deal a couple of hits for about 50 damage each. A dual wielding rogue can churn out a fuckload of damage. Mind flayers were absolute bastards to fight, because every time they hit you, they lowered your intelligence. If your intelligence hit zero, you died. I don't remember how the int damage works here, but the "if it hits zero, you die" thing is still true. While the conversation between Nathyrra and Deekin makes me wonder what Vaelan would have to say to either of them, this is somewhat overridden by the fact that he sucks and is a douche, so gently caress that guy. That golem bartender makes me wonder: where do people get their drinks if not from that guy? If no money is coming in, where does he get anything? Or is this place just some building where the slavers chill and the golem stands around to serve drinks nobody wants or needs because they brought their own? That illusion makes me wonder: do you still get dumped in there if you keep the helmet? (The helmet is gone, by the way, you gave it to those guys to get entrance to the brain pool.) I'm assuming you do, because from the sounds of it, it keeps them from reading your mind, but that's all it does. They can still gently caress with your head in more brute force ways. I don't know what that illitid device does, but using it gave you a few points towards Evil. It scrolled by really fast, so I don't think you noticed it, but there you go. Clerics do operate under alignment restrictions to an extent, but since it's on a 0-100 scale and it was some single-digit number, who gives a poo poo? You can take the occasional alignment hit like that without a problem. I thought that the fact that you could do an intelligence check to see if you can get the prime number puzzle was a nice touch. Although it'd be nice if you could wave flunkies over and say "I don't get it, you take a crack at it." Like, Deekin is a bard, why can't you let him translate the bridge controls? He may not be able to solve it, but hell, he could at least tell us what the buttons do so we're not pushing them as blindly while dealing with this Roguelike ASCII bullshit. If I didn't have a big-rear end backlog of games to deal with already, I'd play through this as a chaotic stupid puppy kicking sorcerer just for the contrast. But, well, I do, so there you go.
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Mar 12, 2016 04:55
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Like I've said previously, Alignment in this game is a 0-100 scale.I don't know what the cutoff points are, but picking Lawful Good puts you at 85 for each. I don't know if Hordes of the Underdark has anything to gently caress with the law/chaos axis (the original campaign didn't), but thanks to having 87 Good, you are now more good than when you started, even taking the "incidents" with the buttons into account. I still don't know what those did, of course, but clearly nothing bad enough to make you actually evil. I didn't want to come across as saying "you took Dwarven Defender, RUINED FOREVER" but there's a reason that I said that those few extra levels of casting were a big make-or-break deal between Arcane Archer and Eldritch Knight. With the way things work out in this system, if you're going to go for a prestige class as a caster and you aren't trying to leverage some Weird Class poo poo, then your options boil down to "increases casting" and "garbage." I'm still not sure how much Wisdom you've got, though. If it isn't an unmodified 19, you can't cast level 9 spells. so raising that should be very high priority. Like "use your next feat to get Great Wisdom" level priority, but since I think your next feat is at 24 and that's when you get a stat bonus, you can use the stat bonus on Wisdom, and won't necessarily have to spend the feat that way. You have at least an 18 because you have eighth-level spells, though.I like that in almost every dialogue, no matter how terrible an idea it is, or what kind of sociopathic dipshit you'd have to be to use it, there is a "cut the yakking, get to smacking" option that lets you just shank a fucker. You might be able to get out of this without having to fight, but that's going to require the Persuade option, because you have ranks in that but not Bluff or Intimidate. So you can sweet talk, but you can't bluster or bullshit. I don't know if you'll then have to open your wallet to make him go away after that or what, but the "persuade" option looks like you want to cut a deal, so I'd say save buying him off as a last resort and Plan A should be to tell him to eat a heaping bag of dicks with a side of your axe to the face. I don't know if you could pull that off anyway, since you have 14 ranks in the skill, and if you'd been maxing it out every level you'd have 24. And while there was the digression about "easy to moderate checks so people can feel like dabbling is worthwhile" earlier, this strikes me as the kind of thing where if you want to talk your way out of it, a dabbling diplomancer is not pulling that poo poo off. All I've really got as far as beating that guy's face in is that now that you know he's there, you can prepare. Don't just rely on the buffs that Nathyrra and Deekin can use, because they're poorly chosen and also they're idiots who use them poorly. Clerical buffing is not the world's greatest, but you have access to a pretty good array, and even if you didn't you're surely packing many potions for it. So what I'd suggest doing, then, is gathering all your buff potions on one page of your inventory, lining them up, and then pounding those fuckers like a fratboy doing shots. Barkskin, Bull's Strength, Bear's Endurance, even useless poo poo like Fox's Cunning (okay, useless for a cleric going into battle), casting Aura Against Evil, maybe your best elemental resistance spells against Electricity and Fire (I saw those flying around). Then roll up and try to act surprised, and maybe throw around some Destructions for the Fort-based save or dies at the wizards (and c'mon, they're wizards, making their saving throw means they take 10d6 Divine damage and that's going to tear a chunk out of their HP pool).
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Mar 18, 2016 20:35
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The fact that Defensive Casting and Defensive Stance are mutually exclusive is not something I had previously taken into consideration. That being the case, I still wouldn't call Defensive Casting a waste of time, but I do think Defensive Stance is better. After all, if you don't cast defensively, they get a swing, but there should be enough AC to hopefully not get hit and drop too many spells. Technically, Defensive Stance locks you in place and Defensive Casting doesn't, but in this engine moving shuts off Defensive Casting, so blargh, that's a wash. The Amulet of Natural Armor is, at best, redundant with Barkskin, and at worst gives up a Wisdom-boosting item in the neck slot, and as a Cleric you can always use more of that. The Swordsman's Belt is a fantastic idea, though, but encumbrance will need to be managed, since I think without the belt, Lefur is carrying too much stuff. But gently caress it, that's what flunkies and bags of holding are for, right? Extend Spell is nice if you can spare the feats for it, and I'm not sure Lefur can at this point. Besides, I think Extend is mostly good for Persistent Spell, which is not in this game (but is in Neverwinter Nights 2, and yes, it's absurd). And to save people the trouble of looking it up, Extend Spell is "spell is one level higher but lasts twice as long," Persistent is "spell is six levels higher but lasts 24 hours." And some of the spells you can Persist were balanced around the assumption that you'd have them for two minutes (20 rounds) at most. But time scaling in regards to rounds/level and minutes/level is pretty fucky, so who the hell knows.
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Mar 27, 2016 05:49
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Piling on all those buffs were a big help, but how much help they provide is variable. Using a buff is 1d4+1, so you're always going to get at least a +1 modifier for the relevant stat. More than that, though, and who knows? That's part of why they're a flat +4 in 3.5. Also, you can Maximize and/or Empower them, and making it a flat +4 removes the ability to do that. Anduvir isn't too bad for a two bladed sword, if you overlook that double weapons suck, and it could be used decently well by Sharwyn if you overlook that her build is lovely. Daelan is built for double axes, not double swords, so he wouldn't be able to use it very well. Being able to throw a free Chain Lightning once per day at caster level 15 is pretty nice, but not nice enough to carry around a lovely fifteen pound weapon. The Cloak of Resistance +3 is very generic and boring, but useful if you don't have much use for the other things you can wear as a cloak and you really want to free up your rings and/or amulet slots for other things. I'm pretty sure you have a chance to find stuff that gives better bonuses to saves in those slots by this point, though, but without extensively going over what you can and can't have by this point, I can't say which is better, so gently caress it. I think you've got better stuff for everybody, so the Cloak of Resistance +3 is basically useless for you, although at least it'll fetch a good price. The Dragon Armor is okay, I guess. It's +5 chain mail, which already means only barbarians and druids give a poo poo, and the only reason druids give a poo poo is because the limitations on what druids can wear doesn't work here, since in tabletop they can't wear anything made of metal (but can use metal scimitars so who the gently caress knows), and barbarians only care because the completely better breastplate was given the same sucky stats. Bards and rangers can wear medium armor, but bards have arcane failure and rangers lose their dual wielding, so they're punished for doing it (which is why they no longer have that proficiency in 3.5), while everybody else either goes all the way up to heavy armor or can only wear light or less. Anyway, digressions aside, the fact that it has the +3 to all saves is pretty nice, but renders the Cloak of Resistance you just got pointless if you're wearing the Dragon Armor, because those don't stack. And...that's all there is to say, really, it's just +5 chain that gives +3 to all saves, and I guess if you haven't found anything better somehow, or you're super desperate to free up some equipment slots, there you go. The daily casting of Battletide is pretty nice, but not nearly nice enough. And none of this matters to you anyway, because you're a cleric, you can just cast the drat spell yourself while wearing way better armor. Nathyrra was killed in the opening volley of the fight, before you turned tail and ran. Given how many buffs you had piled up, I think you could've just charged them, but then you would've been in the middle of that guy and his wizardy backup crew, so maybe not. I don't know specifically what killed her, but I suspect it's the fact that she's a badly built wizard/rogue/assassin who suddenly found herself alone and surrounded. It's too bad, her sneak attacking would've done a number on all those casters, if she didn't kill herself on their damage shields first. When fighting the Beholders, all those buffs were useful, but Nathyrra's sneak attacks were also pretty nice. It would've been nicer if the Beholders held still, though. When I dealt with the "pop in and out of combat" assholes like that, I found it was way easier to just equip a bow and shoot them as they appeared instead of chasing them all over. Sure, you won't do nearly as much damage, but gently caress it, it's not like they hold still long enough for it to be a big deal anyway. You can drag your axe and shield to a hotbar slot so you can press it to equip both, and the same with a bow (not a crossbow, arguments could be made on longbow vs light crossbow at Level poo poo, you're now into epic levels, longbows are better), so you can swap weapons around freely. Not that you'd find much use for ranged combat, but y'know. It's a thing you can do if you have to. When you went into the spider tunnels, you got poisoned. You can tell because of the muffled boom sound followed by a sizzling hiss. The combat log probably said what happened, but it only shows four lines, so all I saw was that you're encumbered and can't run or walk at normal speed. I think I had my combat log showing eight or ten lines, which is enough to easily see what's going on without having to spend ages scrolling for that one loving line that says what happened, but not covering up the actual screen. It's a good example of why you should immediately mouse over any debuffs, though, because that will tell you what got you. I don't know what's causing the spell failure, exactly, nor do I know how to fix it, but there it is. Maybe you're in an anti-magic field or something? If that's the case, buddy are you in for a world of poo poo. This entire segment just seems kind of tedious and sucky. As for potions, if your minions are capable of using them (and I think they are), remember that they'll also use them when it isn't appropriate, because they are all very, very stupid. Don't give them anything important or expensive, just assume they'll waste it like the dumbasses they are and give them stuff you don't care about or can easily replace. On the other hand, don't give them super low tier stuff like Cure Light Wounds, because they will try to get those 1d8+1 HP back instead of finishing the fight with the guy that does triple that per hit. It's kind of a pain in the rear end balancing act, I guess.
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Apr 2, 2016 14:49
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Wow, the spider zone is some cast-iron bullshit. But I get ahead of myself! Rolling into the room full of drow and handing everyone their asses like a finely tuned rear end-handing machine was pretty cool. I'm pretty sure you can target any party member via the portraits on the right. So you can target yourself, queue up all the buffs, and they will be cast on you just fine. Much faster and easier than "cast, target, cast, target." The way I would ideally handle that fight against the Beholder Tyrant is to tell the elemental to go distract it and make sure it faces away from us while sweeping around the room killing the little one. Of course, any AI sophisticated enough to follow that plan is probably also in play on the Tyrant, which wouldn't fall for it, but oh well! Lacking that, "charge the tyrant, kill the mid-tier schmucks near him, ignore the trash while you beat him to death" works too. The way I see it, you got a few noteworthy items, with the relevant ones being Spellsmasher, the Mantle of Greath Stealth, the Amulet of Divine Radiance, and the Ironskin Ring. The Spellsmasher is okay, I guess, but by this point you've sunk enough money into your current axe that it's going to run rings around Spellsmasher. Spellsmasher's intelligence hit isn't relevant, and the chance to proc silence is so incredibly low as to be worthless. Starting from a blank slate, I'd say it's worth upgrading Spellsmasher, but since you're not working from a blank slate, Spellsmasher is basically worthless. The Mantle of Great Stealth is absolutely fantastic, but it's not very likely to let you hide from anything that you'd want to sneak by, Deekin needs the Cloak of Charisma, and Nathyrra's cloak has enough other bonuses that aren't worth giving up for a net gain of +20 Hide/Move Silently. The Amulet of Divine Radiance will be useful if you know you're going to be running into six assloads of undead and need to turn them, but otherwise not worth wearing, so I'd keep that one in your back pocket for later. The Ironskin Ring is fantastic in theory, because it will reduce any attack made with a +4 weapon or less by ten damage, and that's really nice! In practice, it's still pretty good, but how many +4 or lower weapons do you think you'll run into by this point? Anything dangerous will have heavily enchanted weapons. Still, I'd take it over the Ring of Spell Battle, because the ring boosts Spellcraft and gives you 1/day dispel, but that only matters if you remember to use it, and it's not like you do a lot of counterspelling. Do not get rid of that Ring of Protection +5, because the +5 armor it gives is super useful. Now for the spider zone. Holy poo poo, that loving spider zone looks terrible. From the looks of things, the point of that door is to make sure that primary casters (who are completely hosed) don't have to do the boss fight, because that lets you skip a big chunk of the dungeon, which just pisses me off because you'd think in the one zone that tells casters to go gently caress themselves, they'd have a hard time and it'd be the fighty dudes ruling the roost, right? Wrong! Have a boss that knocks away your weapons and armor. So casters just need to struggle through the initial wad of spiders (or rather, make whichever two minions you brought with you deal with it), and then they can bypass the rest of the dungeon, while everybody else has to struggle through a boss that slaps away the one thing they have going for you. I guess if you're a Monk you can do okay, because you can just punch the fucker and don't need your gear, but if you're a fighter or barbarian (or, as the case may be, a cleric without enough Spellcraft or Lore), you get to deal with a big mean boss without the benefit of any buffs or magic items, and that includes potions, so gently caress you. As for advice, gently caress, I haven't got much. The most important thing is that you are encumbered because you're carrying too much because you lost your strength boosts, so put your heavy poo poo in the Bag of Holding or offload some of it to minions or something. You need to drop a hundred pounds worth of stuff, and if you still have the large shield, use that instead of the heavily enchanted small shield, because magical bonuses don't work here because gently caress you, I guess. It's very important that you do this because you're walking at half speed, and even that little bit extra will matter in the fight. Nathyrra's dual-wield shanking should come in handy, in theory, but here's the super awesome thing I just learned. Normally I wouldn't dig into the files to give advice, because it strikes me as being against the spirit of things, but bullshit times call for bullshit measures: I have no idea how you're supposed to beat this legitimately, because that loving spider has DR 30/+3, which means that any physical damage that is dealt by a weapon without a big enough magical bonus will be reduced by 30, and oh hey remember how all the magical bonuses got shut off? Haha, gently caress you, because that axe of yours is just masterwork (not that "masterwork" is implemented in this engine either) and good luck dealing damage, chump. It's also packing a pair of 2d6 claws that each slap your armor off and a bite that deals 4d4 damage and poisons you. Of course, while writing all that, it turns out that there is apparently a way to turn off the anti-magic field, and you do that by going back to that obelisk with the stuff you couldn't decipher and mashing buttons until it opens, because you know what they say about monkeys and typewriters. I think if you get in there, you can turn magic back on? Alternately, sniff around in the room before the big spider, I think that's also where the "turn the loving magic back on" switch is located, but there's a hidden door to it or something. Do that and the Bebilith will not just fall over for you, but at least it won't be a one-sided slaughter. But the point is, you can turn the magic back on, but make sure you shed some weight before you go searching for it. It's bad enough you have to walk, you should not be walking at half speed on top of that.
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Apr 3, 2016 09:39
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Hooray, I saved the LP!  I didn't know that the thing would give random effects and might take save scumming to get through. Oh well. Although I did say that there was another way in, and also that you were going so slow because you were carrying too much poo poo because you lost your strength boost and also apparently the weight reduction for your armor fell off. Oh well, given that you fixed it right at the start of the video and we didn't have to see you crawling along, I guess it doesn't matter now! At least if I ever get around to my "Chaotic Stupid puppykicker sorcerer" run, I can be spared some of the pain.There's not a whole lot for me to say about the actual fight, other than "Cleave really kicked in here but even in this situation, Great Cleave didn't do a bunch" and "the writers for this game must have been a lot of engineers because of all the railroading." Here's where we find out if the "fire Deekin, rehire Deekin" thing dodged the bug, since I am operating on the assumption you'll want to bring him along when we find him. We'll have to reform our party, too, because our henchmen didn't come with us. Since it's the third and final chapter, I'm pretty sure, but not positive, that all of the henchmen are available now, and you can choose. I will pre-emptively vote Linu and Deekin until such time as you meet the new party member, at which point Linu gets the boot.
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Apr 5, 2016 16:49
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This one was a lot of  , but it's vital for context of what the gently caress is even going on around here. Like I said, it's Neverwinter Nights, not Diablo.The first video is mostly exposition, but it comes down to "we're in Cania, Mephistopholes knows the True Name of the Reaper (True Names basically give you root access to someone, in case the fact that I capitalized it like that wasn't a clue that it's important), and now he's eating the souls of the dead in Cania to make an undead army to take over Toril." We can get Deekin and Nathyyra back, and while we got Deekin back, we did not get Nathyyra. I think we should at least bring her back long enough to get our stuff, but we can drop her like the lodestone she is once we get that last party member. Speaking of which, that pool that lets you get back the stuff the Act 1 helpers were carrying? That's a pretty hefty piece of evidence that we can't get Linu back. Oh well, not a huge loss since we'd have to drop Deekin for her, and that sure as hell isn't going to happen. (Ha! Sure as hell! It's funny because of where we are.  )That dude that runs the quarry has some nice gear, like really high end Rings of Protection and neat helmets, so I think it was worth feeding that imp through the grinder to get at it. There might have been a way to dismantle the machine well enough to free him, either via digging in the dialogue trees to find out who you need to go to for help or just buffing up your own dexterity (surely you have a Cat's Grace potion or two), but you have enough alignment that a five point hit won't be a big deal, and also it was funny. As for that puzzle you were stuck on, while I am assuming it's too late, the spoiler-free version is that you have to go to the relevant stone, click on it to interact with it, and then talk to the Scrivener. The puzzle is supposed to be "which stones do I to," not "how do I actually interact with the drat things."
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Apr 8, 2016 19:52
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The deal with Aribeth, or at least the bits that are relevant to us here, is that she was a paladin of Tyr, the god of duty. So you can understand why she was a little pissed when the dudes in charge of Neverwinter threw Fenthick to the wolves by staging a kangaroo court and hanging him based on "he didn't realize his buddy was behind the horrible plague infecting Neverwinter." She turns on Neverwinter and starts working for the real big bad of the original campaign. Her ultimate fate in that game depends on if you, as a male PC, get her ring by talking to her. If you do, you can talk her down. If you don't have it, either because you didn't follow the right trees or they weren't made available because she doesn't swing that way, you have to kill her. But of course, she's in the wrong here because she felt betrayed just because her liege betrayed her by executing an innocent man. That thing about "I never actually loved him" just doesn't pass the smell test to me. I think it's mostly there to clear the decks so a male PC can romance her, or at the very least make her look worse. It's a crock of poo poo, is what it is. I'm pretty sure that no matter what you do in that frozen cave, Aribeth is going to become one of your followers. I am also pretty sure that it's impossible to gently caress up getting Paladin Aribeth or Blackguard Aribeth, because it's pretty loving clear which one you're going to get. And yes, they do have different dialogue when they talk, because one is Good and one is Evil. I'm not sure if/how the game handles taking away Blackguard abilities. Fortunately, Aribeth was only a level 6 Blackguard, so most of what she's losing won't sting too much. It's mostly the opportunity cost of the Paladin levels, which aren't that much of a loss, because you need 14 base Charisma to cast the best Paladin spells, and she has 13. Of course, the best Paladin spells are still just Paladin spells, so no great loss. Even so, I just don't understand the incredibly lovely builds going around. This isn't some obscure stuff like "if you take this feat and that feat and combine it with this weapon while under the effect of that spell you get 2% more DPS," this is "your stats aren't high enough to use a core feature of your class." And then there's that nine dexterity and she's wearing leather armor? Slap some full plate on her clumsy rear end, I'm pretty sure you have a spare set. (Bonus points: the accident-prone Linu has a Dexterity of 12.) Oh well, at least it's not as bad as "let's put all the armor proficiency feats on a monk whose equipment you can't modify anyway." As for her being a half elf, yeah, that's kind of poo poo in the Neverwinter engine. It gives you sleep immunity and a handful of nearly useless skill bonuses. She gets the Elven Weapon Proficiencies, but she's not supposed to because only full elves get those, and they're basically useless anyway because they're either weapons your class lets you use anyway or you aren't supposed to be stabbing fuckers. The only class that can really make decent use of it is the Cleric, because it grants them longswords, and while they're only working with 3/4 BAB, so are Rogues. It's also maybe useful for Bards in NWN, but that's because the devs only gave them Simple weapons and not the proper array. Not that bards are frontline fighters themselves, but eh, they can contribute. Anyway, you may as well turn her magic back on. It's not great, but I'm reasonably sure that she won't spend all her time casting crappy spells, and I don't know if it shuts off Turn Undead or Divine Might or Lay On Hands or whatever, and those are things you want her using. She may also retain her summoning abilities from being a Blackguard, but who knows? If you see a skeleton or succubus in your entourage, then that's where they came from.
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May 8, 2016 03:14
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That's the thing: the crowds were pissed, they wanted blood, and Nasher gave them Fenthick. And Aribeth was understandably furious, and figured duty was a crock of poo poo and turned on him, joining the bad guys. So far, so good. Where I take issue is that I don't think it really addresses that Nasher basically got scared and shoved a sacrificial lamb in front of the crowds to keep the peace. And that is super, super lovely. If I have this wrong, someone who's actually played the campaign some time this decade feel free to chime in, because I played Neverwinter Nights when it was brand new, and that was it. The way Paladin levels and Blackguard levels interact in tabletop is kind of neat, because the more Paladin levels you have the stronger a Blackguard you are, but this has the problem that Blackguard requires five ranks in Hide, and Hide is cross-class for paladins. None of that applies here, because that's way more complexity than this game seems able to handle, and also blackguards kind of suck. quote:Honestly the only thing I can think of with the NPC builds on display is that they were deliberately hobbled so that poor PCs don't have the spotlight stolen by good NPCs. For Aribeth one less point of Dexterity changes exactly nothing while one more point of Wisdom enables fourth level spells and adds a second level spell slot. In a system that stresses even ability totals this sticks out. On the one hand, sabotaging the NPCs means they won't upstage a poorly built PC, but on the other hand, they also can't prop up a poorly built PC. Ah, well, I guess that's what easy mode is for.
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May 8, 2016 15:01
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The "intelligent weapon" thing on Enserric just means that it's going to yell a lot in combat, like when it was complaining about the essence of the undead while you were fighting off the skeleton swarm. For Aribeth's gear, the bracers, boots, and ring are all good choices. Nothing exciting, but they're good things to shove in those slots until you get other ideas. I don't know what her cloak was, you neglected to show that one. The Amulet is fantastic, because it gives her extra Turn Undead attempts that she can turn into other things thanks to her feats that give her stuff to do with Turn attempts, and the +6 Charisma is fantastic on a paladin because of all their stuff that keys off Charisma. If the Blackguard's "charisma bonus to saves" thing works, then that would help explain her saving throws. I only saw her Fortitude save of 41, but that's kind of ludicrous. As for the armor, I'd definitely say that the Chainmail of Speed is better. Her personal armor retaliates on attackers with a slow that can be prevented with a Fort save of 20, but most of the stuff that's going to be hitting her can make that trivially. Permahaste, however, is one of the most stupidly broken things in the game. There's a reason adding it to your weapon is so godawful expensive. Now, I will admit that the Chainmail of Speed has a higher armor check penalty, but who gives a poo poo? Aribeth is a Paladin, her class skill list isn't overflowing with stuff where that matters. Sure, she has Hide, but that's just because Blackguard requires five ranks in it for some reason (note that Hide is not a class skill for Paladins). Anyway, I did notice she has over 440 hit points. Between a pretty good AC and saves, an enormous quantity of hit points, and a vampiric sword, she should hardly ever need to use Lay On Hands on herself. If things get really dire, then you can always tag her with a Heal. And yes, it has to be a Heal, anything less is wasting your time. I'd advise giving her potions of Heal too if you can find and afford them, but I don't know if anybody sells them around here. (Fun fact: potions in tabletop cap out at third level, Heal is sixth; so Heal potions shouldn't exist.) Her drat near immortality was especially helped by the Greater Swordsman's Belt you gave her, because that reduces incoming slashing damage by 20, and slashing is all those skeletons dealt. Lawful Good characters, if I remember correctly, try to work within the system to fix lovely laws. So a Lawful Good character does have a recourse in the situation that Aribeth was in, but she didn't take it. Her actions, while understandable (as long as you don't factor in that lovely retcon), were certainly not paladiny. Speaking of paladiny things, I noticed Aribeth try to Smite Good in that fight against the skeletons. So the good news is that she has her Blackguard abilities too! The bad news is that she's very bad at deciding what to use when, because I don't think Neverwinter Nights includes the Deathless type. When you were looking through the list of abilities on Aribeth, that wasn't "hey Aribeth, use this ability," it was "use this ability of mine on Aribeth." You don't have direct control over your henchmen here, and even what you have is a huge step up from the original campaign, because in that all you had was telling them to use ranged or use melee, and they never swapped on their own. To the best of my knowledge, Neverwinter Nights 1 and expansions are unique among D&D CRPGs and games which are heavily influenced by them in that you can't control your companions. Neverwinter Nights 2 will let you, but Neverwinter Nights 2 sucks. You think this writing is bad? You ain't seen nothin' yet. Bull's Strength and other such Animal Stat buffs can be cast on others. It's up to you if you want to take the time to use it on Aribeth. 18 strength isn't the best score, but Aribeth's job here, at least in my opinion, is to take hits all day. She can deal them out well enough, she has a heavily enchanted sword and a bunch of levels in full-BAB classes, but that's kind of secondary to her "wade in, don't die" stuff. Unfortunately, tanking isn't something the AI is really built around, but she's a fantastic meat shield if nothing else. Now that you have that 19 Wisdom, you can start throwing around level 9 spells, and they're pretty sorely needed. As you can see, they're all really drat good. The Storm of Vengeance is a long lasting AOE, so be careful with that one, because I don't think it can hurt your allies due to your difficulty level setting, but I'm pretty sure that you can gently caress yourself up with it. So don't cast it on dudes next to you. Energy Drain is a good one for ruining the day of enemy casters, because it will drain a bunch of their levels and make them lose spells, which is nice. You can theoretically hit anything with it, but it's Fort negates, so tossing it at fighty types won't get you very far. On a related note, any spell slots you have below fifth level are basically garbage now. If you can't put a utility spell or a buff in it, it's not going to do much, because if you're in a situation where you want to bust out a spell, you're going to want the big spells. So you may as well load them up with Knock, Animal Stats, Identify, poo poo like that. Maybe Haste, but I think all three of you have permahaste now (you from your axe, Deekin from boots, soon Aribeth from armor). You can use Empower to squeeze more life out of older spells, but as for how good they are, I'll leave that to someone more qualified. I will tell you, however, that Quicken Spell is worthless in Neverwinter Nights, because its "cast spells faster" functionality is replicated by Haste.
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May 10, 2016 12:33
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An important thing I forgot to mention last episode is that there is a hard level cap of thirty. You have to decide soon if you're going to get any more levels of Dwarven Defender, because you have enough room to be a level 20 cleric/10 Dwarven Defender, but that's it. You're a level 20 cleric. Every level in Cleric you take from now on is a level in Defender you can never take. I'd say good stopping points are five (flank immunity) or six (DR 3). Or go all the way to ten (DR 6, you also get +1 to reflex saves against traps but who gives a poo poo). Just keep in mind that going further in Dwarven Defender cuts into your ability to get Epic Spells, although quite frankly I don't think you have the Spellcraft for them, and because of prior skill point allocation and the fact that it took you so long to get 19 Wisdom, you aren't going to be able to get any. Oh well. Your spells were getting interrupted in the fight against the Guardian. Your armor class is no longer high enough that you can just ignore enemies taking swings at you, so you're going to have to use defensive casting again. Unfortunately, "defensive casting" and "defensive stance" are mutually exclusive, so that's kind of a problem. The Astral Blade +8 is a really good weapon, because what the hell resists Sonic? But I think you're better off sinking more money into Enserric, unless its constant yammering is distracting. Either way, hold on to both swords, and also hold on to some of your money. You're going to want money. Like, lots of money. Protection Against Evil and Magic Circle Against Evil are both the same effect, so Protection is redundant here. I think there's a few reasons Aribeth can deal out better damage than Nathyrra could. The big one is that Nathyrra's a dual wielding rogue, and you spent a lot of time fighting stuff that was immune to sneak attacks, and on those occasions she was fighting shankable foes, flanks weren't being set up so she couldn't sneak attack. Aribeth, on the other hand, has two classes built around "hit things in the face with a sword" and her feats are bent towards that. (Speaking of, we need to see her feats too, those are very important.) The other, of course, is that Aribeth has way better weapons. Aribeth also has some sneak attack: 2d6, to go along with the 1d8+12 slashing and 2d6 sonic she's dealing with her sword (and another +5 if she's power attacking, which I think she usually is). So basically Nathyrra had a higher theoretical DPS but she needed setup, whereas Aribeth can just wade in and lay down the hurt. She has a few tricks to increase damage, but unlike Nathyrra, they aren't required. Plus she didn't waste levels on a class that she can't use for poo poo. There was some sort of loot outside the Mimic's Nest. I don't know if it was anything important or not. If this were just a terrible BioWare romance, that'd be one thing. But it's a terrible BioWare romance with a dead woman who had some pretty dubious retcons applied to the man she betrayed and burned a city for, so that's some extra problems on top. I'm reasonably sure you shut down the romance, but not positive it's actually stopped. One way to handle this would be to go back to a save before coming in here, taking off your armor (or putting on something expendable), and then going in and seeing what happens. If all else fails, Aribeth is carrying that Chainmail of Speed, so you can wear that. It's better than nothing, although I still think Aribeth should be wearing that instead of her unique leather armor, because that slow isn't going to get through nearly often enough to matter.
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May 11, 2016 15:41
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On the one hand, it looks like I hosed up and the hard cap on levels is 40, not 30. On the other hand, I seriously doubt there's enough XP between here and the end of the game to get that far anyway. Still, I'd probably stop Dwarven Defender at 6 for the damage reduction and sink the rest into Cleric. Spellcraft doesn't mention epic level spells because they weren't a thing when the description was first written, and it wasn't updated to reflect changes in the game. Unfortunately, the ugly moral here is "if you're a caster, don't multiclass out of it." (There are exceptions. They do not exist in NWN.) Speaking of stuff you can sell for cash, you might want to go through all of your scrolls. A bunch of them are scrolls you either can't use (wrong class) or wouldn't want to use (too weak). It's not going to be relevant much longer, but when you use your level, you get a full heal. So if you're in a fight, have a level ready to go, and your health is down, you can level up in the middle of the fight to get all your HP back. That "lure the mimic into the fire thing" is an interesting puzzle, but the execution is horrible. Spellcraft is not a Dwarven Defender class skill, and you aren't going to be able to get enough to do anything. Even if you were, you can't take the feat that lets you cast epic spells with a Dwarven Defender level, so raising that is basically wasting skill points. You may have rewatched the video to already see, but at the start of 45, when you put your dragon armor back on, you dropped the chainmail, because you didn't have room. You're carrying way too much bulky garbage and need to dump a bunch at the next shop. Or offload a bunch of your scrolls. Plus a bunch of traps and books and notes and wands and other trash that isn't really relevant, but is incredibly bulky. You also have a bunch of wands and spare weapons, like that light crossbow, that you can afford to dump. In the original Neverwinter Nights, you had six possible companions. You met four of them in chapter 1. Grimgnaw here is the fifth, a LE dwarf monk (with a fantastically sabotaged build; this is the monk who blew four feats on armor and shield proficiencies I complained about). The sixth was Boddyknock Glinkle, LN gnome sorcerer. He was of dubious utility because he was a moron who used his spells badly. There was a mod that upgraded everyone's brains in addition to letting you change their gear, so he'd stop doing stupid poo poo like "throw Sleep spells at zombies, which are immune to sleep," at least. The Maugrim fight does highlight one of the big advantages that clerics have over arcane casters. He cast a bunch of stuff to basically make himself spell-proof, but you just hit him in the face with your axe. Pity he wasn't smart enough to take precautions against that. (Of course precautions against "axe in the face" exist. What, you expect a 3E caster to have an actual weakness? Perish the thought.) Holy crap, these guys have a TON of sweet loot. Do keep in mind, though, that you should still have that bottle that summons a genie merchant, and you can use that to unload some of the lower ticket stuff, like the low level scrolls (and maybe all the wizard scrolls; I'd say give them to Deekin but I don't know if he'll use them). For the sweet loot, the summary is that most of it is stuff you can't or don't use, so you may as well sell it. The things worth keeping are the Blood Plate and Ring of Power. I think you should wear the Blood Plate yourself. It's a little heavier than your current armor (nine pounds, because it gets 60% weight reduction compared to the 80% of the Red Dragon Armor), but nine pounds is hardly back-breaking, especially once you clear out your old garbage. You will also be giving up Fire Resist 20 (which I don't think matters down here) and 25 hit points. I think this is more than offset by the extra point of armor class and regenerating three hit points per round. You can then pass your red dragon armor to Aribeth. You'll need some way to give her Haste, but since she's there to tank it up, I don't think it's as critical. The Ring of Power is mostly because you have six ring slots among your party, surely someone has something outdated that they can trade for a ring that gives some elemental resists, regeneration, and Freedom. The Cape of the Fire Bath was noted, but that's the kind of thing that's nice to find if you're level 10 or so. It's way outdated by now. Plus there was some ring that makes you immune to cold in the lot; I didn't mention it because I'm not sure if it's from this pile of loot. If it was, definitely keep it. Granting complete immunity to an element is pretty handy. There was also some dagger in there you didn't show off, but it's a dagger, who gives a poo poo? MechaCrash fucked around with this message at 20:58 on May 14, 2016 |
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May 14, 2016 20:26
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I'm pretty sure Aribeth won't equip arrows on her own. You might as well throw a stack of them into her arrow ammo slot, and do the same for yourself. I don't know if you have any longbows left, but as I've hammered on in the past: crossbows are poo poo compared to actual bows just due to fire rate. Not to the point that it's worth buying arrows, mind you, but you may as well smoke it if you got it, you know? Speaking of looting, I know you're getting tight on space, but never leave behind potions. You can always find a use for a portion. If nothing else, you can sell the things. That Robe of Leathers looks pretty nice for Deekin. The 10% chance for his spells to fail is worth the giant armor bonus, plus a dexterity bonus (which may be overwritten by his bracers, I forget how much they give), and the on-hit is pretty nice. The usable abilities won't help him because he won't use them, but there you go. You had plenty of room for that bastard sword, you just need to do some Inventory Tetris to compress stuff down so you can carry it. The Bloodsucker is actually a pretty solid dagger. Just, y'know. Dagger. The only reason to use it is if you're a Small dual wielder and going for things you can finesse. (And if you aren't, you're probably dual wielding wrong -- double weapons are unavailable to Small characters in NWN.) Souldrinker being only +5 means you'd need to drag it off for upgrades. The on-hit level drain is pretty awesome, though. The fact that it's DC 16 means it's going to be resisted a lot, but there's no opportunity cost involved and the payoff is pretty fantastic. Okay, no opportunity cost as long as you aren't counting "I'm not using some other weapon," which is a perfectly valid issue. The vampiric regeneration is just a bonus. Aribeth's sword deals Sonic damage, and objects that resist that are pretty rare. A good sonic weapon is a universal lockpick, which is one of the many reasons that Neverwinter Nights 2 and Knights of the Old Republic 2 implemented "if you bash open a locked thing, you ruin some of the poo poo inside." Otherwise, why ever invest points in picking locks when you can just break everything using skills you're going to have anyway? You're leaving a lot of loot lying around. On the one hand, it's probably just gold...but then again, remember when I said you're going to want a lot of gold? Seriously. A lot of gold.
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May 20, 2016 03:06
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There is a thing coming. You're going to want a shitload of gold for it because it costs a shitload of gold. I won't say what it is, because that'd spoil the surprise. I mean, technically I shouldn't even be saying "hey there's a thing you're going to want a shitload of gold for," but at least now it's possible to make a semi-informed decision instead of blowing all the money on turning everyone's weapons into permahaste-granting flaming critical hit machines or whatever. Because even if you ultimately decide to not do the thing what takes all the money, there's always upgrading everyone's weapons to a ludicrous degree.
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May 21, 2016 07:05
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