Community updates

Community updates, as posted by Shane K Defreest in Official NWN2 forums

NWN2 Community Update #1: Classes and Races (Feb 15, 2006)

 *  In NWN1 when a paladin stops being lawful good his class feats are still working (aka palladin/blackguard powerbuild). Is there any easy way to distable class feats of specific class on the specific PC (without removing them)?

Ferret: The big penalty for a paladin drifting from Lawful Good is he can no longer pick up paladin levels. His abilities do not retroactively get turned off – it works like original Neverwinter Nights. Maybe an expansion or patch? I can see the appeal, but we have a lot we want to do and only so much time. We’re adding a bunch of new features and refining some of the old ones over here at Obsidian, so you may not get everything – but man, the community is going to get a lot.


 * Will there be a hardcoded penalty to being an evil subrace? I think it would make sense to give drow and duergar a penalty to appraise/diplomacy/bluff/intimidate when dealing with surface races, especially when dealing with drow vs. elves (even more animosity there). I know, it is better for modders to do this themselves, but we all know that they won't. Far better to make it opt out than opt in. I just think it's pretty farsical for the game mechanics to treat drow exactly the same as moon elves in this regard. I think it would make playing one of these subraces more interesting and immersive.

Ferret: It’s been discussed before but we’re focusing our reactivity efforts on players’ choices they make during gameplay, not character creation. That being said something like this is doable – and we’ll look into it. No promises, but it’s now on the List™.

NWN2 Community Update #1.5: Classes and Races (Feb 16, 2006)

 * Will I be able to really get into the character like I could pre-NWN and KoTOR? In Fallout, BG, and to a certain extent PS:T you really got involved with your characters, i.e., you "cared" about what was happening and if one died, or there were multiple ones that you enjoyed playing, it was difficult to decide which ones to use.

Ferret: Chris Avellone is writing our companions and many prominent characters – and he’s a wiz at exactly that. Making interesting, involving characters that you can develop a connection to. I really think that players are going to have tough choices of which 3 people to bring with you in your journeys, because there will be enough people you really like to fill 2 parties (or more). That opens the door to replayability, though. Our goal is to deliver on this front in spades.


 *  Will there be some restriction on the colour palette of the races/subraces? Will module builders be able to impose such? 

Ferret: Yes, there are restrictions to the color palette based off of race and subrace. It wouldn’t mean much to be a Drow if your avatar had a California tan and brown hair. Some subraces have more hair and color choices than others – we tried to make sure that at least one race type has almost human-like choices. There will be a lot of permutations for creating your character.


 *  Will clerics be able to choose a god and have that determine their Domain options? If they don't choose a god will they get the correct alignment based restrictions on their domains? Will servers/modules be able to design and implement their own gods and affect character creation with them?

Ferret: The domain system works almost identically to the original Neverwinter Nights. We are adding options for modders that can affect things they couldn’t in the original game, but I’ll make no promises on this one.

NWN2 Community Update #2: Classes and Races (Feb 23, 2006)

 *  How is clothing/armor handled? Is it one piece as in NWN (next to gloves, helmet and such) or will every piece of clothing be a separate item (pants, shirt, jacket, cloak, breastplate, etc). Is clothing layered (and can some clothes layer over others so you can wear that breast-plate over any blouse and shirt and such) or does it replace the player model (like it did in NWN)?

Ferret: The way it works is there are different choices for the base armor. The base is something like a breastplate with no accessories. Then you can select different attachments to mix and match to create a look for the armor – so you can choose from different shoulder pieces, forearm pieces, leg pieces, etc. There’s enough permutation of attachments to make a wide variety of looks. Add to that you can change the color palette of the armor, too, so there’s a lot of flexibility.


 *  I read on the WotC on some race article, that Drow have to actually surpress (i.e. turn off) their SR in order for it not to affect friendly spells (such as healing) the same way as normal offensive spells. Is this going to be implemented in NWN2 (unless the rule is out-of-date itself)?

Ferret: Drow’s magic resistance will automatically let beneficial spells go off. That’s a fun rule for pen-and-paper, but during gameplay that could involve too much micromanagement. In my experience most Drow players and DMs settle on the system we’ll be using for Neverwinter Nights 2.


 *  Will classes still have alignment restrictions? (I ask because a recent interview about NWN2 seemed to imply that players will not be choosing an alignment up front. So, this makes me wonder if Chaotic Evil Paladins and Lawful Good Assassins are possible).

Ferret: Yes, classes still have alignment restrictions. And if you choose a Warlock, Paladin, or Monk initially then you won’t start off at True Neutral like everyone else. I think the system we’re adopting for the original campaign should make it fun for people to develop a character concept then stick to it and see what alignment you wind up (something people may remember fondly from the Ultima days). We have some fun moral choices throughout the game – so occasionally you might have to sit back and ponder some deep thoughts before you make your choice.


 *  In NWN1, none of the PrCs had their own spell lists. Instead, they had a few special abilities they could use X times per day. Will PrCs (such as Assassins) have their proper spell lists in NWN2?

Ferret: The NWN1 prestige classes don’t have spell lists. That’s one of the reasons we pushed so hard to get spell progression prestige classes in our game because we wanted to have prestige classes that have a lot more “spell power.” There are a lot of prestige classes to choose from, so there should now be something for everyone.


 *  NWN1 had several examples of class-specific quests, will NWN2 continue this and will it extend to race-specific as well?

Ferret: There are some class-specific quests – but expect a limited amount of them and don’t expect them to be incredibly deep. Especially as we add more classes and races, making content specifically for one of those means design or scripting work only is seen by a small percentage of players. We prefer to focus on the player’s in-game choices, not decisions made at character creation.

NWN2 Community Update #3: Creatures (02 Mar 2006)

 *  The biggest thing I can think of is are they base creatures that you can equip armor on? For example Orcs, Hobgoblins, etc. In NWN1 they had specific models. Do we have that or a nude Orc that we dress?

Ferret: Creatures work differently from the PC in NWN2. You don’t start with an orc in loincloth and put any piece of equipment on top of him and he looks just like the PC. Creatures have a variety of their own base armor types which look more appropriate to their nature – more orcish in this case. It’s not just the base armor variations for the creature you can play with, you can also mix and match creature specific attachments to provide a lot of variation in your orcish armies and they don’t look like PC clones with different skin – they look like a vicious, wicked, and barbaric (and smelly) orcish army.


 *  Will there be better options for controlling the behaviour of individual monsters. Currently you would have to change the onspawn or similair script for each monster as I understand it to get them to behave in unique ways, or use a 3rd party AI. Something like a clickable list of possible behaviours and a "use this spell first" type option would be ideal.

Ferret: We’ll be announcing more specifics about AI improvements later on. There are some real goodies the scripters (and specifically Dan Rubalcaba) have been working on. But we’re going to hammer on them more in QA before announcing the specifics.


 *  Are the monsters limited to 4 classes like the players or does it work differently? 

Ferret: Nope, the monsters are limited to 4 classes just like the player character. I’ve been told they use the same code, so a change to one is a change to another.


 *  Will monsters have the same (full) animation and voice sets as PCs, or will they have limited subsets like in NWN1?

Ferret: Voice sets works the same way as the original game. Animations depend on the monster. If the critter is humanoid a lot of times it’ll use the human animations as a base, which means they’ll have access to a ton of animations. Non-humanoid critters have their own animation sets which don’t have the same depth as the human animations but they are specific to them. Non-humanoids are primarily built to look awesome in a fight.


 *  Will we be able to 'negotiate' with monsters, as in use Intimidate or Persuade to do something with them other than (repeatedly) rack them up as kills?

Ferret: There are times in the single player campaign you can use your silver-tongue to get out of a fight. But there are critters that just can’t be reasoned with (like an Umber Hulk, who aren’t particularly known to be conversationalists) and situations where it’s just not tenable. I don’t think passive resistance would work too well in the Forgotten Realms, there are just too many perils that would bulldoze right over a would-be good samaritan. Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Bluff definitely come up, though. And for user made mods, certainly they can make and script options like this.

NWN2 Community Update #4: Creatures (11 Mar 2006)

 *  Will there be any planar monsters besides the infamously overdone plane touched or Celestials?

Ferret: We’ve got a decent selection of planar critters to select from (over 10) - demons, devils, githyanki, imps, and more. Some haven’t been seen before in a D&D RPG – but many are some fan favorites (well, at least they’re some of my favorites). Expect some more specific monster information later on.


 * How much will the AI of diferent Beasty's differ, as in wolfs actually pack hunting while a dumb zomby just mindelelssly strolls toward nearest thing, and orc's raising alarm/battlecrying when the engage a PC?

Ferret: There isn’t much I can say about AI right now. We’re making sure right now that all our new AI works like a champ before commenting on them.


 * Are there going to be tools built into the toolset to create your own monster?

Ferret: If you’re talking about creating models – then I’m afraid not. Modern art creation tools are really wonders to behold and expensive to license. It wouldn’t be practically feasible to release something like this with our game. But the same graphics tools the community used in NWN1 could be used to create NWN2 assets, although it will require some ramp up because of the new technology we’re using in our game.


 * If you are fighting one or more monsters, and they sense that it will be exceedingly hard for them to defeat you, will they run away to get help/call for help?

Ferret: We’re working on fun stuff like this and more. We call what you described here as coward AI and you can do what you’re describing. QA is currently pounding on it, so the exact specifics of it may change based off of usability feedback.


 * It has been said that in the toolset you will be able to create templates of multiple placeables which can then be placed as a group. Will this same methodolgy be used for creature building?

Ferret: We call them "prefabs" and you could just as easily make a group of creatures you can place as you want as you could a collection of other objects. It’s really quite a powerful tool for everyone, because if you make some amazingly intricate room that looks awesome you can make a prefab of everything and then reuse it. Thus giving mod builders both flexibility and ease of use.

NWN2 Community Update #5: Creatures (21 Mar 2006)

 *  Will the system allow monsters with more than one pair of attacking members e.g. a Marilith?

Chris Avellone: Those monsters do exist, but their actual mechanics is that of a 2-armed creature so you would need to up their attacks and add the special abilities to their attacks to simulate the damage and powers of a 4 armed attacker.


 *  For me, the biggest letdown was "hard-coded" abilities such as knockdown, disarm and other feats. Will these be alterable through scripting in NWN2?

Charles Mead: New scripting commands allow feats to be given to players on a permanent basis – not just as an effect or item property.


 *  NWN1, if we wanted to have two of the same monster but that looked different, we needed to have two instances on the palette; eg two ogre models that were identical except for appearance. I know for trees there will be a built-in randomizer to allow for variety without the need for each version to be on the palette. Will we have that approach, with a built-in randomization, or will each different appearance need to be on the palette?

Charles Mead: Each different appearance will need to be on the palette.


 *  Will there be monsters with the ability to grapple or swallow the heroes?

Chris Avellone: Unfortunately, no. While a cool feature, we can't do in the time provided.


 *  Will we get truly incorporeal undead this time? Shadows, spectres etc were seriously lacking in challenge in NWN1 due mainly to the fact that they did not get any incorporeal benefits (50% chance to ignore hits, touch attack that ignores armour etc).

Charles Mead: I believe this will be fully supported.