Neverwinter Nights 2: WotC, DnD & NWN 2 Deviations

Sethai continues:

Questionable Interpretations:

32 point buy. For some reason (which I remain forever unable to comprehend) point buy has been increased to 32, the maximum allowable under 3.5 rules. Presumably to make the game more "epic." Every kind of interesting character is possible with 25 point buy: the all-rounder cleric, the intelligent but frail wizard. All that this ability point gluttony actually serves to accomplish is to make it completely unnecessary to have any weak or even average stats, so that all characters are superior to normal people in every way. If you want to make the game easier, just lower the ability scores of everyone else; it's all completely relative anyway. So what are you actually achieving, other than distorting the game? I am fairly certain that this will merely lead to all enemies being scaled up too, ruining any sense of proportion (or perhaps they'll just make the game ridiculously easy like KOTOR2?).

Always Max Hit Points - No longer is this tied to game difficulty. All characters will now receive max hit points per level. The whole point of the random hp on level up is to enforce the idea that hp is not proportional to level: 2 level 1 characters are supposed to be more powerful than 1 level 2. Get rid of the randomness if you want, but anything but the max. What's wrong with the average rounded up/ down? Or any other approach? Or a selection of options? Again, it's all completely relative. Just make the enemies weaker (or more accurately, bring them back down to where they should be by the rules). I can't think of any other approach that would have been worse than the one they have taken.

Up to level 20 in a single campaign - It takes characters like Drizzt a lifetime of adventuring to reach level 14, and they propose to take us to the maximum allowed in the standard rules in a single campaign. If you do the maths, it works out approximately 5 times as fast as Baldur's Gate. Now I'm prepared to compromise, but that's just ridiculous. It's even faster than nwn, which was unanimously agreed to be too fast anyway. The whole reason nwn was so fast was that you were saving the world with one character (that and the endless filler combat). Since only one character got to level up, it had to occur frequently to give the player the feeling their character was progressing. Surely since nwn2 has a party this should no longer be necessary? I can't imagine how much filler combat they must have shovelled into the OC to achieve such a ridiculous rate.

Now someone is going to come up with that tired old "but is it fun" argument. But I played KOTOR and so did a lot of other people, and I'll tell you this: It was not fun to get levelled up so quickly (and even for free in the case of the characters you didn't use) that you ceased to even care about it anymore. It was not fun to have acquired every power and feat in the game worth taking. It was not fun to have to sneak your way past yet another clone encounter, simply because you couldn't be bothered to spam your way through it by manipulating the death system and spamming the instant healing. In fact, it ruined any dramatic momentum the story might otherwise have had.

I look in magazines now and see the Baldur's Gate games still revered as the some of the greatest RPGs ever made, despite all the others that have come and gone since then. And they were great because they treated their players like adults instead of wrapping the PCs in cotton wool. They gave you the sense that you were adventuring in this big, dangerous world full of things bigger and more powerful than you, where death and tragedy lurked around every corner and there were serious consequences. A world which was as real as a fantasy game could be. And guess what, people didn't complain, they loved it. They loved it even though at the time they thought "gee, I wish I could just rest this effect off." Looking back, I'm so glad for the moments when I had to drag my dead friends back to the temple and scrape together enough gold to get them resurrected.

So what happened between then and now? Apparently developers decided that one of the most successful rpgs of all time wasn't accessible enough and decided to dumb it down, even though I never heard a single person ever ask for such changes to be made. Like the children asking to open their presents on Christmas eve, they thought they wanted it all, and the developers obliged because these kids were paying for the pleasure. But then Christmas came, and the kids realised the magic had died.

Lead Developer, JE Saywer responds:

I also dislike the Parry/Discipline/Knockdown trifecta and I wish we had dealt with changing it over to the proper rules a long time ago.

The companion death rules and advancement rate are for our Official Campaign only. The former is scripted and the latter is simply how we chose to give out XP. Raise Dead/Res. are not irrelevant in the OC; I use them regularly to bring back allies in combat. A wipe is still a wipe.

I completely disagree on knowledge skills. I think the "find out what skills are worthless by playing the game!" approach contributes nothing to anyone's experience. Even in pen and paper sessions, DMs often have to stretch to allow players to make use of their various knowledge skills.

The ability to equip items with which the character is non-proficient is something I talked to the programmers about. The effects would have to be coded or scripted and we had time for neither, unfortunately. I also agree that it should be allowed with a warning.

I also completely disagree about the max hit points option. In D&D, it's the only randomized element of advancement and I can see no reason why that is a good thing. The player has no control over the die roll and the effects of the roll last for the character's entire life. Die rolls in the heat of combat or in other "conflict" situations are interesting because their effects are transitory and contribute to an interesting narrative. "My barbarian got 2, 2, and 4 hit points for the past three levels," is not part of any interesting story and makes the character dramatically -- and permanently -- less powerful than luckier characters.

EDIT: Some may say, "Well, that's how it goes!" with regard to hit points. Unless you want to advocate randomizing whether or not you get a feat, how many skill points you get per level, and whether or not your character actually gets the spell slot her or she should when advancing, this argument doesn't work. D&D, especially in a computer environment, is a game where randomization takes place during actions. Character building and the consequences of it are driven by player choice, not dumb luck.

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