Neverwinter Nights 2: Designer Diary #4

Here's a few of Josh Sawyer's ideas:

4. Death's Herald +5, Hellbane +3, and Fiendbreaker +4 - I bet these sound like the names of magic items I found in the game. You'd be wrong, my friend! These are magic items I crafted in the game from adamantine ingots and fire beetle glands and a bunch of garnets. Crafting in our game takes a long time, but when you can make a flaming frost cold iron greatsword +3, it's pretty much worth it. Given Dungeon & Dragons 3.5's damage-reduction rules, it's nice to be able to have a full toolset, so to speak. "Sorry, Ms. Werewolf, you're taking the express train to shocking frost alchemical silver greatsword +4 town!" And colors/italics/boldface? Yeah, you can type those in the name field when you enchant items. I tried to make a rainbow staff to celebrate the diversity of my party, but the field wasn't long enough.

6. Ribsmasher - To be honest, Ribsmasher is kind of a "wacky" character, but he's still quite the lovable scamp. Locked up in a goblin fortress, the player can set this crazy monk free! Or kill him. But setting him free has much more hilarious results, as Ribsmasher will smash the ribs of any hostile creature he finds. When he runs out of ribs to smash, he'll smash doors, chests, alchemist's workbenches, etc.

9. Killing a Bunch of Druids - Even though I actually like the idea of druids, they always wind up sassin' off to me when I play RPGs. They're pretty pushy people. "Don't burn down the forest!" this and "You are disrupting the Mere of Dead Men!" that. Well, let me tell you: If you play your cards right, you can waste a whole bunch of these guys in our official campaign. That'll show 'em. However, you will have to watch out for flame strikes and ice storms and myriad other nature spells/druids in animal form.

10. Dragon Encounters - There was a time when someone in quality assurance said, "Hey, these dragon fights aren't hard enough." That is no longer spoken. Hopefully, you will enjoy fighting and trying to defeat these colossal foes. The only thing I enjoyed more than defeating them was hauling loot out of the big one's lair down the side of a huge mountain infested with fire giants.

Read the rest of the list at Gamespot.