Neverwinter Nights Forum News
Posted Monday, September 15, 2003 - 20:55 CET by Veldrin

Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Skills: A few things:

Skills never get removed, only added, so even if we would do the Intimidate/Bluff thing, Persuade would stay. We are exploring other skills as well. Any time we add skills to the game, you have a greater freedom in customizing your character, but you are also forced to specialize a bit more, because there are more skills you can distribute your points in, thats just how it works

Spellcasters In HotU: There are options for spellcasters to protect themselves at epic levels. Spells do not change however, unless their description says they scale). Of course there are monsters that are more of a problem to spellcaster (i.e. Golems) and monsters that are more a problem to Fighers (i.e. Bebilith).

FAQ Update: On that matter:

- System requirements are usually discussed late in the development cycle, for obvious reasons. HotU requirements are not finalized yet, but it won't be a GF4.

- It was surely ok to post it here, after all its one purpose of this board to ask us those questions

- If someone claims that a game requires a GF4, I, as an avid gamer, would not believe it. You usually can not affort to loose more than approx 60%-70% of all gamers out there running a card lower than GF4 by making a game require it, especially in the case of NWN which had fairly low requirements.

David Gaider, Designer

Drow Whip: The drow tentacle rod is drow-specific, not Greyhawk-specific. And as I recall, it's technically a form of whip.

Quote: Quote: My hope: An automated message will appear for the player telling them that an item property has been removed (or added). If left to the module designer, they might just be lazy (or downright mean) and not give any such warning. Thus, I hope the game engine will give you such a warning itself.

The engine will not do that. Any such item scanning is done entirely by script. Ideally an open server would post its item policies before-hand, but that's a matter of etiquette.

Quote: Is the gnome hammer included?

No, the gnome hook hammer is not included. Begin kvetching.

Quote: If you're talking about familiars,then i would certainly like to see the frog.Not that i like frogs,but it gives +2 to Constitution

Exactly the reason not to include the frog. Whenever one of my players (which always seems to be a gnome wizard with maxed-out Con, somehow) takes that stupid frog familiar (sheepishly asking me if it's okay) I always reach across the table and smack them in the head. On the good news front, I believe there is at least one new familiar being added in HotU. I'm not in on that process, however, so you'll have to wait for official news on it.

Quote: Does this mean that you can remove it permanent so if the character is exported the properties removed from the items will be missing even in a new server?

Yes.

Quote: Does it also mean you will be able to cycle through an items properties and catching the ones you want to remove.

Yes.

Quote: Also, I hope you can remove properties added directly to the item (not through dynamic properties).

Not sure what you mean by this. If you mean you hope properties that were added via the toolset can be removed as well as ones added via scripting, then yes.

Quote: Actually I think this dynamic item property might give the local servers a up-swing. You will actually be able to play on a local server without fear of uber items.

This is part of the idea. The DM's and servers need the scripting hooks into item properties so they can actively monitor the true abilities of any items coming into their game... and now they will get them. I imagine there will be a fair number of "item scanning" scripts available not long after release.

Quote: The only fear of this I have is that people will play on a server that restricts some item abilities, so it removes them from the player's item(s). The player doesn't realze this, and saves his/her character when they're done. Next time they play they might be in for a rude awakening...

There is nothing to stop the player from making the item in the toolset again and giving it to their character, is there? It would amount to a minor annoyance at best.