Hi, I’ve had this game for years, but only just got around to sitting down and seriously playing it. I’ve also never played any form of D&D or games adapted from it (such as Baldur’s Gate or Icewind Dale, etc) before. On the other hand, I’ve played a lot of JRPGs, and a few MMORPGs, so I do have some faculty for this kind of number-crunching and mechanics.
Right now I only really have a handful in mind, as for my first time I figured I’d just take a Human Fighter to keep it simple. Oh, and since it seems important, I should clarify that I’m playing the original campaign solo, but I’ve got Shadows of Undrentide installed (the new skills and feats are showing up, but I’m not sure if the prestige classes or other things will).
[ol]
[li]How hard is it to make level 20? Is it reasonable to assume that I could do it just going through casually and getting as many side quests as possible, or do you need to plan ahead?[/li][li]What good is parry? It’s a toggle, right? If it turns off auto-attack it seems awfully situational, and since armor checks affect it, it seems like you’d need to be wearing light armor or have the improved feat to parry any attacks that actually beat your AC[/li][li]Can someone clarify Great Cleave for me? AIUI Cleave makes a normal attack roll on a second target if an auto-attack kills its target. Does Great Cleave only give additional rolls if I keep killing targets, or does it just keep rolling until the chain is broken, or does it just give 1 free roll on every enemy in melee range if an attack kills its target? And can a cleave bonus attack trigger additional cleave rolls?[/li][li]The manual says “at levels 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20, the character can raise one of his or her ability scores by 1 point.” Does this mean I can just raise the stat by one point, or is it 1 spending point line in the point-buy system you use at character creation (that doesn’t let you carry points forward)? Because if it’s the latter than those additional points can only be used to raise stats that are less than 14…[/li][/ol]
Thanks for any assistance you can provide, if I think of any more I’ll post them. Feel free to add your own Q’s too.
Depends on the campaign you’re playing. You could also go into the console and up your level yourself if you wanted to cheat.
I never put much into parry FWIW, but it is a way for one character to tie up a lot of enemies while the rest of your party deals with everyone else.
Great Cleave will keep working as long as it hits an enemy. So if you’re fighting 5 enemies and you kill one, Great Cleave will trigger and you’ll automatically hit 0-4 of them.
Thanks for the quick response!
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[li]As I said, I’m just playing the original campaign at first until I get the hang of it. Searching some of the old threads here I see that most regard the SoU’s campaign as superior, but I figure it’s a good start.[/li][li]Well, that’s a use I wouldn’t really have thought of. Still, since I’m probably just going to be by myself (and a henchman), it doesn’t really sound like it’s worth bothering with.[/li][li]Good to hear, definitely going to pick it up then.[/li][li]Excellent, I couldn’t find anything on Gamefaqs that was any more clear about it than the manual is.[/li][/ol]
Great Cleave doesn’t actually work that way (at least, not in D&D3.5, not sure about the NWN exactly). Normally, Cleave will let you make a free attack to a new target if you kill your first target, but only once. Great Cleave has no such limitation to it. However, it still requires you to kill your target first. So, if you have three opponents, and you kill the first, you get a free attack on the second. If he’s still standing, you cannot make an extra free attack against the third, but if you killed the second guy, you can.
I never though Great Cleave was that great a feat. It’s only useful in situations where you are facing many weak opponents, or when you are finishing off opponents that have been softened by other party members.
Parry was (and is) much bemoaned in the NWN series. the developers of both NWN 1 and NWN 2 refused to simply get rid of the (non D&D) and rather useless (and bugged) skill.
Only now is Obsidian asking for suggestions on what to do with the skill. They still won’t just remove it though, but at least they are willing to change it. Hopefully to something that just adds AC or something like that.
Also I don’t think SoU is regarded as the better campaign in NWN 1. It’s pretty much on par with the OC, just shorter. Hordes of the Underdark is the campaign usually praised. But definitely give the original one a shot first as HotU is a high level (20+) campaign and you need to have an idea of what class/feats/skills/spells/abilities to pick in order to create a decent high level build.
And yes, you should have full access to prestige classes and feats from SoU in the original campaign, same with HotU, although in that case the content is mostly for high level characters and I don’t think you reach 20th level in the OC. 16-19th is the usual unless you cheat or do every single quest.
Parry is worthless. You can only parry as many attacks as you can dish out, so against a horde, not only won’t you damage them, they’ll still damage you. Ripostes use up one more parry (i.e. one parry to negate the hit, one to counterattack), further reducing the number of hits you can block.Bosses have high base attack, so they’re hard to parry in the first place.
Also, because of the way the game engine is coded, you can’t parry more than 3 attacks per opponent, so a boss character with 4 or 5 attacks will likely hit you with the last two. And finally, with the right combination of magical buffs, enchanted equipment and so on, you’ll hardly ever be hit by common mobs, so… it’s better to swing that axe.
Great Cleave has already been explained, and yeah it’s not that useful. Supreme Cleave (from the Frenzied Barbarian prestige class) however can turn it into a devastating feat : Supreme Cleave gives two free attacks instead of one. With a decent two-hander dishing out 30+ damage per hit, a mob thins out really, really fast
The OC is meant to be played by itself. SoU is meant to lead into HotU (starting SoU with a level one character) and there is a officially-endorsed (but not made by Bioware) mod that is meant to bridge the level gap if you play SoU and HotU with the same character. Sorry, I do not remember the name, though I have download and played it. There’s also another trilogy of mods (again, I’m blanking on the name, but they’re pretty good) meant to be played after HotU with the same character (or at least with a character well past 20.) I’d play the OC first, and then if you like it, go buy HotU and at least some of the premium mods. Wyvern Crown of Cormyr finally adds mounts, Pirates of the Sword Coast is a fun mod, and Infinite Dungeons can be fun if you like hack-and-slash dungeon games like Rogue-likes or the Moraff games. You can skip Kingmaker and Shadowguard, though Witch’s Wake is worth playing and it used to be available for free in the “non-premium” version. There’s also a ton of other good user-created mods and even a gigantic user-created content pack.
