>>3957668
Many recommend skipping OC and go straight into MotB. But MotB is actually so good it makes playing OC not so much of a waste. You will have better understanding of the story and your Player character if you play OC first. Just skip side quests or play on easy I guess, because OC is still a drag. Then import your character into MOTB and raise the difficulty

Didn't the Enhanced version make everything better?

>>3958186
The only benefit of the enhanced edition is being available on consoles and Steam Deck. On PC you might as well just use GOG version, it runs perfectly fine even without the mods.

>>3957668
I fucking love NWN, they need to make a sequel or someone needs to make a successor. I need my game of games with that easy to use suite of creation tools, yesterday.

>>3958186
Controller support is a game changer, I love it for that reason alone.

>>3958188
Kinda.
Notably, the toolset does not work on modern machines (because of a .NETFramework legacy issue).

>>3958366
Playing a classic western cRPG ... with a fucking controller?! How, though? Is that possible? How do you select things or interact with objects in the world? How do you do inventory management??

>>3958454
Don't forget you can pause and issue actions. You can target things from far away, and you can do a basic interact, or you can bring up a menu of more actions. There's hotkeys for stuff you might want to do instantly. You can even click the stick in to switch to overhead view that you would get with mouse and keyboard. The ui has been overhauled for controller, it's much better, and it *only* works if you plug in a controller. Mouse and keyboard have the worse original ui.

>>3958146

What is the best class to play in the OC to go through it as fast as possible? One that is also good at using the Super Special Silver Sword (SSSS)?

I know that in MotB, you are low on rogue skills, because you only get a Wizard, Spirit Shaman, Cleric and either a useless fat bear or a schizo that can switch to rogue, but the latter is for "evil" playthroughs only. So there's an argument for "high BAB progression" and "access to rogue" skills. But on the other hand, I also remember that the first game had super overpowered casters because you could refresh all your spell slots / have an entire long rest just by sitting down on the ground for 5 seconds.

>>3958614
Anything will do unless you pick some weird build that comes online at level 16+. You can go pure fighter or paladin if you want, you will still get 4 neat spell-like abilities that refresh on rest. If you want something fancy, you can try warlock but install warlock buddy if you want to use melee. Or some bard/HighBAB/RDD.

>>3958614
I only ever finished the game as Paladin 4/Sorcerer X/EK 10 or something. Felt super weak in early game until I started gaining Sorcerer levels and level 3 spells.

>>3958636
>I only ever finished the game as Paladin 4/Sorcerer X
You didn’t beat the game.

>>3958678
Weird thing to schizo screech at, but not only did I finish the game (in 2008, before I had enough HDD storage to keep my screenshots), I even remembered the exact build I used from NWN2 wiki, which remains unchanged:
https://nwn2.fandom.com/wiki/Eldritch_Paladin_of_Candlekeep_Pal(4),Sor(6),EK(10),ASC(10)

>>3958146
I reckon the terrible camera and control is a bigger hurdle to overcome towards MotB than the original campaign.

>>3957668
Storms of Zehir is better.

>>3960768
I wouldn't go that far. SoZ is fucking awesome. But it's a very different type of game / experience compared to MotB. They just aren't really comparable. It's like comparing Skyrim to Doom. They're both first-person shooters, really, but that'd be a pretty disingenuous comparison by ignoring all the context and details which distinguish them as different genres. Don't be over-reductionist and don't be stupid and don't be a fucking asshole. SoZ is great and it doesn't have to be better than MotB to be great.

>>3960773
SoZ is a better experience. MotB is storyfag slop. SoZ is gameplay enjoyer kino.

>>3960768
It is not. The story is boring and buffs being wiped every time you leave the skirmish zone is super annoying.

>>3960809
>The story
MotB is lacking in that regard too. It just has the flavor text that makes story fags pretend it's good.
>buffs being wiped every time
You don't need to prebuff for most areas or fights

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>>3960775

>>3960809
The buffs have normal durations. It's just that overland travel takes a lot of time because... it's miles, not feet. It's working correctly and far more accurate to the tabletop. The OC has serious balance issues with free infinite resting anywhere you want and pausing buff duration timers for no reason. What is definitely annoying about the OC is that cutscenes usually wipe your Wild Shape and they trigger pretty often.

I cannot believe my iroll20s character (with a 21 AC at level 1) died to Mossfields in the tutorial fight at the fair.

>>3957668
MOTB is certainly one of the best expansions for anything I've ever played. It's such a melancholic game - characters, themes, the soundtrack, the washed-out colours, the focus on something black that's eating away at you from the inside until you're nothing but a husk which I always thought was a good metaphor for depression.

It's a pretty upsetting game, all things considered.

>>3958188
>On PC you might as well just use GOG version, it runs perfectly fine even without the mods.

It doesn't. Original runs like shit on modern PCs.

>>3958454
Using a controller is the truest redpill of gaming.

Most naturally seductive evil playthrough RPG ever. You keep progressing up the chain of evil for convincing reasons until you're ending every dialog by eating the person you talked to.

>>3962715
It's more than just depression, even. The primary theme of the story is that such depression is entirely justified, rational and valid... and inescapable or inevitable. There's also a suggestion that confronting the gods for their sins is a primary reason to hope for an afterlife instead of annihilation. There's also the suggestion that being able to defy the laws of the universe to defeat death won't guarantee that you will succeed no matter how much you want to, nor that you should even want to. It's sort of up to the player to decide about that. It's definitely fucking bleak, and Kelemvor is a self-righteous fucking ASSHOLE. At least Myrkul was self-aware even while openly being a hypocrite. The irony that the previous god of death is dying and doesn't want to was such a genius moment of writing...

>>3962978
>It's definitely fucking bleak, and Kelemvor is a self-righteous fucking ASSHOLE.
When he ascended, he made the City of Judgment a rather nice place and stopped putting people into the Wall. It's the other gods that didn't like that and forced him to act like a neutral arbiter, and he is still kinder than Myrkul ever was, and probably kinder than Jergal too. Even in MoTB he is very passive because he understands your plight and wants you to deal with the curse once and for all.
The problem with DnD cosmology is that there is no happy ending, no heaven after you die even if you are good. Some good god may claim your soul when you are a petitioner and then allow you to join them on their plane, but after some time, your soul will dissolve and become part of that plane of existence. The wall is just that concept taken to the extreme.
There are only a few ways to become immortal, all of them are difficult and almost all of them are different kinds of bad. For a setting with magic and gods interacting with mortals, it is more bleak than it looks at first glance.

>>3962745
>Most naturally seductive evil playthrough RPG ever.
Mask of the Betrayer? Who seduced you exactly? If you're a goody two shoes you don't have to interact with the stupid cocaine addiction mechanic.

>>3960832
>Muhhh infinite resting reeeeeee.

The whole balance of the oc is build around that mechanic. You slice trough hundreds of 3HD orcs, undead anmd githyanki in endless dungeons and caves. With any low bab spellcaster you end up sitting in the corner doing nothing for hours into the game in such an environment, then in midgame you can handle around three of the thirty encounters in the current dungeon and in the lategame saves and hp of even single enemies become so high,that you have to burn two of your maybe 15 non buff spell slots to bring down a single one of them if they do not completely ignore your spells alltogether (note that there is again like fifty of those enemies per "day"). For high save encounters you have to essentially precast three to four debuffs before you can even start to maybe harm them. NWN 2 is not the tabletop DnD. Besides, unlimited resting exists in MotB just as well with the difference that spellcasters are fucked completely because they stop progessing right at the beginning of the expansion that goes on for about ten levels with every mundane gnoll having 250 hp and the most damaging option they have for like five or six slots is about 120-150 hp points per cast and in SoZ spells reset every fucking encounter on the overland map and dungeons are short.
In actual DnD your spellcaster is usually doing a thousand other useful things besides killing shit so being only able to throw three fireballs per day for 90HP in total is not a problem but the official NWN2 modules have none of that. 80% of the injteraction is combat, 20% is mostly fluffy skillchecks. The only reason people are able to play the OC and MotB without resting constantly if modded is because the OC can be beaten with the companions only easily so your PC can technically just tag along until you get le epic unlimited use special character story abilities and for MotB you get shit like 10+ hp reggen per turn so no need to rest.

>>3957668
That's an expansion, not a DLC, zoomer.

>>3957668
WC3: Frozen Throne. (WC3 is heroes based SRPG)
D2: Lord of Destruction.

otherwise most expansion paks in the past were pretty meh. or just like extra quests and maybe an overpowered weapon.

>>3962721
buy ads, beamdog liars. Win10 fanpatches already existed.

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>>3957668
I love Neverwinter Nights 2 so fucking much.
SoZ is great, it's a pretty good departure from the OC and MotB is both an incredible sequel and several steps above everything else.
Played a lot of PWs too.

>>3958186
The are literally og + mods, so don't bother.

I bought it thanks to you guys but I have no idea how to build a character, much less how D&D works kek. What do??

>>3971713
Don't overthink it.
Choose what looks cool. Look at what the game suggests or fills out automatically, and play a couple characters for a couple of hours.
If you do want to peruse some character builds
>https://nwn2db.com/
but don't sweat it.

>>3971713
Make a pure Druid and get the Dinosaur Companion feat. It can kill everything on its own.

>>3967001
Does the new enhanced edition have a working toolset? Because the original toolset no longer works on modern machines.

>>3971713
First ask yourself what kind of character you enjoy playing. Do you want a melee warrior? Pick up Power Attack and Knockdown. If you're playing a Fighter and you have a lot of feats to spare, then start working towards Dodge -> Mobility -> Spring Attack -> Whirlwind Attack.
Do you want a spellcaster? What kind? Do you just want to blast stuff constantly? Pick up a Warlock and get a Cone area shape for your blast. Do you wanna mostly buff and heal and sometimes once in a while nuke? Cleric. Do you wanna control a powerful pet and summon stuff and sometimes buff and heal? Druid. Do you want to control everything so that nothing happens without your permission but you don't want to heal and you don't really care much about buffs? Sorcerer or Wizard. Do you want to be huge dps and solve problems like locks and traps? Rogue, pick up Two Weapon Fighting. Do you want to shoot stuff? Ranger or Fighter are the best archers, though you should be warned there's limited itemization for archery compared to other kinds of combatants. The main benefit is that you can stand around just full attacking, and the enemy AI is not likely to ever move past your front line to come attack you.

This is enough to get you started. Suffice to say that the universe of character optimization ("charop") in D&D 3.PF is literally a decades long flamewar between uberdorks and it's a deep ocean.

>>3971721
Spirit Shaman with the spirit animal companion feat is stronger, but doesn't come online until a little later.

>>3971733
They updated it to 64 bits last month I think.

>>3971783
Just to add on to your comment, some advice for new players is that intelligence is not a dump stat. Wisdom and Charisma can be, for Fighters, specifically, but don't dump Intelligence. And even for Fighters, Use Magic Device is not a bad skill to have and it's based on Charisma... Is it worth pumping Charisma high? Nooo.... but there's only so much that Skill Focus can do.
In NWN2, there's good equipment that you can wear if your UMD is high enough. So it's not just wands and scrolls unlocked with it.
In general, four or five stats starting at 15 is better than burning points to pump one stat up to start 18 or 20. Why? Because you'll get equipment that improves your ability scores, and you can add points as you level up. If you end up at level 20 with five stats of 22, that's a much much much better character than a guy with Strength 30 and ... nothing else. In the early game, +1 accuracy and damage is not a big deal. In the late game, the difference grows to something more like... +3 accuracy and damage, but you'll automatically be hitting on a 2 or higher so the accuracy does nothing for you.
Enemies just do not scale in such a way that you have to min/max your damage like that. So what you're actually giving up is flexibility and options. And this is more important for your main character, since you're the one who's making dialogue checks in the OC and MotB (in SoZ, dialogues are written to be able to select your party members to perform checks). Lots of feats are unlocked from Combat Expertise, so having at least 13 Dex and 13 Int can make you much more flexible as a warrior in ways that a tiny bonus accuracy / damage just cannot match.

>>3971796
>cont'd
This advice does not apply to sorcerers or wizards, though. They will never be competent warriors. Just max their Cha (sorc) or Int (wiz) and nothing else really does anything for them.
In the OC, the only skills that matter are being able to deal with locks and traps, and Diplomacy. There are other checks I guess, but they just don't matter. The OC is kind of a hallway. MotB there's lots of skill checks that only a specialist can succeed on because it's an epic level campaign. In SoZ there's a large variety of skills checked for all kinds of things. You will want a scout/ranger with good spot, stealth, survival and knowledge (nature) for sure.
In the OC, the end game dungeon is all undead so don't rely on a build that has to have sneak attacks or mind-affecting spells, but most of the game is living humanoids before that point. In MotB everything is incorporeal, so, same thing. In SoZ, there's a much more diverse variety of enemies and the end dungeon is all living monsters... and they hit like trucks.

>>3971823
That's not what "meme" means.
But anyway, sacred fist is definitely functional mid and late game... but Khelgar is not gonna make a particularly good one unless you cheat to redo his stats with the console. He's still better as a sacred fist than as a pure monk. Druid sacred fist is theoretically the strongest due to Wild Shape, though.
There are epic feats that let you do some crits / sneak attacks to targets that are normally crit/sneak immune but that's epic levels. This is one of those areas where Pathfinder 1e dramatically improved the balance, but NWN2 is a twenty year old game so you just kind of have to deal with the 3.5 jank.

Rangers in NWN2 are complete ass as archers. The whole thing of rangers is getting special feats you would need to spend a lot of dex on and putting that into str/con and putting free feats into favored enemies.
This requires a lot of ranger levels which you cant have since ranged weapons miss the one gear check in the whole game (overcoming DT with +x bonuses to a point where virtually all enemies have one) and instead rely on absurdely expensive and not craftable magic ammunition so you are bound to be an arcane archer 9 in any thinkable ranged scenario for the inherit +5 magic arrow bonus. So to be able to use your build you end up with at least 15 levels (1wiz/6ra/9aa) before you can even start building the ranger part. The OC ends at around 18-20, MotB at 30. You will have enough ranger levels to profit from it at the end of motb while also dropping epic weapon focus and specialization + feats from fighter levels. Its a build that seems rather intuitiv but ends up shit for singleplayer because its one of those where return of investments starts in the last 10 of 60 hours of mediocre slog.

>>3972382
Yeah. Rangers are good at TWF with STR basically.
At least they get Favored Enemy and a couple of spells here and there that can be a little useful, so they are more flexible than fighters.
Granted, the game is easy enough that a ranger 20 with a bow and some buffs from the party can work just fine, but it is inferior to other similar options.
Also, the +x from the bow transfers to the arrows, right?

>>3971713
When in doubt, always play a monk.

>>3972394
>Granted, the game is easy enough that a ranger 20 with a bow and some buffs from the party can work just fine
You could essentially just stay lvl 1 and it would work. The oc at least is designed so you are carried no matter what. Motb is a bit different though.

>Also, the +x from the bow transfers to the arrows, right?
No and thats the point. The +x from ranged weapons is essentially attack bonus only other than melee weapons which combine this damage and magical DT breaking properties come from +x munition. Arcane Archer automatically turns normal ammo into +x ammo but Rangers do not. The nature of bows is many attacks with low damage. So an 10HD enemy with a basic magical creature DT of say 10 will fuck a 20HD ranger without expensive magical ammo because normal arrows will simply have to break trough those 10DT to do any harm. The best longbow in the OC is mighty +6 D8. So potential 1-8 + 6 damage which would be fucking 4 DMG on a perfect non critical. This said if the ranger already runs 22 Str.
This paired with almost no ranger skill checks in the oc or motb makes bow rangers one of the most useless picks to take.

>>3972404
Are you sure? I have it in my mind that iuf you have a +4 bow and you are say, shooting a +2 arrow, you get the highest of the two enhancement bonuses, so +4 to damage and to hit in that case. So a composite or mighty bow with an enhancement bonus will add the damage of both properties to the attack. At least that's how I remember, but then again, I only ever played one bow character a long time ago.
Guess I'll have to go and test that out.

>>3972423
I am. Precisely the +x bonus on magical ranged weapons in Nwn2 OC and MotB is an attack bonus NOT and enhancement bonus. Enhancement is damage + attack + overcoming DR (its not DT as I just realized). Attack Bonus is well... +attack. The enhancement is on the ammo oinly. The big problem is also not the added damage missing. Its virtually being unable to hit stronger magical enemies because a DR15/- is easily overcome by a +1 weapon but essentially completely immune to attacks from anything without enhancement.

>>3972436
>I am. Precisely the +x bonus on magical ranged weapons in Nwn2 OC and MotB is an attack bonus NOT and enhancement bonus.
That's wild.
Sounds like the kind of thing some mod out there might fix. I remember kaedrin's pack having a bunch of these little fixes back in the day.
Also,

>a DR15/- is easily overcome by a +1 weapon but essentially completely immune to attacks from anything without enhancement.
That would be 15/magic no? 15/- (barbarian DR, adamantine armor, etc) means that nothing should bypass it.
I also remember something about DR N/Epic that would be bypassed by weapons with a total +6 item enhancement level (not the same as the enhancement bonus).
I am probably getting my ttrpg and video game information mixed up.
I really ought to test that stuff later.
I'm assuming it's the same in the OG/diamond and enhanced editions correct?

>>3963127
>and probably kinder than Jergal too

Nope. Jergal was extremely fair-minded and lenient, and was so powerful as a deity nobody really could talk back to him.

>>3963127
>but after some time, your soul will dissolve and become part of that plane of existence.

That only happens in Limbo.

>>3972475
>That only happens in Limbo.
That's a rather low bar to clear, no?

>>3972479
Limbo is literally for insane people.

>>3963127
Lichdom doesn't seem so bad. Being a pet Mary Sue of one of the setting's authors doesn't seem so bad.

>>3972442
>That's wild.
Sounds like the kind of thing some mod out there might fix. I remember kaedrin's pack having a bunch of these little fixes back in the day.
While I wrote that I realozed that I have discarded playing an archer because I was too retarded to look for a simple mod for this absolutely miniscule but dumb problem.


>That would be 15/magic no? 15/- (barbarian DR, adamantine armor, etc) means that nothing should bypass it.
Yes and yes. The bad thing about it is essentially that a lot of stuff has a basic +1 DR because it pretty quickly wont matter for essentially everyone else but non arcane archers who get fucked by it so it kinda also fucks the whole balancing. And yes OG etc does the same thing. I have no idea why. Its just like the OG and the 30% exp penalty on charmed characters, summons and familiars. I absolutely no idea what they tried to achieve here.

>>3972442
>I remember kaedrin's pack having a bunch of these little fixes back in the day.
Yes, it implements correct arrow mechanics and fixes the Arcane Archer bug too. Adds spells that can sneak attack too if you play Arcane Trickster.

>>3972502
>>3972529
Kaedrin's is mandatory to play NWN2.
It's a shame about all his bullshit drama that caused him to shut down development on the mod and aggressively attempt to remove all copies of it from the internet. Fuck that fat little rat weasel.

>>3972529
Sick.

>>3972530
Didn't he release a new version of his pack for the EE with some of his previously unreleased stuff?

>>3972530
>Kaedrin's is mandatory to play NWN2.
Eh, not really. It adds way too much bullshit like "Chosen of Sune" that lets you stack absurd amounts of Charisma and completely breaks "Mysteries of Westgate". It's also unstable and full of useless bloat.

>>3972535
I don't know. I haven't gotten the EE because I don't know if they updated the toolset to work on modern machines and if they didn't then there's no reason for me to switch to it. Do you have a link?
>>3972536
It dramatically expanded content and Westgate is a fan module that mostly sucked and fewer people played so it's not important whether it's broken or not. Kaedrin's pack is actually not unstable or bloated, it fixed lots of bugs in the base game's files. Reminder that only two spells in the entire game were not bugged because an inexperienced intern was tasked with scripting them.

>>3972834
>Do you have a link?
>https://steamcommunity.com/games/2738630/announcements/detail/505100449559348676