3.5 Rules, will this conversion be possible ? And will Beamdog consider doing it in-house ?

Twotricks

Ever since i started testing NWN:EE, one thing is really bothering me : the problem of 3.0 ruleset.

3.0 was so broken that only year or so after WoTC republished whole D&D line with updated 3.5 ruleset. Unfortunately , unlike NWN2, NWN1 was made with 3.0 rules...and simplified at that.

My question is:

Would it be possible to adjust the rules to 3.5 version ? But not like half working wonky PRC that uses workarounds to simulate rule changes. But as real hard coded number changes.

For example in 3.0 to efectivelly dual wield weapons you need two feats: Ambidexterity and Two weapon fighting. While in 3.5 its just one feat.

Can we have such change coded so it appears in feat selection.

New classes, prestigue classess, races such Planetouched ?

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Now I know that this change would break official campaign. And many allready existing content.
So it might be developed as option, switch - 3.0 rules or 3.5 rules.

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Would NWN:EE bare the code so much that this would be possible as MOD ?

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Ultimately , would Beamdog consider doing this themselves ?
And if yes. Would WoTC allow it ?

voidofopinion

You can vote for all of these things and more on Beamdogs Trello!

https://trello.com/b/Lb79bbgy/neverwinter-nights-input

However, if you take a look at Beamdog's Roadmap you will see that "Widespread rules changes" are currently in the icebox, meaning that probing of the feature has stopped due to it being out of scope or currently too difficult/costly to implement with current staff.

Link to the Roadmap:
https://trello.com/b/K0C0i8wF/neverwinter-nights-enhanced-edition

Link to the 3.5 Ruleset card:
https://trello.com/c/j7utTOT4/22-allow-wide-ranging-ruleset-changes

MadHatter

Very moddable and will be more so as things get unhard codes. Look for the HRBase or the 3.5 conversion mod on the Vault for examples.

Staran

Everything is possible, code wise.
They could turn this into Kings Quest, if there was demand enough.

Is it wanted? Is it legally possible? Is it worth it?

FreshLemonBun

I would like to clarify some misconceptions. There was one month shy of three years of D&D 3.0 before 3.5 was published. Many of the so called "splatbooks" which are criticized with several poorly edited features were published towards the middle and end of the edition in 3.5 rather than in 3.0. Many of the changes from 3.0 to 3.5 were to change the monsters, often making them more powerful, and to cut out a lot of the non essential content from the core of the system, such as skills like innuendo, read lips and scry. Other changes were more to the effect of clarifying ambiguously written rules or summarizing rules that got lost in the text spaghetti. For example sometimes ppl cite that 3.5 has bonus stacking rules which has something to do with balance or some nonsense, in fact the 3.0 DMG also has a page on stacking rules. The difference is that in 3.5 it was at page 21 neatly summarized at the front of the book as part of the basic rules while in 3.0 it was on page 177 as part of the magic adjudication rules.

Likewise you mention two weapon fighting as a single feat instead of also requiring ambidexterity. This has nothing at all to do with balance but in fact because they decided to simplify the game, that is they had rules for which hand was your dominant hand, and they removed all those considerations. In 3.5 it does not matter if you are left handed or right handed, that was the change, purely for the sake of simplicity. In NWN you don't have a dominant hand either, nor dominant hand based rules, just a vestigial ambidexterity feat.

Many other features like prestige classes and planetouched races were also part of 3.0 too.

For characters the big changes in 3.5 were things like greater weapon focus and greater specialization which required higher investment into the fighter base class. As well as things like the barbarian class enhancements such as indomitable will, increased dr and rage bonuses. Some changes like with bard were only very minor but the NWN implementation differs from the 3.0 source material regardless.

That is to say that if NWN was a very faithful implementation of the 3.0 rules then the change to 3.5 would be quite minor, and an NWN-style approximation of the 3.5 rules would similarly leave out a lot of things. Take the two weapon fighting issue as an example of feat taxation and then consider the situation with the knockdown feats, power attack feats, and disarm feats. In those cases both NWN and NWN2 have 2 feats where there should actually only be 1 in both 3.0 and 3.5 rules.


So in a sense it's far less about the differences between table top editions and far more about the quirks and differences of a video game. If they have to allocate resources to add official alternative pnp rules there's not much point in it (not much difference from now) unless it's a faithful implementation.

fkirenicus

FreshLemonBun said:

(a very good post)

That was interesting, @FreshLemonBun! I have the 3.0 rule books myself, got them for free from someone who went on with 3.5, but never realized the differences were so small, actually.
As you say, I've noticed the (sometimes mind-blowing) difference between monsters in 3.0 and 3.5 respectively first and foremost, but that the rules all over were not THAT much changed is a fresh perspective.
I do hope for more social skills implemented whether Beamdog goes for 3.0 or 3.5, though. Skills like Sense Motive can add quite a lot for builders for work with.

Twotricks

FreshLemonBun said:

Very good post.

I myself started with 3.0 ( didnt realise it was 3 years ! ) and loved it. Never even bothered buying 3.5 books. Since everyone else had them ...

However. I just have two things to say

- NWN2 uses 3.5 rules and just by gameplay comparison ( i was playing both games extensively in past month ) 3.5 rules are superior in almost every way, and provide far more consistent gameplay.

- 3.5 rules are official , so people that have the books and play the pnp game will feel continuinity, and this is very important ( for me D&D buff at least ) as NWN1 is pnp simulator.

1varangian

If there would ever be a ruleset conversion, they should update to the latest 5e rules instead of spending time on another obsolete ruleset.

Twotricks

1varangian said:

If there would ever be a ruleset conversion, they should update to the latest 5e rules instead of spending time on another obsolete ruleset.

I must admit. You have the point there

FreshLemonBun

The thing you have to understand about NWN2 as it relates to D&D is that it inherited many of the "quirks" of NWN in improper conversions and things like the feat taxes. It then went way off course adding a lot of extra home brew rules to the system even tho the 3.5 sources specifically says not to do what NWN2 devs did in some cases. For example by increases the base attack bonus into epic levels NWN2 provided increased attack bonus and 2 extra attacks per round, which could be further exploited by poorly done dual wielding implementation. So NWN2 allows an insane amount of attacks which is 18 in total, some are even granted by little understood bugs, and results in 3 attacks (simulated) per second. D&D does not allow this under any circumstances because in short, that would be pretty silly. It also increases problems with how flurries are still handled by the NWN2 engine and results in commonly used damage exploits.

Another difference is that unlike D&D in NWN2 they decided to increase the spell DC every 3 levels which is not the intention at all. This then results in the exploit to increase your spell DC very high by erroneously raising your effective caster to near 40.

Epic feat progression is given every 2 levels in stead of 3 in NWN2.

Bard has several "songs" which are actually feats a bard should be able to take, in other words they stuck a bunch of free feats on. They also made up some epic bard feats which tend to greatly affect some end game situations. Inspire songs aren't actually treated as songs but as infinite toggle abilities. There are also certain limitations such as the bard can't inspire themselves and for things like skills it only affects a specific skill rather than all skills. The NWN2 implementation kind of quadruple dips compared to the pnp version. Legionnaire march is another home brewed song they stuck on, essentially giving you a party wide divine power, for some unknown reason.

Ranger in NWN2 grants an additional combat style feat regardless of per-requisites, in 3.5 you must take this feat in the normal fashion, combat styles stop at the greater style step.

NWN2 is almost as different to D&D 3.5 as Pathfinder is, it kept the existing quirks of NWN and went in a completely different direction.

I think overall it just goes to demonstrate how we get the developer's version of the game system more than we get x edition version of the game.

Assuming Beamdog did a version of 3.5 then it will probably be drastically different to Obsidian's version of it.

FreshLemonBun

@fkirenicus I agree about expanding skills, they're sometimes misunderstood in ppl thinking you have to max out all your skills but they're supposed to create differentiation between various skillsets. Sense movtive is also very useful in other ways beyond social situations, I believe it also provides mechanical counters to various bluff based special actions.