Is the stacking of Enhancement Bonuses of ability scores WAI?

Ian579

My wizard has a helmet which provides Enhancement Bonus: Intelligence +2. He also has a ring which provides Enhancement Bonus: Intelligence +2, too.

To my surprise, the two Enhancement Bonuses stack and provide +4 Intelligence.

That seems to be too good. Is that working as intended?

Proleric

Working as intended:
https://nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Stack

It's fairly rational if you look at the gold piece value of the items, which reflect what those items would cost to craft.

ShadowM

In 3.5 they do not stack, I wish they add it as a option in the ruleset.2da for them not to stack.

Ian579

ShadowM wrote: »

In 3.5 they do not stack, I wish they add it as a option in the ruleset.2da for them not to stack.

Isn't the game based on 3e?

FreshLemonBun

In 3.0 they do not stack either.

That said the issue is much more complicated than that. Bonuses of a different type do stack however, and stacking rules don't only affect enhancements to ability scores, but should also affect other things. Neither NWN nor NWN2 had a system that accurately handled this. One way is to tag everything with various information but it's not perfect either.

Ian579

FreshLemonBun wrote: »

In 3.0 they do not stack either.

That said the issue is much more complicated than that. Bonuses of a different type do stack however, and stacking rules don't only affect enhancements to ability scores, but should also affect other things. Neither NWN nor NWN2 had a system that accurately handled this. One way is to tag everything with various information but it's not perfect either.

Thanks. I'm not sure if the difficulty of the game was designed in accordance with stacking the Enhancement Bonuses (ability scores). Should I avoid using one of the two equipments to make my gameplay conform more to the core rules? And how do most players on this forum view and handle the matter?

Zaxares

They do stack and working as intended, yes. Strictly speaking it's actually against PnP rules, but IIRC there's still a maximum cap of +12 to any stat across all your equipment anyway, so it kinda works out once you get to epic levels anyway.

FreshLemonBun

There are several peculiarities to how they implemented the rules and a lot of it is in favor of the player. You could make an argument that this makes the lack of party possible without only focusing in very weak challenges.

Some other issues where D&D is different are that items can't grant dodge AC, mage armor and shield spells don't stack with physical items, various popular and powerful spells are unique to NWN, divine shield/might improve an actual shield or actual weapon damage, summon monster summons the previous weaker summon monster.

You can't really avoid it all so if you don't specifically mod it out then it's easier to just accept it.

n00bdragon

It's a bit pedantic but it's useful to understand that NWN isn't actually using 3.0 rules, or even rules based on 3.0. It was developed concurrently with 3.0 D&D and and diverged independently during that process and some of the things contained within it (like Parry and Discipline) are likely remnants of paper and pencil 3.0 D&D that was cut from that game but not from NWN.

FreshLemonBun

We'll never know for sure which parts were just their own design choices and which parts could be related to older versions of the table top rules. However I would stress that none of what had been published could have been fully implemented, there is simply too much and the D&D rules of that era are exceptionally complex and also include various caveats and exceptions. It's not impossible but it could take a single person many years to implement them all.

Even NWN2 has certain design peculiarities despite development starting well after 3.5 had been published, generally to boost certain classes with free feats and new abilities, or to change base attack advancement. It's interesting to reason about what might have been going through their mind and what they were trying to achieve. Especially in relation to how Obsidian later approached the design of the Pillars series.