Is the stacking of Enhancement Bonuses of ability scores WAI?
Ian579
Member Posts: 241
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?
To my surprise, the two Enhancement Bonuses stack and provide +4 Intelligence.
That seems to be too good. Is that working as intended?
0
Comments
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.
Isn't the game based on 3e?
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?
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.
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.