Any official expansion pack/premium module lets you create your custom party?
Ian579
Member Posts: 241
When it comes to party formation, the official campaign lets you start the game with a custom character, and you can hire a henchman to accompany you. Depending on your class, you may also summon a creature and/or a familiar. That's it.
I finished the official campaign today and started playing the Shadows of Undrentide expansion pack, and I found the party formation in Shadows of Undrentide still works like that of the official campaign.
I personally prefer starting with a custom party of up to 6 party members and having full control over each character's action, quick bar, leveling up, inventory, etc, just like the way Icewind Dale series and Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir work. Alternatively, the way Baldur's Gate series work is also fine to me.
So is there an official expansion pack/premium module whose party formation works like that of Icewind Dale series/Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir/Baldur's Gate series?
I finished the official campaign today and started playing the Shadows of Undrentide expansion pack, and I found the party formation in Shadows of Undrentide still works like that of the official campaign.
I personally prefer starting with a custom party of up to 6 party members and having full control over each character's action, quick bar, leveling up, inventory, etc, just like the way Icewind Dale series and Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir work. Alternatively, the way Baldur's Gate series work is also fine to me.
So is there an official expansion pack/premium module whose party formation works like that of Icewind Dale series/Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir/Baldur's Gate series?
Post edited by Ian579 on
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Thanks. That's unfortunate. Not sure if it's because of the game engine NWN uses.
At one point I seem to recall Beamdog discussing whether to modify NWN to let you control a full party but I'm not sure what came of that.
What's unique about NWN is the vast number of fan-made campaigns, many of which are excellent.
The better ones often have larger parties (up to 6 in my modules, for example). I don't have a definitive list, but the module descriptions often give you a clue.
Guide
Companion interaction is typically better than the OC, though, to be fair, the engine constraints mean that you can't micromanage the party in quite such detail as BG.
AFAIK, adventures in D&D often involve a group of heroes who go to defeat evils. It's weird to me that BioWare regarded that as "complexity".
1 character + henchman with bad AI is not a good single player experience for D&D. It requires a party of 3-4 at least.
Agreed. Sometimes the AI is bad indeed, especially when I tell my henchman and summoned creatures to stop fighting and follow me and they aren't listening.
However NWN is a multiplayer game, it seems intended as such otherwise they wasted an insane amount of effort on a side feature and slept on the main course. All the numbers indicate this too, the majority of recorded players are always multiplayer. In contrast the BG series has vastly more single player numbers. Analyzing achievements also shows a huge difference between the games.
The reception was probably still different almost 20 years ago when people were still on dial-up. These days online play seems to be normal. I imagine they were just a decade ahead of their time rather than avoiding a pretty standard feature as party creation.
Good point. I did not know NWN is intended as a multiplayer game until now. That's probably because NWN has not advertised itself as such. On Steam and GOG.com, the advertisement/promotion/propaganda I have seen only give me the impression that NWN is pretty much a single player game like BG/IWD/NWN2.
Dont hink this have any correlation with multiplayer or singleplayer ......
i would say you picked simply the wrong game (pick better round based games , like the upcomming Solasta: Crown of the Magister D&D 5.1 Ruleset game) - i have never thinked the gameplay in NWN is the same as in BG...
It's not that it was never advertised as such but either, the original trailer and primary market/local box describe it accurately. In some regions they diminished multiplayer+toolset on the box description and otherwise people forgot about or ignored one of the original trailers. Today in interviews Trent Oster describes it as D&D in a box, you play one character like in D&D, and you probably play with friends. As opposed to BG which tells one specific story. There's something to say here about casting the broadest net possible unfortunately.
People are free to interpret things how they wish of course. NWN intended and designed as a single player CRPG but the party system was too complicated is not an interpretation I would personally make and I hope that seems reasonable.
To the point I would guess if NWN was made today by a company without an existing fanbase then it would possibly not have a single-player campaign. It may or may not gain the support of the broader CRPG community but that's fine, a niche is allowed to exist. If that were not the case then everything would be Fortnite or gacha games.
Please note that "should have been" is only an opinion, and one with which a fair number of NWN multiplayer fans would strenuously disagree. NWN was certainly a different type of product so I think one has to give BioWare points for trying something new, even though it left a lot of traditional CRPG players nonplussed.
So it's fair to say that NWN caters for both single- and multi- player.
What NWN might have been seems somewhat off-topic.
I suppose the best answer we can give the OP is that the nearest NWN comes to a full party experience is in some of the better fan-made SP modules, or else multiplayer in a decent PW.
NWN certainly supports multiplayer groups and DMed experiences in a manner that other games do not and it's probably better to play it using it's strengths.