Is there anything that can be done to improve the performance of the toolset? It still runs at exactly the same speed as 15 years ago, in spite of hardware improvements. For example, when I right-click on a door to edit its properties, I then must wait *twenty-three seconds* for the dialog box to open. I'm guessing this is a multi-core/64 bit issue.
Is there a way to map (not using external software) my mouse buttons? I would like to see if its possible to get a "mouse look" on the right mouse button, not middle, like many other modern games.
Yeah, NWN hit dice cannot roll below half the maximum. Any result that would be below that threshold is increased to that threshold (so a 1d8 hit dice basically has four 4s, a 5, a 6, and 7, and an 8).
And they could be rerolled, even on multiplayer servers. So anyone willing to cheat a bit would have an edge over "honest" players.
Rolled HP basically become a "luck" attribute that has serious impact on the characters survivability. Two identical characters can become frail and tough without any logical reason. I would like to eliminate that luck factor and opt for average HP, as max HP is not a balanced option either.
I don't disagree @1varangian . I was merely pointing out that NWN already has features to reduce the worst of the randomness. I would not be opposed to some set standard, at least as an option (and perhaps a server option that would recalculate characters' hit points based on that standard).
D&D 5th edition gives average-round-up as an alternative to actually rolling for hit points (so 4 hp on a d6, 5 on a d8, etc). I feel like that's a decent standard, and it's only a little lower than the current NWN averages. If we want a standard other than max HP, I feel like that's a good one to look at.
Hope it hasn't been mentioned before, too many posts to check!
1/ Death and bleed out rules on dying. Had this in a campaign and it was awesome. Roll checks to see if you stabilise and stuff and slowly come back. At 0 HP you drop incapasitated and lose 1 extra HP every round till -10 when you actually die. During this time, others have a chance to apply bandages/ healing to help. If by any chance by a miracle, this is actually considered, I would just add that if you do regenerate back to 1 HP, by default you should stay down and play dead(and still appear dead to NPC's who fail a roll) till you do something, rather then auto stand at 1 hp and get owned by the baddie standing over your body again.
2/ Another pipe dream, but if attributes could somehow be used to help generate a characters appearance partially. Although this is probably more NWN2 domain. Example, big strength= bulging muscles. Charisma= whether you look photogenic or been hit in the face with a shovel. Intelligence= low brow(literally) or something lol. You get the idea.
3/ I'm no coder but, make the engine take advantage of the vastly more powerfull PC it is running on now to make the game smoother. I'm guessing its something to with that 64 bit jargon or something. Example, I have an old mod and an old version of NWN. You enter an area with many NPC's, a lot guarding walls with crossbows, and travel gets choppy. Tried the same mod on NWN EE and it does the same thing, gets choppy with lots of NPC's in the area. Id like that sorted although no idea how why or what causes it.
Would be really nice to have an audio clue when party speaks. Sometimes I'm in a wall of text and miss a message, or in middle of a fight where there is too much happening.
D&D 5th edition gives average-round-up as an alternative to actually rolling for hit points (so 4 hp on a d6, 5 on a d8, etc). I feel like that's a decent standard, and it's only a little lower than the current NWN averages. If we want a standard other than max HP, I feel like that's a good one to look at.
That's the system that is most balanced compared to monster HP, spell damage, trap damage, etc. Really hope it would be the "standard". Max HP or rolled HP can always be options for those who like to build their mods that way.
I also like how 5e bumps Wizards to d6 and Rogues to d8 but that's not relevant with 3e of course.
D&D has actually inflated the HP over several editions but not everything else was adjusted to match. Two examples are less deadly spells and being able to actually survive maximum falling damage. Here's how max hp breaks down for a pure wizard at level 1 and 20 between the main editions. Note that in NWN toughness feat isn't +3 hp but +1hp/level instead unlike the base rules. AD&D level 1: 3-6 (+2 hp/level con bonus cap) AD&D level 20: 40-70 (hd stops after 10, +1hp/level after that) D&D 3.5 level 1: 10-13 (gnome with 18+2 con and 18 int, mind over body feat) D&D 3.5 level 20: 124-184 + n (n is metamatic feats) D&D 5e level 1: 12-14 (max con + hp dwarf + tough feat for +2 hp/level) D&D 5e level 20: 240-280 (this is more realistic, stat cap is easy to hit in multiple stats)
NWN2 has max hp per level and it's more wacky because a wizard gets 4hp and barbarian 12hp whereas the average would normally be 2.5 vs 6.5.
I should make a note that balance more or less refers to the economics of a game, cost / power, rock-paper-scissors, game theory, Markov chains. It doesn't actually imply a game will be either fair, sane, realistic, or enjoyable. There are some very interesting discussions out there about it, and with 5e it hasn't stopped things from breaking and certain spells getting banned from convention play.
Ultimately 5e's approach is towards extremely high rates of survival and less variation.
For NWN I think modules should have full control over hp generation and recovery rules because some ppl might like their character to not die easily and others might want a nail biting dungeon crawl of death.
Maybe show more consistency with the game font and maybe pick a better font for the game. I know it's really minor but crazy people like me care about things like that.
Custom jpeg images and text windows for transition screens. This would be a great option for custom created modules. Stories could be told on loading screens describing journeys/events in the transition. Additionally a 'click to proceed' button should be included so the player can proceed when they are ready. I love this in the Shadowrun (Sword Coast legends did something similar as well) tool set and I feel it really adds a lot to the way a story can be told in a module. Since there is no overland map option in the NWN toolset, providing a full map of the Forgotten Realms included in the toolset (separated into regions) could be really simple way of conveying location in game. For example, during a load screen, red arrows indicating travel on a map really gives a sense of place and definitely could make modules feel even more like a tabletop adventure. Allowing custom maps would be great too and really could convey to the player the creator's campaign world.
@FreshLemonBun I should correct my previous analysis as I forgot only AD&D had rolled hp at level 1, both 3.5 and 5e I believe have max hp for 1st level.
You are able to shortcut private messages to other players by clicking on there portrait within the chat. But it works only for the creature the player controlled the moment you joined a server.
Example: A DM is inside a NPC while you join the server. The click on the portrait in chat only works then the DM is within this NPC from now on. If he is regular DM or inside another NPC clicking the portrait does absolutly nothing.
If I remember right this also happens with possessed Familiars.
I like that we can now scale the UI independently of the screen resolution, but we're left with only two options rather than the anywhere-within-a-continuum we had before.
I would prefer to be able to adjust the size anywhere within a range (like in vanilla) rather than be limited to two options.
Dropping this in here too as I do not see it fitting the other topics: In today's live stream I asked if it were possible to increase the toolset resource limit so that builders can create larger PWs without having to break that PW across several severs. The answer, in short, was a yes. Per the stream answer I am dropping this in here so hopefully it will be picked up and put on the Trello Input board.
One hard to categorize suggestion, don't get too attached to old content available for NWN. While it is important to retain some level of compatibility (specialy with adventure modules), I think it should not come at the cost of being stranded in the past. 15 years have passed since the original release and a decade since the last premium module was released, file formats and the like have changed and I think it is more important to help new community content creators than to be compatible with no longer supported or updated haks.
So maybe there will be the need to create tools to convert old format to new like .bik to webm, the most exciting feature of NWN:EE is the new content that can be created with tools available nowadays (i.e. someone in this forum suggested blender support), if some old community content gets broken the community should lift the pieces and update it, with help from beamdog if feasible.
The devs have already said they want to preserve as much backward compatibility as possible. I am disappointed that this didn't extend to .bik but I would rather they try to make sure old modules will continue to work with the game.
1. Something small I've thought of from time to time in this and other games is that it would be nice if a character creation screen remembered your last chosen character gender instead of defaulting.
2. Fixing speed increases would be nice too and change how you can increase and decrease speed by feats or scripted effects. So a barbarian with the dash feat and the run feat running at maximum speed would move really fast for a short time. Only monks move faster as it is now.
3. Greater amount of view range if I haven't already suggested that somewhere would be nice too. For example render creatures and placeables out to 300 or maybe even uncapped. Then script based restrictions for example in the dark, during night without low light vision. Separate vision from spot and weapon distance. A creature out of detect range should still be able to hide more easily even while in vision range.
4. Encrypted tells between two clients so that a server can't log or spy on private communication.
5. Improve cross server play and allow multiple linked servers to appear as a single server when it comes to chat (tells and shout), server list, party members, and in game player list. So the experience is more seamless.
6. Chat filtering and highlighting/coloring controls on client side. With a lot of players chatting it would be nice to instantly see if a topic or character name was mentioned, or maybe someone wants rp *emotes* to be colored differently on their screen.
7. Option to disable the combat log output within the module and include only specific things or custom roll information for combat overriding.
8. A walk mode that toggles to make automatic movement as walk instead of hustle/run.
1. Meh. I take this how I feel on the day. 2. Run feat? Do you mean Fast Movement? If so it's not that big a change, it doesn't make them Usain Bolt, but it should be reflected, yes. 3. 300 what? Anyway as long as it also reflects LoS restrictions that might be OK, but maybe it should also be related to your Spot skill (say). 4. Maybe it should be able to, to ensure that you are not behaving inappropriately. You don't have to communicate on their server. 5. What experience? I'm not getting how multiple servers being linked for chat purposes helps anything. As far as I am concerned if there are more instances of OOC communication that is the exact opposite of helpfulness. 6. Emotes is easy to do; it's on NWN2 servers. As for Topics I cannot even begin to see how that would be implemented unless you pre-selected the topics, which seems rather facile. 7. Why? I mean it's not accurate anyway, but at least it gives some feedback. 8. Walk seems easy enough, but yes this is implemented in NWN2.
The devs have already said they want to preserve as much backward compatibility as possible. I am disappointed that this didn't extend to .bik but I would rather they try to make sure old modules will continue to work with the game.
I already suggested that beamdog should create a tool to update modules (and maybe even tilesets) to EE levels, they could even open source said tool so if any rare module hits a fringe case, someone in the community might provide a fix while Beamdog focus on improving EE.
Comments
Rolled HP basically become a "luck" attribute that has serious impact on the characters survivability. Two identical characters can become frail and tough without any logical reason. I would like to eliminate that luck factor and opt for average HP, as max HP is not a balanced option either.
D&D 5th edition gives average-round-up as an alternative to actually rolling for hit points (so 4 hp on a d6, 5 on a d8, etc). I feel like that's a decent standard, and it's only a little lower than the current NWN averages. If we want a standard other than max HP, I feel like that's a good one to look at.
1/ Death and bleed out rules on dying. Had this in a campaign and it was awesome. Roll checks to see if you stabilise and stuff and slowly come back. At 0 HP you drop incapasitated and lose 1 extra HP every round till -10 when you actually die. During this time, others have a chance to apply bandages/ healing to help. If by any chance by a miracle, this is actually considered, I would just add that if you do regenerate back to 1 HP, by default you should stay down and play dead(and still appear dead to NPC's who fail a roll) till you do something, rather then auto stand at 1 hp and get owned by the baddie standing over your body again.
2/ Another pipe dream, but if attributes could somehow be used to help generate a characters appearance partially. Although this is probably more NWN2 domain. Example, big strength= bulging muscles. Charisma= whether you look photogenic or been hit in the face with a shovel. Intelligence= low brow(literally) or something lol. You get the idea.
3/ I'm no coder but, make the engine take advantage of the vastly more powerfull PC it is running on now to make the game smoother. I'm guessing its something to with that 64 bit jargon or something. Example, I have an old mod and an old version of NWN. You enter an area with many NPC's, a lot guarding walls with crossbows, and travel gets choppy. Tried the same mod on NWN EE and it does the same thing, gets choppy with lots of NPC's in the area. Id like that sorted although no idea how why or what causes it.
I also like how 5e bumps Wizards to d6 and Rogues to d8 but that's not relevant with 3e of course.
AD&D level 1: 3-6 (+2 hp/level con bonus cap)
AD&D level 20: 40-70 (hd stops after 10, +1hp/level after that)
D&D 3.5 level 1: 10-13 (gnome with 18+2 con and 18 int, mind over body feat)
D&D 3.5 level 20: 124-184 + n (n is metamatic feats)
D&D 5e level 1: 12-14 (max con + hp dwarf + tough feat for +2 hp/level)
D&D 5e level 20: 240-280 (this is more realistic, stat cap is easy to hit in multiple stats)
NWN2 has max hp per level and it's more wacky because a wizard gets 4hp and barbarian 12hp whereas the average would normally be 2.5 vs 6.5.
I should make a note that balance more or less refers to the economics of a game, cost / power, rock-paper-scissors, game theory, Markov chains. It doesn't actually imply a game will be either fair, sane, realistic, or enjoyable. There are some very interesting discussions out there about it, and with 5e it hasn't stopped things from breaking and certain spells getting banned from convention play.
Ultimately 5e's approach is towards extremely high rates of survival and less variation.
For NWN I think modules should have full control over hp generation and recovery rules because some ppl might like their character to not die easily and others might want a nail biting dungeon crawl of death.
I know it's really minor but crazy people like me care about things like that.
You are able to shortcut private messages to other players by clicking on there portrait within the chat. But it works only for the creature the player controlled the moment you joined a server.
Example: A DM is inside a NPC while you join the server. The click on the portrait in chat only works then the DM is within this NPC from now on. If he is regular DM or inside another NPC clicking the portrait does absolutly nothing.
If I remember right this also happens with possessed Familiars.
I would prefer to be able to adjust the size anywhere within a range (like in vanilla) rather than be limited to two options.
So maybe there will be the need to create tools to convert old format to new like .bik to webm, the most exciting feature of NWN:EE is the new content that can be created with tools available nowadays (i.e. someone in this forum suggested blender support), if some old community content gets broken the community should lift the pieces and update it, with help from beamdog if feasible.
OnUpdate / OnEnterFrame or similar event for placeable only, to manipulate their position xyz/rotation/scale easily
1. Something small I've thought of from time to time in this and other games is that it would be nice if a character creation screen remembered your last chosen character gender instead of defaulting.
2. Fixing speed increases would be nice too and change how you can increase and decrease speed by feats or scripted effects. So a barbarian with the dash feat and the run feat running at maximum speed would move really fast for a short time. Only monks move faster as it is now.
3. Greater amount of view range if I haven't already suggested that somewhere would be nice too. For example render creatures and placeables out to 300 or maybe even uncapped. Then script based restrictions for example in the dark, during night without low light vision. Separate vision from spot and weapon distance. A creature out of detect range should still be able to hide more easily even while in vision range.
4. Encrypted tells between two clients so that a server can't log or spy on private communication.
5. Improve cross server play and allow multiple linked servers to appear as a single server when it comes to chat (tells and shout), server list, party members, and in game player list. So the experience is more seamless.
6. Chat filtering and highlighting/coloring controls on client side. With a lot of players chatting it would be nice to instantly see if a topic or character name was mentioned, or maybe someone wants rp *emotes* to be colored differently on their screen.
7. Option to disable the combat log output within the module and include only specific things or custom roll information for combat overriding.
8. A walk mode that toggles to make automatic movement as walk instead of hustle/run.
2. Run feat? Do you mean Fast Movement? If so it's not that big a change, it doesn't make them Usain Bolt, but it should be reflected, yes.
3. 300 what? Anyway as long as it also reflects LoS restrictions that might be OK, but maybe it should also be related to your Spot skill (say).
4. Maybe it should be able to, to ensure that you are not behaving inappropriately. You don't have to communicate on their server.
5. What experience? I'm not getting how multiple servers being linked for chat purposes helps anything. As far as I am concerned if there are more instances of OOC communication that is the exact opposite of helpfulness.
6. Emotes is easy to do; it's on NWN2 servers. As for Topics I cannot even begin to see how that would be implemented unless you pre-selected the topics, which seems rather facile.
7. Why? I mean it's not accurate anyway, but at least it gives some feedback.
8. Walk seems easy enough, but yes this is implemented in NWN2.