Icewind Dale 2 Forum Update

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(Originally posted by Z-Layrex)

J.E Sawyer, Lead Designer

Sneak attack: When I played through IWD2, my dwarven rogue would pull off multiple successful sneak attacks in every battle in which I bothered to try. The circumstances under which a backstab can be pulled off in IE limit how much you can use it without dying of fatigue.

Sneak attack requires virtually no set up (though hiding first can help) and, as such, can be used on multiple foes in each battle. The amount of damage done by a single instance of backstab has the potential to be greater than a single instance of sneak attack, but sneak attack does far more reliable damage. That's simply due to how the mechanics of calculating backstab and sneak attack work.

P.S.: It was even better when my rogue enabled Power Attack at +5.

Tex Yang, Quality Assurance

Cross class skills: Yes, you can put points into cross class skills when not leveling up as a rogue, but it would cost you 2 skill points instead of 1.

Strength requirement for items: Nope, there is no strength requirement for items in IWD2.

If you want to wear an armor that barely allows you to move, makes your thieving skills crappy, and kills your dexterity bonus, there's nothing stopping you from doing it.

Holy power: Holy power is a 4th level cleric/paladin and 5th level domain spell (forgot which cleric off the top of my head), which gives a +4 damage bonus for the duration of the spell.

Sneak attack: - Sneak attack works with any melee weapon, but there is no ranged sneak attacks.
- In order to execute the sneak attack, the enemy has to be 'facing' away from the rogue, so if they are chasing them around, there is no sneak attack that will be done (even if the character is hasted enough to, in an animation timeframe, be able to run behind an opponent). This is best accomplished by attacking enemies which are already engaged with other members of the party.
- Improved invisibility is also a *big* plus when sneak attacking - as some enemies will turn around and start attacking the rogue that just sneak attacked them.
- I'm not positive on the whole 'enable the backstab option' deal, as I have no clue what the ini switch was.

They would still need to leave the enemy's sight before being able to sneak attack the same enemy, but they can sneak attack multiple different enemy's without leaving the area. For example, there's 5 barbarians attacking the party. My thief can sneak attack barbarians A,B,C,D and E without leaving the area, but once I do so, they have to leave and come back.

Length of game: Length-wise it's as big as, if not bigger than, IWD+HoW+ToTL.

Removing armor in battle to cast a spell: Characters can remove their armor in combat, exactly like the original IWD.

Damien Foletto, Junior Designer

Strategy guide: We (BIS) looked over the strat guide a couple of weeks before we went gold, and corrected what was out of date. So the content is up to date as of print time.

Chad Nicholas, Scriptor

Amount of old areas in the game: Because when the game was due for release used to be sooner than it is now. We were operating on a shorter time table, and didn't have the time to create as many whole new areas as we'd have liked.

Chris Avellone, Designer

Extorting money: There are times you can extort money from people in the game, but it's not often. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's not.

Magic weapons: Every weapon proficiency type is well-represented amongst the magic weapons in the game, so choose a weapon you want, and you won't be disappointed.

Between six characters, you'll pretty much cover all the bases anyway.