Neverwinter Nights Forum News (Sep. 27, 04)

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Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Shifter
No bug, your shifter can only use this ability a certain number of times before his head explodes

Stanley Woo, Quality Assurance

about Blackguard confused
No, the term blackguard has nothing to do with race. According to one source on etymology:

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Quote: blackguard
1532, of uncertain application. Perhaps once an actual military or guard unit; more likely orig. a mock-military ref. to scullions and kitchen-knaves of noble households, of black-liveried personal guards, and of shoeblacks. By 1736, sense had emerged of "one of the criminal class."

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www.dictionary.com gives us this as one of the definitions:

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Quote: 1. The scullions and lower menials of a court, or of a nobleman's household, who, in a removal from one residence to another, had charge of the kitchen utensils, and being smutted by them, were jocularly called the ``black guard''; also, the servants and hangers-on of an army. [Obs.]

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ANother source says:

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Quote: The Macquarie ABC Dictionary defines a blackguard as a “coarse, despicable person; a scoundrel”. We tend to label someone who treats other people badly as a blackguard (or we used to – the word is heard less often than it once was). The word blackguard goes back to the 16th century when it was applied, originally, in an entirely literal way: to a guard, or soldier who was black – in person, or uniform, or character. Collectively the “blackguards” were the lowest menials in a royal or noble household, who had charge of pots and pans and other kitchen utensils, and who rode in wagons conveying these utensils during journeys from one residence to another. In other words, their work literally blackened them so they were called the “black guards”. This literal sense (involving the colour black) was later extended so that...[an] urchin who earned a living as a boot black could be called “blackguard”. That usage is found in the 17th century, and then by the 18th century the word blackguard was being used in almost its modern sense, to mean “one of the idle criminal class, a low worthless character addicted to or ready for crime” (quite possibly because the street boys who were bootblacks grew up to criminals). And that extension gives our modern meaning of blackguard as a “coarse, despicable person”.

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James Henley, Technical Designer

Help a noobie!
Just a note: the amount of experience you need to advance a level is equal to your character level (the sum of all class levels). So a 3 rogue / 2 fighter would have a character level of 5, and would need 15,000 experience to advance to 6th level (at which point you could add another level of rogue, another level of fighter, or take a third class).

[ September 29, 2004, 00:32: Message edited by: chevalier ]