Neverwinter Nights Forum Update

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(Originally posted by Arwen)

Bob McCabe, Writing & Design:

Stealth mode and familiars: Q: If your rogue sorcerer hides in shadows and then possesses her/his familiar, does the character remain hidden? If so, does the character remain hidden? A:I just tried it in-game. I put my wizard into stealth, and then possessed my familiar. My wizard did not break stealth mode. I ran around as a panther (Feyna the Wonder Kitty) for a while, and watched as Mr. Wizard stood in place, in stealth mode. Afterward, I unpossessed my familiar. This caused stealth mode to break.

I think you can jump back in before anyone sees you, though, as it seems that there is some delay on the breaking of stealth...

David Gaider, Designer:

Stonecunning skill: Stonecunning: +2 to Search rolls when made underground.

Dwarves also get a racial +2 bonus to Lore, as well, incidentally.

Skill check bonuses for favored enemy: For favored enemy, you get +1 to damage, Listen, Spot and Taunt. That bonus goes up +1 for every 5 levels. (And, of course, you get extra selections later, too).

Animal companion levels: Rangers begin getting their animal companion at level 4 or 5 (I forget which). Druids begin getting theirs at level 1. Either way, the level of their animal companion stacks, yes... I just played a ranger who had just gotten his animal companion. When I leveled up, I took Druid, and the animal companion moved up a level, as well.

Factions: For one, each PC's faction is his party. If he's not a member of a party, then yes... he, himself, is a faction. As far as how other factions feel about an individual PC, that is 'Reaction'. Reaction is a rating that starts at the FR but changes according to an individual's actions.

As well, the ratings of faction to faction are NOT mutually inclusive. FactionA can be friendly to FactionB, but FactionB hostile to FactionA (a situation which would not last long if FactionB's members started killing FactionA's members).

As far as 'mixed' factions go, PC's are always members of their party faction... and that's it. The FR is how non-PC factions feel about the PC's and each other.

A party attacking Purple Dragon members would incur a small penalty to overall FR for each member killed. Those who have been attacked will have a hostile Reaction to all party members. You can script changes to Reaction and FR yourself, yes, but I wouldn't call that simple... it's not as customizeable as changing settings on a Module Wizard, for example.

Reactions are maintained individually and retained by the module. If a player is currently hostile with NPC A and logs off, when he returns he is still hostile with NPC A. The same applies to FR, although players with different FR's who band together in the party end up having a new 'party FR' somewhere in the middle (I might be wrong about this, but this is my understanding of what Sonya was talking about earlier in another post). So basically, if you team up with someone who is scum, you're not going to be looked on as highly, yourself.

Beyond that, yes... there are no functions for creating long-term player guilds in NWN as they exist in MMORPG's.

A PC does not 'join' an NPC faction. How that faction feels about the individual PC, however, determines their Reaction. If a PC 'joins' the Harpers and you set the Harpers to be Friendly to him... and when they are Friendly they defend him in combat and have dialogue that treats him as a member of their organization, THAT is how a PC 'joins' them.

The Faction system can be used to simulate a player joining an organization, but you have to get the idea of a player literally 'joining a Faction' in terms of the Faction system out of your head.

A PC is free to join any party he has been invited to, and may leave at any time.

As far as his relations with organizations in your game, that will be however you script their FR to the particular PC and the dialogue involved.

The Harpers on Server A are completely different from the Harpers on Server B. There is no 'Owner Faction' that crosses server boundaries... NWN is not set up that way, period. Like I said, it might be possible to communicate to the Server B that their relationship to the PC needs to chance when he portals to that Server, but that's something that you will have to figure out on your own.

Servers can share a vault and therefore have standardized filters to make player transfer easier, but there is no module-to-module communication beyond what you can script. Hopefully this is something that we can make easier for the PW crowd in the future.

I know these are a LOT of questions, but hey, just goes to show how unresolved/confusing the issue is.

Succubus: The succubus model is its demonic form... no wings, though. Originally the plan was to have bird & bat wings as selectable (so it could be either an erinyes or succubus), but it just couldn't be done properly (the wing issue has been mentioned before, I think, in regards to the humanoid models). The model was made demonic because a succubus trying to pass herself off as human would likely use a human model anyway, right?

It's definitely recognizeable as a demon, however... and insofar as showing demonic skin, I don't think anyone would mistake it as anything other than a succubus.

DM-ing large groups: 32 or 64 players or whatever is the physical limit on the server... which has nothing to do with the practical limit for how many you can run in your module.

If your module has a lot of automation and is specifically designed to handle a large number of players at once, then you may be able to get away with a larger number of players.

Same thing if you have more than one DM in the game... you'll likely be able to handle more players (depending on how well the DM's co-ordinate, I guess).

Beyond that, your average pick-up game will not be much different from your average PnP game. I might be able to fit 32 people in my living room... doesn't mean it's very feasible to DM them all in the same game at once. At least... not without a lot of preparation, right?

Can a magic item grant a weapon proficiency feat?: According to the list I just pulled up inside the toolset (I've never actually looked at it before, personally), the following is a list of bonus feats that are possible to be applied via an item property:

- Alertness
- Ambidexterity
- Cleave
- Combat Casting
- Dodge
- Extra Turning
- Knockdown
- Point Blank Shot
- Power Attack
- Spell Focus
- Spell Penetration
- Two-Weapon Fighting

So, as you can see, there isn't an item property that exists to grant a proficiency feat.

Derek French, Assistant Producer:

Can a server be set up to only accept portalling characters, and not direct (client initiated) connections?: No, but there is a super-easy workaround.

All modules must have a starting location. If I had 4 servers (A through D) each running one module of my world, I would make A my gateway server and hope that all people start through here. On the modules on the B though D servers, I would put the starting location in an almost empty 2 by 2 area with a portal to Server A. This way, even if they manage to connect to server B through D, they would end up at the gateway server, A.

Is that it, or did I miss a detail?

Spyware: No, version 1.09 of GameSpy Arcade that ships with NWN does not contain any spyware as certified by myself and AdAware. GameSpy Arcade install is NOT madatory and is NOT required to play NWN.