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On with some of the forum highlights from the last few days...
Brent Knowles, Co Lead Designer
Bard Spells
It was mentioned in this post that bards are not getting Tasha's Laughter and Gust of Wind. They should be. Perhaps the manual is missing this information? I don't have a final manual layout so that may be the case. I just verified that in game, bards do get these two spells, so if they are not showing up for you, please send it as a bug. As for some of the other discussion in regards to balancing the new spells with the previous NWN spells -- we are under contract with WOTC to be as authentic to the D&D rules as possible. Most of the new spells are truer in implementation than the original spells. Unfortunately this at times make some of the newer spells seem less powerful -- though in most cases we tried to choose spells that were saved against by different saving throws or had larger area of effects etcetera...As well some spells simply are not as powerful in NWN as they would be in PnP. Our Earthquake implementation cannot destroy buildings...but we could not adjust the damage it did, since that would make it a non legit D&D spell. Earthquake is a cool spell, so it went in anyways.
Brenon Holmes, Programmer
Combat Scripts
Currently there is no way to access combat specific information from scripting. Unfortunately, at the moment, the only information you have access to is damage, amount and type. Also (obviously) whether or not the attack was successful. Also, the special attacks you've mentioned are hard-coded into the engine and so aren't very viable for modification from scripting...TouchAttackMelee() will actually perform an attack roll versus the
specified target and return the result, so it's probably not what you're looking for... again, unfortunately I don't think the functionality currently exists at the moment for what you're looking to do.
You can sort of get what you're looking for. If you create a custom feat (as you've said) and give it a custom spellid, it will then run a script when activated (specified by your custom spell). You can calculate most of what we do in-engine in script, attack rolls, stat mods, situational modifiers... there are a few things you can't access at the moment, like modifiers from items... You can actually even duplicate the combat messages to the players
involved using the SendMessageToPC() function...The only issues I can really see are going to be that there's no way to force an attack animation to play from scripting (there is a huge load of information we normally send to the clients along with attack animations). As for determining whether an attack was successful or not, the only way I'm currently aware of for determining this in scripting is via a (pseudo nasty) kludge. ie: A handler in all your
on-damaged scripts...So, it's sort of possible with the current state of things... but probably not entirely what you're looking for?
David Gaider, Designer
Item Level Restrictions
With 1.30, the ILR (Item Level Restrictions) default to Off rather than On, as they were before. You can always choose to turn it back on in the .ini file, if you like.
Alignments
Chaotic does not equal evil in SoU. Don't jump to conclusions. First off, your alignment is unlikely to change if you are already performing chaotic actions. If the action is very chaotic, you might, but some minor chaotic stuff is only going to affect those who are Lawful. As far as Szaren the Red Wizard goes, the Chaotic hit you take there is situational. You get a Chaotic hit if you said you would help him and then didn't... not if you just refuse. Breaking deals, after all, is Chaotic behavior. Going to Ayala (not Katarina, whoever said that) and lying to her about the fact that you have some of the artifacts (since you obviously intend to keep them, then) is not Evil but it is Chaotic. Doing obviously unlawful actions such as stealing and breaking into homes is also Chaotic, very much so. But not evil. Conversely, you'll actually find very few real Lawful hits in the game... since being Lawful means specifically such things as keeping your word even when it is not in your best interest or actively helping law/authority.
Well, I can pretty safely say that if you're sliding towards Chaotic or Lawful, it's not because you're doing Good or Evil acts. Rarely are the two combined in a single instance, and in any case it's only going to be in a pretty clear case where an alignment hit is being applied. If we had any argument over the matter during Q&A, the hit was removed as being too ambivalent with regards to motivation. The only problem that might exist is what you consider to be Lawful or Chaotic, Good or Evil. SoU's alignment handling is pretty consistent in this regard. If you like, I can even dig up the rules we used for each (on Monday).
Tom Ohle, Communications Associate
Epic Levels
Yeah, like Jay said, we really don't have any comment at this point regarding Epic Levels. We're definitely considering them, but there's a lot of work that needs to be put in to support levels beyond 20, and in the end, it'll come down to how much time we are able to spend on putting it in. |
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Bioware Forum Tidbits
