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What happened at the forums......Josh SawyerGhostwise Halfling
When a ghostwise halfling is using rage, he or she certainly could have a 20 strength. When using improved rage, he or she could have a 22 strength. Of course, additional ability score points gained every four levels can raise this as well.
Untrained Skills
You can use almost all skills except Use Magic Device and Wilderness Lore untrained. Yes, I know that WL should be usable untrained, but it's only function in-game is tracking. Rangers start with the Track feat for free, allowing them to put points into WL. Other classes have to buy it.
Ability Scores
A character with +2 to strength, -2 to intelligence and -2 to charisma doesn't seem like he or she is "balanced" -- it seems like he or she is limited. The value of ability scores should be either be measured absolutely or in the context of the character being made. Since you never know what kind of character is being made, I think it's best to measure ability scores absolutely.
I made a halfling cleric of Yondalla in a campaign who wiped the floor with bad guys. He had an 18 cha and a 16 wis. If I multi-classed that guy to paladin, it would have been a sucky day for evil creatures in the Forgotten Realms. His sub-par strength score didn't matter at all.
Strength was never of great importance to that character. Someone should make a character race with +4 to Charisma, -2 to Strength. It won't stop someone from making a sorcerer of that race, but it certainly might stop someone from making, say, a fighter.
Because "the roolz" cannot know where any given character is going to throw/need scores, it's best to treat them absolutely. What does an additional -2 to Charisma do to a half-orc barbarian? It doesn't make it harder for that character to be a barbarian. You could give half-orcs -50 to Charisma and it wouldn't change the fact that they get +2 to Strength.
Try to follow this logical process: a designer creates a race with +2 to Strength and -2 to Intelligence. Someone says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Strength is really important. You make someone with a high Strength, and they could bowl over everyone!" Designer two says, "I'VE GOT IT! We'll give them an additional -2 to Charisma!" How does that really make the character any more balanced? If anything, it effectively says to the player, "Dude, don't even bother thinking about making an arcane spellcaster. Just jam all of your high rolls into combat stats and accept the fact that you're a combat monster."
Similarly, the whole "-2 Strength/+4 Charisma" doesn't mean a whole lot when it's used on a sorcerer. They don't need a high Strength because 1) they're almost never in combat and 2) they typically don't wear armor/carry a lot of stuff. If you made a race like this, it wouldn't stop people from making sorcerers in that race.
Also, please note that all other races in the Player's Handbook not only receive equal numerical bonuses and penalties, but they also receive benefits on top of that. The half-orc gets darkvision and the "orc blood" bit that allows them to use items as though they are full-blooded orcs. WHOA! STOP THE PRESSES!
Human: +1 Feat, +4 SP at first level, +1 SP every additional level
Elves: +2 Dex, -2 Con, 2 MW Feats, Low-Light Vision, +2 Skill Bonuses, Sleep Immunity, +2 bonus vs. Enchantment spells
Half-Elves: Low-Light Vision, +1 Skill Bonuses, Sleep Immunity, +2 bonus vs. Enchantment
Gnome: +2 Con, -2 Str (but wait -- that's not equivalent), Low-Light, +2 vs, Illusions, +1 to hit kobolds and goblinoids, +4 AC vs. giants, +2 Skill bonuses, ability to cast free cantrips
Halfling: +2 Dex, -2 Str, +2 skill bonuses, +2 vs. Fear, +1 to all saves
Dwarf: +2 to Con, -2 Cha, +2 saves vs. spells, +2 saves vs. poison, +4 AC vs. giants, darkvision, +2 skill bonuses (base speed 20 feet, though).
Half-Orc: +2 to Str, -2 to Int, -2 to Cha, Darkvision
Sound Clips
Here are two little wavy mcwavs of dialogue samples in IWD2. Should I be letting you hear these? Who knows?!
Anyway, they're pretty short and kind of neat.
http://feedback.blackisle.com/sounds/oldbuddy.wav
http://feedback.blackisle.com/sounds/mystery.wav
Voices
So, you'd rather hear exotic races from all over a fantasy game world all talking with neutral American accents?
These V.O. scripts aren't for a world-wide audience. They're for the U.S. and other English-speaking countries. Every time the V.O. gets translated, it all the V.O. is re-recorded.
I don't know any American who talks like the woman in mystery.wav. I don't know any Eastern European who talks like Nym. Both actors were told that their characters had accent blends.
Personally, it annoys me to extreme ends when I play games where my characters encounter weird, foreign races, and hear them talk to me like they're reading off the 11:00 news.
Tex Yang (Bloodlust)Spell and Greater Shout
As far as I know, they're both in.
Dialogues
There is one dialogue I can think of, off the top of my head, that a very low intelligence will get players a dialogue path that's, hmm, interesting.
Racial Enemy
Characters get a racial enemy for every 5 levels of ranger that they advance.
Doug Avery (Wolf)Contest
For those of you that submitted your characters for the contest, we thank you. Unfortunately, we cannot run this contest at this moment. We will try to re-visit it at a later time, but for now it has to wait. If you would like to continue submitting characters to iwd2contest@blackisle.com they will be read over and possibly used in our starting party. All submission to this address become the intellectual property of Interplay Entertainment Corp. I will keep you posted on the status of any pending contests and hope to have something for you shortly.
The reason it was taken down is because there was a possibility that some of the information was incorrect. This is nobody's fault, and I want that to be abundantly clear to you all. When we have assurances that the information that was presented is absolutely correct, we will try it again.
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Icewind Dale II Forum Update
