As I said it just example from the top of my head. While most direct dealing damage spells indeed stops at 20 in turm of damage - most buffs\defuffs continue to grow so its not exactly correct to say that 20CL is effective limit of spells

. May I nitpick one more but... it doesn't. Nowhere in epic spell usage caster level comes into use. Since it spell like ability of innate level 10 it does not subject to any forms of immunities/resists/ward. But as a price its a big fat lie that all epic spells has DC+5. It has DC 25+caster stat modifier, so epic caster with epic focus will have DC on its 9 level spells about the same(ot better if it RWT)

Anyway, vampiric feast was example of how you can overcome death immunity on death enemy to oneshot them. As I said - caster can pull out more damage when applied, meaning not in every single fight and in basic capanilities. Companions are a bit different through one kast killers is still better as a wizard a bit

It's so much nitpick as small mechanical qualifications.

Why don't go further? Dex figher/monk9 with two kamas, perfect two weapon fighting, greater flurry(+2 attacks) and permahaste kama in offhand for 15 attacks per round? Yes there are power builds(btw doesn't sopmewhat similar exist in nwn1 As well as DD with epic DR progression? As well as Arcane archer with +15 bow). Yes you can craft insanely powerful item. But in most of casescrafting is just a waste of time with main reason being that final boss is kinda a pushover. His saves are not that great(I managed to make him fail saves as a controller warlock. He lost to 15CL spell!), his weapon hurt but his AB is far from the best and well equiped fighter can ignore him. Additionally for all your crafting you need the same essences so you most likely will get this item somewhere at the end companion or you will have to grind respawning elementals if you want to be able to slowly improve it through companion. Additionally you forget about pretty hight AC and AB of enemies, so melee fighter want to have innate 40+AB to deliever at least half of attacks in round and AC around 50-60 to comfortably be in melee. And if we were to actually talk about op stuff - Requiem man. Just requiem.

Additionally you once again ignore that you have a party. A true party, not just three useless idiots tailoring you, who are more then happy to run after summoned rat, leaving you wide open for attacks of guys who actually metter, too stupid to take even cleave or waste half of fight casting "critical wound" on lich. You can say what you want, but your party is significally, SIGNIGFICALLY more powerful then in nwn2(not to mention Zehir, where you can have +6 party members at once) since you can actually ensure that they do their job, and not running through 20 traps just becouse there is a wolf on other side

Just because PnP casters are even more ridiculously OP doesn't mean the NWN ones aren't.
Seriously, once you get to mid-levels, you can win pretty much any encounter (including the end bosses of the campaigns) within 2 or 3 rounds, without taking any damage. How much more powerful do you want to get?

Also, I found spell resistance to be pretty much a non-issue in NWN, provided you play a pure caster and take spell penetration, so I don't know why you bring that one up.

Frankly, I'm really not sure what you're even trying to accomplish with those posts. Are you actually trying to say NWN casters are weak because the devs let melee craft ridiculously powerful weapons?
Because if so you should remember that it really doesn't matter if a really well-built, well-geared melee char can kill enemies 1 round faster than casters in epic levels, since said casters can still kill those enemies really easily.

"Viable", at least to me, doesn't mean "almost as good at the absolute top character build", but "can finish the campaigns relatively easily". NWN 1 and 2 are single player RPGs, not MMORPGs.

"""broken""" spells for you that "removes the need for party members" in nwn1 do much less damage than 11 (attacks per round) * 5d6(elemental damage), can't bypass SR, you can't trow this spells in armor...

So, for you the worst class in defense(no more strong defensive spells) and the worst class in offense are not underpowered.... This game is based in D&D. For generic RPG's with little inspiration in D&D you can check the 354165165413524135165316513515*10²³ other games. In a table RPG, if you can win the majority of encounter with no problem, is not the D&D fault. Is a DM fault. Also, creatures can use spell/spell like abilities, in nwn case, is a bioware fault. Bioware should make tough and smarter enemies...

And sorcs are OP compared with what? Clerics with implosion + divine shield + strong defensive spells + melee capabilities + full heal spells + resurrection + some offensive DPS spells? All play-stiles are viable in nwn1.

About DR, a non epic sorc have almost no change against Vix'thra, but a non epic cleric can easily defeat Vix'thra... Also, conjuration is the best school in PnP because a lot of spells bypass SR.

You need to talk to some bosses before start the fight and some times by no reason, you lose all defenses during that. Some times i can't even cast a haste and i an dead... In NWN2 > melee >>>>>>> divine casters >>> arcane casters

divine casters are underpowered, but are at least playable.

Only you are one of the best class in defence(only cleric is better all around). one of the least gear dependent classes(almost all stuff you neecd can be gotten in act 1 of OC with boots requiring Act3 of OC). You do not care about AB. You do not care that motb enemies has pretty damn high AC score

Count this as houserules. As quite a few DM I know like to houserule ressurection into magic difibrillator and outright ban sance motive.

You wont get DS on casting cleric as its require high charisma to be useful. Sure you can try make offencive cleric with magic/cold/air domains but you still wont be able to be real dd caster. Divine casters areare best buffers. Leave it as that


Damn that Bioware took their forum down. It has an awesome guide with numbers and comparacment of sdifferent classes.... Damn =_=

Ok, I'll try to bring a short story here - in the end of this guide was a table of class strengh. First free entries were
1)Wizard and sorc - self sufficient classes, who require minimum items to function
2)Bard - has low AC for a Motb so require setup, but it has awesome curse song(even if it nerfed compared to nwn1) and Requem feats
3)Cleric - with divine power it literally superior melee master. Domains brings useful feats. It has awesome buffs but it lacks spells like persistent haste.

and the worst class was Barbarian since with decent items rage become "make me weaker" button(and no, tireless rage do not fix it). Druid was somewhere in the middle since druid pet has low AC to be useful in motb(and dragon companion being worse then normal) and Ranger is a bit before since favourite enemie, bane of enemies and free PTWF making it possible to be str based dual wielder

So basically its other way around: arcane casters >>divine casters>>melee fighers based on classes abilities, gear dependency and fighting capabilities

Pretty sure he is talking about skill resets when you move between modules in companion(like it you use world map to travel from, for example, Gates of Mulsantir to Well of Lirue). You have all your spells reset, like you have rested, and all of your buffs removed. Thats indeed a bit annoying...

Not that it so dealbreaking that it impossible to play around(ICE helps)

First of all. I HATE mmo. Second. If for you clerics and druids are stronger in elemental damage, how sorcs(less hit dice, armor penalty, etc) are not underpowered in nwn2?

According to you divine casters are stronger than arcane casters in nwn2.

In D&D 3.5,, is like in nwn1. Depends the situation. In D&D 3.5, you as divine caster can create an army of constructs? Stop time? Cast a Wish? In some aspects divine > arcane and in other, arcane > divine. DnD 3.5 & nwn1 are pretty balanced in this aspect. About "learn how to play", i have more than 50 hours in nwn2 only on gog. I an not saying that the game is bad. Only that nwn1 >>>>>>>> nwn2.

epic warding can give 50/20 DR for 40 rounds if your caster level is 40 and you can't dispel this insane DR.

Honestly, i have posted 4 points. OP crafted weapons are only one point. Spells doing 1/6 of nwn1 damage, lack of defensive spells...List the best spells per "category" in nwn2 :

Offensive damage
Offensive OHK
Defensive heal
Defensive buff
Defensive damage dealer
(...)

In nwn1, the game is balanced. In some aspects, arcane > divine like defensive damage dealer(Mestil's acid sheath), in others, divine > arcane(regeneration, implosion), but in nwn2 divine > arcane in all aspects., since arcane spells are nerfed to oblivion compared to nwn1 or DnD 3.5.

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Valkinaz

About cleric, here is a melee cleric https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X83vlxEAFlM

and a damage dealer cleric https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23rjHW4s-9o

As you can see, clerics can do a lot of melee and elemental damage. Also, charisma is not only useful to cast spells, but to increase AC with DS.

About dragon companion, he is tougher than some dragons in game. How a dragon helping you dealing damage, casting aura of dragonfear and serving as a meatshield is not useful? Some servers ban epic dragon knight and guess what. Dragon companion is a permanent dragon knight epic spell. Is like say that the hotu crafted golem is useless. Is much better than for an example a "0 damage companion, useless meat-shield familiar"

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I like play as sorc, but my playtrough as sorc was a pain in the ***; my playthrough as druid is not frustrating as hell. Finished BG1 as solo sorc at max difficulty, finished nwn1, dragon age origin, etc, etc, etc; the unique game that i have problems was nwn2. During the final battle in OC and MOTB, i was forced to reduce the difficulty...

Only clerics gets no use from charisma apart from busting "Turn undead". And Shaman/Favourite soul do not get DC. DS and is pretty much paladin feat. Or cleric dip feat on sorc/control warlock
http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Nature's_Avatar
This. This is the reason why dragon companion is rubbish in nwn2. Zero damage meatshield familiar is exactly what dragon is.(Through even this do not boost dino companion past 30-40% hit chance)
Lets recount - you collected bunch of bad spells, took lameball, ignored your AC and did not get how to utilise party and now sayiing that sorcs are not valuable. Sorcs are not press X to win.

While I agree that if you was ass during your playthrough of MotB final boss can be quite hard(It you wasn't ass you get either Gann or Safiya as support in final fight and well... two casters are awesome and Gunn by this time might become actually good tank). But reducing difficulty in final fight of OC... I mean unlimited revive item, ton of supporting characters with bard who sing inspire courage, two healers... I mean... Duel with Lorn is harder 0_0 Of course unless you didn't ignore party all playthrough and didn't pay attention towards what you take on them...

I've spended 99% of OC with i and + 2 guys in my party, so i have only 3 eqquiped guys in final boss all other guys have only the "defeault" eqquipment and in some cases no eqqiupment. Also, as i've said, i prefer role play a character than spend 50000 years giving orders to each party member. The IA of nwn2 is pretty bad. They suddenly stop attacking or following you, you need to pause each 3 times/minute to give the same order, over and over again... While in nwn1 i can talk to the NPC ask for the NPC to do something and... The NPC will do.

Also, the IA of opponents are terrible too. Cast a couple of firewalls during the Keep siege - they simple walk to death, no ones wait until the fire disapear and engage in a ranged combat or tries dispel your wall even if they can cast dispel or attack you at range, even DOS games have better IA...

And again, i found zero problems beating BG1 solo. About "nature avatar", this spell din't exist in nwn1. Is a good reason to not use Dragon Companion in nwn2(since he is not considered an animal so can't be affected), but is more one good spell for divine casters...

How do you think that give a lot of powerful spells to divine casters and remove allmost all defensive spells and nerf the remain spells to do 1/6 of original damage(like they did with tentacles) for arcane casters will make the game balanced? He is a broken boss, not a hard boss. Mephistopheles is a hard boss. He can teleport you, he can dispell your defenses, do a lot of damage that bypass my increased DR spells, have a lot of immunities, summon huge elementals... faceless man is a non memorable boss that is only "hard" because he is immortal until he summons 4 minions.

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If you put nwn2 epic druid/cleric against a monster with the same stats as mephistopheles, he can easily kill mephistopheles 2.0, but if you put a NWN2 wizard/sorcerer against a enemy like mephistopheles, he will never wins...

Without defensive spells, he can kill you even at lv 38 in one turn.

SO basically you ignored Navals words about preparing everything you can.
How many times did nwn1 companion run trough traps collecting a lot of damage or suddenly decided to run after some small(maybe even summon) letting tuge chunk of guys attack you instead?

And in nwn1 undead priests had a habit of casting heal upon themselves when they are hurt

Mirror Image, Spiderskin, Shadow shield are not defensive spells? You lost some, and you get some. Add existence of zero spell failure chainmalis, zero spell failure shield - lack of defence is only your own fault. You have ASoC to throw around empowered 8 level polar ray, you have EK for 10HD and high bab at a cost of 2CL(One for Matrial progiency class, One for EK1) which easily metigated by Practiced Spellcaster. Hell even Pale master 1 give you +1AC

Only Faceless Man is not that hard at all since he is just a fighter with few spell like abilities. Yes, he has summon spawning, yes he has 30 in each stat, but apart from that only actual part of Faceless man is that he spirit eat you. Which you can easily fix by casting devour spirit on him since you get unlimited uses of it. If you have a second party member is

You act like only sorcs were nerfed. Druids lost their shifter prc which let player completely ignore physical stats. Dwarf defender lost epic DR progression, Divine champion(CoT) was nerfed into oblivion with significally cut bonus feat choises and once again no epic save progression. Fact that you bab grow through all 30 levels means that gap between high bab and medium bab is much highter and with higher enemies AC all around(AC25 dor example is pretty much becomes norm for Act2 OC enemies.) that makes it much more important for melee character to stuck up AB. And yardstick druid... is not very good at it.

Also I think you mixing up class strengh and class accessibility. Lets compare two high bab melee classes and compare them. Who is easier to make - str based pure fighter of str based pure ranger?

Lets start with a Fighter. He, of course couse you can wear heavy armor, you naturally get all WF and WS line and boost your strengh with great str on epic, also taking EWF and EWS. Only point where you can screw up is by not taking Blind fight somewhere pre epic to not suffer through consealed enemies in MotB

Now lets look at ranger - you want to get AC, while you cant wear heavy armor and you wont use shields since you'll most likely dual wield(and if you want to use heavy armor, you need to take two feats loosing other stuff), you want to have HP since you cant rank up AC as much as just medium fighter, you want AB since you loose some AB when you dual wield and you unable to get EWF since it require fighter 8 greater weapon focus feat. And you need to utilise correct favourite enemies, couse if you didn't took undead, fey. elementals and aberration(faceless man) one of your main selling points becomes less then usefull and if you didn't get bane of enemies and expose weakness it just a waste.

So fighter is pretty much foolproof here. Now, when they are all build well and setuped - who is stronger? Ranger. SInce with a correct FE, carefully selected feats and stats he will steamroll through encounters where fighter would feel himself somewhat uncomfortable , additionally he can cast few decent spells(like cat's grace). Sorcing around require understanding of game mechanics. And while wizards indeed has some edge over sorc(RWT helps since dew to way enhanced specialization is implemented - you do not loose spells which you already learned prior to getting second banned school) sorc is still insanely powerful in right hands

That is my point. Sorcs are the most nerfed class, but this doesn't means that are the unique.

NWN2 was designed to be played with an generic melee character and be more closer to an 'generic jrpg' that you spend more time giving the same order to party member than actually role playing a character. I an not saying that there aren't good jrpg because Dark Souls and Dragon's Dogma are jrpg that you din't spend 99% of time giving the same order, over and over again. The companion IA in DD is amazing.

According to user Darvin "The biggest problem is that there are circumstances where the game will strip you of your debuffs (even ones that would have lasted a full 24 hours) and/or move you to the front of the party to begin battle almost in melee range of the enemy. These annoying anti-caster measures don't make the Sorcerer unviable, though. ", so this proves my point. Are, but try face mephistopheles with only nwn2 defensive spells, you can put in easy difficulty... Good luck. You will need it... I got no information about unlimited uses of devour and let's be honnest. "i an immortal until i realize 4 summons, but i will use this 4 summons because i an dumb" is a terrible boss design.

Thats just funny to hear looking at a guys like Divine champion, warpriest and duelist which pretty much worse choise in any situation and barbarian with "Make me weak" button instead of main selling point. Or hell, even warlock, who at 30 lvl cast like 15 lvl caster

Actually Nwn2 OC do roleplay a lot better then nwn1 OC where you runned around with little to no agency and in "best" TES Oblivion tradition being bystander in their own story. But what make it worse in original nwn1 companions all your actions has zero consequences in story. Everything you did in act one was dropped in act 2. And parts where you could do something has zero interaction with story itself

... Only its not anti-caster measures. It engine limitations and they are connected to a way companion put together. I'm not very good with NWN2 editor so I'd like to have someone who know this stuff better emplane it in more details, but as far as I remember its connected with the way modules are connected in companion. Because it\s not only remove spell buffs but debuffs as well and hell, even interact with battlemods and inspirations

With only spells? Or with caster PrC which boost caster level and has enhanced metamagic, 0ASF chainmail +7 and 0ASF shield? I'm pretty sure I'd be totally oc.

So the fact that all limiting numbers on Spirit Eater skills disappeared wasn't a signal that you can use them nonstop?Only they are not actually summons from story point. Its more like you are separating Akachi soul from Wall hunger. Don't forget - Akachi is not mastermind behind story. He is insane cursed spirit will with hunger of abhorrent eldritch monstrosity.

Here is the stats for Mephistopheles in DnD > http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/devil/archdevil/archdevil-mephistopheles/

I believe that his stats are the similar in Nwn1. If there are any creatures with similar stats in any nwn2 module, you can try kill this creature with sorc, or you can use the Automatic still spell feat to be able to cast lv 9 spells inside armor, you can use a "test" module in nwn1 to face him at lv 40 with full armor or multiclass, i don't care, you will never be able to defeat him with only nwn2 sorc spells doesn't mater how high is your AC.

It wasn't an engine limitation. There is no need to strip effects from the party and move the main character to the front. The scripts they used in the OC for their triggers were specifically written to do this, because they chose to manage the plot variables in a particular way. The scripts can be edited not to do it with no ill effects in new modules, or you can use custom scripts that don't do it. Many user-made modules exist where this is not done, and allow the currently-controlled character to do the talking, and/or just don't teleport the players anywhere against their will, or force them into conversations. These are all things that the designers of the official campaigns chose, and which any mod maker can choose not to do.

I wouldn't be so sure. First of all as far as I remember there are no 40SR in nwn1. Pretty sure he is weaker ingame. Might be mistaken of course, through I'd still prefer direct stat from last HotU battle(as developers might have chosen to reedit).

Anyway in nwn2 sorcerer can easily get AC of 69. Than means that Meph would be able to strike you on 14 and up. Add here that sorc taking 2 pal levels can easy get Divine grace - DC of 32-31 is kinda a bit too low to break through sorc save after he got decent items and buffed. So I'm pretty sure if well setuped sorc from MotB(who used everything avaliable to him) would have come to fight nwn1 mephisto he would be able to beat him without too much problems.
Lets just put a classic sorc buil here. http://nwn2db.com/build/?21154
Most of sorcs go armored RTA casters with divine dip(paladin/blackguard/cleric), while wizards go for DC spells(once again wizards has RWT class which boost DC). Anyway I wouldn't call a guy who can walk around with 69AC and mid 40 saves buffed nerfed or unviable

----update-----
And here is AC breakdown[in the notes]
http://nwn2db.com/build/?141
Everything is easy obtainable in MotB with just one item crafted and one re-enchanted. 75 AC fully buffed. Look like Meph would hit only on 20

I don't remember game going out of its ways specifically to strip you effects. Yes It does occasionally teleport, but that game went out their way to remove all your buffs and not replenish spells/ability - that kinda didn't happen. And as far as teleport go I feel it was just a way Obsibian tried to make sure that you character does not talking while being stuck in the wall outside of room. Maybe not a best choice, but I don't feel that it was specifically "evil" plan to "screw up mages".

Anyway, can you give example of player being striped from buffs? When your PC was specifically cleaned from spells in situation, where he wouldn't normally - for example in the middle of location of in-between aligned locations(like cemetery-tumb, one that can be travelled between without use of world map). Because your spells becomes automatically dispelled if you for example travel from West Harbor to Inn with word map even through there are no dialogues there.