There are also some very nasty Mummies in SoU. That said, you're going to want an item that grants immunity to mind-affecting spells at some point, and that encompasses fear. Travel Domain has other useful spells, haste just happens to be the best one in there. As far as items go, you may want to use your item slot for different items other than haste effects, or to caste haste on your henchmen. It's still a very nice spell to have. Yup; given that you'll have more HP and higher AC than a wizard this is probably a lot better than DR for you.


Strength Domain will work just fine.

You can still cast Haste on a summoned creature or henchman, it isn't completely useless. But generally I would prefer domains that offered spells/abilities not easily available through commonly available magical items. Speed potions are available. (ETA: I see now the point is already covered.)

In NWN2 casting stoneskin on everyone made combat much easier but I must admit that I never used invisibility or concealment. My char will wear full plate, tower shield and other things that boost AC, so she will rarely get hit by normal enemies.

As stats I thought of: str 14, dex 12, con 14, int 10, wis 14, cha 14

Enough strenght to carry her equipment (but not much more) and when she gets lv9 spells (Char level 21) she has 19 wis. Spell DC will not be significant since most spells will be buffs and summons.

As henchman I thought of a strong fighter (pack mule) and a rogue like char.

Question: how intelligent are caster companions?
My motto is: expect nothing and you will get it

example: A weak zombie walks towards us and a boss is at the other end of the room. I expect my mage friend will throw a fireball at the zombie next to him and almost kill himself in doing so. Than he starts running and attacs the boss with a dagger. (In arcanum they will do this)

- Does something exist that gives you full control over your party that you can play it like NWN2, BG, IWD and so on?

-Is there a list what effect counts as what? Like what is a mind effecting spell? Till now I thought this is only confusion and domination. I am also not sure what belongs to death magic. There might be other categories I don´t even know.

-What means ETA?

final note: Until now (I am at the end of chapter 2) the OC of NWN1 is so easy that you can do it with almost any char.
The problem is: If you know how to create a good char (I think I am) you are also good enough to play the game with a bad char. But if you are completely new to such games you need a good char to play it but you don´t know how to create a good char.

Concealment stacks with AC. So if they have a 20% chance of hitting you thanks to your armor, then adding 50% concealment reduces it to only a 10% chance to hit you. Very effective way of doing things.

Stoneskin is nice, but it gets less useful later since enemies can get around it. That'll work just fine. Well, that's exactly what to expect with regards to NWN henchmen.

Micromanage them as much as possible. For mind-affecting: stunning, fear, confusion, domination. Pretty much anything that prevents you from acting normally that isn't some form of paralysis (you need "freedom of movement" to deal with that).

Death magic is simple: if it kills enemies on a failed saving throw, it's death magic. Some of the areas can be challenging for melee-types. Some of the monsters have some pretty nasty save-or-suck abilities with unreasonably high DC's, others have absolutely enormous hit point totals and need to be defeated using disabling abilities.

Thanks

As I have written, I have a rogue/fighter/blackguard now.
Grimgnaw runs forward, attracts all enemies and gets rarely hit while doing tons of damage.
This allows me to sneak attack them, which goes well with a scythe and improved critical thread range.
When fighting mages, I knock them down all the time and he beats the hell out of them.

I always carry some equipment that protects from some effects (mind affecting, freedom, death, ...) in my magic bag in case I need it.

about my future sou/hotu char
I am a bit sad there are no aasimar in NWN1.

If you install the TonyK AI (and you can install the henchman AI part of it only and skip the monster AI and other stuff), your henchmen spellcasters choose spells much more intelligently. And you can give them more complex instructions on how to use spells.

They still won't be as smart as a player spellcaster, but at least it doesn't feel like they waste spells and drag things down.

I suppose my most recent playthrough was as a solo character without any companion (Fighter/Rogue/Weapon Master) which would affect my perception of the difficulty quite dramatically. Yeah, just the basic races and no way to get mental ability score bonuses. On the other hand, that levels the playing field somewhat for casters.

My personal recommendation for a complete SoU/HotU playthrough is a human Sorcerer. I recently did a SoU/HotU playthrough as a Sorcerer with a one level dip in barbarian.

I have finished the OC of NWN1.

I got level 17 short before the final battle.
Usually my henchman was 1 level behind me, but at the end he stayed at lv 14.
Is this normal?

Now i started HoU with my cleric.
Both games start with your school being overrun by goblins.
Lets see what ancient evil lies behind this.
Somewere in the multiverse must queue of ancient evils and whenever one of them
is defeated the next one starts his mission to enslave the world.
Their first step is always to attac a small village and then one of the survivors kicks their ass.
The only succes of these ancient evils is to inspire fantasy authors to write the same
story a million times again.

This is my first caster in NWN1 so here are 2 more questions:
-In NWN1 clerics cannot convert any of their spells to healing spells, or am I to stupid to find it?
I guess it will be the same with druids and summon animal.

-Is there a quick spell menu (its the F button by default in NWN2)?
When my quick slot if full I have to cast every spell with the ring menu.

They can. It's not intuitive though. From the wiki:

To set a spontaneously cast spell for a cleric, the player must drag the spell from the spellbook to a quickslot. These slots will have their number of uses (top-right corner) displayed as "S", indicating that the slot represents spontaneous castings. (Technically, the "S" designation only appears when the cleric has no memorized uses of the spell remaining, but this is usually the case as players never need to explicitly memorize spells that can be spontaneously cast.)

Druids don't have spontaneous casting as far as I remember.

No quick cast menu, but keep in mind that you do have three quick bars (the regular one, then one when you press Shift and one when you press CTRL) Then just hit the Function key for the corresponding quick slot. You can also quick cast with the number pad, using a 5 number combo to call up the spell (if memory serves, you bring up the radial by pressing the zero, then navigate from there with the other numbers. Once you get the number combos memorized it's pretty slick). This is actually radial casting, but it's much faster than navigating the radial with the mouse.

Please start to panic, because the madman has new great ideas.

Do characters die instantly when one of their stats is reduced to zero?

I thought of a swashbuckler19, fighter4, weapon master7 dual wielding keen kukries.
He would have the highest possible amount of criticals per round and each critical
hit reduces the strengh and the constitution of the target.

Of course, he is useless against undead and other things immun to crits.

New Problems in SoU.

In chapter 1 Dorna (my rogue henchman) automatically disarmed traps when standing close to it.
Now we are in the desert and she does not do anything, even when I command her to handle traps.
She does help me to open locks when I try to do it. I cannot try to disarm traps myself.
She also detects traps on her own.

It is not a big problem because I am a cleric so I have the find/disarm trap spell.
But it is strange to use a spell when a rogue with this skill stands next to you.

Had to double-check this one, but it seems that NWN has a minimum threshold of 3. Only level drain would be fatal. NWN1 does not have the Swashbuckler class, so this would be a NWN2 thing.

Unfortunately, the big problem I see with this combo is that you'll be well into the epic levels before it becomes fully-operational and you've got a pretty long haul ahead of you otherwise. Swashbuckler is pretty barren from level 4-14 until you get your weakening critical, and even then you're still helpless against critical-immune enemies until you get the epic precision feat.

It is a bug that has apparently never been fixed.

There is a way to fix Dorna so she starts disarming traps again, using the Debug Console.

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/197/index/6299266#7959706

On your talk line, enter the following two lines:

##DebugMode 1
##dm_setvarint NW_ASSOCIATE_MASTER 18961

Then click on Dorna. After that, on the talk line:

##DebugMode 0

Hmm...

Tiefling - 10 / 18 / 12 / 18 / 10 / 8
All stat advances into dex

1 - Swashbuckler - weapon focus (kukri)
2 - Swashbuckler
3 - Fighter - two weapon fighting, dodge
4 - Fighter - mobility
5 - Swashbuckler
6 - Rogue - spring attack
7 - Rogue
8 - Rogue
9 - Rogue - combat expertise
10 - Rogue
11 - Rogue
12 - Rogue - whirlwind attack
13 - Weapon Master
14 - Weapon Master
15 - Weapon Master - improved two weapon fighting
16 - Weapon Master
17 - Weapon Master
18 - Weapon Master - greater two weapon fighting
19 - Weapon Master
20 - Rogue
21 - Rogue - epic dexterity
22 - Rogue - crippling strike
23 - Fighter - epic precision
24 - Fighter - weapon specialization (kukri)
25 - Rogue - perfect two weapon fighting
26 - Rogue
27 - Rogue - slippery mind, improved critical