Cormyr and the Dalelands

Is there a way to actually control which way the spells like Blade Barrier and Firewall pop up in game? Because it seems to me that I can only summon them in a North to South direction? No matter how the spell was targeted.

And is there a way to make it so that offensive AoE spells do not automatically snap to nearest hostile?

For offensive AoE spells, you should be able to target them on the ground, in which case they will fire centered there.

As far as I know, blade barrier and wall of fire both started having that problem with an EE patch and there's no way of reorienting them. Believe me, I've tried. 

Yeah, I can cast spells on the ground, but if I want to place it neatly at the center of a mob, I run the risk of accidentally clicking on a mob running at me... And then the spell explodes on my own face... I guess I just need to get into the habit of targeting spells way off from the monster hit boxes.

Oh and it is a game patch related problem? In that case, I guess there is no choice but to keep looking at that small compass down at the bottom right then when casting those wall spells.

Thanks for answers!

Yeah, there's not much of a way around having to be careful with placement. Mastery of Shaping helps though!

As for the other issue, we poked around it a bit and it seems like it's a CD specific issue so we're looking at fixing it. Don't have a timetable on that, but we are looking into it.

Speaking of Mastery of Shaping, does it allow one and one's friends to sit within a Cloadkill kind of spell? Or is it just for single burst AoE spells?

Clouds become safe, too. There are few (very few!) exceptions. The only one that comes to mind right now is the epic spell Hellball.

Epic spells are exempt, and dispels will still affect your friends. Otherwise I believe it makes almost every spell safe.

Alright, then it is a feat to look forward to. : )

So I went digging into the code on this, and unfortunately there's an engine level setup where the workaround that CD uses to control those spells for things like Timestop and mastery of Shaping, strips the facing data from the effect, causing it to always end up in a north-south position.

I've mentioned this quirk to the NWN devs, though I'm not holding my breath as our implementation is a rather unique one where we put the effect on an object, rather than at a location. But we'll see.

So, am I wrong to assume that the Time Stop spell does not freeze the entire server on CD?

Timestop only freezes the area you're in.

That is good to know.