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There's more reasons why you see scimitars most often (it's not 60-70% by far though, especially as two handed weapons are pretty popular) For druids and clerics its also spikes which is very notable dmg boost. And while hitting might seems easy on lower tiers once you move to T5 get ready to missing a lot for a while. And there's T6 with even higher ACs coming. And scrolls and buffs help only in limited fashion as there is still +20ab hard cap you can't avoid. Also you are not giving up ton of AC by not using shield. You're giving up 3-5 based on a build (as do you only use shield spell for +4 or do you have divine shield to give you up to +10 shield AC) Only reason I have one character using shield is that he's FS who needs to use bastard sword and doesn't have dex to dual wield. Otherwise I'd alsways pick two handed or dual wield just as a personal choice. Shields are boring.

And yes ultimately it also boils down to what is reasonably possible as we do have shared weapon feats where under same group you have weapons with different ranges and mults.

In the end I really think main reason why some weapon groups aren't used lies much more in the loot and that is being worked on. I have character using maul and they're doing pretty well but there's only one T3 maul in loot and that's it. I love mercurial longswords but there are none (my dream is double-bladed mercurial but that probably ain't happening) even good scythes are  rare. Meanwhile there's over 18 T4 scimitars, many of them pretty good so its no wonder people stick to what they can find. Same reason why Shan used scimitars until he managed to get double-bladed from an event. I'm pretty sure we'll see much more variety as soon as there's new weapons in drops (which will also dillude how often the previously numerous ones show up)

I see few issues with that idea which I already discussed few times in mechanics on discord

The weapons with higher multiplier are meant to have slightly lower damage in total when you calculate against no AC and no DR as the inherent issue with your calculation there is lack of considering these factors and devast as it is now reflects that well. Yes you'll get less total devast damage from 3x or 4x weapon with smaller range BUT consider high AC enemy you only hit on rolls of 16+ for example. Then it doesn't matter if you are WM with scimitar with range of 10-20 because you can't crit if you don't hit. So you crit on 16-20 and WM with 5x mod weapon also crits on 16-20 and hugely pulls ahead with damage.

Higher mult weapons also of course have big advantage vs enemies with high DR though I admit those are somewhat rare on CD and likely won't be encountered outside of events. Premonition on other hand is very common.

This would also make greatsword even better than it is as you can already flip between falchion, gs and mercurial under same feats and if devast would scale up with it instead of making all weapons more equal you just have the best option by far there as flip to merc with boosted devast would be crazy against any higher AC enemy.

In general you can view high range - low mult weapons as perfect for killing regular enemies while low range high mult are perfect for bosses or enemies with huge hp pools and high ACs (event enemies typically). So while high range weapons might seem better in general or even for running dungeons where most of the action is killing lots of weaker foes for bosses and events higher multiplier weapons can easily pull ahead where it matters the most.

Hello and welcome!

We certainly do all we can to make CD welcoming to new players and you don't have to worry about asking. Be sure to join us on discord too where you can also ask specific lore and mechanics questions and get answers usually very quickly. While using the discord is not mandatory for players its definitely greatly recommended.
discord.gg/cormyrdales also you absolutely can poke me directly if you have any more questions Wolfgar#3367

1. Neither is mine and I get to inflict it on the poor unsuspecting players from above and bellow. And judging from your initial post you are fine really. Don't worry about it, after all NWN is one of the best ways how to improve your English. If it worked for dumb ol' me it'll work for everyone.

2. Getting into NWN: EE and its very specific mechanics can be bit intimidating at first but very much worth it. If you have experience with NWN2 though it should be much easier for you. We have few introductory quests thart should also take you around the main areas and show you first few locations but the easiest way how to get around when you're new and not getting lost though is to join forces with some other adventurers!

3. You actually don't have to worry about that here too much because CD allows for rebuilds and relevels to fix all the early mechanical mistakes you might make being new (or for many of us even old) to the server. Up to lvl 12 you're even allowed to make some major changes to your character concept like deity, alignment or main classes as you might find out that your character naturally turned in other direction than you originally planned and that's fine. Rebuilds and relevels are availible at all levels.

4. Cormyr with the Arabel as the main hub is LG/LN focused which means it great place for such characters to get involved. My main character being LN Helmite and most played alt LN member of purple dragons. Depending on choice of deity or focus you'll certainly find characters willing to take your character under their wings as well

Adding few more spells on 3rd and 4th would also help and give some motivation to also take more levels on paladin. Those slots are mostly useless now. And there's definitely some spells that would be helpful and can be considered. Moon blade on 3rd would be great and it would further empathise how good paladins should be against undead. And since it does positive damage it stacks with holy. 4th can be open for some AoE party buff like battletide.

While Helm's dislike of Lathander is well known Wolfgang has no reasons to share the animostity and had been on neutral to friendly terms with them in past, as father Lewis provided him support in battles against undead keeping Wolfgang supplied with divine scrolls and Charlotte is currently helping him he would not push himself forward into the temple matters but readily offer aid if asked.

Jan 8, 2022 22:17:59 GMT -5 snorriht said:

I had a contrasting experience playing on a hardcore server, in that the roleplay happened before level 20.

This was because the epic level content was content so brutal, only cookie-cutter builds were needed, and were welcome in parties.

It took me two years to get my caster cleric to epic level, with a rich history of roleplay, relationships, plots and fun for all. And after epic level, she was a heal-bot. It was a total let-down for me.

And I was one of the lucky ones! Melee-oriented Clerics were almost non-viable in epic levels, due to the amount of dispel, and dispel-on-hit spam. 

Most roleplay-oriented characters retired there early teens, because it was extremely difficult to level, and soloing was near suicidal.

Ah yes, you can either play on hardcore server or have fun but not both.

Week is way too long time period, I fully agree on that. 2 or 3 day buffer now that sounds actually great. Same progress speed we have now and the system I enjoy but without the stress of having to get to the cap daily, juggling characters and feeling guilty when I miss it. And yes I absolutely know I shouldn't worry that much about it but tell that to my weird brain. With like three day buffer I could take a day to focus on one character without worry I'm missing on another and focus on them next day whithout creating the "long pauses" that had been main argument against weekly xp. Or you can keep getting your daily 300 as you're used to.

Question of course is how hard would it be to script something like you get 300rpxp daily and they stack up to the cap of X but with Fox magic everything is probably possible. That is of course if admins might like the idea enough to consider it.

The weekly xp cap rather than daily gets discussed every few months and the arguments against it are always the same, instead of showing up daily some characters would only appear once a week and then disappear, less activity, less interest and so on and I kinda agree with all of those. But then you have daily xp with the stress to catch up and make it and people hopping from character to character to get their ticks everywhere and... it almost makes me think day is too short and week is too long. In a way something like 2-3 days would probably be ideal. It's not as intuitive than day or week but it'd take away stress about missing a day and give you more time to spend on single character without missing on another while not having the long pauses of weekly cap.

I like current system but this is the only change I think could be really positive.

Dec 21, 2021 9:55:20 GMT -5 sneakyone said:

We certainly have completely opposite view on this. For me this doesn't seem like a fair compromise at all, it feels like a very strict reachout towards passive/social playstyle only. 

"- It encourages you to log in and play, it's only up to you what you like to do. You can RP. You can run dungeons. You can run around collecting balls. And that's the BEST thing about it."

There would be encouragement to log in even more without this system, it just kills motivation to do most of that. If some people would like "free xp" for their RP, I wouldn't mind them keeping the ticks. Though if possible I'd opt out of it myself because I don't get any enjoyment for leveling up for picking up snowballs.

Also I don't mean to bash social servers. If people just want to chitchat it's all fine with me, as long as they have fun. I don't care if they get free xp for doing so. It's not my thing though.

I think that minset is the entire problem really - the very "traditional" mindset of in DnD you get xp for killing things. But if you look at almost any modern pen and paper system pretty much all abandoned this idea. Because it's nonsence. The name of the thing is experience. Well anything can be experience. You're way more likely to improve your persuade by talking to people rather than bashing things over the head. Sure most characters are adventurers and that's why there's still combat xp element but I've always found idea of smashing things until you ding concept that fits much better into mmorpgs than experience focused on Roleplay.

I've been DMing pen and paper games since what... 2001 I think and I've never used the per kill experience once in any of my games, instead rewarding players based on their activity, actions, what their characters learned and how they've developed. And that's RP xp. On CD you can see the xp being split between combat, the deeds done (the DM events) and personal development and growth and that's the xp fairy. All of those together make sense way more than just picking one as the best and only one.  Why the idea of character getting experience for picking snowballs seems weird? Because my character while picking snowballs found playces they had no idea existed and learned way way more than from punting gobblins around for couple of hours. Exploration is none less wonderous than combat. Even if the character already knows the places and just jogs around for two hours I heard that's actually how you level up your physique in real life.

["RP XP" does not encourage RP]

This might be hard to see for someone new to server but even existence of the 300 daily fairy xp is actually huge progress and it got the leveling experience and speed to rather comfortable levels, on top of that you have pretty fast early game which allows you to try out builds, characters and concepts before you pick those you like to stick with when the progress slows down. It's balanced out so event xp are very welcome and significant boost and players have motivation to want to be involved yet those who cannot still aren't left completely stranded and have some means of progression.

Honestly I think it's exactly where it should be. We'll never see uncapped xp on CD and I don't think I'd want to. For longest time I've been proponent of playing only single character and found it bit unfair but in the end it did motivated me to make couple more characters and I found out I'm actually having more fun. Current system is perfect in a way that even if you have IRL stuff and can't play half of the day you can still keep up with everyone else on at least one character. If you have more time well you can have 2-3 characters that will still progress nicely. Or army of alts.

This is a system that takes in consideration that none of us is in their teens anymore, most of us not even in their twenties. It offers pretty fair compromise to allow people to progress and live their lives.

Point by point:

"RP XP" does not encourage RP

- It encourages you to log in and play, it's only up to you what you like to do. You can RP. You can run dungeons. You can run around collecting balls. And that's the BEST thing about it.

It discourages activity

- If I get into fun RP or go into dungeon I enjoy I honestly don't care if I'm getting ticks or not. Neither should you. If you want to keep progressing and have more time it allows you to progress few different characters at even pace with their friends and allies. Also social servers are bad? It's characters living their lives. Being social is part of it.

It severely restricts creating new characters

- Actually it had been exactly the opposite for me. Afer being player of one single character for good 15 years this system was what made me to try some new ideas, builds and characters and I'm having more fun for it in the end.

It limits players' ability to create storylines

- You can still do that. Early levels are unlimited and quick so you can even get new alts up to speed and try out character concepts and builds before you decide what you want to put time and effort into and that's great. Also as personal pet peeve please keep in mind there are players who simply do not enjoy player conflict, making antagonist disposable baddies is fine if that's the style you enjoy, just make sure everyone else involved is on board with that. Another option if you want to create storylines for other players is to consider DM application! That's what DM's on CD are supposed to be after all, the storytellers. DM program will give you all the tools needed to make stories for other players.

It splits already small playerbase

- The playerbase is largest than ever! You can find groups in almost any level range easily these days. Also the level range works bit differently. You add up level (including ECL) of all characters in the group, then divide it by the number of characters to get average. Everyone up to 3 levels from the average gets full xp, 4 is 50% of the xp and 5 from the average is none. This means it's not as limited as you might think.

It puts unfair and unnecessary stress on both players and DMs

- December is not good example being hectic for almost everyone but there are plenty of events to go around and choose from, we're covering more time zones now too.

In the end of the day, this is just a game and it should be easy to approach and fun

- I absolutely agree with that sentiment but I really believe the current system makes that fair compromise to have fun for everyone. From one extreme of having no fairy to the other extreme of completely unlimited combat XP the current system sits right in the middle. Sure the "most fun" might be in different spots for different players but it's the compromise so everyone is close enough to still have fun instead of being ideal for one player and terrible for another.

I've been trying to make paladin build for few days now and I'd say they are not great but they are not terrible. Main problem with the class is that you're getting no reward for going into the higher levels and bit of imbalance compared to barbarian/ranger/GK which all got extra feats while paladin didn't. Sure you can take hospitaler but it's not impactful as it is for cleric and in my building I in the end rather went with figher. I think extra feat every 5 level in line with barbarian changes would put paladins in the right spot they deserve, especially given the 1/2 rule.

As for keen it's missing mostly on old weapons and it's fairly common on new ones. But if you have UMD/arcane levels you're better off using bit better weapons without keen and getting keen from scrolls anyway.

Hello and wecome back!
If you are using steam version you only need to go to nwn steam workshop and find Cormyr and the Dalelands Persistent World Haks and I'd suggest getting optional Cormyr and the Dalelands Portraits and Voices as well. Steam will keep them updated for you as well (handy as there will be hak update today). Also if you played before the Enhanced Edition your characters will likely need to be moved over, Bella did that for me when I came back. If you use discord CD has discord server where you can ask questions and get response to possible troubleshooting pretty quickly... and it's also full of wonderful people.

And ultimate one for Wolfgang

Wolfgang's especially related to memory loss of his previous time in Arabel it's very spot on.

Jun 15, 2021 15:52:57 GMT -5 etanu said:

But...But...My cook!

I have real people to cook for as well