Neverwinter Nights 2 Community Update #5

Obsidian’s public relations manager Shane DeFreest has once again stopped by the official Neverwinter Nights 2 forums to provide us with a fifth community update for the game. His full post to follow:

First off I apologize for this being late. Last week was quite possibly the busiest week at Obsidian to date since I’ve been involved with the project. I wish we had a little bit more to report this week but as many of you know we’re still waiting on some final touches before the website goes live.

In the meantime Chris Avellone and Charles Mead have some answers to your questions.

Enjoy!

1) Will the system allow monsters with more than one pair of attacking members e.g. a Marilith?

Chris Avellone: Those monsters do exist, but their actual mechanics is that of a 2-armed creature so you would need to up their attacks and add the special abilities to their attacks to simulate the damage and powers of a 4 armed attacker.

2) For me, the biggest letdown was “hard-coded” abilities such as knockdown, disarm and other feats. Will these be alterable through scripting in NWN2?

Charles Mead: New scripting commands allow feats to be given to players on a permanent basis not just as an effect or item property.

3) NWN1, if we wanted to have two of the same monster but that looked different, we needed to have two instances on the palette; eg two ogre models that were identical except for appearance. I know for trees there will be a built-in randomizer to allow for variety without the need for each version to be on the palette. Will we have that approach, with a built-in randomization, or will each different appearance need to be on the palette?

Charles Mead: Each different appearance will need to be on the palette.

4) Will there be monsters with the ability to grapple or swallow the heroes?

Chris Avellone: Unfortunately, no. While a cool feature, we can’t do in the time provided.

5) Will we get truly incorporeal undead this time? Shadows, spectres etc were seriously lacking in challenge in NWN1 due mainly to the fact that they did not get any incorporeal benefits (50% chance to ignore hits, touch attack that ignores armour etc).

Charles Mead: I believe this will be fully supported.