The boss fights in this game are just crap. You really can't do anything for tactics against enemy spell casters. I buffed up and recruited allies in one of the expansions and an enemy mage killed everyone with all their weapons deflecting.

Playing this game after playing some of the other games like infinity engine games is a complete difference. The non d and d party based games are better than this and I bet only some classes can beat certain scenarios.

This is a pure example of what happens when bioware stops making good games, they make miscarriages like this. Its no wonder none of their games they made after kotor were 3/10 stars.

Ive tried this game with the original campaign 3 times and can't get past desther. SOU is worse and tried 2 characters. Bioware deserves all their staff to get aids for this haha!

I've beaten all the games in both NWN and NWN2 (including all the modules) with multiple party makeups as well. I'm not even that hardcore of a gamer either.

Ever consider you simply just stink at the game?

so since you're bad at this game, the Bioware staff should get AIDS?

It's been about 10 years since I played the OC of NWN1, but I just finished a playthrough of SoU and I have to say none of it is too terribly difficult. Chapter 1 is probably the most difficult of the chapters though.

Mages will mop the floor with you in any D&D game if you aren't careful. This goes double in NWN1 where the time stop and haste spells let them spam their payload at an alarming rate.

The best strategy for dispatching mages is to open with a dispel effect to remove some of their protections then have a big warrior hit them over the head with a heavy weapon. If you're really having troubles, the right protections Little hard to comment on this generally given the wildly different scenarios the NWN series can throw at you, but I'd contest the point.

There certainly are strong and weak classes in NWN, and this is more pronounced in the first game where you have a very limited selection of henchmen rather than a full party backing you up. I'd accept that you can't solo the game with all classes, but you certainly can beat it with anything.

Heck, I've completed Storm of Zehir with a 14th level party. Heavily optimized, to be sure, but that's still a fight designed for 20th level characters. There are a couple bosses in chapter 1 of the NWN OC that have an inexplicably large number of hit points. There's a Rogue boss in the docks with around 250 hit points! Desther is one of these bosses. The problem of hit point bloat doesn't emerge in later chapters (some of the bosses are comically fragile), so I have no idea what happened with chapter 1.

As for Shadows of Undrendtide, there are lots of ways to approach the challenges it throws at you. Most of the difficult fights can be skipped or made much easier (the fight against J'Nah's elemental guardians, as pointed out in another recent thread, is an exception that sticks out like a sore thumb). I've beaten chapter 1 of SoU with a wide variety of different classes. SoU is the only NWN campaign I've solo'd with a single-class rogue.

The whole game is a joke. I really wanted to get past chapter 1 because I felt that I should give it a chance. I had a long history with Neverwinter Nights and spoke with a few people on here who have stated that if your not over leveled for boss fights, you will die every time. The dialogue and story is terrible compared to infinity engine games. Im playing Planescape and the story is epicly done.

Bioware really couldn't make any more good games after Kotor and Baldurs Gate. They exhausted all their ideas. They made Jade Empire which sucked, then they did Mass Effect which was a first person shooter, then Dragon Age which they compared to Baldurs Gate. The whole company is just one big dead baby joke.

I think family guy has better storytelling then current bioware which is sad. The only thing that can help them is new management.

Until then Spiderweb Software makes better party based games then all of those jew companies.

Well of course you beat the campaign in SOU. You were using a single class rogue. They are one of the best damage dealers in NWN. At lvl 6 they have a decent sneak attack with every chance. What do I have a bard who deals more damage with bard song that I don't know. He has 70 health for a lvl 6 bard and his song lets him do good damage. He has 26 armor class and when buffed I soloed each of the elementals

I get to Jnah the fucking jew and she pulls a hook nose trick on me. Mages seem to always have an excuse for why they are powerful. Having 250 health or whatever isn't realistic in a game where fighters have half that. The balance is still in Alpha. Bards must suck because I took all the advice they gave me.

I think that is why D and D has a few inconsistencies in their games. In Baldurs Gate 1 Sarevok was immune to magic. I don't care what level he is, it seems like the bad guy in each of the d and d games has a sick card every time someone castrates him with a curved dagger. The mage says he cast a spell when taking a shit before the fight, bullshit. The fighter said he practiced resistance stuff to make him immune to magic.

Im sorry but each of the games bosses always has an excuse for why they are powerful. If you are a lvl 10 mage, you don't have 250 health.

Its somewhat ok for Sarevok because he has magic missile weakness for magic. The mages in Neverwinter Nights are glitched with high health and sick card bullshit. They are immune to melee.

The balance and realistics is just not d and d's good card. In fact their good card with balance is when I Jnah gets raped by her acolytes. Why she allows them to do that is beyond me.

I am so fucking Angry.

if it will help you, here's a cheesetastic way I found to beat J'Nah.

First, make sure you recruited the gnoll allies to back you up. Then apply all buffs and entire J'Nah's room. Walk slowly toward her and her entourage until she starts running toward you. At that point, immediately run towards the corner farthest from her cronies. She will follow you but the minions will not. Go through the dialogue and initiate combat. Use the powder from the dragon if you have it. The gnolls will enter and immediately charge J'Nah's guards, leaving the silly elf witch to you and your sidekick/summons. As Darvin said, dispell any of her buffs and wail away.

I see why you might be having trouble- single-classed bards don't have much in the way of offensive power, and are designed more to back up the rest of the party. This can prove a bit of a challenge in NWN when you don't have much of a party to back up. If you're intent on playing a single-class bard then you'll want to pick up one of the heavy-hitting henchmen (either the fighter or the monk), then use them plus buffs as your main source of offensive power. Alternatively there's the multiclassing route- Bard/Arcane Archer combinations are fairly popular and can make for decent ranged characters, while for more melee focused Barbarian is often a popular choice, sometimes with some RDD levels thrown in later for the attribute bonuses (these builds tend to start with the melee class levels, since low-level bards can lack offensive power, as you're finding out). Alternatively, you could multiclass with some rogue levels for sneak attack damage and pump stealth, just make sure you have a henchman who can get the attention of enemies so you can use that sneak attack, or pick up a level of Shadowdancer for Hide in Plain Site (so you can stealth in combat).

Now this I can agree on. The NWN series definitely compares poorly against most of the IE games for its story. It's still passable and I personally feel the rest of the game (and the fan-made content especially) shores up those weaknesses. Not true! Not by a longshot!

The problem is that Rogues have lower accuracy and fewer attacks per round than a fighter. This is subtle at first but becomes more noticable as you go on. In practice, the fighter hits significantly far more often than an equal-level Rogue. The rogue actually needs to get a sneak attack on every hit just to break even with an equivalent fighter who lands hits far more reliably. And if he encounters enemies that are immune to sneak attacks or finds himself in a scenario where he cannot get a sneak attack, the Rogue is in deep trouble.

The real power of the Rogue is his 8+int skill points, evasion, and the use magic device skill. Never underestimate a holistic advantage. If you deal more damage, hit more often, and get hit less often, the net result can easily overshadow someone who just deals a lot of additional damage. The Bard is a weaker class, but in a solo fight with time to pre-buff but with no flanking-buddy he's going to outshine the Rogue. The HP bloat I was talking about is specific to chapter 1 of the OC. It's definitely not an issue in SoU.

I just opened up the editor to see J'Nah's exact stats. She has 64 hit points, which is only slightly above average for a Sorcerer of her level and constitution. If you throw the powder at her it about cuts her health in half. Her armor class is actually insubstantial, so if you can get through her defensive spells she'll drop pretty quickly in combat. Bards were buffed in the D&D 3.5 rules edition, and that was for a good reason. They were definitely a below-average class in 3.0, which NWN is based on. So yes you are correct to an extent. They aren't that bad, though. Certainly playable and enjoyable. While it's true that bosses are often given specific exemptions, it appears that J'Nah is more or less just a very high-level character. She has a few unique bonuses, but they're very minor and nothing that couldn't be granted by level-appropriate equipment.

Single-class Bards certainly aren't that powerful in NWN, but so long as they have a decent strength score they can deal damage just fine.

For a melee character, the NWN spellcaster killing feat is "Knockdown".

*Plonk* and the spellcaster is lying on his back helplessly, take a free swing and then *plonk* him back down again.

*looks at thread title*

"This game is the worst D and D game on here"

Clearly someone needs to be introduced to [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_of_Radiance:_Ruins_of_Myth_Drannor]Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor[/url]... ;)

... which is not on here. ;)

Ah, but you could change that. ;)