I just recently finished the OC in NWN. I'm familiar with BioWare from their games after NWN and Baldur's Gate, though I never finished it, but I never played Neverwinter Nights.

Skip to "Questions:" if you will.

Anyway, I played with a wizard, and I gotta say, I have mixed feelings about it. I almost played a Monk, but I like mages and thought I'd be safe with an archetype for my class. I don't have much experience with D&D and I can say that for a lot of it, I'm not really sure it works that well in a videogame setting. In the Wizard's case it's even more prevalent, and further it's compounded by BioWare's spikey difficulty and tendency to stack things against magic sometimes. I must have died at least 8 times or more and that's not counting having trouble with a pair of bosses early on.

Thankfully it's come to my attention that SoU and HotU are meant to be played with a new character (I was previously assuming I'd take the wizard through. Had I known, I would have bought more scrolls and less items I can't use.). So, I don't think I'll play a Wizard this time. There is a lot of tedium involved with the Wizard where it's a constant repeat of casting the same buffs in the same order, and then resting after every fight. If you don't fully prepare, or even if you're unlucky, things can snowball quickly. I'd like to get away from some of that and to a more natural playstyle based upon BioWare's favorite type of damage, physical.

So. These are roughly ordered most important to least. Questions:

Is the Monk a good class to play SoU with? Does it avoid the tedium and fragility of the wizard? Does it also handle HotU well? This is the question I'm really after advice for.

Is the Monk a hard build? Does it weather inefficiency or inexperience well? Can I mess around and have fun with it or will that ruin it? Can I miss something without too much trouble or is that a recipe for disaster (for example, good luck with a Wizard if you decide that isaac's and horrid just don't interest you so you don't take them.)? Do I really want a Fighter or Paladin or Rogue or something?

Does the Monk benefit from multiclassing a lot? Multiclassing strikes me as something you do if you really know what you're doing, or else it's just a complete waste. Just some low levels of various things that are useless to you. I didn't have to worry about it the first time as I played a Wizard. If the Monk really sings with multiclassing, though, I'll start to look around at builds and feat synergies and such.

Any multiplayer servers you'd recommend?

Are there any well regarded community modules made for the purpose of resuming play with your OC character?

I heard the wizard isn't a good choice for SoU because you fight a lot of undead. The wizard's got Undeath to Death, though, right? So what is it about SoU that doesn't mix with the wizard? Just asking out of curiosity on this one.

If you got here the long way, thanks a lot. Thanks in advance for any insights you will share.

Wizards are somewhat challenging to play, especially at low levels when their hit point total is extremely tight, but with the right spells they're positively god-like. Wizards shouldn't need to rest that often. At low levels it's understandable (you have like three spell slots total at level 1) but you'll very quickly reach a point at which you have enough spell slots to make it through many encounters. A 10th level wizard, for instance, should have about 30 spell slots total and shouldn't need more than 5 per fight (including prebuffs). He should be able to get through half a dozen fights between rests. The Monk is arguably the weakest class in the game. It has superb defensive abilities, but it sucks at dealing damage. It's still functional, but it might not be what you're looking for. I personally dislike the class. The concept is cool, but the execution is excruciating. Maybe someone who likes the class better than me can give you another side to the argument, but I personally avoid it. Multi-classing is a very powerful option, and no it's not too difficult to do. Just avoid the spellcasting classes (Wizard/Sorcerer/Cleric/Druid/Bard) and it's no harder to screw up than a single-class character. Monks are tricky to work with, so if you plan on doing anything with them be sure to have a build planned out. For Fighters, Rogues, Paladins, and Barbarians you can pretty much just ad-hoc as you go.

I'm personally a big fan of the Fighter/Rogue combination (ensure you take your first level as a Rogue). That comment perplexes me as well. Wizards do just fine against undead; it's Rogues that have trouble with them. Sure, many mind-affecting spells don't affect undead but a wizard can just adjust his daily spell preparation to pick different spells. Even a Sorcerers shouldn't have issues if they chose their spells known intelligently.

With respect to your specific question about undeath to death, the undead-heavy portion of the campaign happens relatively early. You'll be about level 7 by this point, so you won't have access to undeath to death yet. However, you will have access to other exceptional spells.

Edited to correct for NWN version:
If you're having issues, definitely google for a good build and do some class splashing.

My suggestion for a powerful simple to build character that can steamroll the main game is this:

Level 1 & 2 - Monk. This is your defense. You get wis to ac, evasion, etc.

Everything else Druid.

Max wisdom.

After that you can pretty much do whatever and you'll be fine. You'll have a pet, be a full spellcaster, have good defenses, be able to use most equipment and fight in melee, and be able to steamroll most fights.

Those are NWN2 only.

That said, I can attest that the Druid is a fun and powerful choice in SoU. I ran one through a few months ago, and the guy is a beast. Spellcasting, shapeshifting, and an animal companion gives him a 1-2-3 punch of class features that make it a rare day that he encounters something that gives him trouble.

I'll second this.

I too did a run through SoU and HotU with a pure druid a few months ago and it was a blast, almost too easy really. Plus you can play a tank or a nuker depending on your mood. No need to start a new character, just change your spell selections.

As mentioned, Wizards are exceedingly powerful -- but you do need to know which spells to use in general, which is part of the problem you're having, I think. Casters are far more complicated to play than melee in NWN.

The first few levels can be rough, but by level 8 and beyond you should generally be cruising through enemies -- and that goes double if you're bringing along a henchmen to buff (are you?). You certainly shouldn't need to be casting that many buffs and you definitely don't need to rest after every fight. It's weaker in the first few levels but winds up having insane defenses. But its offense isn't very good -- low attack, low damage. You can easily play through SoU/HotU with it but it's certainly not the most powerful (partly because the Monk's extra defenses aren't needed at all in the campaigns). Not really -- you could basically ignore all feats for monks in the first 20 levels and be fine. You basically only pick up 1 AB, 1 HP per level, maybe better crit range, and slightly better saves for the most part. What gear you wear is far, far more important. Not hugely -- best thing is probably Fighter. Four levels pre-epic for an extra BAB and Weapon Specialization then one level in epic for Epic Weapon Specialization.

There are druid/cleric builds that mesh well with a few monk levels to abuse monk class features, but then you're not playing a monk at that point. For what? Action? RP? Exploration? Group content? Low level? High level? Low magic? High magic? Specific settings? Etc. Only thing I've heard of is Aribeth's Redemption which only makes sense for PCs who romanced Aribeth.

Can recommend many community modules meant for characters of various levels, though. I'm going with the guy who mentioned how that probably meant rogue isn't a good choice, mages are fine.

In general, if you're having issue with something it'll help if you explain it and we can look at what you're doing (and what you COULD be doing). This advice is using things in NWN2 that do not apply to NWN very much.

My mistake, I thought he'd said NWN2 for some reason. But my suggestion stands. I think the druid is the easiest character for newbies. You get everything to play with (fighting ability, full spellcasting, decent skills) and dipping 2 levels of monk makes you a beast. Ignore the dino companion bit, but the rest holds true.

There's a reason in pen and paper they speak of "CoD-zilla" aka Cleric or Druid Zilla. They're the power classes.

Thanks guys. Looks like I found my class. I'm considering Ranger or Druid at this point; two classes I wasn't even thinking about. The whole "nature warrior" thing isn't really high up as a favourite stylistically for me. I'll probably go on the recommendation and take Druid. That way I can still play caster a little bit. It'll probably be a combat heavy Druid. I don't want to come off like I had a really bad go with it and just didn't have any encounter that wasn't a complete grind. But what you describe has not been my experience. I felt like that is kind of supposed to be how it is supposed to go, though, so I was wondering about it. A majority of times I went into a fight without resting first, I regretted it. And I certainly paid for it a few times when I forgot to throw up a mantle or the like.

I did have a henchman for most of the game. I played with all of the henchman but the monk (my best fit for a henchman I am aware of this. but I hated him. hated him.). I had the familar, the henchman, and a summon, usually. I didn't have a henchman for act 4, however. Can't recall dieing in that part, though. Though I did get the impression I may be doing something wrong because I figured it was supposed to go how you guys describe. Did I miss some spells? Was I just not loading up enough damage-dealers? I'd be interested in hearing about any that are exploration-based. That seems ambitious. And perhaps the most difficult to build. I'd be curious about those. Mainly though I was just looking for tips on ones that are active and that work out easily. I threw my character's spells and stats in a text file and could post them here if you're curious. I'm not gonna make this post any longer if it's not needed.

Thanks again you guys. Really great. I wouldn't have considered Ranger or Druid as I thought of one as a DPS bomber and the other as a charmer/cc/de-buffer mainly; support tank/support casting class/support summons. Like I said I don't have much experience with D&D, instead just general RPG practice. Thank you.

You're better off going Cleric, it is far stronger in actual combat with its crazy self-buffs. Druids are only really good when their Animal Companion is good and Shapeshifting is good -- but in NWN neither are great by default. Many modules/worlds modify those two things as a result. Er, it probably wasn't even worth using Spell Mantle in the original campaign. Better to take the damage and heal it up with potions. Daelen would actually have been much better -- could have buffed his weapon up significantly and has better offense. We'd need far more information in order to be able to figure that out. Was there a particular section you recall struggling at? I could record a video of me playing it so you could see how it was "supposed" to go. Well, not so much exploration based as much as there's a lot of exploration. Some servers tend to be very action focused with little that's off the beaten path, for example -- the main goal is to find and kill monsters to collect loot with friends. Others have a lot of little things to find and areas to roam around in.

You are aware that you'd make a new character for an online world?

Here's what would probably help us most about online worlds:

1, what's the max level you want it to be?
2, do you want it to be fast leveling (most people hit max level) or slow leveling (maybe no one is even quite at max level)?
3, do you want it to be RP focused (social stories, DM events, staying in-character) or action focused (delving into dungeons, fighting tough enemies, getting cool loot)?
4, what kind of magic level do you want? Should +3 swords be the best? Should +20? Should something between those?
5, do you want it to be group oriented or solo friendly?
6, how forgiving should it be if you mess up (like, say, you die)? Should it be you die and your character is deleted? Should it be you die and instantly pop back up where you are without any penalty? Something else?

All the online worlds are incredibly different in many ways.

Avoid the Ranger in Neverwinter Nights 1. It's a generally weak class overshadowed by the Druid on one side and Fighter/Rogue multi-class on the other. That's fair enough; as I said, the wizard is a challenging class to play. His power (especially as compared to a Sorcerer) is the ability to use a wide range of spells, and to get the most out of that you really need to know the game inside out. The upper limit of the wizard's power if you have that level of mastery is positively god-like. The scary part is, the NWN wizard is only a pale imitation of his pen and paper incarnation. Direct damage is generally only the best approach against more fragile enemies or as a last resort against particularly resilient ones. The better approach is to use spells that incapacitate. Why use two or three fireballs where one stinking cloud will suffice?

Well not so much against damage, mostly against instant death save spells or some kind of control spell. Yeah I never did take the flame weapon or magic weapon spells. I didn't really realize the length of the duration at first, and I also wasn't planning to really base things around a single henchman. Then later you can't buy those. No need to bother with recording any wizard play. For the suggestions on servers, that seems like way too much prep. I'll just hit up some web pages and just jump on one and see how it goes.

Yeah a couple spells I looked into a bit do seem to make more sense in their pen and paper versions. Like, for example, Great Thunderclap. Don't see much use to that except as a silence for mages. I guess it's more useful if you have a large party of other people to attempt to hit coup de grace on many enemies.

Yeah that's a good spell. Eventually I replaced it with Mind Fog, though.

Going to disagree with this slightly -- it's powerful on lower magic worlds where the Animal Companion is good and Favored Enemies start to kick in. Epic Rangers with Bane of Enemies are quite strong.

Going to disagree with this as well. Generally speaking, enemies very vulnerable to control spells like that tend to be weak enough to die to 1-2 AoE spells. And strong enemies tend to have high saves or be immune to effects like that.

In addition, what do you do after you hit the enemy with stinking cloud? Still have to kill them at that point, and unless you have a henchmen/summon protected against Mind Spells then they're vulnerable to running in and getting incapacitated as well!

Use spells or items that protect against those long term (Mind Blank, Shadow Shield, Belt of Guiding Light, etc).

Can still scribe them at any level -- can pick any two spells you want to learn. Doesn't have to be a high level spell.

Let's try this, then: do you want to be in-character and roleplay or do you want to be focused on exploring the world and fighting monsters?

A lot of spells are far more effective when you're in a large party, they go from "not worth casting" to "godlike."

It's not enough to salvage him in my eyes. Favored Enemy only works well if you use pre-knowledge of the adventure to select the right enemy types. I will agree that the animal companion is nice, but the Druid does that better. The Ranger occupies a very narrow niche between Fighter/Rogue and Druid. If you want the whole package, by all means play a Ranger, I just don't think it compares favorably against other similar classes or multi-class combos.


I think you just answered your own question. Stinking Cloud in particular is a poison effect, so any immunity to poison will suffice. A few spells, like Black Tentacles, don't even require you to do any follow-up. Against numerically smaller encounters, single-target spells can be used to remove key threats and let your familiar and summon clean up the rest. Even if you plan on cleaning up with damage spells anyways, leading with an incapacitation spell is usually going to be a better way to stay alive than trying to cast defensive spells during battle. Again, this all goes back to the "wizard is challenging to play" thing; you need to know the inside-out of every spell to really get the most out of him, and it's not surprising that most players fall back on direct damage.

It's also worth noting that this is a complete non-issue on lower difficulty settings, where clean-up after incapacitation is utterly trivial. I know that few veterans play on the "normal" difficult, but a lot of first-timers will, and it completely takes away the double-edged nature of sorcerer/wizard spells.

I do not really RP but I'm not particular about it. I'm just looking for one that is active and fairly straightforward. It doesn't really matter to me that much, though.

At level 40 a ranger has equal AB to a fighter with 16 damage and 2 AB versus favored enemies while the fighter has 6 damage. There's a feat difference obviously but most fighters wind up just having to take a bunch of Epic Toughness Feats anyway.

And with 9+ favored enemies you can generally pick all the ones that matter. Plus you can do something like 35 ranger/5 fighter to lose 1 Favored Enemy damage for 6 universal damage. Overall something like a 30 Ranger/4 Rogue/6 Fighter is extremely powerful. They're mainly just weak pre-epic due to lower favored enemy bonuses and less favored enemies.

Who said anything about casting defensive spells during battle?

And I like how you're assuming I apparently don't know how to play. I guarantee I understand the spells in NWN better than you do -- which doesn't change the fact that direct damage is usually faster, simpler, and safer. It is dependent on the module's author, though.

In general, you may save 1-2 spells per fight if you're lucky, but if that means you take five times as long to clear a group then you're still way behind on time overall.

And on normal difficulty you can just Fireball with abandon anyway.

In no particular order, could check out Legion of Darkstar, Higher Ground, and The Awakening.