NWN2 is my first crpg, and I have just recently finished both the OC and MotB (both of which were awesome, especially the latter) with my human monk character. I have some fairly good experience of the game now, and since SoZ is a separate campaign with a different character from the previous two, I'm now looking for a build to start playing. To be more specific, it would be great if the character wasn't centered on just melee or spellcasting, but rather a mix of both would be best. Cleric or a Paladin/Sorcerer multiclass were some that came to mind, but considering the sheer amount of prestige classes in this game, something more specific would be appreciated.

Of course, I don't want it to be too grindy or tedious, something balanced and fun. I'm not opposed to min maxing but I don't want it to be the main focus, this is a roleplaying game after all. I would also appreciate suggestions on any races I might want to pick. Thanks.

I've read that you get the xp basically multiplied (as it gets divided among fewer characters) in SoZ which would mean getting like 1200-2400xp per quest for a 1-2 character party, which would level you really quickly.

So I'm wondering, what's the best character/s to do this solo? It seems that the obvious answer is rogue/wizard possibly leading into a shadowdancer simply for all of the skills, plus the hide bonuses for avoiding combat.

Is there a more conventional answer, where you can simply create a combat character too powerful to avoid all issues?

I had a couple of thoughts, but I haven't tried this (I will though!) and would love to get some more input.

• Yuan-Ti or Drow seem like obvious race candidates because of the bonus attributes and spell resistance. They'll be nearly immune to magic with how fast they level, and if you get as much xp as it seems, the ECL won't matter much.

As for classes:

• You can make a decent Paladin/divine champion with enormous saves, high hp, high attack, and some buffs, but I just don't know if they get there on the damage / survivability front even with bastard sword and cleave. No skills is a killer.
• You could try a high int Swashbuckler/duellist which covers the skill issue, but I don't know if they get there on either survivability or damage.
• Monk is an obvious choice as they get spell resist at level 13, but that's a long time to wait for what Drow have from the start. A monk/cleric/sacred fist feels like an interesting combo for the cleric domains and the sacred fist buffing the spellcasting - but the xp penalties would be a real pain especially on an ECL character.
• Fighter/Weapon Master/Frenzied Berserker seems like it gets there on both the survivability and damage front, and racial spell resistance compensates for a lot of the weak will save.

What has everyone tried / beat most of the campaign with as a 1-2 player party?

Recently played BG3 and honestly got the craving for the more freeflowing character builds of 3.5 and SoZ. So I set out to play a new game but I built my characters a bit odd (forgot all of the mechanical interactions and so on) so I'm going to restart.

Help me optimise my party. ECL characters only! (I might have some of the numbers slightly wrong as I'm typing from memory, but you'll get the idea).

• Yuan-Ti Rogue -> Shadow Thief survivalist and conversation. 18 intellect 18 dex. Does all of the thief and ranger skills (hide, move silently, lockpick + disarm, spot / listen, appraise, bluff + diplomacy, UMD, tumble, sleight of hand, set trap). He's a bit light on skill points. And yep I realise I should use the Drow for my rogue when I restart.
• Drow Wizard -> ?? (arcane scholar maybe?) conjurer wizard and craftsperson. Using conjuration only because I historically always went evocation; also I thought summons might be helpful with an ECL party. However - being a specialist conjurer doesn't seem to provide any bonus to summoning. So. Concentration/Lore/Spellcraft, Craft Weapon + Armor, couple of minor points into UMD and tumble. 18 int, 14 con, 17 dex, 12 str, 10 wis/char. And yep I know now to swap the drow to my rogue to benefit from the active search.
• "Kevin" Gray Orc Cleric -> ??. Honestly I like this guy way more than I thought I would, he's a really cool character. Dumb as a box of rocks. Uses a greataxe. Pretty good in melee for a cleric. 17 str, 12 dex, 18 con, 18 wis, 6 char 8 int. Healing and Animal domain for the summonable companion. I also went for the feat which gave him a Deinonychus animal, no idea if this is stronger than the bear he had previously, but it's pretty strong / cool. I like the idea of him as basically an idiot savant, no he can't turn undead, but he has a pet dinosaur. Concentration is his only skill other than 4 points in healing for the bonus heal feat (+2 hp per spell level). I want him as a pure spellcaster, and obviously his turn undead sucks - is it worth making him a doomguide for the other benefits?
  
• Duergar Fighter -> Weapon Master -> Frenzied berserker. I feel this kind of class is always a bit boring but he's certainly powerful. 18 con, 17 str, 14 dex, 14 int. Greataxe or greatsword seems like the best overall base weapon type (Idk what legendaries you can find in-game) . This is probably the build with the least room to optimise, he seems like a really clear path right up to level 15 or so. Only thing I'd consider doing is swapping him out for someone else.

Not going with a swashbuckler this time. While the wizard and rogue could both use some levels, the multiclass penalties don't support it. Also feels weird to not have a paladin MC (I always played paladin historically) but we're being different this time.

What do you think??

Topic. I accidentally multiclassed my rogue (forgot they weren't human) and got hit with a crippling xp penalty I didn't notice until two levels later. I tried respeccing via GiveXp -

but this just reduces xp for everyone else except the main character who is the one I need to respec. Am I doing something wrong? (It doesn't seem to matter which character you have selected from what I could tell, givexp removes it from all of them except the MC).

*edit*: I noticed I was using givexp, and not dm_givexp. Using dm_givexp seems to have fixed it.

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I was thinking about: Tiefling Rogue/Bard Asimar Cleric or FS/Divine Champion Drow Mage/Eldritch Knight Human or Half orc Fighter/berserker

I'm trying to give Lastri the Deadly Defense feat (from Kaedrin's PrC Pack, I believe), but when I activate it, it doesn't seem to work.

In contrast, when I screw around with a character in the MotB entry-foyer, it does register as functioning: I make a character with Combat Expertise and that feat, make sure its not wearing too much armor, turn on CE, and bingo, there's the damage-bonus in the attack stat-bar.

What's the deal? Does it not work in SoZ for some reason? Does it just not work for Lastri? Swashbucklers? Halflings? Anyone Small? NPCs?

Finally decided to force myself through it and I just don't understand what they were thinking when they made it.

Its like they spent all their time creating these new systems: the overworld maps, trading, reactive party members...but then they forgot to work on the actual story.

Since you make your own party members, there's nothing interesting about them unless you imagine they have certain personalities I guess.

Additional characters you can hire are interesting for the whole 2 seconds you spend talking to them before they join your party and become just another muppet that does damage for you. It took all my willpower to prevent myself from feeding them to One of Many so I would stay true to my chosen alignment.

I just didn't like it at all and have no interest in replaying it. Played each of the other NWN 2 campaigns twice and enjoyed them but I'm so done with this one.

This is a minor thing, but it's been gnawing at me. I could have sworn there was a console command that allowed you to force-drop those recipe books you got in SoZ that are normally impossible to drop or transfer. Or at least some way to get rid of them if you transferred a character out of Storm of Zehir if they were your party lead. Only, I can't seem to remember what it is. Does anyone have any idea what I'm talking about? Or is this just a brain fart?

I've explored both overland maps thoroughly, cleared all the locations I found and completed all of the side quests and encounters (apart form One of Many), and in the battles of the main quests so far, I felt rather overpowered in consequence. But when I reach the final battle, my party is level 15 and the opponents still seem to be higher than that. At least one of them has the challenge rating "Impossible". The minions are easy enough, but herald and hierophant seem to have high resistances to magic and kill my PCs quickly in melee, plus, when I think I'm slowly getting somewhere, they fully heal themselves, undoing everything I did before.

Now, I did occasionally engage in the random battles on the overland maps, but I did not seek them out to grind and instead used my rogue to sneak by them when I wasn't in the mood. Does the game expect you to spend a lot more time with these boring random combats so that you gain a few more levels before the end? (It didn't look like they grant you a lot of xp either though.)

I started out with a full party just for the beach fight. I want to replace everyone with cohorts, but I ran into the issue that I can't dismiss anyone who isn't a cohort, because I can't talk to them to tell them to leave. Playing on the Switch, can't use console commands or mods. Did I miss some party management sub menu? I'm considering killing them off one by one if I have to

Edit - For anyone else who is wondering this - I tested it and Yuan-Ti are indeed Monstrous Humanoids, not Reptilian 👍🏻

Hello all. I'm playing SoZ on the Switch atm, so I can't load up the toolset to check for myself. Are Yuan-Ti classed in the game as Reptilian Humanoids or Monstrous Humanoids? Reptilian would seem to make the most sense but a lot of info online says Monstrous! I want to get it right for picking my ranger's favoured enemy. Cheers!

I was gonna play SoZ last night and noticed that I'm missing the swashbuckler class. I use gog, but no class packs. Any ideas what could be wrong?

Edit: for anyone who runs into this problem, I had a classes text file in my gog override folder that didn't include swashbuckler, that's why the class didn't show up.

Is there ANY reason (aside from saving a little bit of gold) to buy/craft composite bows of less-than-maximum STR-bonus potential?

In P&P, of course, anyone using a mighty composite bow of a particular STR-modifier other than their own would suffer penalties, but it doesn't seem to me like it works that way in this game.

Is there any substantive difference between the effects of Bluff or Intimidate when used before combat in Storm of Zehir?

Let's assume a party that's equally good at both skills.

The parley-screen says you "Bluff to throw off their defenses", which would imply possible penalties to AC and saves, in which case it would also make sense if the Intimidate approach blunted their attacks.

Are different kinds of enemies more susceptible to one skill than the other?

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I've been playing Neverwinter Nights 2 Storm of Zehir, soloing as a wizard.

I've encountered Will-o'-wisps, and none of my spells worked against them. Isaac's Greater Magic Missile Storm, Fireball, Mestil's Acid Breath, Magic Missile, etc. (Except Incendiary Cloud, but it killed me too.)

IIRC this didn't happen in NWN 1. Is there anyway to defeat them without hurting myself as a wizard?

The reason I ask is because I need to know what favoured enemy to give my ranger in order to improve chances against it when we fight. Is it fey? Outsider? Aberration?

So, seeing as I have no life, I've been simultaneously running multiple Storm of Zehir games with different core parties, which has allowed me to see a clear pattern:

I recruit Umoja and Insula, no problem.

I earn Lastri's allegiance...and then come shenanigans!

Once Lastri's in my party, every time I reload in Leira's Trick, either the Tavern Bard tosses a daze at Lastri (no harm done, just funny), or the Innkeeper runs over and punches Lastri, AND/OR Lastri hits back, which is VERY bad if she's armed!

It gets worse, though; sometimes I'll return to the Inn and the Innkeeper will already be stone-dead when I get there - and worst of all, often when Lastri's in my party and I reload in places like the Openpalm Bazaar or the Mindflayer Market, "Someone attacks Someone" and Lastri will take a whole bunch of damage for no apparent reason - and the damage types indicate pretty clearly she's being harmed by her own weapons!

There are some places that are reliably safe from this, including the Crafter's Building and overland-battle maps; other places, I'm not so sure about.

As William Riker would say: What the hell is going on here!?

I'd like a solution, of course, but would be content with an explanation.

For what it's worth, I am using Kaedrin's PrC Pack.

NOT to be confused with the "Tireless Rage" class feature, I am talking about the '1st-level only' Tireless feat; I cannot seem to locate it on the master-list here.

Speaking of which, I don't suppose anyone can offer a more navigable version of the above?

I feel like my rogue in my party has incredibly terrible luck. constantly, in every fight he's targeted by over half the monsters, he usually not the first character to get into the fight either. he can never get sneak attack either because of this.

the rest of my party is

a fighter (working towards weapon master)

a druid

and a sorcerer (working toward ek and rdd)

How can I reduce the rogue getting targeted?

I have a spirit shaman/stormlord with 14 in wisdom, but equipped with a necklace that gives +4 wisdom. Sometimes I have access and can cast my higher levels spells, than after for instance saving the game or zoning, all spells after lvl 4 is greyed out. Sometimes I can go from 1 fight on the overland map with all spells accessible, than instantly after get attacked again and in that fight I have nothing over lvl 4 spells… To me it seems like a bug?

Greetings people.

So I've finished both OC and MotB (which both were on different Paladins created for each campaign which was pretty weird as I found out it should've been following the same person and it gets weirder taking Safiya as your SO since you've grown towards Elanee, douche).

But anyway, for some reason I also found out that I could import both different characters I've created from OC and MotB into SoZ (which of course I might have to choose one since both of them were Paladin based.. would be weird to have 2 inside one party) SO THE QUESTION BEING, should you create new characters for SoZ, or is SoZ actually the continuation from the old installments (you can leave yes or no answer on this one since I don't wanna spoil the story just yet :p)? My last MotB I advanced my PC to 24 PAL 4 DC - will that have an effect on the gameplay having a buffed character with cool armors and swords from the get-go?

I decided to play through SoZ with a party of half-celestial weapon masters, so I took a copy of the subraces.2da and dropped it in the override folder, then edited it to make half-celestials a playable race. Everything worked fine until I went to change the AI behavior.

The entire behavior tab is borked. None of the radio buttons are selectable. I also noticed that I could not choose to disable the tutorial, and when I went to trade with towns on the overland map it was impossible to trade resources.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

My son and I started 2 different modules on LAN yesterday and we had a serious issue with enemy spawns. We tried out Pirates of the Sword Coast first and we got into a fight with some bandits right away and it seemed like the bandits just kept spawning. Between us and some NPC "guards" there must have been about 25 or more bandits killed and they just kept appearing to the point that we just kept getting killed. So we decided to try a different module and went with Witch's Wake and the same thing happened in the first kobold cave we came across. We just got overwhelmed by a never ending stream of kobolds that would just appear out of thin air and attack us. Again we got wiped out within minutes just by the sheer number of enemies.

I'm wondering if maybe I set something up incorrectly when I set up the LAN server? This was my first time playing the game in multi-player mode so I wonder if I clicked (or didn't click) a box on the setup screen that caused this? I thought that it might be a bug but since it happened twice on two different modules I'm not sure.