Newbie asking a newbie question

[Legacy_Friedrich Ironhide]

               I want to apologize in advance if this is the wrong place for this topic.  I love what you guys have going on here and I was thrilled to find such an active community for a game t that is 10 years old.  I am familiar with 3.5 D&D, having played pen and paper as well as ToEE and IWD 2.  I also played NWN back in the day.  I recently bought the DIamond Edition off of GOG and uploaded the PRC pack to it.  I got everything working and now the only problem is that there are almost TOOOO many options to pick from.

I am going to play SoU solo and I am leaning toward a cleric build with a few rougue levels sprinkled in to get some much needed class skills.  I have several question and judging by some of the threads I've read here, I would imagine they would be quite easy to answer.  Many of these questions pertain to PRC material but I am playing SoU so I hope this is the correct place to ask.

1) How does the practiced caster work exactly


Type of Feat: General.

Prerequisite: Spellcraft 4.

Specifics: Your caster level for the chosen class increase by +4.
This can't increased your caster level beyond your HD. (Ex: a Fighter 2 /
Wizard 5 increase his caster level from 5 to 7).


Lets say I take 10 levels of cleric and then I take 5 levels of Hospital, would I need
this feat.?  The Hospitaler class description states that for every
level gained the character gains spells per day as if they had gained a
level in their previous divine class. Does this apply to caster level as well in regards to duration, damage etc?

2) The hospitaler class allows undead turning at level 3 according to the class description

http://www.athasreborn.com/prc/manual/

Will these turning levels stack with my cleric turning levels?

3)  What domians would you recommend and how many domain spells can you prepare per day?

The reason I am asking this is because carefuly selected  cleric domains seems to be a way to GREATLY augment
a clerics spell list.  Simply put; I look for domains that add arcane
spells and key in on those.  I am leaning toward the Time Domain because
it provides 4 spells that are not available to a cleric + improved
initiative (does Improved Init  work in NWN?)
www.athasreborn.com/prc/manual/


The second domain I am looking at is Domination for many of the same reasons.



It add 4 arcane enchantment spells that arcane casters get at comporable
levels and the spell focus enchantment feat on top of that.

4;   How about dropping the rogue levels and  take the Contemplatice PrC for
my 3rd class instead.  The major reason being that they get 2 bonus
domains and that could add spells likeWail of the Banshee, Power Word
Kill, Greater spell mantle to my spell list. With two additional domains, I would be able to cherry pick some great spells!

5)  Lets say haste is a domain spell that I have....can I prepare more than 1 of it per day?   Lets say I have two good options for domian spells on a given level could I prepare
1 of each?  IIRC, in pen and paper, the answer is no.  You get 1 domain
spell per day which takes up its own domain slot.  Is that how it works
here?

I know this is very long and it kind of evolved into a "please critique my build" post[smilie]http://social.bioware.com/images/forum/emoticons/blushing.png[/smilie] so please move it to the correct section if it doesn't belong here.  Otherwise, I would love to get some anwers from some of the more experienced players here!

Thanks!
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Friedrich Ironhide, 10 septembre 2012 - 05:30 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Fester Pot]

               Yes!

FP!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Friedrich Ironhide]

               

Fester Pot wrote...

Yes!

FP!

Sorry about that...first time using this message board and they're all a little differerent.  I tried to format my post view viewing the source code in other threads to see how it was done....and FAILED!!!

Is there a way to "preview post" here?


For later readers, my first post was entirely blank...and I don't know how that happened.  Good thing I had copied the post or I would have lost all of it!

HA!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MrZork]

               FI, I can't address the PRC questions, but I will concur that the forum software here is quirky and lacks some of the functionality present on many boards. Several times I have mangled posts by pasting what I've written from a word processing program or by pasting text I want to quote that I've copied from the thread page instead of hitting the quote button (always tempting when quoting from more than one post).

There is no preview. '> That's why you'll see a ton of posts that were initially posted and then modified one minute later. One bit of advice is to go to a different forum that allows previews and preview your post there, but just don't post it. When you have it looking the way you want then copy the source of your post and come here to paste it into the standard form in BBCode mode. It's annoying, but it's the closest you'll come to a preview. This board treats most BBS code the same as other boards, so the preview from the other board should be pretty accurate, though, if you are asking a  scripting question, there is little hope that the [code=auto:0] tag will do what you want.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MagicalMaster]

               Friedrich, I think you accidentally put your first post into your signature the first time around somehow.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Friedrich Ironhide]

               Thanks for the advice MrZork!

@Magic Master:  You are right.  I don't know how the heck I did that either!  But at least I have fixed it now.

1)  Are there any servers that would be good for somebody like me.  I have a decent understanding of the RAW (rules as written) but I am no pro at all...I haven't played in years.  

2) What mods are commonly used?  Is there some mods that add a little more "flavor" to the game...classes, playable races, feats etc and have a more active community?  As much content as PRC added, I swear I could see tumble weeds blowing through their servers over there.

I'd like to get back into the game so if anybody could recommend a good 'hack'--is that what it's called? to download I would be interested. Do people still play online or is that pretty much dead?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MagicalMaster]

               There are quite a few PWs...but what are you looking for?

1. Do you care about level cap (20 vs 30 vs 40 or whatever)?
2. Do you want to play at max level or start a new character at that point?
3. Do you want to be focused on beating tough challenges and getting good loot, RP, or a mix of both?
4. How many changes to the base ruleset are you comfortable with?
5. Do you care about the setting?

"Hak" files are files used to basically alter rules for modules.  For example, if I made a module and I decided I wanted wizards to get 6 HP per level instead of 4 HP per level, I'd make a "hak" file and require people to possess that file to play the module.

It's not "hacking" in the usual sense, though.

Incidentally, if you like campaigns and haven't played the Aielund Saga, I'd highly recommend that.  Some other good campaigns that I've played are Prophet and A Dance With Rogues (the latter is sexually explicit).
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ffbj]

               The old Wild West days are long gone. NwN is in it's twilight time. But twilight is, in all probability, the most beautiful and certainly the most magical time of day.
Pick a server jump on, or go look at the threads for PW's. Just poke around here and there and you will have some fun. There is a reason NwN has been around so long, and now it has a cornucopia of modules, pw's, prefabs, scripts, custom content,etc... Maybe over a million man hours of stuff created by the community, plus all the Bioware add ons.
Cheers!
               
               

               

                     Modifié par ffbj, 10 septembre 2012 - 10:49 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Bansidhe]

               Check the list on the Athas reborn forum for prc enabled servers,then goto their forum for haks, a new one with unlimited choices,[many servers need applications for the more powerful races/classes],is kingdom of james,for more RP flavour and with 10+ players on( at peak times mind),Harrowport,forest of woe is good,and very newbie friendly,which I find important.

Hope this helps
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

1) How does the practiced caster work exactly

If your caster level is lower than your total level, practived spellcaster adds +4 to you caster level. This however cannot exceed the total level.

So: if you are pure wizard or wizard/eldritch knight, then this feats will give you no benefit
If you are wizard mixed with fighter or some PRC which adds caster level only every second level like pale master (in PRC it adds CL i think) then this feats adds up to +4 to your CL.
Oh and yes, you can take this earlier and once you start taking fighter levels it will grant the benefit automatically.

One more example: Wizard5/Cleric5/Mystic Theurghe 30 would have 35CL for each class, wizard and cleric, add the practiced spellcaster for each classes and you get up to 39CL.

Im not sure how it works if the class like Archmage adds special CL bonus like via feat. It should work by logic, yet it depends on how its scripted. The PRC creators could mess this up and I havent tested it, actually im not working with PRC long time ago since they added so many half-casters such as hexblade. That made from PRC total mess.

2) The hospitaler class allows undead turning at level 3 according to the class description
Will these turning levels stack with my cleric turning levels?

They definitely should, but again, I didnt tested it. The PRC team could miss this so you cant know until you try it yourself. I could look into the script later today to know for sure.

3)  What domians would you recommend and how many domain spells can you prepare per day?

Depends. If you are mixing cleric with anything that can cast invisibility (wizard, bard, assassin maybe ninja) then you dont need trickery domain, which is the most used and powerful domain in NWN ever. But that applies to vanilla, PRC added more spells for domains, so hard to say. Healing domain is also great, you get access to healing spells earlier, best choice if you dont intent to get more than 15 cleric levels in total. War domain is second best choice - grants bonus ab and dmg, the more cleric levels you have the better (yet in vanilla, this is not using caster level, instead total cleric level without any PrCs so if you are intent to take some PrCs it might not be so great choice.
For the second part of the question you can prepare as many spells as you can from domain. There is a rule in DnD rules that you have prepare at least one domain spell each spell level but this rule is not enforced in NWN or PRC. There isnt any other restriction for this.

I am leaning toward the Time Domain because
it provides 4 spells that are not available to a cleric + improved
initiative (does Improved Init  work in NWN?)

Yea, Time domain is quite overpowered. As far as initiation - Ive studied this and I wrote the nwn wiki article about it: link in brief: useless

4;   How about dropping the rogue levels and  take the Contemplatice PrC for

Yeah, well great PRC, though last time I tried it these bonsu domains didnt worked very well. The engine limits that a bit and they are using different system to cast them. Also - it depends on type of cleric you want. Clerics are mostly combat oriented, so they mostly casting spells that enhances them and healing spells. They rarely cast anything else because they dont have so big spell DC in general. However you can make a wisdom based caster cleric which would definitely benefit from these extra domains and spells. But if you intent to fight in melee combat, then these extra spells are nearly useless.

5)  Lets say haste is a domain spell that I have....can I prepare more
than 1 of it per day?   Lets say I have two good options for domian
spells on a given level could I prepare

yes, already answered in q3
               
               

               

                     Modifié par ShaDoOoW, 11 septembre 2012 - 10:16 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Friedrich Ironhide]

               THANK you ALL so much for your replies!  It seems like there is still a vibrant community here even if we are in the twilight.  And it seems like the 'old timers' are willing to help a 'newbie' join the party.  There is a ton of information here to process. I appreciate everybody here who pointed me in the right direction and ShaDoOow for going through my questions 1 at a time.

I think I will play a little HoTU solo just to get the feel of it and within a week or so start looking around for a good server to play on.  I will probably have to do a complete reinstall because of the PRC I have installed.  That's OK though...one of the good things about GOG is that once you buy a game off their site you can download it a million times.  

Still I have seen some of those "Epic" builds.  1200 HP dragon with 9th level arcane spells, 100+ AC and devastating crit to boot!!!  It will be a while before I am ready to step to that.

Thanks again guys.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Friedrich Ironhide]

               

ShaDoOoW wrote...

3)  What domians would you recommend and how many domain spells can you prepare per day?

Depends. If you are mixing cleric with anything that can cast invisibility (wizard, bard, assassin maybe ninja) then you dont need trickery domain, which is the most used and powerful domain in NWN ever. But that applies to vanilla, PRC added more spells for domains, so hard to say. Healing domain is also great, you get access to healing spells earlier, best choice if you dont intent to get more than 15 cleric levels in total. War domain is second best choice - grants bonus ab and dmg, the more cleric levels you have the better (yet in vanilla, this is not using caster level, instead total cleric level without any PrCs so if you are intent to take some PrCs it might not be so great choice.

Thanks for the feedback.  I definately DID consider the "Trickery" Domain very closely for all the reasons you pointed out.  Invisibilty in conjuction with backstab, on paper, is huge.  What swung me against it was the fact that, as I understand it, with improved invisibility, after the first attack you become "partially visible" thus losing your sneak attack damge.  Instead I am hoping that someplace on the clerics spell list I can find an area of effect 'blind-type' spell that will cause enemies to lose their dex bonus and thus be succeptable to sneak attacks.  

I know the spell "glitterdust" worked wonders just that way in ToEE lol!

The 1 point bonus per 2 levels to a whole bunch of rogue skills lasting a turn per level + cha modifier AND mirror image is huge. 

I tilted back towards domination though because I like the fact that the spell list gives me 4 enchantments spells that are not on the cleric's list and the "spell focus-enchantment" feat to boot.

Type of Feat: Domain

Prerequisite: Access to the Domination domain.

Granted Power: The cleric gains the Spell Focus: Enchantment feat.

Bonus Spells: The cleric gains access to the following spells at the
specified spell level: Charm Person (1), Dominate Person (4), Mass Hold
Person (7), Mass Hold Monster (9)

Use: Automatic.
         
             Granted feat
            Domination

         
         
             Granted spells

Charm Person

Dominate Person
Mass Hold Person
Mass Hold Monster

         
BTW, ShaDoOoW, I don't doubt for a second that you are right when you say "trickery" is one of, if not the best domain possible.  You seem like you have played a lot of this game and definately know your stuff.  Still, I think I'm going to stick with Domination for my 1st run back in it!

I can see why there are thousand of "builds" submitted and people debating back and fourth about what works the best.  Lots of replay value here which is why I decided to get back into NWN.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Friedrich Ironhide, 12 septembre 2012 - 02:14 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               Well the impréoved invisibility is the most powerful defensive boost in game. The 50% concealment that it grants means that every second hit will miss you. Some monsters have blindfight which reduces the miss chance for them to 25% but even then, this is really something.

But yes. the game is playable that way or another.