Just starting nwn2 run and wanting to know, what are the best cleric domains?

Just starting nwn2 run and wanting to know, what are the best cleric domains?
NWN thread go I guess.

I've been playing NWN2 and beat it last week and now I'm in to Mask of the Betrayer and... fuck, it's really drab. Everything is so fucking black and gray it's depressing as fuck. Is it going to be like this the whole time?

>nwn2
don't bother playing it
just play Mask of the Betrayer

I thought mask is a continuation of OC. Also don't want to jump right into epic levels without getting used to 3.5dnd

MotB is just tweeny edgelord shit with muh darkness and muh gritty narration. NwN2 base is an actual adventure.

Caster Cleric - Air and Water for offensive power. Key abilities:
Air:
>call lighting - your first AoE, scales well, doesnt hit friendlies
>chain lighting - okay damage, doesnt hit friendlies
Water:
>Ice Storm - like a fireball and provides NO SAVE

Warrior Cleric - Earth and Travel. Key abilities:
Earth:
>toughness for free
>Stoneskin - useful all game, strong defense
Travel:
>10% move - depending on your unofficial patch, works in heavy armor
>Haste - GOAT ability


Maybe replace Air with Fire on caster, maybe replace Travel with Plant on warrior, but I think they are worse.

NWN2 isn't a bad game. It's just unfinished AS FUCK.

No, there's more of the same. I loved this gloomy atmosphere.

I wanted to pick earth and time(it has travel too plus premonition).

The OC is fine, don't listen to elitist fags.
Its silly at times, its written like a D&D tabletop campaign, not all gray and edge.
Mask of the Betrayer is technically a sequel to the story, but they don't have too much in common. You can however use your OC character in MotB, which feels nice.

I recommend playing the OC if you haven't before.

I mean it has haste too.

You can take that too then. You want either Haste or Battletide for sure on your melee cleric.

What about multiclassing end prestiges?

>The most interesting cast to run around with is Neeshka, Sand and Qara
>One of them is near useless and has a massive chance to turn on you, and 100% one of the other 2 will turn on you

Fuck

I think I played a Stormlord on a warrior cleric.
I don't remember prestige class for my caster cleric, I might've even been pure on that one.

Pure even after lvl20?
I checked stormlord and don't really like weapon selection of this class.

>Rogue
>near useless
No. Start backstabbing shit.

>has a massive chance to turn on you
No, unless you completely ignore soft skills.

You can take Monkey Grip to use a spear with a shield on a Stormlord, thats what I did. Its worth it.

And the pure cleric, I just don't remember. Haven't played in several years. It might've been pure, I don't know.

In Mask of the Betrayer there are only 3 companions which are a Cleric, a Wizard and a Spirit Shaman (A shittier version of a druid). I would advice you to play none of those classes so that you get a balanced party.

Never was much of a choice for me.
One's a psychotic cunt, and not in a fun way; the party can survive the hit in damage potential.

I ran with the OG party, like I often do in RPGs that introduce companions one by one.
I am at that point just too used to my mates, and any newcomers feel like they are outside our inner circle.

>No. Start backstabbing shit.
user...

So who should I pick, simple fighter?

Aren't elementals and undead immune to backstabs and crits?
Aren't they super common, invalidating 1/3 of builds in the system?

>No. Start backstabbing shit

Oh right on chief I'll backstab that wrait-
Er, backstab that iron go-
Backstab that shadow pri-

Hmm...

Don't listen to that guy, play whatever.
But Warlock fits the best, with the party and with the enemies and with the lore.

>Love interest in NWN2 is a basic bitch elf hippy
>Love interest in MotB is a cancer patient

What this guy said, except warlock is a risky pick since this class gets boring really fast.

eilistraee

oh sorry u mean domains.long time i did not play this game

Its fine if you install the Warlock Buddy mod to automatically recast your buffs.
There was one in particular that needs recasting EVERY ROUND.

Is it some tricky fighter/mage hybrid or something?

>red haired cocktease
>check who wrote it
>its avellone
Knew it.

Its like a sorcerer that deals half damage, but can cast as much as they like.

By DnD they should be, but aren't ingame.

>Its like a sorcerer that deals half damage, but can cast as much as they like.
Sounds like trash desu, you can rest freely here, right?

>not picking another cleric because 3.5 codzilla can do anything
>not picking another epic level wizard
cmon man

I thought MotB doesn't let you rest as much, or am I misremembering?

You too were tricked into taking Hideous Blow your first time? My condolences. A shame that the only worthwhile build I'm aware of is pure caster, sit back and shoot acid chain/cone/lance all day long. Dark Foresight made it all good at least.

they changed how resting works in mask, it's not as freely available
in the base game yeah just sleep for like 20 hours a day and wreck shop

Depends on how you choose to handle a certain element of the expansion. You can either ignore it and rest pretty much all the time, or abuse it for massive power but way less free time.

MotB has the 8 hour rest mechanic where you can be attacked, there's also story reasons why you shouldn't rest willy nilly.

travel for haste and movement speed
evil for turn outsider and tentacles

tentacles are a real fucking asshole spell in nwn2
the area is large, they have a fairly long duration, you can set up a ton of them in advance of most encounters, and once something is lured into them they have an ass ton of chances of failing their saving throws or being paralyzed

The story reasons is what I was thinking about.

Hold up, really? Does that apply to the warlock invocation chilling tentacles?

yes, chilling tentacles even has the extra ice damage
i mean make no mistake, these spells are not considered strong because of their damage output, just their ability to render an enemy helpless by stacking too many fucking saving throw attempts at them where it results in regular failures

you still need to throw other spells or attacks at them to finish them off
spamming tentacles is just an option for encounters where you can see something is coming plain as day

>Cutscene
>Can't even hear what the enemy is saying over the droning hum of a dozen tentacle spells

yep, whenever playing with friends we would always dub the spell "noisy tentacles"

That's why subtitles are there. Besides, not being able to hear Qara or dickass rogue #123 seems like a good thing to me.

>Playing NWN 1
>Don't know that companion quests are a thing
>Don't know that completing a chapter cancels the quests you received that chapter
This should be illegal
Also, fuck those dire spiders.

Kek, I recently replayed nwn1 with paladin with 2h sword and 12CON, some enemies just killed me in two turns.

...

the thing I most remember about NWN2 is that is just as linear as Diablo but not as fun

>Comic that started out as a comedy poking fun at D&D/Tabletop adventure games turns into a generic fantasy novel because that's really what the author wanted to do, but sucked at it.

It's amazing how common this is.

>picking domains off single-use spell gains

The Domain powers are where it's at. The best 5 indisputably are:

Animal : Get a Druid's animal companion that scales with level.

Death: Pet shadow that levels up with you.

Earth: Free Toughness feat (stronger than the P&P version)

Fury: Gain a berserk mode 1/day that scales with level, powers attributes and grants DR.

Luck: Get a free Luck of Heroes feat (usually only attainable at level 1, one of the best feats in the game)

dat feel when frenzied berserker/rdd/fighter/bard

melee goodness

warlock is fun as fuck too

Is there a worse class Harper Agent? I can't see any benefit to taking the class outside RP.

>Bought NWN2 off Direct2Drive
>The entire set base and expansions
>Dig the fuck outta the one that's an economy sim in the jungle or whatever.

>Not even sure I can download it all anymore.

I really need to get a storage only drive

Nwn2 base is fucking garbage for preteen brainlets. You must suffer from Asperger's syndrome if you think it's at all interesting or compelling.

Purple dragon knight.

Harper Agent is the only way to get four natural attacks and 9th level Mage spells by level 20.

Fighter(or Paladin/Ranger/Barbarian)-1 / Wizard(or Sorcerer)-5 / Harper Agent-4 / Eldritch Knight-10

Also, their secondary benefits are good too. Free Bardic Knowledge, two prime saving throws, great skill selection and skill points, free daily spell-like abilities, stackable bonuses to saving throws, etc.

It might not be the most overtly powerful Prestige Class, but it's still really good and my personal favorite.

I enjoyed OotS for a while, but the slow creep into text bubbles literally taking up four fifths of every fucking page just got too much.

>Nwn2 base is fucking garbage for preteen brainlets

Right, I agree. For preteen brainlets, MotB is far superior.

People claim it's onpar with planescape, it was all a lie?

NWN>NWN2

>wut
Listen OP, there are hundreds of builds out there that are interesting to play and absolutely shit out tons of damage. Please try to remember that while this is an RPG, it's DnD RPG which means it has combat and quite a lot of it. You might as well build the most capable character you can to make fights interesting and over quickly. Gimmick characters might be fine against the 99% of enemies which aren't especially hard on their own, some of them crumble to the bosses like the dragons (there are several) or the undeads.

As for clerics I'd suggest going in any direction that maximises self buffing and fire damage. Clerics can be back line healers, spell throwers AND CQC monsters depending on equipment and spells memorised. For best results as a magic thrower, take empower metamagic feat. For a CQC character, take the extend spell metamagic feat. Generally speaking a cleric MC will be required to do some talking also so get your diplomacy to as high as you can, bluff doesn't hurt either.

Of no real importance are skills like appraisal which are useful sometimes but generally offer best results where they give you discounts on bought goods and bonus gold on sold goods. I'd invest a few points in to this skill if you have taken the Able Learner feat since it has its uses and over the course of the 60+hrs you will play it will pay for itself.

How is Storm of Zehir?

is there ever a reason to go dual wielding? Seems to me that going 2 handed is always better.

>Able Learner
What's the point, you're still gimped by half of max level restriction.
Is spellcraft useful for cleric? I planned to max it along with diplomacy and concentration.

Extra attack. Extra bonuses from the second weapons if applicable.

Depends. For rogues and dual wield rangers it makes a lot of sense with the +to hit and +damage from preferred enemy feats (which are class locked). For rogues it's better to duel wield because it procs more sneak attacks (consider at level 20 for those enemies which you can sneak attack using the feat to hit undeads etc, you get like +12 d6 dice of extra 'raw' damage that iirc ignores damage resistances, therefore 2h only attacks max 4x per round while duel wields attack 8x in the same time frame, literally doubling the number of sneak attack dice produced).

2h definitely does make sense... for weapons like the scythe or falchion where you can get 12-20 crit rating or better depending on build and this matters because crits multiply base damage so you want the base damage to be as high as possible. A dagger is 1d4, a falchion is 2d4 etc.

The point of able learner is exactly what it says on the tin, to let you take points in skills you shouldn't normally get, but at half price. As I said earlier, taking a couple points of appraisal is useful, especially since there are items that give pretty substantial bonuses like +8 which is a bonus you can't activate if you don't have at least 1 full point in a skill. I'm very rusty on what sort of shit that clerics can use for skills but having lots of points in diplomacy, spellcraft and heal should be your primary stats, appraisal/bluff/intimidate/UMD are dump stats. If you don't take able learner then just drop 1 point as available in to each of them and use items to gain bonuses on them. If you do take able learner, consider investing 4 points or so in to appraisal an getting 10 or so in bluff, since bluff has a lot of items with VERY high bonuses to it.

Anyone else agree NWN1 graphics are far superior to NWN2?

It's not as good as it's hyped to be. It explores the ramifications of one braindead aspect of the entirely braindead FR setting. That's it.

I like nwn1, it has consistent design in all about it.

Yes. They're superior entirely because they're so basic, which means you can let your imagination fill in some of the gaps. NWN2 looks like ass. Especially faces.

I think you might be getting seriously nostalgic for it. It's true that simpler graphics have that "each novel looks and sounds unique to each reader" *thing* going for them but the game itself is ugly and dated. Some games age well. NWN1 didn't.

Literally the best fantasy jew simulator ever made. The whole goal is to make money, grow your trade company, meet people and make deals.

Depends on what you want to do but if you intend on doing martial combat at all, the one that gives Divine Power at level 3 is a godsend, especially with the bugfixes that allow you to persist it.

NWN1 controls far better than its sequel, you don't feel like you're moving through tar for one thing

The problem is that it grows out of control and makes gold irrelevant if you bother to do it at all because of how your income scales.

>muh nostalgia

I replay NWN1 pretty regularly because it's so simple and easy to control. NWN2 on the other hand looks bad, runs bad (boy I sure love installing a 3rd party program or restarting my computer all the time to keep it from having that timing glitch), and has worse controls.

Does NWN2 have some things going for it over NWN1? Sure. Better companions. Better inventory. SoZ is pretty fun. Is it worth reinstalling it and playing through it semi-regularly? No.

>Playing a game where you always have a 5% chance of missing/failing

It's honestly much, much higher than that thanks to the idiotic way the game does random numbers. I've managed to roll five 1s in a row in NWN1/2 - something that has NEVER happened in 15+ years of PnP gaming with real dice.

You don't play enough 40k I see. Watching a punisher miss 20 shots isn't entirely uncommon.

NWN2's main problem is it uses the NWN1 engine. A NWN2 running on a better engine would be beyond meaningful comparison to 1.

But mate, in all honesty, if there was a remake for both games I'd get them. NWN1 FOR the nostalgia, NWN2 because its objectively the better game.

I don't like how NWN2 didn't give you more xp for soloing stuff, and I didn't like how summons and pets in NWN1 took your exp and then disappeared meaning you had to pay with progress to use them.

>NWN2 because its objectively the better game
user, obsidian is more idea guys rather than programmers, they are notorious for half-finished barely working games. They can't do shit even with completed assets.

It doesn't make much difference because enemies have challenge rating and if your level is lower or higher you'll get boost/penalty to xp for killing.

Fuck, I really need to finish this but
>made a bard
>realise sorcerer is way more fun at about 34 into the game
>cant be arsed to reroll cause main game is boring as shit
>dont feel like playing motb with inferior char

Best girl

Creepy stalker.

>mage pc
>maxxed out the magical (crafting) skills
>got a good amount of social skills from that one PrC everyone takes as well
>baldy basically proposes to me by the time we leave the caves

didn't bother me, because I enjoyed being rich as fuck all the time and rebuilding Crossroad Keep again

that's just how true love works

that's why you play as a less optimal class so you actually have to solve all your problems by throwing money at them

played as a swashbuckler that never took off his pimp hat

link to the build?

What's better - mace, club or morgenstern?

That's not even an argument against the content of the game, for which, NWN2 is head and shoulders better than NWN1.

>use character editor
>its a java program and like 100 years old
>you can de-level yourself to level 1, take 1 level of bard and then the rest as sorc for that RDD goodness

>main villain legit did nothing wrong and was a true patriot all along

He's not free of guilt, it's just that he's a victim of his nature.

Cute isn't it? Like pottery, it rhymes. He was hungry for magic, and you become hungry for souls. You both kill to survive. He defends his homeland against ALL invaders and may possibly have been beyond the reach of the gods. You defend yourself from the gods and you are beyond the reach of your homeland (and soul).

Strength and Time domain if you want to be a cheesing motherfucker.

Divine Power as a level 3 spell + persistable hastes + premonition pretty much wins the game for you.

You can even trow an offensive spell here and there just for fun.