Mechanical/Survival Tips Thread

[Kotenku]

Alt Title: "21 THINGS YOU WISH YOU KNEW ABOUT NWN MECHANICS BEFORE DYING AT 20700XP"
This thread is for miscellaneous mechanical tips that are second-nature for veterans, but might not be obvious to people who haven't been playing for hundreds of years.

Disclaimer: Always build your character according to story first, and mechanical advantage second. Take nothing written here as gospel.

Dealing with Attacks of Opportunity:
Each creature in NWN can only make one Attack of Opportunity per combat round.

AoOs happen when you enter or leave a 5-foot radius of a hostile creature while running. If you are not being targeted by the enemy already, you can disengage from combat, switch on detect mode (or use shift+click) to walk out of the threatened area safely, and THEN run to safety.

You can also run toward an enemy and switch to walking the last bit of distance for a more cautious charge. I've heard mixed opinions on whether this is OK, but in my view, you don't get an attack bonus from charging (like you would from the maneuver of that name in Pathfinder), and you risk letting the spellcaster finish their spell if you don't get to them as fast as possible.

AoOs also happen when you drink a potion in a threatened area. Wands, scrolls, miscellaneous items, equipment special powers, charged items, */day powers, and so forth will not provoke AoOs. The trade-off with potions is that you can drink two potions per round. For this reason if you're drinking in combat, you should always queue two potions at a time, particularly if you're drinking healing.

The Mobility and Spring Attack feats will increase your AC against AoOs provoked by movement, or remove AoOs from movement altogether. If you don't have spring attack or tumble ranks, you have a 100% chance of provoking an attack of opportunity. However, for a character in cloth armor, a single rank in tumble will grant a 30% chance to avoid provoking AoOs. (d20 + 1 vs DC 15 means rolling a 14 or better will succeed.) Gear conferring a tumble bonus is ubiquitous, and can usually be worn by anyone, and every tumble point above 0 gives a 5% chance of preventing AoOs. That 5% could be the scythe crit from Bobo that would have killed your squishy PC in a single hit.

Health Management:
Uninjured status means you're above 95% HP.
Barely Injured means 75-95%.
Injured means 50%-75%.
Badly Wounded means 25-50%,
Near Death means below 25%.

The biggest killer of PCs is sudden, bursty damage from unexpected critical hits or from sneak attacks. There is not much you can do about either, except avoid being in the position to take those hits. If you can't avoid it though, the /next/ best thing is to keep your hit points topped up as much as possible, so that when those hits DO come, you'll still be on your feet afterward.
This isn't always practical on your own, so as a good guideline, if your PC IS on their own, goes into injured status, and can't safely heal, that is a very good time to consider running away.
If you are playing a support or healing character, the expectation is that you will keep your front liners either Uninjured or Barely Injured as much as possible.
If a group's front-liner drops into Badly Wounded/Near Death/Bleeding, something is very wrong, and it may be time to reassess your party's tactics and fitness for the challenge at hand.

Learn what spells can improve your survivability. There are three primary approaches:
Absorb More Hits: Spells like Endurance, Aid; Some bard songs, Stone Skin, Endure/Resist/Protection from Elements, all act as flat bonuses on top of you current hit points, and will give you time to heal or make decisions in combat.

Get hit less: Spells like Barkskin, Shield, Mage Armor, Haste, and Cat's Grace may increase your AC. For monks, include Owl's Wisdom
Ghostly Visage, Displacement, and Improved Invisibility grant Concealment which confers a flat miss chance to enemy attacks, calculated BEFORE they roll, meaning they can miss you even on a 20 if your concealment effect works.

Take Less Damage: The potion of plur (Ghostly Visage) is probably the single best potion for low to mid-level PvE. Conferring 5/+1 damage reduction, and 10% concealment by default (but boostable to 20% with GSF: Illusion), blur can make you nearly invincible in hectic situations against enemies who don't have magic weapons. Stoneskin and the elemental resistance potions also fall in this category, but were placed above because of their 'point' limitations.

Note that creatures with DR of their own get an automatic enhancement bonus to their creature weapons. So an imp with 5/+1 DR will pierce 5/+1 DR. Keep this in mind when tanking creatures with heavy DR, you may be better off with a concealment spell, or higher AC.

There's dozens or hundreds of more little quirks, things that are useful to know, and these only scratch the surface. I open the floor to anyone who'd like to add some of their own insights, and as I remember more of these things, I'll swing back by this thread to add them on. Hopefully this can be a useful resource for players who are really struggling with getting past the level 6 difficulty curve.

Next time I'll try to talk about positioning in combat, and the virtues of teamwork (and how to do teamwork right.)

[TsunamiWombat]

Always max Climb first
Drink clarity first

[bobofwestoregonusa]

Even when tanking, try to position with the group and never ahead. Being surrounded is the best way to gaurentee you'll see fugue.

[Anthee]

I'd add that if you're playing a frontliner, getting Improved Expertise is probably the single best mechanical decision you can make to help keep both yourself and your party alive. You can do tanking even while wielding a two-handed weapon if you've enough other sources of AC. You can turn it on when you're taking the heat and off when you're flanking -- and if you do use a two-handed weapon (or are a dual-wielder), you can basically be both a tank and a DPS, switching between the roles depending on the situation. And since you have to get Expertise, too, in order to get Improved Expertise, you can opt for that instead when you don't need that much AC (remember to check the enemies' attack bonuses from the combat feed).

Even though 20s will still hit you -- so don't think you'll be untouchable even in full plate with a tower shield if you're surrounded by lots of enemies -- the HP drain will generally be slow enough for you and your party to determine the best course of action and heal up or fall back if it starts to look bad. Just remember that as with all combat modes, Expertise / Improved Expertise will get turned off immediately if you stop attacking for any reason, including drinking healing potions! A related tip: although many frontliners will have a low Will save for IC reasons, neglecting Will is one of the surest ways to die many an ignominious death because of Hold Person, Gedlee's Electric Loop or another incapacitating spell. And if the frontliners fall, the rest of the party often joins the fugue trip in short order, too.

If you turn on Improved Expertise before charging, you can also benefit from the high AC against the enemy's ranged attackers while not yet within melee range, even if you don't actually need it in melee.

Disclaimer: Expertise and Improved Expertise do require an Intelligence score of 13+ so many less intelligent characters specializing in melee combat (especially the stereotypical barbarian) will have to use other tricks to improve their survivability.

[Anonymous Lemur]

Improved expertise is almost always a terrible choice.

There are very niche situations where it is decent. Such as if you happen to be travelling with a party of entirely ranged attackers and have a means to completely block enemy pathing. Some quests have these kinds of chokes, but most of them are enough for three units to move through at a time.

So why is gaining 10 AC for 10 AB such a bad deal?  Well there are a number of factors. One of them is way the AI works in nwn. Specifically how it decides when to switch targets. So I'll explain that first.

Here are things that cause npc's to re-evaluate their targets:

   
• Using abilities
• Drinking potions
• Casting Spells
• Getting knockdowned/disabled in some way
• Attacks of Opportunity (Usually switches to the target it got an aoo on)
• Isn't being hit by current target and is struck by flanking target
• Run/Call for Help Script

Now they won't -always- change targets, but they frequently will. This is why the flanker always needs to be attacking the same target as someone taking the brunt, not just to kill them faster (the best way to mitigate damage) but also to ensure one of the monsters doesn't turn to him. You can usually tell someone very experienced with holding a line because they will always try to target something that can be reached by all of the flankers. Rather than what is directly in front of them. Since attacking any unit that isn't being hit by "tank"  is almost certain to cause that unit to turn to you.

So essentially when you sacrifice your ability to hit a target, it's typically going to switch to one of your squishier targets. Not to mention most non boss monsters on quests don't have more than 16 ab. Standard quest buffs of barkskin, protection from evil with a full plate and large shield +1 will see you sitting at 27 ac, add haste (31 ac) to that when fighting a LOT of monsters and displacement for really tough fights and then you're chance of being hit is reduced dramatically, while still being able to kill your opponents -quickly-.

What's the rush about killing monsters quickly? Well most of the time the rush is more a case of needing to get chaff quickly out of the way so that you can deal with important targets. For example if you take too long to kill the an ogre brainslammer swarm, those Vaprak Callers are going to dispel every single one of your front-liners repeatedly before you reach them.

The only time I would ever suggest taking improved expertise is when playing an RSD. Only because they rely heavily on stalling with their regeneration effects to keep themselves alive.

Sorry about the terrible formatting. I shouldn't even be awake. Let alone posting on the forums...

[Anthee]

You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but my experience (and that of some mechanically proficient players I respect) suggests otherwise.

Keep in mind that this is about party dynamics: when you do use Improved Expertise to tank, the expectation is that there is at least one other PC in the party that can play the role of DPS. All you need is one rogue, two-hander or mage as support. With a bit of experience, you can switch the mode on and off as needed pretty smoothly and avoid situations where you'd get caught in that lethal catch-22 where you need healing or other consumables but can't do it due to Imp Expertise turning off if you do it.

+10 AC regardless of how much AB penalty you get is a great deal whenever you're tanking. Monsters don't switch their focus that easily away from you even if they're not hitting you. And when they do, just switch the mode off for the time being and deal some damage, right?

[bobofwestoregonusa]

I'm just gonna go ahead and weigh in on this argument here since we're trying to help new people survive. I don't want them falling into the trap of thinking expertise is a security blanket when realistically it's not even good most of the time.

As someone who has played tanks regularly I can confirm. Improved Expertise will improve your chances of survival and literally only your chances of survival. Generally the idea of "roles" degenerates the moment you get into an open area where combat becomes a multi target frenzy and enemies can choose not to discriminate to the person with the highest ac. That's why it becomes a game of formations. The tank sends himself into the group of targets while he focuses on a target the most people at once can kill so that he can move up the line. This will allow the tank to lands hits and keep the attention of the target (who will ignore you entirely if you do literally no damage most times) while his party makes a good solid point of killing the thing. Then move along the line in order to reduce the number of threats on the map that can attack non-tanks.


Positioning is the biggest and most important factor to survival on EFU and AC is secondary to it at almost all points in time.


Also reliance on combat modes for AC is generally going to get you killed when:


1) Tanglefoot bags happen
2) Your target moves and breaks your expertise
3) You are leave combat mode for any myriad of reasons that constantly happen in EFU.
4) You move either with the directional keys or clicking out of combat.

30 ac and unit tactics is and literally always will be better than 40 ac and hoping your party doesn't get attacked. Getting yourself reliable tumble, armor, shield, deflection, and natural armor goes a much longer way toward your survival. Sitting at that solid 30 with a party who can prioritize targets correctly is the most reliable way to survive an encounter. This isn't world of warcraft so we don't have aggro bars that hold targets onto you even when you aren't dealing any damage. That's just not how EFU or NWN's AI work. Confusing the two will get you killed and make you regret two mostly situational (in the case of improved expertise only dispirately useful in maybe two scenarios) feats.

[zDark Shadowz]

There are a number of points I agree & disagree on in regards to improved / expertise in both those posts, and I use both often having had practice on many low-level low magic servers... it's best used by people that like number crunching AB/AC comparisons, checking the flank bonuses and working out relative percentages to hit to get the optimal effect over time, optimal being everyone can win, or everyone gets bought time to run first...

There's a lot of what-ifs. IE works for people that know how to use it well. If you think it's a terrible choice then you don't know how to use it well, or you haven't encountered a situation yet where it was needed, but it nevertheless remains a choice so pick a different feat that suits your playstyle and leave it at that.

Not all encounters are scaled fairly, it only takes one death and your character is out, either for the rest of the dungeon or the rest of the game. You can have all the best AC gear and spell enchantments and Improved Expertise and it still may not be enough, and that's just how the game rolls.

Best survival tip - find out how capable your group is for the situations you can expect and make sure that healing is evenly distributed. A proper adventuring group shares and splits supplies before a venture, not after, because it's the collective success that matters, not the personal wealth. Also, displacement/improved invisibility provides 50% concealment which is (ignoring blind fight) going to half the amount of times your front liners are going to be hit. If the opponents AB is higher than your frontliners AC, changing things from 100% hit chance to 50% hit is a significant improvement in an otherwise impossible situation.

[Anthee]

Bob:

Realistically speaking, it's going to take a very, very long time for any new player to reach the point where they'll be regularly having 30 AC with their tank character on scripted quests. You need Shield + Barkskin for that, in addition to your standard tanking gear, and characters in EfU don't start with full plate mail and stacks of potions (or the gold to buy those). Even if you know how to get there relatively quickly with your equally mechanics-savvy questing pals, new players don't.

Besides, you only need to get to level 6 or so and add a couple of AB buffs to land hits often enough even with Imp Expertise on to keep the attention of most scripted quest hostiles. And you can always turn it off for a round to land a hit or two if you're facing a high AC monster.

There are very many maps that allow for bottleneck tactics rather than the "open field carnage" scenario you're presenting. You can even use Imp Expertise in PvP to basically nullify or at least greatly reduce the effectiveness of your opponent's short-term buffs like Haste, barbarian rage, and the like.

I agree it's not a safety blanket, it's not something to rely on exclusively (and I never implied such), but for the cost of two feats, it's definitely the single most useful all-around combat feat when used properly. There are tons and tons of situations where you wish you had it if you didn't take it.

[Damien]

I enjoy this thread purely for Naga getting called out for being mechanically inefficient.

In all seriousness though, a new player will survive far more easily with IE until they learn how combat works in EfU. That's a fact, while still holding true all that Lemur said.

I think a key tip also is understanding your enemies. Learn what spells they use, what dcs they have, what ab/ac they have. That is key to your survival also.

[Anonymous Lemur]

You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but my experience (and that of some mechanically proficient players I respect) suggests otherwise

This is Naga by the way. Improved expertise is a bit of a newbie trap. Some people fall into it and never get out, since it seems a lot better than it is and they never try playing without it. The utility falls of dramatically at the level 8-10 range and during big server changing events/dm quests. Usually resulting in an unpleasant death for the user.

Damage will decrease significantly when the monster ignores you because you never hit it and the flanker hits it once and has them on him instead. Your rogues do zero damage when they can't sneak attack. Less when they die to the monster that is ignoring you and chunking their hit points while you sit in improved expertise, wondering why the monster suddenly disengaged from you.

You can drop expertise at that point, but then the other monsters hitting you will begin to inflict some serious hurt, also since the flanker is hitting the monster it will be difficult for you to draw it's attention back unless they're running around and at that point your line is completely broken.

Expertise will bring you up to the point of most monsters needing 20 to hit you just fine without crippling your ab too much.

[Glyph]

I would add that tumble requires training so at least 1 investment point necessary to take advantage of tumble gear

[Anthee]

The utility falls of dramatically at the level 8-10 range and during big server changing events/dm quests. Usually resulting in an unpleasant death for the user

The new players who need to look at this thread for mechanical tips will likely never ever have had a level 8 character and likely will not have one for a long time either. It's not an easy thing to accomplish on EfU if you're not a NWN veteran, unless you find a reliable questing posse and don't do frontlining.
I don't contest the point in and of itself, though, so let's leave it at that.

[Kotenku]

Dang it guys... Did you have to turn this into the expertise debate again? I swear there is no topic in EFU more contentious than 'Improved Expertise'.
It's a good panic button when you only care about your own survival, it's useless in many circumstances that are somewhat hard to discern from the outside, but being dogmatic about it in either direction is silly.

[Anthee]

Let me rephrase that reply:
"Dang it guys... Did you have to turn this into the expertise debate again? Side B is obviously correct, but being dogmatic about it in either direction is silly."
::)