Class Warfare
By dvaeg 5 Comments
Although I didn't play any NWN this weekend, I can officially declare that I'm now ankle-deep into the foray. When last I wrote I was slightly past the character creation screens, far enough to realize that I had stumbled into what begins as a generic RPG send up of the worst kind. I was able to spend a few hours playing on Friday, and I made it to the first major quest hub, Fort Locke. In the lead up I had also acquired two companions: a punch-drunk dwarf fighter and a whiny, Tiefling rogue.
Head of the Class(es)
That's where my problems began, and to be honest I'm not sure where I stand on it. Having spent the majority of my recent RPG time in World of Warcraft, I had completely re-tuned my noggin towards the Holy Trinity school of combat. For the uninitiated, the Holy Trinity requires only three roles, each fill-able by certain classes: - Tank - the meatshield that absorbs the bulk of the damage and manages aggro
- Healer - a squishie who is responsible for keeping the tank alive
- DPS - damage dealing class that hits hard without getting aggro.
This strategy, while a staple in the MMO genre, does not work so well in D&D. After 5 hours or so of gameplay I've found myself with a fighter and two rogues, necessitating a complete rethinking of my strategy. With no real implementation of aggro in the game system, and nobody to do a lick of healing, I was pretty much screwed. A helpful commenter on this very blog summed up my predicament with the following wise words: "You plan on multiclassing, right?" I do now, Arbitrary Water, I do now.
But I Digress
Having considered my options, I'm highly likely to take a rank or two of fighter or cleric, keeping my ability to spot traps and disarm them, but gaining the ability to use a real weapon instead of this Peter Pan dagger I carry like a damn sissy. At Fort Locke I've been asked to clear out some bandits, head into a graveyard and find a missing holy symbol -- none of which was particularly exciting to me from a story perspective. At somewhere around 5 hours into the game, there's a pretty big hole where an antagonist should be. Obsidian is generally awesome, but if you aspire to make something more than a dungeon crawler, adhering to principles of story-writing need to come into play. This is doubly true when the screen flashes the act number in front of the player, letting them know they've hit a story milestone. So far I'm left with with a feeling of cognitive dissonance when I try to reconcile my feelings. I have a robust, challenging, rewarding combat engine that might as well be put to use killing 10 rats in a underground cellar for all the good it does me. There's merit in building a throw-back story to go with your throwback mechanics, but if there's enjoyment to be found in the narrative, I haven't come across it yet. Not that this will stop me from playing though, as NWN2 has so far succeeded in massaging my nostalgia button in the most salacious of ways.