When leveling up, you sometimes get an extra ability point to distribute. When say, a fighter has a str of 16 and he adds his ability point to str, he gets 17, but that holds no further changes right? He'll need ANOTHER point in str to get to 18 before he gets +4? Isnt that just worthless? The difference between 16 and 17 str = nothing?

You get an extra ability point every 4 levels, regardless of class. And, yep, not much difference between 16 and 17 strength, except that now you're just one point away from 18.

Right. As the table on p. 134 shows, abilities go up in pairs. Unless the stat is an odd number, you won't get an increase when you raise it. So it's usually 2 points (or 8 levels) to get an increase. Which is marginally better than previous rules, where what you started with never changed, except through magic.

<cenetr>Nightowl2</center>

I gotta say I prefered the old system where getting 20 strength was a major accomplishment. :( My barbarian has 32 strength... seems so cheesy. I miss the 18/00 18/91 18/83 style 18's that made fighters so cool and rerolls so much fun. Just me I suppose but I really enjoyed endless rerolls. SERIOUS! [img]smile.gif[/img]

I miss the re-rolls too. One thing I don't like is the parity in character generation. No character of a particular race can have stat points totaling more than any other member of that race, and I think that's kind of lame. You've got your 16 points and the same starting stats, every time. Makes me tend to min-max stats without shame.

Say Jack, how'd you get a Barb with 32 strength? The most you can start with is 20, and by level 30, you've only had 7 increases, making for 27. Of course, if you're wearing a strength boost item, that would explain it.

Yeah, I miss rolling (and rolling and rolling and...or do I? ;) the dice myself. Patience can give you some good numbers over time.

Then again, what IWD2 uses for char gen is still better than the optional point system in the DM's Guide. There, everyone starts at 8 (!), you get 25 points, and it's 1 for 1 only up to 14. To raise a stat to 18 would cost 16 points. Ouch. I'm glad they didn't do that here.

<center>Nightowl2</center>

They made the ability score distribution more complex, useful and so damn confusing. In iwd1 charisma is not the basis of the sorcerers spells, wisdom and intellegence is not the determiner of the highest spell level you can cast.

Well, IWD1 was 2nd ed rules. This is 3rd edition (more or less, sometimes less).

Then again, 2nd ed didn't have sorcerers. At least not in my PHB.

<center>Nightowl2</center>

In ways I rather miss the rolling stats of 2nd edition rules too, but I also like the stat increase every 4 levels; I think that makes sense. If you're out in the field, fighting hook horrors and dread knights every day, you'll probably build some muscles, if you're a fighter, or increase your intelligence by thinking so much, if you're a wizard, etc. Too bad they couldn't have combined the two systems; they're not mutually exclusive. Have rolling stats, but also have the stat increases every 4 levels. That might make for some insane characters, but very fun!

Insanity is at the heart of any good character! ;)

As for my Barbarian: Yes he is wearing a belt I found in HoF called the Drawven Ogre. Raises strength by six... only usuable by Barbarians Rangers and Fighters... OR... [img]smile.gif[/img] character with ONE level of these. [img]smile.gif[/img] If it didnt mess up the BAB a Half Orc Monk 29/Fighter 1 would be SUPER powerful wearing this belt... But until a patch fixes that I will have to live with a monks strength maxing out at 27+2 with the Mercy Killer belt. :(

On a side note: has anyone made a Drow Monk? Monks get Spell Resitance but so do drow... and they stack. But only up to 50. I was wonder if ANY spells would get through at 50. The new system is a little weird. I beleive its a DC check against the casters Spellcraft level, which even in HoF should never be over 33. So with a little math it would be 33 + 1d20 Vs. 50 + 1d20 and since the max would be 53 for the spell caster and the MINIMUM for the monk would be 51 he should never be affected by a spell. Is this right??? I have also see a bug pop up where the Spell resistance stacked up to 81.

The roll to beat spell resistance is d20+caster level+spell penetration (if any). Even so, a 50 would be very hard to get past, unless, of course, the designers fudged things a bit for high-level enemy mages. Even if the spell gets through, you still have the saving throw (for spells that allow one).

In actual 3rd ed rules, the basic rollup is still with us. In this case, it's 4d6, total the three highest dice. The DMG has several alternate methods of stat creation, of which the point distribution is one.

I suspect the designers went with their modified version because overall, it's faster than rolling dice. I still prefer the dice.

Jack, I've bought that belt in HOF, too. Nice little item ;)

<center>Nightowl2</center>

They removed the rolling the dices part because people where exploiting it.

You are suposed to roll it once, or maybe twice, if you got a very bad roll. Not spend 3 hours rolling until you get four 18. That was creating unbalanced characters, so they removed it and gave a fixed number of points to distribute. That was every characters are balanced.

Well if you really spent the time (3+ hours!) then I'd argue you deserved the extraordinary characters. But my real problem with the new system is that it's kind of boring, and not realistic - not everyone is created perfectly equally and it takes some of the fun out of character generation for me. A party of extraordinary heroes to me is a good thing, not a bad one. Also from alot of the party/character builds I have seen (and even created) it tends to make the characters even more unrealistic - with min-maxed scores (alot of 1/3s in Int and Cha for example).

I miss the 2nd edition system too..

For spell resistance AIK, if your SR is 10. you absorb first 10 damage. so if your SR is 50. A wizard must cause 51 damage to cause you 1 damage [img]smile.gif[/img] correct me if im wrong

Well, they've tried to confuse us with spell resistance and magic resistance (I love these new, simplfied rules ;) )

Spell resistance means the spell either gets through or it doesn't.

Magic resistance is what absorbs damage from spells.

So let's say your Drow has a spell resistance of 25 and magic resistance 10. The evil mage chucks a fireball and must get 25 or better on his roll to have a chance of affecting him. Mage ends up with a 16, so the Drow just sneers and takes no damage at all.

But suppose said mage rolls up a 27. Now the spell gets through so the Drow must reflex save against the fireball. Let's say he makes it for half damage, maybe 15 points. Magic resistance eats 10 of that, so the Drow ends up with a first-degree burn of 5 points of damage.

<center>Nightowl2</center>

Is the caster level the lvl of a particular class or the total level of the character?

Technically, it should be the level of the mage part. For instance, if you have a Rogue 2/Sorcerer 6, the caster level should be 6, not 8. I've never dualed any of my mage types, however, so can't be sure if they are doing that here. And it's difficult to say in any case, since you don't see the rolls to get through spell resistance.

I know they take full character levels for skills. For example, a Fighter 5/Rogue 2 could have 10 in Lockpicking, where a Fighter 7 could only have 3.

<center>Nightowl2</center>

True enough! I never started a game where my char would have less then 83 points on a roll. On balancing account, this new system is superb. I just wish they would have done *some*thing with the odd numbers, not just the even.

I also dislike the odd numbers being pointless.

Also, IWD was based on AD&D 2nd edition, not just 2nd edition buyo! ;) heh heh, AD&D kicks ass. Oh, I love the claim that feats are a new, interesting thing. lol, THATS WHAT NON-WEAPON PROFICIENCIES WERE FOR! lol, stupid wotc.

"I also dislike the odd numbers being pointless."

Actually they're not - to qualify for certain feats, you need an odd number (take Expertise or Dirty Fighting for example).

In fact, all feats that have a stat requirement show the minimum to be an odd number, either 13 or 15. Of course, if you happen to have an odd stat above those numbers, it doesn't mean much.

<center>Nightowl2</center>

Odds stats are like that because this is how they are in the pen and paper version.

And again, it's just about balance. They could have stats make a difference everytime, but then you would start with attributes from 1 to 9, and you would get a new point every 8 levels.

I'm a little curious: how are you getting to these high levels? I'm at the Dragon's eye and am only level 14 and having trouble getting XPs, I either get none or the amounts are dropping (I know the rules work that way). I've done all the side quests and things that I could fine, but its still creeping.

As for the Ability increases, the way the system works takes planning to develop the character like you want them, not end up with all 18's. I actually dislike the way feats are doled out and the choices, some of the best in the pen and paper game didn't make it here.

The higher levels come from a few different methods. First (though I don't do it myself), if you play in Heart of Fire mode, you get more exp.

Second, if you have a smaller party, they will go up levels faster. You may want to add low level characters to the group as you go along to keep getting more exp.

Third, you can "level squat" - not take levels you've earned for a long time to keep your paty's average level down.

Basically the game looks at your party's combined average level when it gauges the difficulty of an encounter and grants exp.

A full party would finish the game at level 16 average.

I know thats how the pnp method works! lol, I spend too much time with the books. heh.

Yes, you need odd numbers for the feats, but, do you often just leave it at the odd number? or do you raise it by one to get the bonuses from it?

They wouldn't need to change that much. Just make make the bonus' go up EVERY level. This would help monsters as much as PC, as in 3rd ed, all monsters have stats.

For Fighters I do with Int, if I am going for Expertise - no real benefits to bumping a Fighter's Int to a 14.