Druid

[Illumina Drathiran'ar]

IIRC- If I Remember Correctly.

And yes, the creation skills are new, and they might work in the OC, if you have the later games installed... I'm not positive, though.

[Timber Loftis]

My robe-clad druid is proof that the new creation skills do work in the OC.

[Target]

Now that sound good!!! What sort of thing do I need to get to make cool stuff??

[Timber Loftis]

Originally posted by Target: Now that sound good!!! What sort of thing do I need to get to make cool stuff??

I'm certainly no expert, but once you've begun the game, the craft skills are on your radial menu. You can change the look of your armor, weapon, or add a robe. The robe is purely cosmetic as far as I can tell. But, my armor crafting ain't so hot yet, and I can't make the role to craft the armor I want. Oh, I think the armor is not purely cosmetic, just to add a note.

[Target]

Armor that looks better must be good.....right
So you just find a robe and combine it with your armor...sounds easy, I'll put some points into that!!

[Timber Loftis]

You don't have to find a robe. Robes/cloaks you do find are placed in the appropriate inventory slot as usual. Just use the radial menu at any time to go to the craft skill and use it. It will be easy from there.

[Stratos]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: Yes, do bother with a long-range weapon. Slings are good, and do Oh, and Stratos mentioned a Druid being immune to grease and entanglement -- sorry, but IIRC it's only entanglement.

Nah, the in-game description says you get immunity to web, entangle and grease effects, but I'm absolutely certain I've been trapped by webs several times so that immunity obviously doesn't apply. I don't know what the official DnD material says about this, though.

[Stratos]

As for the crafting; no it's not really available in the NWN OC. To add a robe really just change the appearance of whatever you are wearing in the armour slot into one of four different robe models. It looks cool, but it doesn't change the stat of the original armour in any way; a chainmail turned into a robe will still be a chainmail. Adding a robe also always seem to succeed even if you don't have putted any skill points into crafting.

If you want to use the actual crafting skills you'll need to put some skill points into them to have a good chance of success. With, say, the Craft Armor skill you can create new armours, which requires raw materials, as well as changing the appearance of the armour you're wearing. When you want to change the appearance you can do things like changing the looks on the shoulder pads, torso piece etc., custom designing your own armour, so to speak. This isn't to be confused with just adding robes I described before. As for creating a brand new armour from scratch you'll need to collect raw materials for it, but I don't believe they are available the NWN OC. SoU introduces the Craft Trap skill and contains items for that purpose, but the items used for Craft Weapon and Craft Armor is only available in HotU.

Hope this clears some things up.

Edit: Except for changing the appearance of your armour into something cool, there's very little purpose for the crafting skills, AFAIK. You can't permanently enchant any items with these skills, and going around to look for raw materials for a non-magic chainmail is fairly pointless considering it's easier to just buy it in a store. Perhaps if you're really short on cash.

Spellcasters can, on the other hand, craft wands, brew potions and scribe scrolls which is pretty cool. And the Continual Light spell is just cheesy.

[ 04-13-2004, 05:25 PM: Message edited by: Stratos ]

[ScottG]

Pure Druids can be good at either ranged attacks OR melee attacks - not both though (..you can be good at one and decent at another though).

I've tried them both ways and I actually prefer to use them as ranged attackers - pure Elf race. Why? Because you have to pump quite a bit into your wisdom attribute, you won't be left w/ a lot of points to up Str. and Con.. Additionally, you don't get a lot of feats to choose (feats you really want for melee). Also they have excellent summoning, good pets (1st level brown bear is the choice for a ranged attacker), and the spell entangle - (plus at level 16 you can shift into an earth elemental to dish-out melee damage). Ammunition has a variety a elemental damage. The feat Rapid Shot gives you an extra attack. finally the tactic I mention below works well with offensive spell casting AND ranged attacks.)

Tactic for a beginning Druid (and any level Druid): hide and move silently until you come across an opponent or opponents. Pull back out of your opponents visual range and then fire off your first entagle spell near them. Next fire off your second entagle spell but this time offset the location of the spell from where you first located it - this gives better coverage virtually ensuring that you will entagle your opponents. Even if they make a save and move forward chances are they will entangled again b4 they get to you. IF the opponents are ranged attackers then you can summon a creature right next to them to distract them. IF they manage to get past the entangle radius then summon a tank in front of your character. Otherwise - fire away at your opponents until their dead.

Skills - I don't even bother with animal empathy outside of 1 point. Otherwise up your hide and move silently skills. Also up your tumble skill for the AC bonus. Attributes would be Wisdom (16) and Dex. (18) with everything else in the 10's. Your first two in-game attribute point increases will go to dex., the remaining 3 to wisdom. Race Elf (Dex. bonus and Longbow prof. feat + skill bonuses). Feats point blank shot and rapid shot. latter feats: improved critical longbow, dodge, mobility, spring attack. (the last 3 are mentioned to get spring attack which helps with minimizing attacks of opportunity problems with ranged attacks.)

[Timber Loftis]

On the note of a ranged Druid, has anyone played a Druid/Arcane Archer? I guess you'd need a level of Wiz or Sorc. Not an option for me -- I played a human. But, I'm regretting it solely on the basis that I'd like to have darkvision.