I think skill presets are very important and are things that will have been considered if not already implemented, and if not, definitely needing to be. Not just for the casual player who wants to pick a stock role and doesn't like legos as much as some of us, but really for the whole NWN group and users like the NWN group that will carry over and be feeling out the waters. Even lego-users will be looking for ways to recreate the familiar classes and will use presets as starting points to make their rogues, monks, paladins, rangers, etc. Customization is a wonderful, wonderful thing, but it's not everyone's bag. Some people still hit the 'recommended' button even in Neverwinter Nights, forget a skill-based game.
So agreed there,
especially for priests. It would be nice to have subsets for those as well, for simulating their different 'domains.' In the Lucindite priest example, you could have a preset for each ward of the church. (Yes, I know they will be obsolete, but we work with current information when giving examples...) So you would have,
with updated equivalents, Priestess of Lucinda (Ardhon Gis); Priestess of Lucinda (Akh'faern Gis); Priestess of Lucinda (Uvaer Gis); Priestess of Lucinda (Cerlyn Wethrina) etc... just with the new divisions of the churches from the new writeups instead. You get the point. Similarly things like Mage - Evoker, Mage - Illusionist, etc, that collected same-type skills/spells together. Even though the schools of magic will not be D&D style, having even an unofficial set of presets (sharing them!) to replicate the past stuff would be nice.
Regardless of levels vs no-levels though, 'progression speed' is still a valid concept, I think.
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Originally Posted by Pseudonym  PS. And poison to last longer on weapons |
While I don't know how their poison system is going to work (or if it will be available right out of the gate, since you know the first version is going to be trim), I feel that we can be safe in assuming that it will be nothing like the current one. Yes, there are people working on the new stuff that have been listening to people whine about it for years and that have poison crafting characters, but more than that the simple reason that everything takes time to make and they don't have stacks of cash and a time machine. If it they bother to put in a poison system, it has an automatic priority of, you know,
functioning. Making your own stuff means it either works or it's out, usually. There's not a lot of time to be wasted by spending it on something that's just as broken as the previous version... :P
So! I am reasonably confident that if there is a poison system, it will be thought out and serving a well-defined purpose, whether it is my favorite or not - if only because of the simple need for prioritizing and getting the most from their valuable time.
While RP skills are nice and all that, I think it is important that all skills in a commercial game have a useful purpose - especially if it is a skill based game. Besides, can you imagine the reaction if they put in one just like our current one, only for pay this time? Customers are even uglier than players about that kind of thing, hehe.