Vision

This page is about how I envision things when I develop for this persistent world. Please keep these in mind when contributing.

Inspiration

A lot of inspiration comes from a persistent world called 3 Towns. It is known for being hardcore and tough. It remains a popular action server despite using no haks. Some of the systems I have made are inspired directly from it, such as resting ambushes and difficult encounters. The Stone of Recall from the original campaign is pretty much gone for the most part, although you can return to the Temple as a way to "unstuck" yourself but it counts as dying, thus travel is difficult and wipes are dangerous. I want to re-create the epic encounters such as the assault on the Iron Brotherhood Citadel, the orc camps, etc. They were quite memorable, fun, and extremely tough!

Sticking to Vanilla

I really, really want to stick as close to vanilla as possible. It's so players can easily pick it up and start playing without doing any reading. Players who are new to Neverwinter Nights or who read the wiki or manual for information should be able to make good builds and characters who won't do bad in this environment, while allowing room for power-builders to try new builds because of the level 12 cap. It's also why I didn't change the statistics of certain items - in some servers scimitars/rapiers are nerfed or changed or more commonly, other item types are buffed. I just opted instead to reduce how often the more overpowered items are found and give good items to the alternative. Clubs and sickles may be weak, for example, but there are often some very good ones with unique on-hit properties that are not found on other items. In this server you will never find a scimitar with keen, but perhaps a shortsword or longsword that is.

Level 12 Cap

Although I never played any real table top, I did read that a lot of campaigns stopped around level 12-15. It's something I want to stick by, as I also read that D&D is more balanced at low level and things never truly get to or close to epic. Anyways, I settled for level 12 for a few things (mainly balance):

• Weapon masters cannot reach the seventh level and reach full power
• Barbarians get an additional rage and 1 damage reduction
• Druids who are pure get improved Wildshape
• Fighter and Champion of Torm feats are more valuable
• Dwarvern Defenders can reach a point where they can't be flanked, but not quite reach the damage reduction
• Harper Scouts and Purple Dragon Knights are more relevant
• Sorcerers must be pure to get sixth level spells
• Paladins and Rangers get their third level spells
• etc.

As you can see, a lot of classes gain a lot at their 12th level. I honestly feel NWN is balanced most around that level. I also think having this type of cap will encourage players (and they have!) to create fun, unique builds. Another source of inspiration is from games such as Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and even the original Neverwinter Nights as they also tend to be fairly low level. Myself, I'd really like to capture the feel of the low levels from the Infinity Engine cRPGs. Did I mention that there's not really a low level action server that's doesn't require roleplay?

I've also been heavily inspired for the "RP" sense it made. Check out this reddit comment for my thoughts on it, and the tiers of play.

According to that comment on reddit, someone on EN World broke 3/3.5 down into quartiles like so:

• Levels 1-5: Gritty fantasy
• Levels 6-10: Heroic fantasy
• Levels 11-15: Wuxia
• Levels 16-20: Superheroes

We stop here at Wuxia (and sort of early as well for some reasons listed above), which literally means "martial heroes". To go any further, well you may as well be able to solo the Forgotten Realms at that point. We can keep the encounters and setting more sensical here without giving goblins and orcs +10 axes and full-plate that's tougher than the regular palette dragons.