Friday, June 10, 2011

Neverwinter Nights 2 mod - DMG 3.5 XP Table


Neverwinter Nights 2 mod - GQ XP Table (2012-Sep-21 -- new link)
Important: UPDATED July 26st, 2011 to correct formatting in the table -- Microsoft Excel wasn't exporting properly.

This is a modified xptable.2da for Neverwinter Nights 2. Put it in the override folder to change xp awards.

The XP table in Neverwinter Nights 2 has various oddities, such as giving you more XP for certain creature challenge levels when your level becomes higher. For example, if you are level 17, you earn 63 XP for defeating a Challenge Level 14 creature. If you were level 18, you would earn MORE when you should be earning less -- you get 65.6 XP (rounds down to 65 in-game).

This xptable.2da revision follows the pen and paper version of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 more closely instead of the erratic table in Neverwinter Nights 2. To install, copy the xptable.2da file into the "override" folder.

The pen and paper version of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 XP table is calculated as follows:
  • Based on a 4-person party, 13-1/3 encounters of Party Level = Creature Level would raise the party by 1 level.
  • Therefore, 4 characters x (level x 1000) * (3/40 encounters) = XP award when Party level = Challenge Rating.
  • This works out to (300 x party level) when Character Party Level = Creature Challenge Level.
  • For every 2 points the CR increases, then you double the XP (XP*2). For every 2 points the CR decreases, then you halve the XP (XP/2).
At levels 1 and 2, this does have a quirk of awarding more XP when your level is higher.

Our xptable.2da adapts the information above to Neverwinter Night 2's engine:
  • We use the formula starting at party level 3, and back-calculate x2 XP for +2 party levels (so level 2 gets about 141% more than at level 3, and level 1 gets 200% more than at level 3) so that the XP award always increases when monster level increases, and decreases when party level increases.
  • Since the game engine awards xp per kill instead of per encounter, we divide xp by 4 to get a per-kill figure -- here, we assume the number of monsters will equal the party size in each encounter.
  • The party size varies from 1-6 depending on the campaign and whether the player decides to solo, but xp is given to all characters, whether they are in the party or not, so we are still going with a party of 4 and further dividing the XP award on the XP table by 4.
  • We also artificially cap the maximum award to be the XP required to advance a level (a situation unlikely to happen in any case), and set the minimum award to be equal to the creature's challenge level.
Overall, XP awards start to be about 150% more when encounters are rated at +/- 2 of the party level.
The formulae can be viewed from the Excel worksheet included.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Neverwinter Nights 2 Mod - GQ Conveniences


Neverwinter Nights 2 mod - GQ Conveniences
This is a small module / cheat for Neverwinter Nights 2.
There is a non-module "independent" version you can put in your override directory to make the items accessible from any module or campaign through the giveitem console command.

In this module, you start in a small room with three chests in front of you.
The chest on the left has various cheat/convenience items. The other two chests are there to help you sort your inventory or throw away unwanted items.

The cheat items are:
  • Bags of Holding. Each of these bags is labelled with the type of item it is meant to hold, and the inventory icon has been changed to reflect this as well -- For instance, the "weapons" bag shows in your inventory as a sword. The bags will not do anything fancy like automatically sorting your inventory and moving things into bags. The icon change is to help you find the correct bag quickly. You may also want a bag inventory UI with more compact listings that show more items at once.
  • There are also several rings that grant various feats and skills. The bonuses given are obscene and are meant to let you experience portions of the campaigns (by passing skill checks) with virtually any character, especially as most characters will have very few skill points.
  • A Smith Hammer that lets you deconstruct traps. Use it's unique power on a trap in your inventory to recover the components (except the trap kit mold). Use it on empty space to get a free trap kit mold.
  • An item with the icon of a stack of gold coins. Use it on an item in inventory to destroy it, and get gold equal to the item's gold piece value as defined in the construction set. I use this to clear clutter that can be generated by cdaulepp's Random Loot Generator instead of filling up store inventories by selling it to them.