Neverwinter Nights 2 - Storm of Zehir - Character Creation

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Neverwinter Nights 2 - Storm of Zehir - Character Creation

This is one of a series of walkthroughs/hints for Neverwinter Nights 2 (Storm of Zehir). Click here for a listing of all our guides for Neverwinter Nights 2 and Expansions.

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You should first read general information in our Character Creation notes for the Original Campaign as much of the information applies.

Character Creation
  • If you start all-new characters instead of importing, they begin with basic armor and no weapons or other gear. You can theoretically import any character you like, but the campaign is for the most part a low to mid-high level campaign and a too-powerful party will ruin the experience.
  • The character that starts the campaign is the only one that cannot be swapped out.
    • The other three you can bring in can be swapped out at any time.
      • You can therefore swap in characters with magic-item crafting feats to do your crafting for you, then swap them out again.
    • The character that starts the campaign is also the "PC" character. If other characters are too far away from this character, they earn NO XP for kills and therefore your party also earns NO XP for their actions.
      • If you want to have a Sneak Attack character go solo with Greater Invisibility and attack with relative impunity, you therefore want to have them as the character you start Storm of Zehir with.
    • You need a party of 4 to learn any Teamwork feats at Crossroad Keep, but you do not need to have all four at all times.
    • There are various cohorts available in the game -- basically characters that are pre-made for you and that you have to find. You can have one, or two if you have the leadership feat.
    • Experience from combat is distributed equally to all party members, including cohorts, and even if someone is dead. Experience from quests is a flat amount given to every party member, and is not divided.
  • You can have more than four party members by using the NWN2 Toolset:
    • Open the Toolset
    • Click on the plugins option
    • Select campaign editor
    • Select Neverwinter Nights 2 Campaign_X2
    • Look for the field that says party creation size and change it from 4 to whatever you like. Six is probably a good limit to avoid traffic jams. You do not have to have a full party.
    • The game won't let you add any cohorts if you already have 5 characters (6 if you have the Leadership feat). To adjust this, use the console command rs ga_party_limit(10)to change the party size limit to 10 (or whatever you want).
  • On the overland map, various skills are checked. You can spread skills out among your characters and use the F1 to F6 keys to select which character is the current party leader.
    • When you select a different character, sometimes you will end up with two characters on the overland map. Just re-select the character who first entered the overland map, then select your party leader again.
      • E.g., You exited to the overland map with the character in slot 2. This will be the character that appears on the overland map as your party leader. If you want the character in slot 4 to be your party leader, you can press F4. If this is the first time you are choosing a new party leader, you may see characters 2 and 4 both on the map. Character 2 will stand in place (but cannot be interacted with by encounters) while character 4 moves around. If you now press F2 to select character 2, the party will jump back to where character 2 is located. If you now press F4 to select character 4 as your party leader, character 2 will be replaced by character 4 instead of two characters appearing on the overland map. Everything should be fine now.
    • The tutorial / journal entry will detail the use of skills, but in general the one you want to have active all the time is Search, to find hidden events.
    • Against hostile encounters, Spot (to detect hostile encounters from as far away as possible), and Hide (to hide from hostile encounters so that you can choose whether to engage them or not) are useful.
    • Survival is useful to maximize your movement rate, but in general that is only good for fleeing when you can't Hide from an encounter. If you can flee long enough and far enough from the initial encounter, the encounter will turn back and disappear. If they catch up to you a second time, you cannot flee again.
    • If the sheer number of encounters on the overland map irritates you, try this Storm of Zehir mod to lower the encounter frequency to half, a third, or zero.
Party Composition
  • We went with a party of six Half-Celestials: Bard, Rogue/Assassin, Fighter/Weapon Master, Sorcerer/Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep, Favoured Soul, Spirit Shaman.
    • At the starting 8,000 xp, this was a challenging party to play as they were basically level 1 and a lucky hit could kill them. Also, we avoided using Mass Charm, Summon Planetar, and Word of Faith.
    • Early on, the Bard can cast Cure Light Wounds and doubles as a healer.
    • At level 7, the Bard gets Inspire Regeneration, so if you can get through an encounter with little or no spell use, you can just wait until the party is fully healed before moving on. This way, on the overland map, you can avoid resting and triggering even more encounters.
    • We went with a Spirit Shaman and Favoured Soul to avoid the tedious process of selecting spells to memorize. Either can get an Animal Companion, which would have amounted to a free character, but which could also have caused traffic jams.
    • The Rogue can solo and kill things quite well once you get Greater Invisibility from either the Bard or the Sorcerer.

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