Manual or good rundown of game mechanics?

[Loco]

Is there a manual or similar somewhere? Have no clue about DnD sadly.

[Shia Luck]

http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page is your friend.

Have fun :)

[Tesseract]

There is also a manual (3 actually, one for the base game and one for each expansion). If you browse the game files, they are under lang->en->docs->legacy. (I guess if you use a different language version, replace "en" with the two letter code for your language.)

[Loco]

Thanks

[Tesseract]

You're welcome. Since you're new to D&D rules, let me also give you a piece of information that I could really have used when I was starting out:

Dexterity does not normally affect your chance to hit with melee weapons. Strength does. No matter how illogical it might seem, those are the rules. :)

(The exception is when you have the Weapon FInesse feat and are using a one-handed light weapon. Then you can add your Dex bonus to melee attack rolls.)

[Shia Luck]

*resting heels on table, sipping wine and waiting until OP realises manual tells you nothing and goes to the wiki*

*cheeky grin*

Have fun :)

[jonnin]

Hmm, a 10 cent run down of NWN D&D..

magic is limited, is the first thing. A spell caster can cast X number of spells per spell difficulty level per day, and that is that. You must also predict what you will need and 'memorize' only those spells when resting for some classes (wizard yes, sorcerer no, but sorc has far less to pick from, clerics can swap anything for a heal on the fly but other stuff have to memorize ahead). This is possibly the most unique thing of D&D vs most other systems including modenr D&D (NNW Is older) where casting is more friendly. Even "better" you need at least a 15 or so in your spell casting ability to do much. The rule is spell level + 10 to use, so a cleric needs 11 wisdom to cast 1st level spells, a sorcerer needs 11 charisma, and so on. Below 15 you won't be able to function. You gain stats very, very slowly as you level so 15 would let you get it to 18 by the time you have 8th level spells if you dump all levle up points into the stat. This is critical for hybrid build max-min stuff but for now, just know that casters need higher casting stats for their class (it says in the text which one they need).

there are really only 4 classes**.
fighter, mage, rogue, and cleric. Everything else offered is derived from those. A paladin is a fighter with a touch of cleric. An assassin is a specialized rogue. A sorcerer is a type of wizard. If you understand those 4 classes you understand all the rest. A druid is a cleric that can shapeshift. **Monk is arguably its own thing but its really a cleric that traded spells for always active buffs and combat abilitiy.

class determines your ability to hit things physically. Melee uses strength, ranged uses dex, there are ways to convert this a little (you can use a feat to use wisdom to shoot or dex to hit with some weapons as a round out for clerics and rogues who may have lower str/dex). Fighters hit the best, then rogues and clerics, then wizards. This governs both attacks per time frame and chance to hit, so fighters are significantly better than the others at fighting.

Armor and health and general durability is tricky. Armor has 2 stats, its protection, and how much of your dodge it allows. A rogue in an elven chain shirt can be as hard to hit as a tin-can full plate paladin because he can dodge what the paladin could shrug off. As expected fighters have the most health ... its exactly like the to-hit I said, actually... mages have lowest health. Anyone can learn to use any armor and weapons, but it costs feats which are few and far between, and mage type casters fail spells in armor without taking even MORE feats to do that.

Class also determines what weapons you can use and feats can get around this as well, or multi-classing. Elf can use swords and bows as any class and that can be pretty important for some builds.

Multi classing and prestiege classes and how you build your perfect character are a huge deal in NWN. You can mess it up -- for example you can go mage -> pale master and then discover that you just get weaker and weaker until its unplayable, though this sounded good on paper. On the flipside something like a monk / red-dragon with a single level of sorcerer or bard to unlock that combo can pretty much walk through the game and smash everything with impunity. A bad character cannot be fixed, so export often. Exported characters can be restarted from there, so if you are about to change class you can export and 'undo' the action if it didnt work out. There are billions of online guides about what class combos work great. Less than perfect characters can beat the game and do just fine, but again, you can totally ruin one ot the point of unplayable so if you get deep into the game you will want to study what not to do more.

All that to say that mages are hardest to play. They have just a few spells, can't hit the enemy with weapons very well, have limited armor for many levels and low health. They were meant in pure D&D to hide behind the fighter, but NWN is not a group of players game, so you don't have a lot to hide behind. They made some rule bends to make it doable, but its still going to be rough for someone new ot the D&D system.

I recommend either a fighter-type or a cleric for your first try in the game. Fighters are pretty simple, you hit stuff and use healing potions/kits you found if you get in trouble. Clerics are exactly like fighters (don't hit as well and have limited weapons but mechanically similar) and they let you use some magic to get a feel for that system.