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Darkcloud: In NWN 2 certainly not. My last Build (Bard 1, Red Dragon Disciple 10, Weapon Master 7, Fighter 12) was massively overpowered with 5 (or was it 6) APR, Massive Strength Bonus, A critical chance of about 40% for 3x Damage was a beast and with improved cleave and whirlwind attack it was pretty decent at fighting crowds too.
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mystral: Did you actually play the game or is that just in your head? Because the whole praise for critical chance, great cleave and whirlwind attack makes me wonder. Also, you can't have more than 4 attacks per round unless you're dual-wielding or have haste.

I mean, you've just listed 2 of the most useless feats in NWN 2 and most of the enemies at the end of the OC and in MotB are immune to crits, making rogues and weapon masters pretty useless in those.

To explain further why great cleave is horribly useless, to activate it, you need to first kill an enemy which triggers cleave, and then to get an extra attack from great cleave you need to actually kill something else with your remaining attacks in the same round. Considering how much hp even trash mobs have at high levels, this will pretty much never happen, except maybe in a very fight against tons of very weak mobs, which you can win easily enough without an extra feat.

Whirlwind is useless for pretty much the same reason. There are almost no fights at high levels where you face lots of weak mobs, so giving up all your attacks in a round to attack everyone around you is a bad idea, since you're almost always better off killing a single enemy asap than hurting lots of enemies.

Finally, a melee-oriented cleric or druid, or even bard can have the same number of attacks as a fully dedicated melee character provided you take at least 4 levels of fighter or whatever else with high BAB.
Sure, he'll have less strength and he won't get the crit stuff (which is unfortunately pretty useless as I've explained), but let me tell you that spells more than make up for that.

Seriously, play your build through the OC and MotB, then play a melee cleric, the cleric will have an easier time every single time. He'll kill things slightly slower, but he'll have a lot more staying power and he can make himself immune to a lot of things that can ruin your fighter's day (like mind-affecting spells, elemental damage, insta-kill spells and so on).

As for pure casters, they're obviously a very different beast and hard to compare. Let me just say that until you get OP weapons through crafting late in the game, casters will do only slightly less single target damage, a lot more area damage and have a lot more utility than pure fighters.
I know, since I've played both.
Its a bit annoying at the end of the OC that the undead are immune to crits but for the MOTB enemies there is a Falchicon that allows crits against them.

I might have forgotten how useless the cleaves are but I think at least cleave was required for something important and I also think I haven't really used whirlwind attack.

Also he has 6 APR (its possible in MOTB) and with an AC of around 70 and fire resistance its pretty good for tanking too. He is also immune to fire, sleep and paralysis and you have use any item.

I also played as a sorccerer and he was only better at big groups and has nothing that the NPCs can't do.
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mystral: To explain further why great cleave is horribly useless, to activate it, you need to first kill an enemy which triggers cleave, and then to get an extra attack from great cleave you need to actually kill something else with your remaining attacks in the same round. Considering how much hp even trash mobs have at high levels, this will pretty much never happen, except maybe in a very fight against tons of very weak mobs, which you can win easily enough without an extra feat.

Whirlwind is useless for pretty much the same reason. There are almost no fights at high levels where you face lots of weak mobs, so giving up all your attacks in a round to attack everyone around you is a bad idea, since you're almost always better off killing a single enemy asap than hurting lots of enemies.
Great Cleave is pretty useless against anything but trash mobs, or at least it would be if not for a crazy overpowered feat- devastating critical. Fortunately this was nerfed in NWN2, but in NWN an epic melee build with great cleave and devastating critical could instantly slice through just about any mob that wasn't immune to criticals. I've played FTR/BRD/RDD builds using this and it's just stupidly overpowered. In NWN Improved Critical stacks with a keen weapon, which can give close to a 50% critical chance. And since very few enemies are able to make the fortitude save necessary to avoid death from a devastating critical almost every critical is an instant kill. Couple that with Great Cleave and 5 attacks per round and the pile of corpses grows very quickly.

But you're right about whirlwind being pretty useless.

For NWN2 the most powerful melee build I've played was a monk/fighter/invisible blade using kamas with high dex and all the 2-weapon feats. MotB really let you stack up the elemental damage on weapons (6d6 damage from a single enchant? Seriously guys?), and combined with 18 attacks per round (hasted and with greater flurry) that added up to some crazy damage. Plus he still had 70+ AC, good saves, and good social skills as well. That one just felt seriously overpowered.
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mystral: To explain further why great cleave is horribly useless, to activate it, you need to first kill an enemy which triggers cleave, and then to get an extra attack from great cleave you need to actually kill something else with your remaining attacks in the same round. Considering how much hp even trash mobs have at high levels, this will pretty much never happen, except maybe in a very fight against tons of very weak mobs, which you can win easily enough without an extra feat.
Yea, but it is utterly hilarious when fighting trash mobs and killing all of them in a single round.
Also, with AoO and dealing 50+ per hit before crits the definition of "trash" gets stretched a bit.

That being said, beyond a certain level I rarely see anything but a regular cleave occur. So its pretty much a low level feat (and can save your bacon at low levels too).

Whirlwind attack is useless. You have to manually activate it and it replaces your 5 APR with a single whirlwind which is worse for you both against strong single foes, and against a bunch of trash mobs.
Post edited January 30, 2013 by taltamir