Neverwinter Nights: Your Journal and You

[Wids]

If you've been playing NWN for long enough, then you probably know about the third tab in your Journal, how you can use it to take notes and such.

I use mine on pretty much any Multiplayer server I'm on, mostly to:

1) Keep track of any other player-characters whom that character has met, if only to avoid the embarrassment of those situations.  "Hi, Doug.  How are you?"  "/tp 'Wids' Doug never met Mary before.  He met your other character, Jill."  *chagrined backtracking ensues*

2)  Where applicable, notes about specific, out-of-the-ordinary interactions with other PCs, or with NPCs during DM events.  Told Bob that Joe was the one who stole his golden shield.  Defeated Tim in battle.  Kissed Jack.  Bathed in Millers Creek with Davie and sneaked peeks at his manly tush.  Et cetera.

3)  The prices and locations of specific items that I'm looking for, as well as which merchant sells them.


Other uses depend on the server I'm on and the character in question.  The overland areas on the Thay server are randomized, so it's easy to become lost when travelling from Point A to Point B; if I (with that character) found a place which wasn't listed in the Atlas, then I'd jot notes in the Journal, a la "Pyarados to Forested Valley: 2 North, 5 East".  When I was playing my Commerce Guild Twi'lek and trading cargo on Star Wars: Rise of the Rebellion, I'd use the Journal to keep track of various planets and what they were paying for various goods, a la...

"ASTROMECH PARTS
Tatooine: 67
Ryloth: 82
Rodia: 71
Bespin: 102"

And Maralah is the first Druid I've played seriously in, like, ever, so one day I unequipped everything and went through all of the Wild Shape forms available on this server.  As I suspected, not all Bear Forms are created equal, nor are the Canine Forms, Feline Forms, Small Forms, Misc Forms and forms in general.  For a while, I was changing Maralah to a grizzly bear before feeding her beer and wine, believing that the bears had the highest Constitution bonus.  But my research disproved this belief, and that's why Maralah does all her boozing in tortoise form now.  

So what do you use your Journals for?  

[Wids]

Falteine à Loch Dachaigh (my Barbarian) is another one of my special Journal cases.  Given the measure of her brogue, I decided to help myself roleplay her a bit better by stuffing her Journal with a mini-glossary or mini-dictionary of all the Old Scottish, Old English and Old Gaelic-in-General words and phrases that a quasi-medieval, unruly, rebellious, Old-Scottish-Highlander-shrew analog like her would say as a matter of course.  Given her temperament, her caustic tongue and her typically colorful insults, the entries are divvied into two lists: Stuff she might say in general discourse, and stuff that she's more likely to say when she's specifically trying to taunt, chide, deride or insult somebody, something or some place.

They're both fairly long lists.

Hey, if you're going to max out your character's Taunt skill and take Skill Focus: Taunt for one of her Feats, then you might as well make the most of it!  

Now post something in here already, ye sweer, grippy, scopperlotchin' whiffle-whaffles.  

[Snubletraad]

All of the above.

I also use mine to write down the edicts and dogma of the particular god that character worships.

[Wids]

That works. Do you just Copy-Paste from the Forgotten Realms wikia like I've been known to do sometimes?

[Snubletraad]

Mar 12, 2018 0:24:45 GMT -5 Wids said:

That works. Do you just Copy-Paste from the Forgotten Realms wikia like I've been known to do sometimes?

Or this site: www.webring.org/l/rd?ring=wargamers;id=1;url=http%3A%2F%2Fmatthewfenn%2Eipage%2Ecom%2Fnj%2Dpbem%2Findex%2Ehtml

Old 2nd edition Faiths and Avatars and Powers and Pantheons information.

[Wids]

Yeesh, that site's kind of a mess. How do you find your way around it?

[Snubletraad]

Clicks "Worship in the Realms" bottom left.

Should bring you to a webpage with all the deities listed by race.

[Wids]

I finally got around to using the Journal to jot down all the differences among all of Maralah's wyrmling forms (courtesy of Greater Wildshape I), and there are more than I had first expected.  (Hint: If you're just looking for the best Armor Class and Ability adjustments, always go for the Gold!)  I'd also like to spend some more time experimenting with each wyrmling form's Damage Immunities and breath weapons; the Blue Wyrmling's lightning breath, for one, seems to travel in more of a linear pattern and can zap enemies who are further away...nothing that any proper D&D geek couldn't anticipate, of course. 

It would be nice if a dragon's breath weapon were aimed as simply as a Burning Hands spell or a Lightning Bolt spell; I have no idea why Bioware made breath weapons like they did.  The wyrmlings' breath weapons have unlimited uses per day, but the damage they do is pretty meager; they can easily do two or three times as much damage in melee, albeit to one enemy at a time.  And I've already taken advantage of the wyrmling forms' Damage Immunities.  "Ooh, a trapped chest.  What kind of trap is it?  .......Electrical.  Can I safely disarm the trap?  .......no.  Okay, then...let's do this."  [shapeshifts into a Blue Wyrmling, bites the treasure chest, triggers the trap and blithely shrugs off the trap's otherwise dolorous discharge]  "Cool!  I hope this is another +1 melee weapon!  Those sell for big cash!"  [opens the chest and finds a Shortbow +1...what a rip-off!]  "...Crap.  Barely even worth the shapeshift!"  

And to think that Silver Wyrmlings get two Damage Immunities, the lucky buggers!  Red Wyrmlings and Gold Wyrmlings have the best Abilities and Armor overall, but those two forms come with the liability of Cold Damage Vulnerability.  None of the wyrmling forms seems to grant resistance or immunity to Sonic, Negative, Positive or Magic Damage, but that's pretty well typical of most things in NWN.

  

Anyway, if you see a dragon whelp flapping around the wilderness somewhere, don't shoot it!  Just feed it stew.  That particular wyrmling really likes meaty stew.  Trust me.  

[Wids]

Now that I look at Maralah's Journal again, I see that she met Breannah, Rhork and Mathis. But I forgot to jot down...what was her name? She was all excitable, and she came running up to Maralah (while Maralah was moseying around Orlbar in her mule form) and this woman was gushing on and on about the "horse" that she found, asking who owned her, and asking if she could ride Maralah, and so on...until Maralah finally reverted to her human form just to tell her, in so many words, "Look, lady, I'm a mule, not a horse.  Slight difference.  In fact, here: Let me show you what a horse looks like...." followed by more shapeshifting.  

Who was that giddy horse afficionada? I need to make a note of her in Maralah's Journal. Was that one of your characters, Hungry Crow?