Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Valefort wrote:No, first because there are many scripts where character save happen then a bunch of those scripts are not for the public eyes.

Awe..
It's just the looting save script so far as i know.

Would it be possible to block a save with the bear warrior script itself? Then save as you shift back?

*bumping* just wanting to check in on this?

I know Valefort said he tried to look into it and couldn't find the issue. I have PMed a couple of you to see if you could bounce ideas off each other and take a crack at it. Any updates here?

Try it out again after the next update. The pickup/drop item scripts could still save your character while polymorphed. That should be fixed now.

No promises as we aren't 100% sure of the cause, but if it's from the auto save it should be better now.

Oh dear lord! Bless you devs if this actually works. I'll let you know post-update and report back.

The class description states:

- Weapon Focus Unarmed, Weapon Specialization Unarmed, as well as their Greater and Epic variants will work while in bear form on all your attacks. So if you have those feats, they transfer to bear form.

Does Improved Critical Unarmed Strike apply to bear form?

Yes

Got some more questions if I may be so bold.

Does the +2 ac Barbs now get, stack in bear form?
Does the con bonus to ac the fist of the forest folk get stack on in bear form?
Does Fist of the forest additional blunt damage stack in bear form?
Does Damage AND plus's to hit, from gloves stack in bear form?
Is improved unarmed strike needed in bear form to avoid attacks of opportunity (I assume this is a no)?
Does Tumble AC bonus stack in bear form?

I think that's it...thx in advance.

Yes, didn't test it though
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes

FYI bear shift is still bugged even after last patch, although not as frequent.

Forum description:

Dire Bear: All claw and bite attacks have +4 enchantment. Base AC 30.

Question by Tekill:

Does Damage AND plus's to hit, from gloves stack in bear form?

Answer by Valefort:

Yes

This means a Dire Bear with +4 EB gloves gets +8 EB in total, right? If so, and the shapeshifting works reliably, the class might actually compete with the regular Barbarian rages.

EB doesn't stack, it's the bonus to damage on your weapon that do transfer to the bear shape, for example if you have a longsword with +1d4 fire your claws will have +1d4 fire when in bear form.

Thanks for clearing that up Valefort. I feared as much.

I think this discourages people - certainly me - from playing the newly reliable Bear Warrior for any reason but RP. Ten straight Barbarian levels are simply better than it since the last improvements to the Barbarian class.

Your improvement of the BW re. weapon damage transfer addressed the Troll killing issue, but ultimately still nerfed the class since it replaced the earlier +2d6 slashing damage the BW received (at least on paper; they might have been bugged and not have worked IG).

In the light of this, and like Acroma666 has suggested before, I would like to suggest improving the BW class with one more trait (or, even better, a choice between several). All of the below suggestions, apart from perhaps the last two, are selected with an eye to RP compatibility.

1) More claw damage: +1/+1d4/+1d6 Slashing (depending on Bear version). Bears are strong and have lifelong training in using their very sharp claws. This would simply make up for the damage nerf mentioned above: the best weapon damage is 1d6, so with this claw damage improvement the BW would be back to where he was in the wiki.
2) The BW gets a +4 to his Knockdown modifier from the start that stacks with the Improved Knockdown bonus: this would accurately reflect his large size, which currently is merely cosmetic.
3) The BW gets Dire Charge and causes some bleeding damage. These would be relatively low-power additions but at least make the use of charge, one of the few style options of the BW, a little more worthwhile on occasion. Knockdown would probably still be better than Charge in most cases at the beginning of battle and bleeding damage is of course useless against even small DR.
4) The BW claws have a chance to either stun or daze or at least cause fear.
5) More or even all weapon features transfer, incl. the material attributes (Cold Iron, Alch. Silver). The BW would still lose some flexibility by not being able to swap mid-rage, but this would also make up for the nerf.
6) The damage properties of both weapon AND gloves transfer to the claws. This would help make up for the damage reduction at the cost of an item slot.

I know there is a lot going on, and probably you feel a sense of 'done and dusted' re. the BW class, Valefort, but I still hope these things can perhaps be considered in the future.

Bear warrior is playable hence it won't get more power, if you play solely for power pick something else.

EDIT : The only thing it's susceptible to gain are a few more actions than charge and KD, like a roar. AB/AC/Damage are all very much in the good ranges, if not too high for AC.

A better than cosmetic roar sounds good, too! Maybe a several times per day Shout effect? You'll know best.

As to playing style: I play usually for both power and rp, but mostly building fun, i.e. finding ways of bringing out the best in classes and unusual class combos. If that best can be replicated and bested by another class for practically every conceivable situation, the class in question becomes unattractive to me (classic example: Harper Agent as it used to be; BW is currently borderline).

As far as I'm concerned that's not a compelling reason to change anything, in fact you're an indicator that this class is in a good spot now

Playability ? Check
Flavor ? Check
Not many powerbuilding options ? Check !