Насчет Красного Мага. Если я не ошибаюсь, то он не получает новые спеллы второй запретной школы только после взятия престижа, но что мешает нам взять престиж на 18 левеле и таким образом у нас не будет запретна вторая школа.

но в остальном просто жесть - только люди, только недобрые, только визарды-специалисты
да еще к этому требуется Spell Penetration ,Greater Spell Penetration которые почти безполезны для визардов
не уверен , что плюсы от класса перевешивают минусы , Arcane Scholar of Candlekeep смотриться для визов лучшей альтернативой ИМХО
хотя пока нет полного описания престижа , нельзя точно судить о его полезности

Прекрасными кандидатами для вступления в организацию являются клирики. Встречаются также и паладины, но реже, т.к. вынуждены отказаться от своего призвания. Воины, воры, барды и даже бывшие монахи также могут стать неплохим выбором, если они имеют достаточно уровней <в другом классе> для произношения божественных заклинаний. Изредка можно встретить и друидов, а вот волшебники и колдуны не находят для себя ничего привлекательного в этом ордене.

Требования:
Базовый бонус Атаки (Base Attack Bonus) +4
Фиты (feats): Улучшенный безоружный удар (Improved Unarmed Strike), Оглушающий кулак (Stunning Fist), Боевое чтение заклинаний ( Combat Casting.)
Скиллы: Знание Легенд (Lore) ранг 8
Заклинания: умение произносить божественные заклинания первого уровня

Особенности класса:
Hit Die: d8
Базовый бонус атаки (Base Attack Bonus): Высокий.
Высокие Спасброски: Стойкость (fortitude) и рефлексы (reflex)
Владение оружием/броней (proficiencies): Священный кулак не получает никакого владения оружием, броней и щитами.
Очки умений (skill points): 4+ модификатор интеллекта
Умения класса (class skills): Концентрация (Concentration) , Лечение (Heal), Знание Легенд (Lore), Знание заклинаний (Spellcraft) и кувырок (Tumble).
Заклинания в день/известные заклинания: Когда Священный Кулак получает новый уровень (за исключением 4 и 8 уровней), он получает те же заклинания, которые он бы получил, если бы продолжал развивать тот класс, который позволил ему произносить божественные заклинания первого уровня. Если же в наличии несколько классов божественных заклинателей, то Священный Кулак должен сделать выбор, какой класс ему улучшать.
Бонус АС: Если не перегружен, одет в легкую или не носит никакой брони, то Священный Кулак получает Бонус АС равный +1 на первом уровне, 2 на 5 уровне и +3 на 10 уровне.
Безоружный урон (Unarmed Damage): Священный Кулак наносит такой же безоружный урон, как и монах равнозначного уровня. Уровни Священного кулака складываются с уровнями монаха (если таковые имелись) в целях определения безоружного урона.
Быстрое передвижение (Fast Movement): Если Священный Кулак имеет уровни монаха, то они складываются для определения скорости монаха (monk speed). Если же нет, то на 3 уровне он получает скорость, эквивалентную и развивающуюся так, как скорость монаха 3 уровня.
Священное пламя (Sacred Flames): На 4 уровне Священный Кулак получает возможность создавать пламя вокруг своих ладоней. Урон огнем будет добавляться к безоружному урону. Дополнительный урон равен уровню Священного Кулака плюс Модификатору Мудрости. Длительность – 10 раундов. Изначально Священный кулак может пользоваться своей возможностью раз в день, а на 8 уровне получает возможность призывать огни дважды в день.
Невероятная увертливость (Uncanny Dodge): На 6 уровне Священный кулак получает Бонус Ловкости к своему АС, если его застали врасплох (Flat footed) или его атакует кто-то невидимый.
Духовная броня(Inner Armor): На 10 уровне Священный кулак может защитить себя от вреда раз в день. Он получает +4 бонус к АС, +4 бонус к спасброскам по воле (will) и сопротивление заклинаниям (SR Spell Resistance), равное 25 на количество раундов, равное его модификатору мудрости.

ссылка http://streamingmovies.ign.com/pc....ide.wmv (7,1 Мб)
источник http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums....21&sp=0

Акела разрадилась последним патчем + озвучка
http://ru.akella.com/Game.aspx?id=361&mode=patches

Атари что ли задабривают , что бы получить право на локализацию аддона

Obsidian: Yep! Not only do they get Darkvision, but the Darkvision we’ve implemented for Mask is way cooler than the old Darkvision implementation.

Question: Will wild elves be in??

Obsidian: They will. Wild!

Question: With the new setting placed in Rasemen, will the Monk finally get a prestige class that caters to it? (such as the Shou Disciple from Unapproachable East supplement book).

Obsidian: Yes, they do – the Sacred Fist is a very cool Monk/Divine Caster hybrid prestige class. Nothing more awesome as a Monk than setting your fists on fire.

Question: I want to ask if special abilities gived by Statues of Purification will be keeped playing Mask of Betrayer... and new PCs maded to play MoB (with new races and classes) will gain them on campaign starts? And I like also to ask if standard NWN2's official campaign is already ready to be played with MoB's new races and classes and there will be new sentences or similar added for people playing it?

Obsidian: The old ritual abilities are not kept in the Mask of the Betrayer campaign, though you get a host of cool new abilities over the course of the game to replace them.

Question: Will we EVER get playable Kaorti's? (check these creatures out in FIEND FOLIO!)

Obsidian: EVER? I don’t know if I can answer that question for the cosmological timeframe, especially since we released the Granny Exporter which lets the community make pretty much whatever they want – but no, Mask doesn’t have them.

Question: Is it true that the prestige class will be capped at level 10 even when your character level reaches 21?

Obsidian: Yes, this is true – prestige classes still have 10 levels. All the base classes continue to 30, though, so once you max out your prestige class you can either choose to continue in your base class or select a new prestige or base class.

Question: Will Blackguards be getting a proper spell list? Will their summons be upgraded this time around?

Obsidian: The Blackguard class hasn’t been revised specifically for MotB, no.

Question: Will Genasi have Effective Character Level penalties? Looking at their stats (in P&P), they do not seem to warrant it, but you never know.

Obsidian: They do – They all have an ECL of 1.

Question: Race Question: Will the daylight adaptation feat be added in the expansion for the underdark races?

Obsidian: Nope.

Question: Did the Cleric domain powers change to reflect the actual D&D 3.5 rules? How about the domain spell lists?

Obsidian: We’ve made some improvements that do make some of the Domains a little closer to their D&D 3.5 equivalents – for instance, the War domain now properly grants you Proficiency with your deities favored weapon.

Question: Will your race/class have a effect on the way your perceived?

Obsidian: Occasionally it will, though more frequently we’ve chosen to focus on the roleplaying decisions the character makes during the campaign rather than at character creation.

Question: Will A spirit shamen have it's own spell list or losely borrow from a druids?

Obsidian: They share the druid spell list.

Question: How will homunculus differ from current familiars? What kind of combat role can we expect them to have? Will Homunculus level up with the wizard or will they be able to level seperately?

Obsidian: Kaji, Safiya’s homunculus, is quite special and has several rogue abilities that you’ll find useful (particularly if you aren’t a rogue). The homunculus isn’t selectable for players right now.

Question: Can we expect to see guns as a exotic weapon?

Obsidian: Nope! Though, again, this is an area wide open for community development.

Question: Will new class specific equipment for all classes be implemented?

Obsidian: There are new items that work very well with specific classes, but not WoW-style class specific item sets, no.
_________________
Shane K. DeFreest
Maverick Public Relations
Neverwinter Nights 2 Community Manager

Взято от сюда.

Loosen up your sword arm, it's time to kill some monsters again in Mask of the Betrayer.
If you played through NWN2 then you know that the game ended on a cliffhanger. Your character was caught in the middle of a collapsing cavern, which prompted howls from fans, and of course the story couldn't end that way. Mask of the Betrayer is a brand-new campaign that will answer the biggest question from NWN2 (how you survive), as well as introduce a slew of new questions. However, if you're expecting another romp on the fabled Sword Coast, you're in for a surprise. You're no longer near the city of Neverwinter. Instead, you'll find yourself transported across the world to Rashemen, a region full of witches, barbarians, and spirits.

This expansion is made for high-level characters only. You have to be level 18 or higher to even survive the opening levels of the game. The good news is that if you haven't played through the NWN2 campaign, you can either select a premade level 18 character or create one for the expansion. There are some new races to select from, such as the wood elves and the elemental genasi, along with a few new face and hair types for some of the existing races. Mask of the Betrayer will also introduce a couple of new character and prestige classes, such as the spirit shaman and the Red Wizards of Thay. (What's cool is that all of these options exist for the original campaign, so you can play through NWN2 as one of these new races or character classes). We imported our existing NWN 2 character and were pleasantly surprised that we got to start with the red dragon armor and other high-level equipment that our character was wearing at the end of the NWN2 campaign. However, you'll lose the stuff that was in your backpack.

You begin Mask of the Betrayer at the bottom level of an ancient barrow, a burial site for a long-dead race of sentient animals. The powerful Sword of Gith has been taken from you, including the shard that was embedded in your chest. In its place is a dark hunger to recover it, and of course to find out who ripped it from your body. At the very start of the game you'll meet your first companion, a Red Wizard of Thay who has decided to help you, though her reasons may be dubious. Your escape from the barrow inflames the ancient spirits that guard it, including the local bear god. That incident will play an important role later on. Answers begin to be revealed when you reach Mulsantir, the main town in the expansion and what appears to be a hub for your many adventures. In Mulsantir you'll find yourself drawn into a web of intrigue that involves the Red Wizards of Thay, as well as a legend that involves a betrayer who tried to usurp the god of death. One of the intriguing things about Mulsantir is that it offers you access to the shadow plane, a dreamlike version of the real world. There's hardly any color in the shadow plane, so it's almost like you're exploring an oppressively gray world.

We don't want to get too far into the story and spoil all the details, so this is a good place to note some of the major gameplay changes in the expansion. Perhaps the biggest one deals with how you play through the game. If NWN2 had a weakness, it was the ability to rapidly rest after every battle, which let you fully heal and recharge all of your magical spells in about five seconds. Consequently, the game seemed a bit too easy. You weren't forced to make the hard choice about using a fireball spell or saving it for later on. Mask of the Betrayer has an interesting solution to this issue, and it's tied heavily into the plot.

The dark hunger that resides in you forces you to consume spirits to survive (the magical kind, not the alcoholic type). You become a spirit-eater, an entity that is feared in that region of the world--exactly how you find and devour spirits is something that will be revealed over the course of the game. Unfortunately, being a spirit-eater is a lot like having a drug addiction. The longer you go without consuming a spirit, the weaker you become, until you eventually die. However, if you eat too many spirits too quickly, it's like being addicted to a drug. You'll need to consume more and more spirits just to get the same level of satisfaction as before. So the trick is to balance spirit consumption carefully. A spirit meter will show your character's current hunger level, and it slowly drains while you play the game (though it pauses during conversations). If you rest in the game, you lose a fair amount of your spirit reserve. So if you rest repeatedly, you'll find yourself in big trouble quickly.

This new system ratchets up the challenge; resting after each battle is no longer possible. The side effect is that healing potions and healing kits are actually valuable, given that you can use them to restore hit points and avoid resting. Another potential problem in NWN2 was that your computer-controlled companions would unleash every spell in their arsenal during a battle, no matter how much overkill it would bring to a situation, which forced you to rest to recharge your companions' abilities. The designers at Obsidian say that they've worked on the artificial intelligence so it will be smarter about such things in the expansion. We'll have to see how that pans out as we play further through the game.

The expansion looks set to offer up a darker, more personal story than before.
Another feature is the new control scheme. Given that many role-players may be more familiar with the play style of massively multiplayer online role-playing games such as World of Warcraft, there's a new behind-the-back camera mode that lets you play entirely from a traditional third-person angle. Additionally, there's a new strategic mode that lets you pull the camera up toward the sky to play from a more top-down approach. If you were a fan of the standard NWN2 control system, it's still there, though you might need to fiddle with the game settings in order to activate it.

One thing is very clear: This is very much an epic expansion. Right from the start you'll battle high-level foes such as formidable animal spirits and shadow creatures that are extremely tough to put down. The new magical spells that you can unleash are almost unbelievable in power. Correspondingly, the rewards have been jacked up considerably. It's not uncommon to reap hundreds, if not thousands, of gold pieces from a single enemy, and there's plenty of low-level magical weaponry for loot. Nevertheless, you'll need it, because the shopkeepers in Mask of the Betrayer have some truly awesome items for sale, and the sticker shock is mighty. We've encountered at least one item that cost over half a million gold pieces alone.

The expansion looks great, courtesy of the new tile sets and the fresh setting. More importantly, it plays much more smoothly than Neverwinter Nights 2 did out of the box. Obsidian has managed to optimize the code considerably over the past year. From what we've seen of the opening levels, Mask of the Betrayer looks as if it'll serve up another intriguing and excellent story in the Forgotten Realms. The expansion has recently gone gold, according to Obsidian, and it will ship to stores early next month.

-GameSpot

Взято от сюда.

From what we saw, the game was looking very slick and pretty, offering new designs, environments and monsters to the gameplay, which are set to help players find unique experiences as they level up their characters. As players battle new monsters like tree ents or shambling mounds (which are giant, humanoid piles of vines), they'll be able to unlock new gear and abilities, which offer new visuals, allowing you to customize their characters in ways never found before in the NWN series. With these visual cues comes a new camera mode, allowing players to switch between two view points, the character and tactics modes, one of which is very familiar to MMO fans. The tactics camera mode is the tried and true over-the-top view, which allows players to see the action that's in their immediate area, offering a solution to easily manage a party. The character mode is an over the shoulder viewpoint, which allows players to mimic games like WoW or LOTRO, allowing them to see ahead and prepare for any threats their way.

The game is set to take players between the two nations of Rasheman and Thay, and since these two games are so prevalent in the NWN mythology, Obsidian had to make sure to include quite a bit of new content to keep players satisfied and enticed to come back for more. To do just that, it has added some extra spice to the game to bring players old and new into the world of Forgotten Realms. Packaged in with this expansion is a whole slew of improvements for just about any Neverwinter Nights fan, providing refined visuals, gameplay tweaks, new game mechanics, a handful of extra classes and races and even some modding tools for those who wish to continue adventuring in something a little more customized.

When we booted up the game, we were introduced to the new races included in the new expansion: Wood Elves, Half Drows and the Genasi. The Wood Elves are exactly what you'd expect - slender, androgynous, pointy-eared warriors, where the Half-Drows are similar to Halflings. However, the real treat comes with the Genasi, as they seem to be the most appealing selection of races in the game. Four types of Genasi are available, as they're half-breeds instilled with the power of the elements (Earth, Fire, Air and Water), and each type reflects that, with unique physical features and different starting stats. Water Genasi have blue skin with a wet sheen, while Earth Genasi will have rocky bumps instead of hair, with the Fire Genasi sporting charcoal black skin and blazing, fiery locks for hair. With these new races available on top of the standard set of set, it should add a few new gameplay options to players, and that's hardly a bad thing.

A few new classes are set to be added to the game, as well as a few new prestige classes that are getting us excited for the game. The two classes that we were shown were the Favored Soul and Spirit Shaman, which were both powerful spell casters, but were different enough to make them distinctive and appealing. While Favored Souls were able to nuke a foe with offense spells, the Spirit Shaman were more of a support class. For those of you who want to make a character with a more defined skill set, Obsidian has added new prestige classes to the game to be unlocked after you meet a certain set of criteria. We were told about two of these classes, the Arcane Scholar and, since you really can't have a visit to Thay without them, the Red Wizard class is set to make its first appearance in a video game.

Along with these additions comes a host of new feats (about 50), including abilities for new classes, allowing you to lay waste to enemies with the greatest of ease. For those whose task it is to play crowd control, the new "mass fowl" epic spell will allow them to turn their enemies into chickens for a brief while. For the warriors who wish to leech health off their enemies, the new "vampiric feast" ability will let them suck energy right out of their foes body. Along with these new skills come new visual cues, adding some beautiful flourishes to your attacks while you decimate your objectives. To accommodate these new abilities comes a new level cap, as players will now be able to advance up to level 30, allowing their characters to become more powerful than ever.

With these new classes and talents, you'll be able to make short work of anyone in your path, but the old trick of resting in between battles to replenish your energy has been done away with, forcing players to look before they leap. A new system of energy management lies with the new time-sensitive spirit energy device, forcing you to kill enemies and consume their spirits, keeping players on the move. At the start of the game, you'll find that you've been inflicted with a curse, which forces you to consume the spirits of the fallen in order to stay alive. With this vampiric affliction, your spirit energy is constantly depleting through the game, with negative side-effects hitting your character hard which could potentially turn lethal, forcing players to keep an eye on things. Naturally, you'll be able to feast upon every spirit you come by and as you consume more, you'll unlock new and stronger abilities. However, you'll need to decide if that's what you really want to do, as the spirits act as a drug. As players consume more and more spirits, the effect that a given amount of them would have early in the game will do next to nothing as you become hooked, forcing you to consume vastly higher amounts to keep your spirit energy in check.

As you progress through the game, you'll also find that you'll have the choice to go it alone, or allow companions to join you. You can just as easily wander the land by your lonesome, but there are some abilities that can be unlocked only by influencing certain companions, adding another aspect of the game that players must consider before making an action. The influence meter that's found in MotB is similar to what we saw in KOTOR II, but a bit more refined, with actual ramifications to consider. In the example that we were given, the party that we were traveling in had two companions that were on entirely opposite ends of the morality spectrum. One was Kaelyn, a half-angel, with a more divine and kind sensibility, while the other was One of Many, an incorporeal demon, who was evil through and through.

As you gain more influence with Kaelyn, it would eventually unlock new talents that you can only get through her that were probably a bit more geared to defense, while One of Many had a handful of dark powers to imbue upon you, should you prove that you're worth his trouble. The only problem is that you can't possibly get a solid reputation with both, as when you gain influence with one, it goes down with the other. Eventually, if you gain too much influence with one, it won't sit well with the other, and they'll eventually leave the party. If you really upset a companion, they may even turn on you and attack, forcing you to battle a formidable opponent.

Another new tweak in the game comes in the form of shadow portals, which allow you to transport to an alternate dimension to continue quests and find new ones, while discovering more information on your curse and how to control it. These portals are only open during the evenings at specific locations, but they'll also be the only way to overcome certain obstacles. In one case, we saw that we needed to cross a lake to get to a given town, but the bridge was out and it was surrounding waters were riddled with all sorts of aquatic beasts, so we faced certain death if we tried to swim it. We came back during the night and sure enough, there was a shadow portal waiting for us. When we hopped through it, we found that the bridge was intact and we were able to go about our quests.

With everything that Obsidian has included in the game, it's making things clear that it wants to make sure that the game is approachable by any player in the market for a new D&D style game. Everything that's packaged in the expansion is making us believe that the game will have a huge amount of customization and open ended gameplay that we look for in an RPG, but whether or not it's the real deal remains to be seen. We'll be back with a full review when the expansion launches in early October.

Взято от сюда.

"We started with the story," said Obsidian Entertainment head Feargus Urquhart in the meeting that started our tour through the game. "We wanted to tie up the loose events of Neverwinter Nights 2, of course, but we also wanted to make it a darker and more personal story." To that end, the storyline in Mask of the Betrayer isn't about the player saving the world, it's about the player saving him or herself.

The game begins with the player being woken up in a mysterious underground cavern by a bald-headed wizard of the corrupt magocracy of Thay. The silver shard the player's character had embedded in his or her chest at the beginning of the original game is gone, replaced by a sucking void that should be fatal but isn't. The rest of the game is concerned with fixing the hole and filling up the empty space with... something.

That "something" is what drives the action of the rest of the game. In the original game, the player's character was really the victim of a random accident. The silver shard that was embedded in his or her chest forced the character onto their path because its existence and fate was of interest to way too many powerful third parties. Now the shard is gone and the player is faced with both literally and symbolically filling the hole in their soul. What kind of spirit will the player end up being when they're completely free to choose? What kind of person are they when no one else is looking and when the consequences of that choice affect nothing but themselves?

To the end, the team has decided to set the game in Rashemen and Thay, two warring countries in the Forgotten Realms' Unapproachable East. This marks the first time in a D&D video game that players will get to explore these lands (though denizens from the area have shown up in video games before, most notably the Rashemen warrior Minsc and his miniature giant space hamster Boo from Baldur's Gate). The Unapproachable East is a notably different place than the rest of the Realms and these differences would fuel a number of the new features in the expansion pack. Chief among them is one of the game's new prestige classes, the Red Wizard, an enormously powerful traditional spell-caster.

Adventuring in the Unapproachable East is much less about killing tons of monsters (though there's no shortage of that) than digging through the layers of subterfuge and masks that hide the truth. This is true in the storyline and is reflected in some of the beautiful new scenery that we were shown. The Rashemen city of Mulsantir will act as the "hub city" in the game, the place where much of the storyline plays out and the majority of the game's quests will be garnered. Mulsantir, like most of the other game locations, also has a dark reflection of itself on the Plane of Shadow that the players will visit. The Plane of Shadow uses a new color desaturation technique (that will be available to modders) to turn everything except the color red to black and white. In these shadowlands, certain truths are revealed so a small, benign temple of a god of healing in the "real world" is instead a huge cathedral to an evil deity. A collapsed pier in an otherwise ordinary swamp is revealed to be whole in the Plane of Shadow and it leads to the home of a group of hags called the Slumbering Coven.

The Unapproachable East is also a land of Earth and nature spirits. This cultural matrix provides the foundation for one of the biggest changes in the game -- the curse the player labors under that forces him or her to consume spirits garnered from living creatures. During Mask of the Betrayer the player will have to keep one eye on a new "spirit meter" on the left hand side of the screen. This meter measures how much "spiritual energy" the player possesses. The closer this energy meter gets to the top, the more special powers the player's character will get to wield. Should the meter ever hit the bottom, the player dies. The kicker is that as the player goes through the game, the more spirits they consume, the more spirits will be required to keep the meter filled. This introduces an element of resource management as the player will need to judge just how often they'll consume spirits to keep their power up while avoiding building up a tolerance.

The spirit meter is also slaved to an internal clock in the game. That means that if a player rests for eight in-game hours or takes a trip across a desert that takes two days, their spirit meter will continue to drain. This has two big effects on the way the game will play out. The smaller one is that it introduces the need to manage in-game time and really consider the amount of time long-distance travel will take. It will also present challenges to the player as the game's characters have regular schedules and certain events will only happen at certain times. Clicking the "wait until nightfall" button to catch a ghost now has serious consequences.

The larger effect is that it makes spell and item management more important than ever. Traditionally in D&D CRPGs, players would rest after every encounter, relearn their spells and lose little more than their buffs. As a result, players would enter every encounter at full strength and the developers had to design encounters to take that into account. Now players need to actually use their lower level spells because they won't be able to afford the eight hours of rest to recharge. Big ninth-level "nukes" need to be carefully husbanded against real need and players will be forced into finding more creative, economical solutions to monster problems. While this will certainly cause some consternation among older fans who remember the Infinity Engine days, it certainly turns those massive 9th level AOE spells into what they were always supposed to be: rare, special and spectacular. Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer has already gone gold and will hit store shelves on October 9th.

Взято от сюда.