One of the things that has been a constant source of annoyance since the early days of NWN2 has been the inability to do many of the same things we do to melee weapons to creature weapons. The fact that their slots are "hidden" offscreen, plus how they seemed to follow an arbitrarily different set of rules, make them quite annoying. This became even more annoying here on SCoD when we started introducing player races with natural weapons. Things like combining a melee weapon with a claw or fist were not possible, and we even had to have a feature to remove the creature weapons if a natural-weapon using PC wanted to become a monk and get unarmed damage.
So I started playing around, and found some ways to make natural weapons that could be equipped in the melee weapon slots. After a long process, it's finally ready to go live and is expected in the next update. So with that in mind, I'm going to lay out the process and details of the new system.
1. As is currently the case, when you create a new PC who should have natural weapons, none will be available at initial character creation. There will be an NPC in the Great Gymnasium named Fang Clawson who will give you the necessary items. New PCs will be required to use the new system. Creature weapon options have been removed from the Styx Oarsman, so you'll now no longer need to wait to return to the OOC room.
2. Those PCs created under the old system will have a choice. They can choose to remain with the old system with no changes, or they can switch over to the new system, again by talking with Fang, who will remove their legacy creature weapons and give them the new ones. Fang will grant creature weapon proficiency to those races who do not currently receive it as well.
3. In the new system, the creature weapons will be undroppable inventory items. You will get an individual item for each attack your PC should have, so for instance a beholder PC will get only a single bite, an iron golem will get two fists, and a hezrou will get two claws and a bite.
4. The equippable creature weapons can be equipped in the right and left hand slots in any combination, or in combination with melee weapons. However, they will fall under the rules of dual-wielding just as normal melee weapons do. However, rather than using Multiattack, all creature weapons now function under the two-weapon fighting progression if you want to have more than one equipped at a time. However, just as a normal PC can switch on the fly between sword and mace, PCs with natural weapons can always switch between claw and bite, assuming they have more than one natural weapon.
5. Even though they work like melee weapons, they're still creature weapons. Spells like holy sword and greater magic weapon will not work on them. However, Jagged Tooth, Flame Weapon, Magic Fang, and Greater Magic Fang have been reworked to work with them. Druids everywhere rejoice!
6. Now onto the new features! Natural weapons can increase in power as you level! Speaking to Fang Clawson with a creature weapon equipped in your right hand opens up a new conversation option, where you can find out how many levels until your next upgrade. When you make that level, you can "swap out" for the newest version of the weapon, which generally does more damage and has higher DCs in the cases of poison. Some of the creature weapons also gain bonus damage of different types as you progress. For PCs with multiple natural weapons, this will need to be done individually with each one when you reach the required level. Levels vary from race to race, generally going more quickly for high-LA races.
7. All of the creature weapon combat feats are now available at level-up if you meet their requirements. This includes Weapon Focus (including Greater and Epic versions), Weapon Specialization (including Greater and Epic versions), Improved Critical, Power Critical, and Overwhelming Critical. All PCs using natural weapons will be granted Creature Weapon Proficiency at creation, while those using Fang to switch from the old system to the new will also be granted this.
8. Creature Weapons are now an option for Weapon Masters! Weapon Focus: Creature now counts as a qualifying feat, and the Creature Weapon can be taken as Weapon of Choice.
9. There will be another NPC next to Fang who will offer a new feature: the ability to coat natural weapons with basic special materials: cold iron, alchemical silver, and adamantine (although this probably won't see much use). Provide him with an ingot of the material and 1,000 jink, and he'll apply them... and this actually works, unlike the old creature weapons.
10. The complete list of PC races who use creature weapons:
- Beholder (Gauth)
- Blade Golem
- Blue Slaad
- Clay Golem
- Drider
- Gargoyle
- Ghoul
- Hezrou
- Iron Golem
- Lich
- Mind Flayer
- Minotaur
- Mud Slaad
- Night Hag
- Paeliryon
- Umber Hulk
- Wererat
- Werewolf
- Winter Wolf
- Wraith
- Dragon (Blue or Bronze)
- Yuan-ti Halfblood
Special thanks to Agony Aunt, Xndar, Astral Eclipse, and the entire SCoD development team for helping out with this system.
- Ceremorph, 1/18/2015