Abilities, Hit Points, and Saving Throws
We need to cover some concepts before you begin exploring the races to choose from: Abilities, Hit Points, and Saving Throws.
Abilities
These are the basic components of your characters that alter how you interact with the NWN world:
- Strength (Str): Indicates how developed your muscles are for physical tasks such as lifting or pushing. The stronger you the better you are at melee.
- Intelligence (Int): Your ability to reason, to learn and comprehend your surroundings. The more Int you have the better skills you will possess.
- Dexterity (Dex): How nimble, quick and graceful you are. The more Dex you have the better you can avoid damage from enemies or traps.
- Constitution (Con): How hardy you are. Different from Str in that Con refers more to endurance, stamina and general health. The more Con you have the more damage you can weather and less likely you will be to contract disease or succumb to poison.
- Wisdom (Wis): Your perception, strength of will, and intuition. The higher your Wis the more in tune with your surroundings you will be.
- Charisma (Cha): This is a mix of leadership, personal magnetism, physical appearance, verbal ability and social skills. The higher your Cha the more likely you will be able to sway, intimidate, seduce or bluff and so on those around you.
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Hit Points
These are a measure of how much damage which can be inflicted upon your character before they are unconscious or dead. For example Jinn, a 4th Level Rogue has 15 Hit Points is hit with an arrow from a bandit hiding in the trees. The arrow does 5 damage to Jinn. Jinn now has 10 Hit Points left and has a wound. If Jinn is hit with more arrows later in the combat and receives more than 10 more Hit Points of damage he dies. In other words if your character is damaged and has 0 (or less) hit points your character dies in the Neverwinter Nights Official Campaign. In Neverwinter Nights a module designer has the ability to change what the death settings are to 3rd Editions standard rules which state that a character is unconscious at 0 Hit Points and loses an additional hit point a round until 10 rounds have passed (the character is now at –10 Hit Points) at which point the character dies.
Hit Points are not just an indicator of how much physical damage you can take. Extra hit points as you gain levels are also an indication of you advancing skill at avoiding critical damage. Your 13th Level Fighter (with 100 Hit Points) may take 40 damage from a volley of 15 arrows but this does not mean you have 15 arrows sticking out of your heart and are just being manly. It probably means you took many small wounds but managed to avoid being hit in a critical area. You have not taken 40 damage in physical terms but the 40 damage represents the fact you were able to survive being struck with 15 arrows—you are injured but not dead as you would be at 1st level. You have enough experience in combat to be able to survive such a deadly situation.
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Saving Throws
The term ‘Saving Throw’ harkens back to the earliest D&D rules where a character is required to ‘throw’ the dice down (roll) in order to ‘save’ them from a bad situation. There are three types of saving throws in 3rd Edition D&D:
- Reflex: When you need to react to something very quickly to avoid damage or perform some desperate action such as dodging a fireball, avoiding a spike trap, catching a party member that has slipped off the ledge and so on.
- Will: Resisting mental attacks, magical effects or anything requires willpower such as Charm, illusions, domination spells and so on.
- Fortitude: Standing up to attacks to your vitality, health, or anything that attacks your constitution such poison, disease, energy drain or paralysis for example.
For example Jinn, the 4th Level Rogue, notices—at the last second—an assassin has pushed a large stone statue off a building in hopes of crushing our hero. He needs to make a saving throw—or specifically a Reflex saving throw—in order to avoid being struck by the statue. Jinn rolls his dice and success in making his Reflex saving throw and jumps clear of the statue as it crashes to the ground.