Neverwinter Nights 2 / Tropes G to L

Tropes 0-F | Tropes G-L | Tropes M-R | Tropes S-Z | Mask of the Betrayer | Storm of Zehir | Mysteries of Westgate

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Neverwinter Nights 2 provides examples of the following tropes:

• Gambit Pileup: Not even counting side groups like the Orc tribes and Shadow thieves, the main plot has at minimum five major factions, two and most of a third of which have been wiped out by the player and each other by the time you actually have any kind of handle on what's really going on.
• Game Mod: Like the previous game, NWN2 comes with a toolkit for building new modules and even entire campaigns. They run the gamut from lousy and cliched to really damn good (rivaling or surpassing the official releases in a few cases). A good source is Neverwinter Vault.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Cleric Player Characters of any deity can freely choose Domains. A Law-aligned god wouldn't allow the Chaos Domain and vice versa. And no evil god in the game (except Luthic) allow healing. Hell, there are no gods in the game that allows both default Domains, Sun and Healing. Lathander is the only one having Sun and he didn't allow Healing in 3.5e.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: The orcs you deal with in the latter half of Chapter I. They are The Horde. They are nothing else.
• Ghostly Death Reveal: Depending on your actions, Bishop may fight for neither you nor the Big Bad in the final battle and simply leave the final dungeon before its collapse. Even if he did, you still meet him in a vision of the atheist's afterlife in Mask of the Betrayer. Apparently, his head start getting out was not enough.
• Going Through the Motions: Character gestures are pretty much taken wholesale from Knights of the Old Republic.

• Gotta Catch Them All: The silver shards. Or at least, you've just Gotta Catch Enough.

• Guest-Star Party Member:
  • Amie, Bevil and Kipp, but most prominently various NPCs involved in escort quests.
  • Also, Shandra Jerro.
• Hard-Coded Hostility: Can be either played straight or averted, due to the advanced faction building system available to module builders. A faction can be made hostile, indifferent or friendly toward any and all other factions, including the "player" faction, independently as required.
• Hate Sink: The King of Shadows is a dangerous threat to Neverwinter and indeed the Sword Coast at large, but once you learn his sad, sad backstory, he becomes a tragic figure who inspires pity rather than hatred. The githyanki get little individual focus and it's hard to hate them all as a group. Although she puts the "Ass" in Ambassador and is smug and abrasive during your trial, Torio Claven can become more helpful and less unpleasant once you defeat Garius if you recruit her for Crossroad Keep, and pulls off a genuine Heel–Face Turn in the epilogue if you do. But Black Garius? He treats his underlings like dirt, works for the King of Shadows and plots to usurp him with no Freudian Excuse or long-term justification. And after he becomes a Shadow Reaver, he starts mind raping Neeshka and tries to corrupt your True Companions over to the side of Evil. Killing him is thus immensely satisfying.
• Heel–Face Turn: Ammon Jerro and, optionally, Torio Claven.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]
• Heroic Sacrifice: Callum
• Hero of Another Story: More than a dozen, including every single one of the major villains. Not surprising, since deconstructing the idea of heroes is arguably the main theme of the story.
• Hidden Elf Village: Probably wouldn't be Dungeons & Dragons without it.
• Hiroshima as a Unit of Measure:
  Grobnar: No one really knows how big the Wendersnaven are. They could be thousands of Khelgars high!
  Khelgar Ironfist: What did I say 'bout usin' me as a unit of measurement?!
  Grobnar: Er, right, several Neeshkas high.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: In-universe example. In the first game Fenthick was a completely innocent man executed to appease the mob when the real culprit escaped, and the sheer blatant injustice of it was a big part of the plot. Here he's remembered as the very worst traitor in the city's history.
• Hostage for MacGuffin: The githyanki commanders do this using Shandra as the hostage, but only after Bishop tracks them back to their hideout and you hack your way through most of their troops. Then Zeeaire discovers that you've got another one of the Plot Coupons embedded in your chest and they abandon the attempt.
• Humans Are White: Justified in the OC. Neverwinter is part of the Forgotten Realms' Medieval European Fantasy area, so non-Caucasians would be unusual. Averted in the expansions. In Mask of the Betrayer, Rashemi are a Fantasy Counterpart Culture for Slavic peoples, while Thayans are part Slav, part Egyptian. And the Chult peninsula in Storm of Zehir is basically tropical Africa WITH DINOSAURS!
• Hub Under Attack:
  • The Player Character's home base for most of the game is the Sunken Flagon inn in Neverwinter. Near the end of chapter 1, the inn is attacked by the githyanki in an attempt to capture the PC to retrieve the fragment of the Sword of Gith lodged in their chest.
  • During Chapter 3, the PC shifts bases to Crossroad Keep, taking command of the fortress with the full knowledge that the King of Shadows will be attacking it with his army in the foreseeable future.
• Implausible Deniability: If you join the thieves' guild, you'll eventually be given a quest to burn down a watch post, and shortly afterwards a member of the city watch will attempt to arrest you for arson. It's perfectly possible that this will happen as you're standing next to a burning haycart, carrying a torch in your hand, and the Dialogue Tree still lets you respond to the accusation with a bluff check: "Who, me? I'm not even carrying a torch." The watchman, understandably, doesn't buy it.
• Improbable Power Discrepancy
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests
• Infinite Stock For Sale: Averted. Not only do merchants have a limited stock (apart from very basic items such as +1 Healing Kits), their money supply never resets. A few items from Act 1 are worth hanging onto until Act 2 simply for lack of any merchants with enough cash to pay full value.
• Infinity +1 Sword
  • The Silver Sword of Gith, wielded by the revolutionary-cum-demigoddess who, along with Zerthimon, led the Gith to freedom from their enslavement to the Mindflayers, before they split into two warring races. Subverted however that while it is still a +5 Universal Sword (ie. can be wielded regardless of proficiency) with +1d6 magic damage and 1d12 damage against Outsiders, it can be overshadowed by some items you yourself can craft. As a universal sword it also doesn't benefit from any feats you may or may not have. That being said however, it's still the only weapon in the game that's capable of dealing unmitigated damage to the final boss of the campaign, so it remains mechanically important despite being overshadowed by other weapons.
    • Completely and utterly played straight when you get the Sword back in the expansion, where it now has +1d12 slashing damage in addition to its base 1d8, an Enhancement Bonus of +10 (!!!), and it comes with massive stat bonuses tailored to your class. The power-up compared to the base game is justified in the plot as the weapon being fully reforged where previously it had several shards still missing.
  • Even worse is the Hammer of Ironfist, which you pick up at about the same time as you complete Khelgar's quest to become a monk. It's still usable, though, if you have either a dwarf Knight-Captain or a high Use Magic Device skill.
• Inn Security: Usually the Sunken Flagon is pretty safe, given that it's frequented by adventurers and off-duty guards. The exception is when the githyanki attack and take Shandra Hostage for a MacGuffin.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Due to the player's inability to jump. An extreme example is a small fallen log blocking access to a burned barn.
• Interspecies Adoption: It doesn't matter what race your character is, your father is always the same.
• Interspecies Romance: With the number of species available to the player, it's almost a given if you choose to pursue a romance at all.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • In the first area you visit outside of your Doomed Hometown — the road to some seemingly-unimportant swamp ruins — the minimap reads "The Mere of Dead Men". Now, the player character knows the apt name of the creepy swamp their home village is built on, but the player isn't supposed to know that yet. Also, one of the initially greyed-out prestige classes is Neverwinter Nine, potentially spoiling the offer Lord Nasher makes to you much later in the game.
  • Also, since the developers didn't bother/weren't able to make it possible to change the names of NPCs on-the-fly and weren't willing to outright lie to the player, you can tell that someone's going to try and deceive you about their identity if the overhead label that appears when you mouse over them says something vague, like "Man", instead of their actual name.
    • Similar to above, while walking through town, you can cursor over various NPCs. Citizen, Citizen, Citizen, Thug ... gee, I wonder which of these will try to ambush me as I walk past...
    • Mask of the Betrayer and certain fan modules prove that it is in fact possible to script a character name change (the MotB instance being Kaelyn the Dove adding a similar Animal Moniker to your name), so we can probably put this one down to Obsidian not caring enough.
  • Similarly, you are told to rescue an envoy but that his name is unknown... however his name shows up in your Journal straight away.
• In-Universe Game Clock
• Irrelevant Importance
• Item Crafting
• It's Up to You: Sometimes it seems the player is the only member of the City Watch who is actually ever assigned any tasks of significance. This is because the guy giving your orders assumes most of the other watchmen are corrupt and doesn't trust anyone but you. The situation is about as good as it sounds.
• Jerkass: Ribsmasher. You can set him free to have him thin out the ogre horde for you, but he also takes his anger out on treasure chests, breaking the contents. It's very tempting later on when you have a chance to get him electrocuted by having him try to open a certain door.
• Justified Tutorial: The Harvest Festival explains all the basics and is entirely skippable.
• Kangaroo Court: Luskan justice is described as being like this. (This is also a Call-Back to a sequence in the book Spine of the World.)
• Killed Off for Real: Amie, rather anticlimactically, and Shandra.
• Knight Templar Parent:
  • Hoo boy, Johcris. The guy is willing to betray his own city to its worst enemy in order to kill Qara, just because she insulted his daughter. If you are cavalier enough, you can make his attitude seem more justified.
  • Also potentially Sand. Sure, Qara's not safe, and on her current path would no doubt turn out to be a major problem for anyone who crosses her. On the other hand, that's a pretty weak excuse to side with the Omnicidal Maniac in the process of corrupting and despoiling the world around you. A Dummied Out cutscene shows that she's actually seriously holding back, and that he's frankly terrified of her.
• Lampshade Hanging:
  • If you win the trial, Torio forces it to end in a trial by combat, same as you can if you lose. Khelgar then goes into an epic rant about how unfair this is and how pointless the trial was. The high priest of Tyr, god of justice, is actually so impressed by this rant that it gives Khelgar a major leg up in his quest to join the church as a monk later.
  • The name of the "Blessed of Waukeen" feat. Waukeen is the goddess of money and wealth. You paid an extra $10 to get this feat, and it's calling you a rich bastard.
• Leaked Experience
• Legendary Weapon:
  • The Silver Sword of Gith, an Ancestral Weapon of the githyanki and githzerai forged by Zerthimon for Gith to free them from the mind flayers. In the backstory it was lost in the Nine Hells, then recovered by Ammon Jerro to fight the King of Shadows, during which battle it was shattered. Its shards act as Plot Coupons to allow the blade to be reforged.
  • Another legendary weapon from the first campaign is the Hammer of Ironfist, the Ancestral Weapon of your companion Khelgar's clan. Unfortunately by the time you get it Khelgar is likely well on his way to becoming a Tyrran monk, meaning he relies on Good Old Fisticuffs instead of weapons, and the Hammer can thus only be reliably wielded by a dwarf player character. Or by Khelgar if you advise him not to become a monk after all after completing his quest, which is mechanically probably the better choice anyway.
• Less Embarrassing Term: Has the following:
  Zinn: I'm Zinn, the pretty lady to my right is Niyra, the elf is Shahra, and the gnome in the dress is Oyo.
  Oyo: It's a robe, you bastard.
• Let's Play: There is an awesome one by Lt. Danger that can be found here.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: First there was the Special Edition, which added the aforementioned "Blessed of Waukeen" feat to the Knight-Captain. It gave access to a couple of special shops, as well as a minor bonus on some dice rolls. Then there was the Gold Edition, which bundled the Special Edition with Mask of the Betrayer. After Storm of Zehir came out, they added it to the Gold box and created the Platinum Edition; it is this version that is available on GOG and was available on Steam.
• Lizard Folk: One of the monster races you encounter throughout the game. They sometimes serve as enemies for the player to overcome, but unlike other most monster races in the game they are portrayed sympathetically and can be reasoned with.
• Load-Bearing Boss: The King of Shadows himself, to the annoyance of many.
  • Lampshaded in Mask of the Betrayer:
    Player Character: I remember being disappointed that the fortress's structure wasn't more architecturally sound.
    Ammon Jerro: Yes. That powerful and evil beings insist on causing destruction even as they die is an unfortunate habit.
  • Exceptionally ironic since Ammon Jerro uses this to justify the PC not killing him in his own base.
• Load-Bearing Hero: In Mask of the Betrayer, Ammon Jerro tells you that Casavir gave his life acting as one, keeping a doorway open until his back broke.
  • An easily missed line in Storm of Zehir retcons that he actually survived, was left a paraplegic, and was captured by Luskan. Kinda ruins the effect.
• Loading Screen: Of the "includes extra information" variety.
• Loads and Loads of Loading: Depending on the player's system.
• Locard's Theory: The Ember investigation.
• Logic Bomb: Subverted in the final boss battle. The Knight-Captain can try to pull this on the King of Shadows by pointing out that its overarching purpose, protecting Illefarn, is no longer applicable since said realm no longer exists. The King has extended the definition of Illefarn to include its descendants. Though this in and of itself is still a bit Logic Bomby given that Neverwinter, the kingdom he is currently trying to destroy, was itself founded and named for a Sun Elf nobleman who hailed from one of the three Successor States to Illefarn that arose after the King of Shadows was sealed in imprisonment, so logically he should be protecting Neverwinter too. That said, even in the Evil Ending where he wins, he still seems to spare the city.
• Long-Lasting Last Words: In NWN2, if the player is bored by Zeeairee's long ominous final speech, he can snap her neck to skip it.
• Loophole Abuse: The charges Luskan makes against you can mean that as a non-noble the treaty demands you will be sent to there for trial. If you followed the City Watch path, Nasher makes you a squire on the spot explicitly to exploit this, and justifying it with your service to the city. If you followed the thieves they just bribe a knight to take you on.
• Love Martyr: A female PC, if she turns down Casavir for Bishop.
• Lucky Rabbit's Foot: Rabbit familiars provide a +1 luck bonus to all saving throws.

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