Neverwinter Nights/YMMV

• Adaptation Displacement: who knows this existed?)
  • More of an intentional homage than anything else. The two games have little alike other then being RPGs based on Dungeons and Dragons rules.
• Big Lipped Alligator Moment: In Hordes of the Underdark, you come across A band of villains from the original game led by Grimgnaw, who are looking to take over Cania with Mephistopeles out of town, and they attack you since you're strong enough to threaten their claim. The fight received no foreshadowing, is not mentioned afterwards, and serves no plot purpose. It's mostly only there to load you up with powerful items for the final few bosses, the ones you don't need functioning as Vendor Trash for the upcoming Money Sink where you'll be spending hundreds of thousands of gold to get what you need.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Subjugating the ruler of the Eighth Circle of Hell and taking his place as ruler. Who knew all it took to conquer Hell was a few hundred thousand gold?
  • Duking it out with Mephisto in the streets of Waterdeep, flanked by your allies: a fire-breathing Kobald bard, and and the ghost of a legendary, perhaps fallen, paladin.
• Crowning Moment of Funny: The strategy guide has a surprising amount. The writers must've been in an incredibly snarky mood when they wrote it.
  • Travel around with Deekin and listen to his random musings. Or have him point out Sharwyn's red hair changes color near her scalp.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: A lot of the music in Hordes of the Underdark, especially "rebel camp" and the final boss.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Aribeth
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Deekin for some, The Scrappy for others.
• Game Breaker: Clerics. Wearing full-plate armor with no magic penalty? Check. Equipping most kinds of weapons by default? Check. Casting the best spells of the game by far, like Harm? Check. Doing so without even having to learn and dislearn spells like the arcane classes? Checkmate.
  • The "Harm" spell in itself was this throughout the game, lowering the hitpoints of any non-undead enemy down to 1 (and anyone with Harm also gets Heal, which can do the same thing to undead as well as healing themselves if needed). It's a sixth-level-spell, meaning you get it at level 11 and will just keep on using it forever all the way to level 40. This particular brokenness was, of course, imported from 3rd edition D&D.
  • In Hordes of the Underdark, take Sorcerer classes until you get all three auto still spells, then 10 levels of Dragon Disciple, then the rest paladin. The result? A killing machine that slaughters its way through a literal army of demons effortlessly. Now add the fact that you an easily get Enserric the longsword to +10, and find an amulet of regeneration early in the game...
  • Five words - Maximized Isaac's Greater Missile Storm. To summarize, IGMS is a Level 6 Wizard/Sorcerer spell that fires magic projectiles, one for each caster level up to 20. They seek out and hit targets in the area of effect and do 2d6 damage each. Enter Maximize Spell, which raises the level of the target spell by three (making IGMS Level 9) and removes the variables from its effect, placing the values at maximum damage. This means that a Maximized ISGM will fire up to 20 projectiles, each doing 12 damage, for a total of 240 damage for one spell. Oh, and if you use this against a lone enemy (ie, a boss), all the projectiles fire at them. Add in the fact that in Hordes in particular you begin the game at Level 15 and keep going so you'll have a lot of spell slots for higher-level spells...
    • To put that damage into perspective, the "Epic Spell" Greater Ruin (that is, one of the top-level spells in the game) does 35d6 damage, to a maximum of 210 damage under optimal conditions--keeping in mind that a Maximized Missle Storm is guaranteed to do 12 damage a missile, while Greater Ruin you still need to rely on the luck of the roll.
  • Traps. You can beat the game before reaching level 10 with them by using a glitch to stack them together and killing storyline-required enemies.
  • As pointed out below, undead bosses often have loads of defenses and immunities as well as fear auras and buffs like stone skin, which makes them very difficult for most character builds...except for paladins who are immune to fear and can cast Lay On Hands which goes right past all of the undead's defenses. While a sword or mace might slowly chip away a hitpoint at a time on Brother Tomas, one casting of Lay On Hands can take a third of his health down.
  • In chapter two of Hordes of the Underdark, The Drow smith Rizolvir will upgrade your weapons for huge amounts of gold. If the player has been careful to save up gold throughout the campaigns they've played they can end up with enough gold to get all of the upgrades on a single weapon. The best possible weapon in the game with the best possible character build can be upgraded to do a maximum of nearly 300 DAMAGE PER ROUND!
• Magnificent Bastard: At least Mephistopheles in Hordes of the Underdark. It's practically in the definition of an archdevil. After being imprisoned by a puny drow who got hold of his True Name, he predicts that she will possibly be defeated by the Player Character, which turns out quite true when this encourages her to bring them to her and enables the devil to slip loose of her control. He then tries to conquer the entire world in an improvised bid to become the supreme ruler of Hell by making this world its lowest level. And when the player character catches up to him, he opens by talking their companions into joining him instead. Of course, the writers' effort to make all this believable is only partially convincing, but it comes across as their fault rather than the character's. Also has a good evil voice and Evil Laugh.
• Most Annoying Sound:The quiet tinkling sound of the fairy companion that threatens your sanity.
• Nightmare Fuel: The Charwood. Do not adventure in this region shortly before bedtime. We mean it. It becomes more of a Tear Jerker once you find out the backstory, but it's still pretty scary.
• That One Boss: Plenty, usually the undead bosses. Also, facing a boss enchanted with Fear (i.e. mummies, dragons) without being immune to it can make the fight extra difficult.
  • The first chapter of the original campaign has the Intellect Devourer. It is highly resistant to physical attacks and has mind-affecting spells. Luckily, this can be remedied early on by equipping gear that provides mind-affecting spell immunity or drinking a Clarity potion beforehand.
  • Chapter 2 of the original campaign has two (each is a high-level wizard lich): Brother Toras of the Arcane Brotherhood and Voleron in the Ruins of Illusk. He will continually spam high level spells on the player and followers. Unless your well prepared ahead of time Toras and crew can and often will mop the floor with you.
  • The final boss of the original campaign is this for some players. The area she is in is past an unmarked point of no return. While in this area, you need to fight a group of fairly powerful mooks, including a Cleric that can resurrect his allies. It is impossible to rest in this area or go to a merchant. The only supplies you find are likely to be a couple of heal potions and a few scrolls. So, you probably are going to be missing a good number of spells if you are playing a caster unless you are prepared for this fight before hand. After all that, the battle is probably going to be basically a Luck-Based Mission, because if she casts just the right spells in the right order, she is almost guaranteed to kill you no matter what.
  • Shadows of Undrentide has a Blackguard Skeleton appear in a mid-level dungeon. It does not sound so bad, but it is an extreme Damage Sponge Boss (with lots of regular damage sponge skeletons acting as bodyguards) whose undead status makes it immune to anything besides straight-up damage. They will surround you, and you will die again, and again, and again. At least Fighters can walk around in the Blackguard's fancy armor afterwards. Thankfully, you can always retreat to safety through a secret door nearby. (Unless you Failed a Spot Check) Cheap, but effective.
    • This troper let Xanos fight the Skeleton Blackguard in the doorway. Since when a henchman "dies", his body remains an object in the game world, I was able to shoot the Blackguard to death with about a hundred acid arrows over a half-orc barricade.
  • Also in Hordes of the Underdark is Vixthra the dracolich of Drearing's Deep. He can revive himself as many times as long as his phylactery remains intact, which is guarded by 2 skeleton golems. Vixthra himself has a huge amount of hit points and his breath weapon can do insane amounts of damage. Tank characters can take more punishment but lighter classes can have a hard time due to small amount of HP. And even though there's a shortcut door to the phylactery, the golems can gang up on you and Vixthra can even fly to your location to defend it. At least Vixthra is undead, so you can always use "Lay on Hands" as an attack if you're a Paladin/Champion of Torm - just make sure you have enough charisma to inflict all that damage... and make sure that the phylactery is broken first.
  • Also in the Isle of the Maker in Hordes of the Underdark, there's a room in that animates your weapons and turns them against you. It's even more devastating for those who dual-wield weapons and you're forced to use the spare weapons scattered on the floor or from your inventory.
    • The game warns you about this, but it can also be countered by equipping a weak weapon BEFORE entering this room's floor, which the weapon spirit will detect. Reequip your weapon after entrance to the floor.
  • And then you fight the Valsharess, a high-level spellcaster, and you have to leave your allies behind to fight her one-on-one. Due to spell resistances, if you're a spellcaster class yourself prepare for a long, drawn-out battle.
• The Untwist: You mean, the Jerkass who has been ridiculing efforts to find a cure for the plague and his priests who cast "blessings" that have the appearance and sound effect of a Negative Energy spell, are actually evil? Ya don't say!
• Woobie: Deekin, if the PC is mean to him.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Aribeth.