Grobnar the Bard in NWN2, needs more of an explanation than I gave in my walkthrough. There is little in the story for which he is compulsory but he can add enormous value. Here are some notes I made.
I like Bards, the fiction around them can be fun, and I have played a number including several in which I focused on enchantment spells, partly to make up for the loss of ‘charm person’ as a skill.
My experience is based on a run through in which I had low influence with him, due to not taking him to the Neverwinter Archive. Sadly, you loose the opportunity to gain significant influence with him which, I think, led to him failing to help at the trial and at the battle of the bands. I quite liked the search for the Wendersneven and you get a metal ore site from it. Other’s find him annoying.
He is important in reactivating the Construct. His “song of competence” can help you, the protagonist, when upgrading the Construct. (I am not a huge fan of crafting, and my PC had a very low craft skill and I had to get the gloves of the artificer from Nya in Port Llast and used Grobnar to cast a spell of Heroism and also took a potion of Fox’s Cunning to get the necessary Craft skills.) i.e. he may be the best source of crafting augmentation.
Sand is a transmuter, Grobnar has no such spell restrictions from scrolls. He isn’t Qara.
I mention in the walkthrough that while he has great capability, some of what he can do can only be done while not doing other things, for instance, his songs. Also the spells all have casting times.Much of what he can do is serial and the V3.5 songs are different again. He is hard to play effectively and his AI is sub optimal. I have commented on the AI.
So here’s the short form advice.
- Take him to the Neverwinter Archive
- Use him to help upgrade the construct (and maybe other things)
- Use him to enhance your crafting
- Learn how to play him.
In BG2 & NWN, one can re-write
Game banshee has some links which talk about Grobnar & the Construct
- http://www.gamebanshee.com/neverwinternights2/companions/grobnar.php
- http://www.gamebanshee.com/neverwinternights2/companions/construct.php
- Bioware’s new forums, the Official Campaign
- The NWN2 wikia has a short page here.
The NWN2 wikia concludes with,
In German, “Grob” means “rude, rough, crude, coarse” and “Narr” means “fool” or “jerk” or possibly also “jester”. That’s why his name gives Grobnar very bad first impressions to native German speakers.
Documenting his combat AI might be useful, there’s a comment somewhere, possible the bioware forums about how he buffs himself before others and then attacks using spells, his combat strength is probably buffing others.
It was possible to write new AI macros for BG2 and NWN; I wonder.