Are NWN encounter level accurate?

[Li Shenron]

Just wanted to ask your opinion about this. In general when you right-click on an enemy, the encounter difficulty given is quite accurate, but there has been two big exceptions that stroke me:

- the bloated dire spiders are now "moderate" for my character (lv7), but with their combo poison+knockdown and 2 attacks/round they're still too hard for me unless I myself summon a spider immune to poison; I suppose I could have a character with very high discipline and a poison-immunity magic item, but neverthless there's no other critter that irritates me as much as these

- there was a wizard (

Spoiler

Meldanen in the Blacklake district

) which registered as "impossible"; normally I RUN AWAY FAST even from "overpowering" enemies - I can just take as much as "very difficult" - but for some reason (well, I had just saved...) I decided to give it a try. Obviously I drank a few potions beforehand, gave a few as well to my bard henchwoman, and summoned a dire wolf to help; but actually with two simple Silence (which didn't succeed) + Hold Person (which succeedede) the enemy wizard lasted not more than 3-4 rounds!

I am curious to know if anyone had noticed other inconsistencies with suggested encounter difficulties...

 

[Morrus]

I don't know if NWN uses the D&D CR system directly to estimate challenges; but if it does, I don't see how it can work, because the magical equipment levels are so different between the "standard" D&D game and NWN. I've seen CR 40 critters cut down in a round or two by 20th level characters.

 

[Angcuru]

The CR is accurate, but the difficulty is relative.

You'll come to find that Impossible-rated Wizards are your best friends. They drop like flies and give you cartloads of exp. The thing with them is, by the time they've readied their first spell, you and your hench have already loaded them with arrows, axes, spears, swords, magic missiles, etc., so their spell is disrupted AND they're dead.

At the same time, the spiders are loaded with poison, disease, and 3 attacks per round at 2d6+n that make them in NWN much more dangerous that a wizard twice their level. Same CR, different difficulty.

'Cause NWN is hack&slash, and the non-completely hack&slash-focused baddies are cake.