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NWN2 uses the point buy system to determine ability scores during character creation. The system is based on points rather than random dice rolls.
A character starts with an ability score of 8 in each of his six abilities, and then draws upon a pool of 32 points to raise these abilities. For example, a player might want to set his character's Strength to 10, and so he would spend two points to raise it from 8.
However, as an ability score is raised to exceptional levels, it becomes more expensive to raise further, as per the following chart: Raising an ability score from 8 to 16 costs 10 points, so be careful not to neglect the rest of a character's abilities when making one or two exceptional.
| Base ability score |
Cost | Total cost |
| 8 | 0 | 0 |
| 9 | 1 | 1 |
| 10 | 1 | 2 |
| 11 | 1 | 3 |
| 12 | 1 | 4 |
| 13 | 1 | 5 |
| 14 | 1 | 6 |
| 15 | 2 | 8 |
| 16 | 2 | 10 |
| 17 | 3 | 13 |
| 18 | 3 | 16 |
Racial ability adjustments
Races that have modified ability scores are applied after the scores are initially allocated. This makes raising scores to exceptional levels costly for score penalties. As an example, moon elves have a -2 to Constitution, so where one would normally spend 10 points to increase that to 16, it would ultimately cost 16 points to start a moon elf with 16 points. On the other hand, ability bonuses, such as the moon elves' +2 to Dexterity, would essentially require only spending 10 points to reach 18 dexterity.
In most cases, these ability score adjustments cancel each other out, resulting in no major bonus over a human or half-elf. A few subraces however, like aasimar and drow, have more bonuses than penalties, and combined with other race features warrant an ECL adjustment. For example, the aasimar have +2 bonus to both Wisdom and Charisma, with no penalty to ability scores. As such, with their celestial resistances and skill bonuses, Aasimar are considered ECL+1.
NWN comparison
- The NWN point buy pool was 30 points. It's been increased to 32 in NWN2.