I still have the original non-remastered version of the game. But I have this question.

The Vanilla base campaign of the game where your trying to save the Waterdhavian Creatures? Is the whole campaign a nearly solo one? Because instead of a whole party, I can only recruit like one partner at a time and I can't even customize them?

Yes, and iirc all of Nevewinter nights, including the expansions, is like that: You can only recruit 1-2 henchmen, and you can't control them directly in combat. Which was just a horrible decision for a system like D&D which was meant for party gameplay, and why imo Neverwinter nights is a dumbed-down and frustrating experience.

So here's my big question.

Since the game is heavily encouraging the use of mod tools/player made maps and campaigns.

Is there a mod that actually lets you utilize a whole party with full on customization of the party's gear and abilities?

Correct - in the first (original) campaign you can only have one henchman at a time (though you can change them).

You can install an updated version of the Henchman AI mod, Henchman Inventory & Battle AI Mod which gives you more control over their tactics and inventory.

You'll have to wait until Hordes of the Underdark before you can recruit more than one henchman still though.

NWN2 does allow you to have a larger party (typically 4, but can be much larger).

Is there also a mod to add more then one henchmen in the Vanilla campaign?

The OHS Henchman System may be worth a look (not compatible with Henchman AI though) as that allows you to use other created player characters as party members.

Hmm, so one mod makes me have full customization for one henchmen.

Another mod makes me add a bunch of henchmen of my own creation but have no direct control of their gear and abilities.

Choices......

NWN is different enough from Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale & Dragon Age Origins in being more solo based but with "extras" (typically you, a henchman + possibly 1x familiar / animal companion + 1x summoned creature depending on class) instead of a proper party of 4-6, that it really has to be treated as a unique game in itself, rather than be disappointed that it's not "Baldur's Gate 3". Think of how in Diablo 2 you could attack with you, your town hireling + a summoned creature or two, but that didn't make you a full party of 3-4? Well it's like that (but with Real-Time-with-Pause combat) but unlike Diablo 2, there's still the occasional "banter" between you and your hireling. Trying too hard to make it Baldur's Gate via mods can break modules, XP scaling, and the general "feel" of the game. I'd definitely recommend you play through at least once "vanilla" and see if you still want to mod it afterwards.

Add to it the fact that if you're playing anyone other than a rogue, you pretty much have to take that default rogue henchman halfling to open stuff for you. I never got beyond the second act of that campaign. But I guess it's not entirely fair to judge it by the same standards as a "normal" single player RPG. That campaing is, I think, designed more as a lengthy tutorial on how a game of D&D works in NN for people to make their own campaigns and play them with actual players.

Or you can have a pixie familiar for that. And once you find a rod of frost (infinite ray of frost), works for bashing most things even if they'd resist physical.
I played all of NWN1 fully solo, from the original campaign to Kingmaker, just talking to henchmen after level ups to go through their stories.

True enough, but the question is why would one want to play throughout something like that? I didn't get far in the vanilla campaign, because its hack&slash character (a result of the decision to do without more complex party gameplay) was just excruciatingly boring imo. I played a bit more of the first expansion Shadows of Undrentide (almost half of it), but that too was really pedestrian when compared to many other rpgs.
And I agree with you regarding the need to choose a rogue henchman for traps and locks, that's another restrictive factor. A class-based system designed for party gameplay just is a very poor fit for this type of game. Something like Fallout's skill-based system where everybody can learn to pick locks would have been more appropriate.

HotU is much above vanilla and SoU though.
And if you take the same character through all (making for a SoU that's a walk in the park, since it's meant for a low level character and you import a high level one), well, you can get something quite nice at the end of HotU. Here was Calad.

I congratulate you on your knowledge of the game, but it obviously comes from delving much deeper into it than I ever felt inclined to. Though I should probably give the other campaigns a shot, by all accounts they are way better.

Well, to learn the ropes for one thing. I never had any interest in creating my own content, running games in NN as a DM or anything like that, but maybe for those who did it was a usefull learning experience. Beyond that, well - it was 2002. Before digital stores with a stream of constant sales gave us "backlogs" and indie games and crowdfunding gave as a crapton of lengthy tabletop inspired RPGs to chose from. In 2002, if you were heavily into D&D and played all the Infinity Engine games to death this was your chance to play a new D&D game, and you paid good money for it, and by god you were going to squeeze what you could out of it. I imagine.


Sure, but remember - they weren't fitting a system to the game. They weren't even making a game exactly. They were primarily making a tool to play D&D, the actual thing exactly as if you were sitting around a table with the books, in a virtual environment. The single player campaign is awkward, but the single player campaign is not Neverwinter Nights. It's tip of the iceberg NN is.

You make good points, and supposedly some of the user-made content for NWN is far superior to the official campaigns. I still find it baffling though that they decided to do without party gameplay (and if I understand correctly that's an issue that also affects the fan-made modules to a considerable extent, it's just not possible to escape NWN's limitations fully), since it was bound to impact any single-player D&D experience in a negative way.

I imagine it stems from the fact that as primarly a way to virtualy play tabletop D&D with other players, the game is based around the idea of every one player controlling only their own character. When you focus on the single player campaign party gameplay seems obvious, but actually it runs counter to the basic design idea of NN. Now whether not including a whole party in the single player content was a real technical issue bacause of that, or just an oversight because their focus was elsewhere, I can't say.