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Factor_VIII posted:One of the 3rd edition developers said that level limits existed in 2E to compensate for special abilities the other races got (e.g. the 90% resistance to charm for elves) that humans didn't. And the level caps were too low to explain possible level 100+ characters. Elven wizards could only go up to level 11, which translates to level 6 spells. So much for ancient elven mages creating wondrous magical effects; they couldn't even cast Delayed Blast Fireball. Good thing BG2 didn't keep the level limits from 2E, otherwise elven wizards for example would have hit an XP cap almost at the start of the game. I played a small amount of AD&D pen and paper when I was a kid (never for more than a couple months at a time) but even then level limits didn't make sense to me, because at a certain point your character would never be able to do anything new beyond any loot they got. Not to turn this into an edition war, but something I thought 3rd edition did very well was balance out races.
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Dec 23, 2013 10:05
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Ferrosol posted:7. General rules of thumb. Missile weapons in BG1 are godly. Most classes are playable and fun the only ones you should avoid completely are Monk(useless till about level 10) Wizard Slayer(losing access to magic gear and potions hurts) Beast Master(Just plain bad.) Shapeshifter(Werewolves are pathetic fighters... when on your team.) Everything else is just a matter of how good you want to be. For a newbie I'd recommend you take an Archer (Ranger Kit) pump Longbow skills, buy a longbow and fill everything with Arrows. It'll be less good in BG2 but by then the rest of your party will be able to take up the rest of the slack. Beast Masters aren't bad in BG1. Being able to vomit summons to tank things for you and still have a reasonable choice of ranged weapons (bows and slings) means that BMs are more likely to live through the Murderhobo levels than just about anyone. In BG2 they're notably less useful, however, and are basically only worth having to dual into a Clanger. If you're running Enhanced Edition, the Sun Soul kit trades a lot of the Monk's late game viability to be able to set themselves on fire early, which can be pretty useful.
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Dec 23, 2013 10:08
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A bit late, but the restriction on clerics not being able to use bladed weapons was originally a reference to real-life history when the Catholic church forbade priests to use weapons that drew blood - piercing and bladed weapons. So they used blunt weapons instead.
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Dec 23, 2013 13:07
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Wolfsheim posted:1)Am I just missing an enormous amount of sidequests or does leveling take a long loving time? Jaheira popped like ten minutes after I found her, and my PC (again, just a standard human fighter) literally didn't hit Level 2 until I killed the final guy in the Nashkel mines. Jaheira starts with a minimum of 3,572 exp in BG1, she gets to level 2 very quickly. Leveling in a party of 6 can take a little while early on because you can't reliably take on the big exp stuff like ankhegs early without dying a lot or getting really lucky.
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Dec 23, 2013 13:37
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Is there a writeup anywhere of how the 18/xx scores work in the weird-rear end D&D rules that Baldurs Gate uses?
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Dec 23, 2013 14:19
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peak debt posted:Is there a writeup anywhere of how the 18/xx scores work in the weird-rear end D&D rules that Baldurs Gate uses? The manual has an explanation.
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Dec 23, 2013 14:26
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peak debt posted:Is there a writeup anywhere of how the 18/xx scores work in the weird-rear end D&D rules that Baldurs Gate uses? http://playithardcore.com/pihwiki/index.php?title=Baldur%27s_Gate:_Races_and_Stats Is basically what you want, I think.
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Dec 23, 2013 14:41
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Cythereal posted:A bit late, but the restriction on clerics not being able to use bladed weapons was originally a reference to real-life history when the Catholic church forbade priests to use weapons that drew blood - piercing and bladed weapons. So they used blunt weapons instead. That still doesn't make any loving sense though, I mean if you smash someone in the head with a warhammer, that's going to draw a little blood.
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Dec 23, 2013 15:10
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TehGherkin posted:That still doesn't make any loving sense though, I mean if you smash someone in the head with a warhammer, that's going to draw a little blood. Religions don't make sense shocker.
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Dec 23, 2013 15:21
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TehGherkin posted:That still doesn't make any loving sense though, I mean if you smash someone in the head with a warhammer, that's going to draw a little blood. It's the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. Making sense to modern eyes was rarely on their agenda. See also: banning use of the crossbow against Catholics because it was inhumane (read: allowed peasants with a week of training to kill wealthy knights with decades of training). Dungeons and Dragons picked it up and ran with it for clerics.
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Dec 23, 2013 15:21
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Smol posted:I forget if Tutu does anything to Khalid's profiencies, but he makes a good archer. Yeah, I love Tutu but it does some dumb things like that. When going from Baldur's Gate's simple weapon groups to BG2's more specialized ones, they had to make their own decisions on what to make of the Large Sword group as it was split into longswords, bastard swords, and two-handers. Khalid got the short end of the stick. Even if he didn't have the dual wield thing, there are hardly any magic bastard swords to begin with in the base game. Another dumb thing that happened is they gave Coran the fighter-thief proficiency in two hand swords. I kinda get what they were going for since archers can't have shields on a quick-slot a two-hand sword seems natural, but thieves can't backstab with non-thief weapons, even the fighters-thieves. He already comes lumped with less than optimal sneaking skills that keep him from being a primary party thief, so the least he could do would be to backstab folks out of the box, but you have to spend a level or two just to get him proficient in longswords or daggers or something. And those two-handed sword pips just sit there, useless. A lot of times I end up using Shadowkeeper just to un-do some of the dumber thing like this. Tuxedo Ted fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Dec 23, 2013 |
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Dec 23, 2013 15:23
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I always wondered about the morningstars. Even if crushing someone's skull apparently doesn't draw blood, I'd imagine hitting someone with a whole bunch of nails would.
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Dec 23, 2013 15:25
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The spikes are because knights insisted on wearing pesky armor, rest assured they'd be given Christian burials after peeling them out of it 
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Dec 23, 2013 15:41
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Cythereal posted:It's the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. Making sense to modern eyes was rarely on their agenda. See also: banning use of the crossbow against Catholics because it was inhumane (read: allowed peasants with a week of training to kill wealthy knights with decades of training). Dungeons and Dragons picked it up and ran with it for clerics.
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Dec 23, 2013 15:45
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Cythereal posted:A bit late, but the restriction on clerics not being able to use bladed weapons was originally a reference to real-life history when the Catholic church forbade priests to use weapons that drew blood - piercing and bladed weapons. So they used blunt weapons instead. 5 minutes of googling seems to suggest this is bullshit, here's some text from wikipedia: quote:It is popularly believed that maces were employed by the clergy in warfare to avoid shedding blood [2] (sine effusione sanguinis). The evidence for this is sparse and appears to derive almost entirely from the depiction of Bishop Odo of Bayeux wielding a club-like mace at the Battle of Hastings in the Bayeux Tapestry, the idea being that he did so to avoid either shedding blood or bearing the arms of war. The fact that his brother Duke William carries a similar item suggests that, in this context, the mace may have been simply a symbol of authority.[3] Certainly, other Bishops were depicted bearing the arms of a knight without comment, such as Archbishop Turpin who bears both a spear and a sword named "Almace" in The Song of Roland or Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy, who also appears to have fought as a knight during the First Crusade, an expedition that Odo also joined.[4]
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Dec 23, 2013 15:57
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SheepNameKiller posted:5 minutes of googling seems to suggest this is bullshit, here's some text from wikipedia: I stand corrected. My mistake.
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Dec 23, 2013 16:00
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Tuxedo Ted posted:Yeah, I love Tutu but it does some dumb things like that. When going from Baldur's Gate's simple weapon groups to BG2's more specialized ones, they had to make their own decisions on what to make of the Large Sword group as it was split into longswords, bastard swords, and two-handers. They could have easily done what I do: look at what the NPC comes equipped with by default to make the decision. Khalid comes with a bastard sword and (at level 2+) a long bow. Therefore, his large sword proficiency is bastard sword proficiency, and his bow proficiency is a long bow one. The 1 pip he has in axes is unambiguous. Giving him 2 pips in dual wielding is totally arbitrary and stupid in BG1 besides. There are plenty enough bastard swords +1 in the game. There are even 2 bastard swords +3 vs. shapeshifters, which make werewolf island quite a bit easier.
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Dec 23, 2013 16:02
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What is it about the notion of priests and clerics being badasses of war that is just so awesome? Probably going to reroll my first playthrough of BG1 already as I dumped INT without realizing I couldn't use ID scrolls. Also, can you resurrect NPCs in your party? A black bear ripped Imoen to shreds and I would hate to have lost her already had I continued with that save. Looking forward to tonight. Going to be spending 12 hours in a parked car with my iPad on the car charger.
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Dec 23, 2013 17:07
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TraderStav posted:What is it about the notion of priests and clerics being badasses of war that is just so awesome?
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Dec 23, 2013 17:12
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TraderStav posted:What is it about the notion of priests and clerics being badasses of war that is just so awesome? You can resurrect NPCs. In BG1, this is done by talking to an NPC - there's one in every town, the main cleric at the local temple. The three you're likely to run across early in the game are: -At the Friendly Arm Inn, SE of the entrance to the inn proper is an entrance to the temple. -In Beregost, exit the town map on the eastern side (ie: the exit by the smithy) to unlock another zone on your map called Temple. In Temple, follow the path to the main building and take the center entrance to meet the priest. -In Nashkel, it's the big building in the middle of the cemetery.
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Dec 23, 2013 17:19
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Rascyc posted:I dunno but it was enough that Clerics practically became the god-class in 3/3.5e! Although class is a little misleading here given that you can splash levels and such. Also, the buffs to clerics and druids in 3/.5 over 2E was an effort to make them more attractive to players. In previous editions, they were stereotyped as boring defensive classes that you nevertheless need one of because someone has to be the healer. 3/.5 wanted to give these classes more options than being "just the healer." It could be argued that this went too far, and it's certainly true that outright healing in the 3/.5 environment is generally far less effective than buffs, debuffs, and battlefield control, but it certainly did accomplish what the improvements to the classes were intended to do.
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Dec 23, 2013 17:20
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As well as playing Baldur's Gate 1 a little, I've spent the last week or so playing Icewind Dale now and then, I've just got to chapter 2 and I'm having a grand old time slaying lizardmen and ice trolls. I sort of wish I'd gone with a 4-man party rather than 6 (Paladin, Fighter, Cleric, Mage, Thief, Bard) because the exp is spread a little thin, but I've grown rather attached to all my characters now. Even the bard, who I really didn't like at first and still aren't that keen on. All he does is stand at the pack and play songs, he occasionally shoots stuff with a crossbow. I'm thinking maybe I should've taken a ranger, at least he'd be better at shooting stuff, my bard can't even cast spells, he has the slots, and he can memorize them, he just can't cast them. I think I remember reading earlier that fighter levels past 4 are pointless, is that true? My fighter's 4 at the moment and kicks a bunch of butt with the Lucky Scimitar, I wouldn't know what to dual him to anyway. EDIT: Grognard incoming, I really get irritated by the way haste fatigues everyone. Technically, they're moving at their normal speed only magically enhanced, therefore they aren't exerting themselves anymore than they would normally, drat it. Thanks, I heard bards pay off in this game, guess I'll just keep clickin' that harp. Suspicious posted:You should be thankful. In P&P the haste spell ages you 1 year. That makes even less sense! TehGherkin fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Dec 23, 2013 |
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Dec 23, 2013 17:33
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Bard is so good in IWD, don't worry he'll pay off. Sure he's boring to 'control' but the benefits he brings are incredible. The songs can sort of stack too, some people will bring two.
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Dec 23, 2013 17:34
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TehGherkin posted:Grognard incoming, I really get irritated by the way haste fatigues everyone. Technically, they're moving at their normal speed only magically enhanced, therefore they aren't exerting themselves anymore than they would normally, drat it. You should be thankful. In P&P the haste spell ages you 1 year.
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Dec 23, 2013 17:36
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TehGherkin posted:I'm thinking maybe I should've taken a ranger, at least he'd be better at shooting stuff, my bard can't even cast spells, he has the slots, and he can memorize them, he just can't cast them.
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Dec 23, 2013 17:40
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zedprime posted:Take your bards armor off. Fighter levels past 4 is an IWD2 thing, fighter's own in IWD1. Ohhhhhh. I feel loving retarded now. I guess all he does is stand at the back singing about poo poo anyway. Thanks. So when I inevitably Move on to IWD2, since I'm gonna have a mage, rogue, and cleric anyway, what should I dual people to?
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Dec 23, 2013 17:44
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Cythereal posted:Also, the buffs to clerics and druids in 3/.5 over 2E was an effort to make them more attractive to players. In previous editions, they were stereotyped as boring defensive classes that you nevertheless need one of because someone has to be the healer. 3/.5 wanted to give these classes more options than being "just the healer." TehGherkin posted:That makes even less sense! What was even better was that in 2E every magical effect that ages the target also triggered a system shock roll (a percentile roll based on Constitution). Fail that and you'd die. In other words characters could die from being hasted, particularly if their Constitution wasn't high.
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Dec 23, 2013 17:46
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Factor_VIII posted:What was even better was that in 2E every magical effect that ages the target also triggered a system shock roll (a percentile roll based on Constitution). Fail that and you'd die. In other words characters could die from being hasted, particularly if their Constitution wasn't high. If I remember right, you lost a point of Con if you were resurrected too, didn't you? Or there was some sort of rule around bringing a dead character back to life that meant it wouldn't work sometimes and welp, your dude is dead forever, here's a new sheet. E: I'm taking an Elf Stalker through the series this time around. I can still only backstab with thief-proficiency weapons, right? (i.e. no battle axes, or bastard swords, etc.) I'm liking the boost to stealth, just to explore areas in relative peace. I know they don't get much else until BG2, but I'm having a good time. Charm Animal is a useful ability in BG1. I just had a cave bear tear up the village of smurfs she was supposed to protect. I'm glad that doesn't count as evil. 
HackensackBackpack fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Dec 23, 2013 |
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Dec 23, 2013 18:09
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TehGherkin posted:That makes even less sense! You are sped up. Your aging is sped up. QED. Errata also reminded you that you had to roll to see if the shock of aging a year in a couple of minutes outright killed you. And the spell specifically designed to reverse magical aging couldn't undo it. 2e designers had some problems but they recognised how broken Haste could be in the wrong hands much more successfully than the 3e ones did. If anyone had actually played without houseruling at least some of that away, Haste would have been a spell used carefully after some thought instead of a standard buff. I don't know anyone who didn't houserule it but I suppose it must have happened somewhere. Restoration ages caster and benefiter by two years if you're looking for other spells that had this effect. In this case it's because it was essentially a cure-all which was able to undo most of the horrible poo poo that could happen to you in adventuring, that normal cure spells couldn't touch. quote:What was even better was that in 2E every magical effect that ages the target also triggered a system shock roll (a percentile roll based on Constitution). Fail that and you'd die. In other words characters could die from being hasted, particularly if their Constitution wasn't high.
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Dec 23, 2013 18:09
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SheepNameKiller posted:5 minutes of googling seems to suggest this is bullshit, here's some text from wikipedia: quote:It is popularly believed that maces were employed by the clergy in warfare to avoid shedding blood [2] (sine effusione sanguinis). The evidence for this is sparse and appears to derive almost entirely from the depiction of Bishop Odo of Bayeux wielding a club-like mace at the Battle of Hastings in the Bayeux Tapestry, the idea being that he did so to avoid either shedding blood or bearing the arms of war. The fact that his brother Duke William carries a similar item suggests that, in this context, the mace may have been simply a symbol of authority.
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Dec 23, 2013 18:13
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Sleep of Bronze posted:2e designers had some problems but they recognised how broken Haste could be in the wrong hands much more successfully than the 3e ones did.
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Dec 23, 2013 18:16
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Sleep of Bronze posted:2e designers had some problems but they recognised how broken Haste could be in the wrong hands much more successfully than the 3e ones did. If anyone had actually played without houseruling at least some of that away, Haste would have been a spell used carefully after some thought instead of a standard buff. I don't know anyone who didn't houserule it but I suppose it must have happened somewhere. Trying to balance spells by giving them a chance to kill the caster or target is a pretty terrible way of doing things in my opinion. People might complain about 3E spells being overpowered but I'd definitely prefer that to the potential of a single bad roll wiping out the entire party. E.g. when casting Teleport in 2E you rolled a percentile die and if you rolled low, the party would teleport into the ground, dying instantly.
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Dec 23, 2013 18:33
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Leofish posted:E: I'm taking an Elf Stalker through the series this time around. I can still only backstab with thief-proficiency weapons, right? (i.e. no battle axes, or bastard swords, etc.) I'm liking the boost to stealth, just to explore areas in relative peace. I know they don't get much else until BG2, but I'm having a good time. Charm Animal is a useful ability in BG1. I just had a cave bear tear up the village of smurfs she was supposed to protect. I'm glad that doesn't count as evil. I picked up the Enhanced Editions (been thru the vanilla/modded BG saga a couple times) to kill time over the holiday break and rolled a human Stalker myself. You can only backstab with thief weapons, yeah, but there are plenty of options for you there. I'm planning to dual to Cleric at level 13 (running a smaller party so the exp should be no problem) which will get me +1 attack, access to the full Druid and Cleric spell lists (plus level 12 Stalker bonus spells including Haste), and x3 Backstab. Drawbacks are limited to studded leather armor and only have staves and clubs for backstab options, but neither of those will be big problems especially in BG2. Edit: and lack of warrior HLAs. Oh well, I'll have 3.5 base attacks, solid THAC0, cleric buffs, Ironskin, and BEES Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Dec 23, 2013 |
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Dec 23, 2013 18:42
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Pellisworth posted:I picked up the Enhanced Editions (been thru the vanilla/modded BG saga a couple times) to kill time over the holiday break and rolled a human Stalker myself. You can only backstab with thief weapons, yeah, but there are plenty of options for you there. I'm planning to dual to Cleric at level 13 (running a smaller party so the exp should be no problem) which will get me +1 attack, access to the full Druid and Cleric spell lists (plus level 12 Stalker bonus spells including Haste), and x3 Backstab. Drawbacks are limited to studded leather armor and only have staves and clubs for backstab options, but neither of those will be big problems especially in BG2. Did they fix the ability to dual from Stalker to Cleric in EE? I remember doing it once in BG2 but then I guess ToB removed that and only Beast Master kitted or vanilla Rangers could dual to Cleric. I'm playing a demi-human so I can't dual anyway, but I remember trying to test it out by loading up a new ToB file and having it not work. I have plenty of thief-friendly weapons as proficiencies with my Stalker- long swords and scimitars mostly- but I wanted to deviate a bit from the standard elf ranger fare and use throwing axes as a missile weapon in place of the traditional long bow. I've noticed, as well, that the elf THAC0 bonus with swords seems to apply to ALL swords and not just long swords, like I thought it did, because I get the extra point with scimitars as well (but I don't get it with a melee battle axe, for example). I'm running a full party of six, so if my PC can't do everything it's no biggie because I'll have NPCs who can cover the roles I need.
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Dec 23, 2013 19:09
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Factor_VIII posted:Trying to balance spells by giving them a chance to kill the caster or target is a pretty terrible way of doing things in my opinion. People might complain about 3E spells being overpowered but I'd definitely prefer that to the potential of a single bad roll wiping out the entire party. E.g. when casting Teleport in 2E you rolled a percentile die and if you rolled low, the party would teleport into the ground, dying instantly. Oh, yeah, I totally agree it's bullshit. Like I said, I don't know anyone who didn't houserule all this crap in some way and I most definitely did. The thing is that seeing all that at least told novice DM me that I needed to keep a drat good eye on Haste and its ilk because the designers had attached all these riders to them which made them so chancy to cast. Fantasy simulationist me, whom 2E catered to especially well, also likes the idea that you have to deal with premature aging and other penalties for making your body act so much faster than it's meant to. Cloudy with a chance of death makes it unfun, but if I'm DMing I'll always ask my group about having our houserules keep some negative repercussions still stapled to the spell.
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Dec 23, 2013 19:18
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Sleep of Bronze posted:Oh, yeah, I totally agree it's bullshit. Like I said, I don't know anyone who didn't houserule all this crap in some way and I most definitely did. The thing is that seeing all that at least told novice DM me that I needed to keep a drat good eye on Haste and its ilk because the designers had attached all these riders to them which made them so chancy to cast. My group made huge use of house rules as we were most active during 2nd edition (and totally aware of how retarded it was at all times), and we were rather proud that several of our house rules ended up being adopted in 3rd edition and beyond. We didn't submit suggestions to WotC or anything, just coincidence. Among those "innovations" were adding a character's CON score to his HP at first level, making fighters proficient with all common weapons to start at level 1, making trivial spells usable at-will for higher level casters, etc. I think that for Haste we removed the aging requirement and made it so that after the combat adrenaline wore off a character would be pretty badly fatigued for a while. Worked well enough as I remember it.
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Dec 23, 2013 19:37
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Leofish posted:Did they fix the ability to dual from Stalker to Cleric in EE? I remember doing it once in BG2 but then I guess ToB removed that and only Beast Master kitted or vanilla Rangers could dual to Cleric. I'm playing a demi-human so I can't dual anyway, but I remember trying to test it out by loading up a new ToB file and having it not work. Yep, you can dual from Stalker (all the Ranger kits, I'm pretty sure) to Cleric in EE. My Stalker/Cleric won't really bring much additional utility over a non-kitted Ranger, but the idea of having most of the combat abilities of a Fighter/Druid/Cleric/Thief sounded appealing. Variety is fun
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Dec 23, 2013 19:40
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Wonder if anyone used the haste shock as a cheese attack. "Raistlin faces us eh? I haste him."
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Dec 23, 2013 19:49
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Suspicious posted:You should be thankful. In P&P the haste spell ages you 1 year.
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Dec 23, 2013 20:14
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Sleep of Bronze posted:Oh, yeah, I totally agree it's bullshit. Like I said, I don't know anyone who didn't houserule all this crap in some way and I most definitely did. The thing is that seeing all that at least told novice DM me that I needed to keep a drat good eye on Haste and its ilk because the designers had attached all these riders to them which made them so chancy to cast. Hughlander posted:Wonder if anyone used the haste shock as a cheese attack. "Raistlin faces us eh? I haste him." 
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Dec 23, 2013 20:36
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