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I wonder why all of the quests in the drow city have such long time limits? Or even have them at all really? Like they will say "come and see me within the next 2 days" or "you have 3 days to hunt down and kill this man" when the man in question is just down the street in the next building over. I can kinda see it from the "if you don't do as your told you will arouse suspicions" angle of the plot but do you just game over if you don't? The city gets locked down after a certain point anyway so it's not like they were worried you'd just go walk around the underdark fighting the infinite elementals for XP or anything like that either!
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Apr 5, 2024 06:42
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| # ? Apr 19, 2024 23:43 |
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I handwave it as Drows are evil jerks, but BG2 was going for something in that section with something in mind for those time limits and I dont know what. Maybe simply, "Drows are evil jerks." 
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Apr 5, 2024 07:46
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It could be to add a bit of pace and impetus to the story, so it isn't like chapter 2/3 where you can spend an in-game year solving problems for randos around Athkatla rather than rescuing your childhood friend from evil wizards ASAP.
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Apr 5, 2024 09:07
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The Shame Boy posted:I wonder why all of the quests in the drow city have such long time limits? Or even have them at all really? Like they will say "come and see me within the next 2 days" or "you have 3 days to hunt down and kill this man" when the man in question is just down the street in the next building over. I can kinda see it from the "if you don't do as your told you will arouse suspicions" angle of the plot but do you just game over if you don't? The city gets locked down after a certain point anyway so it's not like they were worried you'd just go walk around the underdark fighting the infinite elementals for XP or anything like that either! Perhaps the length is for unlucky bastards like me that took a detour to illithid or beholder town midway through. That'll eat through a full rest and then some.
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Apr 5, 2024 09:10
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Icewind Dale 2 question: I currently have a party of 6 where my only arcane caster is a Sorceress. I'm not counting my bard. I only just entered chapter 2. I've picked up a good deal of spell scrolls and feel I may have hosed myself by not having another dedicated arcane caster that is mage instead of a sorcerer. Should I go ahead and create a new mage character and drop one of my current party members? They're only level 5-6 so far. Here's what I have currently: human cleric 6 dwarf fighter 6 human barbarian 6 halfling bard 5/rogue 1 half elf ranger 6 drow sorceress 5 Should I drop one of those? Or will this party with just the sorceress be enough? This is my first time playing through the game (not counting a handful of false starts) and if it helps, i'm using the Enhanced Edition mod. I'm playing on easy because the game is hard enough as it is.
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Apr 7, 2024 01:54
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If you're playing on easy you're probably fine with your current party. If you really want a wizard I'd probably drop the fighter, barbarian or ranger, whichever one is dealing out the least amount of damage. Ranger has some very small bits of special interaction that the other two don't so you might keep them even if the other two are a little better.
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Apr 7, 2024 07:36
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It's probably been like twenty years since I played iwd2 but I agree with Air Skwirl that you should be fine with your current party.
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Apr 7, 2024 09:15
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Ok doke, I’ll just keep trucking. Thanks!
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Apr 7, 2024 10:08
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Wizard is hardest to use class in the game because those scrolls are coming well after your sorc would have been able to cast them if they are bread and butter. Sorc Bard supremacy also means you can take all those scrolls and cast them. A little departure from arcane spell book Pokemon or the way people treat their inventory but casting from scroll is huge for sanding off the difficult corners in a difficult game.
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Apr 7, 2024 13:11
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zedprime posted:Wizard is hardest to use class in the game because those scrolls are coming well after your sorc would have been able to cast them if they are bread and butter. Sorc Bard? Is it enough to dip 1 level into Bard to be able to use those scrolls? I already have a bard/rogue in my party as well, so maybe the scrolls will be learnable by the bard?
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Apr 7, 2024 16:01
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I forget all the different 3e era foibles of who can read scrolls but the sorcerer can cast arcane spells on the scrolls at will (once). Bards can too but I think they might need to make a UMD check? Bonus if it is UMD, cleric scrolls too. I should say sorc & bard supremacy. If you never need to put a stupid spell in your book you can just spend maximum time blasting spells off pieces of paper.
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Apr 7, 2024 18:00
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As i beat Irenicus again i kinda realize something, i've been playing unmodded this whole time and while i've seen streams of the game with people playing with SCS and i was kinda curoius to try it myself eventually, but it didn't occur to me until now that making the mages smarter just basically means every single mage you will run into will be like fighting Irenicus right? Basically a knowledge test of how well you know the magic system? Because that just sounds more annoying than anything else. At least until i have a few more playthroughs under my belt maybe.
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Apr 8, 2024 04:26
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The Shame Boy posted:As i beat Irenicus again i kinda realize something, i've been playing unmodded this whole time and while i've seen streams of the game with people playing with SCS and i was kinda curoius to try it myself eventually, but it didn't occur to me until now that making the mages smarter just basically means every single mage you will run into will be like fighting Irenicus right? Basically a knowledge test of how well you know the magic system? I like it but it's not for everyone and I would not recommend using it until you feel like the core game is too easy for you. It does also change how some spells work (for example, in vanilla you can pretty much cast breach on any mage to kill them, whereas SCS makes it so you have to strip certain mage protections before doing that) so you do kinda have to relearn certain things as well once you use it. That said, it is highly customizable and you don't have to throw it on max settings out of the box. Davaeorn is a good streamer to watch if you want to see what maximized SCS gameplay is like. He plays with pretty cranked up settings and does no reload and all that.
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Apr 8, 2024 08:15
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Good news! ToB already does "every mage is an Irenicus."
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Apr 8, 2024 11:46
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Honestly I kind of prefer BG1 to BG2 because every encounter doesn't devolve into Mage Chess.
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Apr 8, 2024 17:04
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It's not even chess. It's more of a spreadsheet
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Apr 8, 2024 17:25
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After 25 years of playing these games, I recently used Keldorn for the first time. If Keldorn is in your party, then you just push the "prepare mage for deletion" button. Then delete them. No Chess or spreadsheets necessary.
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Apr 8, 2024 18:38
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chaosapiant posted:After 25 years of playing these games, I recently used Keldorn for the first time. If Keldorn is in your party, then you just push the "prepare mage for deletion" button. Then delete them. No Chess or spreadsheets necessary. Yeah Keldorn is loving hilarious to use.
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Apr 8, 2024 18:51
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Air Skwirl posted:Yeah Keldorn is loving hilarious to use. The party I just beat BG2/ToB with was: Multiclass Fighter/Mage Keldorn Minsc Imoen Jaheira Aerie Every character was just immensely powerful and useful by the end of the game. Imoen was my top shelf mage, Jaheira was a machine gun, and Aerie was just a beautiful wingless angel of death and salvation. My PC was a fighter/mage wielding robe of vecna, ring of gaxx, staff of the magi, amulet of power, while Keldorn had Carsomyr and Minsc was dual wielding Flail of Ages and Crom Fayr. I'd switch out Minsc's flail for Mace of Disruption and Keldorn's for Daystar when fighting undead, but it felt like cheating with that party.
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Apr 8, 2024 19:05
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It's not quite the same. SCS does randomise mage spellbooks and tactics a bit, so you don't know exactly what they're going to throw out. But yeah by the time you're liches and other high level mages in BG2 it's more a question of how many of the same defensive spells that you have to deal with, rather than which tactics you need to use. It works way better in BG1 because with restricted spell slots there's so much more variety in what an enemy mage might do.
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Apr 8, 2024 20:39
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voiceless anal fricative posted:It's not quite the same. SCS does randomise mage spellbooks and tactics a bit, so you don't know exactly what they're going to throw out. But yeah by the time you're liches and other high level mages in BG2 it's more a question of how many of the same defensive spells that you have to deal with, rather than which tactics you need to use. There are certain tricks you learn to use like seeing that an enemy mage hasn't cast protection from poison and dropping a cloudkill on their rear end. But certainly by late SOA and TOB they tend to have protections from god damned everything so at that point you pretty much have to start stripping protections. Fortunately by that point you're also a bit less scared of mages because saving throws and hp have scaled pretty well by that point. Tbh in TOB I fear powerful melee enemies more than I do mages, especially if I'm playing no reload. I've seen fire giants end a run in seconds when they pop whirlwind and mulch someone.
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Apr 8, 2024 20:53
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I recall there being a Fighter in the IWD1 expansion that just loving mulches your party if you let him get at you. One of the Trial of the Luremaster areas.
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Apr 8, 2024 20:59
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TotLM (or the rest of IWD on HOF) generally takes the approach of anything meant to be a melee threat just has a perfect THAC0. You need pure avoidance or else. Also why dwarven defender is so OP if you play EE.
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Apr 8, 2024 22:38
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going to start an IWD2EE playthrough, first time on EE Is HoF worth playing over Insane with the EE HoF tweaks? I'm planning on bringing a 3-man (all drow) party. kalam fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Apr 12, 2024 |
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Apr 12, 2024 11:04
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I tried out spike trap for the first time tonight on Abazigal. Holy hell that is nuts.
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Apr 14, 2024 04:54
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I think my first time through all of BG2 and TOB was a swashbuckler who set all his spike traps in a spot and dragged bosses through it. Learned about Aerie and Wish to be able to do it multiple times in the final fight.
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Apr 14, 2024 14:16
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The Shame Boy posted:I tried out spike trap for the first time tonight on Abazigal. Yeah, my Thief\Mage has been having a blast with spike traps. Where there's an obvious fight, I put down a bunch of spike traps and a few skull traps. Then I launch a big AoE spell like Fireball\Cloudkill at the group of enemies. They all charge my Thief\Mage into a bunch of skull traps and spike traps and it usually wipes most of them out. My Thief\Mage basically solo'd the Planar Prison doing this because each area is connected by a narrow corridoor.
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Apr 17, 2024 00:11
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Welp doing that opened up Pandora's Box, i just beat Amelyssan by killing her 4 times over with spike traps, i didn't even hit all the pools  I still count this playthrough an improvement over my playthrough i did recently on the switch version, which was on Normal and where i had to go to story mode multiple times throughout the whole thing and especially for Amelyy herself. I never did drop the difficulty from Core Rules! (outside of learning spells that were super important but i did try to use genius potions when i could!) So from Story Mode to pure cheese, i'm getting better at these games i guess 
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Apr 18, 2024 07:28
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