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The Baldur's Gate demo was non-interactive if I remember correctly. Like it was just a bunch of scenes that played. The game is fairly intuitive for how to attack dudes, you just click on the ones you need to attack. But most attacks involve random chance to hit, so it might seem like you have no idea what you are doing, but just let it play out. Magic is just generally powerful, but you get like a party of six people, so your character only matters depending on your preference and what you want to ALWAYS have access to. Oh, and the only way to game over is if your guy dies.
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Nov 20, 2013 13:19
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Boogle posted:Its an honest mistake to make, especially when dealing with the D&D license. I honestly don't know why developers don't have the freedom to treat it like tabletop where the DM/developers can do whatever the gently caress, even if it means you can break the setting over its knee. In his Counter-Monkey series, Spoony of the Spoony Experiment discussed some details of his past as GM'ing for the RPGA. They were highly upset when he did the usual tabletop fuckery and they eventually kicked him out, because he had the audacity to let his players die to 3 level 1 wizards. "Leaping wizards", it was called. Arcaeris posted:The only justification in D&D you need to kill poo poo is if you cast Know Alignment or Detect Evil and you get an evil ping - then it's slaughter time. Please quote the paragraph that says Detect Evil gives you a license to kill. Heck my copy explicitly says alignment is a tool, not a straightjacket. Mordaedil fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Nov 23, 2013 |
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Nov 23, 2013 21:29
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The Crotch posted:Huh, it's almost like alignment is dumb. Basically, it is there as a tool to help roleplay your character and Detect Evil is meant as a way to identify an assassin in a crowd or similar. Basically, you could just as easily run a game without alignments as with alignments. It can just act as a guide to how you want to play out. Like a knight with a code of honor, but a tendency to sort of do evil poo poo that the code of honor doesn't govern. It can give you an idea to work with instead of just "playing as yourself, but as an elf". The Crotch posted:I thought they didn't even die, they just got scuffed up more than you would expect from three level 1 wizards? Several of the party members died, but over half of them survived, just a bit beaten up. One of the mages went around killing the guys that were under the sleep effect until the fighter threw off the two wizards beating on him. It's a funny story.
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Nov 24, 2013 15:22
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Factor_VIII posted:By D&D novel standards, RA Salvatore is a great author. I actually enjoy his early stories. I think I stopped reading before the Hunter's Blade Trilogy, though I own the book for it. I really enjoyed Path of Darkness if only because a major focus was on Artemis Entreri and he was legitimately more interesting than Drizzt at the time.
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Nov 26, 2013 08:46
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Fruits of the sea posted:Didn't Paths of Darkness also include the books about Wulfgar recovering from PTSD? That was actually a really refreshing take on the standard d&d fare. Salvatore can write some pretty good stuff when he has a topic in mind. Yeah, he was trapped in Hell being tortured and having his will broken over and over by some kind of sucubus, I believe. She'd create elaborate illusions for when he regained consciousness and tell him everything is okay, only to strip it all away after seeing his loved ones murdered or murder in front of his eyes while he lay helplessly watching. It left such an impact that after he was saved, he still couldn't really be sure it wasn't all an elaborate illusion as they would sometimes last months before being swept away from him. His very psyche was their plaything and he came back a changed, cynical man from the meekful boy he started out as. Thanks for the warning on the spinoffs, they sounded like they had potential on writing, but taking a good thing too far can lead to this. Is the Hunter's Trilogy a good read?
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Nov 26, 2013 09:25
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Factor_VIII posted:I disagree. I think greatswords are a very good option even without Carsomyr. In BG1 you can find a +1 greatsword on a bandit close to Nashkel and later get Spider's Bane in Cloakwood and a +3 one in Durlag's Tower. In BG2 you get the Sword of Chaos in Irenicus' dungeon, Lilarcor in the Slums and can later can get the Silver Sword. And ToB has Gram the Sword of Grief. Greatswords are a very strong option even for non-Paladins. So me and my buddy making a paladin and a fighter for multiplayer as our mains wasn't a super terrible idea? He originally specialized in bastard swords, but changed to two-handed swords when I told him it'd be a better choice, but I mainly remembered that because of the Holy Avenger. Since I specialized as a half-elf fighter with points in sword and shield and longswords, what would you recommend I do (I do sort of act as his guide, even if he's usually our voice due to high charisma) so we both stay within relatively close power level-wise?
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Nov 27, 2013 09:13
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Orgophlax posted:OK, thanks for all that. One other question: Is there another mage to pick up at some point? I want a mage in my party, and as much as I like Xzar, his buddy is useless to me. But I can't get rid of him without losing Xzar as well. Have you tried killing him and then removing him? For some reason, companions don't seem to mind accidents as much.
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Nov 27, 2013 16:15
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I am a strange duck who can't enjoy BG2 because I can't seem to really figure my way around it and I die too often.
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Nov 28, 2013 12:36
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Also remember to cheat stats to 18, grab the wizard ring that doubles all first level spells, export your character, grab it again for nice stacking action, and make sure you grab as many wands of monster summoning you can and just spam the gently caress out of it and then you never have to actually play the game.
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Nov 28, 2013 17:45
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Isn't Edwin a conjurer and barred from evocation or am I remembering wrong?
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Nov 29, 2013 08:23
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Emong posted:No, I mean 3.5e was designed specifically to not explain the uses of feats, which is where all its pitfalls come from. It is a lot like perks in Fallout and I kinda like that kind of game design. Well, okay maybe the feat system is kinda dumb, but there are so many things about 3.5 edition that is just easier and better. No THAC0 for instance. I also am not in a big favor of balanced game design that 4th edition did. I like glass cannons and sturdy tanks that can focus fire more. It ain't perfect by any means.
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Nov 30, 2013 18:29
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verybad posted:Attack bonus is just a different (and to be fair, probably more intuitive) way of expressing the same concept. I know, I just really appreciate the idea of higher numbers = better, because it confused me when I played BG the first time. So much so that NWN felt a lot more intuitive when I played that a year later. ProfessorCirno posted:Because the poo poo is entirely clouded. None of it is transparent. Is your character good or bad? In Baldur's Gate that's pretty easy: "I am FIGHTER, my stats are low, I have no items. My character is weak." But knowing how strong your character is - or god forbid is going to be if you decided to make, say, a rogue - is really difficult to figure out on your own. I'm not entirely sure that is true at all. Neverwinter Nights used point buy, so it wasn't like you'd be making an extremely crippled character unless you literally did not even read the in-game text or the player manual (which was essentially so detailed, some of my friends use it as a easy-to-carry PHB quick-guide) they fixed a lot of trap choices (toughness gives +1 HP per level! That's like a free +2 to CON and not terrible for any class) the only real trap choice in the game is that the recommend button on the skill page automatically assigns points to parry, a skill that you don't want any points in, unless you specifically engineer your character to employ parry. And quite honestly, if you were playing a fighter, it didn't matter too much anyway. If you were playing online, you would eventually get into the game with people and eventually you'd end up talking builds and get quite a few good advices on how to make a better character and then you'd remember that if you made a new character. In the end, I just like options. I'm not entirely sure enough gaming systems offer that to me.
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Dec 2, 2013 11:45
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Sleep of Bronze posted:Pen and paper Druid are doing crazy hierarchical things from 12 onwards which is part of the explanation for their loopy XP tables. They're technically only even 'initiates' until 12th, when they get the full Druid title. You can see a remnant of this in BG2's rule that you can't challenge for rule of a Druid grove until 14th. Which is a bit of a comedown from 'you can now challenge for Druidic rule of the continent' which you originally got at 14th. Then at 15th you are Druid ruler of the entire goddam world, then at 16th you lose all your XP but keep your abilities and start levelling up again as a Hierophant Druid and ... 2e Druids were really loving weird and complicated, OK? Fun if you were into them but crazy as poo poo. To be fair here, Druid was actually an example cleric build. The PHB actually encouraged DM's to look at this as a sort of inspiration for making other cleric special classes, with the focus around their "thing" and spheres governing the spells they should have access to with extra abilities around their character and sort of balance things by making a weirder experience table. Sort of like specialist mages, only illusionist is mentioned by name and written out in depth for how it behaves. For some reason though, 2nd edition D&D seemed convinced that Illusion was the most broken school of magic and the most difficult to roleplay, so they had several pages devoted to explaining illusion. Also, everything was really centered around 4 classes, warrior, wizard, priest and rogue. It seemed like it intended itself to be extremely modular with this setup, but I think at the time people were just following what was written because it was most convenient. I have little doubt that is what lead to prestige classes for 3rd edition, an attempt to break people from that mindset; though the effect it actually had was that people bought sourcebooks to throw at their DM's as a "see, it exists and is perfectly balanced" catch-all. PnP can be the worst hobby for the worst kind of people, but it has the potential to be a lot of fun with just a little big of imagination.
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Dec 11, 2013 09:10
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Arivia posted:The thing to understand about Ed Greenwood is that he greatly, greatly enjoys entertaining people. He's an amazing storyteller, but he does that a lot so he can entertain people. So yes, he looks like a wizard, but not for the usual old nerd going to pot reasons. He does it because he enjoys entertaining people as a wizard, and as Santa, and so forth and so on. He likes being a wizard because wizards are cool and that makes people happy. That's why. I thought he was going to be a beanie nerd, but that man is a national treasure. I would aspire to such a glorious beard one day. I wanna discuss some of the improvements that SoD have made to Baldur's Gate, because holy crap, they are so glorious it is a shame it gets drowned in pretty much everything else. The wonderful map zooming where particle effects are still playing, the inventory management made so much better, the statistics breakdown of weapons, the new spell books which are a marked improvement on the old (imo, opinion may vary naturally) and the way dual-wielding or using shields can now be done even with a bow on another item slot, that all the buttons on the toolbar are tied to function keys meaning it is easier to spam lockpicking for once, rotating quicksaves, new portrait system (the old one was such shite in a way), quick loot button, bless that thing, and all of the small things you can click on and off to tailor your experience, this really makes this game out to be the definitive way to play Baldur's Gate for me right now. And it's just amazing to me that we're getting a brand new 2nd edition AD&D game in 2016. Yet no sight of any 4th or 5th edition games.
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Apr 6, 2016 11:52
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Iretep posted:if you want a 4th ed game just play wow or any of its clones. I just want XCOM with swords, why is that so hard? Arivia posted:No, Sword Coast Legends already came by and crashed and burned. It was badly designed, poorly balanced, and just overall terrible. In other words, it was the perfect 5e game.
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Apr 6, 2016 12:20
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Pwnstar posted:I would enjoy a short joke DnD videogame where every time you are about to enter combat with some foe who is causing trouble for the land someone like Elminster or Drizzt shows up to save the day and your party gets more and more frustrated. Your brief sentence would be more fun than the game could hope to be.
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Apr 6, 2016 12:22
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Arivia posted:@Mordaedil: XCom with swords would have been great. Temple of Elemental Evil plays a bit like that, for what it's worth. There were very few 4e computer games because the license was tied up in litigation with Atari, sadly. Every time I try to play ToEE, I think it's the interface that kills it for me. Or something like it. I have a hard time sitting down with it for extended periods of time despite loving certain things about it.
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Apr 6, 2016 12:34
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LibbyM posted:These changes are all present in the original campaign if I buy the expansion right? Yes, I haven't actually played the DLC itself yet, and it reinvigorated the game for me. I still don't have my Steam key though because I bought the collector's edition for that gorgeous cloth map.
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Apr 6, 2016 13:13
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Kirk posted:I hope everyone is having a good time. We have a bugfix patch coming soon. Sorry if we broke your game. I know this isn't really representative or advisable in normal terms, but a friend of mine who works at Sony in UK decided to buy a copy now immediately because of this controversy instead of waiting until a sale. Wish we could do something about review bombing, but this is the year a goat is being elected president of the mightiest nation, so...
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Apr 6, 2016 16:12
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God of murder, so a bit more of an assassin. It's kind of odd the number of races you can play as for BG in that respect. Like, how does playing an elf make any sense? Wouldn't you need to be close to a hundred years old by the time Gorion took you on as his ward? Or do regular elves grow as fast as drow are described in the Dark Elf trilogy? It is kind of funny that I could see a dark elf working because of that. Gnome, halfling and dwarf are also kind of weird, but it'd be weirder with their omission for a fantasy game probably. I always figured cleric would make sense for the CHARNAME, but only for a particular good route. Blackguard makes sense for an evil route. That said, there isn't anything that can't be twisted a bit to fit. Even paladins and druids could be made to fit (Candlekeep does have some nature in its holdings and a lesser druid could easily be seen as charged with protecting what remains in there), and for barbarian you just kind think how Conan was portrayed in the old Arnold movie. For ranger, you just keep it as trained by the guards, but with a desire to wander that only really springs into the class as you leave Candlekeep behind. ineptmule posted:My CHARNAME is an Archer, so this seems a little redundant. At least SOD gives him the Ogre Power gauntlets. It really isn't. My entire party carries bows or slings and we're a wandering death parade that destroys everything before they get close to melee. We also stand in formation and back away in a double-line and fire as they come back into view. It's pretty funny. Keiya posted:This has probably been discussed to death, but I can't help but wonder if removing the Minsc line is a calculated tactical move. It certainly makes it harder to hide hating Mizhena for being herself behind 'but but games journalism!'. BG was difficult for me in the past because a lot of the AD&D rules are really hard to get into or understand how work, since 3rd edition streamlined it a lot better to just be "higher numbers = better", but SoD really eliminates all my hangups with the old game (particularly the looting and pixel-hunting which got so, so tedious, just gone with the quick-loot button) Mordaedil fucked around with this message at 09:03 on Apr 7, 2016 |
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Apr 7, 2016 08:59
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~LATEST NEWS~ Elf in diaper saves the Sword Coast. Nobody saw it coming as the 18 year old baby elf recently abandoned by her foster father in the middle of the road rescues Baldur's Gate region from an iron shortage and stops a plot to overthrow the government by the iron throne sect. Read the inside section with comments from her traveling companions who had to take turns in carrying the baby around in her carriage and listen to their arduous journey straight from the mouth of her half-sister Imoen who took her in as she was crawling slowly away from an armored fiend in heavy plate who somehow couldn't catch up to her. Read how the party dealt with this little leader who could pick locks, throw destruction from her fingertips and wield longswords like grown guards. Tiax reveals all! "I thought I was crazy, but I have nothing on that baby"
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Apr 7, 2016 10:36
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H13 posted:So I reinstalled BG:EE and... You can always pick a middle-ground and being able to zoom in and out is much better than being stuck to one point you can't do anything with. The outline is horrible though, but the sprites and backgrounds are the same as the original game, I am pretty sure, so you might just be mis-remembering how bad TuTu actually looked.
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Apr 7, 2016 12:52
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Yeah, it's only in 3rd edition that the fighter becomes truly boring. And that is mostly because you aren't going to take more than a few levels (2 or 4) of fighter before continuing down another path for the better bonuses. AD&D was kinda nuts because the warrior classes were really interesting not for their lack of spells, but because they actually change how your stats benefited your character. Only fighters, rangers and paladins benefited from a high con and high str score. Of course, dual-classing and multiclassing kinda changes the dynamic a bit. ------------------------------- Changing topic a bit, in my current game I'm running an elf fighter/mage, and after my go-to resource Planet Baldur's Gate has bit the dust I started reading other places online but it's kinda hard to see anyone discuss the low-level play in Baldur's Gate so everyone just talks about kensai/mages. Meanwhile, my worry right now is that I'm using my character wrong, because I've been preparing shield and armor as spells, casting them every day and running through the map with dual-wielding longswords, but it slowly occurred to me that I might as well just equip an armor and not care about being unable to cast and I'd get better AC out of the deal, especially after finding the drat Ankheg plate which is essentially cheating. Essentially I feel like I'm an idiot and going about this all wrong, but I've played myself into a corner and need some help in rethinking how I approach the spellcasting part, because as it stands I'm just a low-hp fighter, at least until I get my hands on a robe.
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Apr 7, 2016 13:16
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Milky Moor posted:Am I the only one who likes the black outlines? I might not have the same level of nostalgia as everyone else for these games, but it might be easier to like them if you aren't used to them not being there.
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Apr 7, 2016 14:22
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I wanna go back to my 16 year old self and tell him that in 2016 he'd be playing an expansion pack to Baldur's Gate and it'd be critically praised mostly because the rest of the industry is in such a dire strait and that it'll still use AD&D rules, but not because there weren't any new ones. But just because. Then I'd record his face with my breast pocket device.
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Apr 7, 2016 14:31
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Kavak posted:I'd love to see how that was supposed to work. "I am a higher level than loving Elminster, why am I in an adventurer academy?" It was scrapped almost just a few months before release, after reviewing enough they realized basically all you were importing was your characters name, since even the appearance wasn't any point in importing. Meanwhile, Trent Oster is hoping to do an Enhanced Edition of NWN, but last I talked with him about it, he was having licensing issues. He still claims to have a list a mile long of improvements he'd want to make.
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Apr 7, 2016 15:44
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Insurrectionist posted:I haven't played NWN since like 2006 (and never beat it or played the allegedly much better expansions but that's neither here nor there) but isn't the game really really (really) ugly? I dunno how much an enhanced edition could help that. Even NWN2 looks pretty drat ugly nowadays, although it's not quite so bad I couldn't play it or anything. I still play it today and it looks better than some stuff from back then, but obvious it is kind of early 3D. But already back then you could mod it to have hands that have more detail than five polygons and stuff. And the environments might have looked sort of plain, but I feel NWN2 managed to look even worse if you tried to do it yourself. But I'm not very good at using that toolset.
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Apr 7, 2016 18:27
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Harlock posted:I haven't played Baldur's Gate 1 since it came out and going through the EE, the game seems a lot shorter than I remember. Maybe my mind was blind to the 5-6 CDs back in the day. A lot of good features have been added to speed up boring gameplay. Imagine playing without quicklooting now.
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Apr 7, 2016 21:33
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Harlock posted:I played through Chapter 2-3 without knowing about quicklooting You tell me about it, I first discovered it while playing Icewind Dale EE in multiplayer with a pair of buddies. It made a world of difference.
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Apr 7, 2016 21:49
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The Iron Mines were especially bad.
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evilmiera posted:Wouldn't an enhanced edition just break all the mods/scenarios/gameworlds people have made for that game, invalidating it entirely? I mean it isn't like most people want to go relive the campaigns for that game and the expansions that badly. He said he wanted to trash the campaign and do something else for a campaign while retaining the DM and toolset functionalities. As for breaking mods, it wouldn't necessarily have to if it used the same ID numbers for the tilesets? I mean, I wouldn't mind if the game still used really simple 3D technology with some modern tricks to make it a bit more visually appealing, none of which would break existing content. Heck, doing it that way you could even have people with original NWN play with people with enhanced, though I am not sure what Trents plans really are. It's certainly not going to be going the NWN2 route from what I understood of it. Rookersh posted:Um how? Care to post an exact computer setup? Drivers up to date? Any wrapper based programs lying around that might be getting used by NWN1 mysteriously? Next for the FPS problem;  Try switching between one of these, it helped me. No, I don't know why. Smol posted:Haven't played in ages - can you turn off that outline poo poo and everything else the new patch "improved"? H13 posted:
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Apr 8, 2016 07:50
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Technically any dragon can destroy a party of any level if you encounter it and the DM plays it like it ought to behave, but video games don't do that 
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Apr 8, 2016 09:11
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Luisfe posted:I cannot play anymore without this mod. How do you install that in Enhanced Edition? Okay, figured it out, had to get a replacement Weidu.exe file. Mordaedil fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Apr 10, 2016 |
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Apr 10, 2016 15:32
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Hollismason posted:Jesus, is there a beginner guide somewhere on quests to avoid like the loving plague. "Please go kill some spiders in my house" While I usually did that as well, it helps a lot if you explore a bit off the beaten path. Go into the forests a bit and try to see what sort of crazy people you come across that will definitely kill you or you get strong enough to survive. I could also just recommend you beeline for the Jovial Joker at the south of Beregost and then continue south, but do not do any of the missions in Nashkel before you have leveled up. Also every inn will have people who want to kill you when you visit them and sometimes when you revisit them.
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Apr 10, 2016 19:08
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Archery is automatically very powerful even when you have characters non-proficient in it, just an FYI. If you didn't already know, you'll eventually encounter some enemy AI that definitely knows how crazy good it is and will kick you in the head over it. HAHAHA.
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Apr 10, 2016 21:23
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Koveras was literally the first time I ever encountered the trope of writing the villains name backwards and it blew my goddamned mind. As a child reading the strategy guide because I was too bad at actually playing the game and I was subscribed to some computer magazine that wrote long sections in character of their travels and the betrayals of their party members. It was really awesome.
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Apr 11, 2016 08:52
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I don't have my handbook in front of me right now, but if I recall correctly, these spells costs quite a bit to cast from the perspective of the average NPC in the Realms, doesn't it? So carrying out a trial by using magical spells as evidence would first require an impartial cleric to cast the spell at a cost that is probably a ton of gold pieces that will be regarded as taxation causes that what farmer in Toril is willing to cover? It suddenly gets very ugly and if the adventurers are willing to pay the cost of the spell because they have money out of their rear end, suddenly the impartiality of the cleric can be called into question, especially by said farmers who don't know any better as "can we know for sure justice was done and can we really trust that these people just did not upset the god of crops which will lead to hard times for us going forward?" suddenly becomes tapestries of difficult circumstances to draw into consideration. It might be good enough for you and your party of characters, but I reckon to everyone else, they'd gawk at the supposed accomplishments our party claims at doing.
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Apr 11, 2016 12:50
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I don't mean just the component though, I mean even casting of the spell of that level costs, what, a few hundred gold pieces before component cost? A farmer earns how much annually? Maybe 2 gold a year?
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Apr 11, 2016 13:28
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Well, I only remember from tabletop in 3rd edition that the formulae was spell level x casterlevel x 10, so a 3rd level spell cast by a fifth level caster would land at 150 gold pieces. That's quite a cost.
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Apr 11, 2016 14:36
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Again, I don't have the AD&D books in front of me, but here's the literal passage out of 3rd edition: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm#spell
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Apr 11, 2016 14:45
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As terrible as it might sound, it also sounds kinda funny in how it really demasculates the player.
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Apr 12, 2016 07:56
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