Luckmann

Hey, I have two stupid questions that other veterans will probably laugh at me for asking, but to be perfectly honest, having played Baldur's Gate 1/2 since release, it never ever actually came up as relevant until right now when I'm playing a elven assassin for the first time. Can you backstab with ranged weapons in BG2? Specifically, Shortbows. Do you get the bonus to hit while in Stealth, with ranged weapons? Specifically, Shortbows. Because if so, I'm going to have all the fun with Poison Weapon and Arrows of Biting (and Arrows of Piercing.. and Arrows of Dispelling). Damn I'm going to miss playing with the different kinds of arrows and adapting to the situation in PoE. Other than that, I'm going to specialize in the use of Longswords, with a minor in Shortswords and Daggers. Longswords are versatile like no other and there's actually not going to be that many that'll use that kind of stuff out of the people I'm going to pick up.

Contrary to popular belief this is absolutely not true. I never did it and neither did any of my RL friends, who are all worse at the IE games than me. My friend Andrew got it first, and he taught me how to play it, and introduced me to D&D. One example is the Ogre right at the start of the game. On my first try, I sent my PC Fighter in to melee the Ogre, and he killed me in a single hit. I repeated that tactic and died again. On my third go, for some reason I thought okay, I'll use Imoen to take the hit, while I attack from the side. The Ogre hit Imoen, didn't kill her, and I got the hits in to take it down. I do not know how this works, because Imoen has like 8 HP, and my PC has 14. I have *never* seen the Ogre kill Imoen on the first hit, ever, in any BG1 vanilla game, almost if she has some kind of script protecting her from this encounter. So that's how I beat that one. To this day, I have never kited an enemy in an IE game with ranged weapons. I have killed plenty of enemies with ranged before they got to me, but I always just send my melee guys charging headlong in to meet them. Kiting is not necessary. Having not played BG1 for so very long, my memory is fuzzy, but I seem to recall that that ogre had absolutely no problem completely wrecking my ****, Imoen or no Imoen. That being said, kiting is definitely not "the first tactic you learned playing BG1". Without abusing the enemy targeting AI (which is something people that have played the game for years is usually terrible at) kiting is actually terrible in BG1. Kiting as a "tactic" only really gets possible with Boots of Speed or similar (this is where I admit to kiting the hell out of some opponents by repeatedly casting Haste). Try kiting that damn gibberling swarm. Try kiting the wolves. Try kiting the elite kobold guards. The first real "tactic" I learned in BG1 was Staff of Summoning, because **** you, Drizzt, **** you very much you black-skinned mary-sue munchkin, I hope these gnolls will wipe that ****grin off your face. "Play it my way or you're playing it wrong." If he had an interest in eliminating exploits, he should focus on not creating exploitable scenarios, not create artificial limiters to perfectly reasonable solutions to the problems presented. There's a difference between plugging unreasonable exploits (such as pulling enemies one by one, gassing entire rooms from fog of war, etc) and deliberately kneecapping perfectly reasonable actions (such as fleeing an encounter, initiating combat with an ability, or attempting to carefully reposition during combat, etc) in his interest of playing it right.

What about if Finger of Death too two rounds to act, and you had one round to apply a counter before dying, after being zapped? "Hit by Finger of Death? Apply Kevorkian's Arcane Defibrillator, level 3, mages only. Now for sale at well-stocked magic merchants!" There's a counter to Finger of Death. It's called Resurrection.

Pff. Casual.

Stuff like this makes me want to bury my face in my hands and just cry.

I'm sorry my birthday doesn't suit you, Sensuki. >=(

February 26th, I'm telling you. February 26th.

Being recognized as a skaenite is one thing - I can see how that's dodgy. But at the very least, you should be able to say - especially as a priest of Skaen - that you are a skaenite and ask them what in Skaen's name they are doing. Then if they believe you or not is another thing entirely. But it should be acknowledged to some degree. I don't really mind that much if there's no peaceful resolution, but it should at least let you make the attempt, it's very reasonable.

There are likely several reasons. For example: Not all deities may actually be that relevant in the region that the game takes place. You would have to account for Deity-specific aspects (mechanically, right now, that's just a Talent each, but it is possible they originally planned more, or want to expand upon it). They may tie into the plot (or sub-plots) to one degree or another, whereas other gods doesn't (or maybe they originally planned for it to have a bigger impact, but couldn't deliver, and originally wanted there to be the kind of effects that are notably absent in the discussion of Skaen priest(s)). And so on. Look at Forgotten Realms for reference. In any game that let's you choose deity with a relevant effect, there is just no way they offer ever near the full number of available (lore-wise) deities.

Modern art project. Just go with it.

Eh, Neutral Evil isn't really the kind that hunts for sport on principle. But if you RP Neutral Evil strictly, then yeah, there's a lot of quests you shouldn't even consider doing. The principal tenet of Neutral Evil is pretty much selfishness. If there's nothing in it for you, screw it. They don't go out of their way to be evil, but they tend to do evil because it benefits them. Chaotic Evil is the kind that hunts other sentients for sport.

Eh, no reason for a new thread, really, this thread is pretty much unsalvageable anyway in terms of PoE relevance.

Not sure if I remember correctly, but couldn't you take a bunch of the first class in the beginning and almost immediately reach the same level with the second class. Could you even do the switch in character creation? Annoyingly, BG2 doesn't allow you to dual-class on character creation. Importing a BG1 character has some very notable perks compared to creating a BG2 character, most notably the +1 Tomes and being able to dual-class at lower levels than 6 or 7. That said, "the part when they're baggage" is extremely short depending on when or where you decide to do it. Starting as one class and instantly changing into a dual-class is actually extremely advantageous in BG2, if you can stand the fact that you'll never be able to give yourself a Kit on your second class (Hahaha, Shadowkeeper, you so funny). This all reminds me that I think I'm actually going to start as a straight Fighter and then Dual-Class into Assassin at lvl 7 or 9.

There was at least one squirrel and moose in Baldur's Gate 2. In PoE, I haven't seen a single squirrel, nor a single moose. After hearing that there is no muderhobo experience in the game, I feel that the 1 xp I am missing out on has completely ruined the game for me. Thanks, OBAMA.

Anyone else have troubles with the Spellhold Studios site? It always loads alright at first, but then I get "Disallowed Key Characters" no matter what I do. Tried different browsers, but problem persists.

Elves get +1 with Longswords and Longbows, afaik, yeah. I believe it's unlisted for some damn reason. Dammit you people, now you are making me want to play Baldur's Gate II again. Not sure whether I should go Assassin or Undead Hunter. Is Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition worth it over BG2 with Mods? I've heard some good with the bad and vice versa. Edit: I checked out the "features" for BG2:EE, saw the UI on a Let's Play on YouTube and just nope nope nope nope noope. BG2:ToB with Mods it is.

I would prefer it if Obsidian would focus on fixing it rather than getting rid of it, but at this point, I'm not getting my hopes up. I think this is the first game ever, where I'm actually going like "I'm going to have to wait for mods before my first playthrough can even start", and it.. doesn't feel right. I'm not sure that's fair. If, say, the final product comes out and you spend 20 minutes playing and find yourself saying, "No! This is icky bad! No good! Engagement bad!" or however you talk to your computer then totally, mod away. I'm a proponent of everyone trying the vanilla version of the game for at least a little while, then if it's unplayable for you mod it. At least give the game a chance, ya'll! I am of course judging it off of the beta here, right now. As it stands, they could still end up changing things, at which point I'll obviously revisit my stance, but as I said, I'm not really getting my hopes up.

I'm an Inquisitor. Ever heard of undercover cops? What if my intention was to investigate both groups in order to find out enough about them to bring them both down? What are you talking about? You hunt down evil spellcasters in addition to standard palading things. Infiltrating Thief guilds is not a job for a guy that cannot lie. Didn't you say you played PnP? Maybe you should read what Inquisitors do. They are not police or detectives and certainly not undercover agents. That is what Harpers do. Yeah, I think the idea that the Inquisitor infiltrates is.. odd, too. A Paladin Inquisitor is very much the kind that would be more liable to throw in a molotov ****tail into the building and start cutting the sinners down as they try to run outside. Alignment isn't your intention, it's what you do. Lying is pretty much the opposite of Lawful behaviour as far as alignment works (at least pre-4e, I know jack squat about what they ended up doing with that insane abortion of a ruleset).

I would prefer it if Obsidian would focus on fixing it rather than getting rid of it, but at this point, I'm not getting my hopes up. I think this is the first game ever, where I'm actually going like "I'm going to have to wait for mods before my first playthrough can even start", and it.. doesn't feel right.

*cough* The Old Republic *cough* Of course BioWare screwed it up bigtime, which is funny since they made KOTOR1. But hey, continue on not having a point... Bioware didn't do The Old Republic, though. Afaik, a completely different studio (was it Mythic?) relabeled with the Bioware logo after Bioware was acquired by EA developed most of The Old Republic. I realize that there's nothing intentionally disingenuous about your point, but rather it's disingenuousness by proxy on EA:s part, and it doesn't matter overly much now that Bioware has been butchered and stitched together as yet another frankesteinian printing press of awful by EA, but let's just be clear on the point that the developers behind KotOR had next to nothing to do with the development of SW:ToR.

Arrows of Detonation, Arrows of Dispelling, Acid Arrows, Piercing Arrows, Poison Arrows, and so on and so forth. I really liked all the different kinds of ammunition in the IE games. I'm sad to see them go, likely because some consider ammunition an "inconveniance". would make the PoE ranger stronger, special arrows restricted to rangers No reason to restrict them to rangers, though. As has been discussed in the ranger thread, the ranger is more than necessarily a master of the bow, and currently (rather sadly) actually does better in melee. Also, PoE appears to largely support non-Class-exclusive equipment, so it'd be conceptually odd to suddenly restrict (rather arbitrarily) certain arrows to a certain class such as the ranger. But special arrows would definitely help those that wants to specialize in ranged combat.

PoE is sadly making mistakes all on it's own, so if you're looking for straight-up improvement or just making BG2 but better, you're going to be disappointed.

Oh, yes, Shields, which brings me to another possible armour modifier; Block Rate, which could essentially be a Hit-To-Graze and Graze-to-Miss modifier. And Shield-based Abilities should really have been a given, such as Knockdown (which now Fighters can take either way, sadly) or Shield Push/Slam for Stunning, or Shieldwall for radically increasing Block Rate for a limited time. ...makes me think that there really should be Abilities that can be taken by anyone with the prerequisite Talents, such as unlocking Knockback, Shield Slam and Shieldwall Abilities when you take the "Weapon and Shield Style" Talent. This would almost necessitate an increase in the number of Talents per level (again, I still think it should be 1 Talent/lvl) and Abilities per level (Maybe more set choices for some that currently have free choices (Fighter, Paladin, etc), and add free choices for those that doesn't have any (Priests, etc). But now I'm really just musing.

Lawful Good has nothing to do with following laws. That said, I really hate the premise for the main plot in BG2 partly because of this reason; it is entirely possible that you just don't care about Imoen, yet the game not only pushes you towards pursuing her, but flat-out assumes that you want to do so. It offers you the option to refuse, or even go in there guns blazing and just up and kill every last one of them. Athkatla is corrupt to the bone, and you being caught choosing between two really bad options (working with vampires or working with Shadow Thieves, the latter obviously presented as the lesser evil) is meant to reinforce this. However, I just feel it ends up tying into the previous issue of assuming you want to do either. That being said, I would have liked it if it was possible to go somewhere, such as the guard, and tell them this or that, and "resolve" the quest that way, even if all they do is tell you to sod off (since the Shadow Thieves is in power in Athkatla, to a degree - which isn't actually covered very well in the game). But again, *that* being said, if you have such issue with the quest based on the character you are playing, I find it remarkable that you even associate yourself with Edwin, a man you should know by now is a Red Wizard of Thay, well known to be a nation of evil, godless wizards whose chief export includes fireballs, their chief import being rashemen slaves. The way BG2 dumps stuff on you is actually annoying as hell, I agree, and I really, really, really missed the way BG1 was paced by comparison, with you being dumped in a relatively open world and then you slowly explored from there, and it all kinda grew organically. In BG2 you're immediately thrown into the biggest (and only) major city in the game, sink or swim, and it hurls a ton of unconnected quests at you before you can even make your way out of there. There's really no "breathers", and with the sense of implied urgency to many of the quests (but let's be honest, most are implied to not be very urgent), it feels odd to go gallivanting cross-country, from a roleplaying perspective. In many ways, BG2 is superior to BG1, but storytelling-wise (both main story and sidequests) BG1 is massively superior in pacing and approach. Not to mention that BG1 has more and better NPC:s, but regrettably also rather shallow ones compared to BG2:s pretty involved interactions. Xan, Kivan, Xzar, Kagain, Garrick, Eldoth.. *sigh* Instead we got the C-team; Imoen the forced plot device, Jaheira the annoying oedipal mother figure, and Minsc the functionally retarded comical relief engine of offbeat humour.

The Sensate Amulet gives Protection From Evil, not Energy Drain, afaik, no?