Katarack21

If you have to kite, **** ain't working right. Kiting is what you do to deal with enemies to big and nasty to take on directly, or to deal with ****ty tanking systems where the tanks don't actually tank.

Straw man, much? Nobody in this thread runs a party anything like that. At all.

Wow. First time I see a post of someone who understands BG combat wasn't perfect, and that the engagement idea is there for a reason. Finally. The things I suffered in the beta forums I'm guessing some more balancing is needed. Obviously the fighter can't have high deflection + high accuracy + extra engagements + high damage. So saying it's the op's problem if his/her fighter doesn't punish disengagement is kinda silly. Actually both him and you don't have a clue what you are talking about. In Bg games it was super easy to tank. You kited a bit with ranged and sent your tank after the chasing enemy and the enemy went back to attacking the tank. That is literally the definition of what you do to adapt to bad tanking systems.

So I fixed it. Here's what I did. I figured Pallagina being stuck and combat mode not ending were interrelated somehow. So I used Aloth to cast an AoE spell at her, figuring if I killed her and resurrected her maybe it would fix it. As soon as I dealt Pallagina 1 damage, combat mode ended--but she was still suck in place. So I saved and reloaded again, and now it's all working fine.

I have binders full of dead level 1 wizards and sorcerers, in BG and in tabletop. I once had a level 1 Sorcerer character in a tabletop game get killed by a squirrel. True story.

Yes. So that you can build a fighter not just to engage multiple enemies, but to hold multiple enemies. So that you can play that way--if you want to.

I just cleared the cave on the first map in Cragholdt Bluffs. After beating all the Steelspine Magus's and Void Seers (barely), I found myself stuck in combat mode--and Pallegina couldn't move, either. This had happened before after defeating one of the groups of bandits, but in that case while the character had been stuck in place at least combat mode had ended. I cleared that up by saving and reloading, but I can't save in combat mode. I'm probably going to have to redo this battle again, and that's gonna suck. These Magus don't screw around. They're tough.

I have. I didn't want to--I'm not at all "new" to these kinds of games. I've beaten BG I (many times), BG II (many times), Planescape, IWD, etc. But I did. I set it on "easy" and tried a combat. Same thing...just took longer for me to die because they missed more, etc. I just really don't understand what the point of this is supposed to be. What I'm supposed to do about this. This is *WAY* worse than BGII's combat ever was. Explain to me what to do in this scenario. I spot the enemy. I send up Pallegina. Pallegina engages that enemy. Three other enemies come around the right side. I send Eder to engage those enemies. One more enemy comes around that group--I send Durance to engage that enemy. All this time, GM, Aloth, and me are firing spells. One round passes (three seconds). Two of the enemies on Eder straight break engagement and rush back to my casters. I don't have a chance to cast any paralyzing, stunning, or blinding spells because they do this far to immediately. The enemy on Durance jumps over to the back line, knocking Durance prone. There are now three people engaged in melee with my back line, Durance is prone, Eder and Pallegina are engaged. At this point I'm dead in one round. And this is EVERY SINGLE FIGHT. They break engagement and rush my back line every time, without fail, without hesitation. It's the same tactic, over and over and over, and since this tactic literally kills half my party in two seconds and there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it, I don't know what to do. Are they doing the same thing to you? Do they consistently break engagement and rush your back line every single combat?

I'm playing on Normal. I have been through the whole game up to this point in Act III. I have a full party of level 11's--me (a cipher), plus Eder, Pallegina, Durance, Aloth, and Grieving mother. Like I said, I've had no real problems up to this point. Raedric was hard--I got through it by rebounding Aloth's "Rolling flame" really hard. The Ogre matron bountie was also a bitch, but it only took three retries. Nothing like this. This is insane. Four barbarians ripping apart my back line three seconds into combat--I really don't know what I'm supposed to be doing.

Wow. First time I see a post of someone who understands BG combat wasn't perfect, and that the engagement idea is there for a reason. Finally. The things I suffered in the beta forums I'm guessing some more balancing is needed. Obviously the fighter can't have high deflection + high accuracy + extra engagements + high damage. So saying it's the op's problem if his/her fighter doesn't punish disengagement is kinda silly. It is absolutely your problem if you treat all offensive stats as dump stats to go max deflection. And it is possible to make an effective hybrid - High deflection while still maintaining offense. My dual wield hatchet paladin was very good in melee and pushed high deflection. 90 deflection with max might and dexterity. Congrats, you created a balanced character with trade offs and sacrifices. Nobody ever said that wasn't possible. What IS impossible is to have a character with high deflection, high accuracy, high endurance, high action speed, max engagement, and high damage. You can't have it all. What I don't understand is what the hell I am supposed to do about the fact that they COMPLETELY IGNORE my engagement. They don't stop--they don't hold. At all. In any way. Every. Single. Combat. Ends with three people shooting past my paladin, fighter, and priest and immediatly face-stomping my casters. Every time. Every. Single time. Engagement means *nothing* because they ignore it, consistently, without fail. No enemy is held, ever. They get engaged, they stop, they go one round and then immediately break engagement and attack my two ciphers and mage in melee combat. Before the respec, after the respect. With various weapons. With various shields and armors. Never do they hold. I understand the idea of "tactical combat", but this isn't tactical combat. This is zerg rushing my ranged party members.

I haven't retrained Aloth because I was worried this might be a thing.

It won't let me retrain their attributes. Is it only party members you make? Not companions? This needs to be made more clear.

Is this working as intended? Because if so, they REALLY need to rephrase that in-game statement when you click on the dice, when it says you can retrain everybodies attributes. Also, I went to retrain my attributes (my main char) and it told me I had -15 points. When I pulled a bunch of points off my resolve, it finalized with 1 point to spend. The hell?

That is also something that I just did, along with chaning Eder's and Palleginas weapon specs (since I switched them over to weapon/shield instead of the two-handers). I never ran with a naked Cipher, but I *have* been using some heavily enchanted Cultist's Robes on him for a long time now, so I switched them up for some medium armor with a few upgrades on it. I'm sweating this hard. I'm the first one to admit that I'm not the best in the world at games of this style; as much as I love Baldur's Gate II (I've beaten it 3 times, once with a 100% complete) the fact is the combat has *always* been difficult for me. I was extremely frustrated when I started the expansion and realized that the game I haven't had any serious problems with (except for Raedric and one of the bounties, admittedly) was suddenly beating my ****ing ass.

I like that last idea, actually. Like the game saves your abilities, talents, etc.--but not your gear--and makes a character with exactly that set up available for hire in future games with a fee based on level, etc with the same name. That's a cool idea.

So, something else that just happened: I went to redo my own attributes and saw that I had -15 points to spend. I was attempting to redistribute my points from resolve to...something useful. But when I pulled my points off resolve, it just put me "up" to having 1 point to spend. So...the hell?

That's totally legit. This whole deal was so frustrating and so overall terrible that I actually just went and respecced Eder and am about to do the same for Pallegina. I hope I can figure out a way to work around this, because I really do not have the words to explain exactly how frustrating that first hour or so of play was.

I do not run a Con 3 Naked Cipher. My Con is 10. What I do have is a ranged spell damage-focused Cipher. My main char is not in any way meant for melee; there is no way for me to survive for any length of time with two fighters or barbarians meleeing with me. My 65 deflection and 123 endurance simply will not take it.

It's not. It's terrible news. What's the point of having a combat-sticky engagement mechanic if it's just ignored by the enemies? The whole purpose of "engagement", from what I understood, was to avoid the BG scenario where your ranged squishies are just constantly rushed. Like in actual D&D, where there are limitations on combat movement and a tank character can actually hold enemies and protect ranged characters. This is exactly the worse aspect of BG combat--the total inability for a tank to tank. It does seem to be a regular part of combat in the expansion and it's ****ing ****. I don't want to have to drag my goddamn fighters across the battle field five goddamn times while constantly re-positioning my main character to avoid instantaneous melee death *EVERY GODDAMN BATTLE*. My tanks are built defensive, with ****ing multiple-engagement talents and deflection and ****, to ****ing tank--to hold multiple enemies on them. Literally my entire party is built around the simple concept of holding enemies on my tanks and dealing damage with my damage dealers. Every item I have, every talent I took, every spell I know--it's all built around that one simple strategy. If they're just going to completely ignore engagement and run off after my casters every. single. time. (as they have been doing) then this entire expansion will be nothing but a constant micromanagement slag of chasing characters around a battlefield. How fun. Yay.

You get a letter at Caed Nua. Go talk to your steward about the letter and it opens the new areas.

During my fourth battle in the expansion, the damn thing lasted over 15 minutes because the enemies kept disengaging from my two fighters and straight-up rushing my main character (a cipher). Six times this happened. In a row. I counted. I'd manuever my fighters back over, engage the enemy, move my cipher across the entire battlefield--and three seconds later "Disengagmenet!" and they literally run across the entire battlefield ignoring everybody else just to melee attack my cipher again. Is this expected behavior? New AI for the expansion? Or is my luck just that terrible?

I run it with a 2.15 ghz dual core PC. Actually, my CPU isn't even *supposed* to be able to run it...but it does. Go figure.

Prepare to be disappointed. Obs probably isn't going to do a major release when their staff is home in bed. Hard to be disappointed when exactly what I expect to happen...happens. I'm not up until midnight waiting with baited breath. I'm up until 6:00 A.M. every night, and hoping that I'm wrong and it releases at midnight so I can play it all night instead of when I wake up tomorrow afternoon.

10:09 Pacific here. Rest assured, if midnight hits and I ain't got it you'll know.

So I'm guessing we wait for Obsidian to get into work in the morning before it releases to us?