Baldurs gate

[Bartimaeus]

My devices are the Sennheiser's 598s for headphones, and the Kanto YU2s for speakers. It'd be nice if somebody else chipped in the discussion for reference and an alternative point of view.

Edited May 12, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Messier-31]

Well, thanks anyway for your participation in this discussion, mate - I sure learned a bit about all this. I asked the same question on Beamdog forums the other day and got no response whatsoever. There must be something up, though, as Polish VO for both BG1 and BG2 is fine quality.

 

Cheers to You

[Bartimaeus]

No problem. This is, as should be obvious now from a few of these discussions, an area of interest for me.

[kirottu]

Hi guys! I'm not sure is this the right place for this, but I think I'm going to finish BGEE in couple of days and I'm asking for mod recommendations for BG2EE.

[Bartimaeus]

What kinds of mods are you looking for? Personally, I'd say Stratagems is my single most important mod for playing the BG series, which is a collection of small feature changes, but also mostly an AI mod...plus some additional challenges if you're interested in that.

[kirottu]

Hi guys! I'm not sure is this the right place for this, but I think I'm going to finish BGEE in couple of days and I'm asking for mod recommendations for BG2EE.

 

Ah, I was so young and innocent back then. Story time:

 

You guys have seen pictures of people who got addicted to plastic surgery? That happened to me with mods. The more I played Baldur's Gate the more I realized I don't actually like 2nd edition rules anymore, so I tried to mod all that **** out. It didn't really work out and the end result was like the pictures of people with waayy too much plastic surgery. I even tried I to learn BG modding myself when I didn't find mods that catered to my needs. I was in a really dark place.

 

In the end I just needed to accept the fact fighters only have auto attack and intelligence wont buff mages spells, and all the other stupid stuff in 2nd edition rules. Even now thinking about the rules makes me annoyed. Their design principle seemed to have been: "Two wrongs do make it right, right?" I think I have been forever spoiled by newer games where fighters get abilities they can use in combat and casters' main stat buff their spells.

 

But it's all good now. I have accepted the reality. Baldur's Gate is a 2nd edition game and keeping that in mind this is my final mod selection for the first Baldur's Gate:

 

BG1NPC project. Only the banter part, because it adds a lot of reactivity to the game and reactivity is good.

 

BG Unfinished Business. This improves some existing quests and and adds few more that I feel fit to the game.

 

Sword Coast Stratagems(as per recommendation). The better general AI part and some of the tweaks. It adds lot of reactivity to the combat, but in the same time it kinda really rubs your face in to the stuff I've been complaining about. Fights against casters and fights against non-casters are like night and day, but I do feel the good out-weights the bad.

 

aTweaks. Better Bhaalspawn powers and some of the PnP tweaks.

 

Tweaks Anthology. Happy party, evil companions complain but never leave the party. That's right Viconia, you will never leave me ever again.

 

Pale Master kit for Sorcerer. This is for my Bhaalspawn story. I feel like the sorcerer fits well and Pale Master fits even better. You have that divine spark which gives you power, but it is an evil spark hence getting deathly evil powers of evil.

 

It probably goes without saying, but I started the game from the beginning once again. I may have ridden myself of my mod addiction, but I still am a dirty rotten re-roller.

Edited June 15, 2017 by kirottu

[kensu]

The EEs are on sale again on GOG. I bought the two so I could finally play SoD and see what all the fuss is about.
So far I'm not that impressed...

 

Ed: Has anyone else had the problem where BG:EE and BG2:EE screw up graphical overlays in Windows so you need to restart Windows after playing one of them?

Edited June 15, 2017 by kensu

[Bartimaeus]

snip

There are things that I like about 2nd Edition, and things that, yes, 3rd Edition definitely does better. In regards to SCS and fighter vs. caster fights...I find that the mod makes the game most difficult when they combine the two. Smart usage of buffs, targeting, much better spell selection in general, potion-usage...all combine to make the game actually quite difficult at times. I would've also recommended Item Revisions and Spell Revisions if you had said what kind of mods you were looking for, although perhaps not Item Revisions at this time, because the author of the mod has left it in an admittedly somewhat rough state, which is why I created my own submod to fix some of its problems myself.

[213374U]

@kirottu

That's more or less my mod lineup when I'm playing. I also tried Spell Revisions and liked it a lot, but it departs quite a bit from the PnP rules in some cases so not for everyone.

As for Stratagems, I really recommend you stick to the option that has casters not spawning with short duration buffs pre-cast, at least for BG2. Much as I like the mod, that **** is cheap as hell and casters really don't need to be any more broken than they are. In BG1 it's not so bad because the highest spell level is 5, but high level casters already have 2-3 protection layers out of their contingencies and triggers, and are untouchable until you deal with them, you don't want to be adding to that.
 
edit: you are playing the EEs, right? Have you checked the spellcasting failure options they added?
 

Spellcasting Failure
The way that spellcasters fail after taking damage has been externalized to CONCENTR.2da. By default, any damage a spellcaster takes will cause them to fail their spellcasting.
 
CHECK_MODE

• 0 Any damage
• 1 (1d20 + luck) vs. (spell level + damage taken)
• 2 (1d20 + Concentration ) vs. (15 + spell level)

Note from the Developers: This is inspired by a feature from ToBEx. Be aware that Baldur's Gate games have no Concentration skill; using that option will use a basic 1d20+luck formula for the caster's check.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/beamdog.com/release_notes/ReleaseNotes080616.pdf

Edited June 15, 2017 by 213374U

[Bartimaeus]

For SCS pre-buffing, I think it totally depends on your playstyle. If you're the type that pre-buffs yourself, I think it's perfectly fair for enemies to similarly pre-buff. It might not always make perfect sense that they pre-buff, but generally speaking, it doesn't make perfect sense for you to do so, either, so fair's fair, right? If you're not the type to pre-buff (...or don't like playing or fighting casters to begin with), then yeah, you're going to probably get ruined if you enable it, and it's probably best to select the "only for enemies that are created in sight of the caster" (i.e. enemies who ambush you - there aren't a whole lot of these types of encounters, and it always makes sense that an ambushing force would be pre-buffed) option, or to not enable it at all.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

Oh yeah, and in regards to spellcasting failure: if you're playing the original BG2 (and/or BGT), then you can get that tweak (among a bunch of others) from the ToBEx mod, which is where Beamdog got it from (as is mentioned in the description).

Edited June 15, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[213374U]

For SCS pre-buffing, I think it totally depends on your playstyle. If you're the type that pre-buffs yourself, I think it's perfectly fair for enemies to similarly pre-buff. It might not always make perfect sense that they pre-buff, but generally speaking, it doesn't make perfect sense for you to do so, either, so fair's fair, right? If you're not the type to pre-buff, then yeah, you're going to probably get ruined if you enable it.

 

Perhaps -- I was only rigorous about stacking potions and buffs for the SCS Sarevok fight.

 

However I do remember that with some relatively high-level casters starting from level 16 or so, SCS used some really cheap check-mate tricks that you could do literally diddly **** about until their durations expired, because the only valid counter was area-based Spell Revisions Spellstrike, which is a level 9 spell. And considering that for most of BG2, enemy casters need about 1-3 rounds to ruin your day regardless of your own prebuffs, that component was more a source of constant aggravation than anything.

 

I also remember that the mod was really ****ing stubborn about allowing me to completely deactivate prebuffs, going so far as forcing me to manually delete the pre-cast versions of the buffs from the game folder. FFS.

Edited June 15, 2017 by 213374U

[Bartimaeus]

The only reason I can imagine there being a situation where you *have* to wait for the spell duration to run out as a result of SCS + SR is because of Improved Invisibility. Spell Revisions, for some godforsaken reason, doesn't have antimagic attacks able to pierce improved invisibility...which, of course, is one of the first things that I fixed when I made my submod for SR (...yes I made one for SR as well as IR - since they're both game-sweeping revisions, I might as well fix some of the things they did wrong, right?). Otherwise, the highest level spell protection, Spell Trap, is piercable by Ruby Ray of Reversal, a 7th level mage spell. You shouldn't really be running into any Spell Traps before that outside of optional fights like liches, which you're really supposed to wait to do until later, and can do earlier than that really only at your own peril. If they cast multiple spell protections at once (Spell Trap, Spell Deflection, Spell Shield, etc.), then you can always use weaker spell protection breakers (like Secret Word - an absolute necessity when playing SCS + SR) to remove those weaker ones, too. Generally speaking, I like to have two mages (or a sorcerer + mage) in my party, so I really don't run into too many problems with all of this, personally...but if you don't like doing that, I can see why it might be a struggle.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

...On a side-note, I've never used a limited use/quantity item in an IE game (...or really, any game - it's a little bit of an OCD-ish thing), so I've never used potions or wands or anything - if a special ability ain't "(x) per day" (or similar), it might as well not exist to me.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[213374U]

The only reason I can imagine there being a situation where you *have* to wait for the spell duration to run out as a result of SCS + SR is because of Improved Invisibility. Spell Revisions, for some godforsaken reason, doesn't have antimagic attacks able to pierce improved invisibility...which, of course, is one of the first things that I fixed when I made my submod for SR (...yes I made one for SR as well as IR - since they're both game-sweeping revisions, I might as well fix some of the things they did wrong, right?). Otherwise, the highest level spell protection, Spell Trap, is piercable by Ruby Ray of Reversal, a 7th level mage spell. You shouldn't really be running into any Spell Traps outside of optional fights like liches, which you're really supposed to wait to do until later, and can do earlier than that really only at your own peril. If they cast multiple spell protections at once (Spell Trap, Spell Deflection, Spell Shield, etc.), then you can always use weaker spell protection breakers (like Secret Word - an absolute necessity when playing SCS + SR) to remove those weaker ones, too. Generally speaking, I like to have two mages (or a sorcerer + mage) in my party, so I really don't run into too many problems with all of this, personally...but if you don't like doing that, I can see why it might be a struggle.

 

So you're basically saying that any invisibility-based spell combo was unmanageable until the duration expired... unless you made your own mod to deal with it. I didn't have your mod, so yeah, 100% unmanageable.

 

Mislead + SI: Divination and SI: Abjuration + Spell Shield are both staples of the mod, which are used simply as a basis for defenses and never on their own. Throw regular combat and spell protections on top of it, and it's check-mate because liches and rakshasa are naturally immune to level 5 spells and below, including protection removal spells. A specific exception was made for Breach, because otherwise the Stoneskin spam made all non-caster classes that weren't Carsomyr-toting vanilla Inquisitors obsolete.

 

Ruby Ray is a level 7 spell, which you'd only have by the very late game, unless you were willing to cast from scrolls, of which there was a rather limited supply.

 

Spell Shield was likely bugged or affected by the wonky event tracking inherent to the engine, because while it's supposed to be dispelled by the first attack that strikes it, in practice often it wasn't, giving enemies absolute immunity against spell protection removal for the duration.

 

Again, battles against casters above level 16 or so boiled down to stripping their defenses in the round or three they needed to decimate your party. Pre-buff shenanigans just made this harder because their contingencies and triggers were not used at the beginning of the encounter and this made enemy casters unreasonably difficult to manage. Yes, it was doable with extensive meta-gaming afforded by prior knowledge of the game, absolutely optimal item and ability usage and frequent reloading. Yes, liches are mostly a cakewalk if you used Daystar and cast Sunray while under ProDead or ProMagic. Rakshasa were a joke if you spammed (undead) summons at them while staying out of sight. Kangaxx could be OHK'd with the improved Mace of Disruption. And so on. I wouldn't say that's exactly an enjoyable way to play the game, however, which is why I don't recommend that one component unless you intimately enjoy pain.

 

Bottom line is the magic system of BG2 was incredibly broken. SCS exploits this to the fullest extent, which is why caster fights are on a whole another league compared to any other type of encounter in the game, including dragons, demons, vampires, etc. The only reason why this isn't more evident is because it usually takes until ToB for the player to reach the power level of the high level mages encountered throughout SoA. At that point, you can make use of the exact same bull**** strategies and laugh at whatever the game throws at you. Broken.

Edited June 15, 2017 by 213374U

[Bartimaeus]

They were unmanageable in specific circumstances and for just a few encounters, yes, I'll admit that. You just mentioned why, actually: liches (and rakshasas) are immune to 5th level or lower spells, which means True Seeing doesn't work (IIRC)...although now that I think of it, I suppose the wizard variant (6th level) might. Ironically, SCS has a component to fix this issue (the "Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility" component), and it's coded in such a way to be compatible with SR...but it's disabled for installation if you have SR installed. How silly, right? As far as I know, the antimagic attacks are *supposed* to be able to pierce improved invisibility in SR (hence why that SCS component is disabled), but for some reason, they just aren't. I have to imagine the author of the mod just didn't implement it correctly, which is really a shame.

 

Spell Immunity is also actually supposed to be disabled completely in SR, but I think you may be right that SCS still uses it anyways. As for Ruby Ray of Reversal, it's a 7th level spell, so that requires you to be level 14. I guess if you consider "back from the Underdark" to be "really late game", yeah. Isn't that kind of common sense? Liches are epic-leveled (in fact, a bit beyond that): it's not too crazy to expect you'd run into problems dealing with them before getting access to a 7th level spell.

 

I've never done any of the things you've mentioned for dealing with encounters. I'm not much of a summonables person (I think there's a good reason the vanilla game has the strict 5 summons limit), I've never used a Protection from Undead or Protection from Magic scroll, I've never cheesed with the Mace of Disruption, etc. I had the two issues with Improved Invisibility and liches and have occasionally run into the issue of SCS illegally using Spell Immunity in contingencies/triggers - which shouldn't even exist in SR, and in fact, even not in SR, Spell Immunity is not normally usable in contingencies/triggers. I think I'll probably fix that for SCS myself so that never happens. Contingencies and spell triggers in SCS actually cast different spells upon reload, which can create the odd impression that a specific instance of a caster battle is virtually impossible, and then you reload and they cast a different combinations of protections that aren't nearly as bad and beat them. Your argument is valid even with that in mind, though: if you can't pierce improved invisibility (and you can't in the current version of SR), you're quite screwed anytime it occurs while fighting a lich or if they're protected by Spell Immunity. That's not fun to not be given a fighting chance when you should have one.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[SonicMage117]

I got a bunch of trading cards on Steam today from Baldurs Gate, Baldurs Gate II and Icewind Dale. Not everyone cares but since this involves badge access and wallpapers of art never before seen, well yeah I thought I should post about just how cool it was for them to update for trading card support!

[kensu]

The main problem is that the designers wrote the battle AI as if the creatures all had independent minds or were being controlled by players, and not by a DM.

DMs are known to blunt or ignore rolls if it would seriously affect the enjoyability of the game (Which is one of the reasons why the DM's dice are hidden behind a screen, while the players' are out in the open). Like one issue I had is that if a character is put to sleep or paralyzed, enemies would take advantage of this and kill them; whereas a DM would have the monsters concentrate on the PCs that were still a threat. (Which is actually how a human or sub-human intelligence would act. I know when I use a sleep spell I have my characters attack the ones who made the saving throw.  I don't wait for the sleeping ones to wake (though I probably should, since I play Good and Neutral characters, and attacking comatose enemies seems like an Evil thing to do), so if I kill all the able-bodied ones, I start to mop up the sleeping ones.)

Now of course the difference is that you can save and reload a computer game, whereas tabletop games are all pretty much Ironman modes, and you can't ever take anything back.

Still it did annoy me where there was certain battles I could only win if I got good rolls.

[Bartimaeus]

SCS fixes that problem of targeting, actually. Enemies that are asleep aren't targeted unless they're the final one(s) left. Additionally, when a party member is instead *held*, they are just hacked to shreds immediately, because every attack on a held character is an autohit, so kill them while they're disabled, right?

[kirottu]

I forgot to mention one mod: convenient ammunition. It adds quivers with never ending normal arrows, bolts, and bullets to one shop. It's really convenient.

 

@NumbersMan, I am indeed playing the Enhanced Edition and I do agree with you about enemies prebuffing. My thinking is they should have the geographical advantage (traps, bottlenecks, that kind of stuff) since they are defending. I have the buffing advantage since I know when the attack is going to happen since I'm attacking. Giving enemies buttload of buffs for free right at the beginning of combat is just lazy design. It does make the combat harder, but it does it in a really cheap fashion.

 

@Bartimaeus, while Spell revisions sound interesting I think I'm going to pass on them. I feel like they change too much from 2nd edition and for me that is the path to the dark place.

[Terminator]

Baldurs Gate 1 and Baldurs Gate 2 and their expansions are classics.

 

Compare to Pillars of Eternity? I say what advantage each game has.

 

Pillars of Eternity

+ Graphics are more modern and there exist shader extra effects and more colors see my post in technical thread for more info about sweetfx mod that improves graphics.

 

 

Baldurs Gate 1 and 2

+ Based on real good Dungeons Dragons rules and in addition personally I consider 4th edition of Dungeons Dragons the worst expansion of Dungeon's Dragons created.

Pillars of Eternity has its computer system + based loosely on 4th edition of Dungeons Dragons and its own rules.

+ Supports multiplayer cooperative LAN play.

I did play back in the days twice through Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and I have no wish to play them again. Pillars of Eternity was also excellent.

 

Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 then? Neverwinter Nights had 3D and super mod community players could create adventures and even persistent worlds.  As for main story both Baldur's Gate and Pillars of Eternity have better story and solo play feeling then Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 has.

 

I have also played Neverwinter MMO, it is a great game, but to much TIME SINK in the long run. Neverwinter MMO is absolutely a buy to win game however it has no subfee like World of Warcraft. Neverwinter MMO is though fairly fair and I have as totally FREE player succeeded to get fastest mount in that game, but my real life friend who is very casual player has got like the second best mount better then first slowest mount, but not as fast mount as mine.

 

You can not compare Neverwinter MMO really since it is a real MMO.  Neverwinter MMO is a combination also of Action combat combined with Dungeons Dragons rules and you can not pause Neverwinter MMO it is real time combat. Neverwinter MMO supports both PvE and PvP  (voluntary PvP and it has not full open PvP instead you choose voluntary if you want to join for PvP battlegrounds).

 

All these games are great games in their own aspect!

Edited June 18, 2017 by Terminator

[SonicMage117]

Now... if only they fixed that tedious resting system Other than that yes, my hundreds of hours into this game in my childhood worth very much.

 

And Beamdog only made the game interesting enough to play through it again while remixing different aspects and mechanics to daunt upon us a new experience.

[kirottu]

I don't think Stratagems is for me. After killing Sarevok I felt the urge reroll. I fought against it and instead rolled party of adventures(three times) in Icewind Dale EE. I played a little while in insanity difficulty without damage increase and something clicked inside of me. This was the kind of difficulty I had wanted all along. Fights against big groups of varied enemies. Where fights were hard but afterwards I was knee deep in orc blood and I felt powerful. I didn't feel powerful once after finishing a hard fight in Baldur's Gate with SCS installed just slightly less annoyed than during the fight. Thieves always had dozens of potions of invisibility and mages didn't have even a single "bad" spell memorized. It's just too much.

 

Well I haven't finished Siege of Dragonspear yet so I have time figure something out. 

[Bartimaeus]

Potions are actually *my* biggest personal annoyance in SCS, because I personally don't use them, and they're just...everywhere. They just don't stop - everyone has them, and loads of them. Normally, I just have the "break all potions upon enemy death" option enabled, but now you're making me reconsider - perhaps I should just not install the potions component at all. It would be a shame for some fights that used to be a cakewalk that were actually made to be a little bit of a challenge (e.g. the pirate cove in the Docks in BG2), but perhaps that's worth it.

 

I don't have an issue with mages not having "bad" spells memorized - I mean, my own party usually doesn't, and I assume enemies aren't stupid and won't be memorizing Infravision or something. But yeah, if you don't like how hardcore SCS goes, you can always just not uninstall parts of the mod - don't install the improved mages and priests components, don't install improved potions, etc. At the very least, I think the "general improved AI" is a good component to have. Personally, I'm more annoyed by the fact that spellcasters' spellbooks are actually somewhat randomized upon the installation of those two components, instead of being hand-selected. Not a fan of enemies being procedurally generated...

Edited June 24, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[kirottu]

I started BG2 and I have just the "general improved AI" part installed of SCS and nothing else. I do hope I don't end up dealing exactly what NumbersMan warned at last page. It is kinda weird you have to take the "smarter mages" buff so you could take the "Mages never cast short-duration spells instantly at start of combat" nerf. Is the game now going to be harder or easier? I don't even know.

 

I think I'm going to take small break from the Bhaalspawn and play Icewind Dale instead.

 

Edit: I'm going to rant a bit about how I think SCS got difficulty wrong in some cases.

 

Right from the start one of assassins in prologue has a poison ability. If he hits me and I fail the save I die, because level 1 characters have no counter to it. SCS creates situations where I had no counter to enemies abilities. Forcing me to load a game.

 

Silke fight in Beregost. When her health dropped low contingency spell activated and her invisibility among other things. At this point my party has only level 1 or 2 characters. I don't have any counter to invisibility. Not to mention contingency is a level 6 spell. I can't get that level of spells even at max level. She casts sleep from invisibility and only one who isn't put to sleep is Viconia. Silke then starts to cast flesh to stone, another level 6 spell, at Viconia. That's just way too much.

 

Ogre mage in Firewine Bridge. He had protection from magical weapons spell(level 6 again). In a game where normal weapons break, because of the iron crisis, having someone use that spell is a **** move.

Edited June 27, 2017 by kirottu