Baldurs gate

[Bartimaeus]

what, are you sure that's SCS - I've fought Silke a few times and can't ever remember a contingency, never mind flesh to stone, holy crap

 

ogre mage I can understand more, and is more easily counterable (especially because iron shattering should be over by the time you get to him), but silke casting level 6 spells is...crazy

Edited June 27, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

Okay, I actually checked my own game for Silke via a creature editor (and I currently have full SCS installed), and I'm not sure why she would have that crap. She has an Improved Invisibility, but that's the most powerful spell she has, and she doesn't really have a whole lot of offensive spells to go with it (2 magic missiles, a charm person, and a power word sleep - a little powerful against a low level party, but not crazily so), as she mostly has defensive spells. Not sure how she would've gotten the flesh to stone in your game, but it ain't in mine.

Edited June 27, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[213374U]

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.

 

Low level gameplay is crap anyway. A gibberling rolling a 20 against your 6-hp mage? Bye-bye. I always found the first few hours of both IWD and BG to be the weakest parts of otherwise great games, and that's in large part through no fault of the devs themselves -- it's because playing D&D at level 1 ****ing sucks. D&D designers knew this, and thus the DM screen was born.

 

Silke is a bad bitch (high level Bard IIRC), but she should still not have access to Contingency. I had the same issue in my playthrough, and turns out it's a mod conflict, in my case it was BG2Tweaks, in yours, it's likely Tweaks Anthology. I would have thought it's fixed by now, though. Regardless, I think I just insta-backstabbed her as soon as she turned red. I did that a lot in both BG1 and BG2 to deal with caster bull**** when my patience ran out. Montaron is your friend, just throw Xzar to the wolves (literally).

 

The Ogre Mage at Firewine ruins is an asshоle, but he's supposed to be an ancient curse kind of guy IIRC, not a pushover like the rest of his kind that you encounter. He's not meant to be taken on by a bunch of level 3s.

 

Sleep is insane in BG1, that's not SCS, it's vanilla shenanigans because at low levels your saves are garbage and you get a penalty from the spell on top of it. DavidW simply assumes that enemies aren't total morons and they will use the most effective tools at their disposal. Arrows, poison, backstabbing and Sleep pave the path to greatness in Stratagems-BG1.

 

Stratagems is a curious thing. After getting used to it, I don't think I could play the game again without it, because I would find the comparatively dumb vanilla AI immersion-breaking. On the other hand, it is sometimes a source of hair-pulling frustration, especially when it does something it clearly should not.

 

It's certainly not for everyone.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Yeah Silke has never cast that on me, at most she's thrown a sequencer with invisibility.

 

Anyways I like the Revisions mods, although as Barti has said Item and Spell (I think) are currently rough and Kit Revisions was never finished. However I like KR just for new saving throw and thac0 tables and the revised proficency. Most content is bad and aside from Solaifein I can't think of any off-hand that adds a class combination that doesn't already show up. Ascension is essential, RR is good, and atweaks always shows up.

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah, I've completed my Item Revisions "Revised" mod, thankfully, that fixes the rough spots and inconsistencies, among a multitude of bugs. Now I'm working on a Spell Revisions "Revised" on and off...about halfway through.

[kensu]

 

Low level gameplay is crap anyway. A gibberling rolling a 20 against your 6-hp mage? Bye-bye. I always found the first few hours of both IWD and BG to be the weakest parts of otherwise great games, and that's in large part through no fault of the devs themselves -- it's because playing D&D at level 1 ****ing sucks. D&D designers knew this, and thus the DM screen was born.

 

There is a trick in Icewind Dale that I read on an FAQ when I was playing through it. Make all of your characters human and have them start out as fighters, but give them the attributes that would fit their roles. Once they hit level 2 or 3 and have a good HP base, dual class them over to their final classes, and it becomes a little harder to wipe out the mages and other low HP roles. (I also liked it because my mages were able to use longbows, which made them useful whenever they ran out of spells or nothing they had memorized could help in the given situation).

Of course, IWD was supposed to be hard; I think the beginning of BG was just poor design (in their defense, most of the people hadn't ever worked on a game before, much less an RPG, so we're lucky it's as good as it was.)

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Yeah, I've completed my Item Revisions "Revised" mod, thankfully, that fixes the rough spots and inconsistencies, among a multitude of bugs. Now I'm working on a Spell Revisions "Revised" on and off...about halfway through.

Could you send them to me when you finish? For personal use only of course.

[Belle Sorciere]

 

 

Low level gameplay is crap anyway. A gibberling rolling a 20 against your 6-hp mage? Bye-bye. I always found the first few hours of both IWD and BG to be the weakest parts of otherwise great games, and that's in large part through no fault of the devs themselves -- it's because playing D&D at level 1 ****ing sucks. D&D designers knew this, and thus the DM screen was born.

 

There is a trick in Icewind Dale that I read on an FAQ when I was playing through it. Make all of your characters human and have them start out as fighters, but give them the attributes that would fit their roles. Once they hit level 2 or 3 and have a good HP base, dual class them over to their final classes, and it becomes a little harder to wipe out the mages and other low HP roles. (I also liked it because my mages were able to use longbows, which made them useful whenever they ran out of spells or nothing they had memorized could help in the given situation).

Of course, IWD was supposed to be hard; I think the beginning of BG was just poor design (in their defense, most of the people hadn't ever worked on a game before, much less an RPG, so we're lucky it's as good as it was.)

 

 

IWD is supposed to be hard? I always found the early game easier than the early game in Baldur's Gate. Part of it I think was that the characters got out of the early levels relatively quickly.

 

It was hard later on, though, can't deny that.

Edited June 28, 2017 by Belle Sorciere

[Bartimaeus]

 

Yeah, I've completed my Item Revisions "Revised" mod, thankfully, that fixes the rough spots and inconsistencies, among a multitude of bugs. Now I'm working on a Spell Revisions "Revised" on and off...about halfway through.

Could you send them to me when you finish? For personal use only of course.

 

Sure. I'll do that for IR as soon as I figure out what the heck is screwing up the damage of a few bows for IR (something in the mod is giving like three bows ridiculous damage damage bonuses, and I have no idea what, because it's nothing that I changed - haven't tracked down the bug yet, but I'm working on it). SR will take a little longer, especially because I'll be having surgery on my wrist soon, which will make doing anything pretty difficult for a couple of weeks at the very least.

Edited June 28, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[kirottu]

Silke is a bad bitch (high level Bard IIRC), but she should still not have access to Contingency. I had the same issue in my playthrough, and turns out it's a mod conflict, in my case it was BG2Tweaks, in yours, it's likely Tweaks Anthology. I would have thought it's fixed by now, though. Regardless, I think I just insta-backstabbed her as soon as she turned red. I did that a lot in both BG1 and BG2 to deal with caster bull**** when my patience ran out. Montaron is your friend, just throw Xzar to the wolves (literally).

So that's why it felt so out of place. Also, I wanted to play through the BG with canon party meaning Montaron wasn't my friend.

 

Stratagems is a curious thing. After getting used to it, I don't think I could play the game again without it, because I would find the comparatively dumb vanilla AI immersion-breaking. On the other hand, it is sometimes a source of hair-pulling frustration, especially when it does something it clearly should not.

 

I do agree. When I realized even with all of my whining I'm still going to play with SCS installed I had to take a break.

 

There is a trick in Icewind Dale that I read on an FAQ when I was playing through it. Make all of your characters human and have them start out as fighters, but give them the attributes that would fit their roles. Once they hit level 2 or 3 and have a good HP base, dual class them over to their final classes, and it becomes a little harder to wipe out the mages and other low HP roles. (I also liked it because my mages were able to use longbows, which made them useful whenever they ran out of spells or nothing they had memorized could help in the given situation).

This is exactly what I did. I had a group of four humans all with two levels of fighter. Cleric and thief on front lines, and druid and mage on ranged duty. I was kinda surprised I ended up enjoying fighter/druid the most. The spells druids get in IWD really elevated druids from just being a support caster. And you can get those spells for BG too. Not to mention druid's main stat improves their casting. And the two levels of fighter removes all the itemization problems I might have with a druid. And it ended up being really simple to add Avenger's bonus wizard spells to my druid via EEKeeper. He's perfect now.

 

So, uh, let's just say I didn't re-roll a human fighter/druid for BG and leave it at that. *cough*

[Bartimaeus]

Dual-classing is pretty overpowered in BG, too. A fighter or swashbuckler (thief kit - you lose the ability to backstab, but get the THAC0 of a fighter and an AC bonus to go along with it, and you can specialize in weapons as well) dual-classing to a cleric or mage at level 7 or 8 makes them pretty good warriors for pretty much the rest of the game while still giving them the full benefit of spellcasting abilities...as opposed to multiclasses, where the only multiclass I would really seriously consider is a mage-cleric. Multiclasses with a fighter-type class are almost universally inferior to a good dual-class in terms of effectiveness - you're giving up too many levels in your spellcasting class for too many near-useless fighter levels, and your character is permanently underleveled.

Edited July 2, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[Guard Dog]

Kirottu what is the canon BG party? Imoen, Jahiera and Khalid I'm sure. Who are the last two?

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Outside of cleric/mage I think there's an argument to be made for mage/thief in terms of hitting x5 backstab with more skills or even F/M/T with it's versatility and synergy, but in general you can get what you need to out of fighters and thieves early enough that multiclassing is less optimal than a dual. I'll say that multi is certainly easier to play than dual in that you start off with the abilities you plan to use and there's no long segment where you're without crucial abilities, but after hitting the point where xp goes from exponential to linear those lost levels really start to hurt.

[Guard Dog]

There is a bow in IWD EE that grants 4 attacks per round. I have a level 10 Archer, with that and +2 Arrows she is death walking. She has 39% of the EP in a six member party. 

 

OK, question. I have not played BG 1 or 2 in years so I don't remember this. But I'm curious. Did Khalid & Jahiera know what the PC was right from the start? If that ever came up in a game conversation I don't remember. 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

There is a bow in IWD EE that grants 4 attacks per round. I have a level 10 Archer, with that and +2 Arrows she is death walking. She has 39% of the EP in a six member party. 

 

OK, question. I have not played BG 1 or 2 in years so I don't remember this. But I'm curious. Did Khalid & Jahiera know what the PC was right from the start? If that ever came up in a game conversation I don't remember.

 

With the NPC project mod they do, I can't remember the base game.

[Bartimaeus]

I'm not sure that's ever established one way or another, and Baldur's Gate 2 doesn't illuminate the matter any further, as far as I remember. I think the Harper leadership, seeing as Elminster and Gorion both knew, were aware of it, but who knows whether that info was passed down to all the other members. As I recall, Harpers ascribed to the "we tell you only what you need to know" philosophy in regards to its general members, so I would personally say they probably do not know*. It's hard to say for sure, though, because NPCs in BG1 are more or less totally silent: when your lineage is finally revealed, there's no reaction from any party members, but I wouldn't necessary assume that a lack of a reaction meant that they knew, given that nobody else reacted, either.

 

*Although I suppose Gorion could've very well told them...but I don't know - with what little they said in BG1, I never really got the impression that they knew. Still, impossible to say for sure if there's nothing concrete.

Edited July 5, 2017 by Bartimaeus