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Baldur's Gate The Baldur's Gate Series Thread

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
18,735
Pathfinder: Wrath
Durlag's Tower is filled to the brim with traps, you'd have to either constantly rest to refresh Find Traps and heal up or load up only on Find Traps and healing spells (and Knock). Thief makes your life much better, it would be too much tedious manual work to do otherwise.
 
Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
Joined
Feb 13, 2013
Messages
5,274
You don't get it. What we have here is a zoological specimen capable of soloing Durlag's Tower on Ironman with a Xvart. Bow down to the socially inept low-IQ basement dweller, and its "points"!
 

hell bovine

Arcane
Joined
Sep 9, 2013
Messages
2,711
Location
Secret Level
- If we are praising the Bounty Hunter for his traps, we definitely could take a look at the Assassin (you can poison Darts for a 3 APR poison attack that goes through Stoneskin and pretty much nullifies mages; stronger backstab will make your late-game fighting less tedious) and the Swashbuckler (whose main claim to fame is being able to reach ridiculous amounts of AC). It's worth noting that these two other kits scale better into the HLA levels because the BH's traps are rendered sorta obsolete after that point.
Not in the original. That last BH trap is a ranged aoe maze, which lets a BH set up spike traps the non-cheesy way and/or in situations where you can't set them up the cheesy way. A BH actually has the best HLA synergy of all thief kits in this aspect. And spike traps are downright nasty, while poison & backstabbing loses power towards the end game.
 

Dzupakazul

Arbiter
Joined
Jun 16, 2015
Messages
707
the points it did manage to make are so minor they don't even matter. Plus, putting words in my mouth. Ergo, blunt response and insult not unwarranted.
I do not recall putting words in your mouth and frankly I do not see why this hostility is warranted. I am not trying to be elitist or antagonize - I enjoy these posts and wanted to interact with it - you know, public forum and all. Theorycrafting on video games is fun and I thought I could share my views on the subject. I liked hell bovine's point about maze traps, as I generally used trap-heavy playstyles in a "set a killzone" way.

I have played Wild Mage on difficulty mods where Nahal sometimes enabled dangerous fights earlier and sometimes it caused unneeded reloads. It is a good class, of course. Fun to play; has some caveats, is all.

I did not think my point about the sorc vs mage was so trivial as being able to choose new spells with lvl instead of waiting for scrolls can mean a lot of difference for solo characters; early Death Spell can trivialise fights, so can getting access to level 7-8 repertoire in chapter 2.

I never had an issue with soloing Durlag's by just having summons walk forward and tank traps, clearing a path. I merely think Thief's strengths do not warrant distinction as a single class; I like the utility, but I would note that if you can combine it with another class, it makes for a straight up superior party member. A 4 level thief is enough to do all the noncombat thieving in BG1; even in BG2 Nalia is a competent NPC disparaged for being a "shitty thief" when she does her job easily with item support in late game.
 

razvedchiki

Magister
Joined
May 25, 2015
Messages
4,319
Location
on the back of a T34.
If you want bards to be worthwhile try the rogue rebalance mod,skald song at lvl 9 gives +4 to ac,DMG,thaco and immunity to fear and confusion,it also gives the thaco progression tables of fighters to swashbucklers making a swash/mage dual an enticing prospect.

In my next playthrough I will have a berserker/cleric,swash/mage,skald,neera,jaheira and possibly a wizard slayer or a plain fighter using crossbows,the fighter will get an extra attack with weapon mastery correct?the 1/2 extra attack fighters get at 7 and 13 lvls are for melee only?
 
Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
Joined
Feb 13, 2013
Messages
5,274
I enjoy these posts and wanted to interact with it - you know, public forum and all.

Difference is, 1000s of people have already read my rundown and almost no one will read your "point-form" shitpost that tries hard to poke holes in it and comes up with nothing. Like I said, you suck. Now, away with you beggar!
 

Dzupakazul

Arbiter
Joined
Jun 16, 2015
Messages
707
Difference is, 1000s of people have already read my rundown and almost no one will read your "point-form" shitpost that tries hard to poke holes in it and comes up with nothing. Like I said, you suck. Now, away with you beggar!
Frankly, going by this logic, tens of thousands of people have already read a guide on what the best classes of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 are; these games are really old and many useful things on them have already been said and regurgitated on various message boards. I don't believe you reinvented the wheel by writing this particular bit.

And really, I do like your content - certainly would have no interest in trying to "poke holes in it" to dismantle it or something. I enjoyed your NWN write-ups immensely - they have been of great help, actually, as there is a dearth of condensed sources on setting up CEP and good modules, what with the recent takedowns - and I liked the Baldur's Gate write-ups as well, they have depth. I can only wish you the best in your endeavors and hope that you can realize that there was no inherent antagonism, no intention to "shitpost", not even "poking holes". I don't know how much more clear I can make it; I also find challenging the notion of Inquisitor supremacy to be really valid and the overall tone really informed. It's a very ambitious and admirable project to create this gargantuan retrospective.

Ofc, this discussion doesn't matter much in the long run - I will still stand, at the very least, by the point that a solo/small-party Sorcerer generally outstrips the Mage due to inflated levelling and that, IMO, in both games, Thieves are the most immediately replacable single-classed characters (I find that not having a dedicated trapfinder/lock opener merely makes dungeoneering more resource intensive, but doesn't necessarily mean bigger time investment; Cleric healing spells can also be fairly easily replicated, but Cleric provides way, way more utility throughout both games than the Thief). Though I definitely can't tell if the next text is dedicated to me from the angle of "IE veterans" or "xvarts", given this recent exchange; I took the liberty of taking on the former mantle to be able to look at the text objectively and I generally think that this is an useful text; in a slightly more abridged form would make for a very useful tl;dr on differences between BG and BG2. I also like it that it tells you not to skip BG1.

For what it's worth, I like, at the very least, the Avenger Druid kit, because it gives a lot of fun utility to play with for a class that suffers from a general dearth of it - just having more pew-pews to play with is fun, and the Sword Spider morph-oriented builds are generally a ton of fun both on mages and druids (some prior general setup - not even all that much, really, certainly not to the level of spending all your resources on a single fight - lets you have an unkillable 4 APR monster of whirling death, whether with Polymorph Self abuse for mages or the Avenger's ability). Though, yes, I find that divine spellcaster variants are generally meh; fairly flavorless.

As you yourself said, "It's always fun rambling on about 19 year old RPGs." - I might not be as articulate, nor willing to commit to such a big project myself, but hey, I just wanted to ramble.

I wish you happy rambling as well. :)
 
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Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
Joined
Feb 13, 2013
Messages
5,274
Gone from shitpost to slimepost? Won't work.

Welcome to my iggy bin, Xvart.
 

Dzupakazul

Arbiter
Joined
Jun 16, 2015
Messages
707
Gone from shitpost to slimepost? Won't work.
I'm fairly certain Slimes can't be Confused in Baldur's Gate, a quality that I definitely can't share with them at this point.

I'm dropping the subject. Good luck and have fun writing!
 

Lhynn

Arcane
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
9,962
Too bad the PRC pack for nwn was never really compatible with the base game modules, and was only really playable on persistent servers (mostly because stupidly high loading times and the fact that they did tend to break some modules). The breadth of classes offered by it made it a joy to theorycraft, a huge mistake on biowares part for hardcoding the character system.
 

Dzupakazul

Arbiter
Joined
Jun 16, 2015
Messages
707
Guys, drop it. It doesn't matter anymore. It's a BG thread.

To keep it on subject: I've played with a few difficulty-enhancing mods, and they generally come in two flavors: cheesy as hell and depending on massive mastery of the system and AI abuse, like Tactics (Ilyich fight here is infamous, it features many more characters, a Glabrezu, and a priest who can summon a Fallen Deva) or ones that improve mage AI and have the AI enter all fights pre-buffed to match your preparations (SCSII). I dug up some more since I'm probably planning some masochistic BG2 playthrough in the future, and I found Improved Anvil, which is supposedly even more broken than Tactics. Stuff like "Vecna's Robe got nerfed and is no longer a bargain bin item from a convenient Planescape merchant" is one thing; Copper Coronet slavers being staffed by hyper-competent mages is another. And then I dug a little bit deeper and apparently the mod creators locked their forum behind a paywall at one brief point and the newest version supposedly had a built-in restriction to actively punish you for rolling a F/M or playing with a smaller party than 6. Sounds like some crazy bullshit.

Wonder how BG2 would play on the most pumped up power level possible - with Item Upgrade to balance out the most ridiculous stuff that Tactics / Improved Battles / Ascension has to offer. EE is now offering that new Legacy of Bhaal difficulty, though I'm also pretty certain EE still doesn't support many of those old WeiDu mods.
 
Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
Joined
Feb 13, 2013
Messages
5,274
Well, when will you post about Flesh Golem cave? Be sure to use Wolf cloak to increase movement rate (or do you have Haste with extended repertoire?)
 

oldmanpaco

Master of Siestas
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
Messages
13,624
Location
Fall
and I found Improved Anvil, which is supposedly even more broken than Tactics.

I played that a little before the developer when full sperg and locked the forum. It wasn't all that fun. From what I remember combat was basically a puzzle you needed to solve and only the tactics that the guy thought should work, would work. All you had to do is figure out how he wanted you to play.

Anyway SCS + Revised Battles + Ascension is the way to play.
 

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