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Baldur's Gate The Baldur's Gate Series Thread

Dreaad

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Party: PCBerserker, Jaheira, Viconia, Yoshimo, Edwin.

Can someone advice if I should buy the Plate of Balduran and Vhailor's Helm or will I find something better or equally good soon in chapter 2. Currently using: Gift of Piece -- Full Plate Mail +1 -- Periapt of Life Protection -- Ring of Regen -- Ring of Earth Control -- Cloak of the Sewers -- Sense of the Cat -- Destroyer of Hills -- Flail of Ages +3 -- Arbane's Sword +2. If I buy those 2 items I will be adding +2 to my AC from each, the only thing that sucks is I will be losing the 20% resistance from my helmet if I buy the Vhailor's Helm but I saw that it gives me a copy of my PC which might be good.

I finished several quests most notably the Unseeing Eye, I think the game kinda buggy when it comes to AI and path finding. I thought I'll try and fight the Beholder without the Shield of Balduran and try to win but it kinda was really easy. I had the Flail of Ages+3 I am currently mastering and the Arbane's Sword +2. Used the berserker ability and then the rod on the Beholder and it died after one single hit I think, I didn't check who hit him. Hardest difficulty. He only used the yellow smoke attack and simply stood there. kinda weird. the smaller beholders were more dangerous with how fast and many they attack.

I had another similar experience against the Lich from the Graveyard that's connected to Edwin's quest I think. After he turned red I backed off and sent a Skeleton hoping to make him waste his spells on but instead he used Door or something and teleported to near the exit of the Pharaoh area, he ignored everyone and simply kept facing the exit until it died. Not all of them are like that tho, the Lich in the Unseeing eye area and the one in the City Gate Inn were pretty tough and I couldn't win against them and figured I'll try again later.

I am thinking of going to kill the dragon that belongs to the Copper Cornet noble quest and want to prepare before going there. I found Dragon's Bane +3 will give a try even tho I am not proficient in using it but it might work. Also I am kinda thinking of exchanging Edwin with Aerie and finding and getting Haer'Dalis just to see if I can steal Aerie before or during their romance or something.

Mods currently using: BG2 Tweaks v15: Added botomless bags -- Max HP on level up (PC only) -- no infighting or leaving because of Reputation and enabled multi romance.
1.) You basically have the best party in the game, including having made you PC a berserker which = immunity to any threat. So yeah game is gonna be easy.
2.) The elder eye beholder doesn't do anything after you shoot him with the rod.... that's the whole point of getting the rod, pay attention to the plot.
3.) Lich cannot cast door. Or teleport at all. In fact no enemies in BG2 use door, its exclusively for cut scenes. Only thing I can think of is that he cast shadow door, and while invisible you somehow scared him, turn undead or something.
4.) In general a good way to beat any spell caster, liches included is to use a druid and cast insect swarm or whatever the level 5 version is called. Completely shuts down all spell casting and goes through every defense magical or otherwise.
 

Xeon

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How do you fight a dragon? Dragon has an attack that sends my units across the room and has a lot of damage, I can't find a way to prevent that attack on my Berserker.

I am currently following this guy's advice [Link] on how to fight Mages and Dragons but the dragon are still pretty hard.

The thing with BG2 mages is that, in the vanilla game (without SCS), they are all pretty consistent in their tricks. You can counter most of the bad things they can do to you with just a few spells, and it isn't that hard to learn, really. It's only frustrating when you don't have the basic knowledge.

- Almost every mage is going to cast Horror and try to cause mass panic in your party. I keep the cleric spell Remove Fear active at all times when my party is in danger, because it prevents the Horror spell from working. If I do not have Remove Fear already cast for some reason, it is the first thing I have my cleric cast on sight of a mage.

-Almost every mage is going to cast at least one and possibly several devastating mind altering spells like Confusion, Chaos, Domination and/or Dire Charm. The cleric spell Chaotic Commands protects against all of them. I keep it active on all party members whenever the party is in danger. In a full six-member party, I like to have two clerics so I can keep everybody covered.

-Many mages and clerics are going to try direct save-or-die spells like Finger of Death and Disintegrate. The cleric spell Death Ward protects against all of them. I keep it active at all times during danger, at least on Charname.

-The cleric spell Protection from Evil 10' adds a significant bonus to saving throws, increasing the chances of only half damage if the mage gets down to his or her big damage spells. Again, keep it active during all times of danger.

-Before going to their mind-altering and then big damage spells, mages like to cast a series of protection spells that make themselves very hard to hit. Many of them are programmed with a Contingency that lets them cast these protections instantly upon going hostile, or to be already cast when you find them. The spell Breach very reliably removes almost all physical protections, so your fighters can hit the mages and make short work of them. Breach is the first spell I have my mage cast upon sight of a protected mage. If there is more than one mage, getting a Breach cast on each of them is a priority action. That's why it can be a good idea to have more than one mage in your own party.

-In addition to the magical physical protections, mages like to use Mirror Image, Improved Invisibility, Dimension Door, Mislead, and Project Image. These illusion spells not only make the mage hard or impossible to hit, Improved Invisibility will make him or her untargetable by spells, including Breach. So, casting the counterspell True Sight is a priority action for my cleric in a mage battle, if I don't have Keldorn. I prefer to have Keldorn so he can cast True Sight on the first round. If my cleric has to do it, it may be necessary to cast it before the mage(s) can Breach.

-If the mage is surrounded by a silver glow at the base of his or her feet, Spell Turning is cast, which will reflect any lower level offensive spells back against you. If there is a blue globe, the mage has cast either a Major or Minor Globe of Invulnerability and is immune to spells of possibly up to fifth level and lower. If you want to cast offensive spells at an enemy mage, you have to start learning to use the more complicated counterspells like Secret Word and Pierce Magic. I find this completely unnecessary in the vanilla game. Mages fall easily to melee once their physical protections and illusions are dispelled.

-The one exception to the above is dragons, who are very hard to bring down in melee even with their magical protections dispelled. Against dragons, you need to cast several Lower Resistance spells, at least two. Three or four are better. Then, you can bring them down with simple offensive spells like Magic Missiles.

tl;dr: You can win most BG2 mage fights with just a handful of easy to remember spells. Remove Fear, Protection from Evil 10', Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, Breach, True Sight. Add in an item that gives Freedom so you won't get stuck in a Web, Paralyzed, or Held, and you're good to go through 99 percent of all the magic-heavy battles.

Main damage dealer is the Berserker, (Hasted, Protection from Evil 10 and the Rage ability of Berserkers along with the Arbane's Sword +2 and Periapt of Life Protection I think I am immune to every status attack but still the Dragon hits kinda hard. Edwin has 4 fire bomb attacks.

Edit:
Yea, I just checked Edwin doesn't have the lower resist magic yet so might give it a rain check, too much work wasted. Few spells can't be learned by him I think.
 
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Bester

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I am currently following this guy's advice [Link] on how to fight Mages and Dragons but the dragon are still pretty hard.

That reminds me. Last time I played, got tons of mods like "smart mages", SCS, etc.

So mages used to cast improved invisibility AND non-detection. Then they also protected themselves against all weapons. Result: couldn't dispell improved invisibility, therefore couldn't target them with spells like Breach, and therefore couldn't hit them with magic or physical attacks. Was frustrating... Or did I miss something?

Dragons were almost unbeatable. They could buff themselves infinitely, so dispelling them served nothing (is it normal that their buffs are abilities instead of spells? wtf?). Whenever they receive a debuff, they just dispel themselves. You could Low-res them and Silence them, but then they'd just Vocalize themselves. So magic was pretty much useless, which is NOT FUN. I think I managed to debilitate (don't remember which spell exactly, something like lowering intelligence to 3...) one dragon after a hundred attempts, but I think it kind of broke the game cause he just stopped moving (I guess modded scripts didn't account for that). No fun there either...
 
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GarfunkeL

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There's nothing you can do about the Wing Buffet. If you don't have sufficient spells/abilities to lower the dragon's SR sufficiently that you can burn them through magic, you need to have enough HP/healing and magic items to keep your team up while you melee them to death. If you have SCS2 installed, you're not going to be able to kill either dragon until the very end of Chapter 2 and even then it requires some luck.

SCS2 is modular so it might not be the best idea to ramp up everything to maximum difficult because Dragons and Lichs become almost impossible to kill in Chapter 2/3.
 

Jasede

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture
Why, the gentleman's way is to cast Lower Spell Resistance 2-3 times, Greater Malison, and then, oh, about 8 casts of Chromatic Orb should do the trick.

:smug:
 

Dreaad

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Not if you have multiple casters. Best option is of course to have dudes with spell triggers to stack the lower magic resist spells and greater malison/doom. I mean in general yeah it's easier to buff a fighter with or paladin with improved haste and bless and just kill the thing, but as mentioned that is not the :obviously: way.
 

Xeon

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I am not using SCS, tried using it during my first playthrough of OBG2 I think and Grunker probably with someone else said not to use it unless I was good at the game so never played it.

Yea, I kinda don't care about the prestigious way of doing things so I'll try and do the fight again with Improved Haste after I gain some more levels, I don't know how to make mages fight like Irenicus did with the multiple fast spells, I did buy the Robe of Vechna but only the first spell is fast. hopefully Improved haste will work. Thanks for the tip.

Insect Plague works great on mages but doesn't work on Lichs I think, they use invisibility and just end up wasting their usage without it being cast and I think Lich make a copy of them selves or something. The lich in the Unseeing Eye cave kept making a copy and if I killed it, he still had perfect health and made another copy sometime later so couldn;t damage the main body at all. tried using Invisibility Purge but he re-casts invisibility again. Will try fight it again after I get True Sight and hopefully that will work out.
 

Greatness

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Much later on you'll get a spell called Improved Alacrity that will let you fire off spells like a machine gun.

If you're having a tough time with specific fights, try visiting the shopkeepers and buy the green "protection" scrolls. Protection from Undead against Liches, Protection from Magic or Protection from Fire against Dragons, etc.

Alternatively you could try using the Animate Dead necromancy spell from your clerics/wards which will summon a Skeleton Warrior that can tank enemy spells for you, since it is immune to magic.
 

GarfunkeL

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Robe of Vecna works just as advertised but the speed increase is most noticeable when you have multiple casters casting the same spell - the one with the Robe always gets her spell off quicker. It's also useful to open with a memorized spell if you're wearing the Robe instead of a Spell Sequencer - it's a quicker order to get spells off.

You can have multiple Invisibility Purges and remember that they stay active for few turns. Remember that a thief with high enough Detect Illusion skill and with Find Traps activated will do the same thing.

If you do use SCS2, the Shadow Dragon's breath will cause Level Drain so you need Negative Energy Protection on all party members, except it starts the battle by dispelling all your buffs, same as Firkraag, so it's best to have multiple casters so that you can quickly buff up during the fight while the dragon gets rid of your summoned cannon fodder.

That's another thing that I love about SCS that there's no point in pre-buffing for difficult fights - instead you summon a bunch of minions to keep the enemy busy after starting the battle so that you have enough time to get some buffs on AFTER the initial Dispel/Remove Magic on your guys and gals. Only frustrating that so many battle areas (especially with Liches) are so damn tiny.
 

Lhynn

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It is acceptable to install NWN-mode HP if you're a weakling. Max HP is just pathetic. Game's easy enough as it is.
Whats wrong with max hp? not having it maxed when you can is purposely gimping yourself, you may as well say "whats the point of using items? game is easy enough even without them".

If you want added challenge just get mods for added challenge.
 

Greatness

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It is acceptable to install NWN-mode HP if you're a weakling. Max HP is just pathetic. Game's easy enough as it is.
Whats wrong with max hp? not having it maxed when you can is purposely gimping yourself, you may as well say "whats the point of using items? game is easy enough even without them".

If you want added challenge just get mods for added challenge.


You have to actively cheat to always get max HP. Either through changing the difficulty to easy, altering the game with mods, or save-scumming (yes, of course save-scumming is cheating). Always having max HP is like always rolling a natural 20 or always having a maximum damage fireball. It should be self explanatory what's wrong with it.
 

Lhynn

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You have to actively cheat to always get max HP. Either through changing the difficulty to easy, altering the game with mods, or save-scumming (yes, of course save-scumming is cheating). Always having max HP is like always rolling a natural 20 or always having a maximum damage fireball. It should be self explanatory what's wrong with it.
Gonna go ahead and call that bullshit, purposely gimping your character to make the game harder is retarded. A better compromise is max health for everyone, which i remember installing.
 

Greatness

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You have to actively cheat to always get max HP. Either through changing the difficulty to easy, altering the game with mods, or save-scumming (yes, of course save-scumming is cheating). Always having max HP is like always rolling a natural 20 or always having a maximum damage fireball. It should be self explanatory what's wrong with it.
Gonna go ahead and call that bullshit, purposely gimping your character to make the game harder is retarded. A better compromise is max health for everyone, which i remember installing.

Giving max health to everything imbalances other aspects of the game though. Where before your fireball might do 10-60 damage and your enemy might have 10-60 health now instead your enemy has 60 health but your fireball still does varying damage, meaning you suddenly have to spend far more spells to kill off the enemy than before. Since spells learned per day doesn't scale with health gained it means spellcasters are now significantly weaker than before and more static damage sources like melee are much stronger. And seeing as spellcasters are usually the only challenging part of the BG series when you nerf them and make it likely they will run out of spells before dealing enough damage to finish off your party you make the game noticeably easier.

And you aren't "gimping" your party by following the core rules. Everyone else (even enemies) has to follow them too.
 

Lhynn

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Giving max health to everything imbalances other aspects of the game though. Where before your fireball might do 10-60 damage and your enemy might have 10-60 health now instead your enemy has 60 health but your fireball still does varying damage, meaning you suddenly have to spend far more spells to kill off the enemy than before. Since spells learned per day doesn't scale with health gained it means spellcasters are now significantly weaker than before and more static damage sources like melee are much stronger. And seeing as spellcasters are usually the only challenging part of the BG series when you nerf them and make it likely they will run out of spells before dealing enough damage to finish off your party you make the game noticeably easier.
And you aren't "gimping" your party by following the core rules. Everyone else (even enemies) has to follow them too.
Oh... oh no! magic and casters will be marginally less useful in BG2 now....
Watch me not giving a flying fuck, in exchange for not having to dread level ups its worth it.
 

Greatness

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Oh... oh no! magic and casters will be marginally less useful in BG2 now....
Watch me not giving a flying fuck, in exchange for not having to dread level ups its worth it.

Hey if you want to mod your games to increase HP bloat, good for you. I personally prefer to retain the internal consistency in game mechanics over just HP bloating everything in sight. A couple less HPs on level up doesn't really bother me.
 

Ziem

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random hp is so fun when you roll 1-2-1 on your frontline warrior
seriously fuck that rng mechanic
if i want a harder game i play on harder difficulty and/or install mods
 
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And you aren't "gimping" your party by following the core rules. Everyone else (even enemies) has to follow them too.

Regarding HP mechanics in (A)D&D cRPGs, this isn't true. Enemy HP is static, not rolled based on their hit dice as listed in the Monster Manual.

In pen and paper (A)D&D monsters are just as capable of having bad rolls as the player characters; there are bound to be a whole lot of orcs with one measly hitpoint, evil wizards with single digit HP maxes, and maybe even a dragon that barely clears 40HP. This, in a way, balances things out, as players aren't the only ones on the bad end of random HP on level up.

But, as previously mentioned, all (to my knowledge) of the (A)D&D cRPGs have static HP totals for each enemy type, with no randomness. Furthermore, the HP maximums of the bestiary in most games tend towards the higher end. Kobolds in Pool of Raidiance, which had 1/2 HD, boasted 3 hit points to their expected 2.25. Orcs, a one hit die monster, had 5 HP each, with orc leaders having the full 8 HP from their single hit die. One could go through the entirety of PoR's bestiary and note how practically every creature's HP is on the right side of their kind's HP distribution.

Pool of Radiance is probably the most "grounded" (A)D&D cRPG. Every other game went hog wild. Things like Secret of the Silver Blades throwing tons of 120 HP fighters your way, PoD's Drow Sorceresses that had over 100 hit points (exceptional even if they were Fighter->Mage dual-classes, which they legally can't be), Infinity Engine bosses having HP totals on par with archdemons and demigods (even the ones that weren't either of those things), and do on.

Basically, cRPG monsters aren't following the same hit dice rules as the player by any reasonable standard. As such, I don't think it's wrong to return the favor.
 

Dreaad

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I don't think it matters all that much either way you do it. Infinity engine games aren't really 'balanced' to begin with. For me personally its just an OCD thing, feels like I'm cheating if I turn max hp on or re-roll my first roll of stats. *Shrugs*
 

Greatness

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all (to my knowledge) of the (A)D&D cRPGs have static HP totals for each enemy type

I assume you're only talking about monsters here. "Human" NPC's still have to roll for health don't they? If creatures HP are all static what exactly does "alter creatures to have their theoretical maximum hit points" mean from the Max-HP component of the tweak pack?

Anyways, I agree with everyone that having random HP isn't fun. It's not that I enjoy getting low HP rolls or something. I just feel like it's clearly cheating to circumvent the game mechanics to give yourself an advantage. I've tried it and when I did have the max HP the game felt much easier. When I would survive a battle at low HP I'd realize that if I wasn't cheating I would be dead, kinda kills the experience for me.

When I play something like SCS (IE something specifically designed to be challenging) it's basically like I'm playing against the designer. If I alter their vision to give myself some advantage it cheapens the experience. Most everyone else got by fine without the crutch of perfect HP gains, so is potentially getting a few unlucky rolls worth dumbing down my game, even though I'm playing it specifically because it's suppose to be challenging?
 
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"Human" NPC's still have to roll for health don't they?

They don't in the same way players do. As far as I know, every (demi)human NPC's HP in a D&D cRPG was set by the designer and will never vary from game to game in the way that player character HP, rolled randomly, will.

If creatures HP are all static what exactly does "alter creatures to have their theoretical maximum hit points" mean from the Max-HP component of the tweak pack?

I'm not familiar with the component, but I assume it looks at the .CRE files, reads their character levels, hit dice, and Constitution modifier and then sets their HP to the maximum attainable given those parameters in lieu of what the developers assigned them. So if a creature was assigned 50 HP because the designers felt this was best, but legally could have up to 100 based on their stats, the component should bump it up.

Most everyone else got by fine without the crutch of perfect HP gains, so is potentially getting a few unlucky rolls worth dumbing down my game, even though I'm playing it specifically because it's suppose to be challenging?

I don't really see removing random HP rolls all that much a "dumbing down" as much as a huge boon to Fighters, Thieves, Clerics and any other class that relies heavily upon HP that grants them utility relative to Mages, Fighter/Druids, and other classes with abilities that make having lower HP than average far less a liability. It deepens the gameplay by allowing more viable options. And, like I said, enemies in cRPGs all have (much) higher than average HP rolls, so it's not like you're gaining a huge leg up on the game by doing the same.
 

Jools

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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Insert Title Here Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
Imagine BG3 with Laidlaw as Lead Designer.
Whole game set in the dynamic and awesome city of Baldur's Gate!
No need to go out exploring, everything you need is right here in the city!![snip]

Actually, and I've mentioned this before, I would love a game that's set -entirely- wihtin a city environment. Most cities in games are fairly unrealistic in terms of size and population, and it'd be nice to see some serious attempt/effort towards recreating a "believable" city. I just love cities. Quite a few games have really interesting and mood-setting urban "sections" (NWN, Torment, Gothic, Gothic 2, Risen, The Witcher, Divinity 2, D:OS...) and leaving those environments felt like a "break" in the mood and flow of the game, to me. And yet it's a hugely overlooked and underused environment, despite one most players can "relate" to.

PS
:necro:
 

BBMorti

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It's Bioware we are talking about here, the game is clearly balanced around random hp rolls, or they wouldn't be part of it. The game can be completed solo with a thief or other 'weak' class with no issue. If some people want to have maximum hp, fine, it's their game.. but trying to excuse it as something else than stacking the odds in their favor (Cheating) is silly. Be real.
 

Jools

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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Insert Title Here Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
Ok, I'm gonna open up a whole new can of worms: which of the two games is more story-driven, and delivers a better story?
Addendum: are these enhanced editions any worth it? Or should I stick with the original releases?
 

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