I just started Baldur's Gate 2...

[Elric]

So you don't need to discern which buff to cast? You can't just wear all your buffs because many of them have short durations. Maze and imprisonment on your PC = instant death, they are not mind spell so chaotic command will NOT protection you from.

Maze isn't insta-death on your PC. If you're playing a mage-type character, chances are it'll last a pitiful 1d4 rounds because of your high intelligence.

Imprisonment is insta-death, but most of the encounters in which the enemy uses it are isolated encounters (Demilich, Lich in Ust Natha, Elder Orb Beholder, etc.) that you should be preparing spells specifically for anyway.

It's gamey, based on pre-acquired knowledge. You don't know what you will be expecting in your first play-through, and loading up your slots with breach will leave you few spells in MOST other circumstances, in which some spells could be the tipping point of the battle.

Except most non-caster encounters didn't require spells at all. You don't need to use up spells to beat back a bunch of orcs, and spells other than Haste are pretty useless against stone/adamantite golems.

The two would-be exceptions are the Beholder Lair and Mind Flayer Lair in the Underdark. The Mind Flayer Lair is ruined by the fact that the game hands you a ton of items that make it easy, and the Beholder Lair calls for a rest anyway, because you normally don't prepare enough Spell Turning-type spells in a day to get through it.

 

[Andrej]

Dear felicity, you are retarded. I will not answer to the things who others have already aptly answered for me.

And as I stated, some casters are also powerful fighter, like a dragon, in which case breach doesn't hamper their melee capability. They may gib your character if you're unlucky. Just reload uh? So much for difficulty. It's not that simple, as I stated above. What about illusion spells + non-detection contingency? What about lich with protection from magic weapon? Breach won't work because of lich innate immunity. And dragon? Whose combat efficiency don't rely on buffs, it's more than "debuff = breach".

Dragons are not regular caster battles. I never said debuff=breach, but i did say that debuff=breach-type-spells (examples are breach, pierce magic, dude's warding whip).

So you don't need to discern which buff to cast? You can't just wear all your buffs because many of them have short durations. Maze and imprisonment on your PC = instant death, they are not mind spell so chaotic command will NOT protection you from.

Yeah, uh, chaotic commands protects from maze. See my first sentance in this post.

]Save/Load is available too you can also abuse it freely but then there is nothing to argue about, anyone can reload until he gets the desired outcome. In a difficulty perspective, cheeses should be excluded, like resting each and every encounter.

No, in a difficulty perspective one should try to see how difficult the game actually is, not how difficult it is if you start tying your hands behind your back. As for reloading, if a character gets gibbed or have reason to be unsatisfied with how the encounter went - i reload. I'm not playing BGII for that roguelike feel.

 

[Mareus]

EDIT: Andrej, how did you not find the demilich hard? Imprisonment every round gets ugly pretty fast, combined with his natural magic resistance and spell protections.

Well, you can always send Minsc into rage and let him deal with demilich all by himself. No problem there. You can also use that cursed sword which makes you go frenzy. The important thing is, that rage makes you immune to imprisonment.

So? It's easy enough to refrain from resting, so what is the problem? The game doesn't force you to wait 82 hours for your party to heal up before letting you proceed. It's true that it's easy enough to abuse this mechanic, but why sit around and complain that this feature makes the game too easy when you can just refrain from resting? Give yourself a challenge man.

Adding on to this: universal resting is pretty much a feature that plagues pretty much every D&D based game. To hold it against BG2 isn't fair, because there isn't a game based on D&D rules in recent years that has done otherwise in this regard. ToEE, which you cite as being your baseline for tactical combat, allows the exact same thing, and has the exact same problems (its trivially easy to stock up a ridiculous number of potions just from random encounters).

Exactly! I played the whole BG trilogy with using rest only when my party got exhausted, and even then I would rest only in the inns or where it looked safe. I also hate using save/load tactic, because the game becomes too easy when you know what you expect and you enter the battle with all the defensive buffs active. It's much more fun when you are already without some very important spells and you get ambushed. The situation then becomes quite tense, because you are clinging to straws and each wrong move can mean the difference between life or death. I still remember my first encounter with those mind flayers. They took out 2 of my fighters before I could blink. Luckily I managed to revive them later and I was all the more careful next time. Or when I first encountered demilich. He took out 3 of my characters before I could even hit him. Luckily, he didn't get Minsc and my main character, so I set him into rage and I quickly ran out with the rest of my characters. After Minsc dealt with the demilich all by himself, I had to buy freedom spells to release my imprisoned characters. My armor and weapons was destroyed, and that really pissed me off, but I didn't load. What I am trying to say is, that you can make the game what you want it to be.

 

[felicity]

Maze isn't insta-death on your PC. If you're playing a mage-type character, chances are it'll last a pitiful 1d4 rounds because of your high intelligence.

Imprisonment is insta-death, but most of the encounters in which the enemy uses it are isolated encounters (Demilich, Lich in Ust Natha, Elder Orb Beholder, etc.) that you should be preparing spells specifically for anyway.

Yes I stand corrected on maze. I remembered maze killed my PC but now I recall it was my solo play-through. Yes the encounters are isolated but you won't know on your first play-through, and without some trial-and-error (or good knowledge on the spell) you wouldn't know imprisonment bypasses SR and spell turning, it is far from written on the wall that you should use spell immunity abjuration. So is it dumb easy as Andrej as making out to be? I think it is a very unfair assessment.

Except most non-caster encounters didn't require spells at all. You don't need to use up spells to beat back a bunch of orcs, and spells other than Haste are pretty useless against stone/adamantite golems.

The two would-be exceptions are the Beholder Lair and Mind Flayer Lair in the Underdark. The Mind Flayer Lair is ruined by the fact that the game hands you a ton of items that make it easy, and the Beholder Lair calls for a rest anyway, because you normally don't prepare enough Spell Turning-type spells in a day to get through it.

There aren't only orcs in BG2. I'd say there are enough encounters that call for the use of spells, especially the later part of the game. Example: demons, vampires, drows, shadow thieves and their invis pots.

Dear felicity, you are retarded. I will not answer to the things who others have already aptly answered for me.

Stop crying. I didn't expect any "answer" from you. You may as well shut up, all you said have been crap.

Dragons are not regular caster battles.

It's caster battle nonetheless, and there are quite a few in game. Caster aren't just mage in dnd, cleric/druid are also caster.

I never said debuff=breach, but i did say that debuff=breach-type-spells (examples are breach, pierce magic, dude's warding whip).

And that's the meaning I'm using. Afaik only Breach/dispel magic/remove magic can break combat buff like protection from magic weapon, all other breach spells are for spell protection like spell turning for instance. And what about illusion + non-detection? Which buffs for what encounters? No need to think at all? Really don't push yourself too hard.

No, in a difficulty perspective one should try to see how difficult the game actually is, not how difficult it is if you start tying your hands behind your back. As for reloading, if a character gets gibbed or have reason to be unsatisfied with how the encounter went - i reload. I'm not playing BGII for that roguelike feel.

Not resting every 5 steps = tying your hands behind your back? Your back must be quite easy to bend, I'll be careful not to sit on you then. Serious, if you want to discuss about difficulty, there need to be some conditions. I'm not saying you shouldn't reload at all, but you need to take save/load into the picture when we're discussing difficulty, and particularly your claim - don't need brain if you don't want to. If you reload whenever you gameover, of course you don't need to think, you'll never fail provided you reload. Any game with save/load feature is the same. But this doesn't say a lot about the caster battle in BG2. I don't think it's fair to say spaming mindlessly is easy, when you rest every each encounter. If you don't do that, the difficulty is good enough to catch you off guard and make you reload every now and then. What more do you want? REJECTED stamp on your face? I can offer you my bootie if you so incline.

 

[Elric]

Yes I stand corrected on maze. I remembered maze killed my PC but now I recall it was my solo play-through. Yes the encounters are isolated but you won't know on your first play-through, and without some trial-and-error (or good knowledge on the spell) you wouldn't know imprisonment bypasses SR and spell turning, it is far from written on the wall that you should use spell immunity abjuration. So is it dumb easy as Andrej as making out to be? I think it is a very unfair assessment.

Its kind of hard to not realize the encounters are isolated. Demilich has a collection quest building up to it. You're told about Elder Orb Beholder and the Lich in Ust Natha well before you encounter them.

BG2 is not "dumb easy" as Andrej says it is. I found combat to be more interesting than many other RPGs, such as everyone's favorite Bugbear Genocide Simulator (good engine, but interesting combat? Come on...). Still, I wouldn't call the combat hard unless modded with something like Sword Coast Stratagems.

There aren't only orcs in BG2. I'd say there are enough encounters that call for the use of spells, especially the later part of the game. Example: demons, vampires, drows, shadow thieves and their invis pots.

Most of the demons I remember were isolated encounters or among a few other demons. They're not "standard-fare dungeon monsters." Vampires were ridiculously easy once you got the pendant that gives you immunity to level drain (and even without it, you just make your non-casters take hits, and let your cleric use Restoration on anyone who took level drain). Drow give you LESS reason to expend spells, not more, because they have spell resistance. Shadow thieves are annoying, but by the time you meet them in fair numbers, 2nd level slots are worthless enough that you can prep a bunch of See Invsibility spells without causing any real detriment to your power.

And that's the meaning I'm using. Afaik only Breach/dispel magic/remove magic can break combat buff like protection from magic weapon, all other breach spells are for spell protection like spell turning for instance. And what about illusion + non-detection? Which buffs for what encounters? No need to think at all? Really don't push yourself too hard.

The thing is, as its implemented in un-modded BG2, Spell Turning type spells don't block Breach. This means that if you have 2-3 fighters, you can pretty much just Breach and go in, without having to break Spell Turnings first. This is fixed in SCSII, where Spell Turning DOES affect Breach.

Also, Non-Detection is worthless spell. It stops See Invisibility and Invisibility Purge, but Detect Illusion and True Sight break it.

 

[Andrej]

I'm not saying you shouldn't reload at all, but you need to take save/load into the picture when we're discussing difficulty, and particularly your claim - don't need brain if you don't want to. If you reload whenever you gameover, of course you don't need to think, you'll never fail provided you reload. Any game with save/load feature is the same. But this doesn't say a lot about the caster battle in BG2. I don't think it's fair to say spaming mindlessly is easy, when you rest every each encounter. If you don't do that, the difficulty is good enough to catch you off guard and make you reload every now and then. What more do you want? REJECTED stamp on your face? I can offer you my bootie if you so incline.

I think it's fair to say that spamming mindlessly is easy, considering the fact that it's spamming and easy.

As for what I want, I'm glad you agree with the fact that the game is easy and requires no real thought given the options available to the player.

 

[hiver]

requires no real thought given the options available to the player.

ahhh cut the crap already.

 

[zaarin888]

Hey, fuckface. Knock off the image spam. -> Calis

 

[Forest Dweller]

Anyone know how to make an image bigger in a thread?

Alright, I figured it out myself.

This is the error I get when trying to install the widescreen mod. Anyone know what to do? I tried searching the forums there but it wasn't very helpful.