Baldur's Gate & Baldur's Gate II Mod Thread

[rusty_shackleford]

How is losing a fight with SCS installed, reloading, and improving your tactics based on your failed attempt different than literally any other game wherein you do not beat every encounter upon the first attempt?

rote memorization is not a substitute for good design
hope that clears things up for you

 

[chuft]

SCS is highly customizable, and even on harshest settings all fights are still winnable on first try if you have a competent party and aren't a retard.

I believed this kind of nonsense until I tried it and got TPK'd in Nashkel by a no-save color spray when I entered a tent. Real tactical. Real bullshit is more like it.

Oh no, enemy mages can use same spells as your mages, what a bullshit

Actually, it sounds like it was using the IWD version of Color Spray. BG's color spray is pretty useless. I don't believe either work RAW.

BGT uses BG2 spells, maybe that's different. All I know is the encounter was instant death, no "tactics" were involved.

 

[chuft]

Quote from SCS designer: "That Nashkel tent encounter is one of the harder ones in the game."

And that's without the BG2 bug where you don't wake up when hit.

 

[Shaki]

SCS is highly customizable, and even on harshest settings all fights are still winnable on first try if you have a competent party and aren't a retard.

I believed this kind of nonsense until I tried it and got TPK'd in Nashkel by a no-save color spray when I entered a tent. Real tactical. Real bullshit is more like it.

Oh no, enemy mages can use same spells as your mages, what a bullshit

SCS makes the conjurer in there level 6, so he is immune to yours, while your party gets wiped out by his. Have you even played?

He was always level 6, but the vanilla game only allowed him to cast couple of shitty spells, while in SCS mages get access to the same selection as player.
You can do exactly the same thing to lower leveled enemies, as he did to you.
Instead of crying, just don't fight lvl 6 mage at lvl 3 or smth? Whole thing you describe is a huge

 

[rusty_shackleford]

SCS is highly customizable, and even on harshest settings all fights are still winnable on first try if you have a competent party and aren't a retard.

I believed this kind of nonsense until I tried it and got TPK'd in Nashkel by a no-save color spray when I entered a tent. Real tactical. Real bullshit is more like it.

Oh no, enemy mages can use same spells as your mages, what a bullshit

SCS makes the conjurer in there level 6, so he is immune to yours, while your party gets wiped out by his. Have you even played?

He was always level 6, but the vanilla game only allowed him to cast couple of shitty spells, while in SCS mages get access to the same selection as player.
You can do exactly the same thing to lower leveled enemies, as he did to you.
Instead of crying, just don't fight lvl 6 mage at lvl 3 or smth? Whole thing you describe is a huge

An encounter where you walk into the room and immediately die sounds like a poorly designed one to me.
But hey, what would I know, I just think encounters should be designed like they would be at tabletop rather than designed around savescumming.

 

[Shaki]

SCS is highly customizable, and even on harshest settings all fights are still winnable on first try if you have a competent party and aren't a retard.

I believed this kind of nonsense until I tried it and got TPK'd in Nashkel by a no-save color spray when I entered a tent. Real tactical. Real bullshit is more like it.

Oh no, enemy mages can use same spells as your mages, what a bullshit

SCS makes the conjurer in there level 6, so he is immune to yours, while your party gets wiped out by his. Have you even played?

He was always level 6, but the vanilla game only allowed him to cast couple of shitty spells, while in SCS mages get access to the same selection as player.
You can do exactly the same thing to lower leveled enemies, as he did to you.
Instead of crying, just don't fight lvl 6 mage at lvl 3 or smth? Whole thing you describe is a huge

An encounter where you walk into the room and immediately die sounds like a poorly designed one to me.
But hey, what would I know, I just think encounters should be designed like they would be at tabletop rather than designed around savescumming.

Vanilla game also had a lot of these. It's a staple of good games in the genre, enemies aren't placed conveniently to provide smooth difficulty curve for a player, at any point you can take a wrong turn and find yourself facing something far beyond your ability to fight. BG2 especially had shitloads of encounters like that.

Even your beloved Divinity:OS 1/2 did it a lot.

If you don't like being surprised, wiped and having to reload, maybe you should go play Disco Elysium instead

 

[rusty_shackleford]

SCS is highly customizable, and even on harshest settings all fights are still winnable on first try if you have a competent party and aren't a retard.

I believed this kind of nonsense until I tried it and got TPK'd in Nashkel by a no-save color spray when I entered a tent. Real tactical. Real bullshit is more like it.

Oh no, enemy mages can use same spells as your mages, what a bullshit

SCS makes the conjurer in there level 6, so he is immune to yours, while your party gets wiped out by his. Have you even played?

He was always level 6, but the vanilla game only allowed him to cast couple of shitty spells, while in SCS mages get access to the same selection as player.
You can do exactly the same thing to lower leveled enemies, as he did to you.
Instead of crying, just don't fight lvl 6 mage at lvl 3 or smth? Whole thing you describe is a huge

An encounter where you walk into the room and immediately die sounds like a poorly designed one to me.
But hey, what would I know, I just think encounters should be designed like they would be at tabletop rather than designed around savescumming.

Vanilla game also had a lot of these. It's a staple of good games in the genre, enemies aren't placed conveniently to provide smooth difficulty curve for a dumbass player, you can take a wrong turn and find yourself facing something far beyond your ability to fight. BG2 especially had shitloads of encounter like that.

Even your beloved Divinity:OS 1/2 did it a lot.

If you don't like being surprised, wiped and having to reload, maybe you should go play Disco Elysium instead

how is pressing F9 a form of difficulty?
why do people like design like this? Does it make them feel smart?

 

[Cryomancer]

replay it over and over instead of trying new games, and have all the encounters and enemies memorized.

The point is simple. There aren't a lot of good RPG's. So we have to replay (a lot) the good ones.

------

As for mods, which modds adds new KITS for Magic user? Preferentially from 2E books.

 

[Shaki]

how is pressing F9 a form of difficulty?
why do people like design like this? Does it make them feel smart?

It makes the world feel more alive and believable. It provides tension, because you never know what might be around a corner. It provides you with optional "hard difficulty" fight, if you decide to face that foe despite being underleveled, and immense satisfaction when you're clever, and find a way to beat him. It also provies satisfaction when you don't take the extra challenge, but instead leave him alone for now, but then come back couple levels later to wipe the floor with him.

It gives you choice and agency, lets your choose your own path and adjust difficulty organically instead of just clicking on a button to do so, and prevent the world from feeling "gamey".

What other design do you prefer? Placing only level-appropriate goons on your path, to be rightclicked to death and make you feel better about your skills? Level scaling maybe?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

how is pressing F9 a form of difficulty?
why do people like design like this? Does it make them feel smart?

It makes the world feel more alive and believable. It provides tension, because you never know what might be around a corner. It provides you with optional "hard difficulty" fight, if you decide to face that foe despite being underleveled, and immense satisfaction when you're clever, and find a way to beat him. It also provies satisfaction when you don't take the extra challenge, but instead leave him alone for now, but then come back couple levels later to wipe the floor with him.

What other design do you prefer? Placing only level-appropriate goons on your path, to be rightclicked to death and make you feel better about your skills? Level scaling maybe?

Uhm... how about having a way to flee without having to cheat?
Bonus points if you can pick up the knocked out guy's body and drag him with you.

 

[Jvegi]

This "discussion" is disgusting.

I'm going to go back to playing SCS on hardcore with damage scaling, average hp for party members, and maximum hp for enemies.

You go play vanilla on normal in 2022. I'm sure it's awesome.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

This "discussion" is disgusting.

I'm going to go back to playing SCS on hardcore with damage scaling, average hp for party members, and maximum hp for enemies.

You go play vanilla on normal in 2022. I'm sure it's awesome.

What's the point if you're just going to savescum tho?
"I'm going to go play this game on really hard except enable cheats"
er... have fun

 

[rusty_shackleford]

This "discussion" reminds me of a quote from Gygax

Next those cry babies will be moaning about being turned to stone. Tell the complainers they should be playing a CRPG where they can save and thus avoid all real danger–ues cheat codes too

 

[Shaki]

how is pressing F9 a form of difficulty?
why do people like design like this? Does it make them feel smart?

It makes the world feel more alive and believable. It provides tension, because you never know what might be around a corner. It provides you with optional "hard difficulty" fight, if you decide to face that foe despite being underleveled, and immense satisfaction when you're clever, and find a way to beat him. It also provies satisfaction when you don't take the extra challenge, but instead leave him alone for now, but then come back couple levels later to wipe the floor with him.

What other design do you prefer? Placing only level-appropriate goons on your path, to be rightclicked to death and make you feel better about your skills? Level scaling maybe?

Uhm... how about having a way to flee without having to cheat?
Bonus points if you can pick up the knocked out guy's body and drag him with you.

Sure, I would like encounter like that to have a way to run without pressing F9 and just not triggering it in the first place. It would be perfect. But I will gladly take the imperfect version over the usually offered alternatives. Ultimately "press F9 to reload" and not trigger the encounter in the first place, or "press X button to run", makes no difference to the gameplay, other than a little bit of immersion lost.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

how is pressing F9 a form of difficulty?
why do people like design like this? Does it make them feel smart?

It makes the world feel more alive and believable. It provides tension, because you never know what might be around a corner. It provides you with optional "hard difficulty" fight, if you decide to face that foe despite being underleveled, and immense satisfaction when you're clever, and find a way to beat him. It also provies satisfaction when you don't take the extra challenge, but instead leave him alone for now, but then come back couple levels later to wipe the floor with him.

What other design do you prefer? Placing only level-appropriate goons on your path, to be rightclicked to death and make you feel better about your skills? Level scaling maybe?

Uhm... how about having a way to flee without having to cheat?
Bonus points if you can pick up the knocked out guy's body and drag him with you.

Sure, I would like encounter like that to have a way to run without pressing F9 and just not triggering it in the first place. It would be perfect. But I will gladly take the imperfect version over the usually offered alternatives. Ultimately "press F9 to reload" and not trigger the encounter in the first place, or "press X button to run", makes no difference to the gameplay, other than a little bit of immersion lost.

In the same way that leveling up and cheating are the same, I suppose.

 

[Shaki]

how is pressing F9 a form of difficulty?
why do people like design like this? Does it make them feel smart?

It makes the world feel more alive and believable. It provides tension, because you never know what might be around a corner. It provides you with optional "hard difficulty" fight, if you decide to face that foe despite being underleveled, and immense satisfaction when you're clever, and find a way to beat him. It also provies satisfaction when you don't take the extra challenge, but instead leave him alone for now, but then come back couple levels later to wipe the floor with him.

What other design do you prefer? Placing only level-appropriate goons on your path, to be rightclicked to death and make you feel better about your skills? Level scaling maybe?

Uhm... how about having a way to flee without having to cheat?
Bonus points if you can pick up the knocked out guy's body and drag him with you.

Sure, I would like encounter like that to have a way to run without pressing F9 and just not triggering it in the first place. It would be perfect. But I will gladly take the imperfect version over the usually offered alternatives. Ultimately "press F9 to reload" and not trigger the encounter in the first place, or "press X button to run", makes no difference to the gameplay, other than a little bit of immersion lost.

In the same way that leveling up and cheating are the same, I suppose.

Do you only play RPGs on ironman?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

how is pressing F9 a form of difficulty?
why do people like design like this? Does it make them feel smart?

It makes the world feel more alive and believable. It provides tension, because you never know what might be around a corner. It provides you with optional "hard difficulty" fight, if you decide to face that foe despite being underleveled, and immense satisfaction when you're clever, and find a way to beat him. It also provies satisfaction when you don't take the extra challenge, but instead leave him alone for now, but then come back couple levels later to wipe the floor with him.

What other design do you prefer? Placing only level-appropriate goons on your path, to be rightclicked to death and make you feel better about your skills? Level scaling maybe?

Uhm... how about having a way to flee without having to cheat?
Bonus points if you can pick up the knocked out guy's body and drag him with you.

Sure, I would like encounter like that to have a way to run without pressing F9 and just not triggering it in the first place. It would be perfect. But I will gladly take the imperfect version over the usually offered alternatives. Ultimately "press F9 to reload" and not trigger the encounter in the first place, or "press X button to run", makes no difference to the gameplay, other than a little bit of immersion lost.

In the same way that leveling up and cheating are the same, I suppose.

Do you only play RPGs on ironman?

Often yes, but I use a self-made script to backup my saves in case of bugs. I've had a few games where I had to revert to an older state to fix bugs, otherwise I roll with what the game gives me.
The problem is that games frequently aren't designed with this in mind and give you scenarios like the aforementioned one that had no way to avoid it unless you already knew about it. Yes, it's a mod, but this has become more common in cRPG design. Compounded by things such as e.g., you can't split the party and scout ahead into areas that require zone transitions in this game, otherwise it could have been avoided.

Scouting ahead by party splitting is how I avoid such deaths in DOS1/2 as you mentioned earlier, btw. You can even use the pyramid to quickly get back to your party if you find yourself in a bad spot.

 

[Shaki]

Often yes, but I use a self-made script to backup my saves in case of bugs. I've had a few games where I had to revert to an older state to fix bugs, otherwise I roll with what the game gives me.
The problem is that games frequently aren't designed with this in mind and give you scenarios like the aforementioned one that had no way to avoid it unless you already knew about it. Yes, it's a mod, but this has become more common in cRPG design. Compounded by things such as e.g., you can't split the party and scout ahead into areas that require zone transitions in this game, otherwise it could have been avoided.

Scouting ahead by party splitting is how I avoid such deaths in DOS1/2 as you mentioned earlier, btw. You can even use the pyramid to quickly get back to your party if you find yourself in a bad spot.

I know, pyramids were precisely the thing I thought of when I mentioned "pressing X button to run out of combat, instead of pressing F9" being ultimately the same shit.

Anyway, when you die, do you cheat and restart the game, or do you delete it from your hard drive and never touch it again?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

when you die

It's simple, I just don't.

 

[Shaki]

when you die

It's simple, I just don't.

Truly a god gamer

 

[Cryomancer]

In P&P - If I'm dying, I will attempt to flee. Why with CRPG's I should't do the same and just quickload?

 

[chuft]

It's not comparable for what should be obvious reasons. If you fight and lose you end up with valuable info about enemy capabilities. If you flee when you see what you're up against, you do not get all that info.

An encounter inside a tent with a guy who instantly knocks out your entire party and then massacres them cannot be won (or even knowingly delayed until you are higher level/more prepared) without absorbing the hit and seeing the result and thus what his attack is. Even if you did flee the second you stepped inside you would be fleeing from just a single guy with unknown capabilities, why would you do that? You don't see a dragon or something, he just looks like any other guy in a robe. You can't see his class, level or spell repertoire. If you try to fight to find out you just die and now you know what he's packing. This is just poor design on SCS' part.

 

[octavius]

I finished BG2 once, in 2001 or whatever it was. I don't need some insane difficulty mod for people who like powergaming and cheese and replay it over and over instead of trying new games, and have all the encounters and enemies memorized.

You never thought of scouting ahead in the BG games???

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I finished BG2 once, in 2001 or whatever it was. I don't need some insane difficulty mod for people who like powergaming and cheese and replay it over and over instead of trying new games, and have all the encounters and enemies memorized.

You never thought of scouting ahead in the BG games???

His example can't be scouted, it requires a scene transition and you immediately die if you fail the save.

 

[chuft]

Same problem with wandering monsters on the way to Gnoll Fortress, I was attacked by ogrillons, and while engaged, had an invisible ogre mage (with 5 spells due to SCS) cast Sleep on my level 2 party 5 times from somewhere behind me. Viconia survived the encounter - this was often the only way I won these battles, with magic resistance - but raising 5 evil companions over and over is bankrupting, and carrying their stuff is a pain in the ass/impossible especially for her with her weak strength and limited inventory.