Baldur's Gate The Baldur's Gate Series Thread

[mediocrepoet]

RTFM only to find out multi-class druid/fighter aren't allowed to wear metal armor and the game itself is wrong

Well, it's hard to argue with that.

RTFM with the expectation that maybe 85% of it is accurate and the other things got Biowared.

 

[oldmanpaco]

RTFM only to find out multi-class druid/fighter aren't allowed to wear metal armor and the game itself is wrong

Some rules I like, some rules I don't like.

 

[mediocrepoet]

If you duel/multi class do you lose out on level 8/9th cleric and Druid spells?

Jaheria and myself only go up to 7th level and Anomen.

There are no 8th/9th level divine spell. Goddamn zoomer with no knowledge of best D&D.

On this note, smaug you should really RTFM.

RTFM?

Read the fucking manual. It helps when playing older games. And there are tons of wikis and fanpages that have all the rules, etc.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/rtfm

 

[smaug]

If you duel/multi class do you lose out on level 8/9th cleric and Druid spells?

Jaheria and myself only go up to 7th level and Anomen.

There are no 8th/9th level divine spell. Goddamn zoomer with no knowledge of best D&D.

Then why the fuck do clerics level slower than wizards?

 

[oldmanpaco]

If you duel/multi class do you lose out on level 8/9th cleric and Druid spells?

Jaheria and myself only go up to 7th level and Anomen.

There are no 8th/9th level divine spell. Goddamn zoomer with no knowledge of best D&D.

Then why the fuck do clerics level slower than wizards?

Josh didn't invent balance until 2009.

 

[Cael]

Because Gygax thought healing spells + armour = overpowered.

 

[octavius]

RTFM only to find out multi-class druid/fighter aren't allowed to wear metal armor and the game itself is wrong

Well, it's hard to argue with that.

RTFM with the expectation that maybe 85% of it is accurate and the other things got Biowared.

Like SSI was 100% accurate.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Then why the fuck do clerics level slower than wizards?

In every version of D&D/AD&D, clerics begin by leveling more quickly than fighters, who in turn level more quickly than magic-users. Gygax apparently couldn't help himself in introducing certain irregularities to what is largely an exponential growth in experience points (up to a certain level, at which point growth becomes linear), so in OD&D and AD&D there is a period in which magic-users advance more quickly before reverting to the norm of needing more experience to reach a particular level than the other two classes, a quirk that was carried over into AD&D 2nd edition. This discrepancy does not exist in Holmes "Blue Book" D&D, B/X Moldvay/Cook D&D, and Mentzer BECMI D&D.

 

[Storyfag]

Jaheria (...) and Anomen.

KYS.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Then why the fuck do clerics level slower than wizards?

In every version of D&D/AD&D, clerics begin by leveling more quickly than fighters, who in turn level more quickly than magic-users. Gygax apparently couldn't help himself in introducing certain irregularities to what is largely an exponential growth in experience points (up to a certain level, at which point growth becomes linear), so in OD&D and AD&D there is a period in which magic-users advance more quickly before reverting to the norm of needing more experience to reach a particular level than the other two classes, a quirk that was carried over into AD&D 2nd edition. This discrepancy does not exist in Holmes "Blue Book" D&D, B/X Moldvay/Cook D&D, and Mentzer BECMI D&D.

Better than all classes level up at the same speed.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Then why the fuck do clerics level slower than wizards?

In every version of D&D/AD&D, clerics begin by leveling more quickly than fighters, who in turn level more quickly than magic-users. Gygax apparently couldn't help himself in introducing certain irregularities to what is largely an exponential growth in experience points (up to a certain level, at which point growth becomes linear), so in OD&D and AD&D there is a period in which magic-users advance more quickly before reverting to the norm of needing more experience to reach a particular level than the other two classes, a quirk that was carried over into AD&D 2nd edition. This discrepancy does not exist in Holmes "Blue Book" D&D, B/X Moldvay/Cook D&D, and Mentzer BECMI D&D.

Better than all classes level up at the same speed.

Honestly this is one of the best ways to ensure the player feels constant progression. In modern games everyone lvls at the same time, then no one lvls for hours. In BG it seems like every few encounters/maps/quests someone is gaining a level. Way more fun.

 

[octavius]

Things like extra XP (5%?) for having prime requisites over a certain number, and getting individual XP for things like picking locks and scribing scrolls also helps.

 

[smaug]

I haven’t started CH3 yet as I’m exploring all the content in CH2 that I can access, this might make the latter game a bit bland. However, I’m very impressed by the general quality of interesting content even if it could be structured better.

It’s interesting to see just how many ways a player could potentially start the game and play through it given the mass freedom you have. I already played some of the beginning before this playthrough so not everything was fresh but most of it still is and was.

Definitely a big improvement over Baldur’s Gate 1, despite me preferring it’s structure (theoretically speaking).

Now attempting to kill this damn shadow dragon.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Each class having their own leveling curve made them feel unique and added flavor. A mage leveling slower than a fighter just feels natural.
It also gives inherent advantages to things that are based on caster level rather than spell level. e.g., Bards are very good dispellers due to them(along with thief) having the fastest level progression. Their spells are also more difficult to dispel due to this, similarly mage spells end up being rather easy to dispel, and multi-class characters are even more vulnerable to dispels.

smaug
FYI, clerics only lag behind in XP required for a short period of time. Once you get into the teens, iirc, they should be leveling faster than anything other than a thief/bard.

 

[unseeingeye]

Each class having their own leveling curve is definitely one of the major appeals of those games and I've always liked the way early AD&D editions handled this. The massive experience jump required to level from 14 to 15 as a Druid bothers a lot of people, and perhaps it was lazy for them to have left this as it is but it does make sense considering the level requirement for Archdruid and the incredible advance in power and spells the Druid gets at level 15.

The Shadow Dragon with the "name" is a decent challenge and a perfect first dragon to take on. There are multiple ways to get through so many of the battles once you grasp all of the rules and limitations so I take a break between each playthrough because otherwise I'll get lazy and start doing stupid things like fighting liches by throwing Azuredge at them and reloading until it works, which is not at all enjoyable.

 

[smaug]

Killed Firkraag and got the The Holy Avenger (fookin nice, though it’s wasted on Keldorn because his whole class is dispel spam). His dungeon was awesome, lots of varied encounters. Dragon sword that you get is dumb itemization though because the dragon halberd goes to waste to, but other than that it was good.

 

[Cryomancer]

Before Woketards, there was a canonical ending for the bhaalspawn?

 

[Cael]

Before Woketards, there was a canonical ending for the bhaalspawn?

There was a series of books. It wasn't well received.

 

[underground nymph]

Did anybody try any of the BGs with an integer scaling instead of the widescreen mod? How is it? I’m struggling to find any screenshots.

 

[Brancaleone]

Did anybody try any of the BGs with an integer scaling instead of the widescreen mod? How is it? I’m struggling to find any screenshots.

Some time ago I used the Widescreen mod to set the game's resolution at one fourth of my desktop resolution and then used Integer Scaler, and it worked fine (I compared screenshots to be sure).

 

[Chippy]

Things like extra XP (5%?) for having prime requisites over a certain number, and getting individual XP for things like picking locks and scribing scrolls also helps.

Didn't IWD1 have that? I distinctly remember it being talked about in a pre-release preview. I haven't played for years, but pretty sure characters with over 18 in a prime requisite stat would get more XP. Might have thrown the balance off (not that they gave a shit) but I would have thought Beamshit would have looked into that and implemented it into BGEE.

Or at least how it was done with WIS in PST.

 

[Sunri]

Spoiler

 

[underground nymph]

Playing BG1 with the RTX’s integer scaling is so much joy tbh. Made me realize that the widescreen mod takes much of the intimacy away by exposing large chunks of the world to a player.
Also now I can play the original 5 discs edition on a big display with fairly unnoticeable borders. A bit lo-fi due to my display having pretty big pixel size (27”1920x1080)
Definitive nostalgic replay.

 

[d1r]

Playing BG1 with the RTX’s integer scaling is so much joy tbh. Made me realize that the widescreen mod takes much of the intimacy away by exposing large chunks of the world to a player.
Also now I can play the original 5 discs edition on a big display with fairly unnoticeable borders. A bit lo-fi due to my display having pretty big pixel size (27”1920x1080)
Definitive nostalgic replay.

I really wanna see how this looks like.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

"widescreen mods" that let you see more area of the map than intended are just cheating

also tends to make the games unplayable, no idea how people play older games with characters 3px big and the UI barely visible