Baldur's Gate The Baldur's Gate Series Thread

[NecroLord]

Thief kits are a joke compared to any multiclass. If you consider

Bounty Hunter gets access to some pretty interesting tricks...
Has a very awesome "Maze" trap.
Swashbuckler can be an excellent fighter, with a very good AC, but he loses his ability to backstab.
Finally, the Use Any Item HLA is just incredible. Bards also get access to it.

 

[Average Manatee]

I was talking specifically about BG1. You're not getting any great thief kit abilities in BG1, you're just suffering a complete lack of thief skill points which means you probably need to take a 2nd thief with you. Meanwhile fighter/thief is a god tier class that loses virtually nothing compared to a pure fighter (no grandmastery in BG1) while also getting massive backstabs and covering traps.

Also Swashbuckler is horrible, never use it. Its AC is trash until it gets Use Any Item (basically you can't actually go toe to toe with enemies for all of BG1 and half of BG2), it can't hit things in melee (THAC0 progression still worse than a fighter), it barely even makes attacks (no APR from specialization/grandmastery and none from reaching level 7/13), and it has trash HP because it doesn't get CON bonuses above 16 like fighters do. Fighter/Thief is literally everything a Swashbuckler wants to be but better and even gets backstabbing and assassination as well. Even ignoring that a fighter/thief can deal something like 3-4x as much damage in melee as a swashbuckler can and looking purely at high level tanking, the AC advantage of Swashbuckler is negated by the fact that they won't get Hardiness.

 

[NecroLord]

Fighter/Thief is literally everything a Swashbuckler wants to be but better and even gets backstabbing and assassination as well.

No arguments here.
Still, I always played the original Baldur's Gate as vanilla as possible. No kits or anything. For the sake of tradition, I guess.

 

[Jvegi]

When you're playing at those difficulties suboptimal crap like Swashbuckler just doesn't fly. Roleplaying and cool kits lose their allure when dps is lacking and reloads frequent. It kinda sucks that available options are rather limited at that level.

I feel like playing bg1 with scs now, never done it.

 

[Chippy]

I hate to ask but are Beamdog still patching BG:EE?. I'm happy to play the game with mods available, but it would have been interesting to see what the modding community came up with if they weren't concerned about compatibility with new patches every few years.

 

[Brimruk]

I hate to ask but are Beamdog still patching BG:EE?. I'm happy to play the game with mods available, but it would have been interesting to see what the modding community came up with if they weren't concerned about compatibility with new patches every few years.

2.6.6 was the latest I'm seeing on Steam and that was from May 2021; 2.6, that came out in April, promised "we're still working on future updates"

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Holy shit: 5d8 breath weapon, -2 AC, 50% FR and 18 spells per day (instead of 22) in BG + Tales

And then after that it's weak in bg2 and you're stuck with -1 spell per day.

So it's overpowered in BG1 and underpowered in BG2.

The original Baldur's Gate shouldn't be played with class kits.

"Shouldn't be" and "wasn't meant to be" are two different things. And it's a lot more than kits you should axe if you want to play it as it was originally designed.

If you want the true original experience, play the original release and not Beamdog's engine port.

 

[Johannes]

Having one less spell isn't a huge deal.

Holy shit: 5d8 breath weapon, -2 AC, 50% FR and 18 spells per day (instead of 22) in BG + Tales

And then after that it's weak in bg2 and you're stuck with -1 spell per day.

So it's overpowered in BG1 and underpowered in BG2

Looks fine in bg2 still, the breath has the benefit of ignoring MR and some spell defenses, undispellable FR is good as is extra HP.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

I hate to ask but are Beamdog still patching BG:EE?. I'm happy to play the game with mods available, but it would have been interesting to see what the modding community came up with if they weren't concerned about compatibility with new patches every few years.

At times, I think. I just disabled the updates on GOG.

I think the real roadblock to modding is the engine and the lack of easy to use mod tools for it.

 

[NecroLord]

the breath has the benefit of ignoring MR and some spell defenses, undispellable FR is good as is extra HP.

Dragon's Breath arcane HLA is superior in every way. Breaks through magic resistance and does massive 20d10 damage.

 

[Parabalus]

Some interesting kits for multiclasses (i.e. fighter/mage -> Eldritch Knight) are available for the EEs via mods.

 

[Chippy]

Did you guys know there's x3 tiers to typical NPC responses based on your charisma in BG1?. I'm playing a character with a charisma of 3 just for laughs and initially Winthrop is not impressed with me trying to be jovial. And later on Viconia just walks off when I save her. She'll give you a short thrift response if you have a charisma of 8 (approx) but still join, and a nice response over that.

 

[Average Manatee]

IIRC it's not usually a charisma check but a reaction check, which includes charisma but also includes reputation.

 

[Johannes]

the breath has the benefit of ignoring MR and some spell defenses, undispellable FR is good as is extra HP.

Dragon's Breath arcane HLA is superior in every way. Breaks through magic resistance and does massive 20d10 damage.

And?

 

[NecroLord]

And?

And what?

 

[octavius]

And...barbecue?

 

[Chippy]

IIRC it's not usually a charisma check but a reaction check, which includes charisma but also includes reputation.

I think it was charisma only here with Viconia as I bumped up rep to 20 and she still left me hanging. From memory the manual says reaction check is both as you say. But this was vanilla BG so maybe a bug or not working as described there and as suggested on the character sheet.

 

[NecroLord]

IIRC it's not usually a charisma check but a reaction check, which includes charisma but also includes reputation.

I think it was charisma only here with Viconia as I bumped up rep to 20 and she still left me hanging. From memory the manual says reaction check is both as you say. But this was vanilla BG so maybe a bug or not working as described there and as suggested on the character sheet.

Bitch left you hanging?
How rude.

 

[Average Manatee]

According to the wiki it does seem that the charisma factor is a lot bigger than the reputation factor after all:

https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Reaction

So if you have 1 charisma you have -10 while 20 rep will only improve that to -6. Though it could also just be a charisma check. It'd make more sense for an evil character like Viconia to not care about your rep (not that things in BG care about making sense).

 

[Lagole Gon]

No homo, but his voice is hot.

 

[ga♥]

According to the wiki it does seem that the charisma factor is a lot bigger than the reputation factor after all:

https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Reaction

So if you have 1 charisma you have -10 while 20 rep will only improve that to -6. Though it could also just be a charisma check. It'd make more sense for an evil character like Viconia to not care about your rep (not that things in BG care about making sense).

Actual stats check in bg1 and bg2 are quite rare, and alignment ones are even rarer (only 1 in ToB AFAIK)

 

[Ryzer]

No homo, but his voice is hot.

 

[ga♥]

No homo, but his voice is hot.

 

[Ryzer]

No homo, but his voice is hot.

Nothing beats the french version in that category, it's even better when you understand it or more cringe, it depends.

 

[CHEMS]

Is the enhanced version worth it? It's on sale right now