What are some examples of "Cheesy" play in BG-TotSC. Also what is "Kiting"?
Eadwyn_G8keeper
Member Posts: 541
Not quite sure what folks mean by "Cheesy" . For example, what about dismissing most of your NPCs temporarily when Charname cashes in Bassilus Quest for XP gain ?
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"Cheesey" usually refers to tactics that take advantage of flaws in the game design, whereby someone achieves a desirable outcome much more easily than should be expected for their power level and the challenge presented. Extreme examples of this are often referred to as "exploits."
Example: A player learns that they can gain unlimited tomes of strength by exporting and re-importing a character into the game equipped with the item, and quickly max out their strength to 25.
"Cheese" is a term that originated as a bastardized form of the word "cheat" with Korean StarCraft players; it meant any tactic that, while technically legal, involved unreliable and/or unlikely factors to be effective, making it devastatingly deadly if things aligned, but easily crushed if not (adding an undesirable amount of randomness to an otherwise strategic game).
In BG, "cheese" usually means exploits of the game engine of some sort. To what degree is a topic for heated debate. For example, some people consider a Kensai->Mage dual class to be "cheese" (in BG2) because it is ridiculously powerful, even though it does not violate any game rules or exploit any bugs. Other cheese includes the aforementioned Mislead-Backstab-abuse, which is widely considered to be unintended engine behavior. Some other popular examples, from old and current versions:
- boxing Drizzt in with NPCs that are then kicked out of the party; this will "imprison" him in a circle of inactive NPCs, allowing you to shoot at him without him being able to move. (fixed in BG:EE)
- using Chain Contingency with Project Image under condition:helpless; this will spawn a whole bunch of images, which in turn can be used to summon a massive army of summoned creatures (more than would otherwise be possible).
- the "Bunny Bomb": using Wish, create a massive swarm of bunnies (I wish for a Horde to overrun my enemies...), then use Wish again to cast Abi-Dhalzim's Horrid Wilting on every unit on the map; the result is a MASSIVE amount of Wiltings that kill everything in sight, often including the game itself (due to graphics overload).
But again: there is no clear definition of what is cheese and what is not. The example you mentioned (kicking out party NPCs before quest turn-in) is often mentioned (also in conjunction with spell-scribing, in BG2). There are many more such cases, but in the end this is a single player game and you have to decide for yourself what you consider too much.
Let's not get into a turf war over semantics. Any action you take whereby you gain an advantage can be legitimately called a "tactic," so by definition, my example follows.
Also, what tools someone uses to do "cheese" is irrelevant. It is the action of circumventing or exploiting the rules that marks it as "cheesey."
The nuances are entirely up to you and there is a gray area here.
Also, again, there is NO CLEAR DEFINITION EITHER WAY. These things cannot be decided, only argued for and against, and debates tend to escalate quickly...
What I don't like doing is deliberately waste a spellcasters spell slot by running in and out of buildings or running out of sight. I kinda wish the spell doesn't get used until it actually hits or takes effect.
I also wish that when you find an enemy, that all of his friends that are with him, engage at the same time. I don't like the idea of pulling an individual enemy one at a time by just getting into line of sight and pulling them back. It doesn't seem right for the encounter. Sadly that can't always be done when some fights force you to step back resulting in a split battle.
Either that or running away and waiting for his protections to wear off.
- Pausing the game.
- Reloading a saved game.
- Playing the game more than once.
- Using the "Reroll" button on character generation.
- Reading an online forum where the game is discussed.
- Using the "Save" button (since you are allowing yourself to reload).
- Reading the 2e D&D rules (gives you an unfair advantage over AIs).
- Registering and posting on an online forum where the game is discussed.
If you do ANY of the above, you are CHEATING, and that makes you a HORRIBLE PERSON.
<- guilty as charged.
If you use a Shadowdancer in a party he won't be so powerful - besides, he now has wrong backstab multipliers - you run a major part of the game with x3 instead of x2 and after the 9th level with x4 instead of x3. In a party play a Shadowdancer gives me so much pleasure!
Africa...
For me, applying my own imagination and devising a satisfactory solution is a Bullseye condition for my purchase of the game. Foraging about in the dark with 5 strangers in Life-or-Death circumstances is just not my kind of thing. There would be at least 25+ of us with guides, logistical support and plenty of Intel. Planning, Logistics and Tactics are much more satisfying personally than Seat-of-the-Pants survival.
Plus I should think that the Devs were all along designing the game as something that would still be great even after the Cheese Pantry was raided for years. That should always be the challenge for Game Designs as opposed to PnP Adventures when the RPing itself can be so much more a part of the experience/fun.
Its all in the Tweaking!! Or maybe I AM, well, as @Nifft has said....inconsiderate. Ruthless perhaps.
Cheers!
It was quite an epic five hour battle. With Drizzt growing belligerent about his request for assistance with the gnolls, Ajantis, Jaheira, Imoen and a sage gnome cleric/illusionist surrounded him, hoping to talk reason with him. With that failing, they decided to give him the silent treatment. As Drizzt shouted into the rain at the Blade standing beyond his reach, the Blade felt compelled to stop the threat his friends faced. He drew his bow and fired arrow after arrow for hours, while his friend Neera reached over the shoulders of her companions with her quarterstaff. Drizzt dodged nearly every blow, but not enough, not nearly enough. As Drizzt struggled with himself--should he break free of the tight confines of this group of four pacifists, even though it might cause them harm?--the rain drops continued to fall, as did the blows from the staff and the bite from the arrows. Eventually, hours later, the skies cleared, and Drizzt lay upon the ground. Drops still fell upon the dirt, tears from the band of companions distraught that they could not peaceably resolve their differences. The Blade gathered Drizzt's gear, vowing to put it to good use, to end the evil plaguing the Sword Coast. Truth be told, he suspected that an evil lurked within his own heart, despite his good intentions.
Oh, uh, or so a friend told me. Yeah, that's the ticket.
I suppose someone could go and compile a comprehensive list of cheese, but that'd be quite the task...
Drizzt, as a native of the Underdark, probably had a lot of trouble adjusting to irrational things like "weather".
Did you know that Drow will look up at the rain falling from the sky, like a bunch of slack-jawed turkeys, and the rain will fall in their mouths until they drown?
Because that's totally what happened, Officer. No need for the Flaming Fist to further investigate the scene of this tragedy. What we should do is go raise money for a nice statue of poor old drowned Drizzt.
Oh wait, my FRIEND did.
cheese is using ways to deal with encounters that although are not cheating,are trying to stretch the rules so strategies that seem odd might be used(and unrealistic),example: setting traps,resting setting traps again or entering the room where a spellcaster is and when he begins casting exiting(so the cast is lost) and rentering till his dangerous spells are depleted,imo ai should be improved so cheese becomes impossible,as it's practically abusing gaps in the rules to kill enemies without actually fighting them
But then some people consider even that to be "cheese". So you go and make a tank, like, say, a Ranger/Cleric, with its defensive buffs. Then people come along and call that cheesy, too. So yeah, what IS "legitimate", really? A vanilla fighter tanking and spanking?
Drizzt can definitely be and has definitely been killed in a huge number of ways. The judgement is out on which of these were "legitimate", though if you asked 50 people about it, you'd probably get 50 different answers and opinions.
Using everything at your disposal at max level ( TotSC/BG:EE ) to take him down in a fair way.