Curious things about Baldur's Gate...

Lateralus

There are some things about Baldur's Gate that I find curious. I don't mind imperfection, the game is thoroughly enjoyable and I certainly couldn't create a better one! So without whining, let me point out a few things that are missing from PnP and some things that are just, curious...

Darkness and Light spells: These are perhaps the 2 most commonly used spells in the PnP realms. I imagine they would work well with this game system, and bring about new challenges and cool effects. I find it curious that they don't exist...

Infravision: It's cool how everybody lights up red, I love that about it. But, I don't think any penalties are being applied to fighting in darkness. Which kind of makes racial perks, magic items, and spells that provide it, uninteresting. That's curious...

Sleep spells: NPC's never use them. Which is AWESOME! I hate sleep time. But, I find it curious as to why the most powerful low level spell is never memorized by the bad guys...

That's all for now!

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BelgarathMTH

The only rpg I've ever played that implemented the Light spell as a critical must-have-memorized spell was Might and Magic 6-8, and that series did it beautifully.

There was no need to apply melee penalties - if you didn't have a "Torch" spell, you couldn't see. You'd have the interface surrounding a black screen. In a 3-D environment, where death by falling was a constant possibility (which also made Feather Fall a must-have spell.) And the monsters could still see and attack you just fine.

You also needed Water Walk or Fly to get to many areas of the game, and if you fell in water with armor and no Water Walk, you promptly drowned to death.

As for the Sleep spell in BG, the programmers must have felt that it would be too discouraging for first level players to keep getting killed by it, as there is no defense, except being a fifth level character.

You might enjoy the Sword Coast Strategems mod, which makes the AI fight with all the same tricks you use, including Sleep spells. People who play with it learn who in the game has Sleep prepared, and avoid those fights until fifth level. Which is hard, because there are a lot of creatures and mages in the SCS game who cast Sleep. And, all spiders cast Web spells on sight.

I tried SCS once, and I couldn't handle it. I'm just not that much of a masochist.

EDIT: I just thought of another game series that does a good job implementing the problems of and the magical or mundane solutions to, light and darkness: The Elder Scrolls series (Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim). I always get my alteration skill in those games pretty high, even with melee toons, just by the need to cast Light again and again.

franco

We had a thread here a few days ago that discussed infravision and the fact that in BG it doesn't seem to affect the game very much. There are scrolls for infravision, but you don't need them and players usually sell them. There's also a helm of infravision, but it doesn't affect the game.

I think that is because the developers never got to the point where they could implement penalties for the party being in the dark without a light source. The game was already going to be a hugely successful classic without having to develop this aspect.

I would suggest that a -2 to Hit penalty and a +2 to Armor Class would start to make it clear that the party would need to do something about the darkness in dungeons or caverns etc. The penalty would be removed if a light spell is cast or at least one character has a torch equipped (probably in the shield spot).
Of course characters with infravision would also have no penalty.

I think that adding this aspect would significantly increase the sense of danger in the game and give it the atmosphere that we enjoyed in the PnP games.

Lateralus

belgarathmth said:

As for the Sleep spell in BG, the programmers must have felt that it would be too discouraging for first level players to keep getting killed by it, as there is no defense, except being a fifth level character.

This is true, but I think tweaking the spell to make it less powerful would have better served the game, and allowed NPCs to implement it. I would allow victims to automatically wake up when they receive damage while slumbering under the effects of the spell. As it stands now, everybody who fails to save is for all intents and purposes, dead. That's too powerful for a 1st level spell. Actually, it's more powerful than fireball in many ways, for it can be cast into a crowd of friendlies without harming anybody. I would also allow for a bonus to the save, much like how Charm Person works.

These changes would improve the game in a few areas, and make the elven perks significant, for now they will actually be attack by that spell.