I always play ironman, and never use raise dead type spells on anyone. So I don't really see high HP as a "cheat"
With spell learning I use potions of genius, but find the whole process kinda crappy and unfair to mages. Imagine if druids and clerics had to buy spells then had a risk of failing to learn it... You'd never hear the end of it!
Wow, I'm honestly chocked at how many people actually cheats. What's the point? The whole game is based on rolls and if they don't matter why not just go into cheat mode and instakill all enemies? Man up and play with the hand you're dealt.
On the other hand and if you want to take it to the extremes, I guess you could say that if you can't reload to get better stats you shouldn't be allowed to reload if you die in combat either as it's all based on lucky rolls. You could also say that infinite attribute rolls when you create your character is cheating so I don't know. The only time I've ever "cheated" was when I was rolling a new character and by accident clicked away a 94 roll and added the lost points to my intelligence (I was playing a warrior) with Shadow Keeper.
I have long had a house rule that a roll of 1 for hit points gets to be rerolled. I Carry that over to BG. I play on hard or insane typically, so not having hit points is suicide.
I always play on core rules, and for the most part take whatever I get in terms of hit point roles or spell writing, especially the latter since it is part of the incentive for having a higher intelligence in the first place. I said for the most part because there is one notable exception -- the first two level-ups in BG1. I do drop down to easy when leveling up the first two times to just to make the game (especially the early game) a bit less frustrating. After that, I leave it alone.
With spell learning I use potions of genius, but find the whole process kinda crappy and unfair to mages. Imagine if druids and clerics had to buy spells then had a risk of failing to learn it... You'd never hear the end of it!
After a Specialist Wizard hits 19 INT (95% base chance), it's kind of pointless to use to the INT raising potions, since you get a -15% penalty to your learn spell roll for spells outside of your school specialization. Even if you raised your INT to 25 (100% base chance), you'd still only have an 85% chance to learn a non-specialty school spell.
On the other hand, it's nice to know that learning checks for spells from one's own specialty school will always succeed after one has 18 INT. However, it's not a very worthwhile tradeoff, since the other PnP bonuses for Specialist Wizards were never implemented into the game.
I put it on normal difficulty... when I start the game. And never change it.
Seriously, I've played enough PnP D&D with 5-hit-point wizards. I am in fact doing one at the moment (okay, it's an Elf old-school D&D style, so more fighter/mage, and there's house rules about not dying instantly at 0hp, but still). I play Baldur's Gate for fun.
In the past when we still swapped discs I installed the Max HP mod. Recently I have moved the slider back a notch every even level for max, while uneven levels remained on core for random. In my current playthrough I am only concerned with the first level up.
I prefer enemies to do full damage. I prefer spell scribing to have an element of chance, and to see a use for potions of genius. It was only ever randomized hit points that bothered me. It somewhat stifles the reason behind making constitution a favored attribute at character creation when misfortune befalls successive levels gained. In my youth it drove me mad to see a mage and a thief acquire equal or greater hit points on two consecutive occasions, in comparison to my constitutionally blessed warrior. I later learned that it was unlikely for such to occur, and that it would have more than swung back in favor of the warrior with time, save for the worst of misfortune. I never gave it a chance. The Max HP mod was in to stay.
Personally I've always felt that max hp at level up should be an option you check that's separate from the difficulty slider. Sometimes I might want to do an easier difficulty without max hp since the enemies aren't as tough and it's not necessary, and sometimes I might want to do a higher difficulty with max hp to help with the challenge.
Personally I've always felt that max hp at level up should be an option you check that's separate from the difficulty slider. Sometimes I might want to do an easier difficulty without max hp since the enemies aren't as tough and it's not necessary, and sometimes I might want to do a higher difficulty with max hp to help with the challenge.
@FinneousPJ I'm not arguing that it doesn't. I'm saying I would like it to be a separate checkbox as a modifier for your selected difficulty to make the game slightly easier or slightly harder wherever you have it placed.
I get that, but then you'll have everyone demanding a checkbox for everything: damage rolls, scribing, AI, etc. etc. There's a difficulty slider that encompasses most things that affect difficulty, which makes total sense to me.
I get that, but then you'll have everyone demanding a checkbox for everything: damage rolls, scribing, AI, etc. etc. There's a difficulty slider that encompasses most things that affect difficulty, which makes total sense to me.
Ok, that's fair. I see your point, good sir. Although I must say, when you mentioned the other options people would want, all I could think is "Holy crap, I WISH I could micromanage my difficulty to that degree!" ...Is that sad?
Since BG was originally released, I've felt that there needed to be a difficulty level between Normal and Core. Core would be perfect if not for rolled hit points, which sounds fine until you try to play a level 6 Mage with 7 hit points. Normal takes the doubt out of the question "will my characters be able to survive being hit", but then also monster damage is decreased which feels like an overcorrection. I simulate a middle-ground difficulty setting (max HP rolls, monsters do full damage, death is possible, attempts to learn spells can fail) by playing at Core but dropping the difficulty to Normal when I level a character.
I use mods to maximise my HP and to enable 100% spell memorisation. For HP I don't consider it cheating as from a difficulty point of view I use SCS and also maximise the HP of my enemies. I just want consistency, the same reason it was standardised in D&D 3. For memorisation you can generally deal with the problem with a potion of genius or buy additional scrolls, but for me this is just additional tiresome micro management in a game which already has far too much pointless micro management.
Seriously, if playing on normal difficulty isn't a cheat (which it clearly isn't) than why would using it periodically be considered cheating? I see it as exercising your right to control your game. Maybe this is a little cheesy, but cheating goes too far in my opinion.
We could go crazy with what we call cheating. Is re-rolling your characters attributes 10 times a cheat? How about 1 time? And if so, why in the hell is there a button that allows you to do so? Is using previous knowledge of the game to influence your decisions a cheat? I mean, you shouldn't have that sort of pre-knowledge, right? But once you have it, you can't unhave it, and it's going to influence your decisions.
I think many around here are too liberal with their use of the word cheating. It seems that the "unspoken definition" that some folks are using is that anything that gives a player an undue benefit in the game is a cheat." And by that definition, I submit that essentially all of us are cheaters in this game. And if that's true, what's the point in calling anyone out about it??
Core would be perfect if not for rolled hit points, which sounds fine until you try to play a level 6 Mage with 7 hit points. Normal takes the doubt out of the question "will my characters be able to survive being hit", but then also monster damage is decreased which feels like an overcorrection.
It's easy to understand why people shy away from low HP mages, but really, they don't need a lot in BG. I remember when Xzar was level 4 and only had 12 HP. I asked myself, what is most likely going to kill him? There aren't a whole lot of encounters that spawn enemies on your backliners, so I knew fireballs would be my biggest challenge. So I had him equip a fire resist ring, and a fire resist robe. Fireballs did 4 damage to him. It was extremely gratifying having figured out a solution to a problem like that, but I understand that's not going to be everyone's cup of tea. In BGII there are more encounters that tend to spawn enemies right on your backliners, but by then no mage has less than 40 HP anyways.
I don't agree with the monster damage being decreased in normal mode, don't understand that one.
Is re-rolling your characters attributes 10 times a cheat? How about 1 time? And if so, why in the hell is there a button that allows you to do so? Is using previous knowledge of the game to influence your decisions a cheat? I mean, you shouldn't have that sort of pre-knowledge, right? But once you have it, you can't unhave it, and it's going to influence your decisions.
How is this even a question anyways. Some of the encounters in this game are impossible without metagaming. BGII even more so. BG was actually nice in that you could play it somewhat like a real DnD game, but once BGII hit the shelves I feel it was less DnD and more strategy. Which was still fun, but different. Let's just say a lot more things flew in BG. BGII? I find myself doing a lot of loading.
Seriously, if playing on normal difficulty isn't a cheat (which it clearly isn't) than why would using it periodically be considered cheating? I see it as exercising your right to control your game. Maybe this is a little cheesy, but cheating goes too far in my opinion.
We could go crazy with what we call cheating. Is re-rolling your characters attributes 10 times a cheat? How about 1 time? And if so, why in the hell is there a button that allows you to do so? Is using previous knowledge of the game to influence your decisions a cheat? I mean, you shouldn't have that sort of pre-knowledge, right? But once you have it, you can't unhave it, and it's going to influence your decisions.
I think many around here are too liberal with their use of the word cheating. It seems that the "unspoken definition" that some folks are using is that anything that gives a player an undue benefit in the game is a cheat." And by that definition, I submit that essentially all of us are cheaters in this game. And if that's true, what's the point in calling anyone out about it??
Says me, yes. Who would you like to say it? High council of gamers? The Wise Pink Dragon of Gaming?
When you play on a difficulty, you are supposed to survive its consequences. If you change it to make an aspect easier, it is cheating whether it's combat or not. I do it when learning spells and i am not offended, you shouldn't be either.
I'm not offended. I just disagree with your word choice. I find it cheesy, but not cheating. But call it whatever you wish. I will perhaps start referring to it as murder. And since you admit to doing it you are now a murderer! I hope the authorities aren't reading this!
Switching difficulties to guarantee max HP, spell scribing, and so forth is, essentially, playing with house rules. Almost everybody who's ever played tabletop D&D played with some manner of house rules; the only difference is that the DM defined them for you, whereas here you're allowed to define them for yourself.
I would consider it more a type of cheating to lower difficulty only, for example, to fight a dragon. That's changing the basis on which you've played the entire game just to reduce a particular challenge, which is the essence of cheats in games. As was said, extreme micromanagement options would be necessary to cover all the variables a player might encounter. Without those, the only way to play the game in a way someone thinks is fair, yet still consistent, is by lowering/raising the difficulty in specifically defined circumstances.
What would be lame is saying, "I beat it on Core/Hard/Insane," without mentioning the caveats of whatever you may have done to ease the process a bit. But as long as you maintain the same rules for yourself throughout, it's really not cheating.
@marceror That's just stupid. Here, I refer to you to a definition of cheat
"To violate rules in order to gain advantage from a situation."
By changing the difficulty to normal you are violating the rolling of HP rule of core rules to gain an advantage. Ergo, you are cheating the core rules.
I think mages are limited as it is with only a few casts each day and I dislike to rest just to restore some spells, it feels more immersion breaking then guaranteed scribing. So I limit my resting and give mages 100% success to write spells.
im playing on basic difficulty at the moment and ive not failed writing a scroll yet, perhaps its a bug or perhaps im lucky, if i complete the game without failing to write a scroll ill let you know, ive failed to do it in BG and BG:EE. as for levels i didnt know the numbers were "random" i just was like "yep i have more than i did, cool"
Comments
With spell learning I use potions of genius, but find the whole process kinda crappy and unfair to mages. Imagine if druids and clerics had to buy spells then had a risk of failing to learn it... You'd never hear the end of it!
On the other hand and if you want to take it to the extremes, I guess you could say that if you can't reload to get better stats you shouldn't be allowed to reload if you die in combat either as it's all based on lucky rolls. You could also say that infinite attribute rolls when you create your character is cheating so I don't know. The only time I've ever "cheated" was when I was rolling a new character and by accident clicked away a 94 roll and added the lost points to my intelligence (I was playing a warrior) with Shadow Keeper.
On the other hand, it's nice to know that learning checks for spells from one's own specialty school will always succeed after one has 18 INT. However, it's not a very worthwhile tradeoff, since the other PnP bonuses for Specialist Wizards were never implemented into the game.
Seriously, I've played enough PnP D&D with 5-hit-point wizards. I am in fact doing one at the moment (okay, it's an Elf old-school D&D style, so more fighter/mage, and there's house rules about not dying instantly at 0hp, but still). I play Baldur's Gate for fun.
I prefer enemies to do full damage. I prefer spell scribing to have an element of chance, and to see a use for potions of genius. It was only ever randomized hit points that bothered me. It somewhat stifles the reason behind making constitution a favored attribute at character creation when misfortune befalls successive levels gained. In my youth it drove me mad to see a mage and a thief acquire equal or greater hit points on two consecutive occasions, in comparison to my constitutionally blessed warrior. I later learned that it was unlikely for such to occur, and that it would have more than swung back in favor of the warrior with time, save for the worst of misfortune. I never gave it a chance. The Max HP mod was in to stay.
Since BG was originally released, I've felt that there needed to be a difficulty level between Normal and Core. Core would be perfect if not for rolled hit points, which sounds fine until you try to play a level 6 Mage with 7 hit points. Normal takes the doubt out of the question "will my characters be able to survive being hit", but then also monster damage is decreased which feels like an overcorrection. I simulate a middle-ground difficulty setting (max HP rolls, monsters do full damage, death is possible, attempts to learn spells can fail) by playing at Core but dropping the difficulty to Normal when I level a character.
Seriously, if playing on normal difficulty isn't a cheat (which it clearly isn't) than why would using it periodically be considered cheating? I see it as exercising your right to control your game. Maybe this is a little cheesy, but cheating goes too far in my opinion.
We could go crazy with what we call cheating. Is re-rolling your characters attributes 10 times a cheat? How about 1 time? And if so, why in the hell is there a button that allows you to do so? Is using previous knowledge of the game to influence your decisions a cheat? I mean, you shouldn't have that sort of pre-knowledge, right? But once you have it, you can't unhave it, and it's going to influence your decisions.
I think many around here are too liberal with their use of the word cheating. It seems that the "unspoken definition" that some folks are using is that anything that gives a player an undue benefit in the game is a cheat." And by that definition, I submit that essentially all of us are cheaters in this game. And if that's true, what's the point in calling anyone out about it??
I don't agree with the monster damage being decreased in normal mode, don't understand that one. How is this even a question anyways. Some of the encounters in this game are impossible without metagaming. BGII even more so. BG was actually nice in that you could play it somewhat like a real DnD game, but once BGII hit the shelves I feel it was less DnD and more strategy. Which was still fun, but different. Let's just say a lot more things flew in BG. BGII? I find myself doing a lot of loading.
Who would you like to say it? High council of gamers? The Wise Pink Dragon of Gaming?
When you play on a difficulty, you are supposed to survive its consequences. If you change it to make an aspect easier, it is cheating whether it's combat or not. I do it when learning spells and i am not offended, you shouldn't be either.
I'm not offended. I just disagree with your word choice. I find it cheesy, but not cheating. But call it whatever you wish. I will perhaps start referring to it as murder. And since you admit to doing it you are now a murderer! I hope the authorities aren't reading this!
I would consider it more a type of cheating to lower difficulty only, for example, to fight a dragon. That's changing the basis on which you've played the entire game just to reduce a particular challenge, which is the essence of cheats in games. As was said, extreme micromanagement options would be necessary to cover all the variables a player might encounter. Without those, the only way to play the game in a way someone thinks is fair, yet still consistent, is by lowering/raising the difficulty in specifically defined circumstances.
What would be lame is saying, "I beat it on Core/Hard/Insane," without mentioning the caveats of whatever you may have done to ease the process a bit. But as long as you maintain the same rules for yourself throughout, it's really not cheating.
"To violate rules in order to gain advantage from a situation."
By changing the difficulty to normal you are violating the rolling of HP rule of core rules to gain an advantage. Ergo, you are cheating the core rules.
I think mages are limited as it is with only a few casts each day and I dislike to rest just to restore some spells, it feels more immersion breaking then guaranteed scribing.
So I limit my resting and give mages 100% success to write spells.