Multi-class Shapeshifter/fighter (SK)
ghostowl
Member Posts: 171
Im planning to use shadowkeeper to let myself use shapeshifter / fighter multi-class
What would be the benefits / cons? Would your damage suffer because of the werewolf paw?
Or is it a better idea to just go Fighter -> shapeshifter dual ?
What would be the benefits / cons? Would your damage suffer because of the werewolf paw?
Or is it a better idea to just go Fighter -> shapeshifter dual ?
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Counting that the werewolf's claw is (as far as I remember) a piercing weapon with meager damage, which is the worst weapon to have (lots of immunities) and several Werewolf "buffs" actually cancel out the warrior's perks, it is not advisable to, mix these two classes.
Yes, the Shapeshifter is powerful in BGEE at low levels, then starts to be overshadowed by the Fighters. Shines again at lvl 13, but again- a good fighter will get better soon enough. Druid casting and buffs, but ultimately - a high level shapeshifter is primarily a high level druid caster.
I'd recommend:
a) just stay a shapeshifter. Or go fighter to lvl 7, dual and EEkeeper change the druid kit to Shapeshifter. If that's possible.
b) do a Kensai->Druid dual-class. Similar disadvantagies (no armor) and still a good fighting druid. If you are willing to EEkeeper-change things, you can try to change your paperdoll/avatar to one of a werewolf. I that works.
However, what you can do with EEkeeper is assign the innate abilities of a Shapeshifter, i.e. the werewolf shapechanges, to a Fighter->Druid dual-class, and you can delete the ordinary Druid shapeshifting innate abilities as well, so this would have pretty much the same effect as if the kit could be assigned. It'd still appear on the Record Sheet as "Fighter/Druid" (or "Kensai/Druid" or whatever) instead of "Fighter/Shapeshifter", but it'd work as if it were a Shapeshifter. (This way there'd be no need to adjust the appearance, the werewolf shapechange would do that automatically when shapechanged.) When the character levelled up, however, it might reset the innate abilities (I haven't tested this), so you might have to be prepared to go back into EEkeeper to change them back again.
I agree with your main advice, though: a Warrior class and Shapeshifter isn't a good mix, I reckon @ghostowl would be better off with a regular Fighter/Druid multi-class or kitted-Fighter->Druid dual-class. (I've got a Berserker(7)->Druid who worked very well in BGee and is waiting to proceed into BG2ee, that's a pretty good combination.) However, dualling from a decent Fighter (or Fighter-kit) into a decent Druid requires a very good roll at character creation, because you need high scores in every ability except INT - so unless the roll is over 90, it's not worth doing.
In general, the shapeshifting abilities of an ordinary Druid are almost worthless, and even the shapeshifting ability of a Shapeshifter is useful only temporarily (as @Southpaw said). For most of game, the main point of a Druid (or Druid-kit) is casting ability - at higher levels (late-BG1 and all of BG2) they get some powerful spells which are unique to Druids and very useful. Also, a very-high-level Druid's elemental resistances become important in late-BG2.
But as I said, such tinkering is dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, and can easily screw up your entire character/save game. Also, only a few effects work that way, anything that's hard-coded you can't edit with SK/EEK.
That said this does NOT seem to be the case in the original BG2. When I transferred this character over to BG2 he was not getting the swashbuckler bonuses. I had to manually add the flags for a swashbuckler of his level after making a template character to compare. AFTER that his bonuses DID improve as normal with leveling.
I'm hoping that BG2EE works like BGEE so that less fiddling is necessary when I make a character like that.
Either way, I'm not sure that your convenience of sorting through threads is an argument for taking away game options from other people. If you don't like the freedom of editing stuff, don't use it. If you want to discuss purist views, mark your threads as such. All these are better options than demanding the game mechanics be changed to disallow editing or make it harder, simply because *you* think it's not "the same rules as anyone else".
Honestly, I'm not usually offended or angered on the forums, but you are being very intolerant and narrow-viewed here.
Your way is not the only acceptable way. The fact that you feel someone else playing by a different set of rules should keep their mouth shut about it on a public forum because it's an affront to your sensibilities or even worse have the game modified so they cannot enjoy it the way they want to, seems downright petty.
What you call a "waste of time" someone else might see as a fascinating topic of conversation. Robbing others of that just to suit your tastes is just childish. If there's a topic you don't find interesting or if a topic turns towards subject matter you don't approve of... you can simply stop reading.
Granted, there are plenty of reasons why a Shapeshifter/Fighter combo isn't as good as it sounds (as you point out), but the piercing damage type has little to do with that.
Keep in mind that while it's indeed "making it easier" when you look at BG2 (vanilla), the change in question would be one of the status quo (i.e. the new code of BG:EE) to the "negative" for no reason except your own opinion and convenience.
It's different with a publicly-distributed mod. Then there are numerous people using it, so there's a community (albeit a sub-section of the wider BG community) with whom there's some point in discussing it. At the moment, there's no serious problem with that, but I'm concerned to keep it that way.
If every topic is eventually over-run with misunderstandings caused by playing different rules, or wrecked by childish clowns butting in, every other post in a thread, with nonsense about how they've "solved" the legitimate problem or puzzle being discussed by editing in more and more and more ridiculously overpowered characters/items or editing out the intended difficulties, then nothing is left worth reading in such a forum. We're currently a long way from that in these forums, but I've seen that sort of thing happen in other places and other games, and I hope we can keep that sort of decay well away from BG. There are vandals out there who will do this to BG if we let them get away with it, same as they've done in other places.
I therefore advocate that Overhaul shouldn't make life too easy for those who want to muck about with the game too casually. A serious modder who will publish his mod (and thereby create a community with a shared interest in playing it and discussing it) is legitimate, but everyone-playing-a-different-game-from-everyone-else anarchy leaves nothing worth discussing.
Note that this will become a particular problem when Overhaul finally get the long-promised multi-player matching facility to work. I know from bitter experience, running open-access public hosting servers for other games, that any game which easily allows anyone to muck about with anything can rapidly be over-run by childish jerks who spoil everyone else's fun (and very rapidly drive everyone else away from the game) by cheating-in edited characters with ridiculous stats/abilities/items which demolish all opposition before legitimate characters have a chance to participate. Overhaul need to build in strong protection against that, which can be technically tricky to do, so that might (I guess) be one of the reasons why it's taking them so long to get open multi-player working.
Perhaps I'm a little over-sensitive to anything which opens up such possibilities, but it is the result of genuine experience of other games being ruined.
As for the "right" way to play, if everyone had been limiting themselves to playing the BG games just as they were out of the box instead of experimenting to see what could be done through editing, modding and exe hacking, there's a fair chance the EE project would never have happened to begin with, and the regular playerbase (in my humble estimation) wouldn't be the size it is. Picking the infinity engine apart, "breaking the rules" and changing things around is what's kept the game alive, patched up, growing and evolving.
Dude, you're incredibly selfish. You don't want other people playing BG2 in their own way because you don't want the forums "cluttered?"
I think you just have an incredibly closed-minded view of things and you're probably not liked in the real world outside of games.
The way I play my game has 0 effect on you. Sure, a topic like this will come up, but if you don't like it, ignore it. And it's gross exaggeration to say that if people like me pop up, the forums will be cluttered. If that is the case, maybe another section of the forum will pop up for players like me
Using your logic, we can say mods are also not good for the community because it changes from the "official" way of playing the game, and hence it should be discouraged. Bioware itself advocates mods. They knew that their games would have mods, and supported that. Look at these forums, for example. There's a separate section for mods. Thats how you know the developers of this game intended people to change things up and play it differently. Everyone has different tastes and preference. If you want people to adjust to your rule and your preference only, why don't you make your own game and ban modifications to the game?
I'm just really shocked at how closed-minded and idiotic some people can be...
I'll remind everyone that the site has rules about respect. Everyone's input is welcome, even disagreements, as long as it's presented in a civil manner.
I don't believe you've actually read what I wrote, @ghostowl. You are grossly mis-representing my position, as well as being rather rude.
Any game is defined by its rules; if you're playing by different rules, then you're not actually playing the same game. To take a simple example, if someone asks advice about a particular battle, then some jerk who answered "just cheat by editing all your stats to 25" or "just edit your Butter Knife into a +12 Hackmaster" would not be not helping the enquirer to understand the game. If I asked a question and got a stupid and irrelevant answer like that, I'd certainly think it was irritating clutter. Wouldn't you?
Furthermore, if someone somewhere has indeed edited his Butter Knife into a +12 Hackmaster, then of course he now finds the whole game very easy, and of course he's free to do such a thing if that's how he wants to spend his time, but it does nothing to enhance the utility and enjoyability of this forum if he then comes on here gleefully announcing "Look how clever I am! I can beat the game easily now!", because what he's beating in that case isn't actually the same game as the rest of us are playing which obviously doesn't contain a +12 Hackmaster (notwithstanding Lilarcor's claims).
Of course Overhaul welcome mods - proper, serious, distributed mods, not just some kid mucking about - and so do I. However, as you point out yourself, there's a separate section of the forum for discussing mods, and that's the right decision by the site moderators. A modded game is obviously not quite the same as the vanilla game, but when numerous people are all playing the same mod then they have subjects to discuss among themselves regarding that variation. Both relevance and mutual understanding in the forum are greatly aided if people discuss their modded games in the mods section with other people who are playing (or considering) the same mod(s), and mostly try to stick to discussing the standard game in the standard section ... particularly for the benefit of newbies.
What would be daft, however, would be a situation where the (standard) forum is dominated by people who are all playing significantly different personal versions of the game from everyone else, because that makes meaningful discussion nearly impossible. It hasn't happened here, and my point is that I don't want it to happen here. I very much doubt that Overhaul would want that to happen here either. I've seen such things happen to other games and other forums, and it's just a chaotic mess which is useless to those who seek serious information or enjoy discussing the game in a reasonably serious manner.
Arguing that discussions should be kept relevant and useful is neither "selfish" nor "closed-minded". Quite the contrary, it's a public benefit.
However, I'm pretty certain that it's no part of Overhaul's actual intention to encourage childish cheating, but we surely can't fail to see that this is a probably-inevitable side-effect of very easy editing. Of course some people are always going to do that, same as there have always been people who cheat at solitaire, and of course they can do that if they wish, even though it's automatically self-defeating and pointless. However, at least when people cheat at solitaire they usually have the sense to realise that it's a strictly private and rather shameful activity, so they don't go onto public forums and boast about it! I agree about this, too. However, I come back to the point above: there's a world of difference between serious modding and silly cheating, even though the same tools might be used.
I'm not sure if we're actually disagreeing about anything, in fact!
We have a Modding forum, but at the moment it's more of a place to discuss the implementation of mods, rather than their use. Until we create a subforum specifically for mod users (and that may yet happen), I'm okay with people discussing their mod-created builds in the general forums, particularly ones created with save editors such as EEKeeper that aren't, themselves, "mods".
@Gallowglass You say mods are okay because they have a separate section in the forum dedicated to mods, but edited gameplay is not okay because it doesn't have one? You do realize that if enough people start talking about edited gameplay, there will probably be another forum section created for users like me, right? Furthermore, you go on to say that discussion would be impossible (assuming a separate forum isn't created). But on the contrary, if overwhelming number of people play the edited game, then discussion would actually be 'smooth'. For example, take a look at ascension/SCS mods. An overwhelming large number of people here, I would assume, do have some sort of difficulty increased game. Because of that, us veterans assume other players here (except beginners) would use a more challenged game, and would give tips and discussions based on that. And this discussion isn't needed if they make a separate section for it.
I think its ironic you choose to accept mods but not edited gameplay, seeing as how they both have the potential to "cheat" more than the other. (An edited game might be small kit modification like my thread's idea, or a mod might be like the 'geomantic sorcerer kit' where the sorcerer literally becomes a city-destroying god with insane AoE spells)
Again - it's not "public-benefit" to ban discussion of other ways of playing the game just because you don't think it's the right place for it. New ways of playing the game actually gives life to a decade-old game, and promotes more players to play it. Your method actually hurts the game and its community.