Robbing Drizzt and keeping his equipment.

wariisop

In BG 1 you can rob Drizzt of his equipment by keeping him distracted until the Knolls knock him unconscious. I say unconscious because he reappears in BG 2. However, later in BG 2, after you defeat him with his fabled party, a wizard keeps showing up using an imprisonment spell that you can not defeat. I am wondering is this part going to be left in the game, because it seems kinda cheap to beat Drizzt, but lose to some no-name wizard. This was not Elminister after all, that is another issue.

Secondly, when you rob Drizzt of his equipment, Icing Death doesn't seem to do the cold damage against fire creatures like in the books, and the + 20% cold resistance is not enough considering boots later on get up to 50% resistance. It would be great if the fire resistance was closer to + 60% considering it could resist dragon fire in the books. Lastly, Defender needs to be a true +5 weapon, while this would be unbalanced early in the game, the alignment requirement will stop too many from taking advantage of both swords.

Aranneas

Melchor Harpell is a character from Salvatore's books as well. I agree their use of him was cheap, primarily because the gear isn't all that great by BGII standards anyway.

I think the main reason they didn't do anything really spectacular with the gear is that you were never really supposed to get your hands on it to begin with. If you do, great; you get some sweet stuff for your BGI playthrough. Per 3e rules, they're not really anything spectacular regardless (doing some digging for 2e stats atm). I don't think that will change for the remake. There's no reason to, really.

*ed: so 2e stats seem to be:
Frostbrand: +3, +6 damage vs extraplanar and/or fire creatures, fire resistance. Could easily have been implemented this way, but I don't think it's that big a loss.
Defender: +5, lets you move enhancement to your armor class. They just went for a default 2 points of enhancement moved to armor class. Not that big a deal imo.

Cheesebelly

The gnolls can actually... "kill" him?
Every time I go there, he just obliterates the bunch of them, while they aren't even attempting to hit him

That aside, I agree on the random mage stealing stuff that is rightfully yours after disintegrating Drizzt's band is a bit cheesy, then again the item that he takes (the swords I believe?) aren't that much of a big deal. I mean, by that point, you probably have better weapons already (hell, Kundane and Belm being two better weapons, enchantment aside)

As for buffing them, that I can't really say. In BG1, either of the two swords is incredibly overpowered (considering one is a +3 weapon... and there's like two +3 weapons in the game along with it : Staff +3 and Two handed sword +3. The other one is a +5, with THAC0 bonus of a +3 (I think) but it improves armor class by 2... and it also is usable only by good alignments only.

As I said, I am bad at deciding possible rebalances so I can't really say. Is there any formal information on the two swords? I mean, statistics-wise?

wariisop

Actually they are great pieces of armor, one being a sword that was found after defeating an Ice Dragon...Icingdeath. The latter being a sword forged by a legendary dwarf blacksmith, Defender which is technically a +5 weapon.

Winthal

I think the wizard taking back all the items was simply Bioware trolling all the power gamers who beat Drizzt in the first game and expected to get away with it a 2:nd time hehe, it's no biggie tho since there are better stuff to find in BG2

wariisop

Yeah, I will agree with that, though again I would have rather fought a near impossible battle than rob me of hard earned weapons and armor after truly defeating Drizzt's crew right out of the Underdark.

wariisop

Sorry Cheesebelly, I only have the Drizzt books to go by, I don't have any D&D weapon guides that explain how powerful Drizzt's sword are supposed to be. I know that his Mirthal chainmail is right on the button though, as it is still good even through BG 2. He is also missing the cape as a magical item, among other things, but that is being nitpicky.

wariisop

Here is the Elder Ice Dragon he fought to get Icingdeath just to put the weapon into perspective.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=BG+2+DRIZZT+Icingdeath+stats&view=detail&id=E803E5F742DFE2C977C3851C23F4558C0CE60883

Shin

There's a mod that removes Harpell from BG2 (as stated, in BG1 his appearance makes sense as you get rather overpowered at that point in the game otherwise). As for the gear itself, you can easily edit it to have whatever stats you want it to have. And you can edit out Harpell as well if that's your fancy. But then you might as well save yourself the effort and just give yourself those items right from the get-go.

Aranneas

@wariisop: What kind of perspective is that supposed to provide us, exactly?

It's not as if Salvatore statted out encounters or wrote them round-by-round, regardless. All of the statting of gear and characters from his books was done by third parties. They made best guesses based on personal interpretation of the text and tried to balance them according to the rules of the edition they were working with. You're never going to get an exact match when the author is using artistic license for the sake of storytelling.

Corvino

@Cheesebelly you missed a couple, the +3 shortsword of backstabbing and +3 sling (Arla's dragonbane?) I think that's all of them.

mch202

wariisop said:

Here is the Elder Ice Dragon he fought to get Icingdeath just to put the weapon into perspective.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=BG+2+DRIZZT+Icingdeath+stats&view=detail&id=E803E5F742DFE2C977C3851C23F4558C0CE60883

Cute Pet I must say....

Cheesebelly

@Corvino : whoops! You are indeed right! XD *is fail*

wariisop

It's not as if Salvatore statted out encounters or wrote them round-by-round, regardless. All of the statting of gear and characters from his books was done by third parties. They made best guesses based on personal interpretation of the text and tried to balance them according to the rules of the edition they were working with. You're never going to get an exact match when the author is using artistic license for the sake of storytelling.

I agree for the most part, but it was clear that Icingdeath's weapon was undervalued, just look at the Dragon's stats it came from, I am not asking blow for blow for each weapon, but this is a legendary weapon, that in the Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance series froze and scattered it's enemies almost every 3rd blow. Here are the stats of the Dragon Icingdeath.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=BG+2+DRIZZT+Icingdeath+stats&view=detail&id=D3C41D0BC4A6907DE774C5C7D959593B8FF71F42

Corvino

I've played too many rogue to forget the +3 shortsword

Aranneas

I don't understand what the stats of this dragon have to do with the stats of the weapon.

Dark alliance is not canon to anything by the way. Drizzt is effectively an easter egg character in that game. He's not even a canon part to the non-canon game. Why are you basing anything off of the effects of his weapons there?

wariisop

It is also mentioned in the books, I was just trying to give a visual interpretation, though I realize it was not canon.

Aranneas

I'm having trouble following the logic. The dragon is mentioned in the books, and so is the sword, and because the dragon has these stats the sword should be stronger?

wariisop

Uh, the swords abilities are shown when fight the dragon in the ancient Dwarven home and also when fighting a greater demon from hell. Both times the sword comes alive with a cold hatred of a much stronger sword than listed in BG 1 or 2. This is why the weapon feels so weak in BG 2, which it shouldn't considering it is used by a legendary character.

Aranneas

Legendary characters often don't have gear to match. A +5 defender weapon is still just a +5 defender weapon, regardless of whether it was used by Drizz't or by Joe Farmhand. I can understand that the weapon's stats don't meet your expectations based on the descriptions in the novels, but I don't feel that's something that needs to be addressed by this remake.

shout27

I will say that Twinkle is one of the better weapons for a kensei to dual-wield. . .

wariisop

The Keryvian is another weapon that seems a little weak especially considering you can only get it in the Tower in TOB. One thing that bothers me is that this blade is the greatest weapon created in Myth Drannor. It is a Baneblade, and yet it is a pretty weak +5 sword by the time you reach the tower...there are several + 5 weapons by this period. If they can't make adjustments to the actual game, it would be nice to see them correct some weapon adjustment like this to stick closer to the written stories about the weapons.

Keryvian is imbued with properties that make its blade magically keen, allow the wielder to jump and fall gently over large distances, and allow the wielder to set a magical proximity alarm.[3][10] The sword can reflect back magic cast at it or its wielder.[1]

The sword can be commanded to "guard" and will wait until anyone who is not the owner touches it, at which point it will begin attacking this individual and making a very loud singing noise.[10]

The value of the sword as of 1368 DR can be estimated at 35,000 gold pieces

Many of these abilities were skipped and considering by this time you are God lvl, there is no reason to hold back a blade of this legend.

FrozenDervish

Well to realize that much of this power upping everyone is saying should be on these weapons consider that +1 would be the equivalent to a hero's weapon, +2 would be something only warlords or the rich could possibly attain, +3 to +5 would be demi-god/god status weapons respectively. So in all honesty even though the weapons of Drizzt do not have official stats their power I would say would be +2 maybe +3 max.

Considering though the power creep in Baldur's Gate and other non-pnp DnD games is extremely fast being stuck with a +1 weapon the entire game would seem boring so they add tons of these weapons.


Also very much agree with the original topic of removing Harpell or letting us slaughter the fool for messing with us.

wariisop

I think the Defender Blade is considered a Godly weapon, as it was created by the Great Dwarven King that retook the ancient Dwarven home. While I agree Icingdeath should only be a +3 weapon, I really didn't want any major changes to that weapon except for a great allowance for it's obvious Cold properties. There are many less known blades introduced in BG 2 that are more powerful than Drizzt's blades, which makes not sense.

Aranneas

wariisop said:

I think the Defender Blade is considered a Godly weapon, as it was created by the Great Dwarven King that retook the ancient Dwarven home. While I agree Icingdeath should only be a +3 weapon, I really didn't want any major changes to that weapon except for a great allowance for it's obvious Cold properties. There are many less known blades introduced in BG 2 that are more powerful than Drizzt's blades, which makes not sense.

Again, what about that doesn't make sense? Drizzt's blades wouldn't be well known, either, if it weren't for Drizzt having used them.

FrozenDervish

Well to answer that you must realize the power creep that happens in BG 2. From the beginning you are what would normally be considered "Retired" as most adventurers would be ending their journey around levels 8-12 which would put them as quite skilled, knowledgeable, powerful, rich, and possibly becoming a noble, archmage, king, or something else entirely.

Beyond that up to the 20th level would put an adventurer in a state of supreme power on the mortal plane in effect making them demi gods and demi gods without the equivalent weapons would feel boring or out of place.

Above that would be godhood, immortals, and various other creatures such as high ranking demons/devil, elemental princes, the dreaded Tarrasque, Demi liches, and celestials of great power. So when we enter ToB we are as players entering that realm of power which is why there are +4 to +6 weapons thrown all over the place we even fight one of the most powerful lords of hell.

Now to just BG 2 though:

Carsomyr: A holy avenger is a weapon for paladins granted by their god for completing a trial that would leave even the greatest of heroes scarred and broken. This weapon is the pinnacle of what a paladin would obtain in his life the mark of his faith and sacrifice.

Short Bow of Gesen: A crafter's best possibly a legendary crafter of bows.

The Wave (Halberd +4): An artifact of a god.

Crom Faeyr: Weapon forged by a dwarven weaponsmith who from text in game would make him a legendary smith whose weapons have no equal similar to how the Masamune legend makes his swords unequaled.

These are just a few of the +4/+5 weapons to be found, but all in all there really isn't many of them till ToB where you are practically a god yourself, or have your current +2/+3 weapons forged with the souls and relics of powers equal or greater than your own do they become +5 weapons.

LadyRhian

@FrozenDervish "The Bow of Gesen" was put into the Book of Artifacts as an Artifact. One of two, the Other being the Horn of Gesen, which was originally wielded by a CG Hun-like Horseman. I am not sure if the one from the game is based on this (Probably, since the Book of Artifacts was published in 1993) or vice versa. It's not one of the original artifacts published in the 1e DMG

FrozenDervish

Thanks for that info LadyRhian.

LadyRhian

@FrozenDervish You're welcome!

Aranneas

@LadyRhian agree with @FrozenDervish, that goes back much further than my own experience with the game.

LadyRhian

@Aranneas I've been playing since 1978. I love AD&D. 2e was my favorite version. I played the gold-box games from back in the day as well (Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, Pools of Darkness). Wish I could play those again as well.