Racial thief bonuses after patch

ryuken87

In the character creation menu racial thieving bonuses are displayed when selecting race (I honestly can't remember whether any were shown before or not) and it would appear that there have been some large changes (there haven't, read on).

Humans for example, now have large bonuses to thieving skills (45 total) while other races such as dwarves and gnomes also received large boosts. These changes aren't actually implemented in the game (for the better in my opinion, the new numbers seem silly) and the game instead uses the old values as far as I can tell, but what I'd like to know is the rationale behind making such changes? Ta.

elminster

They weren't shown before. That said what is displayed has always existed in the game. Every race starts out with human values and then adds/subtracts based on that. So a human thief with 18 dexterity will have 25 pick locks, and a halfling with the same dexterity starts out with 30.

As for a rationale I'm not certain. It was discussed here http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/20918/missing-informations-about-natural-bonuses-to-thieves-skills that the full benefits should be displayed. But as it stands the way each race has been written currently implies that humans are on a fairly equal footing compared to other races.

ryuken87

@elminster The current values displayed do not (and have never) existed in the game. The old values (what you linked to) are what were previously used, what are still used, but do not match those now displayed.

elminster

The values haven't changed. Humans never started out with 0 in everything if they had 13-15 dexterity (level of dexterity that doesn't do anything to thieving skills). They just get the base number. You can see the base number reflected here.

http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Thieving_Abilities

Now, in BG2 they did split up Stealth into Hide in Shadows and Move Silently, but otherwise the values haven't changed. All that is being shown in these descriptions in the case of humans is the base value that all thieves get regardless of their race (their race then adjusts these values up or down depending on the race). Whats shown in the other races is the values that are added/subtracted on top of that.

So basically I think they could be better displayed but nothing has changed.

Avenger_teambg

If the mod didn't just replace bgee.sql, chances are high you can reinstall it without problem.
Give it a try, if it doesn't work, delete bgee.sql again.

elminster

Avenger_teambg said:

If the mod didn't just replace bgee.sql, chances are high you can reinstall it without problem.
Give it a try, if it doesn't work, delete bgee.sql again.

Wrong thread perhaps ?

ryuken87

I'm not talking anything about dex bonuses or base numbers, I am asking for clarification and rationale on the following:

Human racial bonuses used to be:
PP/OL/FT/MS/HitS/DI/ST
0/0/0/0/0/0/0

Human racial bonuses are currently displayed as:
15/10/5/10/5/0/0

Human racial bonuses actually implemented are still:
0/0/0/0/0/0/0

elminster

I think the idea was to incorporate the base scores and racial bonuses combined within the description to make it easier for players to understand what each race starts with. Clearly however they only went half way since the values for other races should read differently if thats the case.

elminster

Perhaps @Dee could shed some light on the situation or what the thinking was behind this new listing.

CutlassJack

The numbers listed are the base numbers you start with under D&D 2nd edition rules and Baldur's Gate 2. They have always been these numbers.

The numbers listed for human are the base thieving skill numbers. They get no bonus or penalty. To test this, start a human plain thief with a 13 dexterity. You start with exactly the numbers you list.

The numbers listed for other races is that base plus their racial modifiers. (i.e. Half Elf has same numbers with an additional +10 pp/+5 HiS) I'm cross referencing this with the original BG 2 manual and the numbers are exact.

elminster

CutlassJack said:

The numbers listed are the base numbers you start with under D&D 2nd edition rules and Baldur's Gate 2. They have always been these numbers.

The numbers listed for human are the base thieving skill numbers. They get no bonus or penalty. To test this, start a human plain thief with a 13 dexterity. You start with exactly the numbers you list.

The numbers listed for other races is that base plus their racial modifiers. (i.e. Half Elf has same numbers with an additional +10 pp/+5 HiS) I'm cross referencing this with the original BG 2 manual and the numbers are exact.

I think everyone here is thoroughly agreed about anything to do with base thieving skills. The problem is with the rationale behind how the different races traits are being shown. For instance currently the numbers being for a human in BGEE is shown as the following in the character creation screen:

+10% Open Locks, +5% Find Traps, +15% Pick Pockets, +10% Move Silently, +5% Hide in Shadows.


Whereas for a Halfling it states (without any mention of the fact that this is on top of what humans get)

+5% Open Locks, +5% Find Traps, +5% Pick Pockets, +15% Move Silently, +15% Hide in Shadows.


So basically its including the base scores for humans but not including the base scores when considering some of the other races.

ryuken87

Got it now thanks guys, the fact that humans, gnomes, dwarves and elves have it set out one way and half-orcs, halflings and half-elves have it the other way was confusing me. It was looking like some races had a huge buff compared to others for no apparent reason.

CutlassJack

The original post was saying there was changes to the numbers and there were not. Thats what I was commenting on. There is definate inconsistencies in the format of written racial descriptions. But their actual numbers are unchanged. (i.e. they never intended a change that gave humans racial bonuses, its just the base numbers. Dwarves is in the same format. Looks like they forgot to update the rest.)

The Beta testers should have caught the inconsistencies when the writeup changed(of which I'm one of, so blame me). But the actual numbers didn't change.

elminster

Actually now that I think about it should thieving skills really state that it gets a % gain? Its not like if you have an 80 in open lock you have an 80% chance of opening any lock.

Anyways I think I'm going to be adding these inconsistencies to the tracker.