Strange deviations from the original; rules and not only...
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It came to my attention, while playing BG2 EE, that some things were not right. Not right, well, when compared against the original 2, in its final, official version, that is... It also seems strange to me that noone, either noticed or mentioned them already, even though many people here are hardcore gamers, rule-maniacs etc. Please, discuss...
1) In 2 EE, should you create a wizard, especially a kit such as the wild mage, you choose NOTICEABLY FEWER wizard spells to begin the game with; for example, at 4th level page, in 2 EE you can choose 3 or 4 at most, while in 2 classic you could choose 5 or 6. Same applies for 3, 2 and 1 spellbook pages. What is wrong with the EE and arcane spellcasters? Intentional nerf or bug which must be corrected at a future update?
2) The black screen pause trick no longer works. Many people considered this cheating, and actively demanded for it to be corrected and banned, but there are certain items from 1, which they neither transfer to 2, nor they can be found anywhere outside 1. Such as the Cloak of Balduran. Well done; now, how are we supposed to use those items in 2 ever again, please say?
3) Some items have wrong name. At least compared to the original game. Starting in ToB with a newly created character, i found the cloak of protection +2 specifically in inventory. Which had a different name, but same shape, color and stats. Is it a bug, or intentional? And if its intentional, can we still craft the improved cloak of protection +2 at cespenar's, even though its name is different?
4) There are very few premade characters, actually only 4. The original had 8, 4 for 2 and 4 for ToB, the latter being well equipped with interesting items you could "borrow" through import-export. Now, premade characters is not that much of a big deal, but still... Also in 1 EE, there was no save game of ToSC, especially that old one from classic 1, full of exceptionally geared adventures begging for you to borrow their end-game and high-tech equipment. Which, once again, was transferable to 2 with the black screen trick. Not a very important issue, this one, especially for purists, but had to notice it nonetheless...
5) And finally the most important thing that bugged me a lot, and i seriously think it should bother everyone here, especially those purists, cannon maniacs and rule zealots. In classic game, after an official patch/update, Bioware made it impossible for any ranger kit to dual to cleric, save only, exclusively, for the Beastmaster and only. Now, as i dreadfully realized, archers and stalkers can dual to clerics, in 2EE! Not only from an RP point, a rules point or the cannon this is an abomination of nature and abhorrent bending of rules, but from a practical view too, is a no-go. Your hard invested points into bows, for example, go to hell when you become a cleric, regain your old class and hit maximum level. I badly need an answer; will BeamDog follow Bioware's footsteps, and with a future update ban ranger kits except BM from dual option, as it should be? Or no one will do nothing, notice nothing, and just pretend to be a purist, a bug crusader and an anti-exploit zealot?
Let's talk things. I really want to hear what people think about these. Especially 1 and 5.
1) In 2 EE, should you create a wizard, especially a kit such as the wild mage, you choose NOTICEABLY FEWER wizard spells to begin the game with; for example, at 4th level page, in 2 EE you can choose 3 or 4 at most, while in 2 classic you could choose 5 or 6. Same applies for 3, 2 and 1 spellbook pages. What is wrong with the EE and arcane spellcasters? Intentional nerf or bug which must be corrected at a future update?
2) The black screen pause trick no longer works. Many people considered this cheating, and actively demanded for it to be corrected and banned, but there are certain items from 1, which they neither transfer to 2, nor they can be found anywhere outside 1. Such as the Cloak of Balduran. Well done; now, how are we supposed to use those items in 2 ever again, please say?
3) Some items have wrong name. At least compared to the original game. Starting in ToB with a newly created character, i found the cloak of protection +2 specifically in inventory. Which had a different name, but same shape, color and stats. Is it a bug, or intentional? And if its intentional, can we still craft the improved cloak of protection +2 at cespenar's, even though its name is different?
4) There are very few premade characters, actually only 4. The original had 8, 4 for 2 and 4 for ToB, the latter being well equipped with interesting items you could "borrow" through import-export. Now, premade characters is not that much of a big deal, but still... Also in 1 EE, there was no save game of ToSC, especially that old one from classic 1, full of exceptionally geared adventures begging for you to borrow their end-game and high-tech equipment. Which, once again, was transferable to 2 with the black screen trick. Not a very important issue, this one, especially for purists, but had to notice it nonetheless...
5) And finally the most important thing that bugged me a lot, and i seriously think it should bother everyone here, especially those purists, cannon maniacs and rule zealots. In classic game, after an official patch/update, Bioware made it impossible for any ranger kit to dual to cleric, save only, exclusively, for the Beastmaster and only. Now, as i dreadfully realized, archers and stalkers can dual to clerics, in 2EE! Not only from an RP point, a rules point or the cannon this is an abomination of nature and abhorrent bending of rules, but from a practical view too, is a no-go. Your hard invested points into bows, for example, go to hell when you become a cleric, regain your old class and hit maximum level. I badly need an answer; will BeamDog follow Bioware's footsteps, and with a future update ban ranger kits except BM from dual option, as it should be? Or no one will do nothing, notice nothing, and just pretend to be a purist, a bug crusader and an anti-exploit zealot?
Let's talk things. I really want to hear what people think about these. Especially 1 and 5.
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Comments
1) I admit I have no idea whether this is intentional. I had never noticed it. Getting spell scrolls for the levels that you can start BGII able to case is not especially difficult, so I'm not sure why this is much of an inconvenience. I find that each level only has a few spells that I ever cast except in the most unusual of circumstances, anyway. You could probably be a fully functional WIzard if you got to pick four 4th level spells and then couldn't learn any more ever. Since you can learn more, it seems like a non-issue to me.
2+4) If you are determined to go beyond the confines of the game to get your way, then you can just use an editor to give the items to yourself. No need for the game developers to spend valuable development time undoing their work. (I could almost see a case for adding in the missing premade characters, except that you seem to want them not to play them but only for their items - so that's why I combined that one in with the other as a single response.)
3) I haven't gotten to ToB yet, so I haven't seen this for myself. Someone else who is more familiar with the ToB changes should comment on this one.
5) I don't remember any such restriction, but then I didn't play a lot of Rangers so I could have missed it. A quick web search uncovered people discussing Ranger->Cleric dual-classing for non-Beastmaster versions of Ranger. They seemed to be working in the context of unmodded BGII (and their posts predated either of the EE games), but that's not really definitive proof of anything. I can say that PnP 2nd Ed. had no such restriction, so I don't really see a problem with removing it for the sake of EE - if it did exist. After all, the original BG2 didn't have quite a few things that have been added to the EE. I don't see much of a case for removing all the things that the developers have added, in the name of purity. The true purist has the option of playing the Original BGII, exactly as it was, by playing BGII instead of BGII:EE.
Also, I'm not sure how one qualifies as a purist while demanding that exploits that allowed unintended item imports be unfixed.
2) Use the console if you want those items.
3) I believe all such items had these names in their descriptions, and the items were renamed to give the game more flavour.
4) Just use the console....
5) This was an 'optional but cool' G3 Fixpack component. It's questionable that they included something that's more a tweak than a fix but there's a simple solution: Don't dual your archers and stalkers to clerics. Problem solved.
Frankly, I don't see why dual classing shouldn't be allowed. Ranger/Cleric is a valid class. Therefore, Archer/Cleric and Stalker/Cleric should also be valid classes.