Hitpoints rant.
Linkamus
Member Posts: 221
Since the latest patch came out, I'm finally dedicating the amount of time needed to go through BG:EE. I'm playing modless, but on insane difficulty. In the past, I've usually reloaded on level up to get max HP on every character. However, this time through, I'm trying to do minimal reloads, and am taking the first HP rolls I get. Well I've had horrible luck. Dorn is level 4 now and has only 20 HP, Rasaad is level 4 and I think he only has 17.
I really think randomizing the amount of HP gained is such a stupid rule for a game that is so heavily combat focused. I wish it was just a set amount of HP received no matter what. Ya I could reload to get max HP like I have usually done in the past, but I always felt dirty when doing it.
Do you guys usually reload to get max hp?
I really think randomizing the amount of HP gained is such a stupid rule for a game that is so heavily combat focused. I wish it was just a set amount of HP received no matter what. Ya I could reload to get max HP like I have usually done in the past, but I always felt dirty when doing it.
Do you guys usually reload to get max hp?
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Comments
It makes each level up more exciting. You got 6 characters, if u get a bad roll, u "roll with the punches" and hope for better next time.
Besides, it's only really significant in BG 1 for melee fighters at the early levels.
Oh yeah, I should add. I just play at Core Rules, I don't intend to go higher. I don't see the point of higher difficulties if it forces me to abandon my rules about (non)powergaming, cheese and reloading.
Sure, normally you butcher this Mage or that. Then you flub your rolls and he gets a lightning bolt off that fries Charname.
I gaurantee by the time you actually pull it off, you won't be saying 'well that was easy'.
There are critical spells for which there are only one or two copies in the game (both BG1 and BG2). And for those critical spells with a lot of copies, you won't have the gold to be able to afford to fail scribing at the appropriate times.
I just make sure all my arcane casters have INT as their primary stat, usually 18, in order to "pay" for my 100 percent spell scribing.
As for hit points, I find it annoying to have low level, medium level, and high level characters having to worry about trivial encounters, that are *supposed* to be trivial encounters. In the actually challenging encounters, hit points don't matter - what matters are good tactics, the best AC you can get, and knowledge of counterspell.
If you don't have those three things, hit points become totally irrelevant. A Held, Panicked, or Stunned fighter with 80 hit points is going to die maybe one and only one round later than a held fighter with 40 hit points.
Maze, Petrify, and Imprison ruin your day, and they don't care how many hit points you have. A fighter with superior Thac0 to your AC doesn't care how many hit points you have, either. Bang, bang, bang, you're dead. He doesn't miss. (See "Sarevok".)
So, it's max hit points for me. My attitude is "might as well have them, for all that it matters in this game." I think max hit points make everything more about your skill, and less about random dice rolls. I *really* want to feel like it's my skill that's beating encounters, not random dice rolls.
The one thing I wish about the slider, would be that I could have a "normal" slider setting that gives max xp and 100 percent spell learning, and prevents chunking (which can ruin your game when it happens - I once got Jaheira chunked in a minimal reload "core rules" ToB game, and I decided to live with it, and never got to see Jaheira's epilogue), but without reducing basic melee damage to 75 percent.
The bottom line, though, is that I have more fun on "normal". I play to relieve anxiety and stress, not to cause it.
I've tried SCS before, and the fully monty with that struck me as ridiculously stressful. The "improved AI" alone didn't make much difference. I know that "smarter mages and clerics" greatly increases difficulty, and that you can give Web spells to every spider and Sleep spells to kobolds, but all that stuff just made me feel like the computer was cheating even worse than it usually does.
If opponents were *truly* intelligent, they wouldn't challenge clearly superior parties, and they'd surrender almost every battle, but then, that wouldn't be a very fun game.
To each their own of course, and I totally understand why people look for ways to increase difficulty, but the bottom line for me is, difficulty slider on normal, no SCS, and the game is plenty hard.
But thanks, good idea what I can play again if there is a bigger pause in the bgee evolution.
Wow for once, our views are not quite in alignment
The reasons I prefer core rules and random hp level ups are:
1) I felt that some characters get too much hp with maximum rolls. I equate hp (perhaps wrongly) with size to an extent. You may remember that at the very start of BG 2, I used ShadowKeeper to reduce Jin’s Con (and also took a Con hit in the Spellhold dream sequence) because I felt he had too much hp for what I’d pictured him to look like. I feel that small-ish men/elves, even warriors, should only have 60-80 hp, at least until they get to much higher levels.
2) As you said, hp actually isn’t too important to difficulty. More specifically, only very poor hp, like in the case of Aerie, poses a problem cos she was so vulnerable to Horrid Wilting, which killed her in one hit. In most cases, hp only delayed death, or gave you a little more room for error. So I felt I didn’t need more hp to beat the game. Having less hp kinda made things more exciting cos I cannot afford to make silly mistakes (and of course on several occasions where I was careless, Jin died… the Fire Giant case being a good example of where extra hp probably would’ve saved him).
You know I'm really surprised that nobody in my LP has ever been chunked... I don't know what causes chunking exactly (what constitutes 'massive damage'), but I remember it happening with frightening regularity in BG 1 Vanilla (where the default was Core Rules, apparently). It didn't happen for me in BG EE cos I was playing on Normal, but I've been playing Core Rules all the time in BG 2, and it's never happened (yet). I've pretty much established that I'd reload for Imoen and Aerie, but not anyone else, though of course, I certainly don't want to lose Anomen (most powerful companion), Jaheira or Minsc (the two who have stood by Jin the longest since BG 1, given Imoen was 'MIA' for quite a while).
SCS sounds crazy. I'd like a challenge, but not to be pushed to cheese/powergaming, so I'm never gonna install that.
Oh and I kinda agree with @ryuken87. The range of rolls for a warrior is a bit ridiculous, and one or two bad rolls can really mess up a frontliner like Khalid or Minsc.
This. This sooo hard.
Being chunked (IIRC) is your remaining health +10 (i.e. you have 20 health remaining and you get hit for 31 or more, you should be chunked). That said I'm not completely certain. It may be 15, but that's why you see it happen so often against your low level kobold or gibberling, which have roughly 1d4 or 1d6 (and my cleric hits for like 8-12 or something pre buffs, crits etc).
Khalid: 17 (not great but not terrible)
Jaheria: 14 I think, definitely the lowest if I remember right
Minsc: 15
Dynaheir: 16
Imoen 16
I knew she had 17 in BG2, I just wasn't sure about BG1. Thanks
That said, you can't get angry with a design that's taken straight from the books. This game *is* a D&D game, after all, and in regards to HP gains at level up, you have to make a roll for it to determine how much you gain. Some DM's won't even let you re-roll on character creation, which means you can end up stuck with crappy stats and learn to like with it. Be glad we were at least given a re-roll feature for *THAT*.
I really don't like reloading in games. Which is why I always just play at a difficulty level that's challenging, but manageable, and then just accept whatever the game throws at me (mostly). If u reload for every little thing, it totally detracts from any sense of achievement when u win a tough battle, make a good decision, etc... and takes away the sense of danger and excitement that enhances most games.
For example I loved FTL cos the game was no-reload by default. I died a good half-dozens before completing the game. But when I did it, I had a beaming smile on my face. Similarly in Shogun 2 Total War, I played at only Hard difficulty, and with plenty of in-battle pausing, but I knew that almost every battle in the early game was critical, and if I lost, or the cost of victory was too high, it would be the end of my playthrough.
And yes, I am not angry at the design of BG hp rolls, I accept it, but I do think that 2nd Ed. PnP rules were not ideal in several regards. Hp rolls is one of them, pick-pocketing is another (though I am not sure if Bioware implemented AD&D 2nd ed. rules for that). @Dragonspear
I find it really surprising then that I have not lost anyone to chunking in 150-200 hrs of BG 2 Vanilla. I am definitely on Core Rules, cos I've failed to learn spells on several occasions, and I don't deliberately take care to heal up wounded characters, which is presumably important in preventing chunking, cos u'd want to keep ur characters away from the 'danger zones' of 1-10 hp, where any significant hit would be chunking.
Oh well... long may my companions stay in one chunk!
I used to feel the same as you about it, and I wasn't satisfied unless I was playing on core rules, but I've softened up on myself.
One time when I was playing Neverwinter Nights on core rules, and even some on maximum difficulty, I noticed that the main difference was that I just had to keep drinking more potions - I still could win all the battles pretty easily. It's similar in BG, in my opinion.
Keeping the slider on core just makes me have to find and buy lots of potions of genius and more healing potions. After a while, that gets tedious to me, and I just start wanting to roleplay my characters through the story without having to do so much resource management.
It depends on my mood, I guess, as to how much I care to struggle through the game. I've played through this game so many times, sometimes I just want to relax and enjoy the ride, on automatic pilot.
For simplicities sake, lets just say you get about 50% more HP on Normal difficulty vs Core. Of course, normal difficulty also reduces damage by 25%. If you factor that in, effective health is pretty much double what you would have on core, triple if you play novice.
Another way to look at Difficulty:
Insane: 50% Effective Health for all characters
Insane with Max Rolls: 75% Effective
Difficult: 66% Effective Health
Difficult with Max Rolls: 100% Effective Health
Core: 100% Effective Health
Core with max Rolls: 150% Effective Health
Normal: 200% Effective Health
Novice: 300% Effective Health
The formula also changes a bit based on if you are playing straight from the start of BG2, where you have ~7 levels of max rolls.
Sure, at the higher levels you can just buff yourself to the Hells and back, so your mages can afford to have low hitpoints, but the problem is getting there in the first place.
It's also extremely annoying rolling 1 at level up with a fighter or a tank character. Hell, even getting 6 with Kagain is always enough to make me mad, but I just roll with it.