My favorite character level name comes from the Assassin. At level 3, they are known as the fearsome Waghalter. The Ranger Knight takes a close second.
My favorite character level name comes from the Assassin. At level 3, they are known as the fearsome Waghalter. The Ranger Knight takes a close second.
@WarChiefZeke So he goes from Bravo-hired killer, to Rutterkin- crafty fox, to Waghalter- one likely to be hanged. I reckon that fits pretty well. They had some interesting old terms for sure.
A couple of tidbits from my last trip down Beregost way...
- If you keep Right-clicking the two guards in the Travenhurst manor, they'll eventually say: "Today I saw a girl with the biggest pair of diddeys(sic) I've ever seen!"
- If you CTRL-Q a Beregost courtesan in to your party she will gain a level. (clicking the Level Up button will crash the game)
A couple of tidbits from my last trip down Beregost way...
- If you CTRL-Q a Beregost courtesan in to your party she will gain a level. (clicking the Level Up button will crash the game)
Levelling up any character who has been brought into your party using CTRL-Q will crash the game.
Yeah, I'm not very technical so I had to learn this the hard way. I assume all NPCs are linked to an XP table which is why they can all effectively trigger the 'Level Up' portrait icon & sound effect?
Nevertheless, the courtesan is the only one I've seen which can "level" at 0xp.
Not exactly. Any character that has a character class (one of the classes you can select on character creation) can level up just fine, and there are plenty of NPCs who have those classes. But there are all kinds of other classes as well, including racial classes like Sahuagin. A Courtesan's class would be "Innocent," one of the few classes that causes the party to lose reputation if you kill them.
Character classes have entries in the .2da tables that govern leveling up. For example, a mage has a value of 2500 that corresponds to its level 2 required XP, which is why mages need 2500 XP to hit level 2. Likewise, there are tables for saving throw growth, spell slots, THAC0, and other things. Non-character classes, however, have no entries in any the .2da tables, so when the game tries to give them a level, it can't figure out what it's supposed to do to the character, so it crashes.
I'd forgotten that if you CTRL-Q someone that it is possible to have in your party then there is no problem. I haven't tried it, but I expect that if an NPC left the party for reputation reasons, you could CTRL-Q them back in and recover their possessions before they decided to leave again.
HLA's in TOB aren't usually that far off from normal high level abilities in 2nd Edition. Some of them, such as Death Blow, were more or less directly ported. Clerics got kinda beat. Party friendly cones of petrification and more, yes please.
Detect Illusion was meant to be one of a series of thief skills that became available at 21st level and up, actually.
@semiticgod Is there a maximum number of entries the .2da tables for levelling up can have, or some other major technical reason why CTRL-Q Levelups can't be modded in? Aside from the number of classes, I don't see why we can't work around the crash.
@Pokota: No maximum to my knowledge, but since there would be dozens of numbers to input for dozens upon dozens of classes, it's far easier to just assign the CTRL-Q target an existing class.
@semiticgod Is there a maximum number of entries the .2da tables for levelling up can have, or some other major technical reason why CTRL-Q Levelups can't be modded in? Aside from the number of classes, I don't see why we can't work around the crash.
You could just use EEKeeper to give your new party member a real character class.
Did you know you can kill guards without loosing reputation by removing the companion from your party before the attack lands? Works best with fireballs.
Useful for removing accidentally agroed Flaming Firsts from the map or clearing a crowded inn for use as a home base.
If my memory is correct, somebody told me they thought I could find a way to kill Belhifet using only spells. I didn't think I could, but they were right.
It is in fact possible to kill Belhifet in Icewind Dale using only elemental damage, without using weapons or summoned critters to hit him. Although he is immune to spell levels 1 to 9 and is immune to fire and cold, making Fire Shields useless against him, there is one spell that can hurt him without using physical damage:
Giant Insect.
The spell summons 3 beetles, either boring beetles or bombardier beetles. Neither of them can actually hit him with their normal attacks, but the bombardier beetles can use their acid attack to deal 3d4 damage to Belhifet, bypassing his magic resistance and spell level immunities.
But each bombardier beetle only uses that acid attack a single time; they can't do it more than once each. On average, you'd need about 47 bombardier beetles with 47 acid attacks to kill Belhifet. Since Giant Insect summons 3 beetles and there's a 50% chance of getting either boring beetles or bombardier beetles, you'd need about 31 castings of Giant Insect on average to kill him. A group of six level 13 druids (pretty reasonable to reach by the end of the game in normal mode) with 18 Wisdom each would be able to cast Giant Insect 30 times, or 54 times if you used Wondrous Recall, which would be more than enough to kill him, provided you had a means of getting rid of his other allies without using those spell slots.
If you were in Heart of Fury mode, a party of level 26 druids (4 million XP apiece) with 18 Wisdom would have 9 level 4 and 9 level 6 spell slots, allowing them to cast Giant Insect a total of 162 times, enough to deal about 1800 damage, more than enough to deal with HoF Belhifet's 1100 HP.
So you can kill Belhifet with nothing but beetle acid. No weapons necessary.
One can get 2 pairs of Legacy of the Masters from the bandit camp. Pickpocket Tazok before he leaves and get another from his tent.
Talking about pickpocketting characters before they leave, that is a very useful tactic as they don't go hostile in the event of failure.
You can use that tactic against Aldeth after you have helped him against the druids. Let's face it, that's when you need it, not when you have already defeated the doppelgangers!
The description of the Ring of Clumsiness says that it was previously owned by a jester who tricked people into putting on the ring and then mocked them. Not everybody liked that, and sometimes he had to run away from them after they got the ring off. Also, apparently his last known performance was with an evil Zhentarim mage, from whom he did not flee quite fast enough.
I'd like to call attention to something here. That was his last *known* performance. Perhaps there have been subsequent unknown performances carried out by his ghost.
Some journal entries and responses are written using singular words like "I" while others are written using words like "we" and "us".
This inconsistency makes writing mods consistent with the original games style more difficult
Yeah, the first instance I thought of when this was mentioned is when one gets to Nashkel. The two basic responses both referring to more than one person, even when one is alone. It just sounds strange unless playing a CHARNAME that is a little 'off', as I do sometimes.
That happens a lot both in vanilla and in mods. What was needed in both cases was a counter to see how many were in the party, and if less than two write I instead of we, or thou instead of you for those languages such as French where a different pronoun is used for you singular and you plural. Not too difficult, it just needed a bit of fore-sight.
Did you know that Summon Insects actually does a pretty solid amount of damage? It lasts slighly longer than Insect Plague, and over its duration it deals a total of 21 damage. Unlike Insect Plague, however, Summon Insects allows the target to save against all the effects, but that save is made at -4, so if you're in Baldur's Gate 1, no one is ever going to make the save.
In BG1 Sarevok uses a +5 sword but it actually doesn't have any kind of enchantment. It will hit people who are immune to normal weapons (since it is still considered to be a magical weapon) but won't work on anyone immune to +1 (or greater) weapons.
In practice of course without getting rid of the xp cap/spawning in new scrolls there isn't any way to take advantage of this. But I figured I'd share it anyways
Comments
- If you keep Right-clicking the two guards in the Travenhurst manor, they'll eventually say: "Today I saw a girl with the biggest pair of diddeys(sic) I've ever seen!"
- If you CTRL-Q a Beregost courtesan in to your party she will gain a level. (clicking the Level Up button will crash the game)
Nevertheless, the courtesan is the only one I've seen which can "level" at 0xp.
Character classes have entries in the .2da tables that govern leveling up. For example, a mage has a value of 2500 that corresponds to its level 2 required XP, which is why mages need 2500 XP to hit level 2. Likewise, there are tables for saving throw growth, spell slots, THAC0, and other things. Non-character classes, however, have no entries in any the .2da tables, so when the game tries to give them a level, it can't figure out what it's supposed to do to the character, so it crashes.
Detect Illusion was meant to be one of a series of thief skills that became available at 21st level and up, actually.
Useful for removing accidentally agroed Flaming Firsts from the map or clearing a crowded inn for use as a home base.
It is in fact possible to kill Belhifet in Icewind Dale using only elemental damage, without using weapons or summoned critters to hit him. Although he is immune to spell levels 1 to 9 and is immune to fire and cold, making Fire Shields useless against him, there is one spell that can hurt him without using physical damage:
Giant Insect.
The spell summons 3 beetles, either boring beetles or bombardier beetles. Neither of them can actually hit him with their normal attacks, but the bombardier beetles can use their acid attack to deal 3d4 damage to Belhifet, bypassing his magic resistance and spell level immunities.
But each bombardier beetle only uses that acid attack a single time; they can't do it more than once each. On average, you'd need about 47 bombardier beetles with 47 acid attacks to kill Belhifet. Since Giant Insect summons 3 beetles and there's a 50% chance of getting either boring beetles or bombardier beetles, you'd need about 31 castings of Giant Insect on average to kill him. A group of six level 13 druids (pretty reasonable to reach by the end of the game in normal mode) with 18 Wisdom each would be able to cast Giant Insect 30 times, or 54 times if you used Wondrous Recall, which would be more than enough to kill him, provided you had a means of getting rid of his other allies without using those spell slots.
If you were in Heart of Fury mode, a party of level 26 druids (4 million XP apiece) with 18 Wisdom would have 9 level 4 and 9 level 6 spell slots, allowing them to cast Giant Insect a total of 162 times, enough to deal about 1800 damage, more than enough to deal with HoF Belhifet's 1100 HP.
So you can kill Belhifet with nothing but beetle acid. No weapons necessary.
Pickpocket Tazok before he leaves and get another from his tent.
You can use that tactic against Aldeth after you have helped him against the druids. Let's face it, that's when you need it, not when you have already defeated the doppelgangers!
Even if you fail you are no worse off!
Good thing it's not actually an ogre mage
I'd like to call attention to something here. That was his last *known* performance. Perhaps there have been subsequent unknown performances carried out by his ghost.
Well, we do have an undead ghost Blade in the BGNPC Project so...
Yeah, I like that idea.
( Jester Ghost by ShiroJester )
Uh oh, I feel rerollitis coming on again, gotta hold out. (RR's the best).
Some journal entries and responses are written using singular words like "I" while others are written using words like "we" and "us".
This inconsistency makes writing mods consistent with the original games style more difficult
In practice of course without getting rid of the xp cap/spawning in new scrolls there isn't any way to take advantage of this. But I figured I'd share it anyways