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How much cheese can you tolerate?

TheArtisan TheArtisan Member Posts: 3,277
edited March 2014 in General Discussion (Spoiler Warning!)
Cheeeeeeeeese.

Anyways title and poll.

Examples of the different degrees of cheese.

1. I use cheese whenever possible - Abuse the engine whenever possible. Fake talk, metagaming, offscreen nuking, etc. If you can do it and it makes your life easier, do it.

2. I only use cheese when I can RP justify it - Only using cheese when it makes sense, regardless of how 'cheesy' it is. Examples: using the Shield of Balduran, Web stacking, trap stacking.

3. I only use cheese under desperation and otherwise avoid it - Basically, you fight a boss about 20 times, can't do it, get frustrated, then resort to cheese just so you can progress before you break your keyboard. Otherwise you play fair.

4. I never use cheese under any circumstances - Self-explanatory.

I'm a 2 personally.
  1. How much cheese can you tolerate?86 votes
    1. I use cheese whenever possible
      12.79%
    2. I only use cheese when I can RP justify it
      39.53%
    3. I only use cheese under desperation and otherwise avoid it
      26.74%
    4. I never use cheese under any circumstances
        9.30%
    5. Any other criteria I forgot
      11.63%
«1

Comments

  • CrevsDaakCrevsDaak Member Posts: 7,155
    I only cheese in battles if I haven't killed my enemies already.
    But the 'I cheese until the game crashes option is missing! D:
  • FlashburnFlashburn Member Posts: 1,847
    I cheese battles only sometimes, though it isn't RP-justified usually. Like setting spike traps for the demonic female battle in Watcher's Keep 4. The Marilith and The Huntress always mess me up.
  • atcDaveatcDave Member Posts: 2,410
    Its important to me to be able to rationalize my behavior and tactics. But I'm sometimes willing to use meta-knowledge on the grounds my characters likely see more and actually know their skills and abilities far better than I myself actually do. So I have no problem with pre-buffing for most big battles on the grounds the party would likely know (hear!) there's a group of monsters in the next room. I have no problem with buying the Shield of Balduran on the grounds Beholders are deadly and its a key tool for survival if you meet one. I have no problem with carrying a bunch of specialized weapons, especially once I have the Bag of Holding, because Dragons and Demons and such are more difficult if you aren't prepared.
    Basically, I want to play as smart as I can justify.
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    edited March 2014
    I don't consider myself a cheeser, but if you define using the Shield of Balduran or setting various traps as cheese, than I'm a cheeser who tries to justify his actions from a RP perspective.

    Do I place lots of traps right in front of a still neutral dragon? No, never. But I might set a number of traps out of its sight, not enough to kill the beast and not for the purpose of killing it, but as a safety net in case my party needs to escape and gets chased by the dragon.
    Do I use the Shield of Balduran? Well if the Item Randomizer lets me find it, I can't see why not. (My parties never depend on it though.)
  • YgramulYgramul Member Posts: 1,060
    None.

    Give me a balanced game where I have a fair chance to beat no-reload if I play really really well.
  • Demonoid_LimewireDemonoid_Limewire Member Posts: 424
    edited March 2014
    I ALWAYS, always, use, love, and philosophically justify cheese. I love the stuff. Can't keep my hands off it! Be it a party fully created by you with ungodly rolls, be it an xp loophole, a money making trick, a glitch, the original expansion saved game to use it and equip your upstart character with endgame items, ANYTHING goes, and is fine, by me.

    As long as it is not the engine, the commands, the cheats, and the editorz. Everything you can achieve by simply exploiting and abusing the game itself, exclusively, is my thing. I hate cheating and trainers with a passion.
  • mumumomomumumomo Member Posts: 635
    What do you consider cheesy?

    From your poll, you consider some effective tactics (like web stacking) to be cheesy but you don't consider reloading the same battle 20 times to be.

    For me :
    - reloading (especially hoping to get lucky, without changing your tactic) is the ultimate cheese
    - apart from that :

    not intended/game breaking (summoning 10 planetars using project image) : Cheesy. I don't do

    not intended/not game breaking (equipping items in the right order to stack MR, putting traps in front of a neutral dragon) : cheesy I may or not do it, depending on the exploit

    intended/game breaking/realistic (time stop/improved alacrity, time stop/shapeshift, setting traps before final seal in WK) : Not cheesy. I do

    intended/game breaking/non realistic (abusing potions of master thievery to get infinite money from the start of the game with your level 1 thief) : I don't do
  • davendaven Member Posts: 112
    Once on Firkraag I stayed offscreen and used wand of cloudkill tons of times because i couldn't kill him...

    Felt guilty afterwards! Never playing like that again.
  • BalladBallad Member Posts: 205
    edited March 2014
    mumumomo said:

    What do you consider cheesy?

    From your poll, you consider some effective tactics (like web stacking) to be cheesy but you don't consider reloading the same battle 20 times to be.

    For me :
    - reloading (especially hoping to get lucky, without changing your tactic) is the ultimate cheese
    - apart from that :

    not intended/game breaking (summoning 10 planetars using project image) : Cheesy. I don't do

    not intended/not game breaking (equipping items in the right order to stack MR, putting traps in front of a neutral dragon) : cheesy I may or not do it, depending on the exploit

    intended/game breaking/realistic (time stop/improved alacrity, time stop/shapeshift, setting traps before final seal in WK) : Not cheesy. I do

    intended/game breaking/non realistic (abusing potions of master thievery to get infinite money from the start of the game with your level 1 thief) : I don't do

    Kudos to you, sir, for perfectly summing up my thoughts on the issue. There are a lot of consciously programmed, developer intended mechanics in the series that are so powerful as to be game breaking. Take the Protection from Magic scroll, which has the capacity to turn pretty much every challenging battle in the game into a cakewalk, essentially making it a legitimate instawin cheat. Same goes for the Shield of Balduran in the context of beholders and a couple of other items. On the other hand, I can think of several, probably unintended tactics that, in my opinion, are perfectly legit and make a lot of sense from a tactical/RP point of view. One example of this would be using terrain - such as the pulsating portals on the floor of Planar Prison - to your advantage or war of attrition strategies, such as having mages exhaust their spells on summoned/protected creatures.

    Personally, I don't feel bad about using tactics like the latter. I, however, do my best to refrain from unrealistic, exploitative tactics like barring doorways with invisible party members, stacking traps over the course of several rests and the like. A lot also depends on the relative difficulty of the enemy I'm facing. As a rule of thumb, the stronger the enemy in comparison to my party, the less bad I feel about cheap tactics. For instance, I wouldn't feel bad for straying into the dairy section at the Final Seal with a party of level 10 characters in Chapter 2, but if I got there during ToB, I'd try to use more presentable/honorable strategies.

    In the end, it all boils down to keeping the game challenging without making it excessively frustrating.
  • mumumomomumumomo Member Posts: 635
    The problem is that any good tactic will transform normally difficult fights into cakewalks.
    So some people call them cheesy. For me, this is not cheese, this is playing properly.

    1 example : the davaevorn fight.

    Davaevorn + his 2 battle horrors can be a very dangerous opponent : his fireball and lightning bolt can be very painful and the battle horrors hit hard.

    Tactic 1 :
    rush in, try to use your spells and abilities as best as you can an pray you don't get unlucky

    Tactic 2:
    Park your group save 1 mage or bard
    drink 1 potion of magic blocking (immunity to level 5 and below spells for 5 rounds).
    Kill the horrors using a wand. If necessary drink of second potion of magic blocking.
    Davaevorn now has no more spells and will fall easily.

    Is it cheesy? Certainly not IMO and yet, it makes a normally challenging fight extremely easy.
  • vyvexthornevyvexthorne Member Posts: 58
    Whenever possible. You obviously don't want to break out the cheese during a big dragon fight. But a little cheese after the dragon fight can really help settle your stomach.
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    ALL OF IT
  • booinyoureyesbooinyoureyes Member Posts: 6,164
    @mumumomo‌ (Bhaal almighty what a name!) pretty much summed up the exact situation in which I find cheese to be appropriate/inappropriate in my game. He must have taken a level in psionics!

    I also use cheese on occasion when I'm annoyed with little things in the game. Like when I am trying to catch some zzzzzs and some stupid kobold feels the need to jump my level 9 party of badasses. Rather than take the time to manage the stupid fight I just ctrl-y the annoying kobolds.
    Funny part is: I HATE being awoken prematurely in real life too! I am also the lightest sleeper ever, which may be a good thing if I was traveling the Sword Coast but in real life is really annoying when my blinds aren't welded shut.
  • KaltzorKaltzor Member Posts: 1,050
    I think cheese needs more specific designations...
  • LemernisLemernis Member, Moderator Posts: 4,318
    edited April 2014
    The one bit of cheese that I sometimes do use in BG2 is set traps in places where it seems unlikely that it would go undetected. I mean, technically, yes, it is outside of the enemy's range of perception. But it's like just outside... Yah, really? Anyway to exploit the game engine as such to kill a dragon, for example, always feels pretty lame to me.
    Post edited by Lemernis on
  • SirK8SirK8 Member Posts: 527
    This poll has made me hungry. I love cheese!
  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    CrevsDaak said:

    I only cheese in battles if I haven't killed my enemies already.

    Yeah, I only use cheese when in battle but AFTER all of my enemies are dead. That's the best time in the combat for me.

  • SjerrieSjerrie Member Posts: 1,237
    Who's to say that my Imoen, Jaheira and Nalia aren't muttering protection spells under their breath while Charname is sucking up to Firkraag. You know, just in case.
  • the_spyderthe_spyder Member Posts: 5,018
    Sjerrie said:

    Who's to say that my Imoen, Jaheira and Nalia aren't muttering protection spells under their breath while Charname is sucking up to Firkraag. You know, just in case.

    Ya know it's funny but that is EXACTLY my point of view. I think that most Wizards of the adventurer persuasion probably have their daily protection spell complement up and running from the first moment that they get out of bed (and maybe even before they brush their teeth).

    There was this NWN Persistent world that I used to play on. They implemented this thing where it was "illegal" for a wizard to have protections up in town. Then they added a script that, when you went into town, they got forcibly stripped off of you. WTF?? They weren't removing fighters' armor and weapons.

    Wizards, by virtue of their physical weakness, are inherently paranoid about getting three feet of steel thrust through their chest. So they protect. And what's wrong with that? And it doesn't just apply to stone skin and the like, but other protections as well. Or is it just me?
  • mumumomomumumomo Member Posts: 635
    Prebuffing depends on the kind of buff.

    Casting PFMW before you see an ennemy would make no sense at all since the duration is so short.
    Some for any kind of buff with a duration in rounds.

    I agree with you however that long term buffs (hours or even several turns) would probably be cast by mages immediately and should be on all the time
  • SjerrieSjerrie Member Posts: 1,237
    I could even see Invisibility 10' being cast before camping while on the road. Less need to keep watch.
  • BalladBallad Member Posts: 205
    Unless you're roleplaying a party of lobotomized lemmings, it makes absolutely no sense NOT to buff up before entering an obviously dangerous area, be it a dungeon, a crypt or that back alley in the Slums. In some instances, such as in the case of Firkraag's Lair or the Temple of Bhaal, the game actually gives you all the reasons/information to suspect that dung is about to hit the Wyvern's whirling tail. Unless your main character has a wisdom score of 3, they should have the foresight to prepare for an imminent confrontation.

    The more I think about it, the fewer reasons I can find to rp-justify barging in on a battle unprepared. Unless it is an ambush. And even then, I think it'd be fair to assume that any adventurer that has lived past level 1 would have developed a kind of sixth sense for upcoming danger.
  • TheElfTheElf Member Posts: 798
    I use it against Illithids. I hate illithids.
  • CaradocCaradoc Member Posts: 92
    edited April 2014
    Some time ago, on these forums, we had a lively discussion about beholders and cheesy tactics. One of the main topics was: Is using shield of balduran cheesy or not?

    "tanking a beholder without cheese" -> http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/25121/tanking-a-beholder-without-cheese/p1

    One of the most insightful comments I've seen on these forums was said on that thread.

    Let me quote the poster who wrote those insightful words:
    Magnus_Grelich said:

    Beholders and Gauths in general are made of cheese.
    Why should you hold back?

    Indeed. If beholder tactics are cheesy, why should I player hold back intentionally? :)
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