If you've never played BG:EE with SCS you are missing out! *SPOILERS*
SirK8
Member Posts: 527
So I've been playing through BG:EE with the intent on finally finishing it with a character to bring into BG2:EE. I installed the SCS mod (along with the BG1NPC and some BG2 Tweaks) to keep the game fresh and up the challenge a bit (though I rarely finish the game, I sure do play up until I get to the city a lot). I'd heard the mod was really good and added a level of challenge, and so far I'd seen that and enjoyed it, but the game was mostly the same. Well except the part where the bounty hunters ambush you at the most inconvenient times (great feature).
The kobold mine was a lot more fun than vanilla, and the chieftain fight was fun, but I'd done it before on a previous run, so I knew what to expect. Then I got to the bandit areas and that is when the fun really began. Bands of Blacktalon Elite, acting like elite archers... kiting my melee, taking pot shots at my squishies, I even resorted to downing a cold resist potion and making sure I passed around the resist boots to conserve healing potions. I had to make sure I kept melee in their faces as best I could and had to retreat my less armored party members more than a few times. I tried to sleep a few times to heal up... bad idea.
Then I run into the Red Wizards.. ah these guys are pushovers, just pound them one at a time with ranged while putting a few swords in their face to distract them right? Wrong, these guys were playing like a caster should, mirror image, protection from missiles, casting disabling spells, retreating when needed, summoning creatures.. well 3 reloads later I finally won that battle and still had to raise a party member. Excellent encounter.
Well now on to the bandit camp. I didn't pretend to join, because CHARNAME is a Cavalier and subterfuge just isn't his style. Besides, storming the bandit camp vs. pretending to join really isn't that different, all that changes is the order that wipe out the camp (tent first vs. outside first). AMIRIGHT?
Now this next part is in spoiler tags, because even though this is already labeled as having spoilers, I do not recommend reading this next part if you have never played with SCS and plan to. This encounter was very unique from my vanilla experience and the highlight of this play through so far. Had it been spoiled for me I don't think it would have had the same impact (both on level of challenge and delight).
Now it was off to the temple to raise our dead and sell our loot. My group had actually gone through almost every buff potion as well, anything to give us an edge (usually I end the game with loads of potions). If the rest of the major encounters are anything like this one, this is shaping up to be the most fun I've had with BG since my first blind game. Thanks @DavidW for this great mod!
The kobold mine was a lot more fun than vanilla, and the chieftain fight was fun, but I'd done it before on a previous run, so I knew what to expect. Then I got to the bandit areas and that is when the fun really began. Bands of Blacktalon Elite, acting like elite archers... kiting my melee, taking pot shots at my squishies, I even resorted to downing a cold resist potion and making sure I passed around the resist boots to conserve healing potions. I had to make sure I kept melee in their faces as best I could and had to retreat my less armored party members more than a few times. I tried to sleep a few times to heal up... bad idea.
Then I run into the Red Wizards.. ah these guys are pushovers, just pound them one at a time with ranged while putting a few swords in their face to distract them right? Wrong, these guys were playing like a caster should, mirror image, protection from missiles, casting disabling spells, retreating when needed, summoning creatures.. well 3 reloads later I finally won that battle and still had to raise a party member. Excellent encounter.
Well now on to the bandit camp. I didn't pretend to join, because CHARNAME is a Cavalier and subterfuge just isn't his style. Besides, storming the bandit camp vs. pretending to join really isn't that different, all that changes is the order that wipe out the camp (tent first vs. outside first). AMIRIGHT?
Now this next part is in spoiler tags, because even though this is already labeled as having spoilers, I do not recommend reading this next part if you have never played with SCS and plan to. This encounter was very unique from my vanilla experience and the highlight of this play through so far. Had it been spoiled for me I don't think it would have had the same impact (both on level of challenge and delight).
Boy was I wrong! So we storm the camp and spot a lone bandit... poor sod, doesn't know what's going to hit him 
I knew that SCS was better about not allowing you to pick off lone enemies using LOS tricks, so I did expect anyone nearby to come running, but what are a few extra nobgoblins and loser bandits *nyahaha*. What I didnt' expect was for him to shout "SOUND THE ALARM". I proceeded to get mobbed by loser bandits, chill mercenaries and black talon elites. This wouldn't be too bad, except they have a fondness for pelting my back row instead of my melee fighters, but anyway a wand of fear and wand of sleep set things right and would easily turn the tide. Except that now the boss tent was emptying into the fray!!!!
This right here delighted me beyond measure and has prompted me to sing SCS praises on this forum. Bosses never do that, they always just wait in their designated spot waiting for you to come at them at your leisure and on your terms. They are supposed to quietly wait while you kill off all of their lackeys and then finally confront them all buffed/healed and ready to go. Wow this was getting awesome... and harder
After a hard fought battle, leaving one party member dead, most of them badly wounded and almost out of healing potions we finally won the battle, the remaining bandits were still feared or sleeping... except that a fresh wave of black talon elites, chill mercs and bandits came at us. Fear, sleep and some summons kept things in our favor but overall this was a battle very hard fought and won.
I knew that SCS was better about not allowing you to pick off lone enemies using LOS tricks, so I did expect anyone nearby to come running, but what are a few extra nobgoblins and loser bandits *nyahaha*. What I didnt' expect was for him to shout "SOUND THE ALARM". I proceeded to get mobbed by loser bandits, chill mercenaries and black talon elites. This wouldn't be too bad, except they have a fondness for pelting my back row instead of my melee fighters, but anyway a wand of fear and wand of sleep set things right and would easily turn the tide. Except that now the boss tent was emptying into the fray!!!! This right here delighted me beyond measure and has prompted me to sing SCS praises on this forum. Bosses never do that, they always just wait in their designated spot waiting for you to come at them at your leisure and on your terms. They are supposed to quietly wait while you kill off all of their lackeys and then finally confront them all buffed/healed and ready to go. Wow this was getting awesome... and harder
After a hard fought battle, leaving one party member dead, most of them badly wounded and almost out of healing potions we finally won the battle, the remaining bandits were still feared or sleeping... except that a fresh wave of black talon elites, chill mercs and bandits came at us. Fear, sleep and some summons kept things in our favor but overall this was a battle very hard fought and won.
Now it was off to the temple to raise our dead and sell our loot. My group had actually gone through almost every buff potion as well, anything to give us an edge (usually I end the game with loads of potions). If the rest of the major encounters are anything like this one, this is shaping up to be the most fun I've had with BG since my first blind game. Thanks @DavidW for this great mod!
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Comments
Great writeup, by the way. There can never be too many SCS-appreciation threads; like @Gotural said, the mod's fantastic.
Xzar
Montaron
Garrick
Eldoth
Skie
which seems a tall order, but it could be fun in a high pressure sort of way... I feel I'm just going to get killed by Silke though.
Would not attempt this as a no-reload - don't think you could reliably survive chain Abi-Dalzim's
However, after reading a lot about SoA/ToB on this site, I'm wanting to give it another go. It just doesn't feel right though if I didn't first bring CHARNAME through the first one. I'm even doing the "canon" group since coincidentally that was my group during my very first run on the original CD version. I'm using the BG1NPC mod so Dynaheir's death in BG2 will be even more devastating to CHARNAME since I'm romancing her with the mod. This will be good because Imoen getting arrested seem like a very lame motivation for me to hunt down Irenicus, especially given the ridiculous amount of money you need to come up with to do so. So running with the canon group in BG1 and romancing Dynaheir should help that aspect for me immersion wise.
You know, I don't like to build my party for best effectiveness, exploit difficulty slider for max hp per level up, using items that are too OP... It's just not my thing.
Then again, there is nothing wrong with promoting a mod. I just think that's not for likes of me.
I think the component that most lends itself to the use of metagame knowlege is the prebuffing of opponent casters, as this considerably increases the challenge of those encounters IMO. However, even that (optional) component has several options that vary in their implementation. One thing I do like about this option though is it teaches you the value of scouting ahead with a thief or otherwise invisible character, so that you can plan things to a degree in a non meta fashion.
What I found especially refreshing was that in the case of the bandit camp, my meta knowledge actually in a way worked against me, as I did not strategize my approach. So in fact that encounter was blind and I still triumphed, though at great cost and difficulty. This breathes new life into a game that I am quite familiar with, especially in the earlier chapters.
The option to have the bounty hunters waylay you at a random time, rather than wait around picking at their a...rmor was also a very welcome addition to the game and presented me with a unique challenge.
Of course I will not try to convince you one way or another, I believe this game should be played the way each individual finds enjoyable. I will give you my opinion though that the game with this mod installed could be played in the manner that you described (which may depend on the components installed). I also intended with this post to share my most gratifying experience so far so that others who may have been eyeing this mod or are otherwise interested might enjoy it as well.
I stand by the discussion title "If you've never played BG:EE with SCS you are missing out!" Just whether or not someone cares about what they are missing out on is up to them
@Chippy - I don't know the answer to that, as this is my first run with SCS so I haven't tried that approach.
I like three things a lot:
* no-reload (people have called reloading the 'ultimate cheese', and I can't help but feel the same way)
* SCS and a few other mods that add tactical challenges or bring certain aspects closer to pnp
* heavy roleplaying (minimal metagaming, mentioned before).
Nowadays I tend to make the mistake of trying to combine these three aspects (whereas in the past I was more of a power/metagamer). The result is that my charnames generally don't survive BG1, with very few exceptions. But two out of three of the above-mentioned aspects is very doable if you know the game mechanics and the spells system. So if you've never tried it, and you don't mind reloading (or playing minimal reload instead of no-reload), I think SCS might surprise you in a positive way.
Btw please don't feel pushed by me to start using SCS. That's by no means my intention. All I'm trying to do is showing you the perspective from a fellow roleplayer (as opposed to powerplayer).
It's ok, you're free to encourage me. And I agree that some components might actually add to immersion, but at the same time I don't want to have every mage and priest pre-buffing before the fight, I don't want some random spiders at cloakwood using the Web spell randomly and such. Some components are much like "cheap difficult", and some have absolutely no sense.
Not that I even could use SCS, even if I wanted to, since SCS and SCS2 were uncombatible with my old versions of Baldur's Gate games for some reasons.
As for BG:EE, I have a break from playing it until certain issue is being resolved. To bad that AndreaColombo consequently ingores my questions regarding this matter.
As both a powergamer and a roleplayer, I can tell you in my BG2:EE SCS game, I'm roleplaying heavily my evil party (I'm playing a Blackguard, not some F/M or F/I). And I don't need to prebuff like mad or anything, the only "prebuff" I do is Stoneskin (12 hours) Animate Dead (8 hours) And Prot from Evil 10 radius (2 turns / levels) and I don't cheese, it's only about playing the game smartly which even makes sense RP-wise.
SCS is all about these moments where your level 12 party randomly encounter a Lich (which makes sence, why would I need to reach the level 18 to randomly encounter them ?) able to cast the Dragon Breath HLA, the head of the dragon appears above Edwin and Viconia, ready to kill them instantly, and your Charname shoots "WATCHOUT" while using a Potion of Icedust and saves the day.
To me, roleplaying is playing the game as if it was real, and I'm sure if Baldur's Gate was real the enemies would act closer to their SCS versions than their vanilla versions thus I support @Blackraven when he says that RP and SCS don't necessarily exclude each other.
If getting random encounter with a Lich all of sudden (by the way, it surely makes perfectly sense and is utterly immersive
If SCS was only about increasing AI of enemies, then it will be alright with me. But we know it isn't.
Don't get me wrong, I totally undestand that you don't like SCS, it's perfectly ok, I just think that you can roleplay SCS same way you can roleplay vanilla.
Indeed, some components of SCS make the game very very difficult. But the mod try to fit different types of player. That's why every single componet is optional. Nonetheless some components are just gold:
- "improved general IA", which basically teaches enemies to change target (archers fire arrows to your spellcasters, etc)
- "better calls for help", which wipes out the old "fighting one at a time cheese"
Such a game would not have web throwing spiders nor lich random encounters, only more realistic enemies.
I recall quest pack having a component for improving just base AI, there is no need for SCS to achieve that. Mods like Quest Pack have AI improvements as components. I think SCS is worth using if you want something more than just improvement of AI.
Maybe I'll end just here. I don't want to argue with anyone. Now, excuse me.
SCS allow you to break this system and to put the better enemies directly against. That's all I wanted to point out, I agree that randomly fighting Lichs make little sense anyway.
It's funny how even this far into the game, you sometimes think "ah this fight should be a pushover" I mean how much damage can a single caster do against my mighty party of six anyway? I'm hoping the Ogre Mage in the Cloakwood Mines goes down a bit easier.
Cuz everytime a near genius fries himself like a noob bhaal cries another tear. And we have enough trials. I think i should try scs. Think of the child- erm, mages! Think of the mages!