After 15 years of Baldur's Gate, I found *The Way* to an immersive experience
Ygramul
Member Posts: 1,060
Okay, so, first, if you have been playing this thing since original release like I do, you also clearly have an OCD. You may want to seek help.
Speaking of OCD, here are two very simple ground rules that constitutes *The Way* for the most fun ever:
1. Do NOT adjust ability scores when you roll.
(Depending on how tough you're feeling, you can take the first roll, or re-roll as long as you want, but no 18/18/16/18/3/5 for that Bard of yours -- it's cheesy & unnatural.)
2. No Reloads!
The first rule gives gravity to your very first choice, the character, and ensures that you will have handicaps, rather than a cookie-cutter.
The second rule gives gravity to all your immediate choices, every round. (Are you gonna fight or flight, when three party members are dead and you have to pick between loosing their equipment or loosing the last 50 hours of your gaming effort in a last ditch charge.)
To taste, you can add:
- SCS [indispensable for me; but I only use the AI enhancements, not encounter 'improvements' which are mostly unbalanced]
RESULT: inexhaustible, countless hours of edge-of-the-seat gaming.
Not Dragon Age, not Mass Effect, not NWN, not Witcher -- none of those give such a well-balanced "maybe this time I can make it!" experience of survival. Those games are not balanced for no-reload play: Baldur's Gate can be consistently beaten no-reload if you play well. Every single one of deaths happened, because I was foolish at that moment!
[Since my initial completion of BG1 & BG2 upon their release and my switching exclusively to trilogy no-reload play, I finished BG1 only twice and BG2 not even once. This may take me an extra decade to accomplish, but what a feat that will be.]
Speaking of OCD, here are two very simple ground rules that constitutes *The Way* for the most fun ever:
1. Do NOT adjust ability scores when you roll.
(Depending on how tough you're feeling, you can take the first roll, or re-roll as long as you want, but no 18/18/16/18/3/5 for that Bard of yours -- it's cheesy & unnatural.)
2. No Reloads!
The first rule gives gravity to your very first choice, the character, and ensures that you will have handicaps, rather than a cookie-cutter.
The second rule gives gravity to all your immediate choices, every round. (Are you gonna fight or flight, when three party members are dead and you have to pick between loosing their equipment or loosing the last 50 hours of your gaming effort in a last ditch charge.)
To taste, you can add:
- SCS [indispensable for me; but I only use the AI enhancements, not encounter 'improvements' which are mostly unbalanced]
RESULT: inexhaustible, countless hours of edge-of-the-seat gaming.
Not Dragon Age, not Mass Effect, not NWN, not Witcher -- none of those give such a well-balanced "maybe this time I can make it!" experience of survival. Those games are not balanced for no-reload play: Baldur's Gate can be consistently beaten no-reload if you play well. Every single one of deaths happened, because I was foolish at that moment!
[Since my initial completion of BG1 & BG2 upon their release and my switching exclusively to trilogy no-reload play, I finished BG1 only twice and BG2 not even once. This may take me an extra decade to accomplish, but what a feat that will be.]
4
Comments
This way of gaming changes how you approach everything. You have to plan every battle and have an exit strategy. You'll become cowardly when things go badly, so cowardly that even Khalid will be ashamed of you. But atleast you live to see another day. Things are so boring when you can just press the magic reload button.
Someone scouts invisible.
Someone else shows up to distract.
Then I walk in and bash.
Otherwise the frontliner WILL die eventually.
I'll mess with stats a bit, but 18/18/18/ect is stupid.
Re. stats rolling, I would love to stick with the stats 'as rolled' IF race and class were chosen AFTER the stats roll (as in my old PnP days, but that I think was just the DM's discretion).
Edit: Would it be feasible to make that last point a mod request, i.e. having the option to role stats before anything else in character creation?