To raise or not to raise..

Noloir

There are many different ways to play BG:EE I've figured but I'm curious about what players think about the concept of raising. Personally whenever any of my characters fall in combat I restart from my last auto-save and never use the raise ability. Doing this typically saves time, in game gold, creates a sense of challenge (If one dies all dies, reset!) and thwarts the prospect of ever losing and good items through combat, however is this method widely approved or is it considered cheating?

lunar

Why should it be a cheat? Game designers allow it, there is no iron man mode for bg. Say we have an iron man mode, (like the hardcore mode for diablo) and you copy and keep your save files in a safe folder and return to a save when you die, that would be cheating.

Some players play no reload and minimal reload games. Minimal reload is reload only when the pc dies, or keep a number of reloads allowed. It is much more exciting and proves challenge and fun for the experienced player. Whena beloved npc permanently dies, or your pc is the last one standing after a tough battle, those are the memorable experiences, really. It is not always sunshine and rainbows but such is life, it is more realistic and immersive for many people.

BelgarathMTH

Play the game however you want, and in whatever way is fun for you.

Reloads break my immersion, so I do everything possible to avoid them. If a party member dies, I do everything I can to get their equipment picked up, hopefully after the rest of the party finishes the battle, although I've been known to frantically try to grab equipment off the ground while retreating from a hopeless situation. Then, I trek back to a temple and pay for a raise, even if the whole round trip takes me twenty minutes or more of real time.

If I have a high enough level cleric, I will finish the battle if possible, then reset a spell slot with Raise Dead and try to rest. I usually don't keep it memorized most of the time, because there are so many other helpful and needed spells at that level. I also try to find and buy one or more Rods of Ressurrection asap.

But that's me. That's how I stay immersed and have fun when I play.

I don't think anybody should worry about what somebody else approves of or considers "cheating" in a single player game. That's a good way to stop having fun.

lroumen

For full out roleplaying I take into account the carry capacity of my party and the weight of the dead npc to decide whether I raise the dead at a Temple or whether the dead or some gear is left behind. Extreme I know....

But in other cases (non-roleplaying game) reload or resurrect/raise is fine.

kiwidoc

I tend to reload when it is something silly and unexpected, like those stupid battles where you can't choose group formation. For the serious, I am expecting danger and are going loaded for dragon type fights if one of my team goes down during the battle I'll raise them at the end. If my clerics aren't high enough level, or if they are the one that bit the dust, and try and use scroll or rods of resurrection. I try to carry a few scrolls of resurrection, or a rod if there is one about.

Archaos

Raises/Resurrections are best used in battle in BGII. That's when those spells are better than reloading, specifically in the boss battles when you don't want to redo everything and you're close to victory.

GreenWarlock

As others say, play the game however you enjoy it. It took me far too long to realize temples offer to raise dead companions, and i still use the service sparingly as I consider it significantly underpriced, especially at low levels. I am quite prepared to lose an NPC or three along the way though, even (especially!) playing Lawful Good. Then there are areas like the missions accessible from Ulgoth's Beard where there are no temples to raise until you complete the whole mission. Reloading here is far more than a convenience of saving a few gold, but certainly something I will do if faced with losing half the party or more.

dunbar

Sometimes I use reloads to create a sort of parallel universe, i.e. when an encounter doesn't go the way I planned/hoped/thought it would I deal with the aftermath and carry on if I can, but keep the pre-encounter save to go back to at a later date. A good example of this is a pair of games I have running at the moment: Two identical parties have both just arrived at Brynnlaw, one with the Shadow Thieves, the other with Bodhi, and this is not by design but simply by going with the flow of the game after the original party got involved in a stupid spur-of-the-moment bar fight and everything went pear-shaped:

"Well you see officer, it was like this. We were in pursuit of some slavers who tried to escape through the Copper Coronet and in the ensuing crossfire some friendly fire casualties were taken, one of whom just happened to be a noblewoman, named Nalia d'Arnise. It wasn't our fault Guv, honest!."

Noloir

BelgarathMTH said:

Play the game however you want, and in whatever way is fun for you.

Reloads break my immersion, so I do everything possible to avoid them. If a party member dies, I do everything I can to get their equipment picked up, hopefully after the rest of the party finishes the battle, although I've been known to frantically try to grab equipment off the ground while retreating from a hopeless situation. Then, I trek back to a temple and pay for a raise, even if the whole round trip takes me twenty minutes or more of real time.

If I have a high enough level cleric, I will finish the battle if possible, then reset a spell slot with Raise Dead and try to rest. I usually don't keep it memorized most of the time, because there are so many other helpful and needed spells at that level. I also try to find and buy one or more Rods of Ressurrection asap.

But that's me. That's how I stay immersed and have fun when I play.

I don't think anybody should worry about what somebody else approves of or considers "cheating" in a single player game. That's a good way to stop having fun.

Agreed. Approve was the wrong word. I meant standard or general attitude regarding reloads vs. raising. The Baldur's Gate series is such an open series there are a variety of different ways to approach game play and I'm interested in learning them all!