How are charname and friends so powerful?
Frank2368
Member Posts: 3
One thing that always bothered me a bit is the fact that the main character and his/her companions can potentially get to level 30+ when it took Elminster more than a thousand years to get to level 29, and Drizzt more than a hundred to merely level 16.
Is there some reason for this? Or is it just a game thing?
Is there some reason for this? Or is it just a game thing?
Post edited by Frank2368 on
3
Comments
Living in a pissant town will do that to you.
They condense decades worth of fighting into a year. I mean...usually taking down a vampire guild, or a beholder infestation, is a once in a decade occurence. With Charname, it happens in the same bloody week.
But yeah, it is a video game thing, and it's at least a bit ridiculous however you explain it.
For serious, the party is constantly being presented with conflict that forces them to improve ... or die. Yes, it's a game thing, but Charname's Bhaalspawn essence made him (or her of course) a target in a way most other characters are not. Sarevok and Irenicus came after him first. In ToB Charname is barely out of Suldanesselar and discovers he's already being targeted by The Five. The allies and resources needed to put an end to those threats in turn required engaging in other conflicts. The choice to settled down like Drizzt in Icewind Dale or Elminster in Shadowdale doesn't come until after ToB.
I had a PC start out at 18 str... by the end of the game, he had pumped himself up to 22 strength!
Nobody finds that a little suspicious? Going from very strong but natural looking to a walking ball of muscle, stronger than most giants?
I would love to see an RPG take a risk and give you unbalanced companions and uneven quest difficulty to better reflect a world that isn't set up for you to gradually gain experience against steadily tougher enemies in a linear fashion until you can take on the big bad boss and save the day.
For example in BG you'd expect that Khalid and Jaheira, being experienced adventurers already, ought to be significantly stronger than Imoen or Charname at the start of the game, though the latter might gain experience faster thanks to their divine lineage. In terms of quests, you should get an idea of the difficulty of the quest from information available, and make your own decision on whether your party can handle it. So perhaps there might be a dragon hoarding a great treasure trove in a mountain near your starting town, but common sense would tell you that you should not annoy a dragon with a group of lv5 characters.
I think it should be okay that certain characters are always going to be stronger than others, because an organic and realistic world is not going to be perfectly balanced anyway. If you think about Tolkien's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, neither the Fellowship of the Ring or the Quest of Erebor have "balanced" members, with Gandalf probably stronger than the rest of the company combined. I wish we could see that in an RPG some time, perhaps with a Gandalf-like super party member only showing up occasionally to help you.
Its a fun game though, if you don't mind grinding here and there, but the spawning system is designed to mob you if things look rough... more enemies seem to result in you spawning... even more enemies.