does it make a difference if you have a strength of 18 or 18/00?

eckister

so I hit fourth re-play on one of my characters today and I remembered somebody posted this question some time ago and Ive decided to use my char and make a comparison.

for some reason the game does not remember wether you should get 18/something and gives you pure 18 once you get there, even though the original BG "remembered" the "/99" or "/00" attribute. made me wish I didnt spend those 20 minutes/character on stat-rolling, but thats what the ee-keeper is for, right? :-)

aaaanyways - heres my current "main" (I use two multi-classed characters simultaneously with the exp-cap remover) and as you can see - the 18/00 makes a HELL of a difference, where the base damage is higher than the max damage on regular 18 strength and the thac0 is 2 points lower...

in case someone would "dare" ask you this question, just show them this as the reason why its worth to roll for 18/00 :-)

lunar

Well, in the manual exceptional str scores show how much bonus they give. Basically, regular 18 str by non-fighter classes give a mere +1 to hit and +2 to damage. 18/00 gives +3 to hit and +6 to damage! Other percentages of exceptional str give some bonuses in between the two scores.

eckister

ye not everyone reads those though. :-D and for a lot of people its easier to understand things when they are compared to other things (simply put)

lunar

Fair enough.

18 str is highly coveted by non-fighters in bg1, because with the +1 str tome you will jump right into 19:hill giant strength territory with a whopping +3 to hit and +7 to damage. Quite a big increase from 18 to 19 there.

eckister

sure enough. I aim for 25 though. ;-D just 7 more re-plays .... :-D

joluv

eckister said:

for some reason the game does not remember wether you should get 18/something and gives you pure 18 once you get there

I don't understand what this means. And you're... replaying BG1 over and over with the same character and an XP cap remover? Do I have that right?

eckister

ok heres what I do - I re-roll my stats, lower wisdom as low as it gets (since there are 3 wisdom books in the game), check if the strength is 18/00 and then lower the stats to 15/15/15/15/8/15 or so. then, as you re-play 3-times, you would gain stats 18/00, 18, 18, 18, 17, 18 (by using all the books in the game on your main character). in the enhanced edition this does not work anymore, as the engine somehow re-sets your strength to pure 18, not 18/00. not sure if that made any more sence.

yes, Im THAT crazy. I re-play the game 9-11 times/character, then import that character into Baldurs Gate II. Ive actually made 6 characters this way, if memory serves. and as for the xp cap remover ..... if Im gonna re-play that much, I might as well have it easier due to the level gap between my character and the opponents...

actually I was never really a fan of the xp cap. I do understand why its there (for the difficulty, so that the tables wouldnt have to be made for a level range few people would actually reach, etc.) I just dont see why characters are "prohibited from learning" (figuratively speaking).

Shin

eckister said:

yes, Im THAT crazy. I re-play the game 9-11 times/character, then import that character into Baldurs Gate II. Ive actually made 6 characters this way

Sounds like what @SharGuidesMyHand used to do if I remember correctly. I never understood why just editing your stats to whatever you want them to be prior to BG2 import wouldn't suffice - as much as I enjoy the games I think I would burn out from 9-11 BG playthroughs before getting to take that character through BG2 - but to each their own.

eckister

yeah .... it just seems cheap to use a strong character without "history".... to me the point of RPGs in general is to create and improve a character, not sure if Im making sence.

Shin

I agree in a general sense, but I would think that when your character goes through the same things again and again collecting exp and powerups it gets difficult to maintain the roleplaying/immersion perspective, unless you imagine that your character dies and then gets reborn with all the knowledge of his/her predecessors or something.

eckister

nah I like to think that my characters are siblings and they would train tirelessly until the day they had to leave Candlekeep. and their attributes are due to the combination of their godchild bodies and their hard training.

so basically - every re-play is "the first time" and their exp and attributes come from their rigorous training and access to lore...

Grum

eckister said:

nah I like to think that my characters are siblings and they would train tirelessly until the day they had to leave Candlekeep. and their attributes are due to the combination of their godchild bodies and their hard training.

so basically - every re-play is "the first time" and their exp and attributes come from their rigorous training and access to lore...

Even so...doesn't that just make BG2 way too easy? Sure, I munchkin it up just along with everyone else (maxed out stats, best items I can find, etc). But to start off with 25 in the important stats...that's not hard work and training. That is downright godhood.

lroumen

Worry about the fact that he gets their father killed by the same guy every time one of the siblings leaves candlekeep. You would think he had learned by now not to go that way.

JuliusBorisov

GROUNDHOGBHAALSPAWN DAY

eckister

dont most bhaalspawn aspire to godhood? nobody ever said that a godchild couldnt reach such stats, or did they? after all - the divine blood manifests in a slightly different way for every bhaalspawn (as weve seen in ToB)...

Iroumen hey - by the fifth playthrough I would even challenge Sarevok, solving the problem to begin with. but noooooo, it has to be an automatic sequence....

think about it - by the fifth playthrough the character would have stats on 19-21 (dependin wether youve managed to roll on 16 or 14 in each stat) and a stronger repertoire of spells than Gorion... take 2 such baddies+Gorion and Sarevok has a REAL problem...

eckister

oh and the game becomes a LOT more easy, thats for sure. but its by any means not impossible to die anyways and Ive always hated having to rest 2x/map just because you depleted your healing/combat spells... and besides - its quite glorious when 1 or 2 of your characters DESTROY the enemys army.

moody_mage

That seems like far too much work.

If you want to play a ridiculous power house roll up a Fighter/Mage/Thief, remove the XP cap and play solo. It can be a bit tough to start but soon you'll stomp over pretty much anything by yourself.

deltago

To answer your original question:

It matters until you get the STR tome, then it is useless.

Pots of giant strength also make rolling a 00 pointless.

And anything less than a 50 can be raised to 18/50 with a strength spell.

So is it good to have? Sure. Should you spend hours rolling for it? Nope.

eckister

well there we have it - what seems worthwhile to someone will seem pointless to someone else. sure - youre right. but then again - the difference between 18/00 and other strengths IS huge. and Ive also tried to compare 18/99 with ogres strength. believe me - the difference is still HUGE. just take Minsc (who is at 18/97 or something like that) and Khalid with the gauntlets of ogre strength and youll see what I mean. and here we have another point - there ARE gauntlets with such a strength. but is it better to take the gauntlets or have that strength by default and take the gauntlets of expertise, which increase your stats even further? Ill let you andswer that one for yourself.
decado - precisely! my other char is a fighter/mage/thief and he could solo Sarevok with his base stats (14/14/14/14/6/14) simply because he had a lot of invisibility pots and 3 invisibility spells... backstabbed his butt into oblivion, I did. ^^ oh and I think I also used a potion of storm giant strenght too.
the question isnt wether there is a point to rolling the 18/00 if youre intent on using the strength tome. the question is, wether there is a point to having that stat if youre going to play your character with it. the answer is, that ogres strength makes a HUGE difference. Ill post a picture comparison between 18/99 and 18/00 in a while.

joluv

The difference is +1 to hit, +1 damage, 80 extra pounds of carry weight, and 5 points to open doors. This isn't a mystery, and I wouldn't call that HUGE. But yeah, it's nice to have.

eckister

oh ok, so the difference isnt HUGE...

eckister

... some technical issues over here, I hope it will be possible to open this file.

moody_mage

Having played 2nd Edition AD&D for a good 20 years, you posting that 18/00 strength is waaay better than 18 strength is sort of like saying 'not getting stabbed in the face is waaay better than getting stabbed in the face'.

It's an obvious statement which is a revelation to no-one.

eckister

aaaaand still we somehow manage to argue over it... 0_o

look - Ive noticed some people asking the question (granted - it was long ago) and so I thought it might be nice to have a visual comparison. thats the long and short of it and yet I still find myself being questioned about the "why" of it...

and besides - stating something is obvious seems very much akin to stating the obvious - either one is unneccessary but people still do it... just saying...

moody_mage

No-ones arguing. Do whatever you want.

DreadKhan

Most people would find it way cooler if you went human WS with min stats, then replayed until you hit 25s. Yep, totally reasonable. Or something.

Yeah, do that @eckister

eckister

meh Ive never liked the human multis - they somehow failed to work for me.

Ive had this char I used to experiment upon - I would give him enough exp to reach level 20 as a warrior, then level 21 as mage and level 22 as a thief (since Ive read that the new class must become at least 1 level higher than the previous one to gain its bonuses) and guess what - nothing... the only thing he retained was his HPs... no Thac0, no skills, no spells .... nothing...

this was in the previous BG 2 so Im not sure about how the EE would hold up, but the prospect of playing for WEEKS only to get .... nothing is not very appealing...

moody_mage

The game restricts human dual-classing to only two classes. Human multi-classing doesn't exist outside of mods.

eckister

well that explains that.

but I still dont really feel like going, working and leveling just to find out that I cannot get what I came for just because a bug...

joluv

The manuals really do have a lot of useful information.

eckister

including how to overcome a bug? because when I went from warrior to mage, my thac0 didnt drop to warrior-level... but I thought - meh, as long as Ill have this many HPs and will be able to backstab as a thief, thingsll work out... well they didnt...