People are taking this too seriously. Let's remember that BG isn't supposed to be competitive. Play it however you like, using whatever cheese or exploits you like. You are playing for your own satisfaction, so you don't need to justify the way you play the game. As long as the game makes you go "This is amazing! I want to play it through several times!" then it doesn't matter how you choose to play.
The beauty of games released during the "golden era" of PC gaming is that they were supposed to be fun. Games back then were full of exploits because developers didn't waste time trying to cover every crack, and spent more time creating immersive content and great gameplay.
I feel like people complain too much about exploits, and it impacts the gameplay of others negatively. Creating unwritten "taboos" about what exploits aren't acceptable, then complaining to the devs to fix it when it was fine for everyone else. Should Kangaxx end up giving you two rings? No. It's too tempting for most players not to take two rings, and makes certain parts of the game unbalanced. However, what was the problem with the flesh golem cave? Surely I should be able to decide if I spend two hours levelling up or not. It's not like there aren't lots of xp farm places throughout the series, either. What are they going to do? Spawn gibberlings every time you sleep?
Anyways, to repeat my point: Don't worry about your own playstyle. If it suits you, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks
I'm quite partial to a well matured camembert myself, or a nice fondue party with friends.
But from gaming perspective, it really does come down to what you consider cheese. Wand of cloud killing a dragon is huge NO go in my book, but using the Carsomyr is fine. Buffing, trapping and even using the dreaded mislead backstab are fine in my book, because well why wouldn't my party use the spells they have to defeat the enemy of the given moment? The things I really don't like are killing things without actually engaging them in combat, I don't mind scouting then throwing spells into the fog of war once the enemy is found, but then the battle must commence.None of that I'm just gonna kill them, by waiting for them to die standing around in the giant acidic cloud because their AI is trash and they won't come looking for me and or leave the gaint acidic cloud.
I think it's a very very good thing how this game rewards deep knowledge and careful play. Most of these little exploitive tactics aren't learned until after having spent many, many hours playing the game.
More so-called balanced games (if they aren't multiplayer) tend to be very boring with forgettable combat systems.
I think more game designers should embrace the idea of imbalance, cheese, exploits, overpowered-ness, whatever, in their games personally.
After all, there are reasons that this game still towers over every crpg made since.
There are ways to ameliorate the "cheese" problem without banning (for others or just oneself) certain spells or tactics outright.
Increasing the number of Protection from Magic/Undead scrolls, and reducing their duration to 5 to 10 rounds, would keep them from become game-breaking against the toughest enemies, without removing them from the game or turning them into something they're not.
The Shield of Balduran could be rigged to give 5 rounds of immunity to Beholder rays, which would maintain its function without rendering Beholders a non-issue. The SCS2 option of allowing Beholders to snatch it also works, but doesn't make much sense conceptually, since the shield should bounce the telekinesis ray like any other Beholder ray.
You could rig the Staff of the Magi so it casts an Invisibility spell when equipped, but gives immunity to the spell for 6 seconds or so. This would allow the wielder to turn invisible only once per round, maintaining invisibility but not giving permanent and non-dispellable invisibility.
To balance song stacking with Mislead, without outright removing the Mislead clones' ability to sing, we could rig the song to cast two spells and give immunity to one, so an Improved Bard Song could give +4 to hit, AC, and damage, but each additional song would only add +1. This would keep song stacking in the game, without making Mislead the best 6th level bard spell by far.
Cut the duration of Project Image in half and it wouldn't be quite so game-breaking, but still be a part of the gameplay.
Give XP and/or gold costs to spells like Wish, or maybe all big spells, and they wouldn't dominate the gameplay.
SCS and @Demivrgvs' Spell Revisions and Item Revisions have the right idea: rather than removing tricks outright, it modifies things to maintain game balance, and improve variety of gameplay. Relying on "cheese" and never using "cheese" both limit the variety of gameplay.
I really like the idea of the shield of balduran being a charge item. Six rounds of immunity once a day seems fair. For the staff of the maji, I'd like something a bit different though:
If hit by a spell, the staff automatically goes off once a day. It throws lightning and fireball at the attacker while making the wielded go invisible. This would make it a neat defensive item, without being overpowered.
That and reduce the duration of the protection scrolls. Several rounds of immunity is enough to make them useful without being broken. That, or make them actual protection.
Protection from undead: makes you immune to level drain, charm, hold and disease for 2 hours. Still anti-undead, but the fight goes on.
Protection from magic: makes you immune to the next five spells cast against you. That is damned useful, but it won't make the big fights a complete cakewalk.
I notice beholders coming up a lot. Does anyone have a strategy for fighting beholders that doesn't rely on either heavy RNG or cheese? Everything non-cheese I've ever tried has come down to some combination of "I hope I can make all my saves" and "I hope the beholder doesn't dispel my buffs."
It depends on your character. MyChar in SoA is a half-orc berserker wielding Lilarcor, who can now berserk 4x a day. If you look at the spell immunities that berserking and using Lilarcor confer when combined ... well, he was able to take out the entire Underdark beholder dungeon almost singlehandedly. The rest of the party stood off at a distance and sniped away with missile weapons. This isn't even cheese; it's one +3 weapon plus natural abilities. Boots of speed were just icing on the cake, letting him run back fast and rest out of range for a few rounds whenever the berserk state was about to wear off. Heal up and Berserk again and he was ready for Round 2.
A group without a berserker MyChar could still do something similar with Korgan in the party. Lacking any berserkers, you might have to rely on hit and run tactics if there's more than one such enemy. Distracting them with summoned skeletons and monsters while peppering them with missile weapons is one such possibility. These will be killed or dispelled with a death spell pretty fast, but you can always call up more of them. Make sure that, if they are in a group, that you stay on the fringes of their visual range; that way you can engage only 1 or 2 at a time. Pull back, heal up and re-buff if more appear. (Using Slayer form is another possibility, but a bit too risky for routine use, IMO.)
I adore the animate dead spell, by the way; I can truthfully say its one of the 5 spells I cast most frequently. They serve as advance scouts, can divert enemy attention from main party members, and are capable of simply destroying entire groups of mind flayers. (Mind flayers waste time hitting them with psionic blast and trying to eat their brains; both of these attacks are futile against them since they have neither minds nor brains.) Just Haste them and send them off in the right direction. You don't even have to be in visual contact with the enemy; the skeletons will do their own search and destroy mission once they make contact with the foe. Just sit back and watch the enemy casualty list grow. My folks are all level 15+, so they are at their maximum level of 7 HD. And unlike many other summonings, they last for 8 hours! Anomen, Neera and Imoen all pack 2 animate dead spells as part of their routine spell preps.
These can be supplemented by other summonings if needed (subject to the 5 at a time limit, of course). Why risk your real party members when you can have temps do the fighting for you? We have the air elemental staff, the black spider figurine, the flesh golem manual, Jaheira's fire elementals, the efreet figurine, spider spawn spells, monster summoning 1,2,3 etc. The only things these don't work well against are foes that can cast death spell, which can vape an entire crew of summoned assistants. Beholders and elder orbs can do this, unfortunately.
Thinking further, I haven't actually tried it since I have my berserker, but you could probably use Keldorn for hit and run against beholders also. Carsomyr gives him 50% magic resistance and his armor gives him free action. This can be supplemented with the belt of 50% magic damage reduction, boots of speed and the gauntlets of ogre strength. Top this all off with protection from magic and improved haste and have a hasted skeleton or two charge in with him as a distraction force.
Now, the improved haste and protection from magic will almost certainly be dispelled and the skeletons killed off on round 1, but he will still get his attack off. Remember, this is a hit and run raid, not a stand up and fight to the death combat. They can dispel his protection from magic and haste, but they can't do anything about his other spell resistances, since they are due to equipment and not spell buffs. The improved haste is to ensure that he gets at least one round of maximized attacks, protection from magic will give him one round free from damage. Kill one gauth, then run away using the boots of speed. If any beholders try to follow, the rest of the party will be waiting with missile weapons, spell sequences and a couple more hasted skeletons to bushwhack the pursuers. Repeat the process as needed. Once all the gauths are dead, start chipping away at the beholders. It will take a while, but should be doable.
I have already moved past this to the Drow city itself, but I might have a saved game position here to try it out. I'm not sure about that, however, so if you try it yourself, let me know how it turns out. Theory is fine, but doesn't always work out in practice.
As I have already said I dislike what exploits AI weaknesses because, yes OK the game is old and thus imperfect, and exploiting AI requires some game knowledge so it may be seen a kind of reward for playing the game a lot. But I like to roleplay the game as if there were some human/mindflayers/whatever type of supposedly intelligent creatures that act about as smart as the player. Like, when you are ambushed by a pack of wolves, it is their instinct that guide them to attack the nearest target no matter what it is (whether tank, caster, or summoned creature) so that s not a problem. But a mindflayer has a racial +4 to intelligence, which means they are a lot smarter than a most humans. Why would they attack brainless skeletons when there is a bunch of juicy-brained human just behind them? Exploiting this is what I call cheese.
Clearly our definition of "cheese" differs. Taking advantage of a foe's weakness isn't "cheese" as far as I am concerned. Mind flayers are great against the living; they can even suck the brains out of summoned elementals. That's pretty nifty in my book. But their mental powers are their main strength. They are weak against the Undead. Even if they DON'T try to use their mind powers against these guys, they are still weak as far as their physical melee skills go! An undead squad of 7 HD skeletons with magical weapons could still defeat them. Their main physical defense against melee is their umber hulk guards, who are far better at physical combat. That's why they have those goons around; it's surely not for their conversational abilities. But they only have two of these, and they can't stop multiple waves of skeletal warriors.
You want me to do what? Not use animate dead, rush in my crew and say "please eat our brains, because we surely aren't using them"? That would be inexcusably moronic on my part. It would be like a general who used only frontal assault tactics, because flanking maneuvers were "unsportsmanlike".
We learn from experience. My guys know what mind flayers are capable of, because we have fought them before. I have had the whole "eat your brain" thing happen in the past. As the old saying goes, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me". They gave us a harsh lesson once, and now we know better.
Winning tactics are all about analyzing the enemy's weakness and using it against them. Beholders are suckers for a protected berserker, as I mentioned. MyChar knows this from having fought them in the sewers in Athkatla. You would prefer me to ... take off my armor, stow my weapon, and smack them upside the head with my fists? I wasn't aware that MyChar was supposed to fight as if hit with a feeblemind spell.
I wasn't aware that MyChar was supposed to fight as if hit with a feeblemind spell.
The problem is, neither are the enemies. And yet they do, so people have various ways in which they balance this out, including not using certain tactics. I certainly wouldn't say you're "supposed" to do anything, and I will vehemently defend your right to play however you feel is most fun, but it's not inherently ridiculous for someone's definition of cheese to include relatively basic tactics.
Let's keep things civil here, everybody. Everyone's got Fire Shield active when we're talking about cheese.
Mind Flayers are supposed to have a variety of psionic abilities, of which Psionic Blast is only one. In PnP they'd also have telekinesis and stuff, and could barrage the Skeleton Warriors with kinetic energy--the Mind Flayers would still be weak against critters without brains, hence the Umber Hulks (also a standard Mind Flayer servant in PnP), but they'd be a little more resilient to Skeleton Warriors if they had all their powers.
Still... there really shouldn't be any strategy that could take down an Illithid city, if you think about it. They're staffed with psychic geniuses under the guidance of an ancient brain the size of a whale. No adventurer should be able to outwit an Elder Brain.
It is true and normal that mindflayers are weak against undead. But it does not mean they HAVE to attack the undead when there are some living guys just behind them. You already have an advantage as a player even over a good AI which is that you can coordinate your characters' action. For example, a paladin using draw upon holy might, immediately hasted by a mage etc... The AI does not do this. And you do not need no other advantages on top of that. Well, you may as well do whatever you feel is most fun, because that's the aim of a game, but for each type of enemy there must be about ten ways to get rid of them, and IMHO the best are certainly those that involves special preparation against that type of enemy which can still go wrong, not just abusing a tactic or using an item that will trivialize the matter. Were you using 3 skeleton warriors to block a corridor that leads to your team to kill the mind flayers, I would say that it is not cheesy, for example, because even smart mindflayers cannot walk by or through them. But sending these skeletons first in an open room to lock the illithids' aggro on them and then join with your melee warriors without the illithids changing their aggro just feels wrong because a smarter AI would've switched aggro. It is what WE do after all when we play this game. We usually rush the most dangerous targets, then get on the least dangerous only once every other enemy has been taken down.
"But that's a far cry from attacking the enemy's left flank, getting crushed because it turns out their veterans are on that side, then casting Power Word: Reload and this time, only now, attacking the right flank. "
I only reload if MyChar dies, because you have to. And that hasn't happened since I foolishly tried to attack Firkraag way back in chapter 2. I am quite cautious in exploring new areas and fighting new foes; I take a Char death as a personal defeat. But I also haven't had an NPC "chunked" since Aerie bought it in chapter 2 either, and the rod of resurrection takes care of those situations where both Anomen and Jaheira have bitten the dust. I am very protective of my NPCs; they're MyChar's buddies, after all. Animate dead is great for scouting new areas and flushing enemies out of cover, so I use it a lot. If I were to have someone chunked or level drained to death, I'd rescue any gear they dropped and recruit a substitute.
But I'd really rather not have that happen, which is why I use the best tactics available! You can do whatever you want; strip naked and do a solo run with no gear or spells for all I care. I'll win in the most efficient way I know.
"play the Rogue Rebalancing Chosen of Cyric battle, you'll get a sense of what it's like to be on the other side of such "tactics."
Sounds interesting actually, but I have no clue what that even is. Some sort of mod? I don't do mods; I'm afraid to play around with game files. I don't have the technical knowledge to feel comfortable doing that. I'd like to see what this SCS thing is that people mention, but I'd be scared of totally bollocksing up my game.
" using 3 skeleton warriors to block a corridor that leads to your team ... is not cheesy because even smart mindflayers cannot walk through ... sending these skeletons first ... to lock the illithids' aggro on them and then join with your melee warriors ... just feels wrong because a smarter AI would've switched aggro"
Seems like a pretty fine distinction to me. Also, I didn't even know that the Ilithids wouldn't switch aggro because I NEVER GAVE THEM A CHANCE to do so. Just sent in waves of summoned critters until they were all dead. Even smart AIs can't kill what they can't see.
When crossbows first came into use, certain nobility made it a practice to hang any captured enemy crossbowmen, because they were actually able to kill a mounted knight. A peasant killing a knight in combat? Unheard of! Sacrilege! Dishonorable!
Then the British longbowmen at Agincourt showed the French nobility what unsportsmanlike conduct was REALLY like. Gosh, maybe the British should have thrown away their bows and used daggers instead, just to make it challenging?
You people are approaching this from a point of view that treats this like a skittles chess game. "I'm a Master, my opponent is Class A; I'll give him rook odds to make the game fairer". I'm a student of military history, and approaching it from the point of view of a general who wants to win with a minimum of casualties among his own troops.
And even in chess, a Master won't give a class A opponent odds if it's a rated tournament and there are cash prizes at stake.
Comments
The beauty of games released during the "golden era" of PC gaming is that they were supposed to be fun. Games back then were full of exploits because developers didn't waste time trying to cover every crack, and spent more time creating immersive content and great gameplay.
I feel like people complain too much about exploits, and it impacts the gameplay of others negatively. Creating unwritten "taboos" about what exploits aren't acceptable, then complaining to the devs to fix it when it was fine for everyone else. Should Kangaxx end up giving you two rings? No. It's too tempting for most players not to take two rings, and makes certain parts of the game unbalanced. However, what was the problem with the flesh golem cave? Surely I should be able to decide if I spend two hours levelling up or not. It's not like there aren't lots of xp farm places throughout the series, either. What are they going to do? Spawn gibberlings every time you sleep?
Anyways, to repeat my point: Don't worry about your own playstyle. If it suits you, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks
But from gaming perspective, it really does come down to what you consider cheese.
Wand of cloud killing a dragon is huge NO go in my book, but using the Carsomyr is fine.
Buffing, trapping and even using the dreaded mislead backstab are fine in my book, because well why wouldn't my party use the spells they have to defeat the enemy of the given moment?
The things I really don't like are killing things without actually engaging them in combat, I don't mind scouting then throwing spells into the fog of war once the enemy is found, but then the battle must commence.None of that I'm just gonna kill them, by waiting for them to die standing around in the giant acidic cloud because their AI is trash and they won't come looking for me and or leave the gaint acidic cloud.
More so-called balanced games (if they aren't multiplayer) tend to be very boring with forgettable combat systems.
I think more game designers should embrace the idea of imbalance, cheese, exploits, overpowered-ness, whatever, in their games personally.
After all, there are reasons that this game still towers over every crpg made since.
Increasing the number of Protection from Magic/Undead scrolls, and reducing their duration to 5 to 10 rounds, would keep them from become game-breaking against the toughest enemies, without removing them from the game or turning them into something they're not.
The Shield of Balduran could be rigged to give 5 rounds of immunity to Beholder rays, which would maintain its function without rendering Beholders a non-issue. The SCS2 option of allowing Beholders to snatch it also works, but doesn't make much sense conceptually, since the shield should bounce the telekinesis ray like any other Beholder ray.
You could rig the Staff of the Magi so it casts an Invisibility spell when equipped, but gives immunity to the spell for 6 seconds or so. This would allow the wielder to turn invisible only once per round, maintaining invisibility but not giving permanent and non-dispellable invisibility.
To balance song stacking with Mislead, without outright removing the Mislead clones' ability to sing, we could rig the song to cast two spells and give immunity to one, so an Improved Bard Song could give +4 to hit, AC, and damage, but each additional song would only add +1. This would keep song stacking in the game, without making Mislead the best 6th level bard spell by far.
Cut the duration of Project Image in half and it wouldn't be quite so game-breaking, but still be a part of the gameplay.
Give XP and/or gold costs to spells like Wish, or maybe all big spells, and they wouldn't dominate the gameplay.
SCS and @Demivrgvs' Spell Revisions and Item Revisions have the right idea: rather than removing tricks outright, it modifies things to maintain game balance, and improve variety of gameplay. Relying on "cheese" and never using "cheese" both limit the variety of gameplay.
Editing, not banning.
If hit by a spell, the staff automatically goes off once a day. It throws lightning and fireball at the attacker while making the wielded go invisible. This would make it a neat defensive item, without being overpowered.
That and reduce the duration of the protection scrolls. Several rounds of immunity is enough to make them useful without being broken. That, or make them actual protection.
Protection from undead: makes you immune to level drain, charm, hold and disease for 2 hours. Still anti-undead, but the fight goes on.
Protection from magic: makes you immune to the next five spells cast against you. That is damned useful, but it won't make the big fights a complete cakewalk.
EDIT: Level 0 spells bypass these things, however.
It depends on your character. MyChar in SoA is a half-orc berserker wielding Lilarcor, who can now berserk 4x a day. If you look at the spell immunities that berserking and using Lilarcor confer when combined ... well, he was able to take out the entire Underdark beholder dungeon almost singlehandedly. The rest of the party stood off at a distance and sniped away with missile weapons. This isn't even cheese; it's one +3 weapon plus natural abilities. Boots of speed were just icing on the cake, letting him run back fast and rest out of range for a few rounds whenever the berserk state was about to wear off. Heal up and Berserk again and he was ready for Round 2.
A group without a berserker MyChar could still do something similar with Korgan in the party. Lacking any berserkers, you might have to rely on hit and run tactics if there's more than one such enemy. Distracting them with summoned skeletons and monsters while peppering them with missile weapons is one such possibility. These will be killed or dispelled with a death spell pretty fast, but you can always call up more of them. Make sure that, if they are in a group, that you stay on the fringes of their visual range; that way you can engage only 1 or 2 at a time. Pull back, heal up and re-buff if more appear. (Using Slayer form is another possibility, but a bit too risky for routine use, IMO.)
I adore the animate dead spell, by the way; I can truthfully say its one of the 5 spells I cast most frequently. They serve as advance scouts, can divert enemy attention from main party members, and are capable of simply destroying entire groups of mind flayers. (Mind flayers waste time hitting them with psionic blast and trying to eat their brains; both of these attacks are futile against them since they have neither minds nor brains.) Just Haste them and send them off in the right direction. You don't even have to be in visual contact with the enemy; the skeletons will do their own search and destroy mission once they make contact with the foe. Just sit back and watch the enemy casualty list grow. My folks are all level 15+, so they are at their maximum level of 7 HD. And unlike many other summonings, they last for 8 hours! Anomen, Neera and Imoen all pack 2 animate dead spells as part of their routine spell preps.
These can be supplemented by other summonings if needed (subject to the 5 at a time limit, of course). Why risk your real party members when you can have temps do the fighting for you? We have the air elemental staff, the black spider figurine, the flesh golem manual, Jaheira's fire elementals, the efreet figurine, spider spawn spells, monster summoning 1,2,3 etc. The only things these don't work well against are foes that can cast death spell, which can vape an entire crew of summoned assistants. Beholders and elder orbs can do this, unfortunately.
Now, the improved haste and protection from magic will almost certainly be dispelled and the skeletons killed off on round 1, but he will still get his attack off. Remember, this is a hit and run raid, not a stand up and fight to the death combat. They can dispel his protection from magic and haste, but they can't do anything about his other spell resistances, since they are due to equipment and not spell buffs. The improved haste is to ensure that he gets at least one round of maximized attacks, protection from magic will give him one round free from damage. Kill one gauth, then run away using the boots of speed. If any beholders try to follow, the rest of the party will be waiting with missile weapons, spell sequences and a couple more hasted skeletons to bushwhack the pursuers. Repeat the process as needed. Once all the gauths are dead, start chipping away at the beholders. It will take a while, but should be doable.
I have already moved past this to the Drow city itself, but I might have a saved game position here to try it out. I'm not sure about that, however, so if you try it yourself, let me know how it turns out. Theory is fine, but doesn't always work out in practice.
But a mindflayer has a racial +4 to intelligence, which means they are a lot smarter than a most humans. Why would they attack brainless skeletons when there is a bunch of juicy-brained human just behind them? Exploiting this is what I call cheese.
You want me to do what? Not use animate dead, rush in my crew and say "please eat our brains, because we surely aren't using them"? That would be inexcusably moronic on my part. It would be like a general who used only frontal assault tactics, because flanking maneuvers were "unsportsmanlike".
We learn from experience. My guys know what mind flayers are capable of, because we have fought them before. I have had the whole "eat your brain" thing happen in the past. As the old saying goes, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me". They gave us a harsh lesson once, and now we know better.
Winning tactics are all about analyzing the enemy's weakness and using it against them. Beholders are suckers for a protected berserker, as I mentioned. MyChar knows this from having fought them in the sewers in Athkatla. You would prefer me to ... take off my armor, stow my weapon, and smack them upside the head with my fists? I wasn't aware that MyChar was supposed to fight as if hit with a feeblemind spell.
Mind Flayers are supposed to have a variety of psionic abilities, of which Psionic Blast is only one. In PnP they'd also have telekinesis and stuff, and could barrage the Skeleton Warriors with kinetic energy--the Mind Flayers would still be weak against critters without brains, hence the Umber Hulks (also a standard Mind Flayer servant in PnP), but they'd be a little more resilient to Skeleton Warriors if they had all their powers.
Still... there really shouldn't be any strategy that could take down an Illithid city, if you think about it. They're staffed with psychic geniuses under the guidance of an ancient brain the size of a whale. No adventurer should be able to outwit an Elder Brain.
Well, you may as well do whatever you feel is most fun, because that's the aim of a game, but for each type of enemy there must be about ten ways to get rid of them, and IMHO the best are certainly those that involves special preparation against that type of enemy which can still go wrong, not just abusing a tactic or using an item that will trivialize the matter. Were you using 3 skeleton warriors to block a corridor that leads to your team to kill the mind flayers, I would say that it is not cheesy, for example, because even smart mindflayers cannot walk by or through them. But sending these skeletons first in an open room to lock the illithids' aggro on them and then join with your melee warriors without the illithids changing their aggro just feels wrong because a smarter AI would've switched aggro. It is what WE do after all when we play this game. We usually rush the most dangerous targets, then get on the least dangerous only once every other enemy has been taken down.
I only reload if MyChar dies, because you have to. And that hasn't happened since I foolishly tried to attack Firkraag way back in chapter 2. I am quite cautious in exploring new areas and fighting new foes; I take a Char death as a personal defeat. But I also haven't had an NPC "chunked" since Aerie bought it in chapter 2 either, and the rod of resurrection takes care of those situations where both Anomen and Jaheira have bitten the dust. I am very protective of my NPCs; they're MyChar's buddies, after all. Animate dead is great for scouting new areas and flushing enemies out of cover, so I use it a lot. If I were to have someone chunked or level drained to death, I'd rescue any gear they dropped and recruit a substitute.
But I'd really rather not have that happen, which is why I use the best tactics available! You can do whatever you want; strip naked and do a solo run with no gear or spells for all I care. I'll win in the most efficient way I know.
Sounds interesting actually, but I have no clue what that even is. Some sort of mod? I don't do mods; I'm afraid to play around with game files. I don't have the technical knowledge to feel comfortable doing that. I'd like to see what this SCS thing is that people mention, but I'd be scared of totally bollocksing up my game.
Seems like a pretty fine distinction to me. Also, I didn't even know that the Ilithids wouldn't switch aggro because I NEVER GAVE THEM A CHANCE to do so. Just sent in waves of summoned critters until they were all dead. Even smart AIs can't kill what they can't see.
When crossbows first came into use, certain nobility made it a practice to hang any captured enemy crossbowmen, because they were actually able to kill a mounted knight. A peasant killing a knight in combat? Unheard of! Sacrilege! Dishonorable!
Then the British longbowmen at Agincourt showed the French nobility what unsportsmanlike conduct was REALLY like. Gosh, maybe the British should have thrown away their bows and used daggers instead, just to make it challenging?
And even in chess, a Master won't give a class A opponent odds if it's a rated tournament and there are cash prizes at stake.