Time Spent Rolling at Character Creation
Lock
Member Posts: 84
I've wondered for a long time if I'm normal.
Baldur's Gate was one of the games that defined my early teenage gaming years, and one of my favourite parts was rolling my character. Literally the dice rolling part. I'd probably spend four to five hours (sometimes more) pressing that re-roll button each time I created a new character, and I got very good at adding up six numbers almost instantaneously (or at least estimating their total). And boy do I love that theme music. Listening to it brings back fond memories, I'm eagerly looking forward to rolling my first BG:EE character.
So am I weird ? How much time do you spend rolling your super-human ?
And I remember considering 15 in every attribute, or 90 total, "par" and a bare minimum (not that that's how I distributed the points mind you). I think the most I ever rolled was a +12 (102), but usually +5 to +7 was acceptable depending on the character I was creating.
Baldur's Gate was one of the games that defined my early teenage gaming years, and one of my favourite parts was rolling my character. Literally the dice rolling part. I'd probably spend four to five hours (sometimes more) pressing that re-roll button each time I created a new character, and I got very good at adding up six numbers almost instantaneously (or at least estimating their total). And boy do I love that theme music. Listening to it brings back fond memories, I'm eagerly looking forward to rolling my first BG:EE character.
So am I weird ? How much time do you spend rolling your super-human ?
And I remember considering 15 in every attribute, or 90 total, "par" and a bare minimum (not that that's how I distributed the points mind you). I think the most I ever rolled was a +12 (102), but usually +5 to +7 was acceptable depending on the character I was creating.
Post edited by Lock on
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I generally aim for anything higher than 90, which usually doesn't take more than 15 minutes or so. One thing I've noticed is that quitting and reloading the game often results in a markedly different distribution of attribute totals that I roll (I'm guessing it has something to do with differing random seeds in the game's pseudo-random number generator).
Someone actually created a program that would re-roll for you, automatically storing the highest roll and recording the results of each roll to a text file. So you could literally leave the game running overnight and have eight hours or so of re-rolls.
Paladins are the hardest class to get good rolls on because Charisma basically locks at 17 and wisdom must remain at 13 despite not adding combat ability to your dude. I also hate using Intelligence as a dump stat because Mind Flayers are difficult enough as is.
I usually settle on 15 strength on paladins and just use items to steroid that stat up to something more deadly, and it's the only class I'm okay with sub 18 dexterity on.
On rangers and fighters (that I don't plan to dual-class), I don't even worry about that. As long as they have 18/51 or better and 18 in dex/con, I'm good. Don't mind if my dude is the ugliest, stupidest, most unwise guy on the planet as long as he can hit hard.
But there was one time when suddenly the screen seemed to be full of beautiful numbers: all 17s and 18s.
But I automatically hit the re-roll button and they vanished into the aether never to return again ...
Of course, given how easy the game is once you've played through it as many times as I have, I nowadays just go with the first roll unmodified. Makes for a much funnier character than yet another master-munchkin, and it saves a lot of time too...
A fighter that I want to dual class might take half an hour.
AN AVENGER might take two eternities
But my goal is always 90+. 95 is optimal for all classes, or most anyway.
It's only a joke, it happens, and happens more then 1 time... I know. For my rolls, I must have a really bad luck, I normally spend the first 2-3 days rolling and I never gain a 100 total!!! But what I really want/need is 4x18 and 2x10.
While some will be content to roll for a fixed period and take what they get, others will roll for hours on end hoping to get lucky. Like someone mentioned in a previous thread, the whole concept of role playing is to add a bit of variability to the game, when every character is superman with 18/18/18/18 stats.. it kinda kills the fun of the game.
To that extent, I try to leave some attributes lacking so that a character is different in there own special way.
My record is 96, I spent hours rolling
Well the difference is I get bored after a while.
Now I don't think I have as much patience. For the swashbuckler run I did recently, I think her total was 85, which I spent about 10 to 20 minutes getting. 18, 19, 17, 10, 10, 11 base, and that was plenty.
I have a suggestion, and I'm not trolling, honestly.
Play with a character who doesn't have god like stats. It makes the game harder, and more fun for a someone who already knows the gear drops, power curves, boss fights, etc. Out of the box the game is a more demanding experience, even on core settings, just by spending less time rolling a 102 or whatever. Currently I'm playing a fighter who will dual to mage in BG2 and his stats are:
16
17
17
18
11
8
And that took me 5 minutes of rolling and it still feels a bit easy. Also, don't force max HP at level up and don't enable wearing multiple protection items through BG2 tweaks. This all sounds like "duhhhh" suggestions but I think I'm not alone as a player who would, on one side, create insane god like characters and bend the rules (max hp, prot items) and at the same time try to increase the difficulty of my game through mods. Give it a shot, I'm actually loving it. It's the first time I've played the game like this since it came out back in the 90s.
Now, I was thinking about playing a purposefully not-great character to write an amusing blog about, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
And yea, the multiple prot items is a mod. I think a lot of us who are into min maxing also have gotten crazy with tactics installs but maybe not.
Edit: No relation to any "rum ham."
To take this thread in a totally unrelated direction, an analogy to this is frequently seen in audio production. To make an instrument or audio track stand out, the novice producer will increase its gain (volume). Soon, you're raising the gain of all things by some amount to compensate, and introducing clipping (think errors) when really they should just bring DOWN the audio level of other components to highlight one without introducing distortions. But I digress...
Gets the same result but you don't have to waste hours of your time.
What makes this score even more crazily amazing is that it's an elven fighter/mage roll which is very hard to get this high compared to a paladin/ranger rolling.
I don't expect that I will roll that high again maybe ever, at least not without being a ranger/paladin. There is something about rolling the stats yourself instead of using an autoroller or shadowkeeper that makes it feel much more like I earned it (silly to many I know), and I can't wait to finish owning my second playthrough with a different set of NPC's.
Most of the fun is rolling nice in 1 attribute and dealing with your weaknesses in the other. If you just give your self 18 18 18 18 18 18. What's the point in even making a character?
You might as well give yourself god mode and speed run to sarevok while youre at it