As someone who picks up EVERYTHING, I HATE inventories where you have to take size into account. Just give me a weight limit (or no limit!) and let me go to town.
Inventory management is almost always a pointless drag. It's better to not have any weight or space limits, as the player is going to sell off or ignore excess equipment anyway.
Yeah I tend to hate "realism" in games because it often means tedium. Inventory management is part of that, as are thirst/hunger systems or that silly CURE menu they put in Metal Gear Solid 3.
I like limited inventory, but few (if any?) games can make a balanced monetary system in which the rewards from quests etc are enough so that you don't have to pick up every single item from every single corpse and sell it. In ie Skyrim I sometimes played with self-restrictions that I could not pick up any armor, ant only a single large or a few weapons to sell later on. I relied mainly on finding smaller items to sell. Made the game feel quite realistic, especially combined with some other mods for realism. Having 10 full plate mails in your inventory always feels a bit ridiculous, but since I usually play BG for character building and not RP nowadays, I don't care. Sometimes I just give myself 20k to stop me from picking up stuff from enemies or containers.
Inventory management... is such a headache. Walking back and fourth from a dungeon several times isn't my idea of fun. Even pen and paper DnD had ways around this such as porters or pack mules.
I wouldn't mind Tiax as a pack mule? Oh sorry, I mean ultimate king ruler of all pack mules
Stats don't really matter in BG. You can go through the whole saga with a fighter, cleric or mage with only 9 in every stat and you wouldn't notice a huge difference. Between stat boosting items, spells, potions, wands, etc..., you can be a juggernaut powerhouse in most fights even if your stats suck.
Stats don't really matter in BG. You can go through the whole saga with a fighter, cleric or mage with only 9 in every stat and you wouldn't notice a huge difference. Between stat boosting items, spells, potions, wands, etc..., you can be a juggernaut powerhouse in most fights even if your stats suck.
well I mean you're focusing on items to max yourself out, so you're still relying on high stats, which means it does make a difference
The strength spell lasts very long and there are plenty of weapons and armour that do not require high strength. You are just a bit more squishy (esp also with low con). I always play with a lot of average stats these days (8-10 being average). It is a lot more fun.
I sometimes wonder why they didn't make better use of int, wis and charisma during the development of BG2. Lack of resources and time maybe? I mean surely there must have been feedback regarding that even back then.
Maybe the unpopular opinion about stats would make more sense if we modified it to "Low ability scores don't have that much impact as long as they are not so low as to cause penalties."
So, a fighter would want at least 15 STR so she can wear plate, but 12 in everything else would be fine. A cleric can do fine without any bonus spells, so 15 STR for plate and 12 in everything else including WIS is also fine.
A core rules mage can use potions of genius to learn spells, so an INT of about 13 to 14 will do. Playing on normal difficulty even renders the INT score meaningless. You only need a couple or three of the best spells per level in your spell book. (Which is one of the reasons sorcerers are so powerful.)
For any class that doesn't use plate and shield, stats between 9-14 in everything are fine.
Granted, it makes your life easier to have stat bonuses, but that starts you on what I call the "powergamer's arms race", where you make your character so strong it makes the game too easy, so you find a way to increase the game difficulty, by slider or SCS. Then you build your character so strong that gets easy, so you want a Legacy of Bhaal difficulty, then with SCS, and on and on it goes. I got off that merry-go-round a long time ago, which is another "unpopular opinion" of mine.
You can do 99% of BG1's quests with a 4th level party.
That's not to say they'll all be easy, but yeah, with things like Silence and Hold Person and Web, you can get through a lot. I wouldn't traverse Durlag's Tower at level four, but otherwise...
You can do 99% of BG1's quests with a 4th level party.
My first complete run of BG1 ended with a party of level 4s maybe charname was at 5
That doesn't sound exactly ~complete~ then
Well the main reason was that I killed Marek and Lothander AFTER I was poisoned. I was gonna go back and more side things but I suddenly found myself under a heavy time limit.
BG2 would be a much better game if when you get to spellhold Imoen has already turned into the slayer and you have to kill her. It would make the maze you run through by Bodhi make more sense and be much more sadistic. And it'd make your revenge against her and Irenicus all the more poignant.
BG2 would be a much better game if when you get to spellhold Imoen has already turned into the slayer and you have to kill her. It would make the maze you run through by Bodhi make more sense and be much more sadistic. And it'd make your revenge against her and Irenicus all the more poignant.
Comments
Inventory limits promote shuffling, not realism.
I wouldn't mind Tiax as a pack mule? Oh sorry, I mean ultimate king ruler of all pack mules
I always play with a lot of average stats these days (8-10 being average). It is a lot more fun.
So, a fighter would want at least 15 STR so she can wear plate, but 12 in everything else would be fine. A cleric can do fine without any bonus spells, so 15 STR for plate and 12 in everything else including WIS is also fine.
A core rules mage can use potions of genius to learn spells, so an INT of about 13 to 14 will do. Playing on normal difficulty even renders the INT score meaningless. You only need a couple or three of the best spells per level in your spell book. (Which is one of the reasons sorcerers are so powerful.)
For any class that doesn't use plate and shield, stats between 9-14 in everything are fine.
Granted, it makes your life easier to have stat bonuses, but that starts you on what I call the "powergamer's arms race", where you make your character so strong it makes the game too easy, so you find a way to increase the game difficulty, by slider or SCS. Then you build your character so strong that gets easy, so you want a Legacy of Bhaal difficulty, then with SCS, and on and on it goes. I got off that merry-go-round a long time ago, which is another "unpopular opinion" of mine.