I'll bite the bait here. After being a 3.5/Pathfinder fanboy for years I ran a year-long 5e campaign and 5e became my favorite system. It's mostly because of the multiclass system though. 3.5/Pathfinder (in my opinion) has a TERRIBLE multiclass system that needs prestige classes to make work and even then it's "meh"
to make a decent wizard/cleric you'd have to do
Wizard 1 (Precocious Apprentice feat)/Cleric 3/Mystic Theurge 2/True Necromancer 14. Then you get a strong multiclass caster.
In 5e just go wizard/cleric and the spell slots stack.
I also like the low magic and the system doesn't assume you will be handing out magic items.
Also a crafting system was introduced in Xanathar's Guide to Everything and each class has quite a few kits to choose from now.
Though I suppose this is an unpopular opinions thread and I prob shouldn't argue opinions lol
@TranscendedOne how does having 20 be the max stat prevent different builds? It wouldn't even make characters weaker, as the game would be balanced around those stat levels anyway.
DC for spells, Spells per day. Better skills. More damage for STR related vital strikes in pathfinder. To hit. It all depends on who it is and what they're class related attributes of importance is. It's really, really boring.
Also, with regards to 5e, you need to choose between a stat increase or a feat, instead of getting both like in 3.5/Pathfinder. All across the board, you've got fewer options, and fewer ways to differentiate one character of a given class from another. I briefly started up in a 5e group after playing a Pathfinder campaign back in college, and it felt like I'd gone from a mountain bike to riding a tricycle.
But then again you don't have to spend feats for stuff like point blank shot/precise shot just to be competent at range or go weapon finesse/weapon focus (rapier)/fencing grace just to get dex to atk and dmg with rapiers.
I'm currently playing in a PF game and a 5e game and 5e gives me much more freedom with characters than PF, in my opinion.
I guess unpopular opinion: The feat system in 3.X/Pathfinder is garbage because it doesn't offer customization, it makes you take things just to be decent at it (Two weapon fighting, weapon finesse, point blank shot/precise shot, etc.)
Caelar Argent is a woefully underutilized character with a backstory that has amazing potential and if I didn’t believe that I would have never announced that particular mod I keep holding off on completing...
Ulgoth's Beard and Durlag's Tower being located where they are is a failure of game design.
The town where you find quests for the tower is hidden up the top of the map, far removed from everything, and accessible only by travelling up through a map you'll only likely be moving into in chapter 5.
The tower itself is slap bang in the middle right by several low level areas like Gullykin where an exploratory minded player can easily stumble well before they ever head up north, potentially completing the whole thing long before getting any quests for it.
While sure, lore of what's where exists, Ulgoth's Beard was hardly a necessary location. Any small fishing town could easily have been squeezed between AR3100 and AR3200, making it highly likely for a player to come across very early on their run, and giving access to quest and lore givers who give the location and context for Durlag's Tower - which could then be left where it is or, ideally, relocated up where Ulgoth's Beard used to be, making the tower harsh and inaccessible to help explain why it hasn't been cleared (honestly, it's not that hard), and making the ankheg map an effective Beef Gate against the curious.
You have to remember that Tales of the Sword Coast was originally an add-on to the original BG release way back then. It added those areas to the pretty limited original game map. Our judgement is from 15 years distance and massive development on the series since then. After that, tradition has it that the areas stayed where the were and some re-location that was at a time attempted by modders was not very well received. It's hard to change such *canon* stuff after all this time without being targetted with *can(n)ons*.
I guess unpopular opinion: The feat system in 3.X/Pathfinder is garbage because it doesn't offer customization, it makes you take things just to be decent at it (Two weapon fighting, weapon finesse, point blank shot/precise shot, etc.)
On the other, other hand, if you really want to specialize in any of those, then there are classes that give you those as bonus feats, particularly Swashbuckler and Ranger. You'll only find yourself feat-starved if you want something really complicated, like a mounted archer.
That's Pathfinder, of course. From what I know of 3.5, archery and finesse just aren't good options anyways, but that's another issue.
@Pantalion Players are MEANT to stumble on the tower by accident the first time. The questline in Ulgoth's Beard was added just to give the players who already cleared everything before the expansion came out a nice little signpost showing them where to find it.
the tower's excuse is thats where it is on the actual fr map.
Considering Durlag's only listed appearance is in the games, is this chicken or egg? But in either case, the tower isn't the primary issue, the town is.
You have to remember that Tales of the Sword Coast was originally an add-on to the original BG release way back then. It added those areas to the pretty limited original game map. Our judgement is from 15 years distance and massive development on the series since then. After that, tradition has it that the areas stayed where the were and some re-location that was at a time attempted by modders was not very well received. It's hard to change such *canon* stuff after all this time without being targetted with *can(n)ons*.
Sure, I'm saying it was bad design when it was originally created, I'm not faulting anyone since for not changing it, since as you say, it's how it's been from the start.
@Pantalion Players are MEANT to stumble on the tower by accident the first time. The questline in Ulgoth's Beard was added just to give the players who already cleared everything before the expansion came out a nice little signpost showing them where to find it.
The questline in Ulgoth's Beard involves three broken quests if you do the tower too early.
1: The tour guide glitches out if you kill the demon knight beforehand. 2: The dwarf giving you the quest glitches out if you get the dagger beforehand. 3: The woman asking you to save her offspring glitches out if you save him beforehand.
Having [Ulgoth's Beard] in a different, more accessible, location would not detract from the tower, and would not make the "average" first time player less significantly likely to encounter the tower early if left in its original location (I appreciate Extra Life's position that it would be "gamey" to have it oop north), it would simply increase the likelihood that they actually encountered the town before chapter 5, by which time they could have completed the tower, and with no need to artificially add a map marker pointing to some nowhere town off the map for every player to give them a meta reason to go in that direction.
And for the argument that the player is intended to "stumble" and the Beard being situated, say, between AR3100 and AR3200 would detract from this, Gullykin already has townsfolk directing the player towards Durlag's Tower ahead of time, no stumbling required.
@Montresor_SP To each their own I guess, I can defnitely understand the argument for Neera or Anomen being annoying, but I throughly enjoy both of those characters
@Pantalion I agree that Durlag's Tower could be completed before actually getting the quest, but nobody of a relatively low level (2-4) who may stumble into the area is going to get past those Battle Horrrors....period.
That being said, the tower itself is an incredibly well designed, well thought out and story-rich dungeon with a wealth of treasure. It has everything a good and challenging dungeon needs unlike....
@Montresor_SP To each their own I guess, I can defnitely understand the argument for Neera or Anomen being annoying, but I throughly enjoy both of those characters
@Pantalion I agree that Durlag's Tower could be completed before actually getting the quest, but nobody of a relatively low level (2-4) who may stumble into the area is going to get past those Battle Horrrors....period.
That being said, the tower itself is an incredibly well designed, well thought out and story-rich dungeon with a wealth of treasure. It has everything a good and challenging dungeon needs unlike....
*GRRRR* (eyes narrow) Firewine Ruins.
Eh, you can kill both at level 1, you just prepwork before you get to the tower, a potion of invisibility, and to be a Mage/Thief with your points put into Find Traps - the last one sort of optional. You probably won't stay level 1 afterwards unless you have a full party of course.
But yeah, the dungeon is a cut above in terms of general BG1 content (including the rest of TotSC, which is fairly dire). The thieves' maze in particular is just tedious, at least Firewine you can bypass completely via Gullykin.
I don't dislike going through the Firewine dungeon the regular way. I use a scout who's good at range attack (high dex thief or a ranger) and snipe those lil' buggers roaming the place one after the other. Just let them follow you, hide around one of the many corners, wait for them to reappear, snipe again and so on. For even more efficiency, add one more sniper just behind the scout. Two characters is enough though, because there's not enough space for more.
If you use the terrain to your own advantage and take your time, you can go through the dungeon without taking much damage. You also can gain a load of arrows of fire. Also, with SCS, the ogre-mage and his goons actually makes for a fun fight. Yep, I kinda like the place actually...
Ulgoth's Beard and Durlag's Tower being located where they are is a failure of game design.
While sure, lore of what's where exists, Ulgoth's Beard was hardly a necessary location. Any small fishing town could easily have been squeezed between AR3100 and AR3200, making it highly likely for a player to come across very early on their run, and giving access to quest and lore givers who give the location and context for Durlag's Tower - which could then be left where it is or, ideally, relocated up where Ulgoth's Beard used to be, making the tower harsh and inaccessible to help explain why it hasn't been cleared (honestly, it's not that hard), and making the ankheg map an effective Beef Gate against the curious.
The ankheg area is so easy to get through that it doesn't deter anyone from going through. There is no compulsion to kill a single ankheg.
It makes sense that BG2 liches don't come back to haunt you after you kill them. If you're a lich and somebody is strong enough to take you down, your best bet is to stay out of their way--not seek a rematch.
Because if you fight them again and can't kill them on Round 2, they're going to start looking for your phylactery so they can destroy it and get you off their backs.
Being defeated is a minor inconvenience for a lich. All it costs them is a day or two to reform, and they can live for hundreds if not thousands of years if they play it safe. A smart lich wouldn't risk their immortality just to exact vengeance for a minor inconvenience.
@semiticgod - but what about wounded ego? But seriously - it makes sense, even if now all our victories against them seem hollow.
The real question is - what was that lich from City Gates doing? Is it really safe to hang out behind the wall of a tavern, right next to ultimate undead destroyer?
Ulgoth's Beard and Durlag's Tower being located where they are is a failure of game design.
While sure, lore of what's where exists, Ulgoth's Beard was hardly a necessary location. Any small fishing town could easily have been squeezed between AR3100 and AR3200, making it highly likely for a player to come across very early on their run, and giving access to quest and lore givers who give the location and context for Durlag's Tower - which could then be left where it is or, ideally, relocated up where Ulgoth's Beard used to be, making the tower harsh and inaccessible to help explain why it hasn't been cleared (honestly, it's not that hard), and making the ankheg map an effective Beef Gate against the curious.
The ankheg area is so easy to get through that it doesn't deter anyone from going through. There is no compulsion to kill a single ankheg.
Now THERE's an unpopular opinion, lol.
That area is BRUTAL. You may not be obligated to fight any ankhegs, but you also never know where they're going to pop up next, and you have to go way out of the way to avoid running into them. And if they see you, they follow you, and can attack ranged with their scary acid stuff, which is hard to get out of the way in time to avoid. And if you don't have it set to autopause when an enemy is 'sighted' they become near impossible to avoid since they're p much underground until their first attack.
Do you have any idea how many times one of those things oneshotted a party member before I'd even had time to process the fact they were THERE?
BG1 gameplay in general is very poor. Areas like the Cloakwood spider area, Firewine Ruins, and Undercity maze are virtually designed to force the player to reload over and over again for no real reason.
Before the Enhanced Editions dramatically sped up the pace of the game, BG1 gameplay was little different from walking across this landscape for 2 hours... ...and then stepping on a landmine that instantly kills you, forcing you to do it all over again.
@typo_tilly: Increased walking speed for one thing, but unlike Tutu, EE also has sped up loading times so much they're practically nonexistent unless you have a lot of mods installed.
Remember the loading screens from the original games and all the little messages you'd read while you were waiting for the next area to load? Those messages are gone because there's not enough time to read them anymore.
Comments
to make a decent wizard/cleric you'd have to do
Wizard 1 (Precocious Apprentice feat)/Cleric 3/Mystic Theurge 2/True Necromancer 14. Then you get a strong multiclass caster.
In 5e just go wizard/cleric and the spell slots stack.
I also like the low magic and the system doesn't assume you will be handing out magic items.
Also a crafting system was introduced in Xanathar's Guide to Everything and each class has quite a few kits to choose from now.
Though I suppose this is an unpopular opinions thread and I prob shouldn't argue opinions lol
DC for spells, Spells per day. Better skills. More damage for STR related vital strikes in pathfinder. To hit. It all depends on who it is and what they're class related attributes of importance is. It's really, really boring.
I'm currently playing in a PF game and a 5e game and 5e gives me much more freedom with characters than PF, in my opinion.
Also Dorn and Neera are some of the best characters in the series.
Kivan is overrated.
Neera is more annoying that Anomen himself!
And Wilson should have a much higher Charisma, he is cute!
The town where you find quests for the tower is hidden up the top of the map, far removed from everything, and accessible only by travelling up through a map you'll only likely be moving into in chapter 5.
The tower itself is slap bang in the middle right by several low level areas like Gullykin where an exploratory minded player can easily stumble well before they ever head up north, potentially completing the whole thing long before getting any quests for it.
While sure, lore of what's where exists, Ulgoth's Beard was hardly a necessary location. Any small fishing town could easily have been squeezed between AR3100 and AR3200, making it highly likely for a player to come across very early on their run, and giving access to quest and lore givers who give the location and context for Durlag's Tower - which could then be left where it is or, ideally, relocated up where Ulgoth's Beard used to be, making the tower harsh and inaccessible to help explain why it hasn't been cleared (honestly, it's not that hard), and making the ankheg map an effective Beef Gate against the curious.
It's hard to change such *canon* stuff after all this time without being targetted with *can(n)ons*.
That's Pathfinder, of course. From what I know of 3.5, archery and finesse just aren't good options anyways, but that's another issue.
Extra Credits did a great little design series based around it here.
1: The tour guide glitches out if you kill the demon knight beforehand.
2: The dwarf giving you the quest glitches out if you get the dagger beforehand.
3: The woman asking you to save her offspring glitches out if you save him beforehand.
Having [Ulgoth's Beard] in a different, more accessible, location would not detract from the tower, and would not make the "average" first time player less significantly likely to encounter the tower early if left in its original location (I appreciate Extra Life's position that it would be "gamey" to have it oop north), it would simply increase the likelihood that they actually encountered the town before chapter 5, by which time they could have completed the tower, and with no need to artificially add a map marker pointing to some nowhere town off the map for every player to give them a meta reason to go in that direction.
And for the argument that the player is intended to "stumble" and the Beard being situated, say, between AR3100 and AR3200 would detract from this, Gullykin already has townsfolk directing the player towards Durlag's Tower ahead of time, no stumbling required.
To each their own I guess, I can defnitely understand the argument for Neera or Anomen being annoying, but I throughly enjoy both of those characters
@Pantalion
I agree that Durlag's Tower could be completed before actually getting the quest, but nobody of a relatively low level (2-4) who may stumble into the area is going to get past those Battle Horrrors....period.
That being said, the tower itself is an incredibly well designed, well thought out and story-rich dungeon with a wealth of treasure. It has everything a good and challenging dungeon needs unlike....
*GRRRR* (eyes narrow) Firewine Ruins.
But yeah, the dungeon is a cut above in terms of general BG1 content (including the rest of TotSC, which is fairly dire). The thieves' maze in particular is just tedious, at least Firewine you can bypass completely via Gullykin.
Not particularly flavorful but it gets the job done.
With that said - Ice Island was a waste of a dungeon.
I don't dislike going through the Firewine dungeon the regular way. I use a scout who's good at range attack (high dex thief or a ranger) and snipe those lil' buggers roaming the place one after the other. Just let them follow you, hide around one of the many corners, wait for them to reappear, snipe again and so on. For even more efficiency, add one more sniper just behind the scout. Two characters is enough though, because there's not enough space for more.
If you use the terrain to your own advantage and take your time, you can go through the dungeon without taking much damage. You also can gain a load of arrows of fire. Also, with SCS, the ogre-mage and his goons actually makes for a fun fight. Yep, I kinda like the place actually...
The ankheg area is so easy to get through that it doesn't deter anyone from going through. There is no compulsion to kill a single ankheg.
Because if you fight them again and can't kill them on Round 2, they're going to start looking for your phylactery so they can destroy it and get you off their backs.
Being defeated is a minor inconvenience for a lich. All it costs them is a day or two to reform, and they can live for hundreds if not thousands of years if they play it safe. A smart lich wouldn't risk their immortality just to exact vengeance for a minor inconvenience.
But seriously - it makes sense, even if now all our victories against them seem hollow.
The real question is - what was that lich from City Gates doing? Is it really safe to hang out behind the wall of a tavern, right next to ultimate undead destroyer?
That area is BRUTAL. You may not be obligated to fight any ankhegs, but you also never know where they're going to pop up next, and you have to go way out of the way to avoid running into them. And if they see you, they follow you, and can attack ranged with their scary acid stuff, which is hard to get out of the way in time to avoid. And if you don't have it set to autopause when an enemy is 'sighted' they become near impossible to avoid since they're p much underground until their first attack.
Do you have any idea how many times one of those things oneshotted a party member before I'd even had time to process the fact they were THERE?
Before the Enhanced Editions dramatically sped up the pace of the game, BG1 gameplay was little different from walking across this landscape for 2 hours...
...and then stepping on a landmine that instantly kills you, forcing you to do it all over again.
Remember the loading screens from the original games and all the little messages you'd read while you were waiting for the next area to load? Those messages are gone because there's not enough time to read them anymore.