@Zaghoul What style of Iado did you practice? I was never very good at it, but I practiced Hiden Mugei Ryu Iadio. I have probably mangled the spelling.
@ThacoBell Mine was Toyama-Ryu Iaido. Of all the martial arts I have done over the years this was by far the most fun and interesting of all. The best part was that we had very few students for this class so we got alot of one on one work with the instructors. I would not have wanted to face off with either of them with a sword in a real fight., for darn sure.
Rogues and clerics don't have too low THAC0, it's fighters that have too good THAC0. A fighter can end BG1 with negative THAC0 on buffs, is that really reasonable? Fighter's THAC0 pregression is so good that it makes them the ONLY real choice for melee characters, meaning if you want to fight at all in melee you need to multi with or dual from fighter.
If fighters had skills/feats instead, their THAC0 progression could have been one every other level instead and they would still have kicked arse.
Now, let's see how unpopular this is! The first part I mean, the second part isn't very unpopular I guess.
"Fighter's THAC0 pregression is so good that it makes them the ONLY real choice for melee characters, meaning if you want to fight at all in melee you need to multi with or dual from fighter. "
Nope, clerics, mages, bards, and any multiclass combo can be VERY competent in melee. I've run entire sagas without any fighters at all while still keeping 3 front line melee characters at all times.
I've done plenty of damage with clerics and bards before, but you usually need buffs (or debuffs like Hold Person) of some sort to pull that off. With fighters, you don't need to commit the same amount of resources for them to perform well. Of course, I hate resting and am way too miserly with my spell slots as a result, so that's doubtless skewed my perspective some.
My Party of Spiders run was all about using non-fighters to deal melee damage. It's quite possible to have high damage output without any fighter levels in the entire party. However, it does require lots of buffing to make them competitive, the high damage output is temporary, and a party with fighters does have much greater potential damage output than one without.
Unless we're talking about the unmodded vanilla game before EE came out. In which case a party of Skalds throwing Improved Hasted Minute Meteors while stacking songs using Mislead clones multiplied by the Wand of Lightning trick would deal more damage than any other party.
FYI, I specifically said "Melee damage" so the parts in replies about MMM's, lightning bolts or other sources of damage such as cleric spells, bard throwing skull traps etc is not really a reply to my unpopular opinion IMHO. Shapechange is a reply though, buffed blade or swashie could be a reply, but only the latter can dual. A cleric in melee combat doing "great" damage? With 2 APR under IH? Sure, you can hit with 25 STR quite easily even at low levels, but that's no way near a fighter's 8 or so APR equally early. Sure stacking boon of lathander was a trick for some time (is that fixed btw?) but that was only for that kit.
A blade in BG1 is about ~10 THAC0 behind a fighter. Are they as good in melee? Well of course not, those 10 THAC0 (I haven't counted, so take this with a grain of salt) is the different between hitting all the time (including offhand) and hitting sometimes. In BG2 the blade catches up to some degree and with tenser's it's similar, but the few spell slots of a bard means you need to rest spam to be anywhere near the fighting potential of a fighter. If you don't mind rest spamming, then the blade is good (I personally love blades FYI, but don't at all like rest spam).
A cleric is also a long way behind the fighter when it comes to THAC0. They can easily reach super-high STR already in BG1 which gives good THAC0 boosts and the buffs just keep on coming. They last for some time as well. Also, they are always stuck at 1 base APR and cannot properly dual wield to offset that. Even if they boost the STR to offset the -THAC0 from dualweilding, they are still miles behind a fighter.
So, my point being, if a thief need to splice in a fighter to be a good thief, then something is a bit weird. If a cleric becomes more than double as good by splicing in a few levels of fighter, is the cleric balanced? If the only way a mage can even begin to consider meleeing is to dual from or multi fighter instead of say, dual from cleric to mage or from rogue to mage, is that balanced?
Maybe it is, I dunno. I still think the fighters are gimped out getting only THAC0 and prof points as their class skills compared to all the other classes and I would have preferred to see them get less THAC0 but being able to put prof points into cool things or that the added pips into single weapon fighting, s&s or 2h fighting etc gave innate ablities instead of just passive boons.
FYI, I specifically said "Melee damage" so the parts in replies about MMM's, lightning bolts or other sources of damage such as cleric spells, bard throwing skull traps etc is not really a reply to my unpopular opinion IMHO.
Then you misunderstood the counterargument. A strong enough cleric can use DUHM+Righteous Magic to get to 25 STR, and with either Boon of Lathander or Seeking Sword plus a second weapon, they get a respectable APR at max damage thanks to RM. That's melee damage.
And the bard has it easier, with the ability to use speed weapons, Improved Haste, Tenser's Transformation, and defensive buffs, to say nothing of what Blades can do with Offensive Spin. That's also melee damage. The cleric spells I referred to weren't blast spells, the MMM and wand of lightning bits were offhanded remarks (the real focus was on Polymorph self+Sword Spider), and nobody said anything about skull traps.
Yeah, any class with Tenser's basically IS a fighter. And all of my examples WERE considering only melee damage. Thaco is also easy to overcome with items.
Okay, this may just be a result of flukes and bad experiences, but I rarely use Horror/Confusion/Chaos. For me, the problem is that all too often, an enemy can get feared/confused...and still act completely normally. Maybe this is the result of bugs/bad luck, but it seems distressingly common, and to me defeats the purpose of using these spells. At this point, I generally reserve them for use against spellcasters only, since they do seem to impede spellcasting. But for physical enemies, I don't bother anymore.
@Skatan I bet we see eye to eye on a lot of things. That thac0 progression is probably compensation for fighters being so 1 dimensional and boring. I just can't main a fighter unless its being dual'd or multi'd. In the case of dualing, its a pretty boring 10 levels to go through. They really needed something like shield slams, knockdowns etc in BG to make them more interesting class imo.
@Abi_Dalzim I don't mind chaos on physical types as they tend to start fighting each other, or stroll around a bit, sometimes attacking the right target briefly, then back to strolling. That tends to be my experience. I absolutely loath fear however. That's a last resort spell for me.
I'm not sure I'd call them a waste of time, but cursed items wear out their welcome on a player eventually, because they'll start metagaming around them. This isn't a real problem for BG2, since cursed stuff is so rare, but in BG1, you'll very quickly be like, "Yep, Bassilus is dead. The hammer is awesome, leave the gloves." And so on. Again, I'm not sure how harshly this indictment should be taken, but this is a forum full of people who've played these games enough times to spot pretty much every cursed item a mile away, so...
I'm not sure I'd call them a waste of time, but cursed items wear out their welcome on a player eventually, because they'll start metagaming around them. This isn't a real problem for BG2, since cursed stuff is so rare, but in BG1, you'll very quickly be like, "Yep, Bassilus is dead. The hammer is awesome, leave the gloves." And so on. Again, I'm not sure how harshly this indictment should be taken, but this is a forum full of people who've played these games enough times to spot pretty much every cursed item a mile away, so...
Some mods make them quite interesting. For example the Cursed Sword of BerserkIng can be made into a decent +3 sword at a price. Somebody else made the belt that changes gender into an amusing item. I think that mod was Romantic Encounters.
Obviously some astute modders thought the same as you do, and decided to do something about it. Something similar could be done for the other cursed items.
I love the inclusion of cursed items (especially really early on) as they teach caution to new players. I get @Abi_Dalzim 's point though. They don't serve much purpose on repeat plays.
Cursed items always seemed like they ought to be really powerful but with a drawback: the Cursed Sword of Berserking, the Backbiter spear, and the Claw of whatshisface stand out to me as cursed items done really well. Violet and Red potions as well: great power, huge drawbacks. Other stuff like giving Feeblemind to a character (an instant gameover if on the bhaalspawn) or the gloves of misplacement... Just drawback with no benefit, and they're really boring because of it. A fun one would be a cursed bow that had really good damage/accuracy/whatever... But if you have to go into melee? Sucks to be you.
Or just add the component from Item Randomizer that randomize the appearance of cursed items. It doesn't resolve the meta game knowledge problem, because you're simply more cautious with everything you find, but you *might* get caught once in a while anyway.
"Yes, I just found the Shadow armor ! Ah crap, it was the armor of missile attraction." Totally not speaking from experience.
Comments
yearslevels of their life without a helmet, they can get into Hogwarts.Took me a few seconds to get that joke
Kensai dual-classing into Mage at the beginning of BG2
If fighters had skills/feats instead, their THAC0 progression could have been one every other level instead and they would still have kicked arse.
Now, let's see how unpopular this is! The first part I mean, the second part isn't very unpopular I guess.
Nope, clerics, mages, bards, and any multiclass combo can be VERY competent in melee. I've run entire sagas without any fighters at all while still keeping 3 front line melee characters at all times.
Unless we're talking about the unmodded vanilla game before EE came out. In which case a party of Skalds throwing Improved Hasted Minute Meteors while stacking songs using Mislead clones multiplied by the Wand of Lightning trick would deal more damage than any other party.
A blade in BG1 is about ~10 THAC0 behind a fighter. Are they as good in melee? Well of course not, those 10 THAC0 (I haven't counted, so take this with a grain of salt) is the different between hitting all the time (including offhand) and hitting sometimes. In BG2 the blade catches up to some degree and with tenser's it's similar, but the few spell slots of a bard means you need to rest spam to be anywhere near the fighting potential of a fighter. If you don't mind rest spamming, then the blade is good (I personally love blades FYI, but don't at all like rest spam).
A cleric is also a long way behind the fighter when it comes to THAC0. They can easily reach super-high STR already in BG1 which gives good THAC0 boosts and the buffs just keep on coming. They last for some time as well. Also, they are always stuck at 1 base APR and cannot properly dual wield to offset that. Even if they boost the STR to offset the -THAC0 from dualweilding, they are still miles behind a fighter.
So, my point being, if a thief need to splice in a fighter to be a good thief, then something is a bit weird. If a cleric becomes more than double as good by splicing in a few levels of fighter, is the cleric balanced? If the only way a mage can even begin to consider meleeing is to dual from or multi fighter instead of say, dual from cleric to mage or from rogue to mage, is that balanced?
Maybe it is, I dunno. I still think the fighters are gimped out getting only THAC0 and prof points as their class skills compared to all the other classes and I would have preferred to see them get less THAC0 but being able to put prof points into cool things or that the added pips into single weapon fighting, s&s or 2h fighting etc gave innate ablities instead of just passive boons.
And the bard has it easier, with the ability to use speed weapons, Improved Haste, Tenser's Transformation, and defensive buffs, to say nothing of what Blades can do with Offensive Spin. That's also melee damage. The cleric spells I referred to weren't blast spells, the MMM and wand of lightning bits were offhanded remarks (the real focus was on Polymorph self+Sword Spider), and nobody said anything about skull traps.
That thac0 progression is probably compensation for fighters being so 1 dimensional and boring. I just can't main a fighter unless its being dual'd or multi'd. In the case of dualing, its a pretty boring 10 levels to go through. They really needed something like shield slams, knockdowns etc in BG to make them more interesting class imo.
@Abi_Dalzim I don't mind chaos on physical types as they tend to start fighting each other, or stroll around a bit, sometimes attacking the right target briefly, then back to strolling. That tends to be my experience. I absolutely loath fear however. That's a last resort spell for me.
You're scared of "fear".
That's very meta.
(As much as I like Rasaad, to call him "the best writing in the series" is way overstretching even for me)
Obviously some astute modders thought the same as you do, and decided to do something about it. Something similar could be done for the other cursed items.
"Yes, I just found the Shadow armor ! Ah crap, it was the armor of missile attraction." Totally not speaking from experience.