@Demivrgvs the base cap is set to -20 + Dexterity modifier + Style bonuses. Then you can add maluses to the enemy's THAC0. Both my charname and Dorn reach -26 AC with 25 Dexterity then I use Protection from Evil 10 (-2) radius, Mass Invisibility (-4) and the armor modifiers plus the Golden girdle which translates into at least -3 against every types of attacks for a total of -35 effective AC.
@Gotural I was curious because the best vanilla armor has AC -2, and you said "no shield"; but I see now you were talking about a fully buffed character not your base AC. Also if you use Golden Girdle (the Bluntness one is better imo) you are giving up on Giant STR Belts, that's what @Lord_Tansheron meant with "sacrifice in other areas" (Single Weapon Style is another "sacrifice").
Armor AC -2 (hidden modifiers on average is -3 but 0 vs blunt! Let's assume the girdle cover that) Ring of Gaxx + Earth Control? -3 Single Weapon Style -2 (with Dorn? Seriously? I don't believe you ) DEX -6 (I assume 25 DEX comes from Draw Upon Holy Might) ProEvil & Invisibility -6 TOTAL AC is more or less around -22/-23
I think your -35 is an exaggeration. I may have missed a few points (-1 thac0 penalty to enemy from Chant? Doom?), but I don't see that many other sources of AC and a Dispel/Breach would worsen your AC by 12 points or more!
My characters don't have single weapon style, Charname is dualwielding and Dorn uses a two handed weapon. I confused the golden girdle with the bluntness one, good catch. Charname already has 23 base Str so he loses nothing, Dorn can cast DUHM to get enough Str and the belts are used for others characters (Sarevok for instance).
My character has better equipment (Ring of Gaxx, Ring of Protection +3) and the hell bonuses like -2 AC so he is using a Silver Dragon Armor while Dorn has to use the Big Metal Unit which set base AC to -10 to reach the cap.
I'm not home until tomorrow to look exactly how I get such a low AC but there is already a screenshot somewhere in the no-reload thread where I have a -20 base AC (effective AC -29) in hell versus Irenicus.
Recently I took down Demogorgon and it didn't manage to hit us once in melee before it died.
I suppose it's fair enough. Many people consider this a real item, I personally do not. But that's fine, as I keep saying, individual setups mean individual results. You make your choices based on what's available to you, and if that means AC comes easily, then by all means. It's not like I say no to great AC bonuses either. I pick them up where I get them.
Reminds me, anyone know if the level increase from Hard as Bhaals mode affects THAC0? The .cre files give the regular base THAC0 only for the unmodified level, not sure how enemies scale.
My characters don't have single weapon style, Charname is dualwielding and Dorn uses a two handed weapon. ... My character has better equipment (Ring of Gaxx, Ring of Protection +3) and the hell bonuses like -2 AC so he is using a Silver Dragon Armor while
Well, you mentioned Weapon Style as something which was improving your AC. Nevermind...then it's:
Armor AC -2 (all hidden modifiers are -3/-4 thanks to the girdle) Ring of Gaxx + Ring of Protection -5 Hell trial -2 DEX -6 (I assume 25 DEX comes from Draw Upon Holy Might) ProEvil & Invisibility -6 TOTAL AC is more or less around -24/-25
Still far from -35, and still hugely dependant on dispellable buffs (Invisibility bonus will go away as soon as an Oracle or TS is cast, and SCS mages love to do that - vanilla's Non-detection doesn't protect it). You are also considering the two most powerful rings in the game (no other ring is even remotely as powerful as those two) and an evil-only hell bonus restricted to charname, thus your example cannot be extended as a general rule to the 6 party members.
@Gotural Do not get me wrong, I'm not saying you cannot reach a very valuable AC value within ToB (that's what I was claiming myself) but it's not as easy as you claimed imo, and not so extreme.
I mentioned single weapon style because it is the only thing than can increase your base AC beyond -26 (-20 base -6 from the Dexterity modifier) not because I'm using it.
I'm considering the two most powerful rings in the game, you're considering the THAC0 of ToB bosses so I guess it's fair. The same goes for the Big Metal Unit. With -25 AC you are already well in the impossible to hit except on critical hits against everything else zone anyway.
You can also use Blur (Mage spell), Evasion/Greater Evasion (Thief HLAs), Entropy Shield (Cleric spell from IWDification which I'm using), Defensive Spin (Blade ability) and so forth to further increase your AC.
I never said everyone in my party had a low AC, only my Charname and Dorn have. You need the best gear for that.
The same is true for damage resistances, there is only one Defender of Easthaven in the game which means that only one character can be a great tank with high physical resistances, don't expect a single class Berserker with only Hardiness (40%) to last long against a few Fire Giants. You need at least 80% DR (Barbarian) but 85% (Paladins/Rangers/FC and so forth) or 90% (Dwarven Defender) is even better.
Even on a 100% vanilla setup, a few character builds could reach the AC cap without using a shield.
And if we're taking shields into account (which we could, considering the GWW HLA which allows a character with FoA+5 and a shield to outdamage for a round a character dualwielding FoA+5 and a speed weapon) it would be even easier but this is a sacrifice.
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As for the LoB mode I can't answer your question but it's a very interesting one I think. If it works like in IWD it should be a -11 THAC0 bonus right?
I should clarify that my point is that there is the DoE+3 to make a single character in the party nearly immune to physical damage. But there are also enough equipment and spells to make a single character's AC so low that even ToB bosses won't hit him, maybe two characters with the Big Metal Unit.
Why is the big metal unit considered cheese-like? Or that's what I'm getting from reading anyway. It's in the game without any mods, I don't see the issue.
Why is the big metal unit considered cheese-like? Or that's what I'm getting from reading anyway. It's in the game without any mods, I don't see the issue.
Whether you consider a piece of armor requiring preposterous joke items from all three games to be combined into an even more preposterous item ten times more powerful than any other armor in the game cheese, is entirely up to you.
Cheese has no clear definition, it's always a matter of opinion. Many things are possible within the game engine without modification, but not all of those things have equal merit in a discussion. Otherwise we could just assume a character has been re-imported over and over for 25/25/25/25/25/25 stats, which is also a completely "legitimate" process not requiring anything the game doesn't regularly let you do. Heck, it even takes effort to go through it so many times! Wonder if the Hell trial AC bonuses stack over and over, too...
True enough, but there's a difference using a powerful item obtained through a single playthrough using legitimate means, as opposed to reimporting for ridiculous stats.
I think it's really just a matter of opinion and taste...I will never, ever, use the bmu, because I think it's a ridiculous item. Plus, it makes you look like a golem, which I think is ugly, and I don't like ugly things in my games. And why anyone would ever wear the bmu is beyond me. What kind of person actually wants to look like a giant golem? Not my cute little bhaalspawn, and I doubt they want any of their companions to look like that either. I will quietly judge anyone who wears it not because of its stats, but because of their fashion choices.
That said, I like to replay BG1 until I have stats I like. My charname is a bhaalspawn; if i want to give them extra-powerful stats, of course I'm going to! I don't go for all 25s, but I usually end up with a total roll of around 120ish after playing three/four times. That's just my personal preference, and I know that not everyone agrees with people who do what I do. Which is fine.
TLDR: Not everyone has the same play style. Raising stats and using the bmu are both relatively legitimate, and neither should be looked down upon. Let people do what they want.
Well, if it's as ugly as you say, I'm of a mind to agree.
On my second playthrough I intend to start from level 1, but include any stat boosts I've got throughout the games, make my character a bit more powerful. I mean, in terms of importing - it definitely is 100% opinion on what is cheese and what is not. For me, it's okay if you complete the entire game, BG1-ToB to reimport with higher stats - whereas a friend I know who also plays decided to boost his con and cha to 25 because he could get the tomes easily, and kept importing to achieve that - a bit too much for me, but in the end how he plays doesn't affect me, and vice versa.
It's really ugly...I probably still wouldn't use it if it wasn't ugly, but the fact that it is ugly just settles it for me. No way am I ever touching it again. The one time I had it it made, I put it on, and then I immediately reloaded after I figured out what it looked like. I didn't want something that ugly in my inventory! I didn't even check the stats; I looked at it in NI later on to figure it out.
Yeah, I see what you mean on the reimporting thing. My dad plays similarly to how your friend does, and he can play how he likes of course, but it's something I'd never do, even though I don't mind replaying the whole game to get higher stats. Well, to each their own, right?
Unfortunately not everyone sees it that way - a lot of people seem to think that because they play a certain way, everyone has to play that way - or that there is a 'right' way to play, and only their way of playing is right. That being said, I've not seen anything like that in this small community (which I really like, I love small communities).
I do too, and I completely agree. What's important is that the game is fun to the individual, and no one should be made to feel like they're playing the "wrong" way because there is no wrong way! I mean, unless you are like, majorly, hugely cheating, but even then, if you want to, go for it I guess.
Well, as long as you're having fun, that's fine too. Although cheating kind of spoils the game, or any game really, in my opinion. I played BG1 a good long time ago - when I quite a bit younger. I ended up playing as a thief, just so I could pick the lock in candlekeep for the star sapphire - repeated that until my inventory was full of them (gold didn't import over, I don't know whether it does now or not), then sold them and got the shadow thieves armor right off the bat. I didn't really get all that far, I don't remember when I stopped on that playthrough, pretty early.
Then on a fighter playthrough, I ended up cheating a bunch of items, basically one for each slot. Drizzt's chainmail....his scimitars. Then when I was looking through the belts, I had no idea what any of them did, so I just picked on that sounded like it was good. Found my character as a woman when I loaded up and couldn't figure out why....guess it served me right.
In any case (once I found out how to get my gender back to male), that playthrough got boring, real fast as you can imagine, and even then I got my ass kicked in the Nashkel mines, because I had pretty much no party members....(mostly because my reputation was horrible and everyone kept leaving me).
Anyway, it was a long time ago but it put me off the game, and anytime someone suggested it, I didn't want to simply because of past experience. Eventually a few weeks ago, I tried again, and good thing I did.
And somehow talking of cheesing ended up with my life story...
The thing about cheating is it makes a game really boring, really fast, at least usually. I have no doubt that there are people who massively cheat and have lots of fun doing so. More power to them, I suppose.
Part of the fun of any RPG is gathering money and items, and if you just cheat them into the game it takes away a lot of the challenge and entertainment. I can see where the temptation would be, certainly, but I think many things in execution turn out differently than people expect. Making a character more or less "invincible" is rarely as satisfying as it would seem to be, and more often than not I think it fails anyway.
Obviously, if people want to cheat, that's their prerogative, but I don't think it really does anything in the long run, other than make a game really, really boring, as you yourself discovered.
I am glad you decided to give the game another try, though!
For those determined to boost stats, this is easy enough to do in a single play-through with, what I would term, minor cheating, entirely in-engine and without any kind of keep tool.
OK, technically two play-throughs ;~) First play through, collect all the Tomes, but do not use any. Then export a character with all Tomes, and start a new multi-player game, where you will play all 6 characters - in import the character with the Tomes each time. You can now have a character with multiple copies of each Tome, export and repeat...
Yes, I was sad enough to do this, looking for ways to exploit the game, back in the day. My first character into SoA was a paladin with all-25 stats. I may have been overpowering the game, but was still too ignorant to know how to use that PC well - stats went a long way to solving problems so that I never really had to learn how to play well.
Of course, EEKeeper simplifies the process significantly, but is a tool I am not prepared to touch. Odd what sets off our personal notion of 'cheating' in a singe player game
(and no, I don't stat-boost any more - once was enough to feel I had beaten that part of the game)
I mean, when you do things like that, to me it's no different from using EEKeeper. It's like the fake-talk strategy you can use - which if you're unfamiliar with, it basically allows you to kill anything you want that you can talk to before fighting, without them even fighting back. Sure it works - sure you can do it within the engine (although I'm sure its unintended), but in the end, how is it any different from using the console to do the job for you?
I don't mean to sound critical, because everyone has different opinions on what is cheating and what is not.
@GreenWarlock My father does that little trick and is quite happy it exists, but I could never raise stats that way. I don't really have a problem with people doing it, as I am a firm believer in people should play games however they want, but it feels like crossing the line for me. I don't think it's at all similar to playing the game over multiple times, though undoubtedly there are people who see both things the same way *shrug* It is, as always, just a matter of opinion.
I don't actually have a problem with people cheating if they really want to. I mean, some people consider what I do cheating, to which I say, whatever, I don't, and I don't care what you think. What is and is not cheating is not set in stone.
Everyone has their own opinion on what constitutes cheating. To me, cheating is limited to using exploits, EEkeeper, the console, and modding the game in a way that gives you mechanical benefits.
Obviously what constitutes an exploit is up for debate but in my opinion exporting and re-using a character within the same game isn't an exploit - it is the intended use of that mechanic. After all, it would have been extremely easy to prevent with a simple flag that activates when a character has entered any particular game that prevents that same character from re-entering any game that it has been flagged for. Exporting within the same game is essentially Baldur's Gate's version of a "New Game +" feature (A feature which has since become extremely popular in other games) and it is there to add an extra level of replayability and give the opportunity to have your Bhaalspawn's divine blood really realize him into a level that puts him a cut above the general population (Prior to potentially fully ascending in the epilogue). No-one considers others "cheaters" for using the "New Game +" feature of other games and they shouldn't here either.
I don't buy the New Game+ analogy, as games that support that also play at a harder difficulty to make things interesting for your over-levelled character, unlike BG.
That said, I have had fun running a character through Black Pits, distinctly over-levelled for BG1, and then importing into the first game and immediately dual-classing. This gives you a Bhaalspawn that can earn no xp in the whole of the first game, but carries a higher-level original class into BG2. At the start of Irenics dungeon something magical happens - for the first time (discounting BP) your character starts earning xp, old Johnny has woken something of the divine up in you all right during all those experiments...
For a more extreme version (also, no extra play-through required) generate your character in ToB, and import back into BG. Now the challenge is to time gaining access to the original class around some big in-game event, such as the big reveal at the end of Spellhold. You might want to quietly discard excess equipment to avoid breaking immersion too badly though. You may be a perpetual 1st level character through the first game, but you still have enough HP that dying before you build a party is also extremely unlikely.
@GreenWarlock See, this is something even I have no problem with. Sure it's cheese mechanically, but it comes with so much flavor behind it I can totally accept someone going that route.
Also I would strongly recommend to anyone who feels they want a real "new game+" to just mod the game for difficulty, and perhaps also enable the new Hard as Bhaals difficulty mode. Without that, it's not new game+ it's new game-.
Comments
Then you can add maluses to the enemy's THAC0.
Both my charname and Dorn reach -26 AC with 25 Dexterity then I use Protection from Evil 10 (-2) radius, Mass Invisibility (-4) and the armor modifiers plus the Golden girdle which translates into at least -3 against every types of attacks for a total of -35 effective AC.
Armor AC -2 (hidden modifiers on average is -3 but 0 vs blunt! Let's assume the girdle cover that)
Ring of Gaxx + Earth Control? -3
Single Weapon Style -2 (with Dorn? Seriously? I don't believe you
DEX -6 (I assume 25 DEX comes from Draw Upon Holy Might)
ProEvil & Invisibility -6
TOTAL AC is more or less around -22/-23
I think your -35 is an exaggeration. I may have missed a few points (-1 thac0 penalty to enemy from Chant? Doom?), but I don't see that many other sources of AC and a Dispel/Breach would worsen your AC by 12 points or more!
I confused the golden girdle with the bluntness one, good catch.
Charname already has 23 base Str so he loses nothing, Dorn can cast DUHM to get enough Str and the belts are used for others characters (Sarevok for instance).
My character has better equipment (Ring of Gaxx, Ring of Protection +3) and the hell bonuses like -2 AC so he is using a Silver Dragon Armor while Dorn has to use the Big Metal Unit which set base AC to -10 to reach the cap.
I'm not home until tomorrow to look exactly how I get such a low AC but there is already a screenshot somewhere in the no-reload thread where I have a -20 base AC (effective AC -29) in hell versus Irenicus.
Recently I took down Demogorgon and it didn't manage to hit us once in melee before it died.
I suppose it's fair enough. Many people consider this a real item, I personally do not. But that's fine, as I keep saying, individual setups mean individual results. You make your choices based on what's available to you, and if that means AC comes easily, then by all means. It's not like I say no to great AC bonuses either. I pick them up where I get them.
Reminds me, anyone know if the level increase from Hard as Bhaals mode affects THAC0? The .cre files give the regular base THAC0 only for the unmodified level, not sure how enemies scale.
Armor AC -2 (all hidden modifiers are -3/-4 thanks to the girdle)
Ring of Gaxx + Ring of Protection -5
Hell trial -2
DEX -6 (I assume 25 DEX comes from Draw Upon Holy Might)
ProEvil & Invisibility -6
TOTAL AC is more or less around -24/-25
Still far from -35, and still hugely dependant on dispellable buffs (Invisibility bonus will go away as soon as an Oracle or TS is cast, and SCS mages love to do that - vanilla's Non-detection doesn't protect it). You are also considering the two most powerful rings in the game (no other ring is even remotely as powerful as those two) and an evil-only hell bonus restricted to charname, thus your example cannot be extended as a general rule to the 6 party members.
@Gotural Do not get me wrong, I'm not saying you cannot reach a very valuable AC value within ToB (that's what I was claiming myself) but it's not as easy as you claimed imo, and not so extreme. ...ehm...not much to say here. Just LOL.
I have to agree with @Lord_Tansheron "individual setups mean individual results".
I'm considering the two most powerful rings in the game, you're considering the THAC0 of ToB bosses so I guess it's fair. The same goes for the Big Metal Unit. With -25 AC you are already well in the impossible to hit except on critical hits against everything else zone anyway.
You can also use Blur (Mage spell), Evasion/Greater Evasion (Thief HLAs), Entropy Shield (Cleric spell from IWDification which I'm using), Defensive Spin (Blade ability) and so forth to further increase your AC.
I never said everyone in my party had a low AC, only my Charname and Dorn have. You need the best gear for that.
The same is true for damage resistances, there is only one Defender of Easthaven in the game which means that only one character can be a great tank with high physical resistances, don't expect a single class Berserker with only Hardiness (40%) to last long against a few Fire Giants. You need at least 80% DR (Barbarian) but 85% (Paladins/Rangers/FC and so forth) or 90% (Dwarven Defender) is even better.
Even on a 100% vanilla setup, a few character builds could reach the AC cap without using a shield.
And if we're taking shields into account (which we could, considering the GWW HLA which allows a character with FoA+5 and a shield to outdamage for a round a character dualwielding FoA+5 and a speed weapon) it would be even easier but this is a sacrifice.
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As for the LoB mode I can't answer your question but it's a very interesting one I think.
If it works like in IWD it should be a -11 THAC0 bonus right?
But there are also enough equipment and spells to make a single character's AC so low that even ToB bosses won't hit him, maybe two characters with the Big Metal Unit.
Cheese has no clear definition, it's always a matter of opinion. Many things are possible within the game engine without modification, but not all of those things have equal merit in a discussion. Otherwise we could just assume a character has been re-imported over and over for 25/25/25/25/25/25 stats, which is also a completely "legitimate" process not requiring anything the game doesn't regularly let you do. Heck, it even takes effort to go through it so many times! Wonder if the Hell trial AC bonuses stack over and over, too...
That said, I like to replay BG1 until I have stats I like. My charname is a bhaalspawn; if i want to give them extra-powerful stats, of course I'm going to! I don't go for all 25s, but I usually end up with a total roll of around 120ish after playing three/four times. That's just my personal preference, and I know that not everyone agrees with people who do what I do. Which is fine.
TLDR: Not everyone has the same play style. Raising stats and using the bmu are both relatively legitimate, and neither should be looked down upon. Let people do what they want.
On my second playthrough I intend to start from level 1, but include any stat boosts I've got throughout the games, make my character a bit more powerful. I mean, in terms of importing - it definitely is 100% opinion on what is cheese and what is not. For me, it's okay if you complete the entire game, BG1-ToB to reimport with higher stats - whereas a friend I know who also plays decided to boost his con and cha to 25 because he could get the tomes easily, and kept importing to achieve that - a bit too much for me, but in the end how he plays doesn't affect me, and vice versa.
Yeah, I see what you mean on the reimporting thing. My dad plays similarly to how your friend does, and he can play how he likes of course, but it's something I'd never do, even though I don't mind replaying the whole game to get higher stats. Well, to each their own, right?
Then on a fighter playthrough, I ended up cheating a bunch of items, basically one for each slot. Drizzt's chainmail....his scimitars. Then when I was looking through the belts, I had no idea what any of them did, so I just picked on that sounded like it was good. Found my character as a woman when I loaded up and couldn't figure out why....guess it served me right.
In any case (once I found out how to get my gender back to male), that playthrough got boring, real fast as you can imagine, and even then I got my ass kicked in the Nashkel mines, because I had pretty much no party members....(mostly because my reputation was horrible and everyone kept leaving me).
Anyway, it was a long time ago but it put me off the game, and anytime someone suggested it, I didn't want to simply because of past experience. Eventually a few weeks ago, I tried again, and good thing I did.
And somehow talking of cheesing ended up with my life story...
Part of the fun of any RPG is gathering money and items, and if you just cheat them into the game it takes away a lot of the challenge and entertainment. I can see where the temptation would be, certainly, but I think many things in execution turn out differently than people expect. Making a character more or less "invincible" is rarely as satisfying as it would seem to be, and more often than not I think it fails anyway.
Obviously, if people want to cheat, that's their prerogative, but I don't think it really does anything in the long run, other than make a game really, really boring, as you yourself discovered.
I am glad you decided to give the game another try, though!
OK, technically two play-throughs ;~) First play through, collect all the Tomes, but do not use any.
Then export a character with all Tomes, and start a new multi-player game, where you will play all 6 characters - in import the character with the Tomes each time. You can now have a character with multiple copies of each Tome, export and repeat...
Yes, I was sad enough to do this, looking for ways to exploit the game, back in the day. My first character into SoA was a paladin with all-25 stats. I may have been overpowering the game, but was still too ignorant to know how to use that PC well - stats went a long way to solving problems so that I never really had to learn how to play well.
Of course, EEKeeper simplifies the process significantly, but is a tool I am not prepared to touch. Odd what sets off our personal notion of 'cheating' in a singe player game
(and no, I don't stat-boost any more - once was enough to feel I had beaten that part of the game)
I don't mean to sound critical, because everyone has different opinions on what is cheating and what is not.
I don't actually have a problem with people cheating if they really want to. I mean, some people consider what I do cheating, to which I say, whatever, I don't, and I don't care what you think. What is and is not cheating is not set in stone.
Obviously what constitutes an exploit is up for debate but in my opinion exporting and re-using a character within the same game isn't an exploit - it is the intended use of that mechanic. After all, it would have been extremely easy to prevent with a simple flag that activates when a character has entered any particular game that prevents that same character from re-entering any game that it has been flagged for. Exporting within the same game is essentially Baldur's Gate's version of a "New Game +" feature (A feature which has since become extremely popular in other games) and it is there to add an extra level of replayability and give the opportunity to have your Bhaalspawn's divine blood really realize him into a level that puts him a cut above the general population (Prior to potentially fully ascending in the epilogue). No-one considers others "cheaters" for using the "New Game +" feature of other games and they shouldn't here either.
That said, I have had fun running a character through Black Pits, distinctly over-levelled for BG1, and then importing into the first game and immediately dual-classing. This gives you a Bhaalspawn that can earn no xp in the whole of the first game, but carries a higher-level original class into BG2. At the start of Irenics dungeon something magical happens - for the first time (discounting BP) your character starts earning xp, old Johnny has woken something of the divine up in you all right during all those experiments...
For a more extreme version (also, no extra play-through required) generate your character in ToB, and import back into BG. Now the challenge is to time gaining access to the original class around some big in-game event, such as the big reveal at the end of Spellhold. You might want to quietly discard excess equipment to avoid breaking immersion too badly though. You may be a perpetual 1st level character through the first game, but you still have enough HP that dying before you build a party is also extremely unlikely.
Also I would strongly recommend to anyone who feels they want a real "new game+" to just mod the game for difficulty, and perhaps also enable the new Hard as Bhaals difficulty mode. Without that, it's not new game+ it's new game-.