Thieves can max out lockpicking skill to quickly in BG2 engine *** Minor spoiler***

Icallhimlecobra

for example in an unmodded game there is a very valuable gem available in candlekeep only available to a halfling with 19 dex and maxed lockpicking at level 1. However in bg2 engine thieves get more points to allocate in character creation allowing other races to get the gem. will being able to dump more points each level into lockpicking unbalance the game?

sandmanCCL

Lockpicking is bypassed entirely by the level 2 mage spell "Knock." So by the time you're level 3, it's just for convenience.

Besides, you get more points per level because they added a bunch of skills. BG1 didn't have detect illusion, and stealth was just 1 skill instead of 2.

Shin

I'd say lockpicking never really gets bypassed unless you feel like resting 5 times per ingame day in order to get enough knock casts. As for unbalancing, I guess it depends on how anal you are about keeping everything exactly as the original BG was out of the box. But neither BG nor 2e D&D was all that carefully balanced to begin with.

sandmanCCL

@Shin: What I meant to say is if you ever absolutely want to get into a chest or through a door, you can, even if lockpicking on your thief is really low. It's "important" but by the time your mage hits level 3, you don't absolutely need it any more.

I don't see the extra points you can throw in skills as unbalancing anything, long story short.

Icallhimlecobra

I suppose it probably won't unbalance the game lol. I do still think that only halflings being able to access the gem was a nice little feature. I think perhaps the devs should increase the lockpicking skill requirement for that chest to keep it like the unmodded bg1

Demoss

Only halflings? I made a dwarf that could crack that chest with the Star Sapphire. (BG1 Vanilla of course)

Silence

The chest can also be busted open by characters with high strength scores (eg: half-orc with barbarian rage). So there's quite a few ways to get into it.

The gem, like the diamond in the tree or the ankheg plate mail, is something meta-gamers look for...it does remove the mystique of being very difficult to get. But on the bright side, its only a couple hundred gps

elminster

I believe you need 60 in lockpicking to open it, but I could be mistake.

elminster

I just checked Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halfling thieves can all get the 60 necessary to open that chest at level 1. Though in the case of Dwarves and Gnomes they have to put all their available points in order to get exactly the 60 needed (I think Halflings would have 5 leftover). This of course is in BG vanilla.

LadyRhian

In Pen and Paper, you get 60 points at level 1 to distribute and can only put up to half of them in one skill. You then get another 30 points for each additional level, with the same caveat of only being able to assign half the points to a single skill. However, Pen and Paper has two skills not used in BG: Climb Walls and Read Languages. And yes, you also get bonuses and penalties to skills for race and high/low Dexterity.