Class kits on a level 1 character feel wrong to me!

Icallhimlecobra

I'll be playing my first bgee play play through with a standard class, Why? It makes no sense to me that a level 1 character would be specialised in their class of choice. Class kits make more sense for the PC in bg2 where your character is more experienced and may have specialised by that time.

Dee

I like to think of the kits as kind of like the archetypes mechanic in Pathfinder. They hone your character concept to clarify the sort of character you're playing. There's a very big difference, for example, between a Fighter who walks around in full plate armor, and a Kensai who prides himself on using nothing but his weapon.

Icallhimlecobra

I suppose you could look at it that way, I look at kits as if they are the choice a character would make at a certain point in their career. To specialise in one thing or an other, i see it as a choice that can only be made with a bit of good old fashioned adventuring under your belt (or girdle lol)

Shin

I agree with @Aosaw, also generally viewing kits more like variants than specialist classes. Some of them may differ a bit like the mage specialist kits, but even there it seems fairly likely that if e.g. an invoker taught you, you might well end up as an invoker yourself even if you have no experience.

But yeah, obviously it's fine to follow your own sense of what your character is like in terms of experience and capabilities.

Jean_Luc

Kits in bg2 also start at lvl 1, it's just that the game kicks you up to lvl 7. If you choose a kensai you're going to be a lvl 7 kensai, not lvl 2 warrior and lvl 5 kensai or anything like that so lvl 1 kits make just as much sense as they always have.

It's probably 3ed that's making you think of kits as prestige classes which they're not.

fighter_mage_thief

I agree in part with the OP. Most kits are fine imo, but the ones that stand out as unusually powerful at level 1 are the Inquisitor, all three Cleric kits, and the Shapeshifter. Around 8th to 10th level (what you'd be normally going through BG1 with TotSC), none of the kits seem unusual. What also bothers me is that the Cleric kits never had any disadvantages, unlike every other kit, from what I recall.

Quartz

Jean_Luc said:

It's probably 3ed that's making you think of kits as prestige classes which they're not.

Barf.

Keles

I'll be running through as yea ole generic ranger. kits at 1st level are not an issue for me as I look at it more from a character concept choice. plus, they add a lil more replay value. ~

Brude

Kits feel a little weird to me too at first level.

Part or that is because some of them feel overpowered (like, wow, the Cavalier gets a ton of advantages for a guy with zero experience). And part of that is because half of the descriptions list abilities you don't get until BG1 is well over!

I don't have a problem with the specialization aspect of it. I think of it as the same kind of distinctions as between EMTs and nurses, plumbers and truck mechanics, cops and firefighters. Those people went into medical care, mechanical maintenance, and public safety, respectively.

Lemernis

People have been playing Tutu and BGT for many years now and there haven't been any enduring complaints that kits break the game in BG1. That said, there are also mods that rebalance classes and improve enemy AI. But I think even without heavily modding the game with those platforms, i.e., just using the BG2 engine and not much else, there hasn't been a deep grumbling that kits ruin BG1.

Figrut

Does a bonus to kill dragons and other worldly manifestations of destructive evil unbalance level 1 play? I do not remember much of dueling orcus riding a cloud dragon on my way to fetch quest #1-7.

sandmanCCL

Figrut said:

Does a bonus to kill dragons and other worldly manifestations of destructive evil unbalance level 1 play? I do not remember much of dueling orcus riding a cloud dragon on my way to fetch quest #1-7.

Being immune to charm and hold certainly does, though.

The only ability I see being game-breaking at level 1 is Totemic Druid summons. Then again, they are fairly game-breaking at level 13 still. It's just a really, really good ability. Shapeshifters properly implemented would also make low levels a total joke.

But that's about it. Even the paladin kits, as strong as they are, don't really make it much easier than a regular paladin for low levels.

I'm struggling to come up with anything else that strikes me as particularly "overpowered" specifically because of low level advantages and I'm coming up blank.

mlnevese

The problem in my opinion comes from the wrong interpretation of what kits and level 1 adventurers are.

Level 1 adventurers are not inexperienced as most people think. They're highly trained elite individuals. A level 1 human mage normally starts his training when he's 10-11 years old and is not considered a level 1 mage until his early 20s.

The same apply to fighters as well. They're not the guy who is given a sword and told to go kill goblins, he was trained from an early age and is highly skilled knowing how to fight in all kind of armors and how to correctly use a shield. Just compare him to an NPC soldier from the DMG which rarely has more than 4 hit points and rarely knows how to fight in more than one kind of armor.

Kits reflect different training. A Transmuter is still a mage, who concentrated so much in his school of magic that he completely neglects others. An Inquisitor is a Paladin, trained from early age to hunt and kill evil spellcasters, foregoing the training that allows a Paladin to channel holy energy from his god in the form of healing touch and spells and instead concentrating on using this holy energy to see through illusions and dispel evil magics. The P&P version's description went to the length of limiting his dispel power to spells cast by evil casters. It didn't work on a spell cast by a good caster.

The kensai is a fighter who was trained to fight with no armor, concentrating on weapon techniques.

So a kit is NOT an experienced adventurer who specialized into something, although that kind of kit existed as well, it just reflects a completely different training from an early age.

Mechanically they still use the THAC0, saves and hit dice from their root class, so they are considered a kit from a class.

Regarding relative strengths, in P&P, their higher requirements would make most kits quite rare. BG mechanics make it easier by automatically adjusting the stats to match the minimum requirements of the kit/class you wish to play. And that's exactly how it should work in a computer game. I see no sense in forbidding the player to have the character he wishes to play.