Survival of the Unfittest

Ligg

There are plenty of folks out there doing challenges with various self-imposed rules. Never tried that myself (solos? No reloads?) The PCs that get posted up tend to have really high min/maxed stats. Does anyone ever play these challenges with a deliberately poor character - all stats, just say, 9s? Or does anyone seek out a party of Garrick, Alora, Quayle, Tiax & Faldorn?

DJKajuru

Well, all the npc's you've mentioned are more tactical than physical, therefore you'd have to rely on attacking and casting spells from a distance. Against a tough party, I've imagined a situation like this:

round 1 -
Alora scouts , Garrick/Quayle/Tiax/Faldorn summon creatures.

round 2 -
Alora acts as bait and attracts enemies , G/Q/T/F buff

round 3 -
summoned creatures (monsters/skeletons/animals) fight , while G/Q/T/F cast disabling spells, use wands and cause havok.

At lowers levels there would be a lot of hit-and-run , at medium levels they would summon/disable , at higher levels they would summon/buff/disable/use wands.

Brude

I've found that effectiveness in BG1 comes down to your ranged DPS. Who's got a decent DEX and can consistently hit with a ranged weapon? All other concerns are secondary.

The original game was easy enough that you could "carry" the 6th party member through the game. Meaning, your PC could literally do nothing in every fight & you'd still be able to finish the story.

For freak runs -- my lastest impulses were to run an all-female party (+Edwin, with a little help from the Girdle of Masculinity/Feminity) -or- run an all shorty group: Quayle, Tiax, Kagain, Montaron & a gnome PC.

Fighting_Ferret

I'd think an interesting play through would be to equip all the cursed items on the pc... as soon as possible and make it through bg1.

HaHaCharade

I am a perfectionist and just tend to build what I feel is the most kick ass party.. which I guess is the normal thing lol. Never tried a novelty run cuz I'm just constantly starting over for one reason or another it seems. So I don't have a TON of playthroughs.

Jaxsbudgie

One of my favourites is if the NPC dies, they're permanently dead, even if their portrait is grey and not missing (from chunking). The PC can die and you can reload (it's not a no-reload challenge), but where the fun lies, is you manically end up recruiting characters you would never have considered in a team you really can't plan. It is soul crushing when your beefed up Shar-Teel or your Mage dualled Imoen (both of whom you've nurtured from the offset) perish in battle. But hey, that's how I discovered Eldoth and Skie!

The only time I ever did it (I've only done it once, it was too taxing ... emotionally), I ended up with Skie, Eldoth, Alora and Tiax. I can't remember what class my PC was but oh god what a weird party.

ajwz

One of my favourite playthroughs has been the one where I invite every single npc in the game along at some point, and then role play thier tragic or heroic deaths at various stages of the game, and then note them all in my journal.

DJKajuru

ajwz said:

One of my favourite playthroughs has been the one where I invite every single npc in the game along at some point, and then role play thier tragic or heroic deaths at various stages of the game, and then note them all in my journal.

So do I! There's always an npc who dies tragically by the hands of Firkraag.

ajwz

DJKajuru said:

ajwz said:

One of my favourite playthroughs has been the one where I invite every single npc in the game along at some point, and then role play thier tragic or heroic deaths at various stages of the game, and then note them all in my journal.

So do I! There's always an npc who dies tragically by the hands of Firkraag.

Haha, yeah exactly. Plus in this mode I actively encourage interparty combat, and then neutrally stand back and record the winner. Doing the summary of the eventual fate of every npc at the end is really the best part.

AHF

Ligg said:

There are plenty of folks out there doing challenges with various self-imposed rules. Never tried that myself (solos? No reloads?) The PCs that get posted up tend to have really high min/maxed stats. Does anyone ever play these challenges with a deliberately poor character - all stats, just say, 9s? Or does anyone seek out a party of Garrick, Alora, Quayle, Tiax & Faldorn?

All 9's is all average stats. Drop some or all of those stats to 3's for a real "challenge." In fact, I think I may be looking at an all 3's minimum sorcerer that just destroys.. The real question will be which stat to drop to a 2...

I just feel that this kind of challenge should be "min" without the "max."

Tetraploid

@Jaxsbudgie That's exactly what I did on my last playthrough! The most annoying thing was when two of my NPCs (Khalid and Shar-Teel) got turned to stone by basilisks. Goodbye, fighters, and goodbye all the gear they had on them. Most traumatic was losing Branwen in the bandit camp, I had to hurry my through Cloakwood to find Yeslick to replace her! (I like clerics.)

That was also the run-through in which I realised how great some NPCs I had never used before were. Coran, in particular - I'd always ignored him before on the basis that I had plenty of fighter-type characters and Imoen/Montaron as a thief. I picked him up in desperation when Imoen met a grisly end and he turned out to be ridiculously good.

Jaxsbudgie

@Tetraploid ugh, that Shar-Teel and Khalid basilisk event made me wince, I remember losing a few to basilisks myself. I think I did the very same with Yeslick! As for Coran, I really haven't tested him, his dex is nice but all his other stats provide no bonuses whatsoever.

I'm tempted to try that game again now ... and see how far I can take Xzar.

bbear

AHF said:

Ligg said:

There are plenty of folks out there doing challenges with various self-imposed rules. Never tried that myself (solos? No reloads?) The PCs that get posted up tend to have really high min/maxed stats. Does anyone ever play these challenges with a deliberately poor character - all stats, just say, 9s? Or does anyone seek out a party of Garrick, Alora, Quayle, Tiax & Faldorn?

All 9's is all average stats. Drop some or all of those stats to 3's for a real "challenge." In fact, I think I may be looking at an all 3's minimum sorcerer that just destroys.. The real question will be which stat to drop to a 2...

I just feel that this kind of challenge should be "min" without the "max."

Should be doable since a sorcerer doesnt have any require stats. You are looking for a "poverty" type of challenge since your pc cant carry stuff (except gems, gold, scrolls). I believe only human/elf/half-elf can be sorcerer, so the 2 stat goes to constitution.

sandmanCCL

Ligg said:

There are plenty of folks out there doing challenges with various self-imposed rules. Never tried that myself (solos? No reloads?) The PCs that get posted up tend to have really high min/maxed stats. Does anyone ever play these challenges with a deliberately poor character - all stats, just say, 9s? Or does anyone seek out a party of Garrick, Alora, Quayle, Tiax & Faldorn?

I've honestly thought about it!

Minimum roll you can possibly have is 75, so I figure if I planned out the stats of just 75 and readjusted them so he'd still be a playable NPC but without maxing anything, that could be fun.

@Jaxsbudgie: I used to feel that way about Coran. Then I actually used him. He's supremely bad-ass. For whatever reason, he actually joins with more HP than he should possibly have so his low CON doesn't ever come into play. His strength doesn't provide damage bonuses, but it's enough to let him carry a big bow and studded leather comfortably. His supreme Dexterity is great, and it's worth noting he has more proficiency points in Bows than should technically be allowed for a fighter/thief. At max XP, he's the "best" archer in the game from a pure ranged thac0 standpoint.

And if you really want to go melee-combat with him, just quaff a beefy strength potion and backstab to your heart's content. Fighter/thief is fun like that.

CaptRory

I used Coran to backstab that guy that puts you on the trail of Baldur's Helm and Cloak at the end. My party doesn't have tons of DPS, it's more like... a millstone that grinds down the opposition. So I had him chug a potion of Frost Giant Strength and backstab the guy with the Dagger of Venom. Really gave me the edge on taking him out before he fled with the Helm.

Kaxon

bbear said:

Should be doable since a sorcerer doesnt have any require stats. You are looking for a "poverty" type of challenge since your pc cant carry stuff (except gems, gold, scrolls). I believe only human/elf/half-elf can be sorcerer, so the 2 stat goes to constitution.

Elves and half elves both have minimum stats above 3, so you should only be able to get all 3s if you play as a human... unless that part of the game is broken.

bbear

ok, i guess absolute min stat is 24 when you are human. I think the min stat of a class is 9 for the required stat (I believe a sorcerer class still requires to have a min stat of 9 in intelligence.)

mjs

@fighting_ferret i had this thought too! looked some of the cursed items up and realised how brutally affected you'd be

Dragonspear

When I read this topic title I initially thought it was going to be a run where you were not allowed to have any characters in your party with a constitution that was 11 or higher oO

bbear

Just rolled this guy...Irenicus nearly tortured me to death

bbear

Just finished Irenicus' dungeon solo. It sucks that I can only carry 5 lbs of stuff. Also, I cant equip a quarterstaff cuz it requires 5 Str. Had to rely on minute meteor (each dart weights 1 lb!) to destroy those mephit.

Fighting_Ferret

You might want the second level spell strength...

bbear

Fighting_Ferret said:

You might want the second level spell strength...

Too late...Already made my spell picks...I'll buy some scrolls/regular 18 str potions or maybe the girdle of hill giant strength

stygga

Ac of 13 -_-; That is going to be hilarious when a gibberling chunks you.

bbear

Goblins were killing my images. 2 arrows and he's dead.

Just finished the circus. Cant even carry the sword key dispel the illusion on aerie cuz it weights 10 lbs. Also, the shadows nearly killed me by draining my strength to 1. Interestingly enough, I was still able to move because I only carried an amulet (1 lb).

GygaxianProse

Yeah, I want to try a round with no reloads for NPC death, although lugging their body to a temple (bg1) and paying for a resurrect isnt out of the question.

ARKdeEREH

An idea I found interesting/challenging was to use the MoveToArea cheat to send my party from the beginning of SoA into ToB. My PC had just been imported from BG1, so was really weak. I played a little into SoA first, so I had a few other characters in my party. Then I switched into ToB, and played it through to the end. Just before I would have beaten Amellisan, I paused the game and used the same cheat to go back to Waukeen's Promenade to continue from where I'd left off with SoA.

Of course, this led to all kinds of glitches, but it made for a more interesting game.

Edit: I played a BG1 game once where my PC could only carry 50lb. I think her strength was like 8 or 9. I didn't set it that low because I was trying to challenge myself, I did it because I knew there were items throughout the game (the tomes) that could raise her strength and that in BG2 she could get one of the girdles and strength would become irrelevant, so I thought it was better to raise her stats in other things. Since this was also a solo game, inventory management became a major challenge, and I was forced to revise my strategy of hoarding things. She could barely hold anything aside from the armor, weapon, and shield she had equipped and even that was pushing it. The game was definitely more challenging that way, especially since I couldn't find the tomes that game and ended up going all the way through BG1 like that. In BG2 I got the girdle as quickly as possible, so in the end it worked out.

bbear

ARKdeEREH said:

An idea I found interesting/challenging was to use the MoveToArea cheat to send my party from the beginning of SoA into ToB. My PC had just been imported from BG1, so was really weak. I played a little into SoA first, so I had a few other characters in my party. Then I switched into ToB, and played it through to the end. Just before I would have beaten Amellisan, I paused the game and used the same cheat to go back to Waukeen's Promenade to continue from where I'd left off with SoA.

I did something similar. I played the BG2 low level challenge in which I played through SoA and ToB (up to the final battle with Melissan) without ever leveling up my pc and npc (the average level of the party was lvl 8). The challenge was getting impossible at the ravager battle and the melissan battle. Otherwise, the game challenge was easy in SoA and acceptable in ToB.

CaptRory

Anyone ever tried a game where, it's just the PC and Khalid and Jaheria (and maybe Imoen since it makes sense for her to come along). The PC does nothing. Never levels up. Won't carry anything. Doesn't do anything. And Jaheira and Khalid (and maybe Imoen) have to drag his lazy butt through the game. Maybe the only items the PC will use are healing potions (it's SUCH a Pain to heal up the normal way!) and invisibility potions (now this is how you get out of work!). I'd say hack in an item that makes him permanately slow but, that'd be more annoying than challenging no matter how much he would drag his feet.

I call it, "The Lazy Millstone Challenge".

jolly_bb

@CaptRory has anyone ever tried a challenge where lvl1 charname clua-teleports to Sarevok battle and wins it?

we can make dozens of funny challenges but not sure if all of them make practical sense.

Kitteh_On_A_Cloud

@Jaxsbudgie: Xzar requires a lot of babysitting in the beginning of the games, as his health is so low. But as he levels up, he slowly makes for a fearsome mage, though. In my game, he almost solo'd the fight against Sarevok...and won. XD