It makes sense because...
FinnTheHuman
Member Posts: 404
I once had a teacher who told the class that humans don't have a gift for logic, but rather a gift for justification. This thread is to collect some of your best justifications for strategies, cheese, metagaming, incongruous story elements, etc. A thread for things you tell yourself to keep the game immersive.
What are some things that some people, even you, have said "thats dumb" when you first encounter it, but then it starts making sense when you think of it another way and creates a deeper experience. Or even justifications which you don't really buy, but are still fun.
Also, what would a mod look like which incorporated your justification? How would it change the game world.
What are some things that some people, even you, have said "thats dumb" when you first encounter it, but then it starts making sense when you think of it another way and creates a deeper experience. Or even justifications which you don't really buy, but are still fun.
Also, what would a mod look like which incorporated your justification? How would it change the game world.
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Ideas for a mod? I would call the mod "Potty Break", and it would make enemies isolate themselves every so often in some of these set battles. It would also make other members come scouting if they notice the member didn't come back.
As a follow up question, in the enhanced/SCS content where groups come running to aid party members, does a successful casting of silence prevent the call for help?
It's delicious.
Well, after the trauma of Chateau Irenicus, she really wanted a nap, but an Amnish soldier told her it was against the law to sleep on the street. Feeling horribly guilty, she couldn't sleep and suffered worse and worse sleep deprivation until eventually she lost her mind, therefore justifying all nonsensical metagaming and alignment-breaking shenanigans.
Everything that cost me blood sweat and tears is good for the purpose. All the rest is not.
So I don't erase and learn again scrolls, I don't block people with the party to talk with them again and again to get multiple quest XP and so on. And I don't do that thing at Saradush.
But there is a real battle involved everything is legit in my book.
Points of the game where enemies spawn like the elemental portals in the Underdark? Fine.
Transform dragons in blocks of stone, and back to flesh? Fine. Repeat? Sure! Feeblemind them before a session of "dragon statue carving"? Sorry, no, where is the risk, where is the fun? But sometimes I do it after I have proved myself that I can do without, let's say after that I have turned them to stone 10 times without reloads or party members dying, my gaming time is not infinite.
Tank the Demon Prince for forever while I kill his spawning helpers? That is a good one, I have done it up to gather 6M XP
Gate some demons to kill them? Could be fine but is quite cheap, better to summon 6 Vampires with the Limited Wish, you can do it many times with low WIS and the option "I want to be protected...", that is an interesting fight!
I want cheese in my games, tasty, stinky delicious cheese, erasing and learning again is really not my way as it is no more difficult then using EEkeeper.
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Marthammor_Duin
The hero-of-Baldus's-Gate thing does not fit for a druid, since he/she desires to stay into the wilderness and not at the service of a city.
But the war wanted by Sarevok and the Caeler Argent crusade bring devastation to the land, hence, my character understand that it is best to be ally with Baldur's Gate for a fast resolution, so he decided to play the role of the hero.
"We are of course scouting ahead with our best scout. I know this encounter is just a bit into the fog at this exact point. We'll just not actually send the scout out and say we did. The scout has placed a mark for us just out of the enemy's sight, so we can blast the whole area with webs and fireballs. No metagaming, there, no, uh-uh."
"I just had a prophetic dream last night where Imoen and I were killed by an assassin mage on the steps of the FAI, after he rendered us helpless with a Horror spell. Better prepare Remove Fear, just in case."
(I use that "prophetic dreams" bit a lot. It's a formula I use to make sense of my foreknowledge. "I had a dream that I was killed by x casting y, so I prepared z. Luckily the dream also showed me the exact location and time where this was going to happen.")
I don't like to get my day/night cycles messed up, so I often rest as many times as needed to make the last multiple of eight hours come up early in the morning, when the sunlight starts. And then I say, "The way the game implements time and distance is really lame, so we didn't just rest for 30 hours. We went to sleep at a reasonable hour, and started our day in the morning."
We always post watches through the night when we camp outside, so there is no such thing as dying or being attacked in our sleep while camping. Seriously, who in their right mind would have their whole party go to sleep outside in a world like Faerun, with horrible monsters and enemy humanoids waiting behind every rock and tree?
The Jaheira romance forces the player to stupidly have the whole party asleep outside for one of its encounters. Boo, Jaheira romance!
Mages and clerics do not take 8 hours of sleep to refresh their spells. They need maybe an hour or two of peace and quiet to study their books, meditate, and/or pray. Go to heck, Jack Vance. We did not just rest for 8 hours, we found a quiet safe place by some trees and a babbling brook, and we cooked some food and chilled for a couple of hours before packing back up, because our casters were getting low on magic juice. We did not just click the rest button as many times as we needed to get the time of day to be roughly the same or within two hours of when we stopped to recuperate.
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gorgonzola's justification for bards, cheesy edition.
Some evil people tell that my reasons for playing the bards in a certain way are related to powergaming.
But my justifications are deeply rooted in RP.
The key of everything is the song, the Jester's one and the Skald/HLA one.
I really can not imagine a bard, that has some combat capability, sitting in the middle of the battle with his harp, singing mawkish songs while their comrades are desperately trying to save their lives. No, this would break all my immersion.
I imagine instead something similar to what happens in Arda with some horns.
Do you remember Boromir in Khazad-dûm, when he blow in Horn of Gondor, causing the Orcs and even the Balrog to pause in their advance. That is epic, that is what I imagine for my BG heroes. And he doesn't have to sit there al the time blowing, just one short, but bold and loud sound and the magic happens. New energy flow in his allies, transmuting the desperation in hope, while a doubt rise in the mind of the enemies, doubt that soon become terror.
I imagine something like this for the bards, they are, or become at a certain level, the masters of the epic lore. And mastery give power, the same power of Arda's horns, infused in their own voice. I see their song as a battle cry that they can shout right in the middle of the battle, while their swords cut the enemies in pieces. The bard may be not the strongest one in mlee, but in the darkest moments he becomes the leader, the epic one, no wonder that charisma is his more important stat.
This is my justification for having my bards sing while they fight.
Now let's deal with the Mislead clones singing.
The bard is not only the master of epic lore, he is an arcane spellcaster, a pretty competent one, and is a natural researcher, so for him finding new ways, mixing epic and arcane magic, is logical and natural.
He can become capable not only to use his epic song, but to amplificate it with magic, creating the illusion of more bards that join in, shouting loud the battle cry rising the epic up to the sky.
Examples of similar illusions can be found in the lore of Arda, and when I RP fantasy my imagination is deeply rooted in Arda's lore, as I devoured many times the Silmarillion and the other books and I have never read a book related to FR (shame on me...).
Technically he does it using mislead. But as for me the justification is more important than the reason (playing BG, in RL is the opposite) and I consider myself as a RP-powergamer with an ethic, having the bard and/or his clones singing while they stay far away from the battle is not possible. How can a coward lead the way? So I use clones to sing, but I keep them in range, just as the enemy's mislead clones stay in range in the game.
OP? Sure, but also challenging as they have to move while they sing and my fighters have to protect them, my mages have to disrupt the enemies that cast TS, and when it is not possible (TS cast trough a script or infinite scrolls) I assume that the enemy mages have enough intelligence to sense that something strange is happening and enough lore, power and ways to dispel the illusion, and I accept it. At least I accept it most of the times, few times, when the enemies are cheating blatantly, I grant myself to cheat a little. I want to be honest with you about that.
Maybe being human I am clever, while the AI is stupid and predictable, but at least I am fair.
Casting on my clones an invisibility spell imo is borderline acceptable, from a RP perspective, so I do it very rarely.
For the same reason my bard when is using clones always attack ranged, because I can not avoid his invisibility, that is not compatible with my RP-powergamer's pride, going mlee protected by a permanent invisibility is not compatible with my interpretation of him using his mastery in epic lore and mixing it with his magic.
About the use of Mislead to attack in mlee.... That is another justification, not strictly bard realted, so I will not deal with it in this rant, maybe the next time
I know, we all know, how useful can be the invisibility granted by Mislead when attacking mlee or even more for multiple no risk backstabs.
The justification is that this is the intended behavior of the spell, to reset the invisibility after each action that dispell it (casting, attacking, using wands or other items).
Until the clone, that is quite fragile, is alive, and imo the last point is utterly relevant.
There is a progression in the spells that grant an invisibility, the first is a very low level spell and give a single invisibility, once you do something that reveals you the spell is gone.
At an higher level there is a spell that give, at the cost of a more valuable slot, other advantages, huge advantages, being not targetable and the rest.
And then we find Mislead, even more valuable slot, even more powerful, and this is fair if the added power is not too much. Imo is not so and the reason is that the clone is so easy to kill.
TS, DM or physical/elemental attacks can make a short and easy work killing him. Unless you abuse the weakness of the AI and hide him away. But this is not related to the spell and its power, is only related to use easy and cheap tactics that trivialize the game. Talking to people is not OP, but if you fake talk and attack fighting dragons become really easy, Fireball is not a nuke, but if you routinely use it to bomb enemies that can not see and react completely break the first part of SoA, quaff some potions, sell and steal a wand, and you are done, 50 Fireballs ready. Do you get my point?
Hiding the clone is not clever, is cheap, and I refuse to rate a spell taking in account the cheap tactics that you can use it for. With cheap tactics you can break the game in 1000 ways.
So imo Mislead is not game breaking, is not even OP.
Wait, but it was intended to be used by mages while they are casting!
No, no, and no.
No because combining the classes and merging the advantages is a feature of the game, also UAI to cast it through a scroll in the quick slot if you are a FT or a K->T is an intended feature. Tell that is not fair is like to tell that your K->M must only cast because mages are not supposed to be badass fighters...
No because the clone himself (or the PI one) is not allowed to do physical attacks as the mages are prevented from casting under certain conditions, like when shapeshifted or under TT. If the thing was not intended it could be easily prevented.
To physically attack while under Mislead is a normal and intended behavior as the developers did not prevent it.
No because a mage that use Mislead to cast without retaliation, maybe while wearing the robe and the amulet and under IA, is even much powerful. Somehow using a mislead to go mlee or even to backstab is under using it. Ok, I am exaggerating, but is not more powerful than use it for casting, And this is balanced by how easy is to kill the clone, if the player refuses cheap tactics that abuse the AI weakness.
Those are my justifications for using Mislead to go mlee or backstab, for those who are interested I have some data about Mislead and my 3 last runs of BG2 + ToB, I keep them under spoiler so the ones not interested can skip them.
Not completely true because in a few situations I had my bard using it for "singing purposes" and going mlee. But I can not avoid it and it was always done in a context where the bard, that had other ways to be invulnerable, was not taking advantage of it. Like when I have dispelled the physical protections of a strong monster and i beat hard to kill him fast. In such situations is easy to have the bad guy targeting some other of the chars, one of the simulacra, some summoned cannon fodder or the gated helpers (Planetar and Elemental Prince in the run with Jaheira), having the bard under mislead was not even noticeable.
Number of the times that the "mislead trick" was used to backstab outside testing purposes followed by a reload and a more honorable tactic: 3
All the times it happened in the random encounters in the town of the Tactics Mod, with the high level spawns. And as I like those fights (and their loot
So why I write a such long post to justify something that I don't use?
Just because I think that is a sound justification, I don't use it but I have no problem in using it, for me is legit but not so funny. Marginally funny as I don't hide the clone, but as I use Mislead to sing I have anyway a good share of that fun.
This way I can justify doing things like killing certain parties from the shadows, without even talking with them first.
At that point of the game Charname has to open a gate to reveal his enemy.
The false assumption is that to open that gate he need to go trough 5 trials, as the guardians tells him to do. They are lying.. and is very easy to believe to them and think that you have to do so if you don't want to be a cheater.
The true assumption is that you need the Baal's Tears to open the gate, the Hell's Trials have nothing to do with it, they are only possible ways to obtain the tears. If you can find other legit way to have a tear, a way that uses normal game mechanics, good for you. The game will accept that tear and give you the reward, the good one by default, the evil one only if in the trial you have made a certain choice, if you have made a choice or went through the trial at all.
If you have a rogue in the party and find someone so stupid to give you a powerful sword telling you: "I have that tear in my pocket, now please go to that djinni and give him the sword, then come and I will give you the tear" than
Every respected rogue at this point will approach the guardian, distracting with some "sure, let me first complete something other than I will come an deal with that, and don't worry about the sword, I will be very careful and keep it safe " as his hand slips in the pocket
And he will walk away, with both the sword and the tear, turning and making signs of agreement to the smiling idiot until the fog of war separates them.
That is not cheating, is only RP a rogue