@HaHaCharade : In theory, the maximum you can get is 108 (6x18). I've seen scores as high as 100, but the engine doesn't limit the perfect 108. It does limit however *every* score below 75 if I am not mistaken. Back on the BioWare forums, a guy programmed an auto-reroller program for BG2, which rolled and saved the roles all in a txt file. With a moderately fast PC, the program was able to reroll around 20 times per second. In 5 minutes, you could get a 95 with any character, in an hour or two, it could hit 100.
Through it, the guy was able to analyze the Attribute rolls and it was obvious that the scores couldn't go below 75 (I think the game automatically cancels any roll that goes below that score) I am not sure if *anyone* at any point in their BG career, or the Auto Reroller in fact, were able to get the perfect 108, but the possibility is certainly there.
Any idea if new the new BG:EE will be hackable for stat mods using the same tool that we used for BG? I guess that remains to be seen.
@decado : I'm fairly certain you can get a 100 quickly with an elven ranger. Of course, it would still take a while, but oh well.
I'm certainly not going to wait a couple thousands of years for getting a perfect 108... there really is no use to it. 95 is easily considered as "perfect" in my books.
I have to wonder sometimes about how many people power-roll.
I personally can't stand the idea. For a start, it's utterly incongruous with having a party of RP-stated NPCs. Secondly, I don't see the fun in a game where you've set the precedent from the get-go that you're going to make everything as easy as possible for yourself and diminish all the game's challenges, justified by being given a mechanical liberty.
A human fighter dual-class with 18/18/18/10/3/18? Innovative stuff.
Anyway, to each his own, I guess. Personally I assign stats as to how I would RP the character. I am certain that on more than one occasion, Imoen or Jaheira in BG2 had higher total stats than me.
But I was still better
In a pen-and-paper rpg I agree completely with you, but you don't have a save/reload function in that type of game so losing a fight or doing the wrong thing has consequences.
I agree with you that on the first couple of playthroughs you might want to stay away from min/maxing but as the opponents are always in the same places with the same spells and the same gear there's no variation to the fight except for the class you yourself play. But the Baldur's Gate Saga are computer games with the save/load function which means that losing a fight or doing the wrong thing has no consequences other than the time it takes to reload. In a game where there are no consequences for losing and/or doing the wrong thing I fail to see why you shouldn't just be allowed to have all the fun you want and play the game the way you like to.
Now I might be reading to much between the lines in your post but it feels like you are judging people for playing the game in some perceived "wrong" way. If that is actually the case I urge you to stop judging people and stop worrying about how others play the game. Instead I recommend focusing on optimizing your own enjoyment of the game. There's nothing wrong with handing out advice if solicitated or stating how you yourself like the game as long as you stick to a tone without judgement.
I will "max" by allocating points to a class's prime reqs (high wisdom for cleric, etc.) but I won't "min" below an average range score without a role playing reason. If I am going to go with someone with a 3 wisdom, they are going to be someone with the common sense of Minsc. Wisdom is actually the only stat I will "dump" for roleplaying purposes now that I think about it. Everything else has a low in the range of a 10 or so.
I might run a low charisma character if I planned on running with a low reputation and battling guards, etc. but the low wisdom/reckless character is the only one I've done in practice.
I don't really min/max but I do roll a few times (never did more than 10) I don't see much point in having the roll if you just want to max all also its not like a avg roll will make you fail in the game haha.
I try to avoid using exploits where possible. I find that 18s and 3s is an exploit much in the same way modifying chars to straight 18s in the goldbox/eob games was. The game engine supports it but the game was balanced with certain expectations in mind and I try to avoid violating them as much as possible.
I think I have to disagree here. Because the game freely lets you lower any stats that you class doesn't need to a 3 without any major consequences or dialogue changes, I feel that not only is it not an exploit, but the developers made the game in mind with players lowering their dump stats as low as needed. It's one of the big benefits to rolling up a human: they don't have any racial stat minimums (elves, for example, require a minimum of 9 charisma)
Also, as a Bhaalspawn, you stats are kinda supposed to be just plain better than your comrades. Notice how Sarevok's stats are better than the party members you get.
Using regular d6 the chance is around one in 100 trillion to roll six 18s in a row, but the game likely handles it a bit different. Even so, in that case even with a program rolling 20 times per second, you'd have to let it run for around 160,000 years to expect a perfect 108.
I get 1 in 101,559,956,668,367.
I think the game does 4d6, drop lowest, apply racial modifiers, and adjust to the minimum required for the selected race and class combination, which is basically the munchkiniest method that was ever endorsed by any version of the PnP game.
The next time I play, I intend to take the first roll, not look at the results, and go. Superman is an okay character to watch in a movie, but boring to play, as well as too easy.
Meh, I can understand why some people don't like rerolling but personally I do like it. I enjoy having awesome stats, and your character is the child of a god after all. My first character was a ranger with a 99 and my second character was a paladin with a 96.
In a previous thread on this board a couple people claimed they'd rolled a 104.
Naw. Minmaxing is boring. If I roll 18's, then I'll use 18's. But other than that, I just take what I roll. I allow myself 5 rerolls for new characters, though if I'm recreating a character I have previously played in another IE game I will roll as many times as needed to get the proper total to give them the exact same stats they had before. I think my record is like 250 rerolls or something. That was for a playthrough in Icewind Dale where I decided to recreate six of the joinable NPC's from BG to make up my party, for shits and giggles.
Also, this sounds awesome. Did you import the voice sets too? If so, how did you do it?
hmm... Usually I roll a lot of times trying to get at least 89 points. But when I get the BG:EE I think my goal will be 93 points. This is simply put because I want to play an elven fighter/mage with the stats: 18 18 17 18 4 18
That way after 7 playthroughs of BG1 my stats will be as follows: 25 25 24 25 25 25
@Mechalibur The fact that humans are even better because you can dump their stats further is not an example of a choice made by the devs. It's a consequence of the rules of D&D plus the decision to implement a +/- button. In fact, I think it's a good example of why stat dumping is an exploit. Elves were not designed to be "less flexible than humans during the stat rearrangement procedure". That's not one of their intended qualities, because the system that racial ability limits were designed under (1E rules) did not have arbitrary stat rearrangement. You'll notice their 'inflexibility' is not listed under the race's disadvantages
In D&D you roll scores then choose your class. Baldur's Gate character creation switches this, so changing the location of your scores or re-rolling a few times makes sense from a D&D perspective. Rolling 18d6 dozens of times until you get the highest total and then splitting it as desired among 6 attributes is not D&D.
It's a licensed D&D game. The D&D world, it's spells and items are balanced for typical D&D characters. Therefore I'd anticipate that devs would have expected (and balanced for) the idea that most players will tend to roll characters that stay roughly 'true' to D&D.
Is there anything wrong with 'roll playing'. No, but I do consider it an exploit of a system designed with something else in mind.
I'm well aware of that, but certain liberties are always taken into place when a video game adaptation is made. While it's certainly possible that the human advantage is on oversight of the devs, keep in mind that they also completely ignored racial level caps on demihumans, which was one of the few advantages to playing a human. And yes, the stat flexibility isn't listed in the racial description, but neither is shorty saving throw bonuses, which is a pretty big deal for halflings, gnomes, and dwarves, so I don't think that's an accurate representation of developer insight.
Yes, getting to re-roll your stats over and over again isn't D&D. But then again, neither is saving your progress, being limited to a select amount of dialogue options in social encounters, or fighting in real time. In my opinion, a large number of the AD&D rules are absolutely ridiculous (you don't get max hp at level 1, stats generally require 15+ to have any effect despite odds of getting that being extremely crappy), so I'm kind of glad they go against the ruleset at times. When the game just so blatantly gives you no reason to have a stat, and all the reason to concentrate in others, I can't honestly see it being an exploit.
I mean, if anyone has a direct quote from any of the developers on what they expected players to do, I would love to see it. Until then however, I have no reason whatsoever to think the system was designed against dropping a useless stats as low as it can go.
I mean, if anyone has a direct quote from any of the developers on what they expected players to do, I would love to see it. Until then however, I have no reason whatsoever to think the system was designed against dropping a useless stats as low as it can go.
I don't have BG1 installed, but here are the 4 "example" characters that come with BG2. They are characters made by the devs for people to pick up and play with:
It's a licensed D&D game. The D&D world, it's spells and items are balanced for typical D&D characters. Therefore I'd anticipate that devs would have expected (and balanced for) the idea that most players will tend to roll characters that stay roughly 'true' to D&D.
I was with you up until this point, but the idea that they included a reroll button (and store/recall) without realizing people would reroll to get high stats is beyond implausible. Or just the fact that they set a 75 point minimum for stats and allowed you to +/-.
I never said that. I said that they'd have expected that the characters people played would be roughly true to D&D. Absolutely they'd likely have high (16+) scores in meaningful attributes, but they'd still look like D&D characters. I tend to play 17 16 15 13 11 9 arrange-as-desired. To roll a character that good takes quite a few rolls usually, considering scores are randomly allocated.
Well. Saying that it is an exploit is to me judgemental. An exploit usually have a negative connotation and again I don't see why you would need to judge other people on the way they play the game. I say all the power to you if you want to play with RP-looking stats instead of min/max stats and I too have played the game like that and liked it. But I also like doing the min/maxing so that is what I'll be doing next time. And for the question on why I didn't use shadowkeeper? Good question. And I may end up doing just that.
I call it how I see it. Lots of people enjoy exploits in games, lots of people don't. Lots of tournaments allow exploits, lots don't. In general, I prefer to play my RPGs sans exploits. It wasn't always the case; I power-gamed when I was younger.
It seems like a pretty academical debate - in all the PnP gaming I've done the rules have been there to serve the playing session and the general sense of enjoyment, not the other way around. As you are the only one playing your own BG campaign, altering things in it could be viewed exactly as adapting house rules unanimously agreed upon in a PnP setting.
It seems like a pretty academical debate - in all the PnP gaming I've done the rules have been there to serve the playing session and the general sense of enjoyment, not the other way around. As you are the only one playing your own BG campaign, altering things in it could be viewed exactly as adapting house rules unanimously agreed upon in a PnP setting.
Agreed, I think we can all agree that you should play the game however you want to play and in whatever fashion you enjoy it the most. The fact that these options are available means that people with many different wants from their game can play and enjoy the same game.
At the end of the day we are all BG fans. Therefore we rock.
I mean, if anyone has a direct quote from any of the developers on what they expected players to do, I would love to see it. Until then however, I have no reason whatsoever to think the system was designed against dropping a useless stats as low as it can go.
If you want to see what developers thought of the first game, you need only look at the second game and notice what changed.
NPC reaction rolls have almost no importance in BG2, and the game provides an item that boosts your CHA to 18 very early on. But they also made stat dumping deadly during certain encounters.
This suggests they wanted to streamline the role playing aspect of the game (probably to focus more on a unified story) while making more stats actually matter in the context of combat.
So, yeah, you can get away with a 3 INT human fighter in BG1, but given what mechanics they put in place in BG2, it seems doing that sort of thing wasn't the develper's intention.
When rolling character's stats, I am simply looking at what I have rolled. If stats are appearing pretty big at first glance, I set every stat to 10 and then see how much spare stat points I have. If I have 30 spare stats, then that means that I have 90 stats points total, which is a norm for me when creating character (often I decide to keep rolling so that I have more than 90, but that depends on my current mood). When re-arraging those spare stats, I follow these rules:
1. First of all, my character was raised by sage in big library. So, no retarded characters. If anything, I can give even warriors few points of inteligence/wisdom. 2. No less than 10 charisma. I'm supposed to be the party leader. 3. Make character effective at what he/she is going to do. But... 4. ... No perfect characters! Give them some weakness (mage doesn't have to posses 16 constitution or max dexterity/intelligence, when creating warriors I don't max 3 primary stats at the same time (ex. 18/xx str, 18 dex, 18 con). You know the drill 5. Use your imagination and imagine how the character was spending her/his childhood. Consider this when arraging stats, weapon profs etc.
I'm always have fun with characters created this way. Just saiyan.
@HaHaCharade : In theory, the maximum you can get is 108 (6x18). I've seen scores as high as 100, but the engine doesn't limit the perfect 108. It does limit however *every* score below 75 if I am not mistaken. Back on the BioWare forums, a guy programmed an auto-reroller program for BG2, which rolled and saved the roles all in a txt file. With a moderately fast PC, the program was able to reroll around 20 times per second. In 5 minutes, you could get a 95 with any character, in an hour or two, it could hit 100.
Through it, the guy was able to analyze the Attribute rolls and it was obvious that the scores couldn't go below 75 (I think the game automatically cancels any roll that goes below that score) I am not sure if *anyone* at any point in their BG career, or the Auto Reroller in fact, were able to get the perfect 108, but the possibility is certainly there.
I like to place some limit, so I try to limit myself to 20 rolls, unless they're all *completely* useless.
I rolled a lawful evil elven fighter/mage yesterday for a pre:BGEE training run through BGT-Weidu using this system (this is the build I intend to play for my first run through BGEE, starting with 2H swords**, long bow**). In the end I think I kept my third roll (out of 20):
Str 18/29 (good enough, can boost to 19 with the tome b4 by the end of BG1) Dex 18 (same AC as 19, good enough, Imoen will get the tome, though to buff her thieving even more) Con 17 (elf max, will boost with a tome, though) Int 18 (I hate failing to copy scrolls, but want to play core rules, and will further boost to 19 wih the tome) Wis 8 (I *could* boost to 11 with the 3 tomes to be able to use Valygar's armour in BG2, but will probably give the tomes to Viconia instead, as she will benefit more from them) Char 8 (fine, Imoen does my shopping, will be giving her the Char tome)
So - this isn't a "perfect" roll, but it looks good enough to me! Its easier rolling good straight fighters, rangers and thieves, though.
I like to place some limit, so I try to limit myself to 20 rolls, unless they're all *completely* useless.
High scores, especially in dexterity, constitution and, for fighters, strength make the early parts of the game considerably easier, but even a character with the minimum allowed scores for their chosen race/class is fully capable of finishing the game; the generation mechanics guarantee no character is completely useless, stat-wise.
The character above has a total of 87 points. Among the NPCs, only Ajantis and Imoen have score totals that high and a few, including favourites like Minsc, have scores in the low 70s (Minsc's ability score total is 71).
Comments
I'm certainly not going to wait a couple thousands of years for getting a perfect 108... there really is no use to it. 95 is easily considered as "perfect" in my books.
I agree with you that on the first couple of playthroughs you might want to stay away from min/maxing but as the opponents are always in the same places with the same spells and the same gear there's no variation to the fight except for the class you yourself play.
But the Baldur's Gate Saga are computer games with the save/load function which means that losing a fight or doing the wrong thing has no consequences other than the time it takes to reload. In a game where there are no consequences for losing and/or doing the wrong thing I fail to see why you shouldn't just be allowed to have all the fun you want and play the game the way you like to.
Now I might be reading to much between the lines in your post but it feels like you are judging people for playing the game in some perceived "wrong" way. If that is actually the case I urge you to stop judging people and stop worrying about how others play the game. Instead I recommend focusing on optimizing your own enjoyment of the game.
There's nothing wrong with handing out advice if solicitated or stating how you yourself like the game as long as you stick to a tone without judgement.
18/00
18
18
3
3
18
I might run a low charisma character if I planned on running with a low reputation and battling guards, etc. but the low wisdom/reckless character is the only one I've done in practice.
Probably - I was rolling some low prerequisite attribute classes rather than those which need lots of bare minimums.
I roll until i'm satisfied :P
Or until that 18/00 comes.
Also, as a Bhaalspawn, you stats are kinda supposed to be just plain better than your comrades. Notice how Sarevok's stats are better than the party members you get.
I think the game does 4d6, drop lowest, apply racial modifiers, and adjust to the minimum required for the selected race and class combination, which is basically the munchkiniest method that was ever endorsed by any version of the PnP game.
The next time I play, I intend to take the first roll, not look at the results, and go. Superman is an okay character to watch in a movie, but boring to play, as well as too easy.
In a previous thread on this board a couple people claimed they'd rolled a 104.
In D&D you roll scores then choose your class. Baldur's Gate character creation switches this, so changing the location of your scores or re-rolling a few times makes sense from a D&D perspective. Rolling 18d6 dozens of times until you get the highest total and then splitting it as desired among 6 attributes is not D&D.
It's a licensed D&D game. The D&D world, it's spells and items are balanced for typical D&D characters. Therefore I'd anticipate that devs would have expected (and balanced for) the idea that most players will tend to roll characters that stay roughly 'true' to D&D.
Is there anything wrong with 'roll playing'. No, but I do consider it an exploit of a system designed with something else in mind.
Yes, getting to re-roll your stats over and over again isn't D&D. But then again, neither is saving your progress, being limited to a select amount of dialogue options in social encounters, or fighting in real time. In my opinion, a large number of the AD&D rules are absolutely ridiculous (you don't get max hp at level 1, stats generally require 15+ to have any effect despite odds of getting that being extremely crappy), so I'm kind of glad they go against the ruleset at times. When the game just so blatantly gives you no reason to have a stat, and all the reason to concentrate in others, I can't honestly see it being an exploit.
I mean, if anyone has a direct quote from any of the developers on what they expected players to do, I would love to see it. Until then however, I have no reason whatsoever to think the system was designed against dropping a useless stats as low as it can go.
18 16 11 10 10 10
18 18 11 11 10 9
18 16 16 12 10 9
18 16 16 12 9 9
The four core classes, all human, no scores below 9.
I say all the power to you if you want to play with RP-looking stats instead of min/max stats and I too have played the game like that and liked it. But I also like doing the min/maxing so that is what I'll be doing next time.
And for the question on why I didn't use shadowkeeper? Good question. And I may end up doing just that.
At the end of the day we are all BG fans. Therefore we rock.
NPC reaction rolls have almost no importance in BG2, and the game provides an item that boosts your CHA to 18 very early on. But they also made stat dumping deadly during certain encounters.
This suggests they wanted to streamline the role playing aspect of the game (probably to focus more on a unified story) while making more stats actually matter in the context of combat.
So, yeah, you can get away with a 3 INT human fighter in BG1, but given what mechanics they put in place in BG2, it seems doing that sort of thing wasn't the develper's intention.
1. First of all, my character was raised by sage in big library. So, no retarded characters. If anything, I can give even warriors few points of inteligence/wisdom.
2. No less than 10 charisma. I'm supposed to be the party leader.
3. Make character effective at what he/she is going to do. But...
4. ... No perfect characters! Give them some weakness (mage doesn't have to posses 16 constitution or max dexterity/intelligence, when creating warriors I don't max 3 primary stats at the same time (ex. 18/xx str, 18 dex, 18 con). You know the drill
5. Use your imagination and imagine how the character was spending her/his childhood. Consider this when arraging stats, weapon profs etc.
I'm always have fun with characters created this way. Just saiyan.
I rolled a lawful evil elven fighter/mage yesterday for a pre:BGEE training run through BGT-Weidu using this system (this is the build I intend to play for my first run through BGEE, starting with 2H swords**, long bow**). In the end I think I kept my third roll (out of 20):
Str 18/29 (good enough, can boost to 19 with the tome b4 by the end of BG1)
Dex 18 (same AC as 19, good enough, Imoen will get the tome, though to buff her thieving even more)
Con 17 (elf max, will boost with a tome, though)
Int 18 (I hate failing to copy scrolls, but want to play core rules, and will further boost to 19 wih the tome)
Wis 8 (I *could* boost to 11 with the 3 tomes to be able to use Valygar's armour in BG2, but will probably give the tomes to Viconia instead, as she will benefit more from them)
Char 8 (fine, Imoen does my shopping, will be giving her the Char tome)
So - this isn't a "perfect" roll, but it looks good enough to me! Its easier rolling good straight fighters, rangers and thieves, though.
The character above has a total of 87 points. Among the NPCs, only Ajantis and Imoen have score totals that high and a few, including favourites like Minsc, have scores in the low 70s (Minsc's ability score total is 71).