Ghouls and Ogres have 16 Intelligence, but Carrion Crawlers have only 9

chimeric

Near Infinity tells the most AMAZING things about creatures in BG:EE. Almost all of them are average, with all stats at 9, even the animals, but some stand out, like Ogres and Ghouls for their Intelligence. A Nymph's Charisma is 25, but a Succubus' is only 18. And so on.

I suppose the people at Beamdog just never thought to give creatures meaningful stats except where it is the most obvious, like Strength. But mods could make use of stats, with spells and abilities that work differently depending on Wisdom or Intelligence - if creatures received a stats work-over. It's one of those things that can produce a deeper experience.

O_Bruce

Do I think creatures should have more suited abillity scores for them? Yes. Do changing it will improve the gameplay or overall experience in the slightlest? Nope. As a player, you don't see how much charisma or intelligene your opponents have anywas. Not to mention that, unfortunately, those stats aren't really affecting the gameplay in notable way, especially on enemies/non-party members side.

TheArtisan

Well, technically I guess if you controlled/shapechanged into a mind flayer an ogre would die in 2 hits rather than four... but would players really care about that? Probably not.

chimeric

That's because most players are... patience, patience... deep breaths... most players are... not inclined to think beyond what's currently available to them in gameplay to what it could be like.

Kurona

I have a feeling a lot of creatures in the BG games were copy pasted from a template by the original BioWare developers and that they only adjusted what was strictly necessary. Of course the game wasn't intended to be modded originally so it didn't matter back then.

chimeric

It wasn't intended, but mods started to appear very quickly. A couple of years after the original game there was already Dark Side of the Sword Coast, various weapon tweaks and so on. All these years later Beamdog should make a conscious effort to turn the game more moddable and give players chances to make the experience richer and deeper. Beamdog's people do update the engine little by little, it's true, but they can also change features like the topic of this post. Then we could take advantage of them. It's like a pair of cogs: there have got to be teeth on the one and on the other to clutch, otherwise they rotate past each other.

Here is another question. I don't know the answer to this one, somebody tell me. Are unconscious creatures easier to pickpocket? Yes, no? I haven't tried. It's swell if they are, my hat off to Beamdog. But if they aren't, then why not make success automatic in their case? That would invite players to come up with more ways to knock creatures out - with strategies, special abilities, sleeping darts, blackjacks. Just an example.