Power gamer wants to roleplay + no reload challenge
Gonzo100100
Member Posts: 30
Hi, I am no expert of Baldur’s gate, neither a beginner, intermediate I would say. Anyway, what’s more important I could describe myself as a power gamer. This time however I want to try something unique for me. I want to actually role-play! Unfortunately, I am unable to do it 100% properly so I came out with a set of rules to balance things (Actually maybe you will be able to help me to tweak some of them). The plan is to go Baldur’s Gate: EE with few mods then continue to BG2:EE and TOB.
I believe that the most noticeable would be small quest packs, unfinished business, NPC project. No tactical modes except Rogue Rebalancing and components like “More realistic wolves and wild dogs”, etc. In the Big World installation, I didn’t install any yellow ticks though, didn’t install any additional items or bag containers to the enhanced edition. That’s all about my installation for now.
Maybe worth to mention: I installed a mod that allows humans to multiclass and non-humans to dual class.
Rules:
1. No reload! Over the years, I finished both games few times however I think it will be very challenging for me but I believe I have a pretty good understanding of the game. So, maybe I will be able to pull it off.
2. Core rules.
3. I am not going to bother with rolling my stats, I’m just going to give myself 100 out of 108 possible in shadowkeeper. Which is 18/01 – 19 – 17 – 18 – 10 – 18. Yes, wisdom is going to be the only weakness of my character. This is the part which I am just unable to role-play.
4. Grinding XP is not allowed. My usual cheesy tactic to go kill 1 siren for 5000xp and go to kill basilisks early on solo is also forbidden.
5. Via console I will give myself some experience after each dream. 1-2.000, 2-4.000, 3-8.000, 4-16.000, 5-32.000, 6-64.000. Yes, it may be cheating for some but I don’t care, it is me who supposed to have fun and going to kill stuff like basilisks seems silly to me so I came out with resolution where I can get similar effect and justify the outcome.
6. I always felt strange when I came to Khalid and Jaheira on lvl1 and they talk about themselves like they are experienced adventures and Jaheira regards herself as my character guardian. I am going to give them both 8.000 XP as I meet them making Khalid lvl4 fighter and Jeheira 3/3 fighter/druid.
7. For killing Sarevok I will add myself additional 250.000 XP for nicer start of BG2
8. Level cap removed.
9. HP per level randomized NVN style (upper half of the rolls, if the roll is d10 the possible hp for a particular level is 6-10)
Above rules are basically for myself really. So, won’t go beyond them and that could be the case if I just thought about them but I decided I can share them with the World as well. ;p
I will try to best of my ability role-play an evil-neutral character. I will not do, ignore, and ruin many quests because I really want to RP it as I would it in PnP. That’s also why I came out with rule
5 as I will cut out rewards for many quests probably.
If I die I am determined to try few times unless I die very late in the game (like during the battle with Sarevok). That would be the end.
All right about my character.
I’m going to play neutral-evil female elf kensai named Alice.
I should play mage/fighter but I really want to try Kensai/Mage
I began the game before as Kensai so I know how the class plays but I never finished that game.
My primary goal is to shape her character somehow during my playthrough but her main desires are going to be money and power. She’s going to disregard people in search for those things. At the beginning, I plan to be somewhat obedient to NPC’s like Jaheira and Khalid but later to develop her unique for her character and to abandon or betray NPCs that will be against her.
I’m going to start my playthrough tomorrow and I hope to use this thread to ask some questions in the future and to share my possible deaths.
I believe that the most noticeable would be small quest packs, unfinished business, NPC project. No tactical modes except Rogue Rebalancing and components like “More realistic wolves and wild dogs”, etc. In the Big World installation, I didn’t install any yellow ticks though, didn’t install any additional items or bag containers to the enhanced edition. That’s all about my installation for now.
Maybe worth to mention: I installed a mod that allows humans to multiclass and non-humans to dual class.
Rules:
1. No reload! Over the years, I finished both games few times however I think it will be very challenging for me but I believe I have a pretty good understanding of the game. So, maybe I will be able to pull it off.
2. Core rules.
3. I am not going to bother with rolling my stats, I’m just going to give myself 100 out of 108 possible in shadowkeeper. Which is 18/01 – 19 – 17 – 18 – 10 – 18. Yes, wisdom is going to be the only weakness of my character. This is the part which I am just unable to role-play.
4. Grinding XP is not allowed. My usual cheesy tactic to go kill 1 siren for 5000xp and go to kill basilisks early on solo is also forbidden.
5. Via console I will give myself some experience after each dream. 1-2.000, 2-4.000, 3-8.000, 4-16.000, 5-32.000, 6-64.000. Yes, it may be cheating for some but I don’t care, it is me who supposed to have fun and going to kill stuff like basilisks seems silly to me so I came out with resolution where I can get similar effect and justify the outcome.
6. I always felt strange when I came to Khalid and Jaheira on lvl1 and they talk about themselves like they are experienced adventures and Jaheira regards herself as my character guardian. I am going to give them both 8.000 XP as I meet them making Khalid lvl4 fighter and Jeheira 3/3 fighter/druid.
7. For killing Sarevok I will add myself additional 250.000 XP for nicer start of BG2
8. Level cap removed.
9. HP per level randomized NVN style (upper half of the rolls, if the roll is d10 the possible hp for a particular level is 6-10)
Above rules are basically for myself really. So, won’t go beyond them and that could be the case if I just thought about them but I decided I can share them with the World as well. ;p
I will try to best of my ability role-play an evil-neutral character. I will not do, ignore, and ruin many quests because I really want to RP it as I would it in PnP. That’s also why I came out with rule
5 as I will cut out rewards for many quests probably.
If I die I am determined to try few times unless I die very late in the game (like during the battle with Sarevok). That would be the end.
All right about my character.
I’m going to play neutral-evil female elf kensai named Alice.
I should play mage/fighter but I really want to try Kensai/Mage
I began the game before as Kensai so I know how the class plays but I never finished that game.
My primary goal is to shape her character somehow during my playthrough but her main desires are going to be money and power. She’s going to disregard people in search for those things. At the beginning, I plan to be somewhat obedient to NPC’s like Jaheira and Khalid but later to develop her unique for her character and to abandon or betray NPCs that will be against her.
I’m going to start my playthrough tomorrow and I hope to use this thread to ask some questions in the future and to share my possible deaths.
6
Comments
It seems like you try to restrict yourself but cover the restriction with another thing that nearly gives the same thing.
Also you speak about Power Gaming and Challenge but in the same time mention Shadowkeeper?
No matter how far you are in the game , if you use no save / reload rules .... you die = you die.
As mentioned that you wanna have fun , if you do this - at least don't call it challenge or power gaming , because it's definitely not.
Shadowkeeper - Yes, why not? As I said, I am going to endeavour to role-play a neutral-evil character. I finished the game multiple times and I believe I can afford to try my current idea which is to not accept or not to complete many quests given by people that need someone who is altruist. I need some means that will balance it for myself. You’re right again! The fact that you decided to explain it to me makes me feel (doesn’t matter if I’m correct here) that you misunderstood the part of the previous post where I wrote that if I die I am determined to try few times. What I meant is that if I die I am determined to start the game from the very beginning. However, if I die very late in the game I will probably stop playing and occupy myself with something different.
As an additional note I can say that if I can manage complete a game using this hardcore rule, it brings 10x more fun than if I would play normally. It’s definitely not power gaming but for me it is definitely a big challenge, maybe not for you – I can understand that. If I spend 6 or 7 hours on a drawing auto portrait, it will look like on black and white photograph, for me it’s not a big challenge but for someone else who can’t draw, 100 hours won’t be enough to meet that ‘challenge’.
But again, I don’t want to become a person who managed to beat the game with the hardest possible settings. I just want to adapt it to my own possibilities and for me it is going to be very challenging because what I already noticed no reload here is much different than other games I played on that mode like Diablo 2 & 3 hardcore or Far Cry Primal permadeath. It’s not enough to just be super careful, I also have to know exactly what canters what. I’m not sure if I understand it. What kind of NPC advice?
To some extent I do have problem with breaking powergaming habits but I actually don’t know for sure if it bothers me. I would say that on d&d sessions or on Nwn 2 role-play servers I didn’t have much problem with that. It goes more when I play single player I automatically want to do everything perfectly, get the max possible XP, have the strongest build possible, etc. Now I want to try something what is completely different for me but should be fun I think.
just another power game run is what i see.
pick a fringe class like Bard or Beast master , go with 3 re rolls on stat points and stick with it. play good or evil and stick to it , pick the matching dialog options even if you know they end in horrible results , refuse NPC who don't align with you.
For now, I will pick the option of overpowered character with no-reload challenge and I will try to roleplay to my best ability throughout the game…
Over
…playing a character with ordinary person weakness but without no-reload rule.
Anyway, I must say that I made a different approach to the game by committing to roleplay and it’s a lot of fun, it’s strange because it’s like this battle in my mind of what I think my character would do vs what I really would like her to do. I am definitely satisfied from my role-playing, I took some inspirations from the adventures of Lilly Black
Nevertheless, the fun ends when I die. I tend to rush to the spot where I died and do everything exactly the same as I did before but this greatly breaks the immersion.
My last attempt ended in chapter 3 as my party was wandering around and my main character was slain by Mustard Jelly. I had a lot of bad luck there because I basically lost because of 2 critical hits in a window of 3 seconds!
As I think about it I believe that kensai is a very bad choice for such a challenge, having no ability to wear helmets entirely disqualify the character from melee combat and only viable option is to go and throw axes. So, until kensai regain her abilities at level 14 as a mage, it can be a very poor ranged fighter without proficiencies in axes or to be quite good ranged fighter with the proficiency points in axes anyway I wanted to wield celestial fury and belm in BG2, not viable option for my challenge as it appears.
I came to an understanding that as for now for my ability I must separate roleplay from doing challenges. I still want to beat the game without re-loading but I have to put efficiency above everything else so I currently think of doing an ordinary solo power gaming run with just no-reload rule.
On the other hand, doing the roleplay is amazing and I think I also want do this but with the minimum reload. In both ways, I will move away from kensai/mage concept because my current idea about this combo is that it is for unlimited re-loads run. Which happens to be also very role-play unfriendly because how to explain a change from a quite powerful fighter to a level 1 mage who can’t hit any target?
So, in my eyes for no reload solo best choice is mage/fighter/thief and if in party then maybe fighter/mage
And for pure roleplay with a minimum reloads there is a lot of choices depends of how difficult I want it to be. It can be bard as it was suggested before but fighter/mage is also viable I will have to think a bit more what class I will choose for that run.
In summary, the attempt to do no-reload and roleplay failed because I’m not able to survive and rushing the game to the moment where I died last time greatly breaks the immersion.
@Gonzo100100: You seem to already reached new insight, but I would suggest picking a class with greater survivability whom you can still identify yourself with. Paladins, F/C dwarves, (dwarf anything really), berzerkers all offer easier BG1 experiences than kensais. Good luck.
This is the real world and not everything is good / perfect / beautiful and opinions here doesn't matter.
Again , it seems you don't read or you cannot assimilate what going on - the OP mentions Hardcore Gaming while tells the people of him generating a max stats character trough programs and how he doesn't want to abuse a certain game mechanic but use / abuse another just to get the same goal on a ''core rules'' while also giving himself XP after ''Dream''.
After i and others pointed about this has nothing to do with Power Gaming i get comments and bullsh*t from the kinds of you like you or the OP are some kind of oppressed ?
for all i care he can go with a 5000 HP 5 APR 25 in all stats Fighter/Mage/Thief with removed xp cap and all on level 200 and i wills till call it out for being cheap.
Edit: The point being (as always): this is a single-player game: what the OP does in his game is not for you to judge. You don't get to decide what he considers to be power-gaming or what he thinks is a challenge. I get what you mean, I really do, I just think you should have chosen more neutral wording. That's it.
Nevertheless, the thread is surely ruined now because if I actually had some questions, before people will get through this whole argument, they will lose interest (at least it is what happens to me, if I see people arguing on a forum about non-relevant things, I immediately go somewhere else). So as for me the thread may be closed, no hard feelings though, if I will need help, I’ll ask probably in another thread.
Speaking as a moderator of this forum, I will point out that disrespectful behavior is against the Site Rules.
Speaking as an old-timer on this forum, I will point out that the most accomplished powergamers in the community--the people who have completed no-reload trilogy runs with solo characters, using suboptimal character builds, on maximum difficulty settings, with SCS and Ascension, including such luminaries as @Alesia_B_H, have never looked down on other players who "cheat" or use "cheap" or "cheesy" methods to play their game.
The local veterans are very friendly and always willing to help. They're not here to tell you what you're supposed to do; they're here to help you do what you want to do.
Speaking as a longtime no-reload player myself, I invite @Gonzo100100 to post his or her adventures in the "Maybe this time" thread for no-reload runs. We're always on the lookout for new contributors.
And for what it's worth, I personally do experimental no-reload runs using untested techniques I invented myself. And even I'm not ashamed to use EEKeeper, Near Infinity, and the console to tweak my game and my characters.
I would certainly agree that running a kensai in a solo no-reload game is making things considerably more difficult for yourself - and would tend to involve the sort of 'grinding' I think you're not fond of. However, in a party a kensai is a perfectly reasonable choice. You can still use the kensai as a melee character, but do need to closely manage fights to avoid them being targeted. As you've already discovered I think the lack of critical hit protection makes a big difference when you're playing no-reload ...