in amn i would say that who control the wealth, the reach people, has the real power and who control magic is a tolerated parallel power, each of the 2 parts is careful to don't collide with the other.
so high rank cw are allowed in the government building and it is tolerated that cw ask money for a licence, put the people in their own prison, that is not in amn but in an independent island, and kill people in the streets. even if the amn solders side at your part if it happens, this is very enlightening on how the cw are tolerated and not who has the real power, like it happens in thay.
in amn i would say that who control the wealth, the reach people, has the real power and who control magic is a tolerated parallel power, each of the 2 parts is careful to don't collide with the other.
so high rank cw are allowed in the government building and it is tolerated that cw ask money for a licence, put the people in their own prison, that is not in amn but in an independent island, and kill people in the streets. even if the amn solders side at your part if it happens, this is very enlightening on how the cw are tolerated and not who has the real power, like it happens in thay.
Not sure I buy that. Ribald may be a very wealthy entrepeneur for example, but he doesn't have access to his own police force arresting lesser entrepeneurs who don't play by his rules. When you set out to make money in Amn, you don't first have to earn your way into the good graces of the Money Overlords who control all Money in Amn.
Money is power in any society, but Magic is very much the "real power" in Amn.
Member of party dies: Party carries the dead person (weightless, doesn't take up inventory space) back to a temple to have them revived. They can spend several days or even months doing so.
Party finds a dead person and decides to carry them back to their loved ones: Dead person takes up space in inventory and weighs enough to encumber the one carrying them. And there is no way to revive them.
The warriors would probably be pretty heavy, right? Lot of muscle mass.
even mazzy?
same muscles as nalia but in a much shorter body...
Same strength score but not necessarily the same muscle mass.
With the stats in this system being largely static, it's hard to say what they mean in the face of training. Much the same way that a 13 int Mage who's spent their whole lifetime studying would be expected to be more knowledgeable than a 13 int peasant who's always been preoccupied with manual labor, I suspect that the difference between a 14 STR thief -> Mage and a 15 STR fighter is not insignificant.
The warriors would probably be pretty heavy, right? Lot of muscle mass.
even mazzy?
same muscles as nalia but in a much shorter body...
Same strength score but not necessarily the same muscle mass.
With the stats in this system being largely static, it's hard to say what they mean in the face of training. Much the same way that a 13 int Mage who's spent their whole lifetime studying would be expected to be more knowledgeable than a 13 int peasant who's always been preoccupied with manual labor, I suspect that the difference between a 14 STR thief -> Mage and a 15 STR fighter is not insignificant.
But that 13 int peasant probably knows a whole LOT about cows or crops or the best place to buy a steak in Beregost...
The warriors would probably be pretty heavy, right? Lot of muscle mass.
even mazzy?
same muscles as nalia but in a much shorter body...
Same strength score but not necessarily the same muscle mass.
With the stats in this system being largely static, it's hard to say what they mean in the face of training. Much the same way that a 13 int Mage who's spent their whole lifetime studying would be expected to be more knowledgeable than a 13 int peasant who's always been preoccupied with manual labor, I suspect that the difference between a 14 STR thief -> Mage and a 15 STR fighter is not insignificant.
If they have the same STR score they are exactly the same when it comes to strength. Stamina, meaning how long you can use that strength without getting tired, might be a bit different, but they would both be able to lift the same weights. So IMHO there's zero difference between a STR14 thief and STR14 fighter, they could benchpress the same weights or wear the same armor etc, no matter their race or class.
stamina in the game is controlled by CON, characters with lesser CON get fatigued earlier, even if only a daily based stamina is implemented, and it is exclusively based on the time elapsed from the rest, if other factors like the effect of the haste spell don't cause a quicker loosing of it. you don't need stamina to be 100% efficient in combat, as you don't need health, a character maintains the same efficiency trough a whole 2 hours battle and the fact that he has full health or is near death, badly wounded and with few hp left also does not have consequences.
this is not realistic at all, but is the way the game works.
about the stats there are only few cases when the class affect how a stat works, but for str it is not the case, a mage or a fighter, both with 22 str from an item or both with a natural 18 str get the same damage bonus and can carry the same load.
a warrior class can have a more then 18 natural str, up to 18.00, but it is a different thing.
i would say that some shorty fighters weight less then human or half orc mages with the same str, as a similar muscle mass is needed to pull out that str, but the bones are shorter so weight less, assuming that both are not fat people, thing that is unlikely that adventurers used to walk long distances by walking are.
maybe it is not true for a dwarf as his bones are short but thick and heavy, but for gnomes and halflings it is probably so.
i am not sure that nalia's corpse would weight more then korgan's one, but i would bet that it weights more then mazzy's one.
"Stamina" is actually a factor of Strength in BG, according to the ability score description: "Strength measures a character's muscle, endurance, and stamina."
The description for Constitution is more about sturdiness than stamina: "Constitution measures a character's fitness, health, and physical resistance to hardship, injury, and disease."
Well, we're talking about theoretical stuff here rather than gameplay. There's no gameplay element called "stamina." In-game, STR and CON only impact carrying capacity, melee THAC0, damage with most melee attacks and slings, item usability, HP, save bonuses for halflings, gnomes, and dwarves, fatigue, dual-classing requirements, and the ability to survive STR and CON drain. But both carrying capacity and fatigue could qualify as "stamina" issues--you can't walk around for long in full plate mail or march at full stride carrying 100 pounds without stamina. You could also call them issues of "endurance," a STR word, and "fitness," a CON word. In that sense, the issue is pretty ambiguous.
Member of party dies: Party carries the dead person (weightless, doesn't take up inventory space) back to a temple to have them revived. They can spend several days or even months doing so.
Party finds a dead person and decides to carry them back to their loved ones: Dead person takes up space in inventory and weighs enough to encumber the one carrying them. And there is no way to revive them.
I always expect my party members to carry their own weight. I also expect them to take that statement literally.
The warriors would probably be pretty heavy, right? Lot of muscle mass.
even mazzy?
same muscles as nalia but in a much shorter body...
Same strength score but not necessarily the same muscle mass.
With the stats in this system being largely static, it's hard to say what they mean in the face of training. Much the same way that a 13 int Mage who's spent their whole lifetime studying would be expected to be more knowledgeable than a 13 int peasant who's always been preoccupied with manual labor, I suspect that the difference between a 14 STR thief -> Mage and a 15 STR fighter is not insignificant.
If they have the same STR score they are exactly the same when it comes to strength. Stamina, meaning how long you can use that strength without getting tired, might be a bit different, but they would both be able to lift the same weights. So IMHO there's zero difference between a STR14 thief and STR14 fighter, they could benchpress the same weights or wear the same armor etc, no matter their race or class.
Off the top of my head, while a fighter with 15 strength and a thief with 15 strength can both fight all day long, for the fighter "Fighting all day long" is a bit more labor intensive, since they're swinging multiple times a round.
Many people also interpret hitpoints to be energy rather than a literal gauge of health. A lethal wound will kill anybody regardless of how many hitpoints they have, so losing hitpoints effectively represents on exhaustion gauge, after which you will not be able to fend off a lethal blow anymore. The fighter rolls D10 for hitpoints while the thief rolls D6, so if a fighter and thief have identical ability scores, the fighter will still be able to fight longer.
Well, we're talking about theoretical stuff here rather than gameplay. There's no gameplay element called "stamina." In-game, STR and CON only impact carrying capacity, melee THAC0, damage with most melee attacks and slings, item usability, HP, save bonuses for halflings, gnomes, and dwarves, fatigue, dual-classing requirements, and the ability to survive STR and CON drain. But both carrying capacity and fatigue could qualify as "stamina" issues--you can't walk around for long in full plate mail or march at full stride carrying 100 pounds without stamina. You could also call them issues of "endurance," a STR word, and "fitness," a CON word. In that sense, the issue is pretty ambiguous.
The physical stats are all pretty firmly entangled with eachother anyway.
A 19 Dex 18/00 Str 5 Con elf has very strong and nimble hands, but they're often made weak and shakey by sickness for example. In game terms all those bonuses to hit and dodge won't mean much once the fatigue penalties start to set in.
That sort of juxtoposition in theory is supposed to drive a lot of the interest in roleplaying though. Classically we all love a book-smart street-stupid wizard.
i am not sure that a fighter swings the weapon more then a not fighter, i see the apr more like teh representation that a fighter, being more proficient, has more situations in which he can try to hit successfully (so there is a to hit roll), not as if a thief or mage would try to swing his weapon only every 6 seconds, remaining then idle for the rest of the round.
the game even shows fake attacks, that i keep always disabled for micro managing issues, to show that the character is not idle after his apr is reached.
i would say that a fighter fighting all day long, or for a certain period of time, consumes less energy then a thief with the same str as being trained is more efficient in the way he moves and he uses the weight of the body to give power to his hits. in every sport or activity that is energy consuming a proper technique let spend less energy for the same result. a person with the same level of stamina and fitness, but not trained for that particular work will be fatigued much earlier, being it chopping wood with an axe, use a hand plane to flatten a piece of wood or fight with a weapon.
i would say that a fighter fighting all day long, or for a certain period of time, consumes less energy then a thief with the same str as being trained is more efficient in the way he moves and he uses the weight of the body to give power to his hits. in every sport or activity that is energy consuming a proper technique let spend less energy for the same result. a person with the same level of stamina and fitness, but not trained for that particular work will be fatigued much earlier, being it chopping wood with an axe, use a hand plane to flatten a piece of wood or fight with a weapon.
And yet, you would also expect the MMA FIghter, Woodchopper, etc, to have developed some muscle mass over the course of their training, which is really what we're coming back to here.
In a system where Strength is a score you're born with, which does not change with training, you cannot expect it to be the sole dictator of muscle mass.
Intelligence represents your ability to learn, rather than your accumulated knowledge, and it makes sense to view Strength much the same way. Because to do otherwise is to suppose Mazzy was born with all the muscles she would ever have, and never got any stronger through her training.
i would say that a fighter fighting all day long, or for a certain period of time, consumes less energy then a thief with the same str as being trained is more efficient in the way he moves and he uses the weight of the body to give power to his hits. in every sport or activity that is energy consuming a proper technique let spend less energy for the same result. a person with the same level of stamina and fitness, but not trained for that particular work will be fatigued much earlier, being it chopping wood with an axe, use a hand plane to flatten a piece of wood or fight with a weapon.
And yet, you would also expect the MMA FIghter, Woodchopper, etc, to have developed some muscle mass over the course of their training, which is really what we're coming back to here.
In a system where Strength is a score you're born with, which does not change with training, you cannot expect it to be the sole dictator of muscle mass.
Intelligence represents your ability to learn, rather than your accumulated knowledge, and it makes sense to view Strength much the same way. Because to do otherwise is to suppose Mazzy was born with all the muscles she would ever have, and never got any stronger through her training.
You're confusing the real world with D&D. There's nothing in the stat description to indicate what you write above about muscles, even if I agree what you say would be logical.
i would say that a fighter fighting all day long, or for a certain period of time, consumes less energy then a thief with the same str as being trained is more efficient in the way he moves and he uses the weight of the body to give power to his hits. in every sport or activity that is energy consuming a proper technique let spend less energy for the same result. a person with the same level of stamina and fitness, but not trained for that particular work will be fatigued much earlier, being it chopping wood with an axe, use a hand plane to flatten a piece of wood or fight with a weapon.
And yet, you would also expect the MMA FIghter, Woodchopper, etc, to have developed some muscle mass over the course of their training, which is really what we're coming back to here.
In a system where Strength is a score you're born with, which does not change with training, you cannot expect it to be the sole dictator of muscle mass.
Intelligence represents your ability to learn, rather than your accumulated knowledge, and it makes sense to view Strength much the same way. Because to do otherwise is to suppose Mazzy was born with all the muscles she would ever have, and never got any stronger through her training.
You're confusing the real world with D&D. There's nothing in the stat description to indicate what you write above about muscles, even if I agree what you say would be logical.
It doesn't say anything about muscle mass at all in the stat description...
It's make believe. If it makes more sense to view it this way, if it's more in line with every other facet of the system and setting than the alternative, then why does it matter that it doesn't explicitly spell out the muscle mass situation in big bold letters for you?
I've often been irked by the fact that your party can resurrect anyone in the party except the player character. I get that it makes the game more difficult, but in reality, the game should only end if everyone in the party dies, not just the PC.
Adding weight to the party member's bodies might make things interesting, though. Imagine if half the team dies, but the survivors are all mages with crap strength. Oops...
I've often been irked by the fact that your party can resurrect anyone in the party except the player character. I get that it makes the game more difficult, but in reality, the game should only end if everyone in the party dies, not just the PC.
Adding weight to the party member's bodies might make things interesting, though. Imagine if half the team dies, but the survivors are all mages with crap strength. Oops...
It also discourages new players from picking fragile classes as their player character.
Everything else you can rely on your party to compensate for your weaknesses, but if the player character dies that will always be final in a way that just isn't shared by your party members.
I've often been irked by the fact that your party can resurrect anyone in the party except the player character. I get that it makes the game more difficult, but in reality, the game should only end if everyone in the party dies, not just the PC.
Adding weight to the party member's bodies might make things interesting, though. Imagine if half the team dies, but the survivors are all mages with crap strength. Oops...
There's in game reasoning for that. Major spoilers if you haven't beaten BG1:
When a Bhaalspawn dies, they lose their Bhaal essence and disentigrate. So yeah, good luck raising that. And even if you could, no longer having a divine essence would mean Charname wouldn't be involved in ANYTHING that happens post BG1.
Party can have fights with assassins in wide open public grounds during broad daylight with little to no intervention from the local guard
I mean, that much is true to life. These fights are usually resolved pretty quickly. What's that old expression? "When you have seven minutes, the police are only an hour away" or something like that?
If the guards happen to be in the immediate vicinity of your fight they'll intervene.
There's in game reasoning for that. Major spoilers if you haven't beaten BG1:
When a Bhaalspawn dies, they lose their Bhaal essence and disentigrate. So yeah, good luck raising that. And even if you could, no longer having a divine essence would mean Charname wouldn't be involved in ANYTHING that happens post BG1.
Yet Imoen in BG1 can be raised without problems. Yes, I understand why it is so (scenarists decided to make her Bhaalspawn only in BG2), but still.
Well, we're talking about theoretical stuff here rather than gameplay. There's no gameplay element called "stamina." In-game, STR and CON only impact carrying capacity, melee THAC0, damage with most melee attacks and slings, item usability, HP, save bonuses for halflings, gnomes, and dwarves, fatigue, dual-classing requirements, and the ability to survive STR and CON drain. But both carrying capacity and fatigue could qualify as "stamina" issues--you can't walk around for long in full plate mail or march at full stride carrying 100 pounds without stamina. You could also call them issues of "endurance," a STR word, and "fitness," a CON word. In that sense, the issue is pretty ambiguous.
Energy drain effects are also quite ambiguous. In various spells, items, and abilities, energy drain has been interpreted as current HP drain (e.g. Absorb Health), current HP drain with temporary HP added (e.g. Larloch's Minor Drain, Vampiric Touch), Strength drain (e.g. shadows), Dexterity drain (e.g. Kirinhale energy drain), Constitution drain (e.g. Kirinhale energy drain, Tactics Bodhi), THAC0 drain (e.g. Soul Reaver), fatigue (e.g. Spell Revisions Waves of Fatigue spell), luck drain (e.g. Icewind Dale wights), saving throw drain (e.g. Kirinhale energy drain), level drain (e.g. vampires), cold damage (e.g. Chill Touch), magic damage (e.g. Cause Wounds), and causing life-drained creatures to rise as undead (e.g. Soul Eater).
There's in game reasoning for that. Major spoilers if you haven't beaten BG1:
When a Bhaalspawn dies, they lose their Bhaal essence and disentigrate. So yeah, good luck raising that. And even if you could, no longer having a divine essence would mean Charname wouldn't be involved in ANYTHING that happens post BG1.
Yet Imoen in BG1 can be raised without problems. Yes, I understand why it is so (scenarists decided to make her Bhaalspawn only in BG2), but still.
We still haven't explained the situation with Jon Irenicus or the PC in the last chapter of BG2... I suppose that was a special case because of the link, and the fact that Irenicus didn't get all of your soul. This bit was also left out of ToB, as I don't believe any of the Bhaalspawn enemies disintegrate like that, and they were more powerful than Sarevok.
I'm willing to let it go at "gameplay reasons", but there is a lot of inconsistency here.
Kind of a shame, too, as I consider it a lost opportunity for a "trust building" exercise. Rather than automatically ending the game, or letting the player choose, let the remaining NPCs decide based on how the PC treated them.
I don't think there is anything to suggest the Five don't disintegrate. The contest in hell I always understood as a sort of test set up by the essence to decide which of the two bearers of the split soul was more worthy of it (hence it taking place in Bhaal's Pocket Plane in Hell).
Comments
so high rank cw are allowed in the government building and it is tolerated that cw ask money for a licence, put the people in their own prison, that is not in amn but in an independent island, and kill people in the streets. even if the amn solders side at your part if it happens, this is very enlightening on how the cw are tolerated and not who has the real power, like it happens in thay.
Not sure I buy that. Ribald may be a very wealthy entrepeneur for example, but he doesn't have access to his own police force arresting lesser entrepeneurs who don't play by his rules. When you set out to make money in Amn, you don't first have to earn your way into the good graces of the Money Overlords who control all Money in Amn.
Money is power in any society, but Magic is very much the "real power" in Amn.
Party finds a dead person and decides to carry them back to their loved ones: Dead person takes up space in inventory and weighs enough to encumber the one carrying them. And there is no way to revive them.
same muscles as nalia but in a much shorter body...
Same strength score but not necessarily the same muscle mass.
With the stats in this system being largely static, it's hard to say what they mean in the face of training. Much the same way that a 13 int Mage who's spent their whole lifetime studying would be expected to be more knowledgeable than a 13 int peasant who's always been preoccupied with manual labor, I suspect that the difference between a 14 STR thief -> Mage and a 15 STR fighter is not insignificant.
But that 13 int peasant probably knows a whole LOT about cows or crops or the best place to buy a steak in Beregost...
If they have the same STR score they are exactly the same when it comes to strength. Stamina, meaning how long you can use that strength without getting tired, might be a bit different, but they would both be able to lift the same weights. So IMHO there's zero difference between a STR14 thief and STR14 fighter, they could benchpress the same weights or wear the same armor etc, no matter their race or class.
this is not realistic at all, but is the way the game works.
about the stats there are only few cases when the class affect how a stat works, but for str it is not the case, a mage or a fighter, both with 22 str from an item or both with a natural 18 str get the same damage bonus and can carry the same load.
a warrior class can have a more then 18 natural str, up to 18.00, but it is a different thing.
i would say that some shorty fighters weight less then human or half orc mages with the same str, as a similar muscle mass is needed to pull out that str, but the bones are shorter so weight less, assuming that both are not fat people, thing that is unlikely that adventurers used to walk long distances by walking are.
maybe it is not true for a dwarf as his bones are short but thick and heavy, but for gnomes and halflings it is probably so.
i am not sure that nalia's corpse would weight more then korgan's one, but i would bet that it weights more then mazzy's one.
The description for Constitution is more about sturdiness than stamina: "Constitution measures a character's fitness, health, and physical resistance to hardship, injury, and disease."
i don't see how in game str has any influence on endurance or stamina.
I always expect my party members to carry their own weight. I also expect them to take that statement literally.
Off the top of my head, while a fighter with 15 strength and a thief with 15 strength can both fight all day long, for the fighter "Fighting all day long" is a bit more labor intensive, since they're swinging multiple times a round.
Many people also interpret hitpoints to be energy rather than a literal gauge of health. A lethal wound will kill anybody regardless of how many hitpoints they have, so losing hitpoints effectively represents on exhaustion gauge, after which you will not be able to fend off a lethal blow anymore. The fighter rolls D10 for hitpoints while the thief rolls D6, so if a fighter and thief have identical ability scores, the fighter will still be able to fight longer.
The physical stats are all pretty firmly entangled with eachother anyway.
A 19 Dex 18/00 Str 5 Con elf has very strong and nimble hands, but they're often made weak and shakey by sickness for example. In game terms all those bonuses to hit and dodge won't mean much once the fatigue penalties start to set in.
That sort of juxtoposition in theory is supposed to drive a lot of the interest in roleplaying though. Classically we all love a book-smart street-stupid wizard.
the game even shows fake attacks, that i keep always disabled for micro managing issues, to show that the character is not idle after his apr is reached.
i would say that a fighter fighting all day long, or for a certain period of time, consumes less energy then a thief with the same str as being trained is more efficient in the way he moves and he uses the weight of the body to give power to his hits. in every sport or activity that is energy consuming a proper technique let spend less energy for the same result. a person with the same level of stamina and fitness, but not trained for that particular work will be fatigued much earlier, being it chopping wood with an axe, use a hand plane to flatten a piece of wood or fight with a weapon.
And yet, you would also expect the MMA FIghter, Woodchopper, etc, to have developed some muscle mass over the course of their training, which is really what we're coming back to here.
In a system where Strength is a score you're born with, which does not change with training, you cannot expect it to be the sole dictator of muscle mass.
Intelligence represents your ability to learn, rather than your accumulated knowledge, and it makes sense to view Strength much the same way. Because to do otherwise is to suppose Mazzy was born with all the muscles she would ever have, and never got any stronger through her training.
You're confusing the real world with D&D. There's nothing in the stat description to indicate what you write above about muscles, even if I agree what you say would be logical.
It doesn't say anything about muscle mass at all in the stat description...
It's make believe. If it makes more sense to view it this way, if it's more in line with every other facet of the system and setting than the alternative, then why does it matter that it doesn't explicitly spell out the muscle mass situation in big bold letters for you?
Adding weight to the party member's bodies might make things interesting, though. Imagine if half the team dies, but the survivors are all mages with crap strength. Oops...
It also discourages new players from picking fragile classes as their player character.
Everything else you can rely on your party to compensate for your weaknesses, but if the player character dies that will always be final in a way that just isn't shared by your party members.
There's in game reasoning for that. Major spoilers if you haven't beaten BG1:
I mean, that much is true to life. These fights are usually resolved pretty quickly. What's that old expression? "When you have seven minutes, the police are only an hour away" or something like that?
If the guards happen to be in the immediate vicinity of your fight they'll intervene.
Energy drain effects are also quite ambiguous. In various spells, items, and abilities, energy drain has been interpreted as current HP drain (e.g. Absorb Health), current HP drain with temporary HP added (e.g. Larloch's Minor Drain, Vampiric Touch), Strength drain (e.g. shadows), Dexterity drain (e.g. Kirinhale energy drain), Constitution drain (e.g. Kirinhale energy drain, Tactics Bodhi), THAC0 drain (e.g. Soul Reaver), fatigue (e.g. Spell Revisions Waves of Fatigue spell), luck drain (e.g. Icewind Dale wights), saving throw drain (e.g. Kirinhale energy drain), level drain (e.g. vampires), cold damage (e.g. Chill Touch), magic damage (e.g. Cause Wounds), and causing life-drained creatures to rise as undead (e.g. Soul Eater).
We still haven't explained the situation with Jon Irenicus or the PC in the last chapter of BG2... I suppose that was a special case because of the link, and the fact that Irenicus didn't get all of your soul. This bit was also left out of ToB, as I don't believe any of the Bhaalspawn enemies disintegrate like that, and they were more powerful than Sarevok.
I'm willing to let it go at "gameplay reasons", but there is a lot of inconsistency here.
Kind of a shame, too, as I consider it a lost opportunity for a "trust building" exercise. Rather than automatically ending the game, or letting the player choose, let the remaining NPCs decide based on how the PC treated them.