Beamdog should change the way characters are rolled in the Infinity Engine.
EPluribusUnum
Member Posts: 4
This may well be an incredibly unpopular opinion; spending a could chunk of time re-rolling your character abilities, aiming for that really high score, is pretty much seen as an integral part of the Baldur's Gate experience, and the idea of removing or altering that in any way could be seen as sacrilegious. Nonetheless, I believe it to be perhaps the worst game design decision of the Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale franchise, and needs to be changed.
Let me explain my reasoning: when you re-roll again and again, aiming for the highest total score possible, then reassigning those points how you please, you are, at least with respect to tabletop D&D, cheating. You are circumventing the entire point of "rolling" in the first place by gaming the system until you get exactly what you want. Really, you might as well just use EEKeeper to give yourself the best scores possible, and yet the game sort of legitimises it by giving you the freedom it does, letting you think that what you're doing is somehow not cheating, when all it is is cheating but in a more time-consuming and slightly irritating way.
The first part of my proposal is to make one simple change to ability rolls: remove ability point reassignment. Like before, you can roll and re-roll as you wish, bookmarking a decent result in case you want to come back to it, but you can no longer change how those points are distributed. If you think about it, already this will make it radically harder to get exactly what you want. When you consider how long it can sometimes take to get a total roll over 90, and then factor in that now you might still not get certain specific abilities as high as you want, the idea of sitting there and trying to get not only a high total score, but a particular distribution, becomes significantly less appealing. Of course, you can always then just turn to EEKeeper, but at least you would be admitting to yourself that what you want is to have these certain scores, and were never really interested in "rolling" a character to begin with. It can also make it a little easier in a way, too: focus on one or two abilities you know you want to be decently high, while simply making do with the rest. This is what makes for interesting roleplay - playing to your characters strengths while finding ways to mitigate their faults as well.
The second part is to be able to select alternate options for choosing character abilities. The main alternative would be point buy. This would function like it does in 3E D&D and beyond, although it would have to be balanced a little differently considering the way 2E abilities work. This would give players the ability have complete control over the distribution of their ability scores, although it would also force them to create a somewhat balanced character as opposed to rolling which could potentially yield a much higher overall score.
Just for fun, I thought up another option for generating ability scores: hidden roll. Hidden roll would let you roll (and re-roll) for ability scores, but it wouldn't actually show you what they are, instead, it shows you how they are ranked (Dex: 1, Wis: 2, etc.). This way, you could make an informed decision as to what class might best suit your character, but you wouldn't know any of the actual scores until you begin the game. Now, realistically, I realise this could lead to some frustrating false starts, and while some players might enjoy the idea that they risk having to muddle through the game with a slow, weak, incompetent fool, most will probably expect their character to at be at least somewhat competent in regards to what they're best at, and will have to quit out and remake the character again when they find that even their top ranked ability turns out to be sub-par. Therefore, there could be a checkbox, selected by default, which ensures minimum scores for the top ranked abilities (maybe 15 for the top one, 14 for the second, etc., or at least something like that).
So those are my thoughts. For now, I've simply begun to restrain myself from re-rolling and reassigning too much in my games as I find always beginning with those near-perfect scores, without really having to make up for anything, is starting to get a little boring.
What are everyone else's thoughts on the matter?
Let me explain my reasoning: when you re-roll again and again, aiming for the highest total score possible, then reassigning those points how you please, you are, at least with respect to tabletop D&D, cheating. You are circumventing the entire point of "rolling" in the first place by gaming the system until you get exactly what you want. Really, you might as well just use EEKeeper to give yourself the best scores possible, and yet the game sort of legitimises it by giving you the freedom it does, letting you think that what you're doing is somehow not cheating, when all it is is cheating but in a more time-consuming and slightly irritating way.
The first part of my proposal is to make one simple change to ability rolls: remove ability point reassignment. Like before, you can roll and re-roll as you wish, bookmarking a decent result in case you want to come back to it, but you can no longer change how those points are distributed. If you think about it, already this will make it radically harder to get exactly what you want. When you consider how long it can sometimes take to get a total roll over 90, and then factor in that now you might still not get certain specific abilities as high as you want, the idea of sitting there and trying to get not only a high total score, but a particular distribution, becomes significantly less appealing. Of course, you can always then just turn to EEKeeper, but at least you would be admitting to yourself that what you want is to have these certain scores, and were never really interested in "rolling" a character to begin with. It can also make it a little easier in a way, too: focus on one or two abilities you know you want to be decently high, while simply making do with the rest. This is what makes for interesting roleplay - playing to your characters strengths while finding ways to mitigate their faults as well.
The second part is to be able to select alternate options for choosing character abilities. The main alternative would be point buy. This would function like it does in 3E D&D and beyond, although it would have to be balanced a little differently considering the way 2E abilities work. This would give players the ability have complete control over the distribution of their ability scores, although it would also force them to create a somewhat balanced character as opposed to rolling which could potentially yield a much higher overall score.
Just for fun, I thought up another option for generating ability scores: hidden roll. Hidden roll would let you roll (and re-roll) for ability scores, but it wouldn't actually show you what they are, instead, it shows you how they are ranked (Dex: 1, Wis: 2, etc.). This way, you could make an informed decision as to what class might best suit your character, but you wouldn't know any of the actual scores until you begin the game. Now, realistically, I realise this could lead to some frustrating false starts, and while some players might enjoy the idea that they risk having to muddle through the game with a slow, weak, incompetent fool, most will probably expect their character to at be at least somewhat competent in regards to what they're best at, and will have to quit out and remake the character again when they find that even their top ranked ability turns out to be sub-par. Therefore, there could be a checkbox, selected by default, which ensures minimum scores for the top ranked abilities (maybe 15 for the top one, 14 for the second, etc., or at least something like that).
So those are my thoughts. For now, I've simply begun to restrain myself from re-rolling and reassigning too much in my games as I find always beginning with those near-perfect scores, without really having to make up for anything, is starting to get a little boring.
What are everyone else's thoughts on the matter?
1
Comments
The purpose of video games is to have fun, and forcing a player to take character stats that does not interest them diminishes the fun.
And cheating doesn’t exist in a single player game. The player is only cheating their own experience, but that just goes back to the what the purpose of the game is, having fun, and if a player is having fun cntl+Y everything they come across, more power to them.
All in all I'm with @deltago here, the game is supposed to make fun and yes, it might be seen as cheating, but so would be exporting of your main character for another game or also making savegames, while we are at it.
There have been lots of threads where people suggest the same sorts of things you do as a self-restriction or set of house rules in order to improve character realism, roleplaying, and to raise the game difficulty. But I don't think I've seen anyone go so far as to suggest making it mandatory.
Randomization is part of the fun...and no a change like this wouldn't go over well with people.
I think a better way of improving character creation, would be if Wis, Int and Charisma had more impact on the game for warrior types and so on.
Like severe consequences for walking around with a character with a charisma score below 8 or god forbid someone with an int score of 3-5. But that's also means a much more complex game, retroactively changing anything now wouldn't work imo.
The issue with that method (for AD&D games) was always the stat minimums. If you want to play a paladin but don't roll at least one score of 17 or 18, then you're stuck. So, BG letting you pick the class first and then roll ability scores to make sure the stats meet the minimums works.
I guess I've come around from this idea. Self-imposed restrictions are easy enough to follow, though I feel mechanics shouldn't just be judged by what options they provide, but by what behaviour they encourage. In any case, changing anything this fundamental is probably a bad idea for a classic like this, although I think it's something to consider in future crpg titles.
I'll still re-roll myself, of course, and most of my rolls are in the mid to high 80s because I view the numbers as important for the success of no-reload runs. But if I were designing a game, a point buy system would be simpler and more balanced overall.
There is a Point-Buy UI mod on these forums somewhere already, I think it uses a constant 1:1 ratio, but it can be adapted for scaling costs.
My take on this is that it is an old single player game with a long standing save editor, so what does it matter? No change made to this particular part of the game will positively affect the game's reception because the game came out 20 years ago. And no change made will strongly affect what kind of characters you can make, because if you really wanted to, you could, with physical dice or an online roller, grab 3d6, roll them straight with no rearranging, and then make whatever class those results allow with the save editor.
You can already make whatever character you want by whatever means you personally deem fair or fun. So the only people this would affect at all would be those that are either new to the game(and there aren't many of those these days) or people who strongly like or dislike the current system and are unwilling to work around a system they don't like.
also i never chose to have way over the average stats, my charnames have about the same points of the average of bg2 npcs, sometimes a little more and other times a little less.
i know, as i had done it in the past, that you can roll average stats in a short time and you can roll higher ones if you are willing to spend (waste imho) more time. really good stats need a lot of time.
i don't see the difference in spending a whole afternoon to roll near 100 points stats or eekepering them, so i pretend that i have used my time to roll, set my stats at the needed level with EEkeeper and start to play immediately. my 82 points or 98 points eekeepered charnames are not more effective of the ones i could have rolled.
about the proposal to don't allow to relocate the points i see a problem. we select the class and then we roll the stats. i think that the point allocation, not their grand total, must reflect the chosen class. a fighter with low con and str is not only difficult to play, and if you play on hard even more cause he does not get the maximum hp when he levels up, but that character would have chose to do something other in his life than be a fighter.
to roll the stats only 1 time or few ones without relocating them is a fine way to add challenge to the game, if someone want to do it, and it can be done also now, you decide how much you roll, you decide if or if not relocate points.
but if some people (not me) likes to spend time in rolling and/or optimize their stats for the class they are playing why should that be made impossible as what you propose is already possible now?
point buy is a different thing, if @kjeron is right we can do it right now using a mod so again why impose to everybody something you can have for yourself right now?
Way I see it, if you want to play a character with all 18’s, more power to you. It’s a single player game, so do what’s fun for you. Sometimes I enjoy spamming re-roll to see what I get. Other times I just hit Ctrl 8 and then lower them to whatever values I had in mind. I generally enjoy playing characters with strengths and weaknesses, for the variety of play experiences. But if I feel like making a godly character and steamrolling fools for a bit, I’ll do that.
In summary, your solution wouldn’t work, but that’s okay, because the problem has already been solved with existing systems.
i don't seek high numbers, i stopped to do it after using one time the cheat that gives maxed stats and after realizing how over the average stats make things too easy.
and i feel only frustration in spending RL time in rolling, as i know that i will get the desired stat anyway, is only time spent and dedication, no skill involved. so, whether i want a 78 or a 102 i just EEkeeper it and pretend that i have rolled 3 minutes or 3 afternoons.
every player is different and finds his fun in his own way, and this is the great thing of this game. a really complex game with a complicated magic system and a lot of different possible tactics, that can be played in many ways, from the pure RP to the most outrageous PG. and everything is fine as long as the player has his fun, cause it is not a competition player vs player game.
this is why i feel sad when someone ask for nerfs of characteristics that are intentional and don't affect who don't want to use them or when the developers introduce such nerfs by their own initiative.
i don't use mislead and backstabbing cause i think it is too powerful, crazy damage on enemies that don't even react, using a spell that was designed to be used by mages while they cast ( this is the way AI uses it). but i will never ask to make back stabbing impossible by characters under mislead spell, i respect the freedom of the other people to have fun the way they want.
the same is true for the topic of the tread, if a player don't want to re assign the points he can simply avoid to do it, if a player wants to have a fixed stat total (point buy) he can have it with the mod @kjeron tells about or using EEkeeper. decide yourself how many points charname should have and you have your point buy system working. there is no reason to enforce the things on everybody, it would be wrong imho, as it would only spoil the fun of somebody without giving any benefit to anybody.
Point-buy is a natural way to spread stats around under your control if that is what you prefer, and can get you quickly into the game with an appropriate character if all that dice-rolling is too much for you.
That said, as long as the current system stays as it is (as I expect) I will use that horribly cheesy ability to move stats around as I wish, as I simply cannot resist when the tool is part of the game in front of me!
Method X: 75 character points are divided as desired among ability scores but exceptional strength scores must be purchased at a rate of 10% per character point.
There is no scaling of the point cost, as in the 3E point buy, but with only 75 points to distribute, a single 18 means the other 5 scores have an average of 11.4 (even worse in Method X for 18/00 strength, the 28 points it would cost leaves only 47 points for the other 5 scores, an average of 9.4).
EDIT: by the way why "cheesy"? cheese is exploiting something, but to relocate stat points is a clearly intended mechanic of the game, a player can decide to don't do it, but doing it is to use the game exactly as it was intended by the devs, no cheese at all imo.
I believe stat redistribution is cheesy at it is exploiting a mechanic of the game, as opposed to outright cheating with a tool liker EE keeper or ctrl-8 ("cheating is a relative term here, for how I play the game - not intended to slight others with different play styles).
This is cheese as the result of 3d6 moves on a bell curve, so extreme results like 3s and 18s are extremely rare (1 in 216 chance, less likely than tossing 7 heads in a row), and 2 18s, or an 18 and a 3, are more like 15 heads in a row. Moving stats in a linear fashion totally abuses this part of the game balance, and is why 3rd edition point buys are scaled. From a role-play point of view, characters with extreme dump stats really have no business adventures, as 3-5 is truly an incapacitating weakness if the game engine were mere rounded.
As an odd example, a popular split for many rerolls is for a 93 point roll, split 5x18 and a 3. The odd of actually rolling this are exactly the same as rolling all 18s, but I have never heard of a natural all-18 roll (outside of ctrl-8 or keeper) but have seen many 5x18/3 on just my own machines. It is very distorting - but still a part of the game!
I love rolling stats too! At the moment I'm playing with non-adjusted stats like the OP is advocating, but my modding setup makes it so stats in the 12-17 range still give good bonuses so I'm not gimping myself too much and I think it is a lot more fun!
the decision to play in a way or an other, or somewhere between the 2 extremes, is left to the player.
5*18+1*3 is clearly a PG choice, but is the right choice for a pure powergamer even if is a complete nonsense for a RP player.
"It is very distorting" is true only having a RP point of view, the powergamer would answer:"why? to optimize my toon dumping one stat to the minimum if i don't benefit of it is the wisest thing i can do, is what give me fun playing, i spend hours comparing weapon damages and stuff like that and i don't give a **** about RP issues".
and as long as we have freedom to play the game in the way that give us fun there is nothing wrong in both the points of view.
every mod that make the game more suited to be played the way a single player likes is welcome, every change enforced to anybody make this game less versatile, less suited to give fun to some part of the playing community.
There are 6 ways to get 5 18s and 1 3, unless you're saying you want that 3 in a particular stat. There is of course only 2 ways to get 6 18s (roll it or cheat it!, heh). Ok, only 1 way to get all 6 18s in probability. So the ratio is 6 times more likely to occur than all 18s.