Did this game go through any beta testing ?
Soido
Member Posts: 344
Ambushed by 10 bandits (archers) right out of Candlekeep on the way to Friendly Arms Inn 5 minutes into the game. Party (Imoen, Xzar, Montaron, and main character) decimated in 5 seconds.
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They are as enjoyable as the
That means that a lot of your early adventures will be spent running and dying. The alternative would be to tailor the entire world towards a level 1 character with a half-formed party, which obviously would get dull as you levelled up.
You, upon leaving Candlekeep, have barely been trained to hold your sword right or whatever. You're the weakest of the weak, and there's a bandit crisis. The roads are unsafe. Surviving is gonna be difficult for a while but one day you'll be a seasoned adventurer like Drizzt or Elminster mowing through armies of baddies like it's nothing.
There's a progression here that's fun and gratuitous for the player.
It can be won even on lvl 1 with due tactics and a bit of luck.
The writers also introduced a cheat which prevents level 1 characters with less than 10 HPs from dying to a single hit.
we talked about this in the past https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/69665/10-bandit-waylay-should-be-removed-from-chapter-1/p1
Personally I find they're never really worth the effort you'd need to expend to kill them even in the late game.
Because they surround you before the player is even given control, your formation is fubarred the moment the battle starts. They'll plug arrows into all your squishiest party members, which even late game can be pretty squishy, if you don't immediately incapacitate them with some sort of spell or something.
They have no loot except for some arrows and some scalps though. So it never feels like it's worth spending a spell on them.
Like if they had some of those random treasures xvarts and stuff sometimes have that could be something to get excited about, but all they have pretty much translates into pocket change in a game where money is abundant.
Other classes stand no chance. Dwarven defender unlikely because of the decreased speed he can't reach them fast as the bandits are stationary archers. Mages zero chance won't be able to cast a single spell and will be disrupted.
Xzar is one shot, Imoen and Montaron are 1 or 2 shots, dead in first round. Those bandits I think are doing 2 shots in a round each for 20 shots in the first round !
If you run straight to the map edge as soon as you see them they don't all follow you. When you reach the edge of the map there will probably only be three or four left able to see you so you can then turn back and use your fighters to engage them while keeping your mages and thieves out of the firing line.
It's unfair if it happens at that early stage of the game but BG was never designed to be fair. That's why there are auto saves whenever you leave an area. If you get unlucky and it happens right at the start of the game then then the worst than happens is that a no-reload player has lost about 15 minutes of game play when they start again.
A better game design would be to have a flag that gets set as soon as you've visited an area that's not the start area or the crossroads, and not allow that ambush until the flag is set.
For an experienced party it is just a minor inconvenience.
I agree that I sometimes take pleasure in that ambush if it occurs slightly later in the game, once you got some AC and sleep/wands of sleep.
Xan and Edwin are both around Nashkel, Dynaheir is too but can't cast it anyway, and for Xzar you'd have to investigate the crossroads area instead of just heading straight to the FAI, and hope you get lucky and find a sleep scroll as a random drop.
By the time you've done the Nashkel mines and got yourself a mage who can cast sleep, and headed back north to areas where that ambush might occur, it is no longer the threat it once was and you probably have a number of viable strategies to deal with it.
Every time it happens, I pause the game, and go mentally go through the same old routine. "Do you not know who I am? Are you unable to guess what manner of creature I had to kill to get this suit of armor? Can you even imagine how much blood I have waded through in the past few months? Why would you throw yourselves at my sword like this? Tomorrow I will already have forgotten you. You will just be another smear on the road. You picked the wrong profession if you think that I am a good target to practice your waylaying skills on. Go away. Get the hell out of here. Killing you is more annoying than trying to talk sense into you. Shoo!"
But alas, we are not allowed to communicate with muggers, and SCS offers self-preservational instincts only to wolves. If I lived somewhere on Faerun, I would open a school to teach outlaws what signs to look out for to recognize overleveled adventurers.
In fact, this would make a good mod if it was possible - have bad guys bow out or go neutral instead of yellow when they realize they are getting their butts kicked.
I get that a lot in BG2, with that group of muggers that tends to waylay you when you travel between maps in the city.
"You really want to do this? Do you know what I'm capable of? OK, have it your way..."
Charname: Casts Death Spell
Muggers all die.
I suppose the next step is to become powerful enough and then pull an Irenicus with the Cowled Wizards. :P