99 but 18/5, also about The Black Pit?
Maverick81685
Member Posts: 9
After about 15 minutes I rolled a 99 for a Ranger but it is only a 18/05. Should I reroll or is that okay? I don't want to powergame or solo. Just play the game and have fun while being able to survive both games. Also would doing The Black Pit first make me too overpowered? Read it is seperate from everything and before the main game. So wanted to do that first and get the story before I started the main game.
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How hard it's gonna be will depend on the difficulty level you've chosen and whether or not you have any difficulty/AI mods installed. Low-level play can be brutal though, so don't feel bad if you have to reload every now and then. Just remember to save often!
As for the Black Pits, you're right, it's completely separate. It's focus is more on less strictly on combat and is more targeted to seasoned players than the main campaign is. If you really want to do it before you BG1 and import your main character, you will end up severely overleveled for a majority of the game, imo. The story also won't reflect this in any real way as canonically, the Black Pits were completed by a different party than the main story was. It's worth playing through for sure, but if this is your first experience with BG, my advice is playing through the main story first.
14? What were they using as weapons, harsh language?
No full plate or large shields, though. Those require 15 strength to equip, and they're heavy to boot.
Every battle you level up, were as the game can be 10s of hours between levels up depending how you play. Want to see how a Monk of Druid plays at level 8? A few hours of the Black Pits and you'll see. It's great for a second playthrough, create 6 characters you might want to play in the main story and see if you like them while going through the Black Pits. For instance a Monk you might decide is a bit on the weak side end game Baldurs Gate etc.
As mentioned above, playing the Pits to completion before BG1 is inadvisable. BG1 should usually be played by a level one character from scratch, otherwise the game will be too easy. You can import a higher level character for BG1 if you want...for instance playing a high level wizard around Candlekeep in the prologue can be quite amusing, but I doubt it’s how the game is supposed to be played.
Also, all characters with strengths between 18/01 and 18/50 behave in exactly the same way, which is about 50% of all characters with exceptional strength...so looking at it that way a roll of 18/05 is statistically fine. If you are lucky to find an item that increases your strength by one in the game, your ranger will go up to 19 strength, regardless of where he/she is on the exceptional strength scale, which is worth considering.
Looking back on it, exceptional strength in D&D seems like an odd idea, although most warriors and other characters were only very rarely able to (survive long enough to) increase their strength past 18 in a typical game.
Yeah, this is the big thing to keep in mind. While that 18/05 looks particularly bad, it's basically a coin flip to land in the worst exceptional strength bracket in the game. With the odds of each bracket after that becoming progressively smaller as they become more powerful, until the highest has literally a 1% chance of achieving it.
That said, you could also just try either, after completing the Provided tutorial, which involves the characters Imoen, Xan, Branwen and Belt, and takes place in Baldur’s Gate City. It’s done very well and should give a good background.
Standard unkitted rangers are a fair choice too. I played a half-elf one with fairly average stats of 83 total through BG1 and really enjoyed it: a lot of the game is in wilderness crammed with black bears that you can charm and send against foes, making most battles a cinch. Minsc, one of the icons of the BG series Is also an unkitted ranger, and he rocks.
Whatever you choose, I’d advise sticking with a character until the end of the game, unless you really can’t stand it...restartitis is a real problem in this game - I caught it and it took me nearly five years to finish first time!
On deities, it’s purely aesthetic unless you happen to be a kitted cleric. From what I’ve seen, historically popular choices are deities from the Time of Troubles, which occurred twenty years before the events of BG1, such as Cyric, Kelemvor and Midnight/Mystra. Mystra is a key character in forgotten realms and has several incarnations/resurrections, she’s a bit like Jean Grey/Phoenix of this franchise
A ranger focused on the longbow is probably one of the strongest builds for BG1, especially if you're new to the game. It can trivialize alot of the early game difficulty, where one or two hits can kill a character. In fact, if you do struggle in the early fighting, just focus on using ranged weapons with most or all of your early party.
I'd also note that with the game already providing two well-statted rangers, it might make more sense to go with a half-elf ranger/cleric protagonist, which would offer a similar "feel" but be significantly more forgiving for new players.
Sounds a bit like Minsc!
If you are doing a trilogy run, then if you can get a strength increasing item (kept generic to avoid spoilers) that makes the % irrelevant for the 80% plus remainder of the playing experience. Knowing this I don’t really worry about the strength %, especially as ranged weapons are king in BG. If this was IWD the % would be more important. Mental stats have their uses, such as against mind flayers.
Int: Unlocks a few dialogue options. 9 Int allows the use of priest scrolls and protection scrolls. Acts as an alternate HP pool when fighting illithids in BG2. Modifies lore score - but your party should have a thief, mage or bard with a much better score anyway. Intelligence can be temporarily boosted with potions of genius and of mind focusing, which are plentiful in BG2 but relatively rare in BG1. Racial minimums 4 if half-elf, 8 if elf.
Wis: Unlocks a few dialogue options. Modifies lore score. Can be temporarily raised to 18 with potions of insight, which are plentiful in BG2. Class minimum 14.
Cha: Unlocks some dialogue options. The party's "face", in the first slot, affects store prices with their charisma. The speaker's charisma modifies the "reaction score", which affects many dialogue options. A few items increase charisma when equipped, and there's a ring you find early in BG2 that sets base charisma to 18. Racial minimum 8 if elf.
For something pretty close to a min-maxed elf ranger build, there's the recruitable companion Kivan: 18/12 strength, 17 Dex, 14 Con, 10 Int, 14 Wis, 8 Cha. Starts specialized in halberds and longbows. Of course, with only 81 points total, he had to make some compromises - he couldn't afford to raise all of his physical stats.
This is true, but I still think there's some huge value in BG1, especially for a newer player to having a high CHA. There's no NPC with that score. There's a way to boost it somewhat early to 19 and thus get a large reaction bonus. This, along with playing good, can tremendously lower vendor prices, some of those items can be a big boost to a party depending on composition. Also raises the odds of keeping different aligned characters together if kept in slot 1, lowers morale failure odds iirc.
However there are NPC's with high strength. And I don't think melee weapons focusing is all that strong in BG1 anyways. It's especially not a great role for a ranger in BG1 imo, who is better off being capable of stealthing at all times. Your 1 or 2 melee characters should be defensively focused. It's far easier to drop Thac0's via ranged weapons. So I think the high roll, which allows a ranger with max physical stats, max charisma and enough intelligence to read scrolls is probably preferable than a high secondary strength ranger who has to make a sacrifice or not get that max charisma. Just my opinion though. And in terms of a full saga playthrough, well there are so many strength boosting items.
Not quite. As I said, you can boost it to 19 early in BG1, that single point above 18 gives a large bonus to reaction. You can't get there with that item. And just as in BG1, the very beginning of BG2 is where earning a fat discount at stores helps the most.