@2hellwBg2
Hands Down: The game is badly designed, but many love the game even with it’s flaws (or because of them). It’s been a all time favourite for almost 20 years now, and I still love it to bits.
So if you can overcome your justified urge to rage quit, the game has many many hours of fun (and tribulations). You are free to do what you like, but since you have signed up and have the game, you could ask jeres for some tips. I am not a great player, but this forum is brimming with great players you can ask - and most of them rage quitted the first times as well…
2. Certain enemies have inbuilt near 100% resistance to spell interrupt, so they always cast their hold person
The system that determines whether a character will have their spells interrupted is really weird and nonsensical. It depends on which way the character is facing. How it works is that if a character is facing north, south, east, west, northeast, southeast, southwest, or northeast, their spells will be interrupted on damage, but if they're facing one of the directions in between (NNE, ENE, ESE, SSE, SSW, WSW, WNW, or NNW), then their spells can't be interrupted. It's definitely not a great system.
3. Certain enemies can be charmed but automatically lose that charm the following round, even though the spell doesn't work that way (because they are "mini bosses" and have special rules, image if a DM did that)
This is a bug. It happens when you charm someone right after you hit them with an attack or a hostile spell (though charm effects themselves don't count as hostile). To avoid this, don't attack or cast any spells on the enemy in the round before you charm them.
Before you quit, consider adding tweaks and SCS, which vastly improve mages and clerics (along with a whole lot of others, but that's a separate issue) Even on the easiest setting, they behave much more realistically.
Once you start using SCS, it's like the game's AI went to the next level.
That said, you might finish your current game first, so you can appreciate what the mods are adding.
On the one hand: yes, BG1 is poorly-designed. The Baldur's Gate series was always the "Tech Demo" arm of classic BioWare/Black Isle Studios (Icewind Dale was all about the combat while Planescape: Torment was all about the narrative) and it shows at times. It relies on 2nd Edition D&D Rules which if you're not used to them can be hard to grasp (why, exactly, can't a wizard use a light crossbow? How come dwarves can't use arcane magic?), and on top of that Baldur's Gate is not a faithful representation of the ruleset (see the aforementioned complaint about unintuitive spell interruption rules). There's always a chance of running into the infamous Ten Bandit ambush (which tends to be fatal until you've finished the Nashkel Mines and gotten some EXP under your belt) and the difficulty curve only makes sense if you follow the plotted line - as soon as you go off into side areas, good luck getting safely back on the main road!
On the other hand... game was made and balanced in 1997. Furthermore, the game was made and balanced with the expectation that you'd use the two most powerful spells in your arsenal, save scumming and the pause button. Trying to play through this game without reloading after a disaster is considered a challenge run, not the intended style of play.
Wait, you mean you aren't supposed to go wandering off in the woods before clearing the mines in Nashkel? Well jeez, almost all of my parties clear over half the forest before tackling the mines...
One of the things I love about BG1 that I felt was lost in later games was that same sense in tabletop D&D games where you start off, usually quite literally, lost in the woods. Being able to wander around and potentially get your party into serious danger was a feature, not a bug. Sure, any good DM will warn you before you are about to do something stupid, but in a lot of ways, so does Baldur's Gate. A good example are the Doom Guards at the entrance to Durlag's Tower. If you can't defeat them, you probably don't have any business in that tower.
Are the games perfect? No, but they are incredibly fun and, if you are willing to go along with it, great RP experiences. There is a magic to the games that transcends the various parts. About the only thing I regret was that 3E wasn't an option, as 2E is stifling in a lot of ways - but it's a product of it's era.
I thank you for your suggestions, but I can't agree. I tried to play it again but this game is dog-s***. The fact there is different dialogue depending on how you handled a situation is amazing and really drew me like it was a real D&D game.
Example; a guy tried to sell me a scroll of stone to flesh at a price I knew was inflated, I stole it from him and used it on the nearby stoned character, the swindler realized this and left.
But the combat in this game is trash, it ruins the whole experience where you end up save scumming because it cheats.
I'm gonna use a character called Zargal who is BG1 for an example.
He is a hobgoblin that attacks you, I looked up his stats, he has 9 dex and wears studded leather armor. But somehow he has an AC of 2. That is not in the rules of the game!! I'm wearing equipment with bonus to THAC0, and was shooting arrows at him with characters with 18 dex but can't hit him. Meanwhile his archers hit almost every round and they apply poison for some reason.
So what do you have to do? Reload aka save-scum until you get the outcome you need or use game breaking spells like sleep. It's utter nonsense
Almost every battle is like this
Imagine if a DM did this in an actual D&D game "you enter a tavern and there is a level 7 assassin (while you are level 2) that immediately begins to attack you, btw, your wisdom bonus will not apply to your saving-throws so you are stuck with base saves and the assassin casts mirror-image and then fear".
You won't play with him again because he's breaking the rules of the game to be an ahole.
Then there is "scouting" option where you walk around the map hidden and things are just standing there waiting for you to "find them" which is so immersion breaking. People walk around towns and go to bed at night, but enemies just stand in place waiting for you to uncover them. Like basilisks, hey I found a basilisk and he immediately attacks me and I have base saves against petrification; it's game over. Yeah it's game over for me
1. Your average attacks roles are always 5 to 10, the enemy AI has 15 to 20
You were simply unlucky. There is no mechanism in the game that causes enemies to get higher die rolls than party members.
That's not true at all. The amount of times the enemy rolls natural 20 is through the roof. Doesn't matter if it's attack rolls or saves, it's generally 15 to 20. Almost every single battle, and as stated before there are enemies in the game with non-rulebook allowed AC bonuses and attack rolls, just because
I get my armor class down to -5 (which is huge in real D&D 2nd edition) it doesn't really matter, because they are rolling 20s that hit you anyway
I'm gonna use a character called Zargal who is BG1 for an example.
He is a hobgoblin that attacks you, I looked up his stats, he has 9 dex and wears studded leather armor. But somehow he has an AC of 2. That is not in the rules of the game!! I'm wearing equipment with bonus to THAC0, and was shooting arrows at him with characters with 18 dex but can't hit him. Meanwhile his archers hit almost every round and they apply poison for some reason.
So what do you have to do? Reload aka save-scum until you get the outcome you need or use game breaking spells like sleep. It's utter nonsense
Then there is "scouting" option where you walk around the map hidden and things are just standing there waiting for you to "find them" which is so immersion breaking. People walk around towns and go to bed at night, but enemies just stand in place waiting for you to uncover them. Like basilisks, hey I found a basilisk and he immediately attacks me and I have base saves against petrification; it's game over. Yeah it's game over for me
It's pretty clear in the game that Zargal is more powerful than a standard hobgoblin (in his dialogue he says something like "I'm the strongest there is" and he has two followers - after the combat you also find he drops a powerful weapon). Therefore it should be no surprise that he fights better. In 2nd edition D&D standard hobgoblins had AC5 (monsters never followed the AC system for player characters even in tabletop) and leaders are tougher than that. You've probably already realized that in BG1 missile weapons are really powerful, so you certainly need to beware of enemies that use them (and all elite hobgoblins apply poison to their arrows, so it's no surprise these ones do that).
If you don't want to use spells to help combat (and there are many other spells beyond sleep that can help enormously), that obviously makes things more difficult, but all fights in the game can still be done without any need for reloading. Scouting out the situation and positioning your party to best advantage makes a huge difference in combat. When scouting unknown areas by the way, I would suggest you always use an invisible or stealthed character - that way you get the drop on basilisks, rather than the reverse.
As for the point about whether enemies should be mobile, I would argue that the BG approach is good game design, not bad. It's obviously a question of taste, but I've played a fair amount with mods that do add mobility and I find it just becomes tedious after a while if you're walking repeatedly around the map and can't find enemies. In BG the designers compromised by having enemies in a fixed position until you find them, but making some of them move around really quite a lot after that (even if you're invisible when you first spot them). The first group of sirines you find at the lighthouse area are like that for instance and are significantly more difficult to deal with as a result.
Of course you shouldn't play the game if you don't find it enjoyable and I can see why you might find it annoying that the game doesn't always follow your views of how it should work. However, it's possible you would enjoy it more if you planned how to beat the game as it is, rather than thinking about how you'd like to change it.
I'm gonna use a character called Zargal who is BG1 for an example.
He is a hobgoblin that attacks you, I looked up his stats, he has 9 dex and wears studded leather armor. But somehow he has an AC of 2. That is not in the rules of the game!! I'm wearing equipment with bonus to THAC0, and was shooting arrows at him with characters with 18 dex but can't hit him. Meanwhile his archers hit almost every round and they apply poison for some reason.
So what do you have to do? Reload aka save-scum until you get the outcome you need or use game breaking spells like sleep. It's utter nonsense
Then there is "scouting" option where you walk around the map hidden and things are just standing there waiting for you to "find them" which is so immersion breaking. People walk around towns and go to bed at night, but enemies just stand in place waiting for you to uncover them. Like basilisks, hey I found a basilisk and he immediately attacks me and I have base saves against petrification; it's game over. Yeah it's game over for me
It's pretty clear in the game that Zargal is more powerful than a standard hobgoblin (in his dialogue he says something like "I'm the strongest there is" and he has two followers - after the combat you also find he drops a powerful weapon). Therefore it should be no surprise that he fights better. In 2nd edition D&D standard hobgoblins had AC5 (monsters never followed the AC system for player characters even in tabletop) and leaders are tougher than that. You've probably already realized that in BG1 missile weapons are really powerful, so you certainly need to beware of enemies that use them (and all elite hobgoblins apply poison to their arrows, so it's no surprise these ones do that).
If you don't want to use spells to help combat (and there are many other spells beyond sleep that can help enormously), that obviously makes things more difficult, but all fights in the game can still be done without any need for reloading. Scouting out the situation and positioning your party to best advantage makes a huge difference in combat. When scouting unknown areas by the way, I would suggest you always use an invisible or stealthed character - that way you get the drop on basilisks, rather than the reverse.
As for the point about whether enemies should be mobile, I would argue that the BG approach is good game design, not bad. It's obviously a question of taste, but I've played a fair amount with mods that do add mobility and I find it just becomes tedious after a while if you're walking repeatedly around the map and can't find enemies. In BG the designers compromised by having enemies in a fixed position until you find them, but making some of them move around really quite a lot after that (even if you're invisible when you first spot them). The first group of sirines you find at the lighthouse area are like that for instance and are significantly more difficult to deal with as a result.
Of course you shouldn't play the game if you don't find it enjoyable and I can see why you might find it annoying that the game doesn't always follow your views of how it should work. However, it's possible you would enjoy it more if you planned how to beat the game as it is, rather than thinking about how you'd like to change it.
That's not an excuse. Oh he's a "special hobgoblin" that breaks the rules.
Oh the scouting game where enemies are just standing there waiting to be discovered. Yeah the basilisks are like every other battle in this game, use BS tactics like immunity to their attack before you fight them (knowing the situation before hand). Oh theres a mage, let's cast silence that has a huge -5 to their save so they are useless. Oh let's cast sleep on these monsters. You don't fight anything in this game you just stop them from attacking you by cheese tactics
It's a terrible game... absolutely terrible. You can like it, I'm not saying you can't. But honestly, the player is the child of save-scumming, not the god of murder
The fact they didnt add wisdom based saving throw bonuses is shockingly bad game design
I'm gonna use a character called Zargal who is BG1 for an example.
He is a hobgoblin that attacks you, I looked up his stats, he has 9 dex and wears studded leather armor. But somehow he has an AC of 2. That is not in the rules of the game!! I'm wearing equipment with bonus to THAC0, and was shooting arrows at him with characters with 18 dex but can't hit him. Meanwhile his archers hit almost every round and they apply poison for some reason.
So what do you have to do? Reload aka save-scum until you get the outcome you need or use game breaking spells like sleep. It's utter nonsense
Then there is "scouting" option where you walk around the map hidden and things are just standing there waiting for you to "find them" which is so immersion breaking. People walk around towns and go to bed at night, but enemies just stand in place waiting for you to uncover them. Like basilisks, hey I found a basilisk and he immediately attacks me and I have base saves against petrification; it's game over. Yeah it's game over for me
It's pretty clear in the game that Zargal is more powerful than a standard hobgoblin (in his dialogue he says something like "I'm the strongest there is" and he has two followers - after the combat you also find he drops a powerful weapon). Therefore it should be no surprise that he fights better. In 2nd edition D&D standard hobgoblins had AC5 (monsters never followed the AC system for player characters even in tabletop) and leaders are tougher than that. You've probably already realized that in BG1 missile weapons are really powerful, so you certainly need to beware of enemies that use them (and all elite hobgoblins apply poison to their arrows, so it's no surprise these ones do that).
If you don't want to use spells to help combat (and there are many other spells beyond sleep that can help enormously), that obviously makes things more difficult, but all fights in the game can still be done without any need for reloading. Scouting out the situation and positioning your party to best advantage makes a huge difference in combat. When scouting unknown areas by the way, I would suggest you always use an invisible or stealthed character - that way you get the drop on basilisks, rather than the reverse.
As for the point about whether enemies should be mobile, I would argue that the BG approach is good game design, not bad. It's obviously a question of taste, but I've played a fair amount with mods that do add mobility and I find it just becomes tedious after a while if you're walking repeatedly around the map and can't find enemies. In BG the designers compromised by having enemies in a fixed position until you find them, but making some of them move around really quite a lot after that (even if you're invisible when you first spot them). The first group of sirines you find at the lighthouse area are like that for instance and are significantly more difficult to deal with as a result.
Of course you shouldn't play the game if you don't find it enjoyable and I can see why you might find it annoying that the game doesn't always follow your views of how it should work. However, it's possible you would enjoy it more if you planned how to beat the game as it is, rather than thinking about how you'd like to change it.
That's not an excuse. Oh he's a "special hobgoblin" that breaks the rules.
Oh the scouting game where enemies are just standing there waiting to be discovered. Yeah the basilisks are like every other battle in this game, use BS tactics like immunity to their attack before you fight them (knowing the situation before hand). Oh theres a mage, let's cast silence that has a huge -5 to their save so they are useless. Oh let's cast sleep on these monsters. You don't fight anything in this game you just stop them from attacking you by cheese tactics
It's a terrible game... absolutely terrible. You can like it, I'm not saying you can't. But honestly, the player is the child of save-scumming, not the god of murder
It's exactly because he is so clearly a special hobgoblin that he's not breaking the rules. Like most monsters, there's not a single variety of 'hobgoblin' that's always the same - if you look at the Monstrous Manual you'll see there's a number of different types of hobgoblin, so the game is being consistent with the source material here.
I've played exclusively no-reload for many years now and used every possible character class, so I know there is no need to rely on reloading when playing the game. However, if you deliberately avoid tactics the game intends you to use (like using protection from petrification against basilisks), you will clearly make things more difficult. A nice thing about Baldur's Gate is that there is such a huge range of gameplay options available and there are still lots of ways to deal with basilisks without such protection (like using skeletons, or certain mage familiars, or charming Korax, or dominating the basilisks with Algernon's Cloak, or hold monster from nymphs, or area damage spells, or darts of stunning from stealth etc), but I think the game was designed with the expectation that players would use the various forms of gaze protection available - at least while learning the game.
I'm gonna use a character called Zargal who is BG1 for an example.
He is a hobgoblin that attacks you, I looked up his stats, he has 9 dex and wears studded leather armor. But somehow he has an AC of 2. That is not in the rules of the game!! I'm wearing equipment with bonus to THAC0, and was shooting arrows at him with characters with 18 dex but can't hit him. Meanwhile his archers hit almost every round and they apply poison for some reason.
So what do you have to do? Reload aka save-scum until you get the outcome you need or use game breaking spells like sleep. It's utter nonsense
Then there is "scouting" option where you walk around the map hidden and things are just standing there waiting for you to "find them" which is so immersion breaking. People walk around towns and go to bed at night, but enemies just stand in place waiting for you to uncover them. Like basilisks, hey I found a basilisk and he immediately attacks me and I have base saves against petrification; it's game over. Yeah it's game over for me
It's pretty clear in the game that Zargal is more powerful than a standard hobgoblin (in his dialogue he says something like "I'm the strongest there is" and he has two followers - after the combat you also find he drops a powerful weapon). Therefore it should be no surprise that he fights better. In 2nd edition D&D standard hobgoblins had AC5 (monsters never followed the AC system for player characters even in tabletop) and leaders are tougher than that. You've probably already realized that in BG1 missile weapons are really powerful, so you certainly need to beware of enemies that use them (and all elite hobgoblins apply poison to their arrows, so it's no surprise these ones do that).
If you don't want to use spells to help combat (and there are many other spells beyond sleep that can help enormously), that obviously makes things more difficult, but all fights in the game can still be done without any need for reloading. Scouting out the situation and positioning your party to best advantage makes a huge difference in combat. When scouting unknown areas by the way, I would suggest you always use an invisible or stealthed character - that way you get the drop on basilisks, rather than the reverse.
As for the point about whether enemies should be mobile, I would argue that the BG approach is good game design, not bad. It's obviously a question of taste, but I've played a fair amount with mods that do add mobility and I find it just becomes tedious after a while if you're walking repeatedly around the map and can't find enemies. In BG the designers compromised by having enemies in a fixed position until you find them, but making some of them move around really quite a lot after that (even if you're invisible when you first spot them). The first group of sirines you find at the lighthouse area are like that for instance and are significantly more difficult to deal with as a result.
Of course you shouldn't play the game if you don't find it enjoyable and I can see why you might find it annoying that the game doesn't always follow your views of how it should work. However, it's possible you would enjoy it more if you planned how to beat the game as it is, rather than thinking about how you'd like to change it.
That's not an excuse. Oh he's a "special hobgoblin" that breaks the rules.
Oh the scouting game where enemies are just standing there waiting to be discovered. Yeah the basilisks are like every other battle in this game, use BS tactics like immunity to their attack before you fight them (knowing the situation before hand). Oh theres a mage, let's cast silence that has a huge -5 to their save so they are useless. Oh let's cast sleep on these monsters. You don't fight anything in this game you just stop them from attacking you by cheese tactics
It's a terrible game... absolutely terrible. You can like it, I'm not saying you can't. But honestly, the player is the child of save-scumming, not the god of murder
It's exactly because he is so clearly a special hobgoblin that he's not breaking the rules. Like most monsters, there's not a single variety of 'hobgoblin' that's always the same - if you look at the Monstrous Manual you'll see there's a number of different types of hobgoblin, so the game is being consistent with the source material here.
I've played exclusively no-reload for many years now and used every possible character class, so I know there is no need to rely on reloading when playing the game. However, if you deliberately avoid tactics the game intends you to use (like using protection from petrification against basilisks), you will clearly make things more difficult. A nice thing about Baldur's Gate is that there is such a huge range of gameplay options available and there are still lots of ways to deal with basilisks without such protection (like using skeletons, or certain mage familiars, or charming Korax, or dominating the basilisks with Algernon's Cloak, or hold monster from nymphs, or area damage spells, or darts of stunning from stealth etc), but I think the game was designed with the expectation that players would use the various forms of gaze protection available - at least while learning the game.
That argument is ridiculous, "oh he's a special hobgoblin so the rules of dexterity and armor don't apply to his armor class", rules for thee, not for me is BAD GAME DESIGN! the title of the post
he's wearing studded leather armor and has a better armor class than my plate wearer, with no dexterity bonus. yeah there are hobgoblin elites etc, with stats that break the rules of the game. I'm restricted by all these rules while the enemies in the game are not. THATS BAD GAME DESIGN
he's a "special hobgoblin" because he said so? Apparently I'm the child of the god of murder, raised by a noted harper mage!!!
Oh... you do no-reload runs? that's because you know where everything is, you know how to meta the game. you can prepare for each and every situation before it happens
Yes I should have a chance to defend against a basilisks attacks other than using something which makes me completely immune to it. OTHERWISE ITS BAD GAME DESIGN. I'm suppose to have a bonus to my saves based on wisdom which helps me deal with special attacks, BUT I DONT. unless I am a dwarf or something
protection from undead scrolls, that's ridiculous. the fights in this game are all about preparing beforehand with items and spells that make you immune to the battle you are about to face. "oh here comes a fight with a lich, I'll just use this scroll I bought and damn dooood, I'm such a bad ass, that lich couldnt do anything"
walk into a tent, a guy robs me of gold and there is nothing i can do unless i pre-plan the strategy beforehand to knock him out, can't chase him down or anything. this is a scripted F-U moment.
Imagine if a DM pulled that in a real game of D&D, or this situation; you walk into a room with a ghast on the other side that immediately attacks you and paralyses you, you are now dead because you couldnt kill it in time with your other party members because they missed most of their attack rolls
trash game, worse than superman 64, and it's such a shame because the graphics are wonderful and the sense of exploration is great.
how would you fix it, then? Game is also easily modded.
Fair question
1. Enemies should abide by the rules of the game; rules you are bound by
2. Bad "DM" scenarios shouldn't exist. Example; the friendly arm inn assassin, which can cast a magic missile with more damage than your health, he should be casting chromatic orb etc. The game is full of these bad DM situations
3. Game mechanics should work properly, like wisdom save bonuses, spells working as advertised etc
4. Pickpocket, you fail your roll and now the map is hostile to you. You can't "talk" your way out using your charisma or anything; suffering a -1 rep loss or something. That's what would happen in real D&D. If I try to pickpocket him again, he attacks me (only that character going hostile / and their guards if any) who you could knock out with your fists instead of killing them. This is not a difficult thing to program. They have all these "special dialogue scenarios" but couldn't do this for a repeated event
5. Hit rolls. I roll a d20 one hundred times in real life, it will not get anywhere near the amount of 5's etc this game gives you. Nor will the enemy be rolling so many natural 20s. Looking this situation up on the internet, many other players have this problem too.
6. Special abilities like turn undead automatically stop so the character can attack nearby enemies. The AI scripts are awful for this (and require keyboard micromangaing); the other option is to turn off party AI (or have my cleric run circles around enemies) How about my characters auto-attack enemies until I manually select something like turn undead which indicates, stop attacking and start doing this action
7. combat itself should be turn based, real D&D is. it would of solved many of the games problems
8. trap detection is awful, and there is no way to deal with them other than using a thief (summons should be able to trigger them etc)
9. the spell selection itself is bad. there are so many spells and most of them are trash, while others are game breaking. Same problem extends to HLA's. My thief can kill a dragon with a trap; WHAT?
and so on.
these are problems with the game and not early D&D rules
one guy keeps arguing that "he's a special hobgoblin so rule-bending is allowed", I have never known a DM that has made his owns rules for their encounters
the core game itself is amazing; I mean the graphics, scenario, sound, music and so on, but it's flawed by awful programming and design.
the enhanced edition devs should of been fixing this above stuff, because by reading reddit etc, people have had the same complaints as me. even those replying to this thread who love the game are like... "yeah I know what you are saying.."
I'm gonna use a character called Zargal who is BG1 for an example.
He is a hobgoblin that attacks you, I looked up his stats, he has 9 dex and wears studded leather armor. But somehow he has an AC of 2. That is not in the rules of the game!! I'm wearing equipment with bonus to THAC0, and was shooting arrows at him with characters with 18 dex but can't hit him. Meanwhile his archers hit almost every round and they apply poison for some reason.
So what do you have to do? Reload aka save-scum until you get the outcome you need or use game breaking spells like sleep. It's utter nonsense
Then there is "scouting" option where you walk around the map hidden and things are just standing there waiting for you to "find them" which is so immersion breaking. People walk around towns and go to bed at night, but enemies just stand in place waiting for you to uncover them. Like basilisks, hey I found a basilisk and he immediately attacks me and I have base saves against petrification; it's game over. Yeah it's game over for me
It's pretty clear in the game that Zargal is more powerful than a standard hobgoblin (in his dialogue he says something like "I'm the strongest there is" and he has two followers - after the combat you also find he drops a powerful weapon). Therefore it should be no surprise that he fights better. In 2nd edition D&D standard hobgoblins had AC5 (monsters never followed the AC system for player characters even in tabletop) and leaders are tougher than that. You've probably already realized that in BG1 missile weapons are really powerful, so you certainly need to beware of enemies that use them (and all elite hobgoblins apply poison to their arrows, so it's no surprise these ones do that).
If you don't want to use spells to help combat (and there are many other spells beyond sleep that can help enormously), that obviously makes things more difficult, but all fights in the game can still be done without any need for reloading. Scouting out the situation and positioning your party to best advantage makes a huge difference in combat. When scouting unknown areas by the way, I would suggest you always use an invisible or stealthed character - that way you get the drop on basilisks, rather than the reverse.
As for the point about whether enemies should be mobile, I would argue that the BG approach is good game design, not bad. It's obviously a question of taste, but I've played a fair amount with mods that do add mobility and I find it just becomes tedious after a while if you're walking repeatedly around the map and can't find enemies. In BG the designers compromised by having enemies in a fixed position until you find them, but making some of them move around really quite a lot after that (even if you're invisible when you first spot them). The first group of sirines you find at the lighthouse area are like that for instance and are significantly more difficult to deal with as a result.
Of course you shouldn't play the game if you don't find it enjoyable and I can see why you might find it annoying that the game doesn't always follow your views of how it should work. However, it's possible you would enjoy it more if you planned how to beat the game as it is, rather than thinking about how you'd like to change it.
That's not an excuse. Oh he's a "special hobgoblin" that breaks the rules.
Oh the scouting game where enemies are just standing there waiting to be discovered. Yeah the basilisks are like every other battle in this game, use BS tactics like immunity to their attack before you fight them (knowing the situation before hand). Oh theres a mage, let's cast silence that has a huge -5 to their save so they are useless. Oh let's cast sleep on these monsters. You don't fight anything in this game you just stop them from attacking you by cheese tactics
It's a terrible game... absolutely terrible. You can like it, I'm not saying you can't. But honestly, the player is the child of save-scumming, not the god of murder
It's exactly because he is so clearly a special hobgoblin that he's not breaking the rules. Like most monsters, there's not a single variety of 'hobgoblin' that's always the same - if you look at the Monstrous Manual you'll see there's a number of different types of hobgoblin, so the game is being consistent with the source material here.
I've played exclusively no-reload for many years now and used every possible character class, so I know there is no need to rely on reloading when playing the game. However, if you deliberately avoid tactics the game intends you to use (like using protection from petrification against basilisks), you will clearly make things more difficult. A nice thing about Baldur's Gate is that there is such a huge range of gameplay options available and there are still lots of ways to deal with basilisks without such protection (like using skeletons, or certain mage familiars, or charming Korax, or dominating the basilisks with Algernon's Cloak, or hold monster from nymphs, or area damage spells, or darts of stunning from stealth etc), but I think the game was designed with the expectation that players would use the various forms of gaze protection available - at least while learning the game.
That argument is ridiculous, "oh he's a special hobgoblin so the rules of dexterity and armor don't apply to his armor class", rules for thee, not for me is BAD GAME DESIGN! the title of the post
he's wearing studded leather armor and has a better armor class than my plate wearer, with no dexterity bonus. yeah there are hobgoblin elites etc, with stats that break the rules of the game. I'm restricted by all these rules while the enemies in the game are not. THATS BAD GAME DESIGN
he's a "special hobgoblin" because he said so? Apparently I'm the child of the god of murder, raised by a noted harper mage!!!
Oh... you do no-reload runs? that's because you know where everything is, you know how to meta the game. you can prepare for each and every situation before it happens
Yes I should have a chance to defend against a basilisks attacks other than using something which makes me completely immune to it. OTHERWISE ITS BAD GAME DESIGN. I'm suppose to have a bonus to my saves based on wisdom which helps me deal with special attacks, BUT I DONT. unless I am a dwarf or something
protection from undead scrolls, that's ridiculous. the fights in this game are all about preparing beforehand with items and spells that make you immune to the battle you are about to face. "oh here comes a fight with a lich, I'll just use this scroll I bought and damn dooood, I'm such a bad ass, that lich couldnt do anything"
walk into a tent, a guy robs me of gold and there is nothing i can do unless i pre-plan the strategy beforehand to knock him out, can't chase him down or anything. this is a scripted F-U moment.
Imagine if a DM pulled that in a real game of D&D, or this situation; you walk into a room with a ghast on the other side that immediately attacks you and paralyses you, you are now dead because you couldnt kill it in time with your other party members because they missed most of their attack rolls
trash game, worse than superman 64, and it's such a shame because the graphics are wonderful and the sense of exploration is great.
I don't personally see any particular reason why a computer game has to be faithful to the source material that inspired it. However, BG does stick to the source material a lot of the time. You've referred a number of times to what a DM would do, so presumably you have some experience of the original 2nd edition D&D rules. I already referred to the Monstrous Manual, as the most basic source material about enemies. Even without the information about sub-races, the entry for hobgoblins refers to leaders, assistant leaders, sub-chiefs and chiefs - all of whom have better stats than the basic hobgoblin warriors - so it is not cheating, unexpected, or inconsistent with rules to find individual enemies with better stats than other members of their race (you will also find BG follows the convention in many other games that named enemies tend to be more powerful than generic monsters). As I said previously as well, monsters in D&D do not follow the same rules about AC as player characters, so you shouldn't assume that a monster wearing armor will have the same AC as you would wearing that same armor.
The wisdom bonus that you refer to was not a general bonus in D&D rules. Obviously a DM could use whatever house rules they wished, so it might have been used as a general bonus for you. However, in the core rules the bonus only applied to spells that attack the mind (like charm or fear). You could argue this should have been incorporated into BG, but perhaps the developers felt that it would unbalance the selection of spells if you made it easier to defend against mind-attacking spells than other types of spell.
I agree that playing no-reload does require the use of a lot of meta-knowledge. The scouting tactics I referred to before can allow you to prepare for most encounters, but not all. Hence I would not expect anyone to try and play no-reload until they had played the game a lot and were looking for a different sort of challenge.
I think the original developers expected reloading to be used a lot - there are various hints and tips suggesting this both in the game and the original manuals. This is an old game and came from a time when games killed you far more easily than most modern games do - that reflects a different philosophy of game design, which personally I prefer (though I accept that may just be because that's what I was used to when first playing computer games). That doesn't mean though that reloading needs to be used as a means of trying the same encounter over and over until random chance favors you. Reloading can be used to try out different tactics to find the best way to solve an encounter. That allows you to get a wide experience of the possibilities of game play in a far shorter time than if you're just concentrating on staying alive.
The game does require some knowledge of what lies ahead or meta gaming. But this isn't so different from many other games. You make mistakes and then you reload and try to do better. You try different options and see what works. For me that's what makes difficult fights interesting.
What's the alternative here? Making every encounter beatable at the first attempt? How is that interesting? And there are plenty of easy fights in BG1. Some of the encounters at the very beginning - like the assassination attempt - are questionable design-wise. But they aren't a huge hurdle. And after you leveled up a little there are very few trash mobs that can seriously hurt you.
IMO, Baldur's Gate II's combat system is one of the two best systems of all cRPGs I know, the other being Final Fantasy VII's. BG1:EE uses BG2's engine and combat system, but I'll agree it's not as interesting as in BG2 because what makes it so great in my eyes is largely spellcasting. I'd strongly disagree with it being "bad game design" at level 1-7 though, that'd be quite a weird leap from "best of all"
I'm gonna use a character called Zargal who is BG1 for an example.
He is a hobgoblin that attacks you, I looked up his stats, he has 9 dex and wears studded leather armor. But somehow he has an AC of 2. That is not in the rules of the game!!
It actually is pretty close to the rules of the game, I quote:
If the hobgoblins are encountered in their lair, they will be led by a chief with AC 2, 22 hit points, and +3 points of damage per attack, who fights as a 4 Hit Die monster.
The party just happened to meet a chief-level Hobgoblin outside of his lair. Maybe he lost or renounced leadership, not sure we need to care about his personal story, point is that such a Hobgoblin is pretty close to something suggested explicitly by AD&D 2's Monstrous Manual. Note that the "Dungeon Masters" (game developers in this discussion) are encouraged to take liberties with that kind of things, i.e. flexibility is part of the rules.
I strongly disagree that this game is badly designed and requires metagaming to finish without tons of reloads.
The game is designed to be played with a party of 6, and it requires you to use your resources wisely and use them all, if you want it to go smoothly and if you're new.
The EEs have already toned down some of the really mean encounters like Tarnesh and Shoal the Nereid.
The ambush with 10 bandit archers sucks, but life on the road as it is sucks, too. So if we're talking about realism, a youngster who grew up in a library and just left home for the first time can't expect to be treated fairly by criminals and point out to them that their approach isn't fair and the should let you gain more experience before meeting you in a fight. If you want to survive, you have to be smart and use what you have.
It's also a bit surprising to me if going invisible and scouting ahead, or using AoE/ crowd control spells like Sleep, is considered cheesy, but then the game declared to be too difficult. It's expected to play with a party and use their available abilities, the game is designed for that.
Sure, some people do poverty runs, solo runs, whatever, but those are extra challenges, and if they don't go well, it's not the fault of the game design.
Speaking of invisibility, there are some creatures that walk off when you come close to them. I have made that experience several times with kobolds for example. Especially in BG1 there are also creatures that roam around randomly at least in a small area. I believe it would be a bit complicated to expect every encounter to be randomized and adapted to a day/night cycle.
There are mods that randomize the bounty hunters and ambushes or encounters like the amazons, but that's mostly to avoid metagaming for experienced players.
Dice rolls are statistics and that's it. Personal experience will always have a number too small to reliably even out, and we tend to remember the results that concur with our expectations much more vividly.
About the spells, the declaration that some of them are trash while others are total game-breaking cheese, that's a very narrow personal opinion and not a general fact. Some underrated spells shine in particular situations, and some AoE spells do get cheesy if you just continue to nuke everything with them, but not if you use them to save your life when severely outnumbered.
And the game can be played blind and without metagaming, but that's only if you're ready to use what you have, and that includes scouting with a stealthy or invisible character, using consumable stuff like wands and potions, and a wide selection of the available spells.
So, if someone criticizes the gameplay because of difficulties, and gets a whole thread full of useful advice how to improve their experience with the game, they can either give it a try or not, it's as simple as that and comes down to the conclusion if this is a thread to rant about a bad experience or to find out how to make it better.
Venting about frustration with a game is perfectly legitimate, of course, but it would be pointless to try to contradict and convince a person who already has a settled opinion.
I'm still glad there were so many constructive responses to the original post, though, because other people might look at this thread and think "huh, is that really right? I've had bad experiences, too!" and then they read further and find very good advice by you folks here how to improve their gameplay experience and give the game another chance.
1. Enemies should abide by the rules of the game; rules you are bound by
Agreed, but the cheating on this front is not where you'd expect it to be - there are scads of humanoid NPCs with illegal skill sets (your example of Tarnesh in point #2 is usually the go-to example since he has more spells than he legally should be allowed to know for his level), but the monsters? They're all by the book. The hobgoblin you used in your example, if you were to use exactly P&P rules to recreate the scenario, would still have insurmountable stats at that point in the game. And yes, there are plenty of rebalancing mods to correct this.
2. Bad "DM" scenarios shouldn't exist. Example; the friendly arm inn assassin, which can cast a magic missile with more damage than your health, he should be casting chromatic orb etc. The game is full of these bad DM situations
Firstly, Chromatic Orb is a more dangerous spell to deal with at level one with the level disparity in this encounter, since it's a "Save or Suck" spell as well as a damage-dealing one (if Tarnesh casts Chromatic Orb and you fail your save, you're blind or your strength is sapped or you take as much as eight more damage or you're blind for even longer or you're outright stunned (depending on what level you are when you fight him - if you go straight to the FAI it should just be the strength sapping). Magic Missile only deals damage.
3. Game mechanics should work properly, like wisdom save bonuses, spells working as advertised etc
Agreed, though that's partially because I want my 19 wisdom to actually mean something beyond an extra 4th circle cleric spell.
4. Pickpocket, you fail your roll and now the map is hostile to you. You can't "talk" your way out using your charisma or anything; suffering a -1 rep loss or something. That's what would happen in real D&D. If I try to pickpocket him again, he attacks me (only that character going hostile / and their guards if any) who you could knock out with your fists instead of killing them. This is not a difficult thing to program. They have all these "special dialogue scenarios" but couldn't do this for a repeated event
This one is actually a balancing issue intended to reward players who invest in Pick Pockets and/or decide to play a thieving Bard - if your Pick Pockets skill is "high enough" then there's no actual roll to succeed, you just succeed automatically. The problem is that each mark has a target Pick Pockets value and not all marks in BG1 can legally be successfully pickpocketed under the BG1 level cap. But that's the risk you take when you pick pockets, and if you caught someone in real life trying to pick your pocket I'm pretty sure you'd become hostile and call for the authorities as well.
5. Hit rolls. I roll a d20 one hundred times in real life, it will not get anywhere near the amount of 5's etc this game gives you. Nor will the enemy be rolling so many natural 20s. Looking this situation up on the internet, many other players have this problem too.
I could go into a whole diatribe about true randomness vs perceived randomness, but really this just boils down to "reload your damn save and try again."
6. Special abilities like turn undead automatically stop so the character can attack nearby enemies. The AI scripts are awful for this (and require keyboard micromangaing); the other option is to turn off party AI (or have my cleric run circles around enemies) How about my characters auto-attack enemies until I manually select something like turn undead which indicates, stop attacking and start doing this action
Agreed, the modes should not be usurped by AI. Then again, in BG1 Bard Song is basically just a morale bonus, Turn Undead only scares the skeletons away, and Trap Detection is... it's own mess.
7. combat itself should be turn based, real D&D is. it would of solved many of the games problems
This is mostly just a limitation of the engine in line with its goals of being "a simulation of D&D combat in a real-time environment." You can fake round-based combat by enabling a certain autopause function, but the turns would still be synchronous within the round.
8. trap detection is awful, and there is no way to deal with them other than using a thief (summons should be able to trigger them etc)
There is a 2nd circle Divine spell called "Detect Traps" that does exactly what it says on the tin, though you do still need a thief (or a fighter with a zillion health) to disable the trap. Though there's really no excuse on this front - the game hands you Imoen on a silver platter, and she's a perfectly cromulent thief. Remember, half of the alleged appeal of this game is being able to use many varied and colorful NPCs (though I will agree that the need for a competent thief - especially if you intend to progress in any of the bonus content - kind of dampers things here, since your options basically boil down to Imoen, Safana, or a part-thief PC)
9. the spell selection itself is bad. there are so many spells and most of them are trash, while others are game breaking. Same problem extends to HLA's. My thief can kill a dragon with a trap; WHAT?
A problem in two parts.
1) Yes, the spell selection is bad. It's less bad with mods (my preference is for the IWDification mod, which backports a bunch of wonderful divine spells to BG), but still bad. On the flip side, knowing what spell does what can be very helpful - sleep is powerful early on, but because it's tied to the target's level/hit dice it becomes increasingly unreliable as time goes on, while Chromatic Orb - which you previously suggested as a replacement for Magic Missile in the Tarnesh encounter - can literally kill a dragon in one shot if you get lucky.
2) HLA's are supposed to be game-breaking. I can tell you right now, though, that you don't have to use them if you don't want to. Amely can be beaten legitimately without using them.
one guy keeps arguing that "he's a special hobgoblin so rule-bending is allowed", I have never known a DM that has made his owns rules for their encounters
You may want to re-read the official Monstrous Manual entry for Hobgoblins, because that's what that one guy keeps quoting from. The encounter in question would be a perfectly valid one in P&P (though your DM would be actively malicious if they allowed the encounter while you're still level one). In the context of Baldur's Gate, something I've said before (though I don't think it was in this thread specifically) applies - the difficulty curve only makes sense if you follow the plotted line. Once you leave the main path it is considerably harder to get back on to it alive.
6. Special abilities like turn undead automatically stop so the character can attack nearby enemies. The AI scripts are awful for this (and require keyboard micromangaing); the other option is to turn off party AI (or have my cleric run circles around enemies) How about my characters auto-attack enemies until I manually select something like turn undead which indicates, stop attacking and start doing this action
Automatic Turn Undead actually takes priority over auto-attacking. The problem is that it's really poorly implemented; the condition for it to work is an "and" of several "or" conditions which basically requires that the cleric be surrounded by lots of undead. Automatic bard song also takes priority over auto-attacking, though that one's at least scripted so that it actually comes up.
I've modded the scripts for my own use - looking at putting that out for other people to use as well. And ... that gives me another idea. You see, auto-attacking only comes up when the character is "idle". Having Turn Undead active really shouldn't count as idle, but it does. Something else to tweak, then.
...Though there's really no excuse on this front - the game hands you Imoen on a silver platter, and she's a perfectly cromulent thief. Remember, half of the alleged appeal of this game is being able to use many varied and colorful NPCs (though I will agree that the need for a competent thief - especially if you intend to progress in any of the bonus content - kind of dampers things here, since your options basically boil down to Imoen, Safana, or a part-thief PC)
Or Montaron. Or Coran, since you can delay most dungeon content for after the Cloakwood. Or Shar-Teel, if you dual-class her.
It's a shame that Alora and Tiax aren't available until way too late. Though there are mods for that.
(your example of Tarnesh in point #2 is usually the go-to example since he has more spells than he legally should be allowed to know for his level)
Tarnesh has three level 1 spells (all Magic Missile) and two level 2 spells (Horror, Mirror Image) memorized. That's a level 4 generalist mage's loadout. He's level 5. He actually has fewer spells than he should at his level. (In the EE. No idea about the original version.)
Of course, throwing a level 5 mage at what's likely to be an understrength party of level 1 characters is a nasty move. But you have options. If you picked up Montaron and Xzar, for example, Monty can sneak up and backstab for 7-17 damage out of his 12 HP. Hit on a 5, 50% chance of an instant kill if you hit. And then Xzar can cast Larloch's Minor Drain - if you're quick enough to act, that's another 4 damage before Tarnesh can finish casting his Mirror Image (faster casting time, no projectile travel time). At which point he's either all the way dead or down to 1 HP with his defensive spell disrupted, easy prey for the party's attacks.
Oh, and that Chromatic Orb suggestion? At Tarnesh's level, it's 1d8 damage and a 3-round stun on a failed save. Plenty of time for him to unload his other spells for the kill, or just walk up and whack you. The best tweak would probably be to lower his level to 4; that way, his memorized spell count would match his potential, and his Magic Missile spells would be weaker with only two missiles each instead of three. Also, he'd be vulnerable to spells like Sleep and Color Spray.
...if your Pick Pockets skill is "high enough" then there's no actual roll to succeed, you just succeed automatically.
Actually, picking pockets is subject to critical failures no matter what. There's always a small chance of failure even if you have 200+ skill.
It's shoplifting that can be a guaranteed success with enough skill. Just watch out - not all shops can be stolen from, and their difficulties vary widely.
On the hobgoblin discussion it is also worth noticing that while THAC0, AC and HP are directly exposed to the player their dexterity is not. There are several creatures/NPCs where the designer's did not really adjust the stats, and just set appropriate AC, THAC0 and HP directly. It makes almost zero difference, as long as AC and THAC0 are set correctly - which is the case according to the monster manual.
In fact, and also compared to BG3 the BG1&BG2 games are very good about having the player and the enemies on an equal ruleset. No hp bloat for enemies and other stuff like that.
Many of the other complaints like the spells widely varying in effectiveness and stuff are straight out of PnP. Sleep is just a killer at low levels. It's actually really hard to design an encounter where the characters can't die in one-hit at level 1 in 2nd edition. Game already cheats in your favor to avoid that.
The claim about the enemies cheating on their rolls is just straight nonsense though - people have been playing the game a very long time. It's not the case. It's observation bias/XCOM effect.
As for using turn-based instead of RTwP - that doesn't really solve any of your complaints. I've played the old goldbox games a lot where the ruleset is very very close (changes between 1st and 2nd edition are relatively minor IMHO, except for some classes). With TNB the usual issue you still have lethal low-level combat and encounters plus who wins boils down even more to who wins initiative. If you have two level 1 mages fight it is literally the one who gets to cast first who wins.
But to add a point where I think the game is a bit needlessly frustrating for newcomers, I think the one thing that BG should have taken over from Goldbox is that characters above -10 HP are just bleeding out and need to be bandaged to survive, instead of them dying straight-away.
...Though there's really no excuse on this front - the game hands you Imoen on a silver platter, and she's a perfectly cromulent thief. Remember, half of the alleged appeal of this game is being able to use many varied and colorful NPCs (though I will agree that the need for a competent thief - especially if you intend to progress in any of the bonus content - kind of dampers things here, since your options basically boil down to Imoen, Safana, or a part-thief PC)
Or Montaron. Or Coran, since you can delay most dungeon content for after the Cloakwood. Or Shar-Teel, if you dual-class her.
It's a shame that Alora and Tiax aren't available until way too late. Though there are mods for that.
Coran and Shar-Teel I've not messed with, but Montaron I usually end up specializing as a stealth thief rather than a traps-and-locks thief. Again, because Imoen is right there.
But to add a point where I think the game is a bit needlessly frustrating for newcomers, I think the one thing that BG should have taken over from Goldbox is that characters above -10 HP are just bleeding out and need to be bandaged to survive, instead of them dying straight-away.
Glad you said this part, and I fully agree. Obviously I get why they didn't quite get everything right back when this game came out. But what we've seen from Pillars and Pathfinder show a smart evolution on this. And it's one of the key flaws of the BG games, but especially the first game. One of the chief reasons why levels 1-2 feel so so much harder than once you've hit level 3.
I much prefer perma-death and acute weakness early on. Even as a kid, I've always liked the ruthlessness and realism of being level 1, having to be very prudent about which creatures to engage and how, stupidly untrained that we were by Gorion who knew perfectly well what was in store for Imoen and the protagonist.
I've only seen the early videos of "Divinity: Forgotten Realms" (yes), but it seemed harsh enough about death. I hope this hasn't softened up since then.
There are enough story hints that the outside world is tough, and you get plenty of help along the way. There are three npcs in the first area with prospect to getting two more mentioned in the letter. Plenty of npcs warn you to stay on the road and there are further road signs showing information about the surroundings.
If you lose a party member you have plenty of alternatives available, up to 25 ish vanilla if I recall the count, with additional options with the EE npcs.
Some mechanics issues mentioned I have never noticed while playing over the last decades. If they do not work well than they are probably bugs that need some attention.
Complaints about difficulty; you can turn it up or down. There are several levels of it with small bonuses and maluses.
Overall bg1 is one of the more elaborate games of its age and I do not think it is fair to expect the best AI coding to the current age standards considering all the npcs within it, but for what it does, it is quite good.
They improved AI in bg2, but they lost me a bit in that game due to the high magic battles that make it frustrating to know which protection is still up and what inherent immunities each creature may have. Bg1 has very little inherent immunities making it much more approachable in my opinion.
I feel that mostly current age standards for games are much higher than what was feasible a few decades ago, and that is why one would consider it bad design today, but to that I still disagree. Newer games are not doing any better in that regard.
I much prefer perma-death and acute weakness early on. Even as a kid, I've always liked the ruthlessness and realism of being level 1, having to be very prudent about which creatures to engage and how, stupidly untrained that we were by Gorion who knew perfectly well what was in store for Imoen and the protagonist.
I've only seen the early videos of "Divinity: Forgotten Realms" (yes), but it seemed harsh enough about death. I hope this hasn't softened up since then.
Gorion wasn't expecting to die on the way to the FAI, and likely was planning on training Gorion's Ward and Khalid and Jaheira all at the same time (it makes no sense that the Harpers would send a pair of untrained anything to help with this if it wasn't also supposed to be a way for them to get better)
The protagonist is 20 years old, same as Sarevok. One is learned and trained to the teeth and owns high-end equipment, the other can be beaten up by a small pack of Gibberlings and is basically naked. Let's face it, we survived through the sheer luck of having been lucky enough to be The One and by being given the convenient opportunity of only having to face opponents whose level of threat was within our reach -- as opposed to the poor sod slaughtered in the intro.
It's not like Gorion couldn't both provide the protagonist with a stable childhood and healthy education and skills that would help not being overwhelmed in the many combats that would inevitably come. It's not like he didn't know of the full details of Alaundo's prophecy, which was recorded right here in Candlekeep some 14 centuries earlier.
But I'm glad Gorion was so conveniently oblivious, it's thanks to that the just-out-of-Candlekeep part of the game is fun =D
I understand the level progression in the game, letting the PC start at level higher than 1 could be justified story wise but would be inconvenient for a lot of reasons. I do think that balancing is well done after that, though. Stay on the road and only do quests you already got and you will be able to defeat the monsters, go further anywhere and you might regret it. I'm not much into D&D so I do not mind if cheaty stats etc. were used for opponents as long as it doesn't make them unkillable or give them too great of an advantage.
What I do not like, though, is the
two assassins in Candlekeep who can be killed by level1 CHARNAME. Not to mention that they needed a book worth 10,000 gold each to enter.
I understand why they are there, but it's just silly if thinking about it.
I much prefer perma-death and acute weakness early on. Even as a kid, I've always liked the ruthlessness and realism of being level 1, having to be very prudent about which creatures to engage and how, stupidly untrained that we were by Gorion who knew perfectly well what was in store for Imoen and the protagonist.
I've only seen the early videos of "Divinity: Forgotten Realms" (yes), but it seemed harsh enough about death. I hope this hasn't softened up since then.
I get what you're saying here, and I definitely learned to appreciate the death mechanics of the IE games. But we should acknowledge why all the modern CRPG's that take inspiration from these have moved on. And, as Ammar said, why earlier RPG's that the BG series took inspiration from did it better.
I definitely like a challenging game and came to appreciate the challenge the death mechanic adds. But, it also doesn't leave the player with interesting choices really. The tedious chore of overcoming a death is a bunch of no-decision clicking, a bunch of busywork. This why most players, when first starting out, will simply reload on basically every single death. If game is channeling players into that, it's definitely worth questioning whether that element was good game design.
On top of that, because of the low HP totals early on, the game breaks slight from the adage of "easy to learn, hard to master." In many ways BG1 is hard to learn, easy to master. The opening hours of the game, really is an uphill battle for the uninitiated. And this can be tens of hours!
The thing to note regarding lethality is that it's not really about computer games. The IE games emulate 2nd edition D&D, which is just that deadly in the first place. The tabletop games mechanically evolved from wargaming, in which death is simply expected and rolling up a new character is cheap. Over the years and editions, the tabletop games have shifted toward character-focused roleplaying and less lethality, and the games associated with the brand have followed suit. AD&D/2nd edition is pretty early in that process.
If you want a tactically challenging computer game, in which your characters could die for the smallest mistake or even just bad luck, that's still out there. Play something like X-COM. You're just not going to find that as a D&D game now, unless you're deliberately playing older games like this one.
Incidentally, the best tool for mitigating that early-game lethality in BG1? Ranged attacks. Play a party with two or three archers, and take down foes before they can ever reach you.
2hellwBg2
Member Posts: 19
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Hands Down: The game is badly designed, but many love the game even with it’s flaws (or because of them). It’s been a all time favourite for almost 20 years now, and I still love it to bits.
The game is unforgiving, and requires some metagaming, but once you get some hours under your belt and search the forums for tips, it will shine. The game is manageble without luck and even has some very dedicated no-reloaders:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/40393/maybe-this-time-no-reload-thread-the-tale-of-ten-thousand-trials
So if you can overcome your justified urge to rage quit, the game has many many hours of fun (and tribulations). You are free to do what you like, but since you have signed up and have the game, you could ask jeres for some tips. I am not a great player, but this forum is brimming with great players you can ask - and most of them rage quitted the first times as well…
You were simply unlucky. There is no mechanism in the game that causes enemies to get higher die rolls than party members.
The system that determines whether a character will have their spells interrupted is really weird and nonsensical. It depends on which way the character is facing. How it works is that if a character is facing north, south, east, west, northeast, southeast, southwest, or northeast, their spells will be interrupted on damage, but if they're facing one of the directions in between (NNE, ENE, ESE, SSE, SSW, WSW, WNW, or NNW), then their spells can't be interrupted. It's definitely not a great system.
This is a bug. It happens when you charm someone right after you hit them with an attack or a hostile spell (though charm effects themselves don't count as hostile). To avoid this, don't attack or cast any spells on the enemy in the round before you charm them.
Once you start using SCS, it's like the game's AI went to the next level.
That said, you might finish your current game first, so you can appreciate what the mods are adding.
On the other hand... game was made and balanced in 1997. Furthermore, the game was made and balanced with the expectation that you'd use the two most powerful spells in your arsenal, save scumming and the pause button. Trying to play through this game without reloading after a disaster is considered a challenge run, not the intended style of play.
One of the things I love about BG1 that I felt was lost in later games was that same sense in tabletop D&D games where you start off, usually quite literally, lost in the woods. Being able to wander around and potentially get your party into serious danger was a feature, not a bug. Sure, any good DM will warn you before you are about to do something stupid, but in a lot of ways, so does Baldur's Gate. A good example are the Doom Guards at the entrance to Durlag's Tower. If you can't defeat them, you probably don't have any business in that tower.
Are the games perfect? No, but they are incredibly fun and, if you are willing to go along with it, great RP experiences. There is a magic to the games that transcends the various parts. About the only thing I regret was that 3E wasn't an option, as 2E is stifling in a lot of ways - but it's a product of it's era.
Example; a guy tried to sell me a scroll of stone to flesh at a price I knew was inflated, I stole it from him and used it on the nearby stoned character, the swindler realized this and left.
But the combat in this game is trash, it ruins the whole experience where you end up save scumming because it cheats.
I'm gonna use a character called Zargal who is BG1 for an example.
He is a hobgoblin that attacks you, I looked up his stats, he has 9 dex and wears studded leather armor. But somehow he has an AC of 2. That is not in the rules of the game!! I'm wearing equipment with bonus to THAC0, and was shooting arrows at him with characters with 18 dex but can't hit him. Meanwhile his archers hit almost every round and they apply poison for some reason.
So what do you have to do? Reload aka save-scum until you get the outcome you need or use game breaking spells like sleep. It's utter nonsense
Almost every battle is like this
Imagine if a DM did this in an actual D&D game "you enter a tavern and there is a level 7 assassin (while you are level 2) that immediately begins to attack you, btw, your wisdom bonus will not apply to your saving-throws so you are stuck with base saves and the assassin casts mirror-image and then fear".
You won't play with him again because he's breaking the rules of the game to be an ahole.
Then there is "scouting" option where you walk around the map hidden and things are just standing there waiting for you to "find them" which is so immersion breaking. People walk around towns and go to bed at night, but enemies just stand in place waiting for you to uncover them. Like basilisks, hey I found a basilisk and he immediately attacks me and I have base saves against petrification; it's game over. Yeah it's game over for me
That's not true at all. The amount of times the enemy rolls natural 20 is through the roof. Doesn't matter if it's attack rolls or saves, it's generally 15 to 20. Almost every single battle, and as stated before there are enemies in the game with non-rulebook allowed AC bonuses and attack rolls, just because
I get my armor class down to -5 (which is huge in real D&D 2nd edition) it doesn't really matter, because they are rolling 20s that hit you anyway
This game is explicit dog-$***
It's pretty clear in the game that Zargal is more powerful than a standard hobgoblin (in his dialogue he says something like "I'm the strongest there is" and he has two followers - after the combat you also find he drops a powerful weapon). Therefore it should be no surprise that he fights better. In 2nd edition D&D standard hobgoblins had AC5 (monsters never followed the AC system for player characters even in tabletop) and leaders are tougher than that. You've probably already realized that in BG1 missile weapons are really powerful, so you certainly need to beware of enemies that use them (and all elite hobgoblins apply poison to their arrows, so it's no surprise these ones do that).
If you don't want to use spells to help combat (and there are many other spells beyond sleep that can help enormously), that obviously makes things more difficult, but all fights in the game can still be done without any need for reloading. Scouting out the situation and positioning your party to best advantage makes a huge difference in combat. When scouting unknown areas by the way, I would suggest you always use an invisible or stealthed character - that way you get the drop on basilisks, rather than the reverse.
As for the point about whether enemies should be mobile, I would argue that the BG approach is good game design, not bad. It's obviously a question of taste, but I've played a fair amount with mods that do add mobility and I find it just becomes tedious after a while if you're walking repeatedly around the map and can't find enemies. In BG the designers compromised by having enemies in a fixed position until you find them, but making some of them move around really quite a lot after that (even if you're invisible when you first spot them). The first group of sirines you find at the lighthouse area are like that for instance and are significantly more difficult to deal with as a result.
Of course you shouldn't play the game if you don't find it enjoyable and I can see why you might find it annoying that the game doesn't always follow your views of how it should work. However, it's possible you would enjoy it more if you planned how to beat the game as it is, rather than thinking about how you'd like to change it.
That's not an excuse. Oh he's a "special hobgoblin" that breaks the rules.
Oh the scouting game where enemies are just standing there waiting to be discovered. Yeah the basilisks are like every other battle in this game, use BS tactics like immunity to their attack before you fight them (knowing the situation before hand). Oh theres a mage, let's cast silence that has a huge -5 to their save so they are useless. Oh let's cast sleep on these monsters. You don't fight anything in this game you just stop them from attacking you by cheese tactics
It's a terrible game... absolutely terrible. You can like it, I'm not saying you can't. But honestly, the player is the child of save-scumming, not the god of murder
The fact they didnt add wisdom based saving throw bonuses is shockingly bad game design
It's exactly because he is so clearly a special hobgoblin that he's not breaking the rules. Like most monsters, there's not a single variety of 'hobgoblin' that's always the same - if you look at the Monstrous Manual you'll see there's a number of different types of hobgoblin, so the game is being consistent with the source material here.
I've played exclusively no-reload for many years now and used every possible character class, so I know there is no need to rely on reloading when playing the game. However, if you deliberately avoid tactics the game intends you to use (like using protection from petrification against basilisks), you will clearly make things more difficult. A nice thing about Baldur's Gate is that there is such a huge range of gameplay options available and there are still lots of ways to deal with basilisks without such protection (like using skeletons, or certain mage familiars, or charming Korax, or dominating the basilisks with Algernon's Cloak, or hold monster from nymphs, or area damage spells, or darts of stunning from stealth etc), but I think the game was designed with the expectation that players would use the various forms of gaze protection available - at least while learning the game.
That argument is ridiculous, "oh he's a special hobgoblin so the rules of dexterity and armor don't apply to his armor class", rules for thee, not for me is BAD GAME DESIGN! the title of the post
he's wearing studded leather armor and has a better armor class than my plate wearer, with no dexterity bonus. yeah there are hobgoblin elites etc, with stats that break the rules of the game. I'm restricted by all these rules while the enemies in the game are not. THATS BAD GAME DESIGN
he's a "special hobgoblin" because he said so? Apparently I'm the child of the god of murder, raised by a noted harper mage!!!
Oh... you do no-reload runs? that's because you know where everything is, you know how to meta the game. you can prepare for each and every situation before it happens
Yes I should have a chance to defend against a basilisks attacks other than using something which makes me completely immune to it. OTHERWISE ITS BAD GAME DESIGN. I'm suppose to have a bonus to my saves based on wisdom which helps me deal with special attacks, BUT I DONT. unless I am a dwarf or something
protection from undead scrolls, that's ridiculous. the fights in this game are all about preparing beforehand with items and spells that make you immune to the battle you are about to face. "oh here comes a fight with a lich, I'll just use this scroll I bought and damn dooood, I'm such a bad ass, that lich couldnt do anything"
walk into a tent, a guy robs me of gold and there is nothing i can do unless i pre-plan the strategy beforehand to knock him out, can't chase him down or anything. this is a scripted F-U moment.
Imagine if a DM pulled that in a real game of D&D, or this situation; you walk into a room with a ghast on the other side that immediately attacks you and paralyses you, you are now dead because you couldnt kill it in time with your other party members because they missed most of their attack rolls
trash game, worse than superman 64, and it's such a shame because the graphics are wonderful and the sense of exploration is great.
how would you fix it, then? Game is also easily modded.
Fair question
1. Enemies should abide by the rules of the game; rules you are bound by
2. Bad "DM" scenarios shouldn't exist. Example; the friendly arm inn assassin, which can cast a magic missile with more damage than your health, he should be casting chromatic orb etc. The game is full of these bad DM situations
3. Game mechanics should work properly, like wisdom save bonuses, spells working as advertised etc
4. Pickpocket, you fail your roll and now the map is hostile to you. You can't "talk" your way out using your charisma or anything; suffering a -1 rep loss or something. That's what would happen in real D&D. If I try to pickpocket him again, he attacks me (only that character going hostile / and their guards if any) who you could knock out with your fists instead of killing them. This is not a difficult thing to program. They have all these "special dialogue scenarios" but couldn't do this for a repeated event
5. Hit rolls. I roll a d20 one hundred times in real life, it will not get anywhere near the amount of 5's etc this game gives you. Nor will the enemy be rolling so many natural 20s. Looking this situation up on the internet, many other players have this problem too.
6. Special abilities like turn undead automatically stop so the character can attack nearby enemies. The AI scripts are awful for this (and require keyboard micromangaing); the other option is to turn off party AI (or have my cleric run circles around enemies) How about my characters auto-attack enemies until I manually select something like turn undead which indicates, stop attacking and start doing this action
7. combat itself should be turn based, real D&D is. it would of solved many of the games problems
8. trap detection is awful, and there is no way to deal with them other than using a thief (summons should be able to trigger them etc)
9. the spell selection itself is bad. there are so many spells and most of them are trash, while others are game breaking. Same problem extends to HLA's. My thief can kill a dragon with a trap; WHAT?
and so on.
these are problems with the game and not early D&D rules
one guy keeps arguing that "he's a special hobgoblin so rule-bending is allowed", I have never known a DM that has made his owns rules for their encounters
the core game itself is amazing; I mean the graphics, scenario, sound, music and so on, but it's flawed by awful programming and design.
the enhanced edition devs should of been fixing this above stuff, because by reading reddit etc, people have had the same complaints as me. even those replying to this thread who love the game are like... "yeah I know what you are saying.."
I don't personally see any particular reason why a computer game has to be faithful to the source material that inspired it. However, BG does stick to the source material a lot of the time. You've referred a number of times to what a DM would do, so presumably you have some experience of the original 2nd edition D&D rules. I already referred to the Monstrous Manual, as the most basic source material about enemies. Even without the information about sub-races, the entry for hobgoblins refers to leaders, assistant leaders, sub-chiefs and chiefs - all of whom have better stats than the basic hobgoblin warriors - so it is not cheating, unexpected, or inconsistent with rules to find individual enemies with better stats than other members of their race (you will also find BG follows the convention in many other games that named enemies tend to be more powerful than generic monsters). As I said previously as well, monsters in D&D do not follow the same rules about AC as player characters, so you shouldn't assume that a monster wearing armor will have the same AC as you would wearing that same armor.
The wisdom bonus that you refer to was not a general bonus in D&D rules. Obviously a DM could use whatever house rules they wished, so it might have been used as a general bonus for you. However, in the core rules the bonus only applied to spells that attack the mind (like charm or fear). You could argue this should have been incorporated into BG, but perhaps the developers felt that it would unbalance the selection of spells if you made it easier to defend against mind-attacking spells than other types of spell.
I agree that playing no-reload does require the use of a lot of meta-knowledge. The scouting tactics I referred to before can allow you to prepare for most encounters, but not all. Hence I would not expect anyone to try and play no-reload until they had played the game a lot and were looking for a different sort of challenge.
I think the original developers expected reloading to be used a lot - there are various hints and tips suggesting this both in the game and the original manuals. This is an old game and came from a time when games killed you far more easily than most modern games do - that reflects a different philosophy of game design, which personally I prefer (though I accept that may just be because that's what I was used to when first playing computer games). That doesn't mean though that reloading needs to be used as a means of trying the same encounter over and over until random chance favors you. Reloading can be used to try out different tactics to find the best way to solve an encounter. That allows you to get a wide experience of the possibilities of game play in a far shorter time than if you're just concentrating on staying alive.
What's the alternative here? Making every encounter beatable at the first attempt? How is that interesting? And there are plenty of easy fights in BG1. Some of the encounters at the very beginning - like the assassination attempt - are questionable design-wise. But they aren't a huge hurdle. And after you leveled up a little there are very few trash mobs that can seriously hurt you.
It actually is pretty close to the rules of the game, I quote: The party just happened to meet a chief-level Hobgoblin outside of his lair. Maybe he lost or renounced leadership, not sure we need to care about his personal story, point is that such a Hobgoblin is pretty close to something suggested explicitly by AD&D 2's Monstrous Manual. Note that the "Dungeon Masters" (game developers in this discussion) are encouraged to take liberties with that kind of things, i.e. flexibility is part of the rules.
The game is designed to be played with a party of 6, and it requires you to use your resources wisely and use them all, if you want it to go smoothly and if you're new.
The EEs have already toned down some of the really mean encounters like Tarnesh and Shoal the Nereid.
The ambush with 10 bandit archers sucks, but life on the road as it is sucks, too. So if we're talking about realism, a youngster who grew up in a library and just left home for the first time can't expect to be treated fairly by criminals and point out to them that their approach isn't fair and the should let you gain more experience before meeting you in a fight. If you want to survive, you have to be smart and use what you have.
It's also a bit surprising to me if going invisible and scouting ahead, or using AoE/ crowd control spells like Sleep, is considered cheesy, but then the game declared to be too difficult. It's expected to play with a party and use their available abilities, the game is designed for that.
Sure, some people do poverty runs, solo runs, whatever, but those are extra challenges, and if they don't go well, it's not the fault of the game design.
Speaking of invisibility, there are some creatures that walk off when you come close to them. I have made that experience several times with kobolds for example. Especially in BG1 there are also creatures that roam around randomly at least in a small area. I believe it would be a bit complicated to expect every encounter to be randomized and adapted to a day/night cycle.
There are mods that randomize the bounty hunters and ambushes or encounters like the amazons, but that's mostly to avoid metagaming for experienced players.
Dice rolls are statistics and that's it. Personal experience will always have a number too small to reliably even out, and we tend to remember the results that concur with our expectations much more vividly.
About the spells, the declaration that some of them are trash while others are total game-breaking cheese, that's a very narrow personal opinion and not a general fact. Some underrated spells shine in particular situations, and some AoE spells do get cheesy if you just continue to nuke everything with them, but not if you use them to save your life when severely outnumbered.
And the game can be played blind and without metagaming, but that's only if you're ready to use what you have, and that includes scouting with a stealthy or invisible character, using consumable stuff like wands and potions, and a wide selection of the available spells.
So, if someone criticizes the gameplay because of difficulties, and gets a whole thread full of useful advice how to improve their experience with the game, they can either give it a try or not, it's as simple as that and comes down to the conclusion if this is a thread to rant about a bad experience or to find out how to make it better.
Venting about frustration with a game is perfectly legitimate, of course, but it would be pointless to try to contradict and convince a person who already has a settled opinion.
I'm still glad there were so many constructive responses to the original post, though, because other people might look at this thread and think "huh, is that really right? I've had bad experiences, too!" and then they read further and find very good advice by you folks here how to improve their gameplay experience and give the game another chance.
Firstly, Chromatic Orb is a more dangerous spell to deal with at level one with the level disparity in this encounter, since it's a "Save or Suck" spell as well as a damage-dealing one (if Tarnesh casts Chromatic Orb and you fail your save, you're blind or your strength is sapped or you take as much as eight more damage or you're blind for even longer or you're outright stunned (depending on what level you are when you fight him - if you go straight to the FAI it should just be the strength sapping). Magic Missile only deals damage.
Agreed, though that's partially because I want my 19 wisdom to actually mean something beyond an extra 4th circle cleric spell.
This one is actually a balancing issue intended to reward players who invest in Pick Pockets and/or decide to play a thieving Bard - if your Pick Pockets skill is "high enough" then there's no actual roll to succeed, you just succeed automatically. The problem is that each mark has a target Pick Pockets value and not all marks in BG1 can legally be successfully pickpocketed under the BG1 level cap. But that's the risk you take when you pick pockets, and if you caught someone in real life trying to pick your pocket I'm pretty sure you'd become hostile and call for the authorities as well.
I could go into a whole diatribe about true randomness vs perceived randomness, but really this just boils down to "reload your damn save and try again."
Agreed, the modes should not be usurped by AI. Then again, in BG1 Bard Song is basically just a morale bonus, Turn Undead only scares the skeletons away, and Trap Detection is... it's own mess.
This is mostly just a limitation of the engine in line with its goals of being "a simulation of D&D combat in a real-time environment." You can fake round-based combat by enabling a certain autopause function, but the turns would still be synchronous within the round.
On that note, what is your opinion of the 2003 Tomb of Elemental Evil computer game?
There is a 2nd circle Divine spell called "Detect Traps" that does exactly what it says on the tin, though you do still need a thief (or a fighter with a zillion health) to disable the trap. Though there's really no excuse on this front - the game hands you Imoen on a silver platter, and she's a perfectly cromulent thief. Remember, half of the alleged appeal of this game is being able to use many varied and colorful NPCs (though I will agree that the need for a competent thief - especially if you intend to progress in any of the bonus content - kind of dampers things here, since your options basically boil down to Imoen, Safana, or a part-thief PC)
A problem in two parts.
1) Yes, the spell selection is bad. It's less bad with mods (my preference is for the IWDification mod, which backports a bunch of wonderful divine spells to BG), but still bad. On the flip side, knowing what spell does what can be very helpful - sleep is powerful early on, but because it's tied to the target's level/hit dice it becomes increasingly unreliable as time goes on, while Chromatic Orb - which you previously suggested as a replacement for Magic Missile in the Tarnesh encounter - can literally kill a dragon in one shot if you get lucky.
2) HLA's are supposed to be game-breaking. I can tell you right now, though, that you don't have to use them if you don't want to. Amely can be beaten legitimately without using them.
You may want to re-read the official Monstrous Manual entry for Hobgoblins, because that's what that one guy keeps quoting from. The encounter in question would be a perfectly valid one in P&P (though your DM would be actively malicious if they allowed the encounter while you're still level one). In the context of Baldur's Gate, something I've said before (though I don't think it was in this thread specifically) applies - the difficulty curve only makes sense if you follow the plotted line. Once you leave the main path it is considerably harder to get back on to it alive.
Automatic Turn Undead actually takes priority over auto-attacking. The problem is that it's really poorly implemented; the condition for it to work is an "and" of several "or" conditions which basically requires that the cleric be surrounded by lots of undead. Automatic bard song also takes priority over auto-attacking, though that one's at least scripted so that it actually comes up.
I've modded the scripts for my own use - looking at putting that out for other people to use as well. And ... that gives me another idea. You see, auto-attacking only comes up when the character is "idle". Having Turn Undead active really shouldn't count as idle, but it does. Something else to tweak, then.
Or Montaron. Or Coran, since you can delay most dungeon content for after the Cloakwood. Or Shar-Teel, if you dual-class her.
It's a shame that Alora and Tiax aren't available until way too late. Though there are mods for that.
Tarnesh has three level 1 spells (all Magic Missile) and two level 2 spells (Horror, Mirror Image) memorized. That's a level 4 generalist mage's loadout. He's level 5. He actually has fewer spells than he should at his level. (In the EE. No idea about the original version.)
Of course, throwing a level 5 mage at what's likely to be an understrength party of level 1 characters is a nasty move. But you have options. If you picked up Montaron and Xzar, for example, Monty can sneak up and backstab for 7-17 damage out of his 12 HP. Hit on a 5, 50% chance of an instant kill if you hit. And then Xzar can cast Larloch's Minor Drain - if you're quick enough to act, that's another 4 damage before Tarnesh can finish casting his Mirror Image (faster casting time, no projectile travel time). At which point he's either all the way dead or down to 1 HP with his defensive spell disrupted, easy prey for the party's attacks.
Oh, and that Chromatic Orb suggestion? At Tarnesh's level, it's 1d8 damage and a 3-round stun on a failed save. Plenty of time for him to unload his other spells for the kill, or just walk up and whack you. The best tweak would probably be to lower his level to 4; that way, his memorized spell count would match his potential, and his Magic Missile spells would be weaker with only two missiles each instead of three. Also, he'd be vulnerable to spells like Sleep and Color Spray.
Actually, picking pockets is subject to critical failures no matter what. There's always a small chance of failure even if you have 200+ skill.
It's shoplifting that can be a guaranteed success with enough skill. Just watch out - not all shops can be stolen from, and their difficulties vary widely.
In fact, and also compared to BG3 the BG1&BG2 games are very good about having the player and the enemies on an equal ruleset. No hp bloat for enemies and other stuff like that.
Many of the other complaints like the spells widely varying in effectiveness and stuff are straight out of PnP. Sleep is just a killer at low levels. It's actually really hard to design an encounter where the characters can't die in one-hit at level 1 in 2nd edition. Game already cheats in your favor to avoid that.
The claim about the enemies cheating on their rolls is just straight nonsense though - people have been playing the game a very long time. It's not the case. It's observation bias/XCOM effect.
As for using turn-based instead of RTwP - that doesn't really solve any of your complaints. I've played the old goldbox games a lot where the ruleset is very very close (changes between 1st and 2nd edition are relatively minor IMHO, except for some classes). With TNB the usual issue you still have lethal low-level combat and encounters plus who wins boils down even more to who wins initiative. If you have two level 1 mages fight it is literally the one who gets to cast first who wins.
But to add a point where I think the game is a bit needlessly frustrating for newcomers, I think the one thing that BG should have taken over from Goldbox is that characters above -10 HP are just bleeding out and need to be bandaged to survive, instead of them dying straight-away.
Glad you said this part, and I fully agree. Obviously I get why they didn't quite get everything right back when this game came out. But what we've seen from Pillars and Pathfinder show a smart evolution on this. And it's one of the key flaws of the BG games, but especially the first game. One of the chief reasons why levels 1-2 feel so so much harder than once you've hit level 3.
I've only seen the early videos of "Divinity: Forgotten Realms" (yes), but it seemed harsh enough about death. I hope this hasn't softened up since then.
There are enough story hints that the outside world is tough, and you get plenty of help along the way. There are three npcs in the first area with prospect to getting two more mentioned in the letter. Plenty of npcs warn you to stay on the road and there are further road signs showing information about the surroundings.
If you lose a party member you have plenty of alternatives available, up to 25 ish vanilla if I recall the count, with additional options with the EE npcs.
Some mechanics issues mentioned I have never noticed while playing over the last decades. If they do not work well than they are probably bugs that need some attention.
Complaints about difficulty; you can turn it up or down. There are several levels of it with small bonuses and maluses.
Overall bg1 is one of the more elaborate games of its age and I do not think it is fair to expect the best AI coding to the current age standards considering all the npcs within it, but for what it does, it is quite good.
They improved AI in bg2, but they lost me a bit in that game due to the high magic battles that make it frustrating to know which protection is still up and what inherent immunities each creature may have. Bg1 has very little inherent immunities making it much more approachable in my opinion.
I feel that mostly current age standards for games are much higher than what was feasible a few decades ago, and that is why one would consider it bad design today, but to that I still disagree. Newer games are not doing any better in that regard.
Gorion wasn't expecting to die on the way to the FAI, and likely was planning on training Gorion's Ward and Khalid and Jaheira all at the same time (it makes no sense that the Harpers would send a pair of untrained anything to help with this if it wasn't also supposed to be a way for them to get better)
It's not like Gorion couldn't both provide the protagonist with a stable childhood and healthy education and skills that would help not being overwhelmed in the many combats that would inevitably come. It's not like he didn't know of the full details of Alaundo's prophecy, which was recorded right here in Candlekeep some 14 centuries earlier.
But I'm glad Gorion was so conveniently oblivious, it's thanks to that the just-out-of-Candlekeep part of the game is fun =D
What I do not like, though, is the
I get what you're saying here, and I definitely learned to appreciate the death mechanics of the IE games. But we should acknowledge why all the modern CRPG's that take inspiration from these have moved on. And, as Ammar said, why earlier RPG's that the BG series took inspiration from did it better.
I definitely like a challenging game and came to appreciate the challenge the death mechanic adds. But, it also doesn't leave the player with interesting choices really. The tedious chore of overcoming a death is a bunch of no-decision clicking, a bunch of busywork. This why most players, when first starting out, will simply reload on basically every single death. If game is channeling players into that, it's definitely worth questioning whether that element was good game design.
On top of that, because of the low HP totals early on, the game breaks slight from the adage of "easy to learn, hard to master." In many ways BG1 is hard to learn, easy to master. The opening hours of the game, really is an uphill battle for the uninitiated. And this can be tens of hours!
If you want a tactically challenging computer game, in which your characters could die for the smallest mistake or even just bad luck, that's still out there. Play something like X-COM. You're just not going to find that as a D&D game now, unless you're deliberately playing older games like this one.
Incidentally, the best tool for mitigating that early-game lethality in BG1? Ranged attacks. Play a party with two or three archers, and take down foes before they can ever reach you.