How exactly do you make decisions for combat?

nohmdd

TRPG fan here, I'm trying to give CRPGs another swing (with BGII) and I still feel like I'm not grasping something fundamental about them.

I think I understand the gist underlying combat, THAC0-AC calculations and such - and I get general strategies of going after casters first, leading with tanks, etc. But let's say you fight a single Bandit in one room and a single Skeleton in another.

What sort of feedback should you be looking for to gauge on how best beat each enemy? You're only told Hit/Miss and Damage #'s, so how exactly are you making decisions between the Bandit vs the Skele?

Like if the Skele has physical resistance, I'm supposed to notice that one of my characters does more damage here than with the Bandit and infer it's because of that char's magic sword? So it's a sort of memorization of your gear and comparing results? Or is it just pure trial and error for each of my abilities to see what did the most damage?

Obviously different enemies have different stats and skills, and I'm not lamenting the fact that information is hidden - but in TRPGs I get to use that information to inform my decisions, whereas here I don't know what I'm supposed to take away from each combat round. "Miss" - okay so their modifiers are really high, now what?

And I know people like to suggest taking an 'easy' class to steamroll the enemies so you can ignore overthinking things, but that inevitably leads me to hit a wall when I need to get better but never did because I just mindlessly clicked attack while getting better gear and armor. And after that I eventually drop the game, something I want to try and break.

Any insight?

jmerry

Options –> Gameplay –> Feedback. You can see to-hit rolls, successful saving throw rolls, and other such things if you set the options for them.

You still don't get to see exact character data for your foes unless you snoop in the game files (or look it up where someone has posted it), but that's not so different from tabletop - the DM isn't going to show you everything, after all.

Also, when it comes to resistance, you get to see how much damage you would have done; that skeleton might say "1 missile damage (6 resisted)" if you shoot it with an arrow, for example. You can get a rough idea of how much resistance you're looking at from that - and you probably should close to melee with that 90% missile resistant skeleton.

A lot of the time, lesser resistances aren't that big a deal. Chopping up skeletons with slashing damage (50% resistance) instead of bludgeoning (no resistance) usually works just fine. It's the immunities or extremely high resistances that make you change things up, and those are pretty clear in the log.

atcDave

A bit late to the thread here (!), but a couple thoughts.
First, activate a lot of “auto-pause” conditions so you won’t get such a wall of text all at once. It should give you smaller sections of text to look at. Another thing to keep in mind, most resistances make *some* sense, like a fire salamander being resistant to fire but vulnerable to cold.
There also is documentation in the “read me” files that includes a beginners bestiary. I think, original game documentation did. That may provide basic pointers, like trolls needing to be finished off with fire or acid.
So much combat involves a “rock, paper, scissors” sort of thing, what works great against one opponent may be of marginal (or no) value against another. A lot of this is similar to other sorts of war gaming, a tank is less useful in the woods…
There’s a whole thought process of thinking through what a character or weapon is meant for, and using it to best advantage.

chibisensei

0.5 cents

Aside from reading the combat feedback (and using the options to make full use of feedback as someone else mentioned) - make sure to have weapons that do different damage - the game will tell you if you or your party cannot do any damage with the weapon they are currently using - diversity of weapon damage type is needed if you are using a party.

Know how to use spells - read the description - don't just use fireball - other spells will work wonders as well depending on your battle.

Use items - potions, wands etc - no sense in hoarding them - there is enough in BG2 to do most thing - so give Jaheria strength potions for example in a middle-large size conflict and she will fight well. Just like using potions of agility for Minsc will do wonders - assuming you don't have the spell cat grace - buffs for individual characters can make them shine in battle - you just need to remember to use them.

Scout ahead - using your thief - assuming no meta-gaming knowledge or just not wanting to use it - there are a few alternatives if you don't have a thief with high enough hide in shadows or a ranger; such as invisibility, maybe a familiar or the wizard eye spell or perhaps clairvoyance spell.

DinoDin

A little late to this too. But just a general bit of advice about combat strategy, as opposed to combat tactics. Most of the encounters in BG1 and BG2 can be divided kind of into two groups. Easy mobs and dangerous fights. And you can generally tell which are the dangerous fights because they either involve humanoids who talk to you first or some unusual looking creature, relatively speaking. The game tends to be pretty good at telegraphing a dangerous encounter.

Broadly speaking you should conserve your spells against the trash mobs and try to just beat them with attacks, maybe some basic buffs and healing potions, imo. Maybe one powerful AoE spell like sleep, web, fireball. However, it's exactly the opposite when facing a "dangerous" group. You should basically unload with abandon your strongest stuff against them, even including limited use items.

And you should maximize that stuff to hit as soon as possible. You should be casting strong spells with all of your casters in the first two rounds. If you let enemy spell casters get off even one successful spell it can ruin your chances in the fight. And don't be afraid to use limited use items! The inventory system is a pain anyways, so inventory management is a pain if you let it get too full.

This one rule of thumb will keep you from reloading a lot and generally speaking will facilitate a more fun playthrough. Just general advice for anyone.