I tend to agree with that. Reduce the power of one item and I am positive you will find a different item or strategy that then becomes the best one to use.
Self restraint is the better solution.
Restrictions are essential. I play with them: always have, always will.
Self-restriction comes at a cost, though, since it detracts from immersion. Every time you restrict yourself in a life or death situation you're engaging in a role play implausible action. Reducing the need for self restriction is therefore a benefit.
No Tweak mod will cover everything, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't address the obvious targets for improvement. It's like in life. We'll never make the world perfect but that doesn't mean we shouldn't fix the things we can.
Then I have a nomination for a tweak. Change either the XP from basilisks in BG or change immunity from petrification to +saves vs petrification and/or reduce the duration of the buff to something like 5 rounds (in the same sense as negative plane protection).
Agreed. I favor lowering the XP of basilisks. I hadn't thought of changing the duration of the Pro Pet and such, but that makes sense to me.
7000XP and 1400XP are the PnP experience values of greater and lesser basilisks respectively. Those numbers make sense in PnP but they're grossly inflated in the world of BG, since basilisks lose one of their greatest assets: their ability to surprise prey, particularly in ambush attacks.
If you survived the basilisks in your first play through, without a reload, you deserved 7000XP and 1400XP. Otherwise, not so much, lol.
These days I self restrict by refraining from killing basilisks. The only ones I'll allow myself to fight are the waylay basilisks. Those encounters retain some semblance of the PnP flavor.
1400XP and 700XP would be reasonable XP numbers.
As for the buffs, Potion to 5 rounds, arcane spell to 1 turn and green scroll to 2 turns would maintain the hierarchy while adding a bit of risk.
I hope a mod like this does get made.
I play a ton of no-reload with scs cranked to max and have had to keep adding restrictions and rules of my own to keep it interesting. Alas I am no modder, and past fiddling with some items and spells in Near Infinity, most of it just comes down to self restraint, which is getting a little draining at this point.
I will post my list of rules and restrictions, and maybe you find something you like in there, though truthfully there aren't really many interesting tweaks that I make, as I generally just outright opt not to use some of the most overpowered stuff and pretend it doesn't exist.
One thing though - from my experience - that really breaks the game, is uncapped resistances. One thing I would like to at least try, is a run where you cannot gain immunity to damage types.
The nature of playing no reload on maxed scs and double damage is that you need to put up relevant protections. At the same time it feels stupid to have your party chilling inside acid and fire clouds, getting breathed on by dragons, having liches unload half their spell books at you and not bat an eye, and continue casting spells. Physical damage becomes the only relevant damage type.
I would love to see a mod that caps resistances to something in the range of 70-80. Enough to be safe-ish even on double damage, but not enough to yawn at a dragon breath mid-casting and still complete your spell. The chip damage then eventually builds up over a few rounds and now you have to dedicate time and resources to managing that and repositioning, which allows enemies more time to do their thing.
Either that, or severely reduce the resistance values provided by spells to the point where it becomes unreasonable to stack enough different spells and potions of the same protection type on everyone.
Anyway, I'll link the list of rules I play with here and if something catches your eye, then cool.
Comments
Self restraint is the better solution.
I do like some more uniqueness in items though.
Restrictions are essential. I play with them: always have, always will.
Self-restriction comes at a cost, though, since it detracts from immersion. Every time you restrict yourself in a life or death situation you're engaging in a role play implausible action. Reducing the need for self restriction is therefore a benefit.
No Tweak mod will cover everything, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't address the obvious targets for improvement. It's like in life. We'll never make the world perfect but that doesn't mean we shouldn't fix the things we can.
Cheers,
A.
Then I have a nomination for a tweak. Change either the XP from basilisks in BG or change immunity from petrification to +saves vs petrification and/or reduce the duration of the buff to something like 5 rounds (in the same sense as negative plane protection).
7000XP and 1400XP are the PnP experience values of greater and lesser basilisks respectively. Those numbers make sense in PnP but they're grossly inflated in the world of BG, since basilisks lose one of their greatest assets: their ability to surprise prey, particularly in ambush attacks.
If you survived the basilisks in your first play through, without a reload, you deserved 7000XP and 1400XP. Otherwise, not so much, lol.
These days I self restrict by refraining from killing basilisks. The only ones I'll allow myself to fight are the waylay basilisks. Those encounters retain some semblance of the PnP flavor.
1400XP and 700XP would be reasonable XP numbers.
As for the buffs, Potion to 5 rounds, arcane spell to 1 turn and green scroll to 2 turns would maintain the hierarchy while adding a bit of risk.
I play a ton of no-reload with scs cranked to max and have had to keep adding restrictions and rules of my own to keep it interesting. Alas I am no modder, and past fiddling with some items and spells in Near Infinity, most of it just comes down to self restraint, which is getting a little draining at this point.
I will post my list of rules and restrictions, and maybe you find something you like in there, though truthfully there aren't really many interesting tweaks that I make, as I generally just outright opt not to use some of the most overpowered stuff and pretend it doesn't exist.
One thing though - from my experience - that really breaks the game, is uncapped resistances. One thing I would like to at least try, is a run where you cannot gain immunity to damage types.
The nature of playing no reload on maxed scs and double damage is that you need to put up relevant protections. At the same time it feels stupid to have your party chilling inside acid and fire clouds, getting breathed on by dragons, having liches unload half their spell books at you and not bat an eye, and continue casting spells. Physical damage becomes the only relevant damage type.
I would love to see a mod that caps resistances to something in the range of 70-80. Enough to be safe-ish even on double damage, but not enough to yawn at a dragon breath mid-casting and still complete your spell. The chip damage then eventually builds up over a few rounds and now you have to dedicate time and resources to managing that and repositioning, which allows enemies more time to do their thing.
Either that, or severely reduce the resistance values provided by spells to the point where it becomes unreasonable to stack enough different spells and potions of the same protection type on everyone.
Anyway, I'll link the list of rules I play with here and if something catches your eye, then cool.
https://pastebin.com/fjh1rS3U