Several questions regarding ruling, after reading the "Adventurer's Guide" as a beginner.
Dainank
Member Posts: 6
Here are some aspects of the ruling that I struggled to understand and I was wondering if anyone could clarify them for me:
Many thanks for your time.
- Why do ability scores become 18/31 e.t.c. once above 18? I could not seem to find any details on this. What does it represent?
- From my understanding, Dexterity bonus to THAC0 only applies if the user is not wearing heavy armor? Otherwise both THAC0 and armor contribute to AC? If so, isn't it incredibly meta to just wear the best armor that does no restrict dexterity bonus, even on tanks (and speccing tanks in Dexterity as well as Constitution?).
- Since Wisdom contributes to the spell number Clerics can posess, am I correct in assuming that Inteligence is therefore essentially useless to Clerics?
- Considering the bonuses from Charisma, is it a useless stat (in comparison to the others)?
- For fighting styles, I see the following 4 general ones listed in the book: Two-Handed Weapon Style,
Two-Weapon Style, Single-Weapon Style, and Sword and Shield Style. However, when creating a character, I noticed you can also spec directly in a weapon such as the Quarterstaff that falls under the Two-Weapon Style. What benefit do specialized speccing give over generalistic speccing?
Many thanks for your time.
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Comments
2. Your understanding does not apply to this game; heavy armor restricting DEX bonuses to AC is a feature of later editions, but not 2nd. In this game, your full DEX bonus applies regardless of your armor type. The only reason not to wear heavy armor is if it restricts your class features.
3. Wisdom is of minimal use to everyone that isn't a cleric or druid, and intelligence is of minimal use to everyone that isn't a mage or bard. That's minimal, not none. Wands and scrolls require 9 INT to use, and there are wands and scrolls that priests can use. The "Lore" stat also gets bonuses from high INT and WIS; that's your ability to identify items without using an Identify spell. And finally, the "Wish" and "Limited Wish" spells in BG2(EE) work better for high-wisdom casters.
4. Charisma does two primary things: it boosts your reaction score which controls how friendly many NPCs are in conversation, and high charisma lowers shop prices. You definitely want a high charisma character up front to do the talking and interact with shopkeepers. The rest of the party ... not so important. If they're not doing the talking, their charisma is basically irrelevant.
5. Proficiency in a particular weapon type is always more important; the first level eliminates the non-proficiency penalty (-2 to -5 to hit, depending on class), while the second and beyond grant bonuses to hit, damage, and most importantly attacks per round. The weapon styles are a nice bonus on top of that; you can get extra AC versus missiles when using a shield with a melee weapon, more critical hits and a bit of extra damage when wielding a two-handed weapon, and so on. Exactly one weapon style always applies if you're wielding a melee weapon, and the style bonuses stack with specialization bonuses. You absolutely should have both types of proficiencies, at least at higher levels.
1. Does this mean that you should not bother speccing into exceptional strength?
2. Wow okay, so essentially every class tries to wear heavy armor if they can. I guess speccing into DEX is always a good thing then?
Thank you for the remaining information.
2. Dexterity bonus to THAC0 is applied only to ranged weapons, including thrown ones like Throwing Daggers, and it is applied regardless of whatever armor the user is wearing. Your THAC0 does not contribute to your Armor Class, but your Dexterity does--and again, regardless of whatever armor you might be wearing. Even a Tank decked out in Full Plate armor gets exactly the same AC bonus from having 18 DEX, that a Thief in Studded Leather enjoys. There is no armor in the game (apart from third-party modifications, possibly) that hinders anyone's DEX-based AC bonus.
3. Not only is Intelligence almost completely useless to everyone except Mages & Bards, it is also mostly useless even to Mages and Bards. To be precise, those two classes absolutely do need high INT--but only while they are scribing their spells. It is quite possible to build a Mage with only 9 INT, spend a few weeks collecting scrolls through adventuring--and then one night, you chug a bunch of potions to crank your INT up to 24 or 25, giving you a 100% chance to scribe new spells, and with no limits on how many you can learn. Next morning, your INT is back down at 9 again, but who cares? The spells are already in your book, and you don't need a high INT to cast them--merely to learn them.
Apart from scribing spells, INT determines what quickslot items you can use: If you have less than 9 INT, you are functionally illiterate, and cannot cast spells (or any type) from scrolls, or use Wands. Intelligence (and Wisdom) can apply large modifiers to your Lore (which is irrelevant unless you're a Mage, Thief, or especially Bard). Also, some conversations will check your social stats: If your INT is considered to be too low, the more intelligent options in the dialogue tree will not be available to you.
4. Yes. It has its uses, of course: People are more likely to give you better rewards for completing quests, more likely to give you the quest at all, and more likely to be willing to join your adventuring party. Most notably, CHA is useful for getting significant discounts when buying goods at a shop. But you only need one party member with a high CHA (15 and up) to enjoy all of these bonuses--just put them into the Party Leader slot (their portrait is at the top, on the left-hand side) and let them do all the talking. (And it's not like you're going to be buying a bunch of stuff anyway: In all of BG1, you're only going to have to buy, like, 12 things, and most of those aren't even expensive to begin with.)
5. Weapon Style proficiencies can give you bonuses (or, in the case of Two-Weapon Style, mitigate the drawbacks) on top of the bonuses you get from being proficient in the weapon itself. Things like having a quicker Speed Factor, or getting a boost to your AC, or being twice as likely to roll a Critical Hit, when using a weapon of the appropriate type. Having at least 1 point (or 2, if you're a Warrior) in the weapon itself is more important than proficiency in the relevant Style, but investing in the Style is still worth it--in most cases.
Two-Weapon Style: One melee weapon in each hand. Very costly, it takes 3 proficiency points to make this setup worthwhile.
Two-Handed Weapon Style: Wielding a single 2-handed melee weapon--Spear, Staff, Halberd, or 2-Handed Sword. It does not apply to ranged weapons like Bows.
Single-Weapon Style: A 1-handed melee weapon in your right hand, and an empty left hand.
Sword & Shield Style: It's garbage. Burn your proficiency points here only if you've got nowhere else to put them.
2. With that said, yes high DEX is always good. If you enjoy not being stabbed, and would like to continue not being stabbed as much as possible, all characters would ideally crank their DEX as high as they can (if they're going to be doing a lot of ranged combat, or especially if they're a Thief), or at least to 18 (if they're going to be fighting mostly in melee), whichever is lower. They should also ideally crank their Constitution as high as possible if they're a Warrior, or 16 if they aren't.
This does all mean the scores are not all created equal! Some are more important than others, and they have different impact on different classes. As an aside, in PnP each of these scores has even more effects. So Intelligence provides a bonus on certain saving throws and affects how many languages your character can learn. None of these are implemented by the game.
But Dexterity and Constitution are important to everyone. Dexterity from 15 up provides an armor class bonus for all characters, and from 16 up a plus to missile attacks. Everyone benefits from a high Dexterity. Constitution adds hit points from 15 up. At 17 Constitution provides additional hit points for Warriors only. So a non-Warrior will want a 15 or 16 there. Warriors want even higher.
Also note that exceptional Strength roll is significant. Even an 18/01 is better than a straight 18; an 18/00 is MUCH better. And although Strength is important for ANY character in melee combat, most often only your Warriors really belong there. Maybe a cleric, but seriously, if the cleric is expected to melee make them a fighter/cleric of some sort.
As others have indicated, its more important to learn your weapons than your fighting styles. But if you want to wield two weapons, two weapon style fighting becomes VERY important; the penalties for dual wielding without it are severe. Also, two handed weapon style is a pretty nice boost for anyone using a two handed weapon (surprisingly, most of the NPCs who come with two handed weapons do not start with this proficiency). The other two styles contribute much less and I would only take them for those characters fighting that way anyway.
2. With that said, yes, as atcDave has pointed out, Dexterity is important to literally every class, almost all the time. If you enjoy not being stabbed, and would like to continue not being stabbed as efficiently as possible, then ideally you should crank your DEX as high as you can get it. (Except if you intend to be melee-only: there is no AC bonus to be gained at 19 DEX, so a Tank who could get 19 would be just as well stopping at 18.) Similarly, everybody loves hitpoints: Warriors want all the CON they can get, while non-Warriors are happy at 16. (As for Multiclassed Warriors, such as a Cleric/Ranger or Fighter/Mage, that's up to you.)
Here there are the bonuses for strength, including the 18/xx one.
You will see that it boosts not only the damage, but also the Thac0 and the weight you can carry.
I.e. a Fighter with flat 18 STR can carry 220, has a Thac0 (only mlee) bonus of 1 and a DMG bonus of 3 (all mlee weapon + slings and returning weapons). A Fighter with 18/76 gets 1 more bonus point in Thac0 and 2 in damage, can carry 280, with 18/00 gets -3 Thac0 ( for Thac0 and AC the lower the better), +6 DMG and can carry 400. The amount a character can carry is important for carrying more loot that you can sell for money.
If you plan to run the whole saga INT is important for everybody as in BG2 you will find a specific type of enemies that with each successful hit drain some INT points, temporarily, but if they manage to bring it to 0 you are dead even if you still have plenty of hit points, minmaxing a Fighter or some other character with very low INT as it "is not imprtant" is very risky when you find such creatures, that have also the nasty habit to stun you (every attack vs a stunned guy is automatically successful). As the Mage can rise his INT with potions to learn scrolls everybody can do it to be more protected vs those enemies, but the potions are not available in infinite quantity, if you have to give them to mages to learn spells and to front liners as they have natural low INT it is possible that you can not find or buy enough potions, depending on how often your low int mage learns new spells.
INT affects both the chance to learn the spells ( on higher difficulties ) and the number of spells that the mage can learn at each spell level.
https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Weapon_Proficiency
Here there is the proficiency table where you can see the bonus of having x pips in a weapon type and the bonuses of the weapon styles.
I would say that 1 weapon style is almost useless for everybody that can use a shield, you have the OH and if you don't equip a weapon in it use the shield and spare the pip for something better, also the sword and shield style is often not worth wasting pips, gives you only AC bonus against ranged weapons, 2H weapon style gives you +1 damage and critical hits (that work only if the enemy is not wearing an helmet) on a roll of 19 so you have double chance to do double damage compared to who has not at least a pip in the style, the second pip improves only the speed factor, that does not rise your attacks/round, is only the chance that you land your hit before the enemy does, so is not so useful.
for weapon proficiency 2 pips give you +1/2 attack/round, grand mastery (5 pips, single or dual class, but not multiclass Fighters and Archers with some ranged weapons only) gives you and other 1/2 apr, so getting 3 or 4 pips in a weapon brings you only a little more damage, better spend the pips in other weapon types if you don't plan to reach GM.